I’ve been thinking about my father lately. There’s no real reason for it; he died right after the new year in 1998, some 16 years ago. He’s just been popping into my mind. He was a handsome man, who looked something like the golfer Arnold Palmer, always tanned from his outdoor work as a civil engineer building bridges and then a plant engineer at a Maine shipyard. He didn’t play golf, though. He used to, when we lived in Florida, where I was born. After a bad round, he said he used to come home and be unpleasant to my mother. He told me he once hit a beautiful drive that thundered off the tee and was still rising when, 100 yards out, the ball hit the single dead branch of the only tree on the fairway and bounced almost all the way back to him. He wound up and threw the club maybe more than 100 yards, a bit farther than the tree. While huffing out to retrieve it, he told me, “I started thinking why am I so angry about where this stupid ball goes or doesn’t?” And then he put away the clubs and never played again.
He was a naval pilot during World War II, flying DC-3’s from Miami down through South America. Clearly he had a good time of it all despite the golf, visiting the Caribbean, Rio, Buenos Aires. Many years later he and my mother were flying into San Juan, Puerto Rico. He recognized the landscape from those landings all those years ago, and suddenly he realized that the plane was on the wrong flight path, and it was going to crash. They would all die. He looked at my mother, happily knitting beside him, and wondered, “Should I tell her?”
“Naah,” he decided. “Spare her the terror.” So he sat there, silently sweating, as the plane coasted gently down into the new San Juan airport.
One thing I remember most about him was his story-telling. He loved to come home from the shipyard and describe a particularly absurd event that had happened. He’d bring home jokes, not one-liners, but stories, and we would roar.
I was reminded of one of these stories lately, when I was talking with a friend about dogs and their canine customs. A long time ago (my father said) all the dogs in the world used to get together for huge poker games, sort of like – I imagine – the Canine World Series of Poker. All around the wall of the room were countless wooden pegs. In order to avoid dogfights over card disputes (for some dogs are notorious for dealing off the bottom of the deck), every dog was required to remove his asshole and hang it on one of these pegs. This would keep them all sitting down in their seats.
Cigarette smoke rose in thick clouds over all the tables as they played. Suddenly the sound of whistles and klaxons split the air – a RAID! It was the cops, and it was every dog for him- (or her-) self. There was no time to check. Every dog grabbed the closest asshole – anydog’s asshole – popped it in and bolted for a door or window.
And so (said my father) now every time one dog meets another, he (or she) has to check. Maybe here will be the right one.
©August, 2014
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