Father’s Day has complemented Mother’s Day since 1910, although the holiday remained unofficial for decades and most Americans treated Father’s Day as a joke, until LBJ proclaimed the Third Sunday in June as Father’s Day. Six Years later Richard Nixon signed a bill to include Father’s Day in the American pantheon of holidays.
“The only thing I get for Father’s Day are bills,” my father had said at a dinner on that day in 1971. He was right, even though I recall having given my father a tie on several Father’s Day.
After I had passed the legal age for drinking, he received a bottle of wine, which we had drunken with my mother. He was lucky, because many fathers get nothing for Father’s Day. 1 in 6 according to one survey. My older brother had once said that all he received for Father's Day was the check for dinner. Of course some fathers were total bastards and none of their kids celebrated Bastard Day.
My father was a good man. He had raised six kids the best he knew how and I loved him for his many sacrifices to better my life. Some of his efforts were in vain and my father liked listing my failures on various occasions. The list rarely changed from time to time.
“You’re sloppy with everything. You traveled the world like a tramp.”
“Our family voyaged around the world. My great grandfather had died in a shipwreck off Rio.”
“His travels had purpose. You were just a hobo.”
It was the truth and I accepted his accusations without any defense, although after my mother’s death the two of us traveled to France, Ireland, Utah, the Olympic Peninsula, Montana, and Wyoming for long road trips. We were both hoboes.
My father was an excellent driver, but his foot weighed heavy on the pedal and we argued constantly about his speeding. He was never wrong and refused to give up the steering wheel in fear of having to permanently surrender his license. He was in his eighties.
In the summer of 2000 I returned from living in Thailand to deal with my landlord in the East Village. A trip north to north to New England had been on my mind since the passing of Songkarn marking the end of the hot season in Siam and I had convinced my father that we should go on a road trip t Canada. It didn’t take much convincing. He loved the road.
Mid-June I rode Amtrak north, passing along the coast through the Pine Barrens up to the Route 128 train station south of Big Blue Hill. The train arrived a little after noon. Only ten minutes late. My father was in the parking lot next to his Mercedes. His first foreign car.
We shook hands and I threw my bags.
“Tony’s?”
“Fried clams.”
Wollaston Beach was only ten minutes away. We both ordered the same.Fried clams whole bellies. I got a root beer. His was a chocolate milk shake.Everyone in our family marvelled at his stomach’s ability to handle the combination of fried bivalves and milk. After receiving our food, we sat outside, cars whizzing by on the boulevard separating the legendary clam shack from the desolate beach. It was hot, but unlike my youth no one swam in the bay. It was polluted same as in the 1960s.
I unfolded a map
Quebec.
“Why Quebec?” My father had usually picked our destinations.
I told him about the Manicouagan crater.
“It’s the largest ‘visible’ impact crater on Earth. It hit the earth over 200 million years ago.”
“And why do we want to go there?”
“There's nothing like it in the world. A giant meteor in the center of a lake. I tried to get there in the winter of 1991.”
“There are two seasons that far north. The season of good sledding and the season of bad sledding.”
“It was definitely bad driving season north of the border that time of year.” The snow had deepened in Northern Maine, but the roads had been plowed, however my English travel mate had been an illegal alien and Phillipe had refused to cross the border. “I turned back at Fort Kent.”
“And you want to go now?” My father was increasingly more comfortable staying at home
“It’s almost always day that far north. No snow either.”
“I don’t know if I’d like the endless day. I like my sleep.” He slurped his shake.
“Me too, but we’ll have a good time.”
“Doing what?”
“Driving, playing cribbage, eating good food, and drinking wine.” I dipped a clam belly in the tartar sauce tainted red with hot sauce. Succulent.
“Okay.” My father was an easy sell and the next day later we headed north from Boston.
June was a warm month, but his new Mercedes had superb AC. We reached Quebec City in one day, where we stayed at the Hotel Frontenac overlooking the Plains of Abraham. That evening we dined on Arctic char and sipped white wine.
“Our ancestors fought with the British under General Wolfe.”
“I know.” I had been a registered Son of the Colonial Wars, until I had realized that the association celebrated the conquest of the Northern Tribes
“So if we won that war, why don’t they speak English?” He was talking about Les Habitants.
“Because they’re French.”
