The Man Who Never Grew Old

by Donna Poole

I could lie and tell you my dad was perfect, but I’d get called out on that. There are people still alive who know better!

Dad wasn’t perfect, but I adored him when I was a little girl and I miss him still. Dad told me when I was very young, he worked two jobs, one for the railroad and one as a mechanic. Each required a different uniform. He said when he kissed me goodnight or told me good morning, I started giving him funny looks.

Dad said, “Then one day you said, ‘I know! I have two Daddys!’” Apparently, the two different uniforms confused me.

Dad always laughed when he told me that story, the laugh I loved to hear. It was a funny laugh, a kind of heh heh heh!

Dad was the storyteller in the family, the one who loved to laugh. I loved listening to his stories. He’d worked on the Lehigh Valley Railroad, been an auto mechanic, owned his own garage for a short time, and then had become an airline mechanic and inspector. So, he had lots of stories to tell.

He told sad stories; as a little boy he’d never owned a toy except for a broken one he’d taken from someone’s yard and then felt guilty about it. He’d quit school in sixth grade because the kids on the playground had teased him about his Italian heritage and had egged him on to fight with calls of, “Dominic Chick!” He’d usually won too, until he’d decided going to school wasn’t worth the trouble. He got his G.E.D. when I was in high school.

When Dad was a boy, the railroad laid off Grandpa and almost everyone else. Each week a big box of groceries mysteriously appeared on the steps to help feed the family. When the railroad called Grandpa back to work a box came that week, but the day Grandpa got his first paycheck the boxes stopped.

“It was the Mafia who brought the food, wasn’t it Dad?” I asked when he told us that story.

He nodded. “Nobody said the word, but we all knew it was them. They were good like that. They’d cut their own grandmother’s throat if the mob boss told them too, but they loved family, and they took care of their own.”

“Was Grandpa in the mob?” I asked.

Dad laughed. “No, honey. He would have been a lot richer if he had been. But we were Italian, and that’s all that mattered back then.”

Back then all the Italians in Sayre, Pennsylvania lived in the part of town called “Milltown.” And there was a lot of discrimination; Milltown was “the wrong side of the tracks.” To me, Milltown was a charming place where aunts, uncles, and cousins congregated at Grandma and Grandpa’s on Sunday afternoons, a place where the sunporch smelled like geraniums and the kitchen smelled like garlic and good things cooking.

Dad called his parents “Ma” and “Pa” and treated them with great respect as did all his siblings. Dad regretted the time they’d rebelled as children; they’d refused to speak Italian at home, so Grandma and Grandpa had to learn English, but in the process, Dad and his brothers and sisters forgot how to speak Italian.  

Most of the stories Dad told were funny, like trying to run away to California as a boy and throwing all his clothes in the back of an open box car and then not being able to run fast enough to hop on the train.

He told about working as a mechanic for Al Theetge Chevrolet. Al put a fire extinguisher in each mechanic’s bay. But he didn’t give an extinguisher to one man who was an excellent mechanic but challenged in other areas. That made the guy mad. So, one day, when a car caught on fire in the man’s bay, he just sat there and said quietly, “Far. Far. Far.”

Fortunately, someone heard him, rushed in, and extinguished the fire.

Dad never said if they gave the man an extinguisher after that or not, but I can still hear Dad laughing when he told that story.  

 Dad believed with all his heart you get to heaven only by faith in Jesus who died for our sin, and not by good works, but nevertheless, church was important to him. If we kids said we were sick and needed to miss church, Dad wanted to know exactly how sick we were.

Once I died early on a Sunday morning, and Dad told me to get up, walk it off, and get ready for church.

Dad never disciplined us kids, maybe because he was always a kid at heart himself. Poor Mom had her hands full.

Dad never thought of himself as old. When his years started to add up, Dad rode his bike up and down the steep hills in New York State to keep in shape. He planted dozens of rose bushes with a tomato plant next to each one to help prevent black spots. He gave away bushels of tomatoes. He mowed his own yard and shoveled his own snow all his long life.

There was the time, after Mom died, that dad dated a series of younger and younger women. I think he was in his eightieth decade, or close to it, when he got himself engaged to a young woman commonly known as the “town tramp.”

