My Embarrassing FatherRemembering a special and fascinating man
AnnBanks
Posted: Jun 8, 07 10:23pm 
Ann's Dad, Richard BanksThere were so many things my father did that embarrassed me. Wherever he went, he talked to everyone. Sometimes the comments were chatty and engaging, sometimes angry, sometimes tactless—but always in his foghorn of a voice, mortifyingly loud. At his worst, he could be a lunatic. I remember once another driver cut him off in traffic. He took off in hot pursuit, swearing he would corner the offender and give him a piece of his mind. Only the tearful pleas of his children in the back seat persuaded him to abandon the chase. Another time at a hotel pool in Key West, he struck up a conversation with a young German couple. They were from Heidelberg, it turned out, a place my father had recently revisited, three decades after the war. He shared with the German tourists his dismay at finding so many of the beautiful parks no longer there, ceded to developers. "Hell," he said, "We might as well have bombed the place!" I was so appalled overhearing this that I pretended I didn't know him. Amazingly, though, the Germans did not seem to mind. In fact, they warmed to Dad, and the three chatted away all afternoon. I couldn't imagine how he'd gotten away with it. Again. Even when Dad was rebuffed, though, it never stopped him. Talking to strangers is what he did. He also brought them home now and again. I have an excruciating memory of a New Year's Eve when I was 16. We were living in Germany and had gone to Vienna for the holiday. It was snowing, I was already sulking at having to spend the occasion with my parents, and the evening's entertainment, a trip to the opera, had not improved my mood. During the taxi ride back to the hotel, Dad got into a conversation with the driver, a hulking Austrian whose most prominent feature was a menacing scar along one side of his face. The man fascinated Dad, and at the end of the ride he invited him to join us at our hotel. As always when we traveled, there was a bottle of something in the room. And, conveniently, there were three chairs arranged around a table in the corner. My parents and the driver settled down to talk. As the snow muffled the sounds of revelers outside, Gemütlichkeit suffused the room. This German word, beloved of my father, has no exact English translation but means something like coziness and fellow feeling. They all had a great time. I was beyond aggravated. This was New Year's Eve and I was spending it with not only my parents but also some stranger (the taxi driver!) my dad had randomly recruited from the street. I did my best to tune out the conversation, scribbling angrily in my journal and trying not to listen. When I think back on that night, I recognize that something significant took place in our snug hotel room – though at the time I was too much the callow adolescent to let myself feel it. Sitting at the table, Dad and the taxi driver began to open up about their experiences as young soldiers. They had been enemy combatants once, on opposite sides of the same war. Now, as the bottle emptied and midnight neared, they raised their glasses in toast after toast. All were variations on a single theme: zum Frieden; to peace. This was way too heartfelt for me—and it never would have happened without my father's keenness to engage with everybody he met. So now, many years later, I would belatedly like to join in the toast: "Happy Father's Day, Dad. Here's to peace." Do you have memories or stories of your father that you'd like to share with the TeeBeeDee community? Have Something to Say? | ADVERTISEMENT  |
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Posted: Jun 13, 07 3:58pm
And if I'm not mistaken, Colonel Banks was also a helluva dancer... Santa Claus Lightfoot... Zu Friede, everyone, and happy father's day!
Posted: Jun 11, 08 6:59pm
My dad was a very personable and funny man. He could make friends with anyone - and did just that, unless he was very suspicious of someone. He and I were sitting on the front porch on a cool spring evening watching the activities in the neighborhood. Directly across the street from our house was a glass greenhouse that housed, among the flowers, many stray cats and lots of mice. The folks that ran the place lived all around us.
One of the workmen who ran the place was not a very well kept fellow, kind of an oddball that no one trusted too much - a goofball. His family would take turns watching the water sprinklers, greenhouse temperatures, secure the place, etc., every other night. That night, as the guy was walking in front of our house, we were commenting on strange the guy was, how bad he smelled, how badly he needed a shave, and out of the blue, my dad very very calmly says, "I bet he eats cats for supper."
It was so funny I very nearly fell off the front porch. It was so unexpected, but so much my dad's sense of humor. I miss Marv!
Posted: Jun 11, 08 7:34pm
My dad knew us kids were somewhat embarrassed by his choice of profession. He was a schoolbus driver/custodian and we were poor, but he was happy,pleasant and there for us. He tried self improvement by learning new words from a dictionary and forcing their use into conversations. More often than not, his expensive vocabulary caused greater embarrassment or worse. One time my uncles (middle school dropouts) were visiting and acting up a bit. Laughing, my dad called out,"would you two stop acting like a couple of homosapiens!" They were highly offended, understanding only the first syllable, and left in a hurry, not to be seen again for months. Dad eventually gave up trying to sound smarter than he was (he's no dummy anyway) and ended up sounding more intelligent for it. In that, he set an example for me that I follow to this day.
never use a big word when a small one will do.
Posted: Jun 13, 08 1:06am
Wow to post here is the old format.
Nevertheless I just wanted to say uniqueusename1, I love your last line!
