The Real Fred

Now just because I named my bantam rooster after my dad doesn't mean Fred was small and cocky…. On the contrary, he was a big man, with a huge presence… I always found his big, calloused hands a bit frightening, and his gruff nature put me off. We had a fractious relationship in my teen years and beyond, but I have been assured he loved me with all his heart. I believe that now…. There were times when I didn’t.

Fred was a lot like me, although I didn’t readily admit it. He was a tinkerer, a wanderer, and an inveterate scrounger. He cared not one whit about the latest fashion, and wore his grubby jeans low and baggy. His flannel shirts and striped railroad cap were a signature… pushed back on his head, a two day growth of beard stubble that he loved to rub on my cheek to hear me holler, and a pair of sturdy black leather laceup boots were his usual garb. He cleaned up nicely, and I have memories of him, clean shaven and smelling of Aqua Velva, heading out the door in the evenings. The most I could ever get from him when I relentlessly questioned him about where he was going was “Out”.

He had a growl to his voice that would scare a mean pirate, and could get volume from it that must have had something to do with all the years of voice lessons. I still have never heard anyone who could yell as loud as Dad… A favorite thrill was to request him to “Roar” at the dinner table. While my grandmother flinched in ladylike mortification, he would open his mouth and with a deep breath, let out the word with such projection and force that the rafters nearly shook. We shivered in delight, mouths agape,and when it was over and he was just Dad again, we giggled and tried to Roar ourselves, and of course requested it again and again. One roar could create a lot of chaos at the table!

Fred built things. He restored and painted and drove us around town in a 1922 Model T Ford with a crank start, tootling the “ooga” horn whenever he saw someone he knew or even when a stranger waved. He restored a Fokker biplane on the dining room table, sewing sleeves of airplane fabric over wooden strut wings and then painting and shrinking the finished wings in the backyard. He painted it bright yellow, got a pilot’s license, and flew it out of Hanover Airport, until one day, working with a welding torch, he burned it to ashes.

His garage was a mess… a greasy sort of piled -up place that always had some kind of project going on, and a big Collie mix yellow dog tied in front to guard the door. The dogs name was Tallywowser, and although he seemed to love me, I stayed my distance from him, since I was told he was a guard dog and mean. I don’t think he was mean, because I remember him getting loose, going to hang out with the kids at the bus stop, and then diving under the nearest car when the dog catcher came for him. He snarled and growled until Dad could come and snap his fingers and get him out and take him home. One man dog who loved kids, I suppose.

Shirli