How young? She was younger than any of my sisters or me. My older sister, Eve, wanted me to help her talk Dad out of marrying the woman. I objected.

“He’s not going to listen to us. What reasons can we give him he doesn’t already know?”

Eve was near tears. “Just suppose Dad goes through with it and marries her! Think about that! What are you going to call her?”

“I’m going to call her ‘Mom.’”

I thought the mental image of me calling someone younger than myself “Mom” would make Eve laugh. It didn’t.

The marriage didn’t happen. When Dad finally broke up with his fiancée all she said was, “Can I keep the ring?”

Then she showed up at church on Sunday with Dad’s good friend, deliberately picked the pew right in front of Dad, and sat as close to the guy as she could get.

Dad said, “If she thought that was going to make me jealous, it didn’t work. It made me mad. I’d felt bad before then, but after that, I was just glad I hadn’t married her.”

Dad didn’t quit dating. He had a bumper sticker that said, “If you’re rich, I’m single.” But he never got engaged again. It’s probably a good thing, because, except for my mom, Dad had truly terrible taste in women. Clara was the one exception.

Clara was a wonderful Christian woman and Dad’s age. I wouldn’t have minded if Dad had married Clara, and Clara thought it was an excellent idea, but Dad wasn’t having it. She proposed to him one too many times.

Dad said, “Clara if you say one more word about getting married, that’s it. We’re through. We won’t even be friends. I won’t write you anymore letters. When you’re up here in New York visiting family, we won’t go out anymore.”

I asked Dad why he didn’t want to marry Clara; she was richer than he was, and she was single! I thought perhaps Dad objected because she looked so much older than he did, and Dad always thought of himself as a young man, but that wasn’t it. His reason surprised me.

“She likes to galivant all over the country, honey, and I like to stay home.”

Clara stopped proposing to dad and married another gentleman. He didn’t live long.

“See?” Dad said to me. “Told you so. She probably killed him with all that traveling.”

Once again Clara turned her attention to Dad, and he agreed to write letters and keep company when she was in the area, but only if she promised never to mention marriage. She agreed. She and Dad remained good friends until one day tragedy struck. Clara was bent over, working in her garden, when a teenager snuck up behind her and shot her in the back of the head.

The police said poor Clara probably died instantly and never knew what happened. I hope so. She was a good friend to my dad, and he mourned her loss.

When the detectives asked the young man why he’d shot Clara he shrugged and said, “I got up that morning and wondered what it would feel like to kill someone.”

Clara and Dad had this in common; they both trusted Jesus as Savior from sin, so they’re both in heaven now. Mom is there too. I bet Dad is glad Jesus said there’s no marriage in heaven. Otherwise, he might still be running from Clara, and Mom might have something to say about it too!

Dad lived to be ninety and a half and was healthy until just about a month before his death. When he was dying in the hospital he asked, “What am I going to say to June?”

My sisters assured him that because of Jesus’ death on the cross, God had forgiven all his transgressions and Mom had too.

I listened to my sisters, and I knew they were right. Because Dad had trusted Jesus as his Savior, God had forgiven all Dad’s sins, the ones we knew about and the ones we didn’t. And he’d forgiven all of mine too. I looked at Dad as he listened to my sisters. He looked relieved. I couldn’t resist.

“Dad, just in case they’re wrong, if I were you, I’d duck when I saw Mom.”

Dad laughed. Heh heh heh.

Dad was still driving right up until he went into the hospital, though he probably shouldn’t have been. Riding with him was a death-defying adventure.

When Aunt Mary walked into the hospital room, Dad was only semi-conscious.

“Aunt Mary!” Someone exclaimed. “You didn’t drive yourself here, did you?”

She was in the process of explaining that my cousin Tom had dropped her off at the door when Dad roused from semi-consciousness. He sat straight up and said, “I drive!” Then he fell back onto his pillow and continued sleeping. That was Dad, determined to be young and independent until the end.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. You weren’t perfect, but you were my dad, and I love and miss you. See you at Home, around the Big Table. I don’t think Mom will still be mad at you. I can’t wait to hear you laugh again.  

Dad and Mom

My grandparents

Grandma in front of their house in Milltown.