I sometimes dream of my father.
Usually, he is not at the center of these dreams, he's just around. I see him sitting drinking coffee at a counter, or lounging on a sofa watching football. Sometimes I call him--never on a cell phone, he never saw a cell phone. I hear him distant through a heavy Bakelite earpiece. I remember his breath in my ear, the scrape of his whiskers against my cheek. I remember him carrying me, my dead sleepy weight, from the car after another long drive through the night.
I remember the mysteries of his dresser drawer: his ribbon rack, a small black plastic screwtop locket he once told me had something to do with measuring radiation levels, a watch I would later own and lose, a couple of pen knives I wish I had, a loaded .38 caliber pistol, loose keys to locks I never saw, and quarters I never dared to touch.
I have his books, some of them, and his cadences. A few of his prejudices, probably. I look like he looked, only older.
He was an average-sized man, more compact, more explosive, with a better throwing arm than me. He said I was a better hitter. He had more power. He'd played ball with Hank Aaron, with Jim and Gaylord Perry. Somehow he knew Mickey Mantle.
He was a boxer. He won a Golden Gloves tournament; just before he died he confessed he had broken a promise to my mother by fighting a professional bout under a pseudonym while he was on a temporary duty assignment at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. He said he lost a split decision and that he'd done it for the money.
He showed me how to hit a heavy bag, to snap my punches rather than push them, to clip the bag with a hook rather than smack its side. When you throw a straight punch the power comes from your hips. When you throw a jab keep your shoulder high to protect your chin.
When we played basketball one-on-one I could beat him by backing him down and shooting over him. He didn't like that, but I didn't care. We were an even match at golf, but when I was in high school he made me give him a stroke a side. He tended to run around his backhand, but he was quick enough to get away with it most of the time.
He came to all my games. He never said anything to my coaches that I remember other than "thank you."
I remember going to some of his games. Sometimes I sat in the dugout and ran out to retrieve the bats. He told me not to weave my finger through the chain link fence because a foul ball could break them.
He played baseball on the Air Force team in Egypt and Japan. A monocled cobra once attacked a Jeep he was riding in in Thailand. I camped out with him in Death Valley.
He took me to Dodger games when we lived in California. When I was a baby, he took me to a Yankees-Red Sox game in the Bronx. Ted Williams hit a home run in that game.
When I was 7 years old I broke my nose playing football and he blamed himself because I was wearing a cheap helmet with a double-bar face mask instead of the more expensive helmet with a T-bar I'd wanted my parents to buy. I remember how he threw my old helmet in the trash and took me down to the sporting goods store and bought the expensive one.
I think about that sometimes and feel a little bad because it wasn't the helmet's fault. I just let the other guy get lower than me. It was just football.
He liked Johnny Unitas better than Joe Namath.
He liked Dean Martin better than Frank Sinatra. He liked the Beatles OK, but loved Charley Pride. He liked westerns better than war films; he liked Lee Marvin better than John Wayne.
When we lived in California he sometimes saw some scruffy people he later realized were Charles Manson and his acolytes hitchhiking. He thought about giving them a ride.
When I knocked the tip of my finger off in a motorcycle accident he joked about taping it back on while he calmly packed it in ice and carried it with us to the hospital. The surgeon used a local anesthetic so I watched them re-attach it but he couldn't bear it and left the room.
He let me spend a couple of weeks every summer with his gay brother in San Francisco.
He didn't try to talk me out of going to Brazil right after high school to play baseball, even though I think he probably thought I was only going because I wanted to prove him wrong about some things. Instead he gave me a $100 bill ("for emergencies") and loaned me a camera. When I came home I gave the money back but had to tell him a friend of mine accidentally dropped the camera into Guanabara Bay while we were climbing Sugarloaf Mountain.
He saw me graduate from college. He helped me move into my first apartment. He saw my byline in a daily newspaper. He came to see me play guitar a couple of times. I bought him a couple of beers. He told me he was proud of me on more than a couple of occasions.
He had a two-seater Thunderbird for a while; he traded it in on a four-door LTD. He had a Volkswagen Karmann Ghia for a few weeks; but from about 1971 on he drove Chevy Cheyenne pickups almost exclusively.
He taught me how to drive a stick shift. He once tried to convince me to buy a Dodge Magnum because it was a great deal. He really liked the Audi Fox I bought instead.
When he died I was surprised to learn that a provision in his life insurance paid off the loan on the first new car I'd ever bought--the first car I'd ever financed.
I wish I'd gone fishing with him more often. But I didn't like much about it, not getting up before dawn or sitting quietly in a boat or the inevitable bird nesting of the bait-casting reel--my father's preferred model was the Abu Garcia Ambassadeur 5000, a red anodized monster from Sweden that came in a leather case and cost about $55 in 1972 dollars. He had a black 5000 C too, which I think cost more, but he preferred the older model.
I wonder where those reels are now.
I have lived more than half my life without him. I still think of him every day.
pmartin@arkansasonline.com
www.blooddirtangels.com
Editorial on 06/18/2017