Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or OCD as it is called is a mental circus act that causes a person to irrationally focus on a particular function or object. Another of its forms is where a person returns to an action, the same action over and over, expecting a different outcome each time.

This type of behavior frequently strikes more intelligent people because the coping mechanisms necessary to support such illogically complex actions requires a fairly nimble mind and it is, therefore, not surprising that my dad (father #2) had a hell of a time with this issue. In subtle ways I’m a captive of the same confinement but my dad’s creations were the stuff of textbooks on the subject.

We laugh when this disorder is played out on television because, when it’s someone else’s problem, it tends to be a whole lot funnier, like the character Robert Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond who compulsively touches his chin with his eating utensil before the food reaches his mouth. It’s a running comedy bit but it reflects reality well which is probably why it’s so funny.

My dad, while he lived with us, would invariably ask the following question each and every night at the dinner table after getting a little heartburn: “Do you think there’s something wrong with my heart?”. My mother would dutifully say no like she was a licensed cardiologist but even she could easily see the difference between a heart attack and reflux.

The fact that he knew she wasn’t qualified to make the call medically did not stop him from asking and he would expand on that to include the question: “Do you think I have cancer?” Well, considering he smoked Camel straights with abandon, the question was almost reasonable but this was the oblivious smoking ’50’s and society still hadn’t faced slowly emerging medical facts so it still boiled down to a ritual need to ask the question.

My dad was, obviously, a very fearful person and his OCD ran to making sure there were no disasters in his home even though his very life was a disaster of sorts. Nevertheless, he didn’t want anything to happen in the area of leaving the stove on when going out and so there was a ritual to prevent that from happening. After their divorce, I would go over to his house and watch the preventative stove ritual in person.

First he would touch each knob one at a time and with each touch would repeat “off, off, off, off, off, off” until every knob had been confirmed off and then begin the process again, touching the knobs one at a time and repeating his little mantra. “Off, off…” You might think that twice through the checkout would convince one that the knobs were off and it was safe to leave the house but for my dad that was only as good as getting just about to the front door and then…better check the stove again.

Touch, “off”, touch, “off”, touch, “off” until he made sure that one of the knobs hadn’t pulled a fast one and turned itself on between checkups just to put the house in danger. Every time I went over to visit him he did that song and dance, even if he was just going into another room. At a young age I found it mildly entertaining but a bit baffling too. At the time they didn’t have a name for what he was doing.

There was also a ritual surrounding his nightly inebriation that had a perfectly timed curve to it, beginning with his simple sober self, who was the person I would meet at the door and proceeding throughout the evening to its inevitable conclusion. This curve was also dependent upon the time of week because I think there were other considerations if it was a Sunday versus a work day like Wednesday.

For illustrative purposes, the Sunday version would involve me coming over and watching the football game with him around 1pm and the menu was nothing more than television, soda pop and Spanish peanuts (which was one of his edible passions). We would watch the Detroit Lions lose another one and then move to the kitchen table where the first can of Stroh’s beer would be introduced at approximately 4:15pm.

We would toss around some small talk and then the second can would go off at approximately 4:45pm and the pattern would repeat itself at half-hour to 45 minute intervals for the duration of my visit. That meant that the target amount of 12 cans (or a half case in beer drinker lingo) would be gone a short while after I was gone home.

My mother told me recently of a ritual that only she could know of but it fell perfectly in line with the others. Every evening at bedtime he would go into the bathroom, wash his hands, come out and kneel at the bed and say his prayers, whereby he would go back into the bathroom and wash his hands once more. He did this, my mother pointed out, whether he was drunk or sober and since he was drunk nearly every night, it was true dedication to the ritual. Hand washing is one of the classic OCD rituals and he had neatly combined it with his bedtime prayers. I would theorize that the second trip to the bathroom was sort of an off-handed apology to God for saying his prayers while smashed.

When he died of a heart attack in 1973 I grieved but remembering those nights at the dinner table with “Do you think it’s my heart?” made me laugh a little because now the answer was, “Ya, I pretty much think it’s your heart…”

After my parents were divorced (that is from father #2) my dad would pick me up occasionally for a little father/son activity, usually to hang out over at his house but every long once in awhile he’d suggest something apart from the house.

I don’t remember whether I made a pitch for it or not but we agreed that we’d go to the Strand theater in downtown Pontiac and see the newly released Disney film, Swiss Family Robinson. It sounded like the kind of Disney adventure crap I’d enjoy so we made a date for the early evening show on a Saturday.

He picked me up at my house, drove down to the theater, pulled up to the curb, handed me a few bucks and announced that he’d be back to pick me up when the movie was over and to wait out in front of the theater and don’t stray (I think the last part was some lame attempt at parental concern, but I’m not sure).

I was sort of dumbfounded and, frankly, don’t remember saying much of anything other than “O.K.” and I got out of the car and watched him drive away wondering what the hell just happened here? Did I get the details confused? Wasn’t this supposed to be about he and I sharing time? I was angry and resigned because this was what I had come to expect and even though it was playing out absurdly I always hoped for better and I was almost always predictably disappointed.

