New Shiny, I Did Not Want Ye!

Despite the continuously climbing gas prices, I still plan to take a road trip mid-July to Minnesota…via Montana.

I have known for about a year that the factory CD player in the Xterra has been ill. It plays a CD just fine…if you can get it in the player. And then you'll have the same problem getting the CD back out. Last year about this time, before we split up, Mrs. Farrago and I got a new stereo for the Pontiac Sunfire that she's had since before we got together. She wanted one that had an auxiliary input so we could plug an iPod into the stereo and not have to hassle with some aftermarket FM transmitter for which we had to then tune our radio to one of the four lowest frequencies on the FM band in order to hear it. In a radio-rich city like Chicago, there's no guarantee that none of those frequencies is being used…and they are. So listening to the iPod on the car stereo was a less-than-satisfying experience until we got the new stereo put in.

We had discussed doing the same for the Xterra, but it wasn't a priority at the time. Then the split happened, and the Xterra is now with me. We're discussing visitation and possible joint-custody for when the divorce is final.

But, anyhoo! As the trip has approached, I was not the least bit interested in hitting the scan/seek button every hundred miles in search of the strongest album-oriented, classic rock station, nor was I looking forward to fighting with the CD-player to take or give back my CDs, not to mention the hassle of removing or replacing them in their jewel cases while simultaneously driving, eating big sandwiches, reading a map and drinking my beer.

I might spill the beer.

I could use the headphones, but that blots out pretty much ALL the other sounds, plus there's the issue of the cords running all over the place and posing a hazard (one might get in my beer).

So I've been saving up my cash for a new stereo. And, with less than two weeks until my trip, last week was the time.

I went to the same place I went to last year for the Sunfire's new stereo…even though it's not in the same place it was last year. I had hoped to find the exact same model that we got for the Sunfire, which had a cord coming out the back to which we could plug into the headphone jack of the iPod (or ANY audio device), and would then pump our music out through the car's speakers.

When I mentioned "iPod" to the sales guy, he steered me away from the models that had auxiliary jacks on the front and showed me a model that has a USB connection and would allow me to actually control the iPod through the car stereo unit's buttons and its remote control. Remote control!

Naturally this one was more expensive than the plug-in-the-front models. The most I wanted to spend was $300. The sales guy told me it was $300 installed. I debated with myself, but decided that it was safer to be able to control the iPod from the stereo than trying to fiddle with the iPod and dealing with the cord running from it to the front of the less expensive stereo. SOLD!

Friday afternoon I went to the store where they had my stereo and an installer ready and waiting for me. I brought my iPod so they could make sure everything was working properly before I drove back home. They had no problems… I'm not the kind of person who thinks he knows how to fix crap behind the dashboard, so I've never so much as peeked back there. And $295 later, I had a new car stereo…and CHANGE!




One small problem, though; I was instructed to update the software on my iPod, something I had to admit I hadn't done in a while, as the stereo could not recognize it.

So I went home, popped my iPod onto its dock, and the computer told me that its software was up to date. Back out to the Xterra, I plugged the stereo cable into the iPod, turned on the power and…

Bupkis.

Back to the box the stereo came in, I looked through the documentation. There, on an innocent-looking yellow piece of paper, was a list of the "Supported iPod Software Versions." Uh oh.

I had to refer to the Apple website to figure out how to determine which "generation" iPod it was. The reality that it was purchased in 2003 did not comfort me. The website made me confident that I had a third generation iPod, and I again consulted the "Supported Software" sheet.

The earliest generation mentioned is the fifth.

Another sentence on the page mocked me: "Older versions of iPod software may not be supported."

So I was faced with two options: return to the stereo place and have them replace the stereo with one of the plug-in-the-front models and pocket the difference, and deal with the mess and hazard of dangly cords while I try to drive and play with it; or go to the Apple Store and buy a new, car-stereo-supported iPod, putting the purchase on a credit card, something I had been one day earlier proud of myself that I hadn't used.





Safety (and coolness) won out, and I incurred more debt. As the photo shows, it's a pretty li'l thing…and I need to dust. It's about half the weight and, at 80GB, more than five times the storage capacity of my old 15GB iPod. I got a 10% discount by turning in my old, third generation iPod for recycling, a gamble I realized I had inadvertently taken, for if the new one did not work, I would have then wanted to return it, and exchange the stereo.

But, fortunately, it works perfectly!

American Legacy ...Who? ME?!

As I have revealed in this blog in the past, I have been, at times, consumed by the passion called genealogy. It started in November of 1999. Why? I don’t exactly remember. I think it was because my siblings and I had agreed to organize and stage a family reunion for my father’s side. The prior reunion – in 1994 – had consisted only of the families of my father’s siblings. I had started with the same list of cousins and uncles (and an aunt), but I kept wondering about my grandfather’s siblings. I couldn’t recall ever hearing anything about them. Were there any? Did they come over to the USA?

