My
father was a great man. Capital G, capital M. He had huge arms from working
with a jackhammer in the tight spaces of a small coalmine, aiming it at the
veins of coal located above his waist and over his head. He spoke truth to
power and took on a sadistic drill instructor when he was in the military.
Needless to say, he did not have a military career, but they did offer him an
officer’s commission. My father was interested in aviation, but didn’t make it
on the account of color blindness. They offered him airborne infantry, and he
spent time drinking with the officers, who were testing the new jumps and the
new parachutes for the troops. In the end, my father did not stay in the
military. He went to school to be a mining engineer, but wound up working as a
regular miner, because he could make more money. He took up the issue of the
mine safety, and became very unpopular both, with the labor union members and
with the management of the coalmine, until a mine explosion proved him right,
but by then my father was fired from the job and moved on from the small mining
town he lived in at the time. He ended up in grad school, working as a stagehand
at the local opera theater and modeling for the art students. He was a low
profile activist, and when the police tried to make an informant out of him, he
played a fool, (or was it his true nature?) and told his would-be handlers that
he will co-operate, so long as he will advise everyone that he talks to, that
the content of their conversation will be reported to the authorities. They
waived my father off and told him to forget that he ever spoke to them.
My
father was a smart jock, who sat in the back of the higher physics classes
(math was his strong point), and read Hindu philosophy book. He practiced Yoga,
but did it in a different spirit, than in which it is done today: He did it for
the sake of walking on coals, laying on beds of nails and being able to let two
and half-ton trucks roll over his abdomen. I did not listen to my father and
chose weight lifting and gyms over Yoga practice. That was my mistake. I should
have listened to him more, when I was young. Had I listened to his advice based
on the general notions from another time, I would have been more successful in
my endeavors. It was one of those things of the
had-I-stuck-with-my-father’s-yoga-and-kept-doing-my-karate-practice-I-did-in-high-school
variety. But I hadn’t, and instead I argued with him all through my teen-age
years, trashing all of his cherished notions and values in the process. I was a
young republican driving a truck during my college years devoid of humor or
enlightened self-interest. There were opportunities to talk to girls and a red
flag or two, but I missed them. While rejecting most of his views and
practices, I managed to internalize a few key ones despite myself. One was
Achievement and Self-Development. The others were fascination with Eastern
Philosophy and ignorance of and immunity from the peer pressure. My father used
alcohol to break down barriers and connect with anyone and everyone, regardless
of who they were. I never became a jock, but I am able to do the same with mere
conversation. I had horrible fights with my father, which lasted beyond my
teen-age years, until I moved out on my own. As with most things back then, I
was not aware of the significance of the event, while my father got
unexpectedly upset.
The
older I got, the closer I grew to my father. The only fights I had with him
were about his drinking. I tried to get him to stop, but failed. He respected
me more after I moved out, and I learned to recognize and value his common
sense advice and commentary on the events in my life. His success was an irony,
given his drop out lifestyle, where career was evil and money was bad. The more
money he got rid of, including giving it away to friends and charity, the more
money fell on his head. His few friends privately thought him a fool, tried to
emulate his income or outdo him, failed, and were his friends and buddies no
more. He craved fellowship and a commune the way I endure wanderlust and
long for solitude. He tried to find a commune, religious and otherwise, but saw through
the bullshit of his would-be gurus and self-appointed wise men. In the end, I
was able to achieve the same degree of the financial success as my father, but I
get it done with 60 hour work weeks, while my father took a 25% reduction in
pay to work four days a week, and he came and went from his office as he
pleased, whereas I got to punch the proverbial clock. My father started out in
a basement apartment, where he lived with his parents, grandparents, and sibs.
He ended up living in a nothing short of a mini-mansion on the American
Riviera, lined with white carpet, marble, and with a heated pool outside and a
country club nearby, all the amenities were lost on him, and he found he place
thanks to the diligent efforts of my mom and a brother of mine. My father may
eschew the material, but I definitely appreciate the sheer beauty and the sheer
spaciousness of it, every time I fly down to see my parents. I have my own
bedroom with awesome white curtains against the deep azure of the southern
skies. My father died after a long illness on October 8, 2015. His final health
crisis came too quickly for me to fly down and see him. I was on-line looking
for a flight when I got the news. His illness and death were the direct result
of his life-long drinking. I asked my folks about why he drank, to see if the hardships
of his life and my conflicts with him had something to do with it, but I was
told that he drank socially and recreationally. He drank since he was sixteen,
and that in their almost 50 years of marriage my parents had separated and
almost divorced three times because of it, but in the end nothing, but terminal
illness brought on by alcohol abuse, could stop him from drinking. Going back
to Ancient Greeks, every classic hero has a tragic flaw, an Achilles heel that
kills them. I always thought this notion contrived and unrealistic, until it
occurred to me that the firewater was my father’s tragic flaw.
