That may help to explain why you see so many middle-aged men walking around talking to themselves. They're still arguing with their dads. I do it all the time myself.
I drive for a living. I have no one to talk to for most of the day. So, I end up reliving disagreements I had with my old man. Neither one of us won the argument back then and no one ever will. But, they play out in my head year after year. They still do.
Bill Tjaden
My Dad was a very personable guy. Everyone liked him. He always had a joke or a funny story to tell. I always enjoyed having company over our house when I was a kid because it took my Dad’s attention away from me.
My brother felt the same way. When we had visitors he could entertain he didn’t spend any time looking to find where we had screwed up that day. As amusing as he was to guests, he could be equally terrorizing and unreasonable to my brother and me. There were never any questions about our schoolwork. He didn’t want to hear about any problems we might be having that would require his attention be directed at anything other than whatever TV show he was watching.
When we received our report cards, though, we got more of our Dad’s attention than we wanted. My brother and I were both “C” students. We needed 64 credits to graduate high school and we both made it out with the bare minimum. Neither of us were ever going to grace the hallways of a college or university unless we were hired to paint them.
But, for some reason he expected straight A’s on those report cards.
We would wait until he was about 30 minutes into one of his favorite shows like “Combat!” or “Gunsmoke” before we’d bring our cards to him. We knew he’d glance at the cards and then wait until the next commercial to unload on us.
We could count on 2 ½ to 3 minutes of “Get your heads out of your asses and start applying yourselves!”
We would, of course, be grounded until we started bringing home better grades, but this only lasted a week or so when he would be distracted by something more pressing. Then the show would come back on and we were released.
Besides, he knew it and we knew it……those better grades were never going to happen.
Dad was what they call an HVAC mechanic these days. He managed an oil company in the 60’s that was located at a truck stop in Mahwah, NJ. One autumn day in 1961, when I was 11 years old, he came home from work with a live chicken. It seems a truck load of chickens came into the truck stop for fuel and one of the chickens escaped. My Dad chased it down, caught it and the truck driver told him he could keep it.
We made a cage out of old wood-framed window screens in the basement and introduced “Chickey” to her new home. My brother and I were given the chore of keeping Chickey fed and the cage clean. During the ensuing winter months we kept Chickey entertained by leaving a trail of feed around the basement and watching her follow it, pecking at each piece. In her own way she was entertaining us, too. Obviously, we were starved for entertainment.
Chickey slowly became our pet. We were looking forward to the day we’d be able to take her outside so she could “stretch her wings”. January, February and March came and went. Chickey was full grown and much heavier than when she first came to our home. Spring arrived and the outdoors beckoned. We wondered if we should dare take Chickey outside. Would she prove too fast for us and run away? Could chickens fly?
These questions, unfortunately, delayed our plans for Chickey.
One Saturday our Dad, who worked half-days on Saturdays, came home just after lunchtime. My brother and I were watching cartoons in the living room. The old man came in the the room and asked me to help him bring Chickey outside. I looked at my brother and we were both smiling. Okay!! We didn’t know how he had the same idea we did but we were more than glad to help.
I carried Chickey up from the basement through the Bilco door and saw a block of wood in the middle of the back yard. I didn’t give it any thought until I saw our Dad reach into the trunk of his car and bring out an axe. “But, she’s our pet!.” I cried. “You can’t just kill her!”
I’m going to spare you the rest of the sordid story. I will say that my first thought upon seeing the axe was to bring Chickey back down to the safety of her cage. But, even as a kid, I knew that it wouldn’t help. Chickey was executed, plucked, cleaned and cooked.
Dad took one bite of the meat and said it was too tough. No one else would touch it. The rest of Chickey was eventually thrown out with the trash.
The point: Men continue to fight with their fathers long after they’re dead. As adults they look back and ask "What were you thinking?"
Later on we got a cocker spaniel, but I was never comfortable leaving her alone with Dad.
Bill Tjaden of Oakland is a volunteer firefighter, motorcycle enthusiast and grandfather whose lust for life hasn't changed since he was graduated from Mahwah High School in 1968. He's served in the Air Force -- including a stint in Thailand -- has three adult children (with his wife, Valerie) and two gorgeous grandkids. Bill still listens to Tom Waits, Dylan and Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen. And his sense of humor is as cutting and caustic as ever. One of his favorite quotes was his dad's: " If you break a leg, don't come running to me."