A few questions to my father turned up a written essay cobbled together from an oral history, as told to -- and written down by -- my father’s cousin, Romeo, by his mother, the youngest sibling of my grandfather, as well as some of Romeo's own reminiscences that he had added to the “record.” The essay left more questions unanswered than I had even thought before to ask!

A simple entry of my family name into the Google search engine launched me on a fantastic journey of discovery and revelation.
But that’s not what I’m writing about here…

In the middle of all that, I felt a twinge of guilt that I was leaving my mother’s name out of it. It seems somewhat unfair that the whole convention of love and marriage in our country requires, at least traditionally, that the female of the pair give up her family name and take that of her husband. From the point of view of the amateur genealogist, this convention can prove more than a little frustrating! As it goes, I entered Mom’s name – Edgerton – into Google some time in 2000.

Bupkis.

This didn’t exactly surprise me. Other than her father, who died when I was four years old, I had never met nor heard of anyone else with the name. Granted, my mother was estranged from her parents as a teenager and, either out of anger or embarrassment, rarely spoke of them to me, so I imagine there are/were relatives in the region I just don’t know about.

Then one day in 2003 or 2004, I tried again with Google. This attempt produced four possibly helpful links. One of them, titled "The Edgerton Family Database" seemed pretentious. I presumed it was some guy who had listed his parents and maybe his grandparents, his siblings, their children and his own children. So I skipped over it and looked at the others first.

Those proved worthless to me, so I returned to "The Edgerton Family Database." The first page I encountered was a credits page, attributing the monumental effort that resulted beyond to four individuals. Okay. Big deal. Next page, if I recall, was the Edgerton Family index. It was a list of names, alphabetized by given names, as everyone was an Edgerton. It was quite a formidable list, and almost every name was a blue hyper-link. I clicked my way to the ‘Rs’ and found a couple of links for Robert, which was my grandfather’s name. In parentheses beside each name was a birth year. Fortunately for me, I had a copy of an obituary as well as the prayer card from the funeral home that had handled his burial, and each corroborated his birth year as 1895. I chose the Robert from the database index whose birth year was 1895 and clicked on it.

The next page brought me to a listing for Robert, revealing to me his parents’ names. His father’s name on the page was another hyper-link. I clicked up and up and up through generation after generation of Edgertons, a mind-bending journey through the Reconstruction, the Civil War, the expansion of our nation, the Revolution, to England… It boggled my mind to realize I had THAT MANY relatives wandering about the country at various stages of its history!

I had barely gotten started, transcribing the names of my lineage from the database to a Mac-based family-tree software called Reunion, when I thought to send a message to one of those credited on the opening page of the web site to thank them and acknowledge what a truly fantastic effort they had achieved, and what a valuable resource it had become for me. I also noted that there was no spouse or descendants listed for my grandfather, and I asked if he would care to have this information.

A few days later I received a reply to my message in which the author, a Florida-based actor whose stage name is "Edge", who is also my 5th cousin, thanked me for my gratitude, but then deferred my offer of new family information to another of the web-site's creators. Out of curiosity, he asked for my grandfather’s name and birth year, which I sent back to him in a return e-mail. Then I sent the information to the appropriate custodian of Edgerton Family information.

A few more days later I received another e-mail from "Edge" asking me if I realized I was a Mayflower Descendant. EXCUSE ME? Through a series of feverishly written (on my part, anyway) e-mails, "Edge" explained it to me, and then highlighted key names in my family tree that link me directly to the Mayflower!

So…

-Mom's father was Robert J. Edgerton.

-Robert's father was Palmer C. Edgerton (b. February 1863, Lake County, Indiana).

-Palmer's father was Amasa Edgerton (b. August 16, 1824, Elk Creek, Pennsylvania).

-Amasa's father was Horace Edgerton (b. 1794 in Connecticut).

-Horace's father was Isaac Edgerton (b. 1767, Simsbury (N. Canton), Connecticut).

-Isaac's father was Jonathan Edgerton (b. 1726, Norwich (Franklin), Connecticut).

-Jonathan's father was Richard Edgerton III, the grandson of Richard Edgerton, who made his way to the colonies sometime around 1647. On the other hand…

-Jonathan's mother was Hannah Calkins (b. July 20, 1705, New London, Connecticut).

-Hannah's mother was Sarah Turner (b. October 28, 1681).

-Sarah's father was Ezekial Turner (b. January 7, 1650, Scituate, Massachusetts).

-Ezekial Turner's mother was Mary Brewster (b. April 16, 1627, Plymouth, Massachusetts).

-Mary Brewster's father was Jonathan Brewster (b. August 12, 1593, Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, England).

-Jonathan's father (for you history buffs) was William Brewster (b. January 24, 1566, Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, England), who arrived to the Plymouth shores on the Mayflower in 1620. William Brewster also happened to be the ruling elder of the congregation, and therefore the leader of the Puritan church!

