In The Navy

After graduation, Charlie plans to join the navy (like Tommy's father) as a signalman. This morning on her first trip back to Central Park in a very long time Charlie practiced semaphore and  messaged her sister, Phoebe, on a Fifth Avenue roof waiting for the signal.

"I chased two squirrels. One for you, one for me."

Son of a Son of a Sailor

February 1941, on a Saturday morning, my father woke up and found his father drinking coffee alone in the kitchen with only the bare winter light coming in through the backyard window. My grandmother and uncle had left for work. Dad, 11, talked baseball with his Dad while eating three bowls of cereal. My 40 year old grandfather, ill with Potts Disease, a late stage Tuberculosis, told his son he needed to rest and suggested Dad go out and play. Dad got dressed took his mother’s scarf on his father’s suggestion, then he got a long hug and a wet kiss from his father and a good bye in his ear, twice.

After my father left, my grandfather pushed himself up from the table, grabbed a bunch of towels and stuck them under the door and the windows. He pulled a chair over to the oven, stuck his head in it and killed himself. My father found his father dead an hour later and ran and get a cop.

Today is Dad’s birthday, if he were here he’d be 85 and he’d still be expecting a call a day and a kiss on the lips, hello and goodbye. When I was young I didn’t understand his strong grip on Rory and my life. He was a suffocating son of a bitch but I guess he wanted to make sure we didn’t leave him.

Lucky for me, he was the most interesting pain in the ass I’ve ever known, and I miss him each day. His artistic and mechanical talent was boundless, barely owning an education (his early schooling were movies and music at the Paramount) he read everything and could talk any subject intelligently. He knew every joke ever told, and told them well, over and over again.

Most of all he was a sailor, in his heart and in his soul. No conversation was ever far away from a reference to the sea, the Navy, the Merchant Marines, or his three trips around the world. Dad joined the Navy on his 17th birthday in 1946 after a failed attempt the previous year to get in before the war ended. After two years in the Navy he spent three more in the Merchant Marines.

If Dad didn’t meet Mom, he would have made a career at sea. He loved us dearly but never lost his yearning. My brother and I often heard, “if it wasn’t for you I’d be on the ocean.” He told me his father’s fondest wish was to be a sailor. Maybe in his heart that’s what my grandfather was. Being a sailor must have been a dreamy place to go to when he was a boy in the Staten Island orphanage and later when the disease sent him upstate to Tuberculosis Sanatoriums for 7 of his last 10 years. Maybe my Dad wanted to finish his Dad’s dream. For five years, he got the chance.

That makes me a Son of a Son of a Sailor.

This is my latest column in Ask A New Yorker

Pet Chicken Down In Chinatown

Dad nailed a typing test early in his Navy career (always good with his hands) and directly became a storekeeper. This led to "The Life of Reilly," for Dad in the Navy and later in the Merchant Marines (Storekeepers control lots of goodies). After the service, Dad sold space on ships for a few of the big shipping lines along lower Broadway and Battery Place. At the time(1950s & 1960s), there was more product coming in and out of New York then there was space on all the ships. For a long time "The Life of Reilly," continued for Dad in civilian life and he made art in his free time (it surrounds me).

When corruption chased most shipping lines out of New York along with the jobs, Dad bought a town car and got into the livery business like his Dad and his grandfather. His father was a hack driver, and his grandpa was a hostler, caring for horses.

When Dad found the internet his typing skills shook off their cobwebs. I'd get a couple of requests a week to print something up for him. Dad loved quirky stories. Here is one from 2000, two years before he died.