He Always Called Me "Baby"

Dad in Drag (right)

I look for my "self" in my father. I search his face in pictures, looking for revelation. Can I glimpse his concealed soul, passed on to me? My own conflicting memories of him demand resolution. I ask people who knew him to write about him, believing that the "true" person will eventually appear.

College Days

If he was angry or confused, he probably had a right to be - wondering why he was so unfortunate having had to endure such rough going in the war. He didn't talk about those experiences very much. Probably just as well. Most people can't envision that kind of trauma. Maybe he felt the world owed him something better than life as a barber. I liked his Dad as well and thought that they both chose an honorable and respectable, even enviable, pursuit. From what I could observe, he raised a darn fine family and developed a goodly circle of friends. I might add, for good measure, we were all jealous of the fact that your mother chose him to marry!
-his high school friend

With Dolly

We started dating and had such good times. We both liked music and sang while riding always. Such harmony. We also liked to dance and always had the reputation of dancing wherever we went. If we were outside we had the car radio. Danced on tennis courts, roads, porches, not like Ginger and Fred. We had our own style. Especially liked fast dancing. We would go to The Lake Ballroom and that was a huge ballroom, and dance most of the night. Our dancing continued, even at home, until he got too ill. We would dance at home and after we had children they would tell us they could hear the bones creak.

He was so strong. I have always liked tall men.

We were married in Jan. 1942 and in April, 1942 he was inducted into the Army. He went to Camp Crowder, MO, and then to Camp Gordon, Augusta, GA. From there he was sent overseas to Casablanca and was there before Christmas. We didn't hear from him until Christmas morning and the mailman came with a package from him with a gift for his Mom, Dad, and me. We were so glad to hear that he was alive and ok. We also got a telegram. He was in the Signal Corps and he went on ahead of his group. He went from Africa to Italy and was involved in the landing at Salerno. We didn't know it at the time or we would have been basket cases. In May, 1944 he returned to the States. We lived in Atlanta, Georgia. until he was discharged. I quit my job at The Power Co. when I heard he was back in the States and went by train to Georgia. Part of the time we lived on the Fort MacPherson base. With rationing, etc, we didn't have too much but we had a nice life and were glad to be together again.
-Dolly

With Georgia

Things may have gotten worse over time. Perhaps they did, or perhaps it just got harder for us both - things crack or, more likely, just wear away with time and the insides ooze out and dry out and tire out. I think I was happy to be with him once upon a time. I sat by his chair on the floor. He chose a boxer (black trunks, white trunks); the other one was mine. One of us won a quarter. I think we laughed. It was Friday night and I stayed up late, falling asleep on the rug in the living room and waking up cold. I believe we smiled. I believe we never touched even when walking close together in a crowd. We went in the car, he and I and the dog; the old car with the scratchy seats. I threw poorly and never got better a it - I believe he always hoped someday I could throw better. He didn't drink so much - only on weekends maybe. I can't remember a single conversation between us but perhaps we talked as we bounced along on the pricky seats and threw and shot. He gave me a gun. A shotgun that had been his. He took it and had someone cut the barrel short to make it lighter (and to widen the spray of pellets). I must have practiced. Maybe he threw clay discs for me to shoot at. I don't remember. I know he would have thrown the discs very well, even bravely.

My father. Sitting low in a red chair, his arms on it's arms, fingers twist, twist, twist, twist the red hair around and around, the coke bottle (you remember those easy-to-hold green bottles) in his left hand - the arm hangs over the gray carpet and I am lying on the gray place under the green bottle that used to be full of coke but was filled and filled and filled, how many times? from a bottle of whiskey taken from the cupboard shelf by the sink. "It's a pretty bad day" adult-daughter whispers into child-daughter's ear..., "be quiet, be still, be quiet, don't look, be quiet, don't talk...stay." He smelled a certain way that I can't describe but if I smelled that again I know that I would feel unhappy. I have no memory of what my father's face looks like - at least not as a whole piece of work. I know his hair would stand up almost straight in front where he had worried away at it. I know his hands were long and thin and I saw their bones and veins. I know a large dark freckle on the second finger of his left hand. I have that same freckle - sometimes that hand is my hand - but careful now, girl. I know what the dent under his right elbow looked like; the texture of the red vinyl chair. Light red and black shadow. But of course it was a safe place to look.

I believe now that he was depressed: maybe not all the time at first, but with a deep and black fullness, and that our mother guarded him, watching for those times, fixing him with positive attitude. Hell, it might have even worked for a while. Maybe I guarded, too. Later it didn't matter.
- Georgia

He Always Called Me "Baby"

We had a cabin at Red Lake. The water was rusty and we had an outhouse, but that didn't bother me. I caught frogs, and went out on the pontoon, and dove down to the weeds, and took the rowboat along the thick shore to find fairy haunts. He loved it too, and it was Alex, our dog, and me and him that knew the place. We knew the musty smell of the cabin when we'd open the door after not being there for the winter. We liked the cold, and getting wet, and then coming in and smelling scorched socks as we stood steaming at the stove. We liked the concrete of the floor and the mucky lake bottom. We knew the smell of wet dog and army blankets and rotting tree trunks. We were the ones that loved this.

We would drive around the lake to the bathing beach, where there was sand. At least there was some sand mixed with the clay of the lake bottom. We would get out of the car, drop our bathroom towels and run into the rusty water. I would swim quickly to him, to his strong arms again, and he would lift me up high onto his slippery shoulders. Screaming, I'd spring off into a splashy dive, going deep between his legs among the cool flowing weeds. He'd stay there, out where it's deep, until I grew tired, and wandered shoreward, to the others.
- MJ

With his Father