So I am descended from famousness! I am descended from historicality! I am descended from a man of the church! Go figure!

Unfortunately for me, however, someone in my line bought the historical equivalent to a double-wide trailer and set their historical equivalent mode of travel on concrete blocks in the front yard, and we've been struggling to recover from it ever since.

Get this –

- the man credited with the invention of stop-motion photography, and largely responsible for the development and refinement of the photo-strobe is Harold Eugene Edgerton, my 8th cousin-once-removed.

- the first Territorial Governor of the Territory of Montana (1864-1865) was Sidney Edgerton, my 1st cousin-five-times-removed.

- the governor of the Panama Canal Zone during WWII was Glen Edgar Edgerton, relationship yet to be determined.

- one of the two co-founders of Burger King®, in 1954, was David Edgerton, relationship yet to be determined.

(Just think… when new Burger King® print ads are being made, and the photographer sets up his strobes and takes a shot of a Whopper™, it all sorta comes full circle, no?)

As you can see, this kind of information brings to me a sense of joy and pride at what some of my ancestors have accomplished, and yet at the same time, it deflates my pride. What have I accomplished? What do I have to show the world except for this blog, a 3.64 GPA in college and a failed marriage?

Tread lightly with knowledge for, as it can make you powerful, it can also make you frail.

And no, I can't get you a free Whopper™.

Circling the Drain

I recently read a post or an e-mail of mine from some time back. I don’t know which post or e-mail, and I don’t remember how recently, but I had used a phrase in it that resounded in me and is still rattling around inside my brain.

“Circling the drain.”

It most certainly is not my original phrase, nor is it unique. But it’s a close approximation to how I’ve been feeling lately. Gone is that new feeling of relief I experienced upon the passing of my father. That euphoria – if I can call it that without sounding morbid or callous – has washed away, replaced now with the lonely reality that he is no longer “there.” The urge to visit him hits me, but I have nowhere to go.

It is a hazy, vague feeling of uselessness, this “circling the drain” feeling. Pointlessness. No matter what I do, no matter what greatness I achieve – or obscurity – when I’m gone, but for a few days, really, I will amount to nothing. Forgotten like yesterday’s bathwater.

Mrs. Farrago and I have moved another step forward in the proceedings…if you can call that “forward.” Talk about “circling the drain.”

Room For a Chuckle…at least
As I write, I am holed up in a room at the Courtyard by Marriott in Springfield, Missouri. Busy day tomorrow. A few moments ago I heard in the hallway outside my door the little bark of a little dog. I don’t know if pets are allowed in this hotel, nor do I care, as long as it doesn’t start making big barks within earshot while I’m trying to sleep.

The owner of this dog must have been carrying it down the hallway, either in his/her arms or in a pet carrier. I got my chuckle after I heard the first tentative bark of the dog.

“[bark!]”

And then its owner responded. “Shh!”

And then, “[bark!]”

“Shh!”

“[bark!]”

“Shh!”

Each sound was an exact replica of the sound each organism made before it. It was comical and cute.

To me, at least….

Memories, Memorials, Mementos and A Small Dose of Abject Fear

I wish everyone who loses a loved one could experience the flood of positive emotions I felt over the past week or so in the aftermath of Dad's death. Knowing that the end was near for him, but not knowing when, left me with the uncertainty over how I would react when the end finally came. I addressed the moment and the immediate aftermath in an earlier post. What followed I can only describe as incredible.

Perhaps every family who endures a loved one's long illness and slow slide to death sees the same effect as ours did, but this is the only such experience I've had. After watching for more than a year as Dad's health and will to live deteriorated, I experienced an unexpected relief, a weight off of my shoulders, an inexplicable joy when I received the news that he was gone. Don't get me wrong… I'm not happy to be "rid" of him, but, rather, I'm happy that he doesn't have to suffer any more and that – selfishly, I admit – I don't have to stand helplessly and witness his pain and discomfort and boredom and frustration any more. He was set free, and how can anyone feel bad to see someone who was unfairly imprisoned finally set free?

I recognized this feeling in me on the morning of Dad's wake, as I got myself ready. I caught myself singing in the shower, while I was shaving, as I got dressed… I felt HAPPY! And then I looked back on the days leading up to it and realized that all of my family had all been sharing memories and laughing through most of the time since Dad had died!


Drankin'!
May 31, the Saturday after Dad died, was the 21st birthday of my niece, grandchild number 9 (of 12). In the interest of Dad's wishes that there be laughter after his death, not tears, my sister went ahead with plans to celebrate her daughter's birthday by inviting everyone who was lingering about out to dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings, affectionately known to all (it seemed) but me as "B-Dubs."

