things tended to make first impressions of my Dad a little more accurate – I mean, how scary can someone be if they put a candy bar above their bathroom door?
Dad’s wit was calculated and well executed, and often involved a practical joke. Everyone near and dear to Dad was on the receiving end of a prank at one point or another.
Dad’s best friend, Chuck, was probably the biggest target. Dad and Chuck were roommates in their bachelor days. Dad had the brilliant idea to sneak into the bathroom whenever Chuck was showering and switch the clean underwear he had waiting for him on the counter with the dirty pair he had just taken off and left on the floor. This went on for weeks until Chuck finally started to smell himself. When he asked my Dad if he noticed any funky smells, Dad cracked up, not caring that his prank had cost Chuck a date with a pretty girl.
Whenever Dad told the underwear switcheroo story he would interrupt himself at the crucial moment of discovery, unable to control his deep belly laughs. Those laughs were infectious; even if you were angry with him, even if you had been the target of his most recent prank, you just had to laugh along with him. The stories always ended with Dad and his audience wiping tears from their eyes.
If you were part of the immediate family you had no hope of escaping Dad’s pranks. There is a videotape of my cousin Steven, his brother Robert and myself sleeping peacefully on our living room floor. Mom is holding the camera while Dad is spraying shaving cream on our cheeks and foreheads. Dad snorts from time to time as he tries to hold in his laughter. One by one he tickles our faces and eventually we stir awake, not from the cream smeared across our eyes and noses but because Dad couldn’t stay quiet anymore.
When my Grandpa was weeks away from death, his cancer had spread into his throat and taken away his ability to speak. He would sit like a ghost in his recliner and watch with wide, weepy eyes as we lived around him. Grandpa never said, “I love you”, but you knew he did, because every time one of us grandkids walked by he would use what little strength he had to try and trip us with his cane.
Tormenting us with varnish, shaving cream, dirty underwear – these were Dad’s ways of tripping us up. As annoying as he could be, I know he wouldn’t have bothered if he hadn’t loved us so much.
When summer came to Minnesota my family would bring the plane out of the basement to spend a day assembled in our backyard. My parents would pop out the basement window and screen and then Dad would feed Mom whatever parts of the plane he had finished over the previous year. Piece by piece his years work would take shape in our backyard, propped up on sawhorses and lawn chairs. While we worked our neighbors would appear on their decks, sipping their morning coffee, not shy about gawking at our annual ritual.
In the beginning it was hard for me to make sense of what came out of the basement. The naked slabs of wood just looked like...well, wood. Once everything had been secured on sawhorses Dad would shift the pieces around, take notes, remove his hat and wipe sweat from his brow, then move the pieces around again. He obviously saw something we didn’t, or maybe he didn’t see a thing and he meant it every time he threatened to take an axe to his work.
As the summers passed and the fuselage grew I began to see a plane. The VP-1 was a single seat-er, which meant Dad would be the only passenger. It reminded me of a rectangular kayak. He would climb in the seat and his legs would rest inside the nose.
The wings were the most impressive feature in their skeletal state. Before they were encased in fiberglass, row after row of the paper thin wood that had been delicately cut into intricate circles were visible; this was where the nerves of the plane would be fed. The circles were precisely measured and cut with no room for error. More than once I heard Dad curse,
Dad’s wit was calculated and well executed, and often involved a practical joke. Everyone near and dear to Dad was on the receiving end of a prank at one point or another.
Dad’s best friend, Chuck, was probably the biggest target. Dad and Chuck were roommates in their bachelor days. Dad had the brilliant idea to sneak into the bathroom whenever Chuck was showering and switch the clean underwear he had waiting for him on the counter with the dirty pair he had just taken off and left on the floor. This went on for weeks until Chuck finally started to smell himself. When he asked my Dad if he noticed any funky smells, Dad cracked up, not caring that his prank had cost Chuck a date with a pretty girl.
Whenever Dad told the underwear switcheroo story he would interrupt himself at the crucial moment of discovery, unable to control his deep belly laughs. Those laughs were infectious; even if you were angry with him, even if you had been the target of his most recent prank, you just had to laugh along with him. The stories always ended with Dad and his audience wiping tears from their eyes.
If you were part of the immediate family you had no hope of escaping Dad’s pranks. There is a videotape of my cousin Steven, his brother Robert and myself sleeping peacefully on our living room floor. Mom is holding the camera while Dad is spraying shaving cream on our cheeks and foreheads. Dad snorts from time to time as he tries to hold in his laughter. One by one he tickles our faces and eventually we stir awake, not from the cream smeared across our eyes and noses but because Dad couldn’t stay quiet anymore.
When my Grandpa was weeks away from death, his cancer had spread into his throat and taken away his ability to speak. He would sit like a ghost in his recliner and watch with wide, weepy eyes as we lived around him. Grandpa never said, “I love you”, but you knew he did, because every time one of us grandkids walked by he would use what little strength he had to try and trip us with his cane.
Tormenting us with varnish, shaving cream, dirty underwear – these were Dad’s ways of tripping us up. As annoying as he could be, I know he wouldn’t have bothered if he hadn’t loved us so much.
When summer came to Minnesota my family would bring the plane out of the basement to spend a day assembled in our backyard. My parents would pop out the basement window and screen and then Dad would feed Mom whatever parts of the plane he had finished over the previous year. Piece by piece his years work would take shape in our backyard, propped up on sawhorses and lawn chairs. While we worked our neighbors would appear on their decks, sipping their morning coffee, not shy about gawking at our annual ritual.
In the beginning it was hard for me to make sense of what came out of the basement. The naked slabs of wood just looked like...well, wood. Once everything had been secured on sawhorses Dad would shift the pieces around, take notes, remove his hat and wipe sweat from his brow, then move the pieces around again. He obviously saw something we didn’t, or maybe he didn’t see a thing and he meant it every time he threatened to take an axe to his work.
As the summers passed and the fuselage grew I began to see a plane. The VP-1 was a single seat-er, which meant Dad would be the only passenger. It reminded me of a rectangular kayak. He would climb in the seat and his legs would rest inside the nose.
The wings were the most impressive feature in their skeletal state. Before they were encased in fiberglass, row after row of the paper thin wood that had been delicately cut into intricate circles were visible; this was where the nerves of the plane would be fed. The circles were precisely measured and cut with no room for error. More than once I heard Dad curse,
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