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Let me tell you about my Dad


Shoxthemonkey

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Dad was a United States Secret Service agent and was on protective duty for the last year of Ford and 1st year of Carter.  We had moved from Los Angeles to DC for the protective duty assignment but his Dad (my granddad) died and then his brother died in a matter of 6 mos, so we packed up the Chevy Station wagon and drove from DC back to Southern CA.  It changed our lives as he was on a track to maybe one day run the whole damn agency...he was very well thought of from what his buddies have told me over the years.  Anyway he became Special Agent in Charge of Dallas field office in the 80's and thus started my conversion from CA surfer kid to Texan.

One story that has always stuck with me.  Most summer Saturdays, he would drive me and my 2 brothers plus our 3 cousins to Huntington Beach to boogie board.  Rules were, we couldn't set foot in the ocean until he got back from his run.  He'd bang out 8 miles in an hour.  The 6 of us would be lined up on the edge of water sitting on our boards, leashed up.   Once we would catch sight of him on the horizon, we would all get so pumped, ready for a day of catching waves. 

He would get back, strip to his 70's era running shorts , take a dip, pop open a Lowenbrau (or 10) and put on Vin Scully, if the Dodgers were playing, Chick Hearn ( he called him Chicky Baby) if the Lakers were....or Johnny Cash if not.  He was a legend.  My cousins called him "Big JIm".

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Thanks for starting this.  I imagine I'm not going to get this done in one post.  So this is just the intro about my dad:

 

He was born in 1910, in Deadwood, SD.  No, Armybrat and I were not classmates; I'm a product of his second wife in 1973.  His dad was a sharecropper.  He had four brothers and sisters and they were dirt-poor.  He never talked to me about his dad, and what I do know are just tidbits I picked up.  Among those was that he was the quarterback for his high school football team, but he had to quit his senior year to get a job to support his family.  The coach tried to get him to stay and he always felt guilty about quitting.  He never went to college, and his dad told him he never would amount to anything; no wonder I never heard a word about him from my dad.

 

He went out west and was working for a surveyor in California building highways.  One of his jobs, as he recalled it, was leaving hundred dollar bills by some of the surveying stakes.  He later realized those were bribes.  He moved on to Denver at some point and was working as an engineer.  He was self-taught.  During that period of time, he took flying lessons and eventually got a pilot's license. 

 

In the 1940s, he moved to Houston with some people/engineers he worked with in Denver.  They set up a table and a phone at a trade fair and landed their first contract. That little project grew into a large petroleum engineering and construction firm that built all sorts of oil and gas infrastructure all over Texas, the United States, and parts of South America.  Among those was a pipeline in Buenos Aires.  He previously had purchased a Beechraft Twin Bonanza, which later was upgraded to an Excalibur (engines and avionics).  He always was so proud of the fact that he flew that plane over the Andes mountains to Argentina during that project.  He told me stories about circling small towns before landing on dirt roads in South America.  The business partner and namesake of the company was in declining health and retired in 1957.  My dad took over.  His partner gave him a silver box upon his departure.  On it is inscribed in his handwriting, "[DCBC, Sr.] keep her flying, boy!"  That box is on a table in my office.  Some framed, Gaucho, water-color paintings he brought back from Argentina, which hung in his office, now adorn a wall in my office.

 

He and his first wife had three boys during the 1940s.  They divorced in the late 1950s and, after a short stint as a bachelor, he met my mother, thirty years younger than he, on a blind date in 1960.  My mom was a dance instructor and former Miss Houston runner up who had assumed the title after it was discovered that the winner was dating one of the judges.  She swore she never would marry a man who drank (my grandad enjoyed it quite a bit).  My dad ordered a Cutty and Water at dinner.  He must have made a good impression because she dropped that caveat in a hurry.  They married later that year.  My sister was born in 1962.  During the 60s, they bought a small ranch near Sealy and, over time, it grew into a pretty big horse and cattle hobby for him.  My mom always wanted to move out there, but he emphatically told her, "I was born on the farm.  I have no intention of dying on the farm."  In 1968, his company purchased a Jet Commander 1121, which he learned to fly.  And boy, did he love flying that plane.  I have a distinct memory of being maybe two or three years old and being summoned to the cockpit.  He popped me up on his lap and I could see the clouds race by.  He put my hand on the yoke and said, "You're flyin'!"  I asked which way I should go, and he told me, "Straight ahead will be just fine."  It was on autopilot. 

 

When I was fourteen, I started taking flying lessons, and he, now, age 78, was pumped.  He drove me out to the postage-stamp-sized airpark west of Houston regularly and we'd talk about airplanes and flying  I now realize he knew he probably didn't have a lot of years left.  By the time, I soloed, cancer had caught up with him.  He was bedridden, but I got to tell him about this milestone and he mustered a hell of a smile for me.  I still carry that smile with me.  Two weeks later, he was gone.  I wrote a college essay about our relationship and my learning to fly that opened a lot of doors for me academically. 