Now, it wasn't Number 9's intention to overindulge. On the contrary, she was excited merely to order an alcoholic drink and be carded, only to show her ID and be served the drink she ordered. But her cousin (Number 7) was on hand to make sure that being carded would be but a blur in her memory of the evening. My initial instinct was to be the voice of reason and moderation, but when I realized I wasn't driving, I decided to partake of Number 9's "joy" by matching her, drink for drink. Naturally, she opted for my suggestion as a drink she might like – Long Island Iced Tea. And that's how it all started.

After the second round Number 7 insisted we all do a shot. Everyone 21 or older did a shot of Southern Comfort and lime, except for me. I shot a Grey Goose vodka. After that we were all finished eating… I think… and we headed to my sister's – and Number 9's – house. From there Number 7 and Number 9 went to a liquor store to get some more to drink for when Number 9's friends came over to help her celebrate. Asked if I wanted anything, I opted for a 750ml bottle of Grey Goose.

When they returned I was dismayed to see that they came back with a 375ml bottle, but this turned out to be a good thing as, though I fully intended to share, there were few takers.

Number 9's friends showed up. One of them had been to dinner with us, and the other didn't really know Number 9 all that well. But she did know a good handful of drinking games! We five sat down at the table on the deck in the back yard and began to play. I got hit with one of the first requirements to drink. I did a shot of Grey Goose and knew immediately that such a plan would only end badly, so I switched to a mixed drink – rum and Pepsi.

I'll spare the details…mainly because they're really fuzzy or just plain not there…but, suffice it to say, a good time was had by most. I learned a few things that evening. One, I really, really like playing college drinking games with college girls! Early on, before the alcohol hit, I spoke in an aside to my nephew and admonished him to make sure I didn't hit on either of Number 9's friends. Which brings on another of those things I learned… a man in the throes of a divorce and on the verge of an evening of drinking, who's in close proximity to young, attractive college girls wearing college-girl party attire displaying fair amounts of college-girl cleavage, knows that the likelihood of saying – or worse, doing – something embarrassing is very high. Fortunately for me – and moreso for Number 9 – I didn't hit on, or attempt to grope or fondle either of her friends…at least that's what Number 7 tells me. Another thing I learned that evening: I totally SUCK at college drinking games! And the odd thing? The later it got, the worse I got. Go figure!

Number 9's friends had gone home by 12:30am or so (both left when one's mother came to pick them up, so they were safe about it). Number 7 went and sat in his truck. He knew he was too drunk to drive, but he's allergic to Number 9's cats, so he couldn't stay in the house. I know it wasn't all me – it absolutely could NOT be – but the bottle of Grey Goose was empty. I lay my head down on the table and snoozed – sis says until after 2:00am, but I think it was more like 1:00 or 1:15. Regardless, I got up when I got too cold and I staggered inside, where I promptly crashed on the couch.

Much to my own surprise, and after a brief moment in the morning when I got up to go to the bathroom, where I broke into a cold sweat and thought I was going to make a projectile offering to the porcelain god…but it passed, I did not have a hangover. Okay, maybe a little one, but no headache or prolonged nausea or queasiness. Number 9, on the other hand, did make her first-ever post-binge offering, only hers was to the linoleum god. Maybe she will appease the porcelain god some other time.


Last Wish
One of Dad's last wishes was to – after his death – buy all of his buddies one last round of drinks at their hangout, Tony's Place, which is the bar that was next to Dad's barbershop in the building owned by Tony. Probably more than a year ago he made my sister promise that she would fulfill this wish and use the money left in his checking account to buy the round. Wednesday, after the funeral and the luncheon, we all headed over to Tony's and had that round. As I had suspected, Tony, who was like another son to my father, refused to accept any money. Tony loved my Dad so much that I think he would have willingly drained every keg and every last bottle in his tavern in Dad's memory if there were enough people there to drink it all. Somehow, between the funeral home and the cemetery and the restaurant we had lost most of Dad's friends who had shown up, so that first round was just family. Before we took our leave we left behind a decent sum and got Tony's promise that as all of the regulars, all of Dad's friends, came in, their first drink of the day would be on Dad.


Memorial Bowl
If there was a constant in Dad's social life, it was bowling. He was a blue-collar guy in a blue-collar town, and the ultimate blue-collar pastime is bowling. He was all about the fundamentals, so it was natural that he taught or gave advice to just about everybody he ever encountered in a bowling alley…whether they wanted it or not! He gave me my first lessons, as he did for all of my siblings before me. If he was ever outstanding in his bowling, it was in his consistency. He was rarely bad, occasionally great, but always reliable and a contributor to his teams.

So naturally, after we left Tony's Place, we all unwound a little, changed clothes, and hit the local lanes to throw a few games in Dad's memory! I never did a head-count, but we covered four lanes, so I estimate there were 16 of us bowling, plus another four to six "kibitzing," another of Dad's favorite pastimes! Number 9 made quite an astute observation early on in the bowling. As nearly every one of us there had been taught by the same teacher, nearly every one of us there had near-identical throwing styles. It was quite an amazing thing to see!

