Seventy

 

I am certain that when my father was born, the doctor was surprised that the slippery little infant he was holding, still attached to my grandmother by umbilical cord, was smiling at him and capable of speech.

“Well hi,” said a squeaky voice coming from the yet unnamed little Ronny Damm.  Then he flashed his eyes and a tiny, toothless smile.

I doubt that my father cried when he was born, but I’m sure that when he left, all the nurses were his friends and he had tee times set with all the doctors twenty-five years in the future.

That was seventy years ago tomorrow.  That means tomorrow is my father’s seventieth birthday.  Seventy years of smiles and greetings of welcome.  Seventy years of quiet, reasoned thinking.  Seventy years of a strange sense of humor.  Seventy years of support.

One day about fifteen years ago, my father came to visit me when I was just out of college and working at a music store.  As my shift ended, my father and I walked together through the large parking lot in the early-evening sun.  That’s when the sun makes us all feel a little taller when we look at our silhouettes racing us across the ground.  But that day I noticed something very strange, something impossible.  My father was casting two shadows, one right behind the other.  It’s not really possible to cast double shadows with a single bright light source.  It puzzled me and I told dad to stop.  We stopped.

“Wow, Dad, you have two shadows!” I exclaimed as I pointed to the ground for him to see.

The shadow behind the first one appeared to be pointing too.

“No, that’s your shadow, dumbass,” was not what came out of my father’s mouth.  It was certainly appropriate, but my father has a gift of holding his tongue, choosing his words carefully and then seizing the moment to activate my brain and possibly teach me something.

“Are you sure?” he asked, sparing my shame, but acknowledging my statement with stifled enjoyment.

The thing is, we were both right.  Dad hadn’t cast two shadows, but two shadows of my dad had been cast.  One was of the man, who through the simple act of living his life and leading his son by example had crafted a similar walk, build and manner of carrying himself that was realized in me.

Some people say with uncomfortable realization “Oh my God, I’ve become my father.”  Then they ponder the idea and eat an entire “family sized” bag of Wavy Lays potato chips.  Some people are very disappointed.  I wasn’t.

I was shocked.  I thought it was funny, peculiar and I was very surprised, but I wasn’t disappointed.  Deep down, what I was feeling was that I was going to be okay.  If so much of my father rubbed off on me that I cast the same Damm shadow, some of his better inner qualities were probably present too.

Sure, he passed on some heart disease and some sloppy laundry habits, but the good far outweighs the bad.  That ability to shut up and choose words carefully comes in awfully handy when in heated arguments.  It has proved useful especially when I am using his rock-solid philosophies of doing the right thing even if it is hard.

My parents taught me the importance of friendship and the care and maintenance of a relationship, any relationship.  When I was four, my father took me to the local restaurant in Kittitas, the B&B.  It wasn’t a bed and breakfast, maybe it was—maybe it was a terrible bed and breakfast.  No, it was a restaurant.  Dad took me there for a Pepsi some days.  (I know, four-year-old, Pepsi, diabetes, shut up, it’s a lovely memory.)

It was immediately after we had moved to Kittitas from some forty miles away.  Sure it was nice to be on an outing with Dad, but the main reason we were there was that Dad was there to meet the people.  He was new in town and wanted to participate.  Participation meant making friends and making friends starts with introducing yourself and building trust.  It was as important to him as it was to pay the mortgage or change the oil in the car.  Building a network of friendship to my parents, both my mom and my dad, was as important as a balanced diet, maybe more.

Seventy years of friendships.  My parents have lived in Kittitas now for more than 35 years and have an amazing amount of friendships that extend outside of the Kittitas Valley and beyond.  Dad made his with handshakes and smiles, real ones, the kind you don’t get from salesmen or politicians.  This is the quality that I am most thankful to have had passed to me.

Ron Damm is cunning, almost to the point of a grifter.  He excels at what some would call the “low-brow sports.”  I remember one night, I was playing at a bar in Ellensburg and all my friends were there from college.  I was up on stage playing my drums and watching the crowd.  My dad came in and was recognized by a few of my pals and invited to join their game at the pool table.  I watched my father lose the first game, unable to hear what was going on at the table, but it played out like I was watching an old silent film.  My father gestured after defeat to play again, but I could see the question on his lips as if the decibels off the PA speakers were barely audible.  “Loser buys the next pitcher?”  They shook on it.

Dad ran the table.

But it has been like that with other contests too.  I remember playing in a home poker tournament with my father of some ten players including my wife and father.  I’m not sure how the first five players got knocked out, but my father’s disarming and unassuming charm had complete control over the final five players.  My father came in first, I came in second and my wife came in third.  I can assure you that I had NOTHING to do with how I finished.  That outcome was engineered by a man who probably cut his teeth on a deck of 52.

These two stories might offer circumstantial evidence against my father’s ability to run a hustle, but the next is a smoking gun.

When Wendy and I purchased our first home in Kent, my father brought over a house warming gift for our yard.  It was not one, but two sets of bocce balls.  It’s a lawn bowling game played professionally in Italy and as something to do with the hand not holding your domestic beer in the United States.

I told my dad that my lawn wasn’t big enough for two sets of balls and asked if he had made a mistake at the store or was just losing his mind.  He indicated that he was not losing his mind and that the sets were picked up as a bargain somewhere so he got them cheap.  Then the master tipped his hand.

“So what you do is, you use one set to practice up in your back yard and get really good,” Dad said, “then when you’re really good, you invite your buddies over to use the other, brand-new set.”

My mouth was agape at what my father was saying.  He was giving me the tools and the know-how, to hustle my unsuspecting friends with a backyard party game.  It was simple genius, slightly underhanded but shared with love.  Not cheating, it wasn’t ever about cheating as much as it was assumed misdirection.  It was also a peek behind the curtain into the mind of a man I had suspected for some time to be a master trickster.

I began to chuckle, “Dad, you are a dirty, rotten, bastard.”

Dad just smiled back, “well,” he said, “now you can be too.”

I’ll take it dad.  I’ll take all of it.  You’re a good man with a loving yet diseased heart who I am lucky to have learned to be a father from.  I’m proud of you as my dad and love watching you be a grandfather to my son.  I love you.

You don’t look seventy to me.  You look like the hard-working man who would walk out to the baseball diamond to watch me suck, or the guy who taught me to bait a hook without stabbing my finger.

But I’m going to take your word for it that you’re turning the big seven-oh.

Happy birthday dad!  I hope you make it to Christmas, and that’s the Damm truth.