It was memories weekend. Like looking over to find that "Oh, Dad has
dozed off," and then, "Oh, so has Aunt Becca." And her husband Olaf,
too. Then, standing up, twirling around in my Aunt's living room,
social proprieties gone and laughing at the craziness of watching the
Olympics with three sleeping octogenarians.
My Dad, otherwise known as "Coach" from years of coaching tennis and
basketball, had his sixtieth high school class reunion in Stoughton,
Wisconsin last weekend. We drove for six hours, and the next day I
dropped the short guy off at a house full of grey haired peers,
"Why," he asked, "have the women changed so much, and the men so
little?"
It was a trip for new memories and old. Like watching the gymnastics
at 10:59 p.m. in the house down the street from Becca, after my
father's brother and his wife have gone to bed, and then, the clock
chiming, the Olympics disappearing from my mind, and only the clock
is left. THE clock. A forty year old memory surges up, it's 1956, and
I'm falling asleep in my Grandmother's house to the sound of that
clock chiming. And there it was, still chiming, on the top of the
television in my uncle's retirement condo. That, plus the sound of a
certain kind of bird, and Grandma Stokstad putting wheat germ on her
toast, the only memories left of Stoughton, Wisconsin in the
50's.
And all weekend, calling for Delaine. "Hi, Delaine, I'm in town, what
a surprise, call me at Becca's." "Hi, Delaine, it's 10 a.m., where
are you? Sleepin' late? Get up guy.... Call me." "Hi Delaine, guess
you're out of town... maybe you're at the Oshkosh Air Show... Who
knows. Hope you come back, we're outta here monday morning... Call
me."
Delaine Feggestad, the dream uncle, on my mother's side. The Marine
Corps Korean War vet, airline pilot, country western dancer, man
about town killer handsome cool guy who used to fly me around Lake
Kegonsa at the age of seven in a Piper Cub to buzz the cows and yell.
And even though he claims he wasn't the uncle who gave me the mohawk
and then delivered me back to the family, up from Iowa visiting
relatives, who would put it past him?
Not a word from Delaine on Thursday, nothing on Friday, nothing on
Saturday, and then, Bam!, he calls on Sunday with his midget car
racetrack plans for Sunday night or see you for lunch at the VFW with
Coach on Monday at 11. I caught him that night at the end of the
races, followed him and his cowboy booted girlfriend back to his
rented farmhouse, we talked until 1:15 a.m., and then I slept in the
van.
"Race Car Fegge" said the shirt that Delaine gave to me the next
morning from his basement supply dump along with an army blanket,
various other shirts, a jacket, a down vest or two, some socks, a
hat, a bunch of silk glove liners for women, and a two hundred dollar
pair of cowboy boots. "Can't wear 'em. You break 'em in and I'll get
'em back from you in a couple of years."
When I was seven years old, Dad and I were standing in a shoe store
in Waterloo, Iowa, and I wanted to know if I could have the cowboy
boots. Then just this year the most beautiful vegan on the planet
wrinkled her nose at what she thought were leather shoes on my feet.
They weren't, and we didn't have the money, but ever since age seven
cowboy boots feel like playful freedom, wealth and independence.
Thank heaven that vegan left town, and I can safely wear these red
and black stylin' cowskin beauties, if only to make an inner child
completely happy.
Dad and Delaine. The final lunch at the VFW a study in disappointment
as the sincere, kind, considerate and Christian Coach Stokstad sat
and listened while the wild, brash, ex-marine told stories and jokes.
Miraculously the political joke he told was harmless, free of
innuendo or "language," but he said g__ damn once and Dad protested
and without thinking Delaine said it again, and then there was the
talkative, friendly Coach sitting ashen-faced while the lunch wound
down into bill paying silence.
Yes, Dad and Delaine didn't blend well in real life. But they made a
wonderful mix of images in my head.
Dad, insisting on getting out of the car at the old Mundt Park
baseball field to relive his home run with the bases loaded and
pointing out where each of his teammates was standing, by name.
Delaine driving four miles out of his way on the way back from the
racetrack, only to stop in front of a farmhouse and barn at 1 a.m.
and get out of his truck, walk back to my van and point out that see,
that window was your mother's, and that was where he slept along with
his brother, and that's the barn, right there, where your grandfather
shot himself in the right temple one day, wearing his boots on the
wrong feet, not in his right mind.
Searching for Dad's old high school and finding it completely gone,
just a parking lot.
Delaine yelling from two feet away for dramatic effect that all of us
Norwegians with dark hair are black Norwegians and that's because the
Vikings captured women from Africa in their travels and brought them
back and bred with them and you can tell because we get keloid scars
look right here in the medical dictionary see how keloid scarring is
a negroid tendency. So we're all part black, kid, might as well face
it.
Dad talking about his first kiss, which didn't happen until he was in
college, coming back from Madison to date the Stoughton high school
girls.
Delaine talking about the ten thousand Koreans he killed during the
war, how he thinks that's why when he "died" during his heart attack
he fell backwards into a dark pit and so now he knows where he's
going when he dies for real so why should he worry.
Playing pool with Dad and Becca and Olaf and teaching Olaf the high
five after his winning shot.
Delaine explaining how the Koreans didn't know how to use their WW2
era German hand grenades, so the Marines would activate them properly
and lob them right back.
Driving back to Iowa while Dad talked about Helen Smithburg, Elaine
Tonneson, Dorothy Sonstag, Barbara Mills, bringing up an image of my
dad at eighteen, young, romantic, ardent, walking in wonder through a
1930's Stoughton sprinkled with Scandinavian angels, until, one day,
he sees my Mother on yes, that corner right there, and it's all over,
all the other angels disappear, and she is all he can see until he
has her.
Delaine explaining how my Dad destroyed my mom's life. Dad musing
about what it would have been like to marry a woman who didn't go
insane. And Mom, standing on that street corner, a dazzling smile on
her face, and, like a beautiful but cracked easter egg, a history of
depression in the genes, maybe started, says Delaine, by a first
cousins marriage on her father's side.
Delaine saying, "I'm proud of you." For turning out masculine despite
my momma's boy qualities in childhood.
And then Dad saying, as I dropped him off at the retirement home back
in Des Moines, " I wish we were just starting out."