Dad Ramblings

The Man and I had such a great night with my dad.

The Man really wanted to try the new steak knives that Dad bought last week so we invited him over for steak tonight with the caveat that he bring his knives with him

"That's a good deal, " said Dad. And promptly came over for dinner.

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Dad was in a talkative mood tonight. He started telling stories about his childhood. I love when he does that. It brings my grandparents back for just a little while since I can picture them as the stories unfold.

I don't remember how we got on the topic of school lunches but that's when the stories began. My grandfather used to give my dad "about $3-$4 a week" for allowance when he was in high school. That was a lot of money at the time. Dad made extra money by walking his grandfather to the bus station. His grandfather would sometimes take the bus out to see Nan's brother. Instead of taking the bus from the closest stop, he would walk to the main hub in the center of the city and take a bus from there. It saved him ten cents. He would pay my dad fifty cents for walking with him. He'd tell him, "Here. Go to the movies  and get yourself some candy." And my dad would. The movies were ten cents and a box of candy, usually Jujubes or Black Crows, were five cents. So for fifteen cents he had a day at the movies. That's a pretty good deal, I think.

At school, my dad would take a sandwich for lunch, usually olive loaf or ham loaf, and he would have to buy a milk carton and then he would choose either a bag of chips or an ice cream sandwich. He preferred the ice cream, he said. The milk and bag of chips were a nickel apiece and the ice cream sandwich was a dime. He did that every day.

Combined with the money he got from his grandfather, that left him with some money left over at the end of the week. When he was young, about 8 or 9 he guessed, he and his younger brother would walk around the corner to a luncheonette every Friday afternoon. That's when the "funny books" were put out. 

Funny books = comic books, in case you didn't know that.

Anyway, he and my uncle would sit on the floor of the luncheonette and read funny books for about an hour. They never bothered anyone, they were very careful with the pages, and could plow through about five of them in the hour they were there. When they had finished those five, they would buy one for a nickel and take it home.  My dad and uncle were so thankful to the owners of the luncheonette for letting them do that. He said the owners were the brother and sister of the guy who owned the neighborhood bar my grandfather went to on Friday nights. Everyone knew everyone else in the neighborhood in the day so they knew my grandfather went to their brother's bar. His kids were okay to come in and sit and read funny books.

I wish we still had those neighborhoods. 

I love the visual of my dad and uncle sitting on the floor of a luncheonette, nobody paying any attention to them, people coming and going - two small boys tucked into a wall, reading all afternoon. 

As Dad got older, he stopped reading funny books and moved on to the classics. He read them in funny book format, at least that's what he told us. You would call them graphic novels in today's world. He said they were much thicker so they cost fifteen cents. He would read it and then pass it down to his brother, who still liked to read "The Lone Ranger" and "Lulu" funny books.

Readers. I come from a family of readers. I love that.

On Friday nights, my grandfather would take the two oldest boys, my dad and uncle, food shopping for the week's groceries and Nan would stay home with my aunt and another uncle because they were too young to take. After they finished shopping, Grampa would send the two older boys up the street to Marie's fish market to get some fried fish and fries or over to another market to get baked beans for the family for dinner. Nan and the kids would eat together and Grampa would go to the neighborhood bar for a few beers. When Grampa came home later that evening, he'd ask my dad if he wanted to go get some fish with him, or a sandwich, and dad would tag along, happy to get a second meal. Nan wouldn't let Grampa go alone. She wanted to make sure he could find his way there and home in a straight line.

On Saturdays, Grampa would sometimes take my dad to the movies, sometimes a double matinee that showed two movies and either a cartoon or a newsreel between the showings. Dad guessed he was about five or six at the time. Grampa loved the shoot 'em up movies with gangsters. Dad did not love these. He would close his eyes and not watch them. He thought they were real. After a while, he began telling his father that he didn't like the movies and didn't want to go. So Grampa would ask my uncle to go. My uncle didn't mind the violence so he would tag along. After a few years, when my father was about eight or nine, he was old enough to understand the movies were only make believe and he started to go again. But that only lasted a little while because my grandfather bought their first car (in 1952) and they stopped going to the movies. Instead, he would take the whole family out for a drive.

In 1949, the family got their first TV. Dad said they were the first ones in the neighborhood to get one and it was A BIG DEAL.

Nan's sister and brother in law used to come over on Wednesday nights to watch the fights with Grampa. They would bring their daughter, my dad's cousin, with them and she would play with the kids while the adults were watching TV. She's probably my dad's closest cousin since they spent so much time together. They would also come over another night to watch wrestling. Dad said Grampa didn't like wrestling so he would read the paper while they watched the matches. Afterward, they would get up and go home.

I asked my dad if Nan and Gramps ever went out together on a date and he said, "No." Friday nights were Grampa's night to go out and on Saturday nights, Nan went to bingo while Grampa watched the kids. Thursday nights were for union meetings. My grandfather was big in the union at various times so he always went to the meetings. And the rest of the nights the whole family was home together. Dad said there weren't any restaurants to speak of at the time and they just didn't have the extra money to go out.

So what amazed me about my grandparents is that they put all their kids through private school. They paid $80 for the year for each child to go that private high school. That was a lot of money. My dad said he got a great education in that high school. And since he went on to become a nuclear physicist, and was literally a rocket scientist for a while, I believe he did.

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It was kind of difficult growing up with my dad and his incredible math skills. When my sisters or I would need help working out a math problem, he would explain it as simply as he could and was incredulous when we didn't catch on. He was a little intimidating, I tell ya. 

My dad, the rocket scientist. I still love telling people that.