Skip to main content

Happy Belated Birthday Pop

     My Dad's 84th birthday was on the 6th. We were going to take him to dinner, but he and my mom decided to visit a sick relative instead.  So today, I took him to lunch to celebrate his birthday.
Some people who don't know him and read, or hear, my stories about my dad's epic temper, might come to the conclusion that he is a jerk. Nothing could be further from the truth. I never met anyone who didn't instantly take a liking to my dad. He is the nicest guy you could ever meet. He's charming, funny, friendly and outgoing. He just has a strong sense of right and wrong. He also used to have a temper that would build up over time. In my life, he only spanked me twice. He never once spanked my sister. Parents, nowadays, may say, "Well you should never spank your children!" But in the 1960's spanking was normal. School principals kept a wooden paddles just for that purpose. So, not only was it normal to spank your children, it wasn't unusual for other people to spank your children.

     My dad was always a hard working guy. He worked hard in high school and set the regional shot put record. He worked hard after high school and went to the 1956 Olympics for diving. When my mother died of cancer, I was about two and a half years old. My dad had a new house with a mortgage, a little boy and a ton of medical bills. He got a lot of help with me. My paternal grandmother, Grandma Rosie, came to Westminster from Monterey Park and cleaned the house about once a week. My Aunt Betty, who lived around the corner watched me during the weekday when my dad was at work. My maternal grandparents, Ma and Pa, watched me on the weekends in Huntington Beach.

     So, what was my dad doing while everyone else was doing this stuff for us? During the weekday he worked full time as a driver at United Parcel Service.  At night, he worked at Shakey's Pizza Parlor. On the weekends he mowed lawns. And when he wasn't doing those three things, he was signing up for every available overtime spot at United Parcel Service.

     When my dad was home, he always had a smile for me and some gum. I think I was about five before I knew gum was supposed to have flavor. That was because my dad would give me the Juicy Fruit he had already chewed. Yeah, kind of disgusting, but it was funny. At night, we'd climb into bed, Look at each other, giggle, pull the gum out of our mouths and stick it to the top of the headboard. Then we'd giggle again, the lights would go out and we'd go to sleep. In the morning, we'd look at each other, giggle again and the gum would go back into our mouths for awhile, before we brushed our teeth. That was our routine. When I was seven, my dad remarried and my sister was born.

     When I was in high school he quit lawn mowing and UPS and opened a bar in Midway City. Anyone who owns their own business knows how hard it is. My dad was also a generous guy. Whenever we saw my grandparents, my dad would give them a couple of hundred bucks. One morning I woke up and there was a homeless Asian guy in our kitchen. My dad introduced him as Booji and said he'd be staying with us for awhile. Booji's wife had kicked him out. Booji's kids wouldn't take him in, for the same reason his wife kicked him out, because he was an alcoholic. My dad only knew him from the local bar. "Awhile" turned into several years, and Booji was still living with us when I joined the Army, about four years later.

     While I was in the Army, the Orange County Sheriff's shut my dad's bar down. He tried to fight the ruling in court and lost. He lost the bar and the house we had lived in for about 20 years. But my dad picked up. He did odd jobs, like re-felting pool tables, until he got the opportunity to open another bar. He put my sister through Berkeley. And yet, in all that time, I never heard my dad complain (except about the Orange County Sheriff's Department). Having said all that about my dad...

     When I was in Junior High, my dad was still mowing lawns on the weekend. He kept the lawnmowers and the edger in the back of his truck. One day, he told me to go get something out of the bed of his truck and then water the lawn. I looked in the bed and got what he wanted, but I noticed there was something different about the edger and lawnmowers. I looked at them and couldn't figure it out. I gave my dad what it was he asked for and told him I thought there was something wrong with the edger and mowers. He came outside, looked at them and calmly said,
"Someone stole the starters."
Then he turned went into the house and I heard him playing pool in the garage. The starter is the part of the engine with the rope that you pull on to get the engine started. I couldn't believe he took it so calmly, because it had been about 6 months since his last blow up and I knew time was drawing near.

     About a week went by and I was watering the front yard with the hose. I had worked my way from the street to the front door and was almost done, when three guys I knew from school went riding by in the street on their bicycles. These were guys I knew, but we weren't pals. We never had any trouble with each other, we just didn't hang out with the same people. As they rode past, they looked over at me and one of them yelled, in a mocking manner,
"Hey Farrell! How are your lawnmowers working?"
As all three of them started to laugh, I heard the screen door behind me close and saw my dad step up next to me. The laughter from my three schoolmates died almost as soon as it had started, the stupid grins dropped from their faces, they quickly turned their faces forward and picked up the pace of their pedaling. My dad calmly watched them make a right onto Ontario Avenue, before he turned and disappeared back into the house. Seconds later, the screen door banged shut, he walked quickly past me, and disappeared around the corner of the garage. He was on a mission. I heard the truck door open and slam shut. The truck engine roared to life, and I saw the truck leave the driveway onto our street almost on two wheels. The truck quickly hung a right onto Ontario, leaning heavily to the left, and disappeared from view.
"I'm glad I'm not those dicks.", I thought, as I continued watering.
Several minutes later my dad returned with the truck and a big smile on his face. He walked past me, tossed me the truck keys and casually said,
"If the cops come, I'll be in the garage playing pool."

