DAD HAD HIS STANDARDS

My father was always one to make sure his son acted like a man. He never would have tolerated my going home crying if someone picked on me, and would have kicked me down the stairs telling me to finish the fight.

As he grew up, he too grew in a tough neighborhood, and trouble was always around the corner. All you had to do was walk down a street and if you looked afraid, had a little wiggle in your walk or dressed up and it wasn’t Sunday, be prepared for a fight or at least being teased unmercifully.

Establishing your toughness was important, necessary and wise, because otherwise you would be victimized. Dad took me out and we played baseball, he once bought me a football, basketball, softball, glove and bat, all in one box on summer evening when he came home from work! I was about 5, and I’ll never forget it, he owned a car in those days and he went into his trunk and took it out. Being 5, I had only a vague idea of what it was all about. But one day he decided I was the next Carl Erskine and took me down to the sidewalk and I had to start pitching to him. He instructed me on how to hold the ball and the necessary arc the ball should leave my hand. Then he started showing me how to throw a fastball. I tried my first fastball and it went toward Dad, hit his fingertips and smacked him right between the eyes. The next pitch never happened, I was not going to be a pitcher anymore. I didn’t help myself that I called him lumpy.

As I got older, and joined the Little League teams, he would show up and stand along the foul line in left field and watch me play, then when I got home would go over all my miscues, errors or strikeouts. His feeling was so what if you did hit the ball or did catch it, you also let the team down by striking out or throwing the ball away. He never yelled, just never let me forget.

One time the coach put me on second base, and the ball was hit like a rocket at me, I put my glove up but the ball hit the fingertips and shot straight up in the air about 20 feet. I instantly looked for the ball and spotted it behind me coming down, spun around, stuck my glove out and caught it, to the applauding of everyone on the field.

A few plays later another shot is hit at me and I put my glove down to field it but it goes through my legs. Guess which play Dad mentioned that day, and every time we talked about my playing baseball? Yes, “Right through your legs!”

So it came to pass that one day I was married with children, and had gotten a hair cut, and the barber was a young fellow and style was changing. Barbers used to square off the corners of the back of the neck, as they always had, but this one decided to round off the corners instead. Dad comes over one day, sees the corners rounded and asked: “Where the hell did you get that haircut, your wife’s beautician, you look like a fairy with those rounded corners! THEY SHOULD BE SQUARED!” I didn’t notice or care but did then. Now when I get a haircut I ask myself if I’m getting the fairy cut or not.

But it wasn’t just haircuts that could set him off. One time TLW (The Little Woman) decided to order me a shirt and tie from Sears in a catalog. We had to go to a family wedding and she decided let’s get something new. Mom and Dad came over and I would drive into the city with them for the occasion. Dad had a problem with my blue shirt and knitted tie, the tie was PINK! Gasp!

It never bothered me that the tie was pink, would still wear a pink tie, never pink panties, but a pink tie, who cares? Dad was sure I was coming out of the closet! (Probably the closet where I kept all my ties!)

Dad was of the opinion that there was two ways of saying something, the Brooklyn tough guy way, or the sissy way. Certain words had to be said a certain way, such as aunt. Brooklynese it was pronounced ‘ant’. The dainty way was ‘arnt’!

Mom had a hard time with Dad when she would perform a miracle and he would be sitting in a church. He would slouch in his seat, legs spread and looking all around him and feeling very uncomfortable, while everyone else was all prim and proper. Coming from a blue collar environment, stepping into a church and acting high and mighty was tough on him, yet he was more of a human being than some of the saintly phonies that may have judged him that day. Me, I loved to watch his reactions, his halfhearted attempts to fit in, he looked like he was learning a dance for the first time.

But getting Dad dressed was the funniest. Mom would say: “Anthony, go put on a shirt and tie, we have to leave soon for the wedding.” Dad would never say a word, and come out looking like he blindfolded himself and tried to guess what he was wearing. He’d come out with his tie only knotted loosely, and nothing matching, Mom getting aggravated would send him back in the bedroom to try with his ‘eyes opened this time’ instructing him on what to wear.

The funniest part of all this is Dad was really a sharp dresser when he was young and dating Mom, from the pictures I saw, he had great looking ties, shoes and jackets, he WAS a sharp dresser!

They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and being an apple I fell exactly where you might expect! I’m as bad as my Dad ever was!

Here is a cute joke for you to digest:

Unable to attend the funeral after his Uncle Charlie died, a man who lived far away called his brother and told him, "Do something nice for Uncle Charlie and send me the bill."

Later, he got a bill for $200.00, which he paid.  The next month, he got another bill for $200.00, which he also paid, figuring it was some incidental expense.

But, when the bills for $200.00 kept arriving every month, he finally called his brother again to find out what was going on.

"Well," said the other brother, "You said to do something nice for Uncle Charlie.  So I rented him a tuxedo."