 

We spent every weekend at that ranch, which by then had grown quite a bit.  We hunted and fished a lot.  There was a pond with a paddle boat.  We never stocked it, but it had so many bass in it, you'd swear it was farmed.  If he was fishing with me, I'd never get a bite.  But I'd get to reel in some that he'd hook.  He only used on lure: The Famous Hula Popper.  He caught so many fish.  There also were a metric ton of water moccasins in and around that pond.  And he also kept his Remington Model 1100 .410 in the boat to dispatch them when they expressed too much interest in the fish on the stringer.  A fellow Surlyite now owns that gun, and I hope it's being put to good use. 

 

He was an avid deer hunter, and I still have a ton of firearms (several I will never part with).  He and his buddies and my older brothers used to go up to a huge ranch a friend of his owned in Eagle, Colorado and hunt mule deer and elk every October.  When I was 15, I finally got to go.  They'd always eat lunch in this beautiful, little valley they called "the pocket."  One day, after lunch, my dad spotted a bull elk on the ridge above a shale slide and took him.  He then walked up the road that led to the ridge while we cleaned up lunch.  The next thing I know, I'm standing in the pocket with one of my half-brothers, looking up, as my dad slides off the ridge and slides down that shale slide dragging that elk behind him by the rack.  My brother looked up and said, "Son of a bitch, he's 79 years old!  What the hell."  In later years, my half-brother would go hunting there every October.  He always told me he felt closest to my dad in the pocket.  On year, they were there.  He said it was just the most still day, bluebird skies.  And he said something about my dad.  I don't know if he was telling a story or talking to him or what.  But he said, all of a sudden, out of the stillness, the leaves all around them, just swirled up into the air.  He'd never said anything like this to me before.  But that really meant something to him.

 

Anyway, that's the short version.  He died over 34 years ago, and I think about him every day.  In his eulogy, the pastor (his golfing buddy), called him "The Turk of Manly Men."  He most certainly was that, but he was a whole lot more.

Edited by dcbc
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4 minutes ago, dcbc said:

They set up a table and a phone at a trade fair and landed their first contract. That little project grew into a large petroleum engineering firm that built all sorts of oil and gas infrastructure all over Texas and parts of South America.  Among those was a pipeline in Buenos Aires. 

If that was the main gas line from Tierra del Fuego all the way up to Buenos Aires....my dad ended up running that company and pipeline.  Because this world is smaller than we often think.

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18 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

If that was the main gas line from Tierra del Fuego all the way up to Buenos Aires....my dad ended up running that company and pipeline.  Because this world is smaller than we often think.

Well, I know what I'm going to try to figure out this weekend.

 

 

 

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1 minute ago, InkaUtexas said:

Dad is still alive. How I have no idea. I will sit back, enjoy this thread and dread the day I join.

Thank you all for posting this.

The fathers don't need to be gone. Writing about him while he is still with you could spark lots of good conversations now. Do it anyway because I don't know how much time I have left and I want to read about it.

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7 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

Dad is still alive. How I have no idea. I will sit back, enjoy this thread and dread the day I join.

Thank you all for posting this.

Yep.  My kids spent time with my dad, even recording him telling them stories about his life.  Obviously....they did that before he died (our Ouija board is broken).  We shouldn't wait till people are gone to tell their stories.

Just like we shouldn't wait to tell the people we love that we love them.

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3 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Yep.  My kids spent time with my dad, even recording him telling them stories about his life.  Obviously....they did that before he died (our Ouija board is broken).  We shouldn't wait till people are gone to tell their stories.

Just like we shouldn't wait to tell the people we love that we love them.

it is always interesting to ask those older people the very first thing in their memory.  Or in my case, I would ask them if their parents or grandparents ever told them their first memories.  When I asked my mother that, she told me her grandmother‘s first memory was being a young child in a sleigh in Sweden with her father being terrified and using his whip against wolves, who were chasing the sleigh - probably wanting to eat some horses.   Her other memory was playing at serving tea to her doll, using acorns as teacups.     I never met my Swedish great-grandmother, but weirdly I have information about what she was doing in the 1860s

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29 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Here's what I found.  It doesn't appear to be the same ones in that link.

 

"In 1957, the [company] went international by constructing an 1100-mile natural gas pipeline in South America from the Bolivian border to Buenos Aires, Argentina.  The Argentina pipeline led to another . . . project, which was the engineering and construction of an Argentine petrochemical complex.  This complex used the new raw materials brought by the pipeline for the first synthetic rubber plant in South America in a cooperative undertaking called PASA."

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27 minutes ago, Shoxthemonkey said:

The fathers don't need to be gone. Writing about him while he is still with you could spark lots of good conversations now. Do it anyway because I don't know how much time I have left and I want to read about it.