I don’t really think I cared about that movie but, screw it, I figure I’ve got cash in hand, popcorn on the horizon and head in the theater to salvage something out of this wonderful bonding time between father and son. Every time I wonder where my streak of sarcasm comes from I only need to recall this incident to appreciate its origins.

When the film was over and I was saturated with Coke and Milk Duds, I went out to look for my Dad. He wasn’t there right away but he eventually pulled up to the curb and as soon as I jumped in the car there was the unmistakable odor of ‘one too many’. He’d spent the entire time at the bar doing exactly what he wanted to do and that was to knock down as many as possible before having to fulfill the remainder of his perceived duties and get me home.

I had effectively lost a dad and gained a chauffeur and to make matters worse my chauffeur was drunk on his rear and navigating me back to point ‘A’ and I was just young enough (9 years old) to lack the necessary fear born of self-preservation. This guy was driving a car and doing a full-on Foster Brooks impression only it was no act and if I’d ever been able to transcend the situation, which I rarely did, I would have had him stop the car and call my mother from a phone booth to pick me up but that’s not what happened.

I just wanted to get home and out of that car and we were making decent time…until the train.

That train was in the way of me getting to safety and out of the sphere of this sloppy drunk and in those days trains transported the majority of goods in the country, until trucks eventually took over as primary movers, so this crossing could go on for quite some time. And then he got mad; madder than I was by a long shot and it was laced with that drunken nastiness that was the direct antithesis of his sober persona. He was a Jekyll and Hyde and I was being driven home by the misanthropic Mr. Hyde.

We were completely surrounded by drivers, just like us, waiting for the long line of railroad cars to pass and then I watched as the impatience burned away his common sense and he began to yell at the train, at first imperceptibly to other drivers, but even that didn’t matter because I was personally embarrassed that my dad was screaming like a loon at inanimate objects passing in the night.

And then he laid on the horn.

Now the other drivers do know that he’s a crazy shit and I’m embarrassed in more obvious ways and, you know, it became like watching a very bad movie. I think I psychologically tried to distance myself, even though it was hopeless, from this incoherent, slurfest that was my father and he keeps banging on the horn and people in the other cars are all staring at us but he continues undeterred. He thrusts his palm down on the steering column like it’s the staff of Moses and has the power to part the mass of cars and train and allow us to drive away unimpeded.

Finally, he takes one more great swipe at the horn and literally breaks the cast iron metal ring that runs around the inside of the steering wheel and tosses the broken piece to the floor in disgust.

I felt nothing but utter humiliation and sadness that my dad wanted to get me home and out of his car and back to the bar so badly that he would destroy his own property if that would help. I probably would have cried but that was not an option. Disgust and stoicism had already replaced that emotion and would always be with me in these moments and there would be plenty more where that came from.

Eventually the Red Sea parted and he swiftly landed me at my doorstep where I leapt from the Corvair and into the safety zone of my house. When my mother asked me how it was I said little other than “Dad dropped me off at the movies”. I just couldn’t talk anymore about it and wanted to do almost anything so I didn’t have to. it was all too insane for one night.

My mother called him on it the next day and he barely remembered any of what had occurred, although that broken horn ring should have been a tip-off that something untoward had happened. Since he couldn’t remember all that much, he mustered a half-ass apology that was passed through my mother and we all quietly went back to square one.

But from that point forward and from deep within me I would be scrutinizing his every move and motive because he had now earned my healthy distrust and I was fairly sure that he would never simply love me in spite of himself.

Recently my mother recalled a classic Petey moment and I’d be remiss not to include it in the collection (see the prior September 14th entry “Petey”). As I’d mentioned earlier, my dad’s (father #2) mother lived with us for a while when I was 2 to 3 years old and was there for the Petey era.

One day before my parents came home from work my grandmother, who was assigned to watch me, was working in the kitchen preparing dinner and she’d pop open the refrigerator at various times to retrieve whatever. Eventually in the process she came back to grab something else, opened the door and Petey sprang out of the fridge like a jack-in-the-box causing her a near coronary.

Beautiful…not the potential coronary necessarily, but the tactic was brilliant!

During the many door openings she hadn’t noticed that Petey had jumped into the fridge before she closed the door. So there he was, puzzled as to the sudden climate change and then, hello…grandma!

That was Petey, sheer performance art genius all wrapped up in a ball of fur.

Up until I was age 9 or so we always had various animals around, as a direct result of my dad’s (father #2) other occupation as a professional magician. Doves, for instance, were a staple of the act, as were ducks and the occasional rabbit.

Petey? Well, Petey was definitely not scheduled to hit the stage any time soon and was, actually, just an amusement for my father. Petey was a partially domesticated raccoon and lived in our house in the city like, well, like raccoons traditionally do not. They’re nocturnal animals that like the woods and getting into things, so here was Petey living in our home like a dog or a cat. I was very young and just thought that it was another part of the menagerie of our kooky lives. My mother, I suspect, had a different take on this addition to the family.

My dad had gotten Petey from a farm and why he thought that this would work out is sort of beyond belief but dad had some crazy notion that a raccoon house pet was a great idea.

