Montpelier
My daughter-in-law in Arkansas, ever the perfect homemaker and hostess, leaves Dove chocolate bites in little bowls around her house. My son, who nibbles on them now and then, likes to read the thoughts printed on the inside of the wrappers. The other day he came upon one that, as he puts it, “started a torrent of memories.” It read, “Quote your Dad.”
To my delight, he took it seriously, made a list, and sent me the first few that came to his mind. That has started another torrent of memories.
Brother was not an easy kid to raise. Unlike his conspicuously self-contained older sister, he was born bellowing; you never had to wonder where he was. Quite early in life he cracked the windshield of my Bug with his little hammer, which ever afterward was called a “no-no.”
On Saturday mornings, when otherwise I might have slept in an extra half-hour, he climbed up onto our bed, sat on my chest, and hollered, “Hey, Dad! Let’s get inna da truck and go ta da dump!”
One summer day off the coast of Maine in a thick fog, we were put-putting very carefully in a small sloop across the route of the fearsome Vinalhaven Ferry. The kids were playing down below forward in the V-cabin. I was listening hard for the slightest throb of engines, when suddenly there was a tremendous blast of sound. Scared the living hell out of me; I thought we were goners. It was just Brother, down under the open hatch, shouting, “Dad!”
I had no idea, all those years, that he was actually listening to me as I dispensed wise sayings for various occasions. He asked to borrow the small truck one day, for example, to drive the mile or so to the ski jump for practice. “Yep,” I said. “But be careful. It’s slick as a beaver slide on that back road.” No problem; off he went. And came walking back into the yard 20 minutes later asking if I might fire up the big truck and bring a chain. He was into the snowbank right up to his windows. No harm done.
Which brings me to a couple of bits of advice he’s remembered. The first: “The only way to find out how fast that truck will go around that corner is to end up in the woods.” Pretty good, I think. Another: “Four-wheel drive, eh? Don’t forget you’ve got only four-wheel brakes, just like everybody else.”
I won’t go into my one attempt at sex education, which he not only misinterpreted entirely, but went home and repeated to his mother.
We worked together quite a bit on various construction jobs. He picked up the term, “Dubber,” which I think he still uses to describe incompetence. A favorite of mine was, “Keep your mouth shut for five minutes, and you might learn somethin’.” When one of the carpenters went for the third time onto workers’ compensation for an injury, I said, “Some guys get hurt; some don’t.” I don’t recall the occasion that elicited, “Making it look easy is the hard part.”
One day he managed to run two fingers through the gears of a concrete mixer. They came out looking a little strange. “Ah, it only hurts for a little while,” I assured him. “Better soak it in cold water and put a splint on it.” Later we punched holes in the fingernails to let the pressure out, and he was right as rain in just a couple of days.
In domestic affairs, “Do what your mother said,” was a favorite of mine.
And we must have spent more time outdoors than I remember, because he’s got a raft of my comments, many of which he’s termed “massive understatements.” If we woke to a frozen water pail, I’d allow that it was “kinda nippy this morning.” That one was good for winter construction jobs, as well.
“Canoes are the best way to get around,” I often commented, because you could take more stuff with you than if you were backpacking it. An approaching whitecapped lake, he recalls me warning mildly, “Might get a bit choppy.”
Sometimes it was necessary to encourage the troops in wearying situations. To the age-old question of “How far is it now?” the standard answer always was, “Prob’ly just over that rise.” And eventually, of course, it always was. In most of New England, unless you get above timberline, it’s almost impossible to know how near you are to the top of a climb. So I always peered intently through the trees until I could announce to my suffering companion, “There! You see how the sky is visible down low in the trees? Means we’re closin’ in on it.”
We had some good times, Brother and I. He was my bowman on the Allagash River when he was 9, and did a great job of it. We had his 2-year-old sister in the middle of the canoe in a sleeper suit and life jacket, and brought her through Chase Rips so smoothly she never woke up from her nap.
I wish he lived closer; we could still do some great stuff together. I’m so tickled he came up with all these old chestnuts.
He even remembered what to say when severely wounded: “By God, that smarts!”
Willem Lange can be reached at willem.lange@comcast.net.