Aside from possibly doing permanent damage to my left knee because I'm terribly out of shape and I hadn't bowled in several years, I had a fabulous time. And I think I can speak for the others and say they did, too.


Twister, Anyone?
Anyone who paid attention this past weekend to the weather news may remember hearing about the tornado(es) that ripped through northeastern Illinois on Saturday. The town names may have seemed unremarkable to you – Wilmington, Monee, Richton Park, Matteson – but to me they were too close to "home." One could say that some of those areas are my old "stomping grounds," whereas, only three days earlier, I was in one of those communities!

I was at my sister's house in Highland, Indiana, once again enjoying the company of my family. Number 7 saw the "Tornado Warning" graphic on the screen as he watched TV, so he went to the computer and brought up The Weather Channel online. He clicked on the Tornado Warning report and began reading aloud, with increasing agitation: "A tornado is on the ground between Wilmington and University Park and is heading toward Monee…!" The report gave time estimates for arrival at various towns in the tornado's southwest-to-northeast path, and my nephew read out, "…will reach Dyer, Indiana, by 2:37pm, Munster, Indiana, by 2:44pm, and will reach Hammond, Indiana, by 2:50pm."

My sister said with remarkable calm, "It's heading right for us."

HOLY CRAP!

My other sister and her husband, in whose home we had all been sitting around and chatting, began directing their children, Number 9 and Number 10, into the central hallway…not into the basement – they don't have one.

It was at this moment that I realized being in a single-story ranch-style house on a concrete slab is not where I want to be when a tornado comes waltzing through the neighborhood!

The stress and fear got to Number 10, age 17, and she began to cry as she sat on the floor and prepared to huddle against the wall in the hallway.

I, on the other hand, chose to wait to huddle until I saw the funnel cloud with my own two eyes. I stood in the front lawn and kept my eyes on the southwestern skies, keen to the ever-darker clouds moving in. My other sister there reminded me of the words of my mother, who as a little girl had witnessed a tornado zip across her grandparents' farm field: "It sounds like a diesel train." Of little use when you live in an industrial area surrounded by railroad yards….

The wind intermittently whipped up and went calm. Near the darkest parts of the clouds angry streaks of lightning lashed out at the earth, all thankfully several miles away, yet.

And then I heard a familiar sound. I waved my hands at the sister who had reminded me of my mother's words. "SHHH! There it is! Do you hear that?"

"What?" she replied, somewhat spooked.

"It sounds like a train, right?" I asked, my voice tinged with excitement.

"Yes." Her ears scanned the air apprehensively.

And right on cue, with timing that couldn't have been better executed in a movie or a sitcom, that familiar sound came again – the horn blew on a train coasting through a rail yard several hundred yards away! I pointed in the direction from which the sound had come.

Joke on sister pulled off successfully, laughter achieved, the tension eased considerably. The darkest center of the clouds was now due west of us, which meant that, as a tornado always tracks from the southwest to the northeast, if anything was even on the ground at that moment, it would pass us by to our northwest. Or so I believed. Despite hearing several surrounding communities' tornado warning sirens, Highland's was not activated.

For a brief time, the fear had been real. I do not recall the last time I ever felt a total, mind-clearing fear such as that. For all intents and purposes, we were truly in the path of that storm. When I had looked to the southwest I couldn't help but feel helpless and infinitesimal as I imagined that tornado bearing down on us. My initial urge was to get in my car and head southEAST, but I couldn't abandon my family. I had to force myself to prepare to throw my body over one of my nieces, or over my sister, or even my brother-in-law, should that tornado come, in order that my nieces would have a chance to live on with one or both parents. And besides, my car was blocked in the driveway, and I couldn't get out.

But the tornado veered away, or it weakened, or whatever happens that stops a tornado, and we were spared any terror outside our own minds. It made quite a mess in the communities that lie to the west of our old hometown, but as far as I'm aware, no one was hurt, and – most importantly – no one was killed.

When the storm was safely off to the north, phone calls were made. We called another of my four sisters, the one who lives in University Park, to see if she was okay. She was untouched by the storm, but her power was out.

My best friend, who was visiting me as well as my sisters, called his parents, who still live in the town where we grew up. They were fine, but a tree was blown down onto their car. The extent of the damage was not known at that moment, but I would assume it was total.

And that brought to an end one hell of a week! All the better for great stories down the line!

Thank You

These words are written to express my thanks to everyone who reads my blog and sent along their condolences and warm wishes – in comments or in thoughts – to my family and me during our period of celebrating the life of my father.

Reading your comments made the happier moments even more so, and the sad moments a little lighter, and knowing there were similar thoughts from some of the silent ones who visited (you know who you are) made everything better.

I imagine these pages will remain un-updated for a few days while I catch up on the world and get a grip on my thoughts again. (HAH! Like I actually have thoughts!)

To my readers, Thank You.

