Our Wonderfully Dangerous Parents

By TRB

Every time my father got a new car, he would drive it to what ever school I was attending at the time and he would kidnap me and show off his new car, which was always described as "our new car.. And my brothers and sisters never complained about this or were jealous. They knew I was a literal junkie for new cars. I was always at the junk yard, or in February I was making the rounds of the car dealerships looking at the new model. And I was only seven or eight at the time. My parents were the most wonderfully dangerous parents in the world. Really. They treated us like honored guests. We always got what we asked for and they were never too rude. They were hopelessly in love, laughing and crying and fighting. They were painfully good looking, living in Milton, dressing and dancing too well, and maybe drinking too much. My father was a printer, so he wasn't raking it in but there was always money somewhere and no one ever said a word about it. Money, I mean. I can't remember ever not having any thing we needed, usually well before we needed it.

No, money wasn't the thing with my mother and father. They were members of the so-called "greatest generation," the truly reckless, no tomorrows, what-will-be-will-be division of that generation. They were like adult children, unpredictable, and possibly careless. I can remember my father's eyes when my mother told him that a math teacher at school had slapped me. I was in the fourth grade. He took me by the hand and down to the school. My mother had kept me out of school that day. I can remember walking into that class with my father, an impressively decorated veteran of World War Two, who loved his children more than anything on the entire earth. His rage was real.

And I can remember the expression on that math teacher's face when he saw my father coming. But he didn't see him in time. My father almost knocked him out, and would have, but he was hiding behind kids in the class, so my Dad could only manage a glancing blow now and again. In what seemed like no time, the principal was there, the police, my Dad was saying, I don't care, if he hits my kid again, I'll be back here again. We lived right next door to the police chief. He was a family friend. So the patrolman who came to the school that day was more apt to arrest the teacher for hitting me. In fact, my father was going to insist on it until the principal promised to discipline the teacher.

Really my father could have a very bad temper with adults, But he had a way with kids. He'd tell us, "Just stay together, watch out for one another." He was always saying that - right up until the day he died.

Needless to say, we had a lot of fun before that happened. There were those drive-in movies my parents would take us to - and always the horror feature, which as typical brats we thought were the funniest movies in the world. And Dad always had a station wagon for himself and a convertible for my Mom The station wagon was a Ford Country Squire and the convertible was either a Buick or a Chrysler. So he always had the Big Three in Detroit covered.

We just cared about the station wagon. We'd get in the back part designed to hold luggage or larger items and we'd sit there and mess with the electric window that caused this large slab of glass separating us from the outside to open. We would do this when it was raining, when it was snowing, or just to hang out the back of the car. There were no seat belts and we would wrestle all the way, scaring the hell out of our dog who was always afraid one of us would fall on him. That poor dog in that speeding station wagon with those dangerous parents sitting up front smoking like chimneys, laughing about who knows what, as we bounced in circles around the dog out back, where my older brother was holding a string out the back window that had a large empty can of beans on it and was sending up a shower of sparks. And the people in the car behind us were beeping their horn and my father was giving them the bird out the window.

Then the drive-in. My Mom and Dad smoked the whole time, almost chain smoking, so we'd sit there at the drive-in choking on their smoke and eating our popcorn and laughing our butts off at the movie. It didn't make a difference to me. At least we could eat a lot of candy. One of my Dad's friends was a distributor of Life Savers, these candies that were packaged in the form of a multi-colored roll. This friend of my Dad used to drive a '55 Chevy Nomad wagon with an enormous roll of Life Savers on the roof. They weren't real of course; it was just advertising. But I have to admit, it puzzled me to no end the first time this friend turned into our driveway driving that car. All I could see was this giant three-dimensional roll of Life Savers coming my way. I thought I was dreaming. What was it about candy 30 or 40 years ago? Was it better? Someone explained that I had "more taste buds" back then. Maybe. But I don't want to believe it. Another friend said it was full of man-made sugars and devoid of calories, and, if anything, it had probably killed my taste buds.

My older sister was a Necco Wafers fan. And my older brother liked those Squirrel Nuts things. One day, we were in the backseat of my Dad's car headed down Mass Ave., when just across from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology we were attacked from all sides b y the overwhelmingly delightful aroma of Necco Wafers. I thought my older sister was going to have a breakdown. We were parked at a light right outside the factory doors where this candy was made. Guess what else they made? Squirrel Nuts. That's right.

Then we discovered the candy company held tours. It was like the whole world changed. Naturally we attended these tours as often as we could.

Once we were in New Hampshire at this motel that I think was supposed to look dumpy, because it sure seemed like they worked on it. My Dad didn't care one whit about the motel; he was there just to jump in a raging cold river that ran behind it, a river that came down from the mountains with so much force and noise it would keep you up at night. All I could think of was my Dad jumping into that river. Trees were being dragged into that river. It seemed impossible that a human could survive in it. And yet, following breakfast, he put on his swim trunks and jumped right into the freezing, fast moving body of water. I lost sight of him immediately as he disappeared below the surface.

Myself, my brothers and sisters, my Mom, just sat there. Where was he? Entire minutes passed. And I was just ready to cry when he walked up behind us. He stood there, nonchalantly,taking a towel from my mother and wiping himself dry. That wasn't too bad, he said, Arnie said it was worse than that. "Arnie" was his younger brother who was a real-life dare devil, always crashing his cars into trees or falling off roofs. Really, Arnie was one of those "greatest generation" guys who had seen it all during the war, had literally killed dozens of men, some with his bare hands - and frankly didn't give a crap anymore. That is not to say he was moody or hard to get along with; he was nothing like that. Arnie used to captain a tug boat up the East River in New York City. He took me along a couple of times, so I though he was some kind of adult God. He had a ukulele and he used to play "Shine on Harvest Moon," or "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby," or one of those 1930 kind of songs. His entire family was musically inclined. This was not an accident.

My Dad was born on an island off the coast of Maine. There wasn't much to do there, so they formed singing groups, learned to play musical instruments. And when they were not doing that, they were converting steam-powered fishing boats to diesel-powered fishing boats, they were waking up at four in the morning to bring the traps in, drinking whiskey to calm the nerves during storms when they were miles out at sea and the boat felt liker it was being ripped out from under them. Yes, they learned to do many things when they were very young my uncles and my Dad.

I still go to that island every summer or so when I want to see people who look like my Dad - and who look like other members of my family. The very first time I was there a waitress came over to me and said you look like your grandfather. You must be_____________. And she was right; that is exactly who I was. Frankly the girlfriend I had with me at the time thought the whole thing was kind of spooky, like maybe too many cousins married too many cousins or something.

So she was surprised, and I believe a little angry when I asked, "What's a cousin?"

When my father passed from this earth it was unexpected, but natural, just the kind of death that brings everybody out with their stories about how they knew him or something he might have done for him. And there were dozens of old friends and other people we didn't know. After that, my Mom was not part of this world anymore. Her mind was always some place else and you always felt as though you were interrupting her train of thought when you talked to her. After my Dad died, she lived a little more longer than perhaps she would have preferred, then she was gone too.

I had the same tough time any one does with the death of a parent, of parents. And it still bothers me occasionally if I allow myself to think of them. But my parents were so outrageously funny, carefree, careless and in love it was almost like they were not afraid of anything as long as they were together. That's how I think of them now.