Zona

Father mine, father me












Mine:

My father was born on March 29th, 1927 in Evansville, Indiana. One of 13 brothers and sisters in a household where you worked as soon as you were able. He became interested in golf when he worked as a caddy for 25 cents a round at the Evansville Country Club. He was drafted into the Army and as soon as he had finished taking his oath somebody burst into the room to announce the war in Europe was over. He spent two years as a Military Policeman near Cologne, Germany. After the war he went out west to Phoenix, Arizona where his sister Hazel lived to see what he could find. He never went back to Indiana except for family funerals and his 50th high school reunion and the time we all went in 1977.

He met my mother while he was driving a truck on a route in southeastern Arizona. They were married on June 8th, 1957 and I was born a little over a year later.

I have very little memory of of my early childhood but I know that my father used to get up very early in the morning and walk 3 or 4 miles to his job as a bakery delivery man. Then he worked in a meat packing plant and finally in a small meat processing house in Tucson that delivered to local restaurants. My father was not a highly educated man and his high school was more like a school where boys would learn a trade.

He had a lot of common sense so he ended up being the plant manager for Tucson Prime Meats. He played golf and he loved to bowl. He also loved to bet on the horse and dog races. At the dog races he and his buddies would always play the same numbers. 1,2,5,8. One time they won a 1965 Mustang at the dog track.

My father also liked to drink beer and on weekends he went to his favorite bars. Sometimes he'd take us along and we'd sit in a booth and have sodas and hot dogs while he drank and made bets with the owner/bookie. Sometimes we'd go over to his best friend's house on Sundays and watch football while he drank. He was not an alcoholic but one time he scared me when he got home at night. I waited for him to come in the house but he never did. I finally went outside to find him passed out at the steering wheel.

There was the talk behind close doors and that kinda thing never happened again. He would eventually stop drinking except for a beer at lunch and then he'd have beer at home when my mother traveled. My father loved to drive but the last 10 years of his life he would stop traveling all together.

My father never said anything profound to me that I recall but his life was my example. He was a man who got up early everyday and went to work to feed his family. It's hard to explain but he just wasn't the "let's have a talk" kind of guy. He was very conservative in his life style and he was a life long Democrat. There was a time when he knew enough people in Tucson to where he could get a deal on anything he needed. EVERYBODY liked my father. He was very easy to get along with.

He raised me to treat people fairly.

When I left to the Border Patrol Academy my father stopped having lunch at the place he had eaten at for years. Instead he went over to have lunch at our apartment with my wife and our two small children. He did this everyday until I graduated and came home. He would take donuts and play with the kids and if my wife needed anything, he got it for her. Years later we were all in Tucson on vacation and I told those two kids who were then about 18 and 16 to give their grandfather a big hug and kiss goodbye because you never know......They did, and that ended up being the last time they would see him.

My father worked until the day he died. I still can't believe that he's gone because he was supposed to be there forever. But on that day that he most needed me to be there, I was. There were no parting words. We just aren't that way anyway. I imagine he knew what was going to happen and I hope it calmed him to know I was there. I know that's how I would feel in my last moments if I knew my son was there.

Me:

I was born on July 28th, 1958 in Tucson, Arizona. I grew up with what I think was a normal childhood. I had clothes, food, a roof over my head, and I was spanked when I was bad. I had friends, I did enough to get by in school, never had a steady girlfriend until I was 19, and wanted to be a rock star without having to learn how to play. I used to write a lot of poetry/songs, and have always been interested in photography.

I was never abused by anyone as a child. It was about 12 or so when I found out that my older brother and sister did not have the same father as me and it wasn't until much later that I found out how one of them felt about that and what it meant.

I went on a Mormon mission at age 19 to Bolivia where I met the woman I would risk everything familywise to marry. Our first daughter was born in June of 1983 in La Paz, Bolivia at a hospital that many in the States would find atrocious. Eleven children were born at that hospital that day. Six survived.

I brought my wife and daughter to the US in September 1984 and our son was born in July 1985. Another daughter in November 1988 and a son in December of 1990.

I was one of those fathers who would quietly step into the room where any of my children were sleeping and wait until I saw them breathe before quietly stepping out. They were a lot of fun to raise when they were young and I was always their hero, the man who could make it all better. They had it much easier than me and although I thought I was more involved with their lives than my father was with mine and I told them many more things than my father told me I know I made mistakes.

There came a time when I was competing with their friends to have a voice in shaping their lives. Others tell me that the battles are a normal part of raising kids but I relive so many of them to analyze where I misstepped. What did I say or do wrong and how did it turn them away. Was some of the intensity my fault and was my attempt to show my experience over their friends' naivete alienating to them?

I have regrets which I'm sure most fathers do and there's always the "big picture" that my kids will see when they get older and friends the looked to have long vanished. Then maybe they will know that their father wasn't all that bad. But there will still be scars. Maybe they will be minor scars compared to many others but scars that remind us of bad times none the less.

Did I do my best? Probably not always. But there's no book, there's no real path to follow. Things come into young people's lives that pull hard on them and fathers recognize dangers and try to put stop signs out but kids are indestructable and all knowing beings. It aint easy. Sure, it's a lot of fun being a father because you watch yourself grow up all over again.

Too bad you only get one shot at it and that it moves so fast.