I took study leave at Yale Divinity
School Pennsylvania in a working class community.
My father was killed in a ship explosion before I was three, so I watched the
other fathers. Some of this comes from the memories of others, especially Pete
Hamill and Connie Schultz, but I wanted to share it.
My Dad said he
graduated from the school of hard knocks.
His poor man’s university
was the thick Sunday paper.
He worked his way up
through the classes the union offered.
He studied late at night,
a beer on the counter.
“Get yourself an education.
You won’t have to work like this.”
He read the picture books
when we were little.
I never really noticed
that he stopped reading to us
when we could read the big words
quicker than he could.
He wanted us
to make a little something for ourselves,
to do better than they had done.
When we started to do just that,
he was caught between pride and envy
One by one, the black lung
sucked the air from the fathers’ lungs.
They couldn’t even have a catch soon.
So they spent too much time
in the dank, dark bars, and
their hearts grew as sour as Iron City
They would still manage to corral us to a ball game.
Even so, it was they who cut the grass
and changed the oil, the plugs and points.
After all, they always drove the family car.
Somehow the sidewalk was magically clear
in time for the early paper boy to walk up easily.
When I was maybe five,
we went to the bakery after church.
He let me be big and do the ordering.
One day, a raven-haired beauty was behind the counter.
I prayed she would wait on me.
Instead, a familiar hair-netted crone
asked me what I would like.
I said, “I want her to wait on me.”
Everyone laughed, and I blushed fiercely.
We got our order, and he put his meaty paw
on my shoulder, “I would have prayed for the same thing.”
One torpid night he teased me about
giving me a five to go out with friends.
“Do girls really like that damned long hair?”
Late that night I
got up to get some water,
after draining too many beers
and striking out with too many girls.
There he was leaning on the counter
in the soft kitchen light,
touching my college books as if
they were sacramental treasures.
He flipped through the pages
with exquisite care
the way he handled his best tools
He noticed me there,
blushed and asked me:
“You mean one person read all of this stuff
and wrote all of this by himself?
I almost forget how to hold the pen
to make a out a grocery list with your mother.”
I made a weak mild joke
about it being some boring old textbook.
He shook his head.
“How could one person know so much?”
I need to show this
to the guys at the bar,
or the plant.
Especially I need to
show it to Smitty.
He wanted to write
when we were kids.
He got beat up ’cause of it.
None of Smitty’s kids went to school.
“Wait ‘til he sees this.”
“Do you think you could do this?”
Yeah, Dad, in time, I could.
My God, he replied.
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