“They’re not French. They’re Canadian, which is almost American.”
“They don’t think that.”
“That’s, because they’re too French to know when they’re beaten. You know our ancestors fought here with the British under General Wolfe.”
He had recently acquired a tendency to repeat things. My brothers and sisters were worried. They saw him all the time. I played my part as vagabond son and said, “I know.”
The waiter arrived before we had to relive the previous dialogue for a third time. Having lived in Paris, I ordered another bottle of wine in Boston-accented French. The waiter ignored me and my father told him, “We want a Mer’Lot.”
Mispronouncing wines was one of his favorite jokes. The waiter laughed in anticipation of a good tip. My father would not disappoint him.
“I thought you could speak French.”
“The Quebecois speak with an ancient Gallic dialect.”
“And you speak French with a Boston accent?”
“Maybe I do.”
“You know our ancestors fought here with the British under General Wolfe?”
“I know.” I sighed knowing I had not heard the last of General Wolfe on this trip. We finished a second bottle of wine and he told the waiter, “We’re going to see Lake Manicouagan.”
“Why?”
“My son says it’s the biggest impact crater in America.”
“It’s also called the Eye of Quebec. It can be seen from Space.”
“Okay.” The waiter shrugged with the same smirk everyone wore upon hearing our destination.
“No one seems to be impressed with Lake Manicouagan,” my father commented, as we took the elevator to our floor.
“None of them have ever seen it.”
“Neither have you. It’s probably just a big pine-covered rock in the middle of a lake hundreds of miles from anything.”
“Exactly. We might get there tomorrow if we drive fast.”
“100?”
“Why not?”
We entered our hotel and he fell asleep searching the TV for WHEEL OF FORTUNE. I read Kenneth Roberts ARUNDEL about Benedict Arnold’s invasion of Quebec. Our ancestors had also fought in the Revolutionary War. I put down the novel and shut off the light. Tomorrow we had an early start.
The following dawn we skirted along the northern bank of a foggy St. Lawrence. Fiords and waterfalls dotted the northern shore. Whales gathered at the river mouths. My father drove like he was late for work.
“Can you stop a minute?”
“What for?”
“Before today I’ve only seen one whale and that was off the coast of Hawaii.”
“Your great-grand-uncle killed hundreds of whales.”
“Aunt Bert’s father.” My great-grand aunt had lived to a 103.
“Her father slaughtered a blue whale for her eighth birthday.”
“I know. Maybe she saw hundreds, but I want to see one closer.”
“If you’ve seen one whale, you’ve seen a thousand.”
Traffic on the North Cabot Trail was non-existent and my father stepped on the gas. We flew at 110 MPH down the smooth two-lane road.
“Why are you in a hurry?”
“We’re not making it to your crater today and I want to catch WHEEL OF FORTUNE at the motel.” He enjoyed this simple pleasure, even if his show aired in French north of the border.
“Baie-Comeau is only two hours away.”
“You been here before?”
“No, but our ancestors fought under Wolfe in Quebec.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing.”
“As usual.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that you wasted your life and I can’t count the ways, but there was the time you drew submarines on the bedroom walls and set fire to the woods on Easter morning.”
“I didn’t light it.” My older brother Frunk was the family's pyromaniac. I was simply his torchbearer.
“Then who did?”
I said nothing and my father put on a classical music CD. Mozart filled the silence to Baie-Comeau, where the road turned north to Lake Manicouagan. We booked a room for the night at a small hotel overlooking a crystal blue bay. We were a mere two hundred miles for the crater. After signing in, the manager asked where we were going.
“Lake Manicouagan.”
“Why?” He regarded us with bafflement. “There is nothing there.”
“It has the biggest impact crater in North America.
“And also biggest Maringouins in Quebec." The manager shrugged with a smirk.
“What’s Maringouin?”
“Mosquitoes, the most savage mosquitoes south of Hudson Bay.”
“How savage?”
“You’ll see in Lake Manicouagan.”
We ate fresh Atlantic salmon in a small restaurant by the river. The locals sat outside eating corn around a bonfire. We returned to the hotel and I opened a cold bottle of Frontenac Gris. The two of us admired the glow of the near-endless light of summer, although the stars were fighting to be bright through clouds of merciless mosquitoes and blood trickled the bites on our heads.
