Father's Day. Call your Dad, go see him and give him a big hug as you tell him you love him. One day you won't be able to do any of it.
I lost my Dad over four years ago. I wish I could still do those things.
Dad was a blue-collar man's man. I remember him, at times, working two jobs to provide for our family. Most of his working life was spent at Ontario's General Motors plant, at a time before they paid big hourly wages. I worked eighteen months at Stone Container Corporation making cardboard boxes and sheets, hating every minute being inside a factory. It gave me a much greater respect for what Dad did for us, spending over thirty years inside a factory; I imagine he hated it, too, but he was doing what he had to do in order to raise a family.
So many memories come flooding back, not only on Father's Day but every day.When I was in kindergarten we lived on Lexington Avenue, two doors south of what was then Cesar's Shell station; it's now a Valero. I ripped my hand open trying to climb up onto the garage roof back then, running into the house screaming. Mom and Dad wrapped my hand in a towel, loaded me into the station wagon and we took a wild, horn-blaring ride to Mansfield General Hospital. Being too young to understand it was a serious but non-life threatening, I clearly remember pleading, "Daddy, don't let me die! Don't let me die!"
Hearing those words had to have ripped his heart out. Being a father, I understand the impact those words must have had.
I remember Dad pitching to my sister Joyce and I in the back yard with a wiffle ball. One of us would be Mickey Mantle and the other Roger Maris. Dad was a Yankee fan, only because the Indians were terrible. He took me to see the Indians in old Cleveland Municipal Stadium several times while I was growing up and he is the reason I love baseball so much. I'll forever hear him saying "those dang Indians!" when they'd lose yet again.
I remember Dad driving us cross-country to see the Grand Canyon and sleeping along the road, all five of us, in the station wagon. I also remember staying in the Vagabond Motel outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico and swimming in the pool there...with Dad's help. That same trip, we were eating in a restaurant, me sitting next to a big window in a booth. I spotted a dead fly on the window sill and pointed it out to Dad; his reply was "Sshhh, son...everybody else will want one, too."
That was Dad's sense of humor.
I remember Dad taking me to see Dr. Shamess my freshman year of high school; Doc fixed my shoulder after the third dislocation and it had been time to get the stitches removed. Apparently Doc had waited a bit too long to take them out, because skin had grown over several of them. I laid on the exam table as the surgeon worked to remove them, blood trickling down the shoulder and onto the paper covering the table.
Dad almost passed out.
My Dad was a strict disciplinarian and I'm glad he was; it kept me out of trouble in my teen years. He also pastored a church in Galion for several years, which meant church Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night, every week without fail...unless I was sick.
He was also a man who could fix just about anything. One winter, the blower motor in the furnace went out in the middle of the night; he fixed it using the motor out of Mom's old washer, which he'd had the foresight to remove before hauling it off to the junk yard.
There's several years' worth of anecdotal stories I could write about my Dad, a man I loved and admired deeply and who instilled in me my conservative values and love of history, but there's not enough time to tell them all.
I miss my Dad.
My Dad, Clarence Clark, in the early 1960s
