January 29, 2003

• legacy
  
  i never did know a whole lot about my father. he was he was quiet, strong and massive - a man who took up the room no matter how big it was or who else was in it. the only way i can illustrate it is to ask you to go stand in front of a mac truck - that's what standing in front of him was like for me.
  my mother and i only know a few stories about him from when he was growing up; it wasn't something he told me or her a whole lot about. he was a construction worker most of his life, working part time during highschool with his step father. one saturday, my father and him were doing roofing and my father smashed his thumb with the hammer. the inevitable swearing followed. without a word, his step father climbed down the ladder, kicked it over and said he'd be back at 6:00pm, when my father "had the roof done and had learned to control his mouth". so my father finished the roof by himself, stranded in the summer heat for close to 9 hours.
  the other stories i know are better; how he was in highschool, got pissed at the nun teaching him and hurled an inkwell out the window, which wound up landing on the principles car; how he hit 70 mph on a median (in NYC) because he was sick of waiting in traffic. when he and my mother and her best friend would use a rowboat to go bar hopping in howard beach when the ocean and saltwater canals had flooded everything. stories from the bar in flushing he used to hang out at, stories from the bar he owned in flushing. how he got pissed at the movers when him and my mother were moving into their first home - they dropped the refrigerator; he picked it up (by himself), put it back on the truck and told them to do it the right way. they did.
  a few other ones as well.
  for a while, my father was also a steel worker - building the iron beam skeletons of some of the buildings still standing in new york. i don't know any of the buildings he worked on, but i know one thing he did work on - the throgs neck bridge. i find a strange comfort in knowing that my fathers hands helped to complete something so permanent.
  

  

  throgs neck bridge, queens new york

  • 7:30 pm
  • 19 Comments