MY FATHER

This is a tribute to my father.

MY FATHER

My father was not a savvy businessman, evidently. He had no training to be one. He spent sixteen years living in rural England, where he worked for a farmer delivering eggs and milk to the county-folk before he immigrated to America in 1910. Here, he found employment in New York City as a Borden’s milk deliveryman. This career ended when his horse ran wild after being spooked, crashing into an elevated subway column, killing itself and injuring him.

He worked at the nearby Hoboken shipyards during WW I. When Prohibition became the law, my mother and he began to make home brew. From bathtub gin and a small clientele, he wound up as the proprietor of a small hole-in-the-wall saloon located in Hoboken near the terminus of the ferry and rail commuter service to New York. The bar thrived, thanks to the thirst of his customers, primarily rail workers. The person who actually owned the property provided him with all the ingredients needed to make beer on the premises.

I never saw this place, but assume it had the status of a “speakeasy.”

 With the end of prohibition, my father decided to open his own tavern, called the Liberty Bar. My mother cooked free lunch foods for the customers. She brought me there a few times. On one occasion, at age six, my head got stuck in the open framework of a wicker chair. I howled, thinking it would be my fate to live forever with this piece of furniture around my neck.

My father leased the space for this tavern from an unscrupulous building owner who, cunningly, arranged to have the liquor license made out in his name. My father spent a considerable amount of money to refurbish the bar. A year or so later, the owner refused to renew the lease, forcing my father out of business.

At the same time, my father invested most of his savings in a local business, the National Casket Company. Its owner, Tobey Monger, used the money to pay off some debts, and then declared bankruptcy. My father lost every cent he had.

In 1934 he then went to work for the Works Progress Association (W.P.A.), one of the agencies created by newly elected President F. D. Roosevelt to stimulate the economy. A few years later, he went back to work on the docks, shaping up daily as a stevedore as depicted in the movie, On the Waterfront. Since my mother was at work in Manhattan, and as my grade school had no luncheon facilities, my father came home at noon to make our lunch. We had the same meal virtually every day: bacon, eggs, and home-fries. On Friday’s, we had Manhattan clam chowder, purchased from the deli across the street from our apartment.

In 1940, he broke his left leg when a pallet of beans fell on him while unloading cargo for the Maxwell House coffee plant. It didn’t heal properly. Unable to work as a dockhand, he became a bartender, an occupation he continued working at until he was 83. All during those years, he worked six days a week, ten hours a day.

Those noontime lunches we shared kept him strong. It didn’t make my body grow much, but it worked wonders for my mind. After all these years, the memory of those meals and the time we spent together remains vivid. My dad was indeed a very big man whose demeanor masked the pain of those tough economic times.

We never did bond, however. His long hours of work left him with little opportunity to spend time with me. I was studious and athletic. He was neither. My brother acted more like a father to me. He heard my lessons, took me with him to sporting events, museums, college glee club productions, and explained the birds and bees to me one day, Jesuit style, beautifully incomprehensible.

For a few years in the mid '30's, after he lost his savings, my father drank excessively. It was a difficult period of life for my family and especially burdensome for my mother. Their arguments were monumental, and frightened me on some occasions.

Despite living with my parents until 1954, I did not interact much with my father. When I left home in 1954 to move to California, we had not spoken about anything of consequence in years. He was proud of me, I could tell. I had graduated from college, was gainfully employed by a large company, and appeared to be a clean-cut regular guy. He knew I would not have to work at hard menial jobs, as had been his lot in life.

My father was my mother's special target. She never seemed to be able to forgive him for his behavior after he went broke. She found fault with him all the time, and constantly nagged him. He became stoic, and accepted her condemnation. She would not allow him to stop working. She reasoned it was better for him to be standing behind the bar rather than loafing in front of it. It made sense. He loved the pub atmosphere of any of Hoboken's two hundred fifty saloons

My father never counseled me, nor advised me on any matter, until the day before I got married. Then, he asked me to take a walk with him, a very unusual request. During our stroll, he asked, "Do you love Angie?"

"Yes."

"Then take care of her," was his only comment, ending our discussion.

My father was very cognizant of his appearance. He always wore white shirts that my mother starched and ironed to perfection. He had a heavy beard, which he shaved below the skin line. On his day off, he would put on his one and only suit, and then stroll down

Washington St.

with stops at the bank and a number of his favorite bars. He always wore a felt fedora hat. He smoked White Owl cigars, chewing them mostly. He had large hands, which made cigarette smoking seem out of place for him.

As he aged, he drank less and less, settling for an occasional beer. In his prime, he drank rye whiskey, never any form of mixed drinks or cocktails. In Hoboken's grimy bars, there was little call for anything other than the stevedore's boilermaker or depth bombs. One is a beer with a shot of whiskey chaser; the other made by dropping the shot glass of whiskey into the glass of beer, consuming both liquids with one swig. I was never man enough to belly up to a bar to order either.

My most pleasant memory of my father is that of the four days I spent with him after my mother died in 1961. He told me he once had an English girlfriend named Ann. Mostly, he talked about how much he loved my mother. I got to hear him tell about his love of dancing, and heard him reflect about life. I grew to love and respect him so much because of this visit.

He lived the last five years of his life with my sister, in White Plains. To the very end, he loved to take a taxi to the nearest saloon, just to hobnob with the clientele. He would have hated to visit me in California, living as I did in the wilds of suburbia, not one bar in sight.

For all his drinking, he was not a carouser or a family disgrace. He just loved the camaraderie of men and liquor. He was never profane, crude or indecent in any way. He rarely went to church, due to working every Sunday morning. Yet when my sister was pregnant with her first child, he visited church every afternoon to pray for a healthy grandchild.

He left me with many memories, few possessions. I have his straight edged razor and his pearl tiepin, only a few pictures. My most prized objects are the dozen or so letters he wrote after my mother died. When I showed them to my sister one day, she was smitten. She had never received a letter from either of our parents, and had no idea they were such wonderful correspondents.

I think of my father as a man's man, an unassuming man, a gentle man, a decent person, who held no one in disrespect. He even liked the English, unheard of among his Irish peers. He had spent the prime of his life in England, and saw things differently as a result.

While in college, from time to time, I would spot my father walking home from work across the college campus. It was one way he could share my experience without imposing himself.

I pray there is saloon up in heaven. I hope my father is there, waiting to buy the next round. If not, he may be sewing some holy garments for the Angels. He learned to be a tailor at some point in his life. According to my brother, he bought a Singer sewing machine for my mother. A salesman delivered it, and started teaching her how to operate it when my father came home. He tossed the man out the door, and then sat down and taught my mother. She was shocked, unaware of his tailoring background.

Is this a true story? Would my big brother lie? I know my father would not. He was a humble and honest person who made me proud to be his son.

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