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.