It all began to break down quickly when Petey’s life started to play out after everyone went to bed. Raccoons, as I mentioned, are very active in the dead of night. It’s what they do, it’s who they are and I’m always surprised that my dad did not anticipate Petey’s escapades after 11pm.

Since Petey had the run of the house, he had access to everything and everything was a mystery to be explored, discovered and, ultimately, eaten. One of Petey’s early conquests was the butter dish out on the kitchen table and fair game for a raccoon with nothing better to do so Petey, using the fine dexterity of a raccoon, removed the cover and had at it, finishing the stick of butter before morning.

According to my mother, bad, but not bad enough to get 86′d.

Apparently, Petey was also into hair styling. For a while my mother used Spoolies, those little round rubber gadgets used to wind up the hair in small curls before bed, then removing them in the morning to reveal wonderful wavy locks. A bit of the hair setting product Dippity Doo on the Spoolies really cemented the deal. After my mom would set it all up and go to bed, Petey would sneak in, remove the Spoolies one by one without waking my mother (oh, this guy was good), leaving the crime scene littered with rubber grommets and unkempt hair in the morning.

Pretty annoying but still not annoying enough.

One night Petey got into my parents closet and got a hold of my dad’s beaver top hat that he used in his magic show. I don’t know if Petey had an unresolved beef with a beaver or if he was trying to make some sort of early PETA statement but he ate the hat. These hats were expensive and now Petey was poking a stick at his most ardent supporter, thereby putting him on unsteady ground. For my dad, messing with that hat was getting personal. You don’t fuck with the hat. He would scold me when I played with it but at least I never ate it.

Still, Petey was not banished to Siberia.

I’m going to put myself in the shoes(?) of a raccoon now and figure that Petey probably felt that he’d been working well enough ‘locally’ but needed to expand the operation ‘globally’ and so went down the to the fruit cellar (for those not old enough, that was a small room in the basement that acted like a pantry) and knocked over a glass Mason jar of molasses. Petey enjoyed the tasty treat and then came the global part. With his hands and feet covered in the sticky stuff, Petey went all over the house leaving a nasty residue everywhere he traveled and that about sealed his fate and the grand experiment was over.

Finally it was the global transgression that got Petey since a house covered in molasses you can not stand. So Petey, to borrow a sports analogy, was put on ‘waivers’ and shipped back to the farm to live out the rest of his days getting into shit.

Or…

I like to imagine that the farmer recognized Petey’s considerable creative skills, bought him a plane ticket to Burbank, California where he got an agent and went on to develop several unusual game shows like The Gong Show (with his pal Chuck Barris) and Treasure Hunt with Jan Murray before retiring to the Lillian Booth Home for retired members of the entertainment community until his passing in 1965.

I just hope he never forgot what family gave him his start.

Life with its infinite randomness can be affected by the simplest of twists or turns. One choice leads you to one end and another leads somewhere else completely. Instinct is probably your greatest ally and to ignore it is to dismiss a built-in protection system but I wasn’t thinking that on the way to Tiger Stadium in Detroit in 1967.

My Uncle Ron had gotten called to duty, a chauffeur and sidekick for his 16 year-old nephew, and we were off to the ballpark. I’m not sure if he really wanted to go or not but he cared about me and knew that I was without an operational father (I’d asked my dad (father #2) to go many times and been rebuffed) so he stepped up to the plate, so to speak, and we were road buddies for the day.

I loved Tiger Stadium for all its quirks and intimacy and we had a great day at the game, he knocking down the brew and me putting away hot dogs and coke. Other than somebody won and somebody lost I don’t have much recollection of the game details but I’ll never forget the ride home.

We couldn’t see it from where we sat, down the third base line, but there was smoke that could be seen rising up over the stadium skyline depending on your location. I’d find out later that the announcers in the booth had a very good sight line and commented on it frequently throughout the broadcast. It was serious but we didn’t see it until we pulled out and headed down the road and then it appeared; dark, billowing clouds of smoke pouring out of an area of the city just to the immediate north of us.

“Looks like a big fire”, said my Uncle, “maybe we should go over there and see what’s going on.” I hadn’t seen this ambulance chasing side of him before and I figured he’d rather end our play date than go looking for more adventure but here he was wanting to make a little detour to watch the fire crews douse a big one.

I’m not sure what my radar was picking up but it must not have been good because I begged off and urged him to drive home and forget about the smoke plumes that only got larger and larger as we drove on. He let me have my way on this one but with a tiny caveat; we stop at a tavern closer to home and see what the fire was doing on the bar television.

Actually, this was his clever way of getting another beer or two and while I was tired and wanted to go home, that was the deal so there we were in the bar and, sure enough, there was the televised smoke but it turned out to be just a bit more than that as the images of overturned cars, fights, looting and arson came across the screen, reporters doing their best to stay out of the fray.

We had quite fortunately sidestepped the very beginning 12th Street volleys of anger, that hot summer of rioting in Detroit and there would be plenty more to come as it spread right down Woodward Avenue and into Pontiac and surrounding areas; racial unrest that I failed to understand at the time but knew well enough to keep a safe distance from.

There was something coming apart at the seams in the city but for as close as we came to being part of the news, on this day it was still only something on a bar television…