Eulogy

At my father's funeral I stood before those gathered and gave a eulogy. I was asked in the comments by a reader who was there to post it here; it follows below. It is a mildly edited version of a post I made to this blog two years ago, which you will find here, if you'd prefer to read the original.

James Vincent Gasbarro was born in 1923, the fifth child to Italian immigrants. By age five he had lost his father to blood poisoning, the result of an otherwise minor accident at the steel mill where he worked. The following year, his widowed mother, his six siblings, and the rest of the nation tumbled headlong into the Great Depression. Already dirt poor, they were probably better able to cope than those of middle income in that day, for they already knew how to live on next to nothing. My grandmother had a house which her husband had nearly finished building when he fell ill. The home was completed by local workers paid by associates of one Alphonse Capone, a great story in itself, to be told some other time.

Jimmy, and others of his generation, grew up learning how to survive. At times his family had to endure meals of jelly-and-onion sandwiches because that was all there was to eat. My grandmother was a strict woman and her methods, though probably frowned upon today, brought up respectable, law-abiding citizens. There weren’t many things that a swift hand or an accurately wielded broomstick couldn’t correct.

Jimmy was the only of his mother’s children to graduate high school. He and three of his brothers fought in, and returned intact from, World War II. It was one of his duties in the Army that eventually led him to his own enterprise – barber. Upon his discharge he did factory work until he determined that he could succeed as a barber. He also married and began a family. Ten years and six children after getting married, he opened his own shop, one block from the home where he grew up.

I can’t imagine the challenges he faced and overcame: the Great Depression through his entire childhood. Four years away from home fighting a war. Learning, without his own father’s example, how to be a father as his family grew. Raising with his wife five of his seven children through the1960s and losing not one to drugs or Vietnam.

I came along in the ‘60s. I am largely ignorant to the family’s rich history in its sixteen years before I was born. My oldest sibling had moved out and joined the military practically before I had any cognitive knowledge of his existence. But the remaining siblings demonstrated a respect for Dad that I had no option, no other example, than to follow. From the day I realized that other kids had fathers, too, I have been somewhat in awe of mine.

As my father I always knew him to be stern and strict, and the disciplinarian of our family, though my siblings will tell anyone who will listen that I, the youngest, had it easier than any of them. He dealt justice with a razor strop – three strips of leather clamped together at one end and used by a barber to condition a straight razor before shaving someone. He was never cruel with it, nor vicious. It was a plain and simple fact: if you misbehaved past his last warning, you got a swat or two across the rear with “the strap.” I don’t think contact with “the strap” ever hurt as much as knowing you had earned it.

I also always knew him to be a very funny comedian. During my kindergarten class’s spring picnic, mine was the only father to be a “room mother” for the event. The other kids made fun of me because my father came along, until we got to the park and every kid fought to play with him because he was so much fun. I’m sure he also managed to flirt with the teachers and the other kids’ mothers in between.

Dad often had me along when he visited with friends, and there was usually a lot of laughter – and foul language. I was always astounded at the two different people my father was, at home versus with friends. At home I never heard him say the ‘f’- word. With his friends, I never heard anyone say the ‘f’-word more! But it was always good-natured, always bracketed with laughter.

And he was generous. Since he had no money, all he could give you was his time and his expertise. As a young man, in order to survive, he had acquired many different skills – some with which to make money, and some with which to save it – skills which, later in life, he gave as a wealthy man would give money. If a friend’s mother or somebody needed some carpentry work done, or plumbing, or painting, or demolishing, my father was there, the jack-of-all-trades, master of none. Sometimes he would accept money for his time or effort, other times he would not. If an elderly customer came to his shop for a haircut, he would refuse to let the customer pay, often insulting his friend in the process until he either relented and accepted the money or let his friend leave the shop offended. If he heard a friend was in the hospital or laid up at home, he would go in the evening with his traveling barber kit to his friend once a week for as long as the person was laid up – man or woman – and provide a haircut with no expectation, no demand, of payment.

You could step into Jim’s Barbershop to witness every waiting chair occupied, to hear a lively discussion on just about any topic – though his formal education was limited to high school, Dad was always listening, always aware of the day’s current events, and he always had an opinion. And he always had a knack for opposing you on a topic, wrestling with you over it, and suddenly you’d find yourself arguing FOR his earlier point and against yours! And then, with all those people in the waiting chairs, he would finish with the person in the barber chair and then look at you and say, “You’re next.” The others in the waiting chairs would all look at you, and you’d realize that they were all just there for the conversation.

