mum and da

my parents were married sixty-five years ago this week on my dad's birthday, may 9, 1941, in youngstown, ohio. my dad was shanty irish. my mom, the daughter of an industrialist, lived in a big georgian-style house on gypsy lane.

at that time, youngstown was a booming steel town, home to truscon steel (a division of republic steel,) us steel, youngstown sheet and tube, and commercial, shearing and stamping. my mother's father was president of truscon steel.

my father's family was also in the steel business. they stoked coal in the besemer furnaces, stacked pipe in the mills and ground down forged goods in the machine shops.

after the war, my dad went to youngstown university on the g.i. bill. he worked as a machinist at night at commercial, shearing and stamping, and when he graduated he was hired as a salesman. in 1948, when i was two years old, he was transferred to commercial's sales office in chicago. they sent him to minneapolis in 1961 and in the early 1970s back to ohio. he left the company around that time to go build yachts with my uncle, my mother's brother. that partnership turned ugly and my extended family imploded.

my dad worked shitty sales jobs the rest of his career until he retired in the late eighties. he got in a few good years of retirement by the pool in southern california until he died of a brain tumor in 1988. my mother died of cancer in 2003.

my dad was a hale-fellow-well-met. he always had a good joke and a smooth irish charm. women were crazy about him. his people were what they call the "black irish," the gallic influence. he had a full head of hair and dark brown, almost black, eyes. he sang in a fine tenor, had an artistic hand and a theatrical flair. my mother was more reserved, stoic almost. a particularly nasty car accident in the late seventies left her crippled for the rest of her life. she was a tough bird and she was a fighter. so no complaints. ever. she loved her garden and the deep, dark mysteries of 99 cent stores.

i do miss them, especially my dad, probably because he left sooner, and not all that long after we had made our peace together. the vietnam war and my concientious objection to that war put us on opposing sides of the table. i'd like to sit down and have a couple of cocktails together and shoot the shit. now that we'd have something to talk about.

so happy birthday, happy anniversary and happy mother's day, you two.