My father was a most religious man . He lived by the golden rule and he always worked 2 or more jobs mostly as a painter or wallpaper hanger, but had stints as a cab driver and a prison guard.
His work ethics were the best. He used to say to me,”Hank, if you’re job is “shovelling shit” be the best shit shoveller you can be.”
He also said,” if everyone was honest and did a good job you should be able to buy a new car for $500.00.”
While he worked at the prison in Boston harbor on Deer island in Winthrop, the locals called dad and the other guards the slang term “slug”.
When I was seven, he told me to get dressed and he took me via the MTA on four connections plus ferry to the island prison. He knew all the guards so entrance via the security was easy thru all the gates.
Inside the large building, there were four floors with cells/bars on one side all the way to the ceiling. The smell of urine permiated the salty air. Comic books were strewn all over the floors in the cells. He took me into some of the cells and introduced me to a few of the prisoners. Needless to say,I was frightened to death during this ordeal.
Outside the prison,he took me aside and looked at me as only he could and said, “ Henry, this is where you go, if you don’t behave yourself!”
IT MADE AN IMPRESSION ON ME TO THIS DAY!
My dad took me to many great places as a kid such as; the circus, rodeo, sportsman show, Bensen wild animal farm, Norumbega Park, Nantasket Beach
by boat, Boston Braves baseball games, woods for blueberry picking and lady slipper picking for mom, kite flying at the tower, fishing at ponds, rivers, lakes, and sometimes the ocean lingers with me in the recesses of my mind as I approach 70.
My Dad used the ‘41 Plymouth for our fishing trips when he wasn't working on an extra "painting" jobs. Drop cloths, step ladders, paint pails and brushes had to be removed to make room for our fishing gear. We dug in the garden with a pitch fork for “night crawlers” early in the morning, keeping these squirming earthly creatures alive in a can with soil.
Our favorite fishing spots were the popular winding Charles River in Dedham, beyond the end of the MTA bus stop at the end of Center St., Jamaica Pond in Jamaica Plain in full view of former Boston Mayor James Michael Curley’s palatial home, and Newpond in Norwood. These fishing trips were the most successful taken in the Plymouth. Many a time, Dad would rent a rowboat. At Newpond, we (Dad) would row a great distance and make our way to an island in this large body of water away from the swimming beach. If we didn't find any worms in our garden, there were always some for sale at the various homes along the shore of the pond.
One of my favorite/son recollection with my dad was kite flying at the water tower, the highest point around the town. My grandfather was our weather forecaster and when he predicted nice weather with west winds, the kite project began.
We bought window sash wood strips from the Center hardware on Washingston St. Every thing else, we had. Dad cut the Boston Post newspaper to size. Homemade white paste was used to hold string supports to paper. String struts bowed the sticks in place. Three balls of string wound on a three foot cut-off broom handle was tethered to the kite. Cut rags were tied together for the long stabilizer tail.
Off we went up Washingston St. to the sloped tar path leading to the huge stone water tower. In the large green field east of the container full of water from the Quabbin Resevoir, I ran with the kite over my head till it was airborne. I can still see the bowed paper beauty flying majestically back and forth over the suburbs of Boston as we exchanged turns handling the homemade aero marvel and walking back and forth on the MDC towers grassy knoll.
While I and my younger brother and sister were growing-up, my father supported his religious upbringing pact and never got involved with anything controversial within the Catholic church process.
When my sister was a kid, he would devotedly take her to band practice at Sacred Heart, every Friday night (she played the saxophone). Even though he was not a parishioner, he would get involved with fund raising, etc., and everyone thought he was Catholic. He sort of looked Italian/Jewish, even though he was Swiss/German.
Even in my teenage years, he never questioned anything. When I attended regular church services with my mother, he would simply say to me, "say a little prayer for me."
The first time my dad and I got into anything questionable involved the abstinence of eating meat on Fridays. My mother would always prepare the proper menu or school brown bags sandwiches of fish, cheese, eggs or whatever, to meet this criteria. For years, "he" refrained from making remarks about this procedure. However, being the eldest child, I remember he would come-up with little remarks, when I was alone with him.
He might say --" what is this "thing" about Catholics not eating meat on Fridays?" " I don't dare take it up with your mother, because she would think I was stupid."
I would simply say: "well Dad, it's a form of sacrifice, I suppose".
He would respond: "it's strickly economic I think". "The Pope wants to promote the fishing industry and this is his way of doing it. It's really got nothing to do with sacrifice or penance, or whatever." He sort of said this in quip, but I knew he was curious, and very serious.
During my regular church attendance as I grew a bit older, (having received confirmation and all), there would often be these "shady looking characters" in church. My dad would comment about this family who owned the local pizza eaterie/bar ...like they were Italian mafioso types or more derogative.
Dad could act like “Archie Bunker” sometimes.
They weren’t. In fact, one of the daughters went to school with me. She was a sweetheart.
Once in a while, I would comment about the Italian men attending a service, and Dad would say, "why were they in church? -- Receiving communion, and all ...were they blessing themselves?" “And Pacei (the patriach) taking part in the collection plate!” This was dad’s racist way of pointing out to me that perhaps there was some inconsistency regarding religion here. However, he still just sort of stayed in the background with his doubt --yet never rebuking, but forever curious..
Before the modern wide spread state lotteries, there was an illegal numbers game based on U.S. Treasury numbers then pari-mutual information published in the daily newspapers probably run by bookies and the mob called by a racial slur…. and followed by “pool”.