We talk a few times a week, long talks when we can.

I get on my sons ass. "Look Inka Junior, you live 30 minutes away. Go see him a few times a month. Shut up, listen, and enjoy that bad ass lunch he will buy you. Another round at Top Golf can wait."

 

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14 minutes ago, dcbc said:

Here's what I found.  It doesn't appear to be the same ones in that link.

 

"In 1957, the [company] went international by constructing an 1100-mile natural gas pipeline in South America from the Bolivian border to Buenos Aires, Argentina.  The Argentina pipeline led to another . . . project, which was the engineering and construction of an Argentine petrochemical complex.  This complex used the new raw materials brought by the pipeline for the first synthetic rubber plant in South America in a cooperative undertaking called PASA."

Looks like no.  But...they surely shared experiences of great bife de chorizo, many glasses of Malbec, and sharing endless cups of mate with strangers and friends alike.  Also, sent you a DM.

Edited by Brisketexan
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16 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Yep.  My kids spent time with my dad, even recording him telling them stories about his life.  Obviously....they did that before he died (our Ouija board is broken).  We shouldn't wait till people are gone to tell their stories.

Just like we shouldn't wait to tell the people we love that we love them.

My dad had a favorite joke.  He used to tell it with some regularity.  My mom always rolled her eyes, but he loved it and kind of liked that she was sick of hearing it.  When I was a kid, I asked him to tell it and recorded him on an old Panasonic tape recorder.  I wish like hell I still had that tape.  I've got one old video where you can hear his voice.  I swear, the man gargled with gravel. 

 

Fast forward (no pun intended).  My mom remarried in the early 2000s.  During their marriage, her then-husband finished and self-published his autobiography for his family and loved ones.  It was so interesting and helped me get to know him better.  A few years later, my mom wrote and published her own, and it is priceless, not only for her story, but for part of my dad's as well.  I've only read it once---I read it once to my older son a little each night at bedtime.  I barely made it through the part about my dad's passing.  I tried to get her to make an audiobook so I could have a recording of her voice.  But the voicemails I saved will have to do as her health started to deteriorate around that time.

 

Anyway, I really came to appreciate that joke over the years.  I'm of the mind that everyone should know two jokes, a dirty one, and a clean one.  I don't know if he had a dirty one, thought he used to have a bunch of inappropriate diddies he'd sing from time to time.  I've adopted his joke as my clean one.  It goes

 

There's this fellow.  He's on a business trip.  He checks into the hotel.  As he's checking in, he asks, where can a man get a drink around here.  The maître d' tells him, "Oh, the hotel has a beautiful rooftop bar.  Just take the elevator to the top floor.  So the man goes to his room, unpacks, and heads up to the roof to see this bar.  He gets off the elevator and this bar is really something; you can see the whole city.  He goes up to the bar, pulls up next to the only other guy there, and orders a drink. 

As he sips his drink, he looks around and asks the bartender, "Say, anybody ever have a few too many and stumble over the side. 

The other guy at the bar pipes up, "It's really something, there's and air-vent system that can sense when someone falls over the side, and if that happens, it'll kick on and pop 'em right back on the roof."

"Get out of here," the businessman replies.

"No, really, I'll show you," the man says as he walks toward the edge of the rooftop.  Then, he steps off the side, and a second later, like magic, he pops right back up onto the rooftop, and ambles back over to the bar.

"I've got to try this!" the businessman explains as he hurries over to the edge.  He steps off the roof, and plummets to his death.

The bartender takes his drink and begins wiping off the bar with a towel.  He looks at the man sitting at the bar, shaking his head, and says, "Superman, what do you do those kinds of things?"

 

And that, is my dad's "Superman Joke."

 

 

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20 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Looks like no.  But...they surely shared experiences of great bife de chorizo, many glasses of Malbec, and sharing endless cups of mate with strangers and friends alike.  Also, sent you a DM.

It's on my bucket list.  He loved Buenos Aires.  Here's a picture on one of his stops on the way down.  The kids in town were all in for the photo-op.

curt-with-plane-in-argentina.jpg

Edited by dcbc
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Awesome thread about a bunch of awesome Dads.

My Dad is still living and making memories with us.  One thing about my Dad is that he is big joker, and nearly every joke starts off as a serious story that eventually goes off the rails.  He's polished this type of delivery into a fine art.  It's such a common schtick though, that he can no longer pull it off with family members, as they immediately sense that there is a punchline coming.  It's no surprise that my Dad is very outgoing and gregarious.  In my opinion, he is continually on a search for an unsuspecting audience.

Growing up, I though my Dad was the funniest person on the planet.  He had a funny song for nearly any situation.  It wasn't until I was in my 20's and actually heard a Smothers Brothers album that I realized my Dad had stolen every single bit from them.

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