My father and I were not friends. He was raised in a difficult situation and him and his siblings were bascially on their own. He too was a dropout. But he learned the meat cutting trade and actually ran meat cutting operations in WWII in part of the South Pacific. And then at home he taught meat cuttiing as well as ran his own shop.
But after years of smoking, his health deteoriated. He had three primary cancers. During a trying hospital stay...months, he became despondent. So his doctor ordered for a psychiatrist to see him.
The doctor never had a chance. My father felt inferior and shut down. He provided meat to doctors and other smart well educated people, but he never dealt with them......but with their maids, etc.
So eventually the psychiatrist left my father's room. Awhile later housekeeping comes into his room and my father opens up to her, so much so, he's preventing her from doing her job.
My father felt more comfortable with service people and less with educated.
But if you want crazy. Retired he would trim our large corner lot with his old meat cleaver. I'm sure every mother locked their kids in the house on trim day. And one year he took fertilizer, burning the lawn in the words...Merry Christmas.
Posted: Jun 13, 08 1:46am
Oh I have so many good stories about my dad. Yes, there were times when he embarassed us. My sisters and I still laugh and imitate my dad as he used to lean on one leg, hold a finger over one nostril and blow his nose out of the other nostril. I don't know if it was something guys in his school used to do or what but we still roll on the ground laughing about that one. To his benefit though he did a very good job as a father. One time we (5 girls, 2 boys, mom and dad) were all loaded up in the station wagon heading to grandma's house. As we drove under an overpass some young boy heaved a bottle at our car windshield. My dad whipped that car over so fast, got out and chased the boy down. Moments later the boy was shoved into the back seat next to me and we proceeded on to the police station. Never thought my dad could run that fast. When I was 13 I got my first job of babysitting a neighbor's girls while she worked in the evening. I would walk a mile home from school and go directly to her house. A few blocks from my house there was a busy road to cross. You had to wait for cleared traffic, cross to the median and then wait again to get to the other side. In the process I noticed the house kiddy-corner the front door was open and a man was standing there in his underwear. I was 13, very shy, had never seen a man in his underwear before so I immediately looked away and kept walking. When I got to my job I called my girlfriend and told her what had happened. After that I just forgot about it. About 2 years ago my sister told me a story I had never heard. Apparently my girlfriend had told her dad about the man. He called and told my dad. My dad called my grandpa to come to the house. He had my grandpa sit in the car just outside the house with the headlights on. He went down to the house where the man had been and knocked on the door. He showed the man where the car was with the headlights on and said that is where he lived and that he had 5 daughters. The gist of the conversation went that if my dad ever heard of any of his daughters seeing him in his underwear again that the man would never be able to walk. Knowing how mortified I would have been to even answer questions about what I saw my dad never mentioned it. I just love him for that.
Posted: Jun 15, 08 7:35am
Beautiful, Ann, and inspiring...
My father is an imposing man in body and spirit. Growing up, I never heard anyone other than my mother address him by his first name. He was known simply as Mr. Howell (spoken in Georgia as Mistah Howl), and I must admit I took some small measure of pride from this all-encompassing show of respect.
He has a quiet power. He rarely raises his voice and is slow to anger. And yet, he intimidated every boy with the courage to date one of his four daughters, and even our girlfriends gave him a wide berth. This fascinated me, because I knew him to be nothing more than a cuddly bear, stretched out in his recliner; asleep before the first quarter of play was complete.
It was a rare pleasure, when on a hot weekday afternoon, my father's Lincoln would pull into the drive in search of lunch. On one such day, as we all sat, excitedly, around him at the kitchen table while mother prepared our sandwiches, I noticed a dark figure sitting on the back step outside the screen door. I recognized the bend of his narrow back, the grimy grease stains on the well-worn cap, and the dark skin as belonging to Arrie, my Dad's right-hand-man. I wondered how he could have forgotten him out there. It was so hot on the patio and so cool in our kitchen!
"Dad, you forgot Arrie!" I blurted childishly.
My father looked up at me wordlessly, but in his eyes, I read volumes.
Silently chewing through peanut butter & jelly on white, my eyes frequently returned to the singular figure on the back step, as he opened a brown paper bag and unwrapped his lunch.
As my father approached the screen door to return to the construction site, Arrie jumped up agilely and greeted him with a toothy smile. He quickly gathered the remnants of his lunch and stowed them inside the wrinkled brown bag. In all the years he spent with my father, I never heard him speak.
At the time, all I can remember feeling is outrage. In retrospect, I realize I gained many things from watching my father's treatment of his most loyal employee. I witnessed true grace in the way Arrie accepted my father's ignorance and loved him anyway, and I learned compassion from understanding Arrie's situation and my father's lack of knowledge while witnessing firsthand the ugliness of racism.
Today, my father spends his days beachside with an array of philosophical texts at his feet in a never-ending search for answers. I watch as ocean breezes lift his thick white hair from his brow and wonder if he ever thinks of Arrie.