When times got tough, Dad stepped up. During the late 1970s he had three part-time jobs in addition to his Tuesday-through-Saturday eight-hour days at the barbershop. He would lock the door to the shop by 5:30, but then finish the remaining customers who waited. He would stop at Tony’s Place, the bar adjoining his shop, and have a beer or three, and then he would go home. After dinner he would then go to 20th Century Bowling Lanes where he ran the counter, tended bar and gave free bowling lessons until closing, usually around 12:30 or 1:00am. He’d then come home, nap until 4:00am and get up to clean the office at a finance company. From there, around 6:00, he would go to a strip mall a few miles north and sweep and pick up trash and dump garbage cans into a dumpster. He would arrive home around 8:00am, lay down for another nap, and then he would open the shop again at 9:00.

To say Jimmy had boundless energy would not be accurate, as he more often than not fell asleep within minutes of sitting down to watch a television show or football game, when he had the time to do so. More accurate would be to say that he had abnormally high determination and willpower. And patience. After 40 years of smoking, he quit – cold-turkey – once. He and my mother took out a second mortgage on our home so they could buy a lot with a dilapidated house near a river. On weekends and days off over the next seven or eight years or so, he pretty much single-handedly gutted the house, raised it onto cinder-blocks, and rehabbed it to quite a comfortable condition, if a little rustic and eclectic of décor.

Time caught up with him, however. After cutting back his shop hours to three days a week for about 15 years, Jimmy finally sold the shop and retired completely, at age 81. The wear and tear of essentially 55 years of barbering took their toll, with numbness in his hands and feet, the result of irreversible nerve damage from the years of standing, and of holding vibrating clippers in raised arms. After nearly 20 years of living in the river house – most of them alone since my mother’s death in 1993 – and unable to take care of it himself, he sold it and moved in with my sister, Marie.

The change was gradual, and maybe it was connected to his advance in age, but Dad went from being the rough, gruff, single-emotion disciplinarian of my youth, to a softer, gentler, more affectionate father in my adult years. I had only seen the man cry twice – at the funerals of his mother and of one of his brothers, about four years apart, in the early- to mid-1970s. He didn’t cry at sad movies. He didn’t cry at weddings. Tough as nails. Then there was the visit by my oldest brother in 1982, who had joined the military 15 years earlier for what had become his career. He brought with him his older child to meet her grandparents for the first time. It was a joyous event for the whole family in the summer after my high school graduation. When it was time for my brother to leave I was shocked to see Dad first choke up as he said good-bye, and then break into sobs as he hugged my brother. I was moved to tears myself. The old man cracked! It was to be understood. This was his oldest child, someone he had only seen a few times in the prior 15 years.

Nearly two years later I returned home from the first 18 weeks of my military stint, a brief break on my way into my future. I was only able to manage a week at home before I was to drive off to Montana. On the day of my departure it was almost a carbon copy of the day with my brother. And as my parents said good-bye, Dad’s voice cracked, and tears welled up in his eyes. For ME?! It didn’t affect me until I arrived at my duty station in Montana three days later, that first night there, the first night of my real adult life. I lay there in bed, helpless to fight off the tears of homesickness, of loneliness, for how much I missed my family, and, now, for how much I realized my father missed me.

There’s a quote, by whom I don’t know, that goes something like, “He is not poor who has friends.” If this is true, then Jimmy was one of the wealthiest men who ever lived. Through his kindness, his sense of humor, and his endless generosity, he collected more friends in his long life than anyone I’ve ever known.

While I was growing up, there were things I resented about being Jimmy’s son. Other kids’ parents were wealthier. They had more toys, bigger houses. They were allowed to go places, to do things, to stay out at night to hours that my parents would not allow me. They went on family trips to places like Disney World. They had air conditioning in their homes.

But one evening just a few years back, while mingling with Dad, now elderly, and a few of his friends, one of the people nearer my age spoke to me in regard to my father. “You’re his son?” he asked.

I nodded.

“He is such a great man. It must have been so incredible to grow up with him as a father.” The man could not stop raving about how much he admired my father, how much he envied me my childhood with him. It was the first of several such exchanges, with several different people, over the period of a few years. That’s when I was struck by how many people, of all ages, loved Jimmy. It is not a massive fortune for which they admired him. It is not fame that drew them. He was the genuine article. The real deal.

And so it is that I stand here and pay humble tribute to a man whom I admire beyond quantification, beyond the grasp of words. The greatest man nobody knew.

In A Positive Light

Back on May 18, Marc – the man who found Tresi, the Luxemburg woman whose family had practically adopted my father as their own during the war – came to Chicago for a visit. At the top of his list of things to do was a visit with my father.

I brought Marc in to the visiting room at the Veterans' Home, and Dad's face lit up with a great big smile, the first such smile I had seen him smile in months, and, little did I know at that moment, the last I would see forever.

••--••--••--••--••

My mobile phone jostled me out of a deep sleep. I presumed it was my co-worker calling to tell me I had overslept or something. I looked at the display on the phone before I answered; my brother's name glowed at me in the dark. I looked at the alarm clock on the hotel room nightstand: 3:31 am.

"Dad's taken a turn," he said. "His body has stopped sending blood to his hands and feet. The nurses here say that means he has probably a maximum of 48 hours."

