This ran here on Father's Day of 2010. Nothing in it has changed since except that Tom Luth no longer colors the Groo comic books…
In recognition of what day it is…
I have written here many times of how my father hated his job. He spent twenty-five years working for the Internal Revenue Service, loathing every nano-second of it. He was bothered by the grief he sometimes had to bring upon people who were in serious financial trouble. He was annoyed at the way his superiors sometimes treated him.
He was frustrated at how there seemed to be two sets of rules as to who had to pay delinquent taxes. Rich folks with "friends in Washington" (i.e., Richard Nixon) or sometimes "friends in Sacramento" (i.e., Ronald Reagan) often did not. Poor folks with no "connections," of course, always did. They were treated like criminals whereas the Friends of Dick and/or Ron had to be coddled like royalty and remain unthreatened. On several occasions, after my father made a routine call on a Friend of Dick and/or Ron about owing vast amounts to Uncle Sam, the bill would be torn up and my father would be ordered to apologize to the Rich Guy for upsetting him so. But the Poor Mother always had to pay…or else.
You'd have to be a bit of a psychopath not to hate being in his position…but it had to be done and my father had to earn a living. Before that, he had an array of short-term jobs that weren't as stable — the I.R.S. was nothing if not stable — and which he didn't like a whole lot more. He'd worked for a time in the administrative office of a hospital and couldn't stand having to take paperwork to people who were injured and suffering.
None of them were the kind of careers you dream of having. They were all the kind of jobs you take because you can't get one of the kind you dream of having.
And I think the thing he liked least about them were that they all had a firm, concrete ceiling. When you fantasize about what you want to do with your life, you usually pick something that could, at least in theory, make you very, very wealthy. My father never had one of those jobs. He had ones that by their very nature excluded that possibility. They were jobs where if you did them better than anyone else had ever done them, you might at best be able to get a $10 raise next year. Might. It was tough to accept that limitation on your life.
None of this should suggest that he was not, on balance, a happy man. He loved — not necessarily in this order — his home, his wife, his son and our cat. He had a life that was largely free of tragedy and disaster. Once he signed on with the I.R.S., he never had to worry about paying the mortgage, buying food and clothing, affording a car, etc. He had a wonderful health insurance plan that covered him, his spouse and his kid and the only thing wrong with it was that it didn't cover the cat. Apart from paying off the house — and for a time, my orthodonture — he was free of debt.
There's a lot to be said for all that.
In the early seventies, he hit retirement age with the I.R.S., grabbed his pension and got the hell out, just in time to spend all day watching the Senate Watergate hearings. I have vivid memories of him sitting in front of the TV watching the Dodgers or the Lakers, yelling at the screen like he was managing from afar. He was very happy doing that but he was even happier watching the Senate investigate the Nixon Administration.
After it all ended, he missed it. If they'd rerun the hearings like old Star Trek episodes, he'd never have missed one. A lot of I.R.S. abuses were exposed for all the world to see. Years later when I met John Dean, the former Nixon aide who blew the whistle on much of that, I thanked him. On behalf of my father.
Once the hearings were over though, my father had a problem: What to do all day?
It was a small problem at first. He had my mother around. I still lived at home. He had his friend who still worked at the I.R.S. to lunch with, once a week. Then the friend went to prison for accepting bribes. Then my mother took a part-time job at a local gourmet grocery shop. Then I moved out. Then my mother's part-time job turned into a full-time job.
For a while, my father had a portfolio of stocks — nothing that was likely to ever make him wealthy. Following them was more a spectator sport than an investment. They'd go up a dime or two. They'd go down a dime or two. It was not unlike following the Dodgers or the Lakers but without Vin Scully or Chick Hearn.
It was also a place to go. Once a week, he'd go to his brokers' office where there was an entire wall covered with a stock-tracking scoreboard and a gallery where you could just sit and watch. You might sit for hours before you saw any activity on one of your stocks…and then it might only be up or down a penny or so. But it was a pleasant place to sit, read the newspaper, sip the free coffee and maybe chat with other investors and your personal broker if he wasn't busy, which he always was.
Then Channel 22 happened. Today, that UHF station runs programming in Spanish but back then, it ran stock market reports all day. Two lines of crawl ran across the bottom of the screen and my father would sit and stare at both for hours, hoping to spot one of his stocks and learn it was up a half a cent. He missed the camaraderie of the brokers' office but thanks to Channel 22, he could follow his investments without shaving and while wearing his pajamas.
One day when he did shave, dress and go to the broker's office, his broker gave him some advice: "This would be a good time to sell." My father's stocks were all of a kind that had peaked, the broker told him. "Get rid of them all now," he said. "And if you want to stay in the market, I'll advise you on others you should purchase with what you get for them." My father got out and didn't get back in. He couldn't bring himself to follow a new team. He did make some money but he didn't have that to help fill his days.
What he hoped for was Jury Duty. Jury Duty, he was sure, was the remedy for his boredom.
He kept waiting for it, longing for it. He thought it would be interesting and would give him a feeling of accomplishment — having a place to go each day, hearing the cases, pondering them, rendering a just and rational verdict. If you could have signed up to be a full-time juror, he would have done it, no pay necessary. He may even have called up and asked if there was anything he could do that would make him more likely to be called.
He was a few times but it was disappointing. He was never picked to serve on a jury…not once. It was because of his background. Lawyers would ask him his profession and when they heard he'd worked for the I.R.S., they didn't want him. I guess they figured he'd naturally side with the government.
So no jury duty, no stocks to follow, no friends to lunch with…my mother was at work and I was living somewhere else, busy with my career. What could he do all day? Well, he could come visit me from time to time. And he could ask me to send him on errands. I don't know how many times he offered to do things for me.
