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jamesp420

My Father's Tears

Updated: May 10

The kitchen table had become the nexus of creation for my father. That’s where he’d put perfect penciled lines to a scrap of paper as he planned out his next table, cabinet, smoker, ice fishing tent or sheet metal grill. It’s where he’d peer with concentrated wince through coils of cigarette smoke as he whittled away at pieces of pine or maple with a carefully chosen Xacto blade until a knight or bishop or pawn emerged.


One time, shortly after his retirement and diving into more elaborate wood carving for the first time, he penciled in an intricate geometric pattern on a 12-inch by 5-inch piece of one-inch thick pine. Slowly, as he sat at that kitchen table, he carved the pattern into the canvas of wood.  To him, it was practice. To my approximately 16-year-old self, it was art.

 

“Dad, you have to make something out of that.”

 

“Nah.”

 

“Yeah. Make it the lid to a box for your chess pieces.” He had already used his Shopsmith combination lathe to build a chess table, and whittled out all the chess pieces a few years ago.

 

His shrug of shoulders accepted the challenge. He worked on it for some time, framing the ornate pine top in dark walnut, building a rectangular box, and affixing ornate hinges, decorative patina corners, and bronze latch.

 

With chest puffed out and shoulders rolled back, he presented the finished box. “There, kid. Whatdaya think?”

 

“That’s cool, Dad. But you should get felt all inside to dress it up.”

 

He measured and cut green felt and carefully glued it to the interior bottom and sides of the box.

 

“There you go. Happy now?”

 

“Nice! But you know what would be better? You should make an ornate base for it.”

 

His eyes rolled and his voice warbled with exaggerated frustration. “Jesus Christ, kid.”

 

“You gotta.”


Back he went, downstairs to his workroom and the Shopsmith. He routered out and miter-cut ogee moldings, staining the pieces the same dark walnut. He attached them seamlessly to the four sides, creating a dramatic base to match the boldly ornamental top of the box.

 

“There.”

 

“Wow. That’s great. But you know, what if you—”

 

“For Chrissake,” he barked. “It’s done, already!”

 

A child of the depression-era 30s, youngest of 3 sons and daughter to a hard man, he was raised in Sparta, Wisconsin to be tough and strong. Life taught him to be hard because life was hard. He was sent off to work at a nearby farm over a couple summers to raise extra money for the family. In his teens, he swung a sledgehammer for the Chicago-Northwestern railroad and used those hammer-swinging shoulder muscles to drive right hooks into his high school boxing opponents.

 

He joined the 457th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion out of Ft. Bragg in hopes of fighting for his country like his brother Arliss (a B-17 ball turret gunner—a position with a 60-percent mortality rate), but missed World War Two by two years. During that time, he fought his fears and stepped off four-story towers to learn how to land at over 15 miles per hour with 80 pounds of gear dangling below him without killing himself when he jumped out of planes at one thousand feet.


He studied electrical engineering and worked his way up to middle management at Wisconsin Bell, only to be slowly ground down between the cold-stone demands of executives and the rocky resistance of the labor union. He suffered over 35 years of a soul-sucking career because the pay was okay and the benefits were good and that’s just what you did to support a family.


He provided for his wife and five children trudging to and from that job. Life didn’t abide dreamers and punished romantics. It crushed anyone who lived in the fantasies of pursuing passion over paycheck.

 

We, his children, were tempered as much as we were raised. But, as tough and stalwart as he could be, he was also known to be amicable, a joker, sometimes a prankster, as well as social and welcoming. He holstered that steely brawn of his, but always kept one hand at the ready to draw.

 

As the youngest by 14 years, I experienced the softest side of his rough exterior. However, being one of those romantic dreamers, I often found myself in the crosshairs of his stolid consternation.

 

What had, to him, been cute when I was seven and writing silly little stories became a concern by my teen years. I would come home from high school, shut the door to my room, tossing a full and unopened backpack to the corner as I sat down before the slate gray JC Penney 1846 Electric Cartridge Typewriter to hack out an American bestseller. I thought I was going to be the next Stephen King. My father fervently disagreed.

 

When my guitar and I joined a band and thought we were going to be the next Pink Floyd, my father actually shed tears as he told me how disappointed he was in me and my childish dreams of grandeur. In his defense, I had barely graduated as a D-plus student, had been a trouble-maker most of my childhood, and…well, listen. We really WEREN’T that good. At least, not back then.

 

Honestly, I have far, far more fond memories of my father than negative ones; yet, those tears he shed in front of me—not rage, not anger, but a weeping disappointment—left a deep scar that to this day I’m still trying to resolve.

 

The box he made is proudly displayed in our living room. I walk by it every day. I marvel at its intricacy, its ornate beauty that I challenged my father to give to it. He had seen utility. I saw art.

 

And yet, at the kitchen table, he had always been dreaming up new projects, imagining and creating. I suppose he convinced himself it was all useful, functional. For anyone who has admired the chess sets, the tables and cabinets and other items he created from nothing, it is all art.

 

And I think of those tears he shed that day. I think about the man who, likely, was source to much of my creativity, and I wonder.

 

Just who was he actually crying over?

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