"Keep me updated," I said at the end of the two-minute conversation. In the fog of sleep interrupted, and of the shock of reality at the other end of the line, I estimated that I would have finished the job at hand there in Dallas and been back home at the scheduled time before 48 hours were up. I got back in bed and managed only another 20 minutes of sleep in the next two hours.

By 9:00 am I was in the room where our work was being done, waiting on an attendee of the meeting to show up for his videotaped interview. With a few minutes to spare before he showed up, I thought to call my brother for an update.

"He's still hanging in there. He's not talking but he is awake and responsive."

"Okay," I said. "Tell him I love him."

"You should tell him yourself," my brother said. "I'll put my phone to his ear. He can hear you."

I paused for a long moment, seized with my fear of the known. "I can't," I said.

My brother's voice cracked, something I have rarely heard in my lifetime. "Yes you can. It may be the last time you get to tell him."

"The client will be here any minute. I'll be a mess."

"Your client will understand. I'm putting the phone to his ear." He wasn't demanding…he was pleading.

"Okay," I said.

In the distance from his phone I heard my brother's voice giving me the O.K. to speak. My voice was immediately at the edge, my throat threatening to close tight. "Hi, Dad," I croaked. "I love you. Don't hang on, okay? If it's time to go, you go." It was all I could say. I choked back the tears that needed to come.

My brother put the phone back to his own ear. "He heard you. He definitely heard you."

I made him promise to call me the minute anything changed, and then I had to excuse myself from my co-worker. In the Men's Room I lost the battle against the tears. It's not that I'm afraid to cry; I didn't want to do it right before meeting our client because I know that after I have the kind of cry my body was fighting for, I look like a prizefighter the day after a loss – puffy, swollen bags under frightfully bloodshot eyes. So it was brief. It eased the pressure, so to speak, and I cleaned myself up. No bags, no red, swollen vessels.

But then the thought set in. I had to get home. Now.

It was a matter of juggling possibilities, but once I found the earliest flight I could take, we worked out the rest of the day. I went to my room, packed my bag, checked out of the hotel and went back to our interview room. I worked until the last interview was finished, around 2:45 pm. Then I grabbed my bag and a cab, and I went to the airport.

Just as he had promised, at 4:00 pm, just before my flight was to begin boarding, my brother called.

"He's still hanging on. His breathing is very shallow, and he's no longer responsive, but he's still with us."

"Okay," I said. "I'll get there as soon as I can. But tell him not to wait for me."

Three hours later, around 7:15, when my plane landed in Chicago, I called him for an update. Still breathing, shallow but steady. Still alive. I still had to wait for luggage, then get a cab to the office, and then get in my car and drive to the Veterans' Home…another three hours, yet.

As I waited for the cab I had ordered, my phone rang. In the display, I saw my brother's name. I knew.

"He's gone," said my brother. "It was very peaceful…his breathing just got shallower and shallower until he stopped."

When I ended the call, I felt myself at a tipping point. On one side, relief that Dad's pain and discomfort were over, that he was no longer trapped in a body that was no longer at his service; on the other, guilt. Had I dropped everything at 3:30, had I called my co-worker and told him I was going home to my father, leaving him to figure out how to finish our assignment, I could have been at Dad's side by noon or earlier.

But I stopped. I remembered the smile that broke across his face when Marc walked into the visiting room at the Veterans' Home, where I imagined the memories – of the trip to France and Italy, of his visit with Tresi, the best thing I ever did – that must have raced across his mind as Marc approached him. I brought that smile to him, and I will remember it forever.

When we left that day, Marc and me, I kissed Dad on top of his head, and I told him that I love him. My bases were covered. The guilt that threatened me dissolved away.

By the time I was on my way down to meet them, my siblings had already met with the coroner who had given them instructions and assurances for what would happen next, and they called to tell me to meet them at a restaurant near where two of my sisters live.

Over our meal, my brother said to me at one point, "I don't know what you said to Dad when I put my phone to his ear, but right after you spoke to him, he closed his eyes and stopped responding." My sisters nodded their agreement.

I still have mixed feelings over being told that. Did my approval satisfy him and give him the permission to go? Was it just a coincidence?

In the days since Dad died, we have all experienced an uplifting sense of relief, of release. He had been sick and in decline for so long, we were prepared for his final moments, both emotionally and procedurally, and we reacted somewhat like a machine, the power to which had just been switched on. Arrangements were made the next day, and made easily with the help of the funeral director who had handled Mom's arrangements, and who was a friend – and barbershop customer – of Dad's. Since then we have had time to focus clearly on the most important tasks – notifying family and friends of the funeral arrangements, and remembering Dad in the positive light that shone on him in everything he did and on everyone he touched. Since Thursday there has been more laughter than tears over the memories of life with our father, and I think that's the way everyone should be remembered after they’ve passed on.

The world is indeed a darker place without him.