I understood why, of course. He'd feel useful and he'd feel more a part of my life…so I gave him what I could but I simply didn't have many things I could send him to do. And with some of them, things didn't work out well.
He loved to shop. When it was time for him to buy a new (used) car, he would take weeks. When I bought a new (new) car, I'd decide what I wanted, go to a showroom or two, haggle a bit and buy it. My first new car purchase took, I think, three hours.
My father would spend three weeks or more trading in his ten-year-old Buick for a five-year-old Oldsmobile. He would make charts and consult Consumer Reports and he'd visit ten or more lots, often several times each. Then he'd narrow it down to three possibles and go around and test-drive the potential acquisitions and see if this salesman would come down twenty bucks or that one would come down fifty…
He enjoyed the hell out of it. I think he even looked forward to things going wrong with whatever he was driving because they would hasten the moment when he got to say, "I think I need to trade it in for something newer." (He never bought an absolutely-new car in his life and that first time I did, he was so proud of me…and also disappointed that I bought it in, like I said, three hours. He would have loved it if he and I could have driven from dealer to dealer for months, making a joint decision, negotiating in tandem, etc.)
One day, I decided I needed a new TV so I decided to let him find it for me. I decided on the brand I wanted, the screen size and certain features. I wrote them all down and sent him off to find me the right set at the right price. What I would have done was to walk into ABC Premiums a few blocks away, bought the set there and just carted it home, in and out in under an hour…but this gave him something to do.
He made it take weeks. He consulted ads in the newspaper. He drove to stores all over the city. He called others. After the eighth time I told him I needed the set sooner rather than later, he came to me with the results of all his research and scientific inquiry. A set that filled all my requirements could be purchased, he proudly revealed, at Frandsen Electronics for $139.50. I asked, "Where is Frandsen Electronics?"
He said it was in Downey. Downey was — and as far as I know still is — 22 miles away.
I asked if, uh, there might possibly be a closer place? "Yes," he said, consulting his lists. "But it's more expensive and I'm trying to save you money." I asked what the next cheapest place was.
Answer: ABC Premiums, a few blocks away from me. The exact same TV for $139.95.
When I told him I'd decided to buy it from ABC Premiums, he registered a letdown, then bravely said, "Well, son…it's your money." (Yes, it was…all forty-five cents of it.) I could see he was worried about what would happen to me if I went through life indulging in such reckless extravagances.
There were other chores and errands that did not go well…and this brings us to the story of my Leather Sport Coat. I no longer wear things like that but for a time, I was often seen in this great leather sport coat I bought somewhere for around the same price as that TV. Back then, that seemed like a lot of dough to spend on one garment but it was a great addition to my wardrobe. It was more casual than your basic sport coat but it was a little dressier than a windbreaker. Here's a very old photo of me with the folks who still do the Groo comic books. Forget how much younger we looked then and check out the coat…
I wore it often and one day, it was in need of cleaning. My father was quite pleased when I assigned him the task of finding a place that did that kind of thing, taking the coat in and picking it up. What, as they say, could go wrong?
Well, this: When he went to pick it up, he found the laundry closed tight in the middle of a workday. A sign on the door said they were out of business.
Panicked, my father went to other stores on the block to ask if they knew what happened and how one might retrieve a leather sport coat that was being cleaned there. No one could help. The laundry was the subject of lawsuits — partners suing one another, one neighbor had heard. There was some reason to believe it would never reopen.
My father was almost trembling — no, he was trembling — when he came to me and reported what had happened. Near tears, he said, "I lost your leather coat, son. I promise…I'll buy you a new one." He acted like he'd done something horribly, horribly wrong and no matter how many times I assured him it wasn't his fault, he kept repeating his vow to replace the coat.
This went on for a week. At least once a day, sometimes twice, he'd phone to ask if we could go shopping together so I could pick out a replacement coat and he could pay for it. He would not believe that he was not responsible and he did not owe me a new coat. One night, my mother took the phone into their bedroom so he couldn't hear and she called me…
"He's so depressed about this. Isn't there something you can do?" I thought and thought but the only solution seemed to be a good, old-fashioned lie.
I went out and purchased a new leather sport coat. It wasn't exactly the same but it was close enough that I figured he wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Then I called him and said I was coming by the house and I had something to show him. When I walked in, I was wearing a leather sport coat though it was ninety degrees out. Here is the lie I then proceeded to tell…
The most amazing thing happened. This afternoon, I was driving by that laundry, the one where you took my leather sport coat. I saw trucks outside…they were loading clothes on hangers into them. I parked and ran up and told them I had a coat in there and they let me go in and search and I found it. There weren't that many leather goods on the racks so it was easy. The tag said "Evanier" on it and I had I.D. that proved I was Evanier and since the coat fit, they let me have it. See? You didn't lose my coat after all.
He was overjoyed…so overjoyed, in fact, that he didn't remember he'd never told me where the laundry was. My father slept well that night and the next night and the next night…
And then someone called him from the laundry to say they were closing the place down for good and he should come in and pick up that leather coat he left there. "Oh, we already got it," he told the caller. The caller said, "No, you didn't. I'm looking at it right this moment." He drove over, picked it up and showed up at my apartment with it.
I felt like Lucy when Ricky Ricardo finds out she hoaxed him. He was angry at me for about as long as Ricky was ever mad at Lucy, which is to say around thirty seconds…maybe less since he understood I'd fibbed for his own good. I asked him if he would forgive me. He said yes…on one condition. I asked what that condition was.
He said, "That you give me something else to do for you."
I said, "Take my new car in to be serviced. And try not to lose it."