     The cops didn't come. But later that day, my friends, who lived on Ontario, told me what happened.  My dad had rolled up on the three teenage kids and told them to stop as he paced them. When they didn't, he opened his driver door and knocked one off his bike, then he cut the other two off, forcing them to stop. He then tossed one of the kids off his bike and started jumping up and down on it in an effort to break it in half. When he realized his 5'06", 150 pound body wasn't going snap the metal frame in half, he reached into the back of his truck and grabbed his shovel. Wielding his shovel like an ax, he broke one bike in half. At about this point, one of the kids, I think his name was Stevens, who was tall for his age (about 6'02") decided to sack up, puff out his scrawny chest, ball up his fists and step between my dad and his unbroken bike. My dad looked at Stevens, hefted the shovel and stepped toward him. Stevens decided his sack was empty and took several steps away from his bike as my dad hacked that Schwinn in half too. A man stepped out of his house and demanded to know what was going on. My dad told him to mind his own business. The man looked at the kids, looked at my dad and went back into his house to mind his own business. My dad looked at the third bike, looked at his shovel, looked at the bike again and decided to throw his shovel back into the bed of the truck and just run over the third bike. Those guys never said a thing to me about that incident.  I have no idea how those guys explained the condition of their bicycles to their parents.

     Later in life, when he was in his mid to late 50's, I would watch my dad face down drug dealers and drug users at his bar and chase them out of his parking lot, armed only with a lead pipe (painted to look like a flashlight.  In his 60's my mother told me how they went to McDonald's to eat and while they were standing in line, a group of college age adults started talking smack to the cashier, calling him a loser for having a job like that.  My dad blew his stack and went off, calling them a bunch of losers who were probably still living at home with mommy and daddy, sponging off of them, while the cashier was making an honest living.

     My dad is not a perfect man.  For instance, I've never heard him apologize to anyone, for anything. But everyone has their faults. Although my parenting style and peace keeping style were different than his, I absolutely idolize my dad and hope that one day, my own sons will look back and remember me as fondly.



                                                             Happy Birthday Pop

Comments

  1. Your dad looks very good. Please tell him I said hello.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, I will pass the compliment along. Should I just say Anonymous says hello?

      Delete
    2. It is really great Father and son events I read so far Happy belated birthday from India

      Delete
  2. Nothing can replace having a good father like yours.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Case #11- The LASD vs L.A.P.D. (playing cops and cops)

     In September 1987, the Carson patrol area known as, "Tortilla Flats", was suffering a rash of burglaries.  To combat this, Deputy Ray Gayton-Jacob and Al Harris, who were training officers at the time, came up with a burglary suppression plan.  On, about, Wednesday, September 14, 1987, Ray and his trainee would be dressed in full uniform, but in an unmarked, Chevy Malibu, detective car.  They would cruise the Tortilla Flats neighborhood looking for burglars.  Al and his trainee, would remain outside of the neighborhood in a regular patrol car.  If Ray and his partner saw something suspicious, they would keep an eye on it and call in Al and his trainee to check it out.      Things were quiet, until about 1:00 A.M..  Ray, and his trainee, had just finished jamming a hype at Torrance Boulevard and New Hampshire Avenue and had resumed their patrol.  Ray spotted a black and white patrol car coming slowly their way.  Ray assumed it was Al.  Ray assumed wrong.  It was an L.A.

Case #65 - re The People vs Don Chanler (A lesson for all trainees)

  Case #65 - re The People vs Don Chanler ( A lesson for all trainees ) Don Chanler was the Question Cadet in our Academy class, class #226.  At the end of each long day, one of the staff instructors would come in and, prior to dismissing us for the day, would always ask if anyone had any questions about the day's classes.  There was only one cadet who would ever raise his hand.  Don Frickin' Chanler.  Chanler would immediately raise his hand and the staff instructor would resignedly call his name. Chanler would always ask obvious question, after obvious question, delaying our release for the day with ev-ery sin-gle point-less ques-tion.  As with all Question Cadets, only he was interested in what he had to ask.  Three years later, Don Frickin Chanler came to Carson with me, Mike Chacon and about 8 other people from our Academy class.  In Patrol School, we were not relieved to discover that he had not changed.  In fact he had gotten worse, because not only was he the Question C

CASE #61 - The Big Kahuna vs the Chiefs (equal vs EQUAL)

In the early 1980s, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department had a different evidence storage system than they have had since the early 1980s.  Up until the early 1980s, the detectives handling a case were responsible for storage, disposition and tracking of evidence in their cases.  Each detective had a bin in the evidence storage room that they kept their evidence in and a ledger that they logged the evidence in and out in and put the disposition of in.  Carson Sheriff's station's Detective Jerry Kaono aka "Da Big Kahuna" aka "Da Flyin Hawaiian" had one such bin. In the early 1980s, the department decided to do an audit of the evidence being held at the various sheriff's stations.  One of the first stations to be audited was Lakewood station.  Quite a bit of evidence was unaccounted for. Heads rolled.  Detectives were fired.  Detective sgts were fired. Detective lieutenants were fired.  Same thing happened at another station.  Carson station'