The Things We Did, Part I

This post is by Don Weiss, writer of murder mysteries, pharmacist, friend. Part II will describe some of my parents' worst nightmares when I was beyond their reach.

                                                     

I’d like to see a show of hands. How many of us remember playing with mercury as kids? We watched in fascination as the round shiny silver blobs coalesced into one larger blob, as we rolled the mercury around in our hands in blissful ignorance of the danger. Of course our mouths were, and maybe still are, loaded with mercury amalgam fillings, but no matter. We were curious about everything; our bodies, the girl up the street, and of course if you were a boy and possibly a girl, the space program—which brings me to our topic.

I grew up in a family where money was scarce. I wore hand-me-down clothes and played with hand-me-down toys—the best of which were from the AC Gilbert Company Hall of Science: The Erector Set, the Gilbert Microscope and the greatest toy of all, the Chemistry Set. 

What were our parents thinking— giving a child a chemistry set?  Here ya go junior; here’s carte-blanche to blow up the house and poison the cat.  I can still picture the rows of colorful chemicals in small bottles.  Didn’t mom and dad get the hint?  Let’s see; we were transfixed by rockets and satellites, combined with the fact that we had very little money—hmmm—let’s make our own black powder. We already had the charcoal and the sulfur, all we needed was the potassium nitrate and we were off to the races or the moon, or more likely, to kingdom come.

There we were in my friend’s bedroom mixing our own black powder that was to be loaded into tubes made from many layers of paper and fitted with a balsa wood nose cone and cardboard fin and a nozzle made of tin foil.  We guessed at the proportions. Too much charcoal, not enough sulfur, a smidge of potassium nitrate.  This was science, and we were experimenting. If our parents only knew, they would have been so proud of us.

Then, came the moment of truth!  Armed with homemade fuses and matches, we took the missile outside to the nearby field where the huge radio transmitter stood.  We carefully placed the rocket on its homemade launch stand, lit the fuse and ran like hell.  The rocket danced violently for a few seconds and fizzled out. It didn’t fly but it also didn’t blow up—oh well, back to the drawing board we went to try again. You see my fellow sexagenarians, these toys satisfied our natural curiosity and they taught us perseverance.  They also taught us not to tell our parents what we were up to.

Those days are all behind us now.  Children’s toys today are microprocessor-driven, digital marvels that ostensibly improve junior’s hand-eye coordination— but so what.  With our toys, we dreamed of the moon and the stars, built things with our hands, and through it all grew up and managed not to blow up the house. 

My Father's Voice

This guest post is by pharmacist, author of murder mysteries, and friend, Don Weiss. 

My father died on August 8^th, 1982.  I was 30 years old.  The day of his funeral dawned hot and sunny. I was amazed at the number of people who showed up at the cemetery. People whom I knew and people who were perfect strangers. The common denominator, my father had touched these people’s lives in some way. Enough so that they wanted to honor the man they knew in life.

My dad was a member of Tom Brokaw’s “greatest generation.” He served honorably in World War II as a combat field medic, earning a purple heart and a bronze star at the age of 24. 

What I remember about my dad was his sense of humor, his humility, and how he had the ability to make you feel safe when he was around. He was completely dedicated to his sons and his wife, and worked twelve hours a day for as long as I can remember. I can still remember the sound of his car pulling into the driveway and how good that felt.

Going with dad to see the Phillies play at old Connie Mack Stadium and going with him to watch the Eagles play, and the day he took my brother and me to the zoo (to give my mother a break). Trips to the Franklin Institute and the Academy of Natural Sciences and never protesting when my mother would plan a family outing on my dad’s only day off.

When I was a rebellious fifteen year-old, I mouthed off to my father. He smacked me across the face at something faster than the speed of light. It wasn’t a hard slap; it was more for the shock value, but boy did it get my attention. It was the first and last time it happened and with the exception of a brief spanking when I was little, it was the only other time that my father laid a hand on me.

My dad would never come to the table unless he was showered, shaved and dressed and I never saw him get something from the kitchen without asking my mother if he could get her anything.

When I was seventeen and still rebellious, my dad suffered his first of three heart attacks. Two years earlier he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Both began to rob dad of his vitality and I had to grow up fast to help my mother care for him.

He recovered well enough to go back to work, but he wasn’t the same guy. On the eve of his second heart attack, I was home when it happened. With dad in the backseat, I drove the car to the hospital. Again dad recovered enough to go back to work but three years later at the age of 60, he retired on disability. He cooked meals and did other work around the house as much as his physical condition would allow. On rainy days, he would wait at the bus stop for my mom holding an umbrella. Three years later he succumbed to his third heart attack. Parkinson’s had taken a huge toll on him as well, and he was only a shell of the man that I knew.

My huge regret in life is not spending more time with my dad during those last years. I had moved away seven years earlier and only got to see my folks two or three times a year. I wish that I could have talked with him more. The last words I spoke to him were “Hi dad, how are you?” All he said was “I’m fine; I’ll put your mother on.”

Now that I’m going through my own period of self doubt, I can only guess at what advice father would give me.  All I can hope for is that I’m as good a man.