“You still want to see Lake Manicouagan?”
“It’s only two hundred miles away.” I swatted the map at our tormenters, which proved useless for killing the swarms of mosquitoes.
“On a dirt road.” My father was from Maine. He knew dirt roads. “With bigger mosquitoes than this.”
I slapped my forehead. A glut of blood dripped on my shirt.
“I’ve had enough of this.”
“Me too.”
We retreated inside the hotel room and finished the wine. My father watched his show. His snores kept me up until midnight. I fell asleep reading ARUNDEL. Kenneth Roberts failed to mention mosquitoes, because Benedict Arnold had invaded Quebec in the winter of 1776.The Revolutionary army had broken under the city walls.
Early the following morning I examined the bites in the mirror.
“What do you think?” My father scratched at his lumpy skull.
“We’re so close. It seems a shame not to try for it.”
“There’s nothing there, but more Maringouins according to that man.”
“You’re right.” I agreed that there was little sense in braving the vicious blood-sucking mosquitoes.
“So what now?”
“There’s an ferry crossing the river at 8am.”
“How far?” He checked his watch.
“Thirty miles.”
“Let’s go.”
My father never dropped below 100 and we made the ferry in time for 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 sixty years and never received a speeding ticket. Not like you.”
My last moving violation had been on the Mass Pike for driving 85 in a 65 zone. The year was 1975 and I muttered, “It’s a miracle you haven’t.”
“Not a miracle. Just good driving.” He exited off the ferry like he were chased by clouds of bebittes, which was another Quebecoise word for mosquitoes. I supposed they had more.
Towns were clustered closer together on the South bank of the St. Lawrence. My cautions about his speeding were dismissed by his increasingly nasty rancor and he swore at me for opening the map.
“It doesn’t matter where we are. Only where we are going.”
“I want to stop and see the sights.” The chances of my coming this way again were nil.
“There’s nothing to see, but trees and sea.”
My father motored past every stunning vista with a vengeance. He was the captain. The Benz hit 90.
We passed every car. No one else traveled this fast, although he passed the slower traffic like an Indy driver. I studied the long straight-aways with binoculars and spotted a police cruiser in the distance.
“Slow down.”
“Slow down for what?” All he saw was open road.
“A cop car. 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 with me or anyone else. Something was rattling his brain.
The police car passed us, then 180ed in pursuit. The siren was loud and the lights flashed behind us.
“He wants you to stop.”
“So I’m stopping.”
He pulled off the road and swiftly recited a list of 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, and not giving him grandchildren. If that provincial trooper hadn’t knocked on the window, my father would have covered my every trespass since birth.
Worse his accusations were spot on target, but I said with a smile, “So much for not getting a speeding ticket.”
“Like always you don’t know shit.” My father put down the window.
“Why are you talking like that?”
“Like what?”
He didn’t hear my question and rolled down his window.
The hills to the South were blanketed by a pine forest. The air smelled of cut wood.
Somewhere close men worked lumber. My grandfather and his father had put himself through Bowdoin College chopping trees in the northern woods.
The trooper asked for my father’s license and registration in Quebecois.
“Is there something wrong, officer?” My father respected the law.
The officer said in French that he had clocked the car at 90 and looked at me.
“Le Limite de Vitesse est 60. I will have to take your father into custody.”
“Really?” I asked in French. “Cuffs and all?”
“Oui.” He was dead serious about provincial laws.
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 two-hour ordeal and I could use the break.
“What if I pick him up in three hours?”
“We are not a baby-sitting service. I will give your father a warning. No ticket.”
“C’est pas vrai?” I was crushed by his decision to let off my old man.
“Roulez moins vite, Mssr.” The officer handed back the license with a slip of paper.
“Bien sur, officer.” My father understood that he was supposed to drive at a slower pace.
The officer returned to his cruiser and wheeled away from us in the opposite direction. My father smiled with satisfaction. He pulled off the shoulder and we were soon up to 90.
“I told you that I wouldn’t get a ticket.”
“You told me a lot of things back there.” I slunked into the seat defeated by his escape from justice.
My father talked of 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 a night with Janet Stetson. I had been fifteen. My father had picked me up at 3 in the morning.
“You hit me.”
In the face.
“You should have called home. Your mother was worried.”
