Sunday, May 28, 2017

A Story for Memorial Day

I have a low tolerance for bullshit.
     I got it from my father.
     When he was in the Army during World War Two, he was always bouncing back and forth between ranks because when he was asked for his opinion, he gave it. Sometimes when he wasn't asked, too. My father, you see, judged a man by his intelligence and abilities, not his title.
     One time, an officer made the mistake of introducing himself to my father as he was working on the engine of a jeep.
     "I'm your new C.O.," the officer told him. "What needs to be done around here?"
     The officer was obviously talking about the bigger picture of things that needed to be done, but my father was more practical.
     "Well," my father said, wiping his forehead with the back of one hand and leaving a greasy streak, "this workspace needs to be swept out. Why don't you grab that broom over there and put it to work?"
     Offended, the officer stood to his full height and bellowed out in his Army-issued officer's voice.
     "Sergeant," he said, "in case your eyesight is failing you, I am a colonel in the United Stares Army and a graduate of West Point."
     "Oh," my father said, cleaning his hands with a dirty rag. "In that case, I'd better show you how."
  
  
Raising My Father
JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com  American Chimpanzee
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Saturday, May 13, 2017

Happy Mother's Day, Mom

Back when my beloved mother was still alive, I used to go over every Saturday morning for breakfast. Now that I think about it, I should have taken her out for breakfast, but that’s neither here nor there and is just something I’ll have to live with.
   During these times, she was fond of telling me the story of how, when she was but a wee lass of sixteen, she got a job. I won't tell you the year it happened, because that would be uncouth, but this was during a time when a grade school education had the weight of a high school education, a high school education had the weight of a college education, and her future husband was busy trying not to get killed by the Japanese in the Philippines.
   There, I can't be any more couth than that.
   Before she joined the workforce, my mother was enrolled in a catholic high school her father insisted she and her sisters go to. However, my mother wanted more out of life than that, so she quit school without telling her parents and got a job at the Kress Department Store downtown, not far from where the catholic high school was. Every morning, she'd catch the city bus with her sisters, but they would go their separate ways once they stepped off.
   Her father was very angry when the truth came out, as it always does. In this case, the nuns at the catholic school sent a note with one of my mom’s sisters, asking him why she wasn’t attending school.
    “What?” he yelled at his wife, who didn’t know a thing about it.
    “Why?” he yelled at his daughter when she got home that afternoon.
    “I want to buy myself nice things," she explained, and her father’s answer to this was...
    Well, he started crying.
    And then he began yelling and threatening.
    Still, no matter how much he yelled or threatened, my mother refused to quit her job.
   "I just want to buy myself nice things,”she kept trying to explain to him.
    Her father had no choice but to give in.
    Drying the tears in his eyes, he told her, “You’re the first girl in my family to ever work,” and, considering the time, it was probably true.
    Not surprisingly, my grandfather never got a rebate from the catholic school for the time my mother wasn’t attending classes.
    Still, that’s not the story I want to tell you.
    This is the story:
    One day, when she was at work, a man she had never seen before asked if she had ever thought about becoming a movie star. He was a bigwig from Hollywood, but, then, aren’t they all? Whether he was legitimate or not, my mother never found out, but he did have a business card, and he gave it to her with the instructions to, “Give me a call.”
    When my mother went home after work, she excitedly told her sisters what had happened. They all squealed like the young girls they were. Excitedly, they ran into the living room and told their mom and dad, who weren’t quite as excited. Her father took away that business card and told--make that, ordered--my mother not to ever contact that man and to immediately let them know if he tried to speak with her again.
    My mom was too innocent to know the evil that can happen to innocent young girls, so she was disappointed. Still, soon after that, she met my dad, had a family, so you could say her life perked up.
    “So you could have become an actress,” I would tell her, probably with a mouth full of fried egg.
    “I did become an actress,” she would insist.
    “You did?”
    “Yes,” she would say. “You see, when your father complains, I act like I’m listening.”
   
 
Raising My Father
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JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com  American Chimpanzee
@JimDuchene
  

Monday, May 1, 2017

The Very Next Day

The very next day, neither my wife or I felt the need to replace the very delicious ice cream my elderly father had the wherewithal  to complain about the day before, and which I wrote about in last month’s column.
    I, however, had my concerns.
    “You know my father likes something sweet after dinner,” I reminded her.
    “I’ve got it covered,” she assured me.
    When I continued to persist, she said, “Isn’t there someplace else you need to be? I mean, besides here bothering me?”
    Actually, no. There wasn’t. So I sat down and waited for something dark and hot that comes in a liquidy form.
    Some people think I drink a lot of coffee.
    That's because I do.
    I don't have a lot of bad habits, but if drinking coffee is a bad habit, then that's one of them. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't take drugs, but put a cup of coffee in front of me and I'll make it disappear like a donut within reach of my mother-in-law.
    After dinner, my lovely wife was kind enough to serve me the cup of coffee I was anticipating. I sat at the table and waited for her. It was our usual routine to sit outside in the patio and unwind from the day, but, ever since we invited my elderly father to live with us, our routines have changed.
    I looked in the direction of the patio. I looked at my wife. She looked at my father. He looked at her, and she asked him, "Would you like some ice cream before we go outside?"
    "Uh..." he said.
    My wife cut him off at the pass.
    "It's from the PX," she said.
    I looked up from my cup. I didn't know my wife had gone out to buy any ice cream, much less from the PX.
    "What?"
    "It's from the PX."
    "What flavor?"
    "Vanilla."
    "Vanilla?"
    "Vanilla."
    Now, before you start to think my dad's gone senile, let me assure you, he hasn't. It just takes him awhile for something to sink in. It may be because of some hearing loss due to his advanced age. Or it may be that nothing we say is of any interest to him. Or he may just be yanking our chain.
    Personally, I think it’s because his brain has worked hard all of his life and now it's enjoying his retirement along with the rest of him. I’m sure, instead of being in our kitchen, his brain would rather be on some beach in Miami checking out the itsied-bitsied, teenied-weenied, yellow polka-dot bikinied babes.
    Or maybe that's something I'd rather be doing.
    I get confused.
    My dad, on the other hand, doesn't.
    Every month, when his financial statements come in, he goes over them line by line, looking for any kind of a discrepancy. All of his investments, all of his savings, all of his expenditures...  he's right on top of them. It drives the people at the bank nuts.
    “Those characters,” he calls them. “You can’t trust any of them.”
    On the other hand, his monthly trips to the bank does give my dad a social life.
    But I digress...
    "Sure," my Dad said, referring to my wife's offer of ice cream, "It can't be any worse than what you gave me yesterday."
    Lifting one eyebrow, my wife walked over to the freezer and took out the same container of ice cream from the day before.
    “Just a little,” my father insisted. “You always serve me too much.”
    My wife got his favorite bowl and served him...  just a little.
     He gingerly tasted a spoonful.
    "Hey!" he said, with enthusiasm, "now this is what I was talking about!"
    He held out his bowl for more. My wife looked at me, and our eyes met. We were both smiling. She took the bowl and served him a generous amount more.
    As she placed it in front of him, he asked, "From the PX, you say?  It's good."
    Smack, smack!
    "I like the flavor."
    Smack, smack!
    "Much better than yesterday's ice cream."
    Smack!
    "Your son bought it," my wife informed him.
    "Who?"
    "Your son."
    "My son?"
    "Yes, your son. He went to the PX this morning.”
    “He went to the PX? How come?”
    “Because you said you didn't like the ice cream from Costco."
    "Yeah, that one from Costco wasn't very good," he remembered. Then his voice soften, and he shook his head a bit. "My son bought me this ice cream?"
    “Yes,” my wife said.
    I guess he couldn't believe it.
    "Yeah...  well… hmmm...  this one’s definitely better," my father said.
    Smack, smack!
    "I can tell the difference right away."
     Smack, smack!
    "Much better."
    Smack!
    "I'm glad you like it, dad," my wife told him, and put the container of Costco ice cream back in the freezer. That's why I love my wife. Because she's smart. She thinks on her feet.
    And she gives me all the credit.
    As my father finished up the last of his "much better" ice cream, he dropped the spoon into the bowl, and made a final smacking sound.
    Smack!
    "Can I have some more?" he asked.
 
You can find The Duchene Brothers bonding over a nice, hot cup of coffee over at RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com, or JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com, and even @JimDuchene. Come join us.
    
as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine
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Raising My Father
RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com
JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com  American Chimpanzee
@JimDuchene