As you age you can reach the point where you can finally think, compare and contrast your life with that of your Dad’s. It’s not really possible when younger as the relationship is always Dad/Son. But when you reach the age your father had once been and where he was in life, you can more easily understand why he was the way he was. You are both men and can understand.
I’ve mentioned this before, my Dad was a “company man.” That was back when you gave your life over to the business you were employed with and showed enormous loyalty. Back then versus today, that loyalty was REPAID.
He scrambled, fought, and plotted his career life from bank teller till he reached the lofty position of CEO of a small chain of banks called First Federal Savings and Loan of Providence. It’s long since been defunct however. I can remember the day his contract for the new position was splayed across the kitchen table as he and my Mom discussed the good fortune and what to do next.
What to do next. Oh, he had plans.
I once overheard what he was going to plan for his sons, my brother and I. Due to our personalities, we required different career paths. My brother, who had a better school record than I (and probably an IQ of 150, no joke) was going to go study corporate management at Bryant, perhaps Brown University for the coveted MBA and higher. As for me? I was to be a tax attorney as I had the real ugly talent for never giving up once I got started at something. I clamped down like a pit bull on certain things if I wanted too. Hell, I still can be like that.
Well, those plans never came to fruition as my Dad slumped on the kitchen table on a cold February day a year later and died due to walking pneumonia. It’s the same thing that killed Jim Henson at a young age as well. It’s an odd thing walking pneumonia, you can get along for two weeks with it being a mild nuisance and then the last six hours it rages through lungs like Patton’s Third Army.
So, with Dad’s plans out of the way, we kids developed our own paths. And to think back, it was probably for the best as kids develop into their own people, not their parents ideal of what they should be.
So, I’ll be 48 soon and I’ve beat both my father’s and brother’s life span. I’m not a tax attorney nor could have I ever have been really. Dry office occupations never did hold out much allure to me. In fact, I first went into a career that’s the anathema to high finance and that was social work! Dad inadvertently raised a pinko socialist son. Well he didn’t really, but my experiences as a kid, young adult, taught me this world is way too fucked up and needed a janitor to help sop up the messes of people’s lives. But, that’s another long story…
*****
Here’s a telling memory why my Dad liked success.
I forget the movie. It was an old typical WW2 flick in which there was a scene that I noticed my Dad was wholly focused on, and seemed a bit frightened by.
The scene showed a captain chewing out a second lieutenant . The lieutenant was told to stand at attention while the captain told him (and I’m paraphrasing)
“I’m giving you all the goldbrickers, the lay abouts, the losers…and I’m holding YOU responsible for their work and it better be done RIGHT! The captain says.
The captain then tosses his lit cigarette on the floor and orders the lieutenant to “put that out” and the junior officers bends and stuffs the cigarette out.
“Don’t forget just WHO your commanding officer is! I’m going to make your life a living hell if you don’t follow my orders to the tee. The fitness reports I write up are going to be looking for the smallest failures I can find!“
The jist of that was here is this prick senior officer who hates the guts of this poor lieutenant and the other fact is, the military owns your ass and you just can’t leave.
You’re stuck where you are.
My Dad was riveted to that scene in the movie.
Ok, let’s move it up to 1976 and tale #2.
The mid seventies gave birth to the Three Martini Lunch. The high finance guys would rotate where they’d have lunch in Providence then and of course, you can’t eat your veal w/o a good few Manhattans.
Well, as my dad admitted to my Mom later, he was pretty buzzed when he shot straight though a red light on Westminster St and was pulled over by a Providence cop. The cop never suspected that my Dad was DWI and the fact remains, there were NO blood/alcohol tests or laws then. But the cop wrote up my Dad for blowing through the intersection.
I can remember my Dad on the phone with his lawyer and wanting to dispute his obvious guilty actions. When he hung up, I overheard Dad saying his lawyer would “get it squashed” in court fairly easily as Dad was a CEO of a major financial interest downtown.
One day after court, he came home triumphantly, telling my Mom, “Maureen! It was beautiful, Repucci made a total ass out of that cop on the stand. He had him explaining why he was “bothering an upstanding member of the Providence business community.”
Yeah, my Dad got off scot free on this little crime, and he reveled in it.
My Dad had “arrived.” He achieved that position in society where you had some power and could be above it all. He was no longer that young lieutenant in the movie that could be kicked around by abusive power.
And this tells me, my Dad was that little guy who was kicked around a lot at one time. I may be wrong, as I don’t know for sure, but Dad sure had learned plenty of motivation to become the Big Dog
No comments:
Post a Comment