Portrait of my father

Mom’s Mink

He took us to see the houses he grew up in- a small but proper house in Morristown, the huge pink house on Loantaka Way in Madison. They moved to the big house after the war, when GIs were buying cars in droves and the dealership was making profit hand over fist. They were able to buy whatever they wanted: a beach house on Barnegat Bay, a boat named “Mom’s Mink”, a 4 carat diamond ring, a full length fur coat. Every single photograph of my grandfather from that time shows him with a drink in his hand. Even while driving the boat.

The Squirrel

When he was young, his friend took him shooting with a .22 rifle. He killed a squirrel with that gun and felt so terrible about it that he decided he would never shoot a gun again. After college he joined the Marines.

His bartender

He was the valedictorian of the Madison High School class of 1958, he would tell us proudly, even though he didn’t often go to class. He didn’t even need to study, he’d say. His mother was salutatorian, so he came from intelligent stock. He went on to study Eastern religions at Princeton but dropped out after two years, joking that the only person who would miss him was his bartender.

The Flag

In 1964 the World’s Fair came to Queens, NY, and he and his friend Charlie worked the Tropicana orange juice booth. They stole a massive World’s Fair flag. It is folded neatly in my mother’s basement like a military souvenir.

Deep fryer

Sometimes I woke to the smell of coffee and cigarettes in the kitchen, and that heavenly combination equaled joy. It meant he was home with us. Not gone for days on end, working or otherwise unaccounted for. I would race down the stairs and jump into his lap. Later, after he quit smoking, he would come home smelling of French fries, after spending all day in his Burger King.

Starfish

We’d rent a beach house on Long Beach Island that we affectionately called the Little Red House. One night after a big storm, hundreds of starfish washed up on shore. He collected them and pressed them under heavy books on the picnic table in the backyard. We were disappointed that the starfish wouldn’t lay flat. Their little arms kept curling upwards to the sky. We threw them all away. Our one souvenir was a horseshoe crab, which he told me to give to our science teacher.

Heroes

His heroes were Hemingway, Johnny Cash, and Van Gogh. He took us to see Les Miserables twice on Broadway. He cried both times.

Autumn

Every autumn, he would look out the bay window and sigh. “I hate fall, because it means everything is about to die.” He died on the winter solstice, the shortest, darkest day of the year.