¡Día De Padre Feliz!

Happy Father's Day, everyone!

My dad is skating with Jesus these days, but I still thought it would be nice to immortalize him in a blog. Especially since he's not here to defend himself--case in point:


Moi and I were recently challenged to tell seven things that no one knew about our stories. After both of us mangled the assignment by reporting seven unknown points about our novels, we were told no, the assignment was for seven things about our personal stories--our own lives. I've decided to do a second mangling of the assignment--a purposeful one this time--and tell seven things about my father that I think are interesting, weird, or compelling. Or perhaps something I just dredged up to embarrass him in the hereafter.

Seven Things About Bob

1. My father's nickname in our family was Crab Daddy Bob. This hailed back to our vacation sport of crabbing on the Gulf Coast. After getting the nets, coolers, and chicken necks ready (ew, yes, I said chicken necks), he crowbarred us out of bed in some indecent pre-dawn hour and shuffled us, en masse, downstairs to the car. Then he drove us to a series of locations where the crabbing "might be good" so that we could drop those stanky chicken necks into the water and see whether the crustaceans were biting. After listening to us bitch and complain about the heat and lack of breakfast for a couple of hours, he'd trundle us back into the car and take us home to the air-conditioned beach house, whereupon he would gleefully get the water going for the Death Watch. One of my favorite memories is of sitting side-by-side with him at the sink, cleaning those stinky crabs (pre-vegetarian era, of course) and just chatting about stuff. That puts a very warm, achy spot into my heart just remembering it.

2. Crab Daddy once attended a party dressed in a pink tutu and smoking a cigar. (For the record, it was a costume party.) He had a thorough love of entertaining people through unexpected acts, and the funnier the better. That man loved a good guffaw and he didn't mind one bit if it was at his expense.

3. Despite our advanced ages, my siblings and I always referred to him--and still do--as "Daddy." I'm not sure why this childhood cognomen never transitioned to the more adult-like "Dad," but it didn't. I like it.

4. As a child, I always went to Wal-Mart with my father. I guess no one else was interested in going, much to my luck. We walked through the parking lot hand in hand and then he gave me a penny for a gumball as we entered the store. This became our thing, a special little niche of time carved out just for us, and it continued to the end of his life. Well, sans gumball, dangit. Being the youngest of such a big brood, time alone with either of my parents was a very, very special thing.
5. I recently learned from one of my father's cousins that he was quite the little instigator as a child. He hatched a plot of some sort (an engineer from the very beginning) and then handed out assignments to his younger cousins. They dutifully followed through and then watched in awe as he created something whirring, spinning, or booming out of the parts they had collected.

6. One of my greatly-loved possessions is a shadow box my father made for me when I was a child. I don't remember now whether he made it because I had asked for one or just because he thought I would like it. For years it was filled with trinkets that he brought home from business trips and other girlhood delights. I've kept it packed away for many years now, but I think it might be time to bring it out and fill it once again.

7. My dad loved, loved, loved show tunes. There was almost always a musical playing on TV on the weekends while I was growing up. It's where I developed my love of the same. He also loved very sentimental, nostalgic music and used to e-mail me midi files of it. Man, I wish I'd saved those...

8 (Hey, 7 = 8 in my world). My father is buried in a section of the cemetery in which the grave markers are flat on the ground. However, not wishing to follow protocol (see item #2), he was the first to have an upright headstone. Natch, several others followed suit, the copycats, so he's not quite as distinctive, but he's still looking good out there. My family takes great pleasure in pondering the tacky items with which we could decorate his grave--pinwheels, battery-operated blinking lights in funny shapes, plastic Smurf dolls--nothing is sacred. (This is just one more reason why we're all prolly a'goin' to hell, but hey, if you can't have fun with this, what's the point?!) We don't actually put any of those items out there, but we do usually take something to leave for him, such as an orange slice (his favorite) or the top from a bottle of rootbeer. Or whatever we can find in our cars at the moment. On the one year anniversary of his death we took lawn chairs, coffee and donuts out to the cemetery and sat with him for a while. It was soooooo white trash--he would have loved it.

(We only look like we're having a serious, thoughtful discussion about my father. We're not. We're probably telling inappropriate stories about him and laughing our tuckuses off.)

Crab Daddy Bob had it going on, and I'm awfully glad to have had him for my father. Although he was 75 when he died, which certainly seems a respectable age for other people to die, it seemed far too young for him. Nonetheless, I have no doubts that he is sitting in Heaven right now creating something whirring, spinning or booming that will take us all by surprise. Oh, Lawsy...