Dear Dad

Articles

Dear Dad

By James B. Bergstad
Dec. 14, 2004

Dear Dad,

I can picture your face. I can see your eyes. I can visualize that quiet, questioning look that would cross your face now and again. I always thought words would appear on your forehead, much like credits overlay a television show as it ends. “What’s that boy talking about now?” Your look would say. Without saying a word you’d sit there, watch me, waiting to hear my latest rant or my great new idea that would make us a million bucks.

You and I had a different relationship. Part of the difference was your age. I know now it wasn’t easy to become a father at thirty-four. Especially when you almost lost your wife to the pregnancy. I never told you this, but my earliest memory is the remembrance of you making funny faces for me. You’d just had your teeth pulled. You leaned down in my crib and made me laugh before I went to sleep. I love you, dad. I never said that enough.

You didn’t make much of an impression on me during my youngest years. Your job as an iron worker had you up at four in the morning. When you came home at night you were usually covered in soot and grime. Mom would make you a couple of highballs. You’d wash up and eat dinner. Then you’d pat my cheek and give me a hug. After that it was off to bed because four o’clock came mighty early. I remember most how you smelled. A faint odor of oil and grease. The smell of used cotton, if that makes any sense.

You were forty-one when I was seven. Climbing steel and driving rivets all day wasn’t part of my understanding. We’d lived in trailer parks mostly during my toddler years, following your work around the country. I think I did my kindergarten in Willowbrook, California. After that I remember Guttenburg, Iowa, where I attended St. Mary’s school for the first and second grade. I remember those two short years best because you were home a lot more. I remember hot summer weekend afternoon’s. Going crazy waiting for my dinner to digest. After an hour you would walk me down to the river, the Mississippi, and try to teach me to swim. I remember with an ache and a smile the quiet nights lying on the parlor floor. You’d bought us one of the big Philco “floor model” radios. I’d lay there with my coloring books and crayons, coloring and listening to the Lone Ranger, Red Ryder, The Inner Sanctum and Gangbusters.

You remember, dad? Those two years were magic for me. You were fixing up grandmas old three-story Victorian. You replaced a lot of rotted boards and then shingled the outside walls with those new asbestos shingles. You became the talk of Guttenburg because you installed an indoor toilet with a permanent tub and even a shower. All the kids I played with didn’t believe me so I trooped them all in and showed them our modern “BATHROOM.” Magical, magical times, dad. That’s the whole idea behind this long overdue letter. I wanted to do something I never got around too. I wanted to thank you for those magical days. What memories you gave me.

Hot summer nights I ran around the yard in swimming trunks, catching fireflies in a mason jar. I wanted to thank you for the magical places we found ourselves at Christmas time. Most of the time we spent Christmas in cold, snowy places. Places, I’m sure, were miserable for you. For this six, seven, eight-year-old kid those places were pure, wondrous magic. I never thanked you for those years, dad. I wanted to do that now.

I don’t know whether you’ve been following the events of the last few years. We’ve been seeing some disturbing trends take place in this country of ours. Oh, in some places you still see the lights, but they seem colder than the snow I remember so well. It must be because some things are missing. The magic is gone. In fact we are being told the magic was never there. There are wise people who will take care of us. Make sure we never have to worry about mythical religious tenets again. Are you sad in your new home, dad? Are those with you sad?

You remember the big department stores? How they used to have all these elaborate Christmas displays? Talk about magical. Beautiful Christmas trees went round and round to music like “Sliver Bells,” “Noel,” “Silent Night,” “The Christmas Song,” and many others. There were full sized mechanical Santa Claus’ sitting on thrones, while model trains whistled their way around the booted feet. Standing on the sidewalk you could hear the mechanized mannequin laugh, “HO, HO, HO.” Some, I remember, would raise their mechanical arm and point a gloved finger at their plastic nose. The words would carry out to the sidewalk, “What would you like for Christmas, children?”

I’ll bet you remember, dad. Most stores had a Nativity Scene, beautifully decorated. “Little Drummer Boy,” “Hark, The Herald Angles Sing,” some of the classic Christmas music played into the early morning hours. Do you still remember, dad? I look back now and I’m amazed. 1943, 1944, 1945. All were war years. Christmas of 1945 our fighting men were still coming home, some crippled physically, some mentally, a lot just came home in a flag draped coffin. You remember how people still smiled, dad? We’d gone through six years of terror. Tens of thousands of men, women and children died horrible deaths. The families and friends of those whose lives were lost still smiled. People wished each other Merry Christmas. They sang along with those wonderful songs. Instead of elbowing someone out of the way they gave thanksgiving for our freedom. There was magic in the streets. You could feel the warmth of others. You could smell the love; it filled your lungs with every breath. Remember, dad?

I know you must be thinking, “Why is this boy going over all this now? Speak up, son. What’s on your mind?” Well, the truth is, dad, I find myself thinking of you more and more as this Christmas approaches. I’m not sure how many more Christmas’ I want to see. Not this way. It will be seven years this coming July since I’ve seen your face, that little smile I used to love when you first caught sight of me coming around. I find I miss you more and more as the years go by. I miss what we had as a family those long years ago. I want to cry for your great-grandchildren who will never see the kind of Christmas we were privileged to celebrate.

To tell the truth I was wondering if you were paying attention to what is going on now. I hope you’re not because it’s actually gotten ugly. Many children can’t wish each other Merry Christmas, at least while they’re on the grounds of a Public School. There are no displays of The Nativity to speak of, especially on any ground owned by a government entity. The big department stores decorate, but their tinsel and lights are sterile, generic, caricatures of days gone by. Christmas music is limited to “Jingle Bells,” “Hully-Gully Christmas,” and such. Songs with any religious bent are not allowed. The fallacy is in the theme portrayed in the stores. Merry Christmas is gone. In its place is Happy Holidays. I guess those who fear the loss of their ability not to believe don’t realize. Holiday is a contraction of Holy Day.

That’s mainly what I wanted to say. I hope you’re occupied with more important matters. I hope you’re not concerned with the pettiness we see increasing daily. I think you’d be reminded of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution or maybe the New World Order in Germany in the 1930’s. I only studied those events, you lived them. To me the atmosphere is eerily familiar. I wish you were here to tell me not to worry. I miss you, dad. You told me you were going home early in 1998. On July 22nd we celebrated your ninety-fourth birthday on July 29th I held your hand and you did go home. I hope you’re busy with other things, dad. I hope you’re not watching the beauty or our magic slip away.

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About the author James B. Bergstad: I've explored this planet for sixty-six years. For the most part it's been a blast. I now indulge my passions of reading, writing and painting. My novel "Hyde's Corner" is awaiting publication. It is a taut period/drama set in the Oklahoma Panhandle. Sheriff Selmer Burks presides over the destruction of three families and the corruption of Hyde's Corner.

Email: captflash@astound.net

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