Big George

First of all, Happy Fathers’ Day to all of you geeky dads!  I have a few words to share about my own dad, who’s not geeky at all, but he did raise me, so he deserves a medal or something.  But first, if you read the piece of flash fiction I posted the other day entitled “That Golden Day” please go vote for it over at Terrible Minds.  There are a lot of excellent pieces of extremely short fiction over there, so I encourage you to read them all and vote for the most deserving entry, even if it isn’t mine.  Of course I’d love for you to vote for my entry (which is Fathers’ Day appropriate in a dark sort of way), but like I said, there are some great pieces on the list, written by some incredibly talented writers.

Okay, commercial break is over.

Fathers’ Day is one of those holidays that brings out some seriously mixed emotions in people.  Actually, most holidays have that capacity, depending on the circumstances of your life.  For me, July 4th is a pretty depressing day, being the anniversary of my brother’s death.  Fathers’ Day just tends to dredge up old memories and stir some pretty strong emotions about your paterfamilias.  Many of the bloggers I read are writing about their fathers today.  As expected, they run the emotional gamut.  From Chuck Wendig’s heartwarming story of forgiveness to Maggie Carroll’s heartbreaking example of parental denial.

What about my Dad?

“In telling the story of my father’s life, it’s impossible to separate fact from fiction, the man from the myth. The best I can do is to tell it the way he told me.”
     – Will Bloom, Big Fish

My wife and I took my dad to breakfast this morning at a local diner.  Breakfast has always been my father’s meal.  Most people take their fathers out for dinner for special occasions, but cholesterol and quintuple bypass surgery be damned, breakfast is his special meal.  He has ordered the same thing for breakfast any time he goes out for that meal for as long as I can remember.  Two eggs over light, home fries, Taylor ham (if the place has it – since we moved south, he can’t always get that, so he’ll order bacon or sausage if necessary) and buttered rye toast.  With coffee.  He’s actually the only person I’ve ever heard order their eggs “over light” and I think it’s just a fancy way of saying “over easy” but he swears there’s a difference.

When I was growing up in New Jersey, I didn’t really understand my dad.  I know, what kid does?  But still.  He was never home unless he was sleeping.  When he was home sleeping, my brother and I were under strict orders not to make any noise or do anything that would wake our father.  He caught his sleep whenever he could and usually only a few hours at a time, so waking him was punishable by a beating.  Just making enough noise that waking him was a possibility earned a swift, but quiet, reprimand from our mother.  Sometimes accompanied by a smack or a spanking.  We were reminded frequently that he worked his ass off so that we could have nice things and a good roof over our heads.

When I was young, we lived in an apartment on the second floor of the town annex.  The town held important meetings and other functions in a large meeting hall just below our kid feet.  ”Be quiet!  There’s people downstairs!” was as much a mantra in our house as “Be quiet, your father’s trying to sleep!”  Our backyard was bounded on the opposite side by the town fire department, which was right next to the police station and town hall.  It was actually the “Borough Hall” because technically that’s what our town was legally considered.  We didn’t have a front yard.  In its place we had a grocery store parking lot.  Across that parking lot was a grocery store, a fascinating place to my young imagination called Kilroy’s Wonder Market.  There was also a warehouse for the grocery store and, beyond that, a gas station.  We lived across the street from a large town park, which was a paradise for my brother and I, even if our mom had to walk us across the busy street.  During summers, we had a travel trailer at a campground up in the mountains in Sussex County.  My mom and I, and my brother until he turned 16, stayed there all summer.  My father, and later my brother, joined us when he wasn’t working back home in Glen Rock, about an hour away.

I was too young then to understand or appreciate the life that my dad led.  All that mattered to me was that I never got to spend any time with him.  I think it affected my brother, who was 9 years older than me and suffered from bi-polar disorder, more than it affected me because he went through his teen years and his descent into the hell of mental illness while our dad was keeping these crazy hours.  My dad felt guilty about it later and tried his best to make it up to Scott after he retired, but that led to some crazy situations where my dad was more of an enabler for my brother’s mental illness than anything else.

When my father was working as a department manager at a local grocery store, one of the town cops used to come in when it rained and wait for his wife to bring him his rain gear.  My father, never one to let such a ripe opportunity for sarcasm to pass him by, teased that officer mercilessly every time.  ”Awww.  So nice of your mommy to bring your rubbers.”

Eventually, weary of my father’s sarcastic comments, the officer gave him a browbeating.  He lectured my dad on the demands and hazards of police work and did something you should never do to a Dutchman as stubborn as my father.  The cop dared him.  With my dad, it doesn’t even need to be a triple-dog dare.  The poor guy told my dad that he could never make it as a cop and he dared him to try.

My dad, “Big” George Miller, spent the next 25 years of his life serving the borough of Glen Rock as a police officer.  On top of that, he kept his job as a grocery store department manager.  And those weren’t the only two jobs he held.

My dad was a master storyteller.  When he launched into a tale, everyone around gave him their undivided attention.  His stories, and stories about him, were a staple of my formative years.  There was one story about my dad that I didn’t hear until after I was grown and married.  The details change depending on who’s telling the tale, but I’ve heard it from multiple sources and the details have remained fairly consistent:

There was, in the town, an elderly woman who had recently lost her husband.  Before his death, she didn’t get around town much, as her husband did the shopping and ran most of
the errands while she kept house and took care of their children.  After his death, she received flowers from loved ones and, on at least one occasion, my father drove up in the florist’s van and delivered them to her.  When she was going through his things, she found a pair of his shoes and his old trumpet.  She wanted to have both of them repaired to give to one of their children.  One day, while she was downtown, she took the shoes to the local shoe store, where my dad took them from her, wrote up the ticket and placed them behind the counter.  A few days later, when she came upon her late husband’s trumpet, she took it to the local music store, where my father repaired it for her.  At this point, she was becoming suspicious.


Another day, the old widow called the appliance repair shop and asked for someone to come and pick their old console television for repair.  You guessed it.  My father was driving the truck.  By this point, the poor woman was getting paranoid, convinced that my dad was stalking her.  A few days later, a neighbor drove her to the grocery store to get milk, which was handed to her by the nice gentleman who was stocking the dairy case.  My father.  When he turned to hand her the milk, she nearly ran from the store.  The neighbor drove her home, but she was becoming unhinged by this point, so after a few hours of stewing about what to do, she asked her neighbor to drive her to the police station so that she could file a complaint against this man who must be after her.  My dad was manning the desk.

I can’t vouch for the truth in that story, but does it matter?  With my father, the tale has always been about more than the truth.  It is about the story.  And the story today is about fathers.  My story is about my father.  One of the hardest working men I’ve ever met.  He may not have always been the best father in the world, but he always did his best to provide for us.  And he’s always been larger than life.  Thanks, dad.  For everything.

“A man tells his stories so many times that he becomes the stories. They live on after him. And in that way he becomes immortal.”
     – Will Bloom, Big Fish

Note: All photos in the links are copyright David Tanner, 2003.
The photo at the top is my dad and I at the Catskill Game Farm, taken some time in the late 70′s.