My brother Paul, recently told me it still exists and is now called the numbers game and uses the lotto numbers also.
In 1954, Dad won $750.00 on the “pool” and bought a used 1951 black Ford trading in the 1941 Plymouth at Bower Ford on Cummings Hwy. I just got my license and loved to drive this “black beauty”. I bought a gold swan with silver wings as a hood ornament and a chrome exhaust pipe extender.
From a conservative dresser attending the early Holy Name dances, I progressed to a kind of dandy later on. Maybe having occasional use of my father's new used ’51 Ford had something to do with it.
Every Saturday evening, after putting the final touches on my appearance / wardrobe – putting on one of my Billy Eckstein shirts with soft piquee collar (white,light blue,or yellow), with thin dark blue suede belt, skinny knit tie with tie clasp, and usually a dark blue blazer; then combing carefully my “Tony Curtis”-like DA coiffure, tieing the black suede shoes after slipping on matching socks - I went downstairs and always played one last 45 rpm record from my wire, thin metal rack holder of favorites before “I left the building”.
My dad would be sitting in his comfortable, maroon, pub back, wing chair with matching ottoman reading the Boston Post. His mood and facial expression as he peered over his paper at me with his bifocal tortoise-rimmed glasses dictated my musical selection. If he had a quizzical, humorous look, I would go straight for "L'il Darling" by; “the Diamonds”.
I would pull the paper-sleeved record from the rack, remove the paper protector and put the red labeled 45 on the spindle. Then, I would click the release switch, crank up the volume and dance across the gray, carpeted room like James Brown. When the refrain in a deep baritone saying "My darling." Then "I love you" came on, and I would mouth the words as I pointed my index finger at my father's face.
That special look (only he had it) came over my father's face. What he said to me is unprintable. After finishing up this entertainment, I laughed hysterically, gave my mom and dad a hug and left the house with their departing words still ringing in my ears 50 years later.
Years later, in the mid-sixties, when I was in the Air Force; attending MIT; getting graduate degrees, in two subjects, (feeling like I had been in school most of my life). At that point, I would always manage to schedule my life so that on Fridays, I could go shopping with my father.
He loved me to drive his 1951 Ford, which was sort of a relic then. His adventure involved me coming to his home and driving him to Rozzzie Sq. -Lodgens, Clausen’s and Paul’s bakery. Watching him buy groceries was a wonderful education for me. His gregariousness, and enthusiasm; his friendliness and the way he would buy anything, even a pound of bologna was terrific. It was all a work of art.
I loved shopping with him.
It taught me a lot.
When I would take him back home he would always say:
"Why don't you stay for a while and have a piece of cake from the bakery?"
I would stay with him and share a glass of milk and a piece of cake, or whatever. We would talk -- he'd asked me about school and my children (at that time I had four). He just loved to talk- Still nothing of a controversial nature.
I think,to this day,he was a bit leary of my so-called knowledge.
Then, on one particular Friday, totally out of the blue, he said to me: "I never really asked you very much about religion, but now that you are attending MIT, and being taught by some of the most brilliant minds in the world, I'm sure you must enter into discussions with your professors about religion.
What do they think about God? And heaven? Do they believe? Do they know some answers? Is there life after death?"
I looked at him, and I said: "Dad -- they do not know. I do not know. I think there is a God. I hope there is life after death. But, the only person I could recommend that you ask these questions of, would be your wife!
Mom knows!
“She's got the faith and that's about all I can provide."
Years later, in his seventies, my father decided to become a Catholic. He entered the religion because he now wanted to go to church with my mother since the children were grown. He had met a priest who had gotten him involved with the only religion he would ever seriously know. He studied,took the Sacraments, and became a Catholic..
In 1992, my father passed away (on Mother’s day). I went to his funeral in Roslindale, a suburb of Boston. It was difficult to make the journey from Florida (where I now reside). I went with my son, Matt who helped me a great deal during this ordeal. Being in a wheelchair, (as a result of contracting MS during the 60's), it was agony to reach the necessary locations.
It involved being lifted into areas that were impossible and somewhat impassible. However, I or we mastered it. The funeral home and church were old structures and quite a challenge to even the living.
We arrived at Higgin’s funeral home on Washington St. in Rozzie Square before other mourners so friends wouldn’t see our difficulty. I had been to so many wakes there before my wheelchair days. I wanted to spend some quiet time with my father who was laid out in his coffin.
Matt said to me, “ Dad, Pop always bumbed a couple of smokes off me and my brother when he came to Florida, so Mark said to put a couple inside his jacket coat as he laid in the coffin.
Dad smoked all of his life, but mom kept after him to quit.
Tears welled up in my eyes and I said , “ Matt, go ahead.”
Matt put 2 Marlboro lights in Dad’s jacket.
At the Sacred Heart church on Cummings highway as the priest was saying the funeral Mass, I, in my wheelchair with my hand on the coffin, sat there receiving communion. It was in the wide center aisle of the same church where I had gone to Mass every Sunday as a young man and received my confirmation; where my brother and sister were both married and where my father converted to Catholicism. And, I thought of the conversation I had with my father more than 30 years before.
"Was there life after death?" “And, is there a God?”
I whispered to myself: "Well, Pop, you are now the only one who knows the answer." “Wish you could share it with me.”
I was blessed with wonderfull parents!
