Happy Birthday, Dad.

I can't believe that it's been 25 years.

I had completed college but the world didn't come chasing after me. I was working as a writer for a now-defunct magazine in Niagara Falls. Even though I had always wanted to be a writer I hated the job. I hated wearing a tie. I didn't want to be told what to write. Deadlines sucked. Writing sentences without the word sucked in it sucked, and the pay really sucked.

"You should come out here with me," my Dad said as I told him my troubles over the telephone. "Now that you have a degree I can help you get a job in the offices. You'll be around construction, and we'll have fun here."

Did I still need my Dad to find me a job? Hadn't he done enough for me through the years? Wasn't it time to man up a little?

Three days later I was in West Haven, Connecticut. I had driven my black Capri out there and Dad had immediately put me to work in the payroll department.

I got the chance to see him work with the staff, the couple of hundred men that he was scheduling and everyone from the mayor of New Haven on down. For three months we ate at fancy restaurants, he cooked gourmet meals for me, and we played cards in a two bedroom apartment that had furniture that he made out of plywood and two-by-fours.

I'm not kidding.

On his birthday that year - it was his 50th birthday - we headed back to Buffalo for the Christmas break.

There was only one other detail:

He wasn't going back.

He had been offered a job back home and he wanted to be there. I decided (on his advice) to stay in West Haven alone.

He was gonna' make a man out of me one way or another.

"I gave you at least two educations," he told me as we began the seven-hour ride home in a blinding snowstorm. Dad was driving. I was pretending that I didn't like Frank Sinatra as I rode with him.

We were a long ways from home when the car stalled for the first time. It was over-heating in the bitter cold and Dad got out, opened the hood, said a few Italian curse words that my kids can say real well, and got back in.

"I think the float is getting stuck," he said.

"That's what I was thinking too," I said.

I've never seen him laugh harder than that.

The drive took us about 10 hours. We stopped in a cozy little diner and had eggs. We both had steak with our eggs and 25 years later I can still see him sopping up his yoke with the Italian Toast.

"It's a helluva' way to spend your 50th birthday," I said.

"I'm doing all right," he answered. "I just had a shitty steak for breakfast."

The car stalled about thirty times on that trip. Every stop was greeted by his Italian curse words. We killed the heat partway home and eventually we made it to the door of the home he had built with his own two hands.

As we got out of the car he started laughing again. He was thinking of my mechanical deficiencies.

"Thanks for coming out there with me," he said. "It's tough working out of town alone."

"Thanks for my educations," I answered.

All of them.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

Miss you every day.



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