A funny story he told me was about a fight he got into one night when he was drinking at a bar. He and another guy got into a heated argument, probably about who was the drunkest ("You're drunk!" "No, you're drunk!").
Finally, the guy told him, "You want to take it outside?"
"You bet," my Dad said, and led the way.
The heavy bar door opened outward, so my Dad swung it open, stepped outside, and then slammed it against the would-be pugilist who made the mistake of following too close behind him.
Winner! By A Knock-Out! My Father!
At the beginning of another fight, my father assured his opponent that, not only would he (the opponent) lose the fight, but he wouldn't even be able to knock the cigarette dangling coolly from his (my father's) mouth.
Sadly, my father's opponent found out the hard way that my Dad was as good as his word.
But my father didn't solve all his arguments with his fists. When he had to, he could use his head and talk his way out of a fight.
Before World War Two, my father worked a variety of jobs, one of which was delivering bread to grocery stores. Apparently, competition was fierce in the bread business, and, to discourage customers from buying their competitor's product, they would give their competition's loaves a vicious squeeze, thus making their own product more attractive by comparison.
The bread guy who had space on the shelf next to my Dad finally grew tired of having his merchandise purposely damaged, so he told my Dad that if he did it again he'd beat him like a red-headed step-child (my apologies to red-headed step-children). He was a big guy, an oak in a world of pine trees, and was supposed to be a pretty tough cookie himself, but nobody tells my Dad what to do, even to this day, so he did it again.
My father was a pretty big guy himself, but next to this guy he looked like a munchkin from Oz. He didn't know how many guys it would take to chop down this particular tree, but he knew how many there was: just him.
"Before we fight," my father, who had never backed down from a fight and wasn't going to start now, told him, "I just want you to know that, if I beat you, I'm going to tell everybody how I kicked your ass, and, if you beat me, I'm going to tell everybody how you only pick on guys smaller than you."
Which was essentially everybody.
The guy thought about it. It was a lose/lose situation for him. While it would only be embarrassing for him if he lost the fight, he could lose stores and customers if it got around that he was a bully.
While they didn't exactly become best friends like they do in the movies, they did come to an understanding: he wouldn't ruin the loaves of bread my father would stock on the shelves, and my father would extend to him the same courtesy.
The Army, while they didn't teach him how to fight, they certainly did refine his skill.
"In the Army," my Dad once told me and my friends dramatically, "I learned how to kill with my hands."
My friends and I were suitably impressed, but couldn't help but wonder, "Who did he practice on?"
Raising My Father
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