My first memories of my father have him looming against a wide backdrop of open sky, smiling down on me while clouds glided slowly behind him. I was small, helpless, untrained. He was big, a force of nature. He could fix anything.
Another memory has him over my right shoulder as he teaches me to ride a bike. His large, calloused hand is on my shoulder, steadying me, while the other is on the back of the bicycle seat. He trots alongside as I pedal. Moments later, I glance to my right and he is gone. I am pedaling alone, finally keeping the bike upright as I bounce along the front lawn. In my peripheral, I notice him standing a good way off, behind me, smiling. I let out a shriek of joy-fright as I realize I am now in full control. Soon, however, I lose focus, the bike slows and I tip over. My father jogs to help me up. Despite my scraped knee and elbow, I share my excitement with the man who got me there, whose hand was on my shoulder. We smile at the accomplishment, and I realize nothing will ever be the same again. I can ride a bike now. I am no longer a mere biped. I have discovered wheels.*
My father was a truck driver. He would sometimes sneak me along on his deliveries to places like Atlanta or Roanoke, Virginia. It was so exciting to see the world outside of the tiny trailer park where we lived. Once I was old enough to appreciate good stories, weird history, colorful characters and country music, the bond with my father strengthened. He loved old diners, strong coffee and watching the patchwork quilt of America’s heartland roll past in slow, manageable frames that became like favorite scenes in a movie. He could watch it over and over again, always finding something new.**
My father would climb into his truck, slide behind the wheel and become instantly giddy like a child at his own birthday party. He once told me the sound of wheels on a paved highway was music to his ears — right up there with Marty Robbins, George Jones and Tammy Wynette, just a few of his favorites. Their 8-track tapes were always scattered atop the doghouse, that big compartment in between the front seats of a semitruck, under which the engine can be heard churning. And I learned some valuable sign language on those trips like how to signal “honk back” to truckers by raising my arm in honk position, pulling down on the imaginary chain above the driver’s side window to trigger the air horn.
Always present in the truck’s large glove compartment were maps, tokens of the driving trade before GPS. No respecting truck driver would have ever been caught dead without scads of Rand McNally road maps from every state you could name. Of course, one or two nationwide maps were always there, but drivers of my father’s caliber preferred the magnification of the statewides. Driving through Atlanta, for instance, my father could easily zoom in, so to speak, choosing alternate routes to return to favorite stops. I would study those maps with Dad’s hand-inked stars and circles, some of which were labeled “Lila’s — Good coffee” or “Dukes — Best pancakes.”
Now, of course, those folded paper maps have been replaced by our smartphones. If we need to zoom in or out, all we need now is the familiar two-finger pinch.***
Our passed-down family folklore is a lot like Papa Joe’s (the name we all called him) old Rand McNally maps, giving us a more detailed glimpse inside the infrastructure of a family’s culture. As I sat down to write this piece, my thoughts migrated from my father to his sisters and brothers and the dozens of cousins whose stories have taken their own honored place around dinner tables far and wide. I’ll share a few favorites with you, and I would love to hear some of your own family folklore on our Facebook page (theTNmagazine) or at tnmagazine.org.
My father had false teeth. Most people would prefer to keep that a dignified secret, but Papa Joe displayed the evidence with comedic glee. When seeing a group of young kids, he would pop his teeth out so he appeared skeleton-like and open his eyes wide. The rest of us would laugh uproariously as his audience squealed and stepped back in horror. He would then pop his teeth back in, smile and wink at the kids as they giggled with relief. More than one kid would ask how he did it, and he never hesitated to give them the demonstration. “It’s really easy,” he’d say. “You just have to have all your teeth pulled out and get fake ones put back in.”
At age 17 or so, my cousin Jay hopped a train late at night with a friend. They were thinking they could just get off in the next town and hitchhike back. The train actually had no scheduled stops and picked up top speed once out of the city limits. They were trapped on the train for hours and had to call home at daybreak from a city they’d never heard of. The family drew straws around the breakfast table, and a long-suffering uncle made the all-day drive to retrieve them, thereafter taking on the nickname “Short Straw.”
Alcohol is often present, if not center stage, in many of the stories from my family folklore. A favorite story involves a half-full bottle of Boone’s Farm wine, a casket and several neighborhood bars. My Uncle Zed and several of his friends were hopping along favorite downtown drinking establishments when, inexplicably, they came across an empty casket. After years of hearing this story in family circles, I am still unaware how they procured said casket — whether one of them worked at a funeral home, or whatever — but the casket is crucial to the story, so I will continue without sufficient details as to how the casket found its way into the story. According to eye witness accounts, Uncle Zed climbed inside the casket while the others acted as pallbearers, carrying him down tavern row lid-free and exposed to the public. Stopping in several watering holes along the way, they got rounds of free drinks in honor of their fallen friend (my Uncle Zed), who kept his eyes closed and his head propped up by the aforementioned half-full bottle of Boone’s Farm.****
These characters, bound to me by blood and history, are a part of me, and I feel more connected to them — and my father — in the retelling of their stories.
I have spent 23 Father’s Days without our beloved Papa Joe. I am now the same age he was when he died. Having had rheumatic fever when he was a child, his scarred heart only had so many beats in it — fewer than most and fewer, by far, than we all would have liked.
His large, calloused hand once guided me as I pedaled my way into an unknown future. He had to let me go to make my own mistakes, to fall. But for a long time thereafter, he was there when I got back up to try again. When your fathers are no longer at the other end of a phone or in the old house at the end of a driveway, things change, and they can change hard.
I’ve been driving a lot these days, and I feel connected to Papa Joe with every road trip. Sometimes I talk to him and say thanks, and when I signal “honk back” to a neighbor on the highway and hear that familiar blast of air horn, I can smile and imagine it’s my father.
Necessary, life-changing footnotes
*Mobility has long been the mark of modern man, the rite of passage in stages. From skateboard to bicycle to automobile to airplane, our modern lives are divided into chapters by speed. Is it any wonder time goes faster as we get older? It’s an inevitable outcome of the accelerated lives we’ve created on wheels and wings, only to wish them to slow down when we hit age 50 or so.
**I have grown into a man much like my father. I appreciate the open road and the folklore that comes with it. Memories from my own recent travels are held buoyantly in my heart, and I’ll mention a few here because my father would have loved to hear them, and, well, I can’t share them with him anymore. So I’ll share them with you, and I’ll thank you for being there.
1. A one-legged gas station attendant in Wyoming got to talking and let his crutches slide from their leanings to leave a perfect arc scratched on my back door. He was so apologetic, but I assured him not to worry, saying the scratch (not my old car’s first) would be just another good story to tell.
2. An elderly lady, a former dancer with purple, glittery eye makeup, held me in rapt conversation at a diner late one night in Cincinnati. We talked about life for two hours, and I helplessly confessed some of my darkest fears to her.
3. A stuttering bartender in Milwaukee attended to my friends and me with a dignity and poise I’ve only ever seen in movies. His arms were adorned with bold, skull-crossed Marine Corps tattoos and the name of his infant daughter in a light, delicate cursive font on his forearm.
It’s called folklore for a reason, the root being “folk” because people are fascinating, and there’s a story in everyone if we but look.
***I had to laugh at myself the other day while reading a book — an old-school book. I wanted more detail and started to “pinch out” over the picture to enlarge it. Many of us find ourselves caught between these digital and analog worlds.
****Many of the men in my family are accomplished drinkers, and alcohol only exaggerates their already jovial nature. They are also eternal optimists, so the bottles mentioned in our family folklore are always half-full.