“Sorry.”
I had said it then and I said it now.
“Save your sorry for hell. You sinned with that girl. You didn’t care about anyone. All you cared about was sex.”
This turn in the conversation was as unexpected as a verbal barrage of curses.
“You’ve been a bum all your life. You should be working. Instead you traveled the world. To do what? To be a bum.”
“Mom said I was her eyes and ears on the world.”
“Only a mother can love a bum like you.”
“You can’t talk to me like that.” I had worked all my life, but not as a member of the 9-to-5 society.
“Why? Can’t you stand hearing the truth?” His face was turning red.
“Stop, Dad.” I was worried about his heart.
“This is my car. I can say whatever I want, you dirty bum.”
The speedometer pushed over 100.
“Maybe you can, but I don’t have to listen.”
“Then you can get out of the car.”
My father stomped on the brakes and the car veered onto the shoulder.
“Fine with me. Pop the trunk. I want my bag.”
“Get out. Now.”
I obeyed him and waited on the asphalt for him to tell me to get back in the car. Instead he hit the gas and drove east. The Mercedes disappeared over the next hill with my bag. He had a funny sense of humor and I tried his phone with my cell. There was no service. This was not a joke.
I had my phone, wallet, binoculars and a map. I was two miles from Mont-Louis. The another road cut south from 132. Either way I was over twenty miles from Gaspe. I stuck out my thumb. No one stopped for hitchhikers in the 21st Century and I walked east.
Ten minutes later a provincial cruiser stopped on the shoulder. The driver was the same officer from before. I explained what happened and he said in Quebecois that driving long distances with family was a little like ‘le fierve noir’.”
“Black fever?”
“Qui, cabin fever.”
He told me to get in the cruiser and we rode to Gaspe at 100 mph.
“What make you so sure he will be there?”
“He will be there. Everyone stops there.”
“You don’t know my father.”
“Peut-etre, but I know Gaspe.”
We topped a rise and below us lay a stunning archipelago of jagged rocks ran off into the boreal blue Atlantic.
“Gaspe.”
The officer pointed to my father’s Mercedes parked before a small restaurant overlooking the bay.
“Everyone stops here. Bonne chance.” The officer left me and cruised to the west.
I entered the restaurant. My father sat at a window table. A glass of white wine was in one hand and a photo of my mother was in the other. Another glass was filled with the same wine. He lifted his head and said,
“Your mother would have loved it here. You know she said you were her eyes and ears on the world.”
“I know.”
I sniffed the air.
“According to the waitress the bouillabaisse of wild salmon, native oysters, and fresh shrimp is the best in Quebec. I ordered it for two.”
The waitress was right. Neither of us had tasted anything better in years and we drank two bottles of Seyval Blanc toasting my mother, our family, the Red Sox, and traveling the world. The day lingered long in the northern latitudes and we walked along the cliffs of Gaspe in a shimmering dusk. There were no mosquitoes.
“I’ve been losing my temper without any reason these days. Whatever I said I didn’t mean. You’ve been a good son.”
“I could have been a better son.”
“Everyone could have been better. We can only do what we can do. Nothing more.”
“And you’ve been a good father.”
“I tried.”
It wasn’t an apology.
We knew each other too long to need those.
My father was old.
I was fifty-one, which is closer to eighty than twenty.
I was old too.
“I wish your mother was with us.”
“She is, because I am her eyes and ears.”
“Maybe next year we’ll get to Lake Manicouagan.”
“And see those Maringouins. I don’t think your mother will like them.”
“No, I think you’re right about that.”
He had loved my mother more than us, because she loved us all more than she loved herself. After dinner we got a motel room. My father was tired and slipped into bed. He gave me the one near the window. I kissed my father’s head. The face mirrored mine.
“You know our ancestor fought the French up in St. Louisburg?” My father shut his eyes.
“A long time ago.” The Colonials had forced the French to surrender in 1758.
“Good night.”
Thirty seconds later he fell asleep. Tomorrow we were driving to Maine. My sister's camp on Watchic Pond was 500 miles away. We were both at home on the lake. The drive was through the endless forests of New Brunswick and the potato fields of Aroostock County with my father’s right foot to the metal. Those roads had been built for a man like my father, because men of speed drove fast and even faster if they didn’t get tickets.
THE END
