Belated Happy Father's Day

Father’s Day has complemented Mother’s Day since 1910, although the holiday was unofficial for decades and Americans treated Father’s Day as a joke, until LBJ proclaimed the 3rd Sunday in June Father’s Day. Richard Nixon made it permanent six years later.

I recall giving my father a tie on several Father’s Day. As I passed the legal age for drinking, he received a bottle of wine, which we drank it together with my mother. Many fathers get nothing for Father's Day. 1 in 6 according to one survey. Of course some fathers were total bastards and none of their kids celebrated Bastard Day. My father was a good man. He raised six kids the best he knew how. Even into his 80s he helped me with money. My father traveled around the world to see me in Thailand. He was the only member of my family to make the trip other than my late cousin David. I love my old man for that effort and so many other sacrifices that he made to better my life.

Sadly his mind was ravaged by Alzheimer’s and two years ago he was promoted to another world. I fondly recollect his insisting that I enunciate Bath, Maine as Baa-th, instead Baath with my more nasal Boston accent. Every day I recall the many trips we took as children and later after the passing of my mother our road trips in France, Ireland, Quebec, Utah, the Olympic Peninsula, Montana, and Wyoming.

My father was an excellent driver, but age affected his sense of safety. His foot was heavy on the gas. We argued about his motoring behavior. He was never wrong and refused to give up the steering wheel for fear of having to permanently surrender his license.

Our last trip was to Quebec. We stayed at the Hotel Frontenac in Quebec City and ate crepes overlooking the Plains of Abraham. His ancestors had fought as colonial soldiers alongside the British troop under General Wolfe. I ordered the wine in French. The waiter spoke Quebecois, which is an ancient Gallic dialect. He understood my order, but the waiter ignored me. Quebecois are Quebecois and not French. My father told him, “I want a Mer’Lot.”

It was one of his favorite jokes

The waiter laughed in anticipation of a good tip. My father didn’t disappoint him. The next day we drove north along the St. Lawrence passing giords, falls, and whales.

Traffic was non-existent. My father enjoyed flying at 110 MPH on the empty road, but even at that speed we fell short of our destination, Sept Iles, where the paved road turned to dirt all the way to Newfoundland.

We stopped at a small hotel overlooking a crystal blue bay. We opened a bottle of Sancerre and sat in the glow of the near-endless light of summer. The mosquitoes were merciless at dusk. Blood trickled from our bared skin.

We retreated inside the hotel room and on the next day we agreed that these vicious mosquitoes would drain our veins like vampires. The ferry across the St. Lawrence was only 30 miles south. We made the 8am crossing. I spoke with several travelers about the drive to Gaspe. They warned against speeding. My father ridiculed their advice.

“I’ve been driving over 60 years. Never got a speeding ticket. Not like you.”

“It’s a miracle.” My last moving violation was on the Mass Pike. 85 in a 65 zone. 1975.

“Not a miracle. Just good driving.” He exited off the ferry like he was racing against time. Towns were clustered closer together on the south bank of the St. Lawrence.
My cautions were dismissed with rancor. His mood was nasty. I later learned that this was the first sign of his Alzheimer’s. He swore at me after lunch.

For opening the map.

“It doesn’t matter where we are. Only where we are going.”

The chances of my ever coming this way were nil. I wanted to stop at the marked vistas and points of interest. My father motored past them with a vengeance. The trip was entering an unpleasant stage. He resisted my attempts to take over the wheel. He was the captain. Mutiny was my plan. He was driving 90. No one else was close to that speed. I watched the long straight-aways with binoculars and spotted a police cruiser in the distance. A mile off and coming fast.

“Slow down. There’s a cop car coming.”

“Slow down for what?” All he saw was open road.

“He’s going to stop us.”

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” My father had never used that type of language on me or anyone else. Something was ratting in his brain. It only took about twenty seconds for the police car to come even with us, but that short time my father recounted my many sins. Not delivering my newspaper route fast enough. Losing a scholarship to high school because I didn’t believe in god. Getting arrested for a high-speed chase. Drugs, drinks, not giving him grandchildren. If that provincial trooper hadn’t pulled us over, I would have revisited my every sin.

Big and small.

Worse he was right.

“So much for not getting a speeding ticket.” I wanted out of that car. Whoever was driving was not my father.

“Like always you don’t know shit.” My father put down the window.

The St. Lawrence was to the north. The far shore was beyond our sight. The hills to the south were covered with 30 year-old pine. The air smelled of cut wood. Somewhere close men were working lumber. My grandfather had put himself through Bowdoin College chopping trees in the northern woods. No car could go as fast as my father had been driving this morning.

The officer spoke Quebecois. He asked for my father’s license and registration. He said that he had radared the car at 90. The speed limit was 60.

“I will have to take your father into custody.”

“Really?” Jail would teach him a lesson. I asked in French, “Cuffs and all?”

“Oui.” His speech was cute. My father smiled with a practiced innocence.

“So if you arrest him, you’ll take him which way?"

The officer pointed in the direction of Gaspe.

“Excellent.” I figured booking and arraignment was a 2-hour ordeal. I could use the break. “What if I pick him up in 3 hours?”

“Mssr., we are not a baby-sitting service. You are lucky.” He didn’t want the responsibility of a man in his 80s and neither did I. Unfortunately he left me no choice, proving there is no such thing as free will. “I will give your father a warning. No ticket.”

“C’est pas vrai?” My old man was getting off.

“Roulez moins vite, SVP.”

The officer returned to his cruiser and wheeled away from us in the opposite direction. My father was smiling with satisfaction. He pulled off the shoulder and was soon up to 90.

“I told you that I wouldn’t get a ticket.”

“You told me a lot of things back there.” I slinked into the seat defeated by his words and escape from justice.

“Sorry about that. I’ve been losing my temper without any reason these days. Must be getting old. Whatever I said I didn’t mean.”

“I know.” My fight with him ended decades ago.

“You’ve been a good son."

“I could have been better.”

“Everyone could have been better. We can only do what we can do. Nothing more.”

It wasn’t an apology. We knew each other too long to need those. More a passing of the baton. He was old. I was old too. 51, which is closer to 80 than 20. My father could remember our watching bears eat at the town dump, a vandal throwing a rock at our station wagon at South Shore Drive-In, and my coming home late after sex with Janet Stetson. I was only 15. It was the only time he hit me.

“You should have called home.

We were too much alike to fight anymore and that evening we ate a small restaurant in Gaspe. The aroma from the kitchen was delectable. Wild salmon and fresh shrimp in a bouillabaisse. We ordered two plates and a bottle of wine. Night lingers longer in the northern latitudes and we walked along the cliffs of Gaspe in a shimmering dusk.

“I wish your mother was with us.”

“Me too.

He had loved her more than us.

With good reason.

Because she loved us all more than she loved herself.

I kissed my father’s head before going to bed. He was bald. His face was part mine. We were the same blood. Tomorrow we’d drive to Maine. My sister's camp on Watchic Pond was 500 miles away. I’d let my father do the majority of the driving.

He didn’t get tickets.