Yellowriter

 

To me, the beers cans were the most interesting part of the project. I can’t say how he got the idea, but my father likes to make Christmas trees out of beer cans. Don’t laugh because he is quite the aficionado at constructing these alcohol-based ornaments. He spends about sixteen hours gluing and setting the lights into his creations. The result is a three foot by two foot monstrosity that looks hideous until it is plugged in. He makes them only for people who have had a significant impact on his life. I’ve had a Marv Powers Christmas tree in my front window for years each December and the presence of the thing always proves to be one of those conversation pieces that people must talk about.

Every family has a leader. In tense situations, perfect strangers seem to know which member in a family can make the hard decisions. I sat in the waiting room at the hospital, drinking black coffee from a thermos and reading a John LeCarre spy novel. There was not a lot of mystery in my real life. In fact, in one of his books LeCarre referred to it as “The theatre of the real.” In my personal production my father was having surgery to remove a tumor from his colon. It was stage four, which whