I wish I could remember the tweet I read the other day. It said something along the lines of, “to know who you are you need to excavate the lives of your parents”, or something like that.
I feel I’m doing that with my mom and dads daily posts here. Father and son relationships are so, what’s the word? Tenuous. But also very taut, at the same time.
And either a one time blow up or a life time of neglect can severely damage  the relationship. You can just forget it if the dad is gone, that opens up the proverbial can of worms.
Excavating worms. Sounds like a good title.
Anyway, we had a large family and looking back I can understand why my dad didn’t ‘have time for me’. Individually. I’m pretty sure he liked me, but I don’t know if we ever had a relationship, like I said, I don’t remember any father son time except for a few.
But because they are few they are pronounced.
It was a lesson, a life lesson, that I have come to understand in a more profound way now that I’m a bit.. ahem; wiser shall we say.
I was elementary age then and it was winter time. I remember it being very cold, bitter, and windy. With those rogue blasts of cold air, in amongst a steady, Wisconsin, winter breeze.
I cannot recall why I was in the car with my dad but we were downtown and pulling in to the old Clark gas station to fill up. It was still a full service station at the time and one of the owners was manning the pump.
We pulled in off of the Pearl St. bridge and up to a filling island that was on our left, this happened to help the attendant as they were able to have their back to the aforementioned cold blast of old man winter.
The attendant was what I described back then as ‘the little old lady’, now in my defense I was maybe nine or ten, so everybody looked old to me back then and it was obvious she knew my dad.
Dad cracked the window to let her know how much to put in and she said , “Hi Johnny.”
He cranked the window back up and we sat there in silence as the owner pumped in the gas.
Now here is where his life lesson comes in.
She finished with the gas and came up to the window to collect. It was really cold out. She was all bundled up and the only thing I could really see of her was a beet red nose sticking out of the wool scarf around her face.
My dad handed her some money and she pulled out this old, leather, looking billfold that was chock full of money. I know cause I saw it and thought, “Dang that’s a lot of money.” It was so full and just poking out all over. She fumbled with it once or twice as she was going to give my dad his change. Then she said…
“Here Johnny help yourself to your change, it’s too darn cold out here, my hands aren’t working.”
She just handed him that big wad of cash, billfold and all.
My dad slipped his change out, pushed the other money back in a bit neater and handed it back to the attendant.
I can’t remember if I said anything but right before we were to pull out he turned, looked at me, and said…
“When people really know you, they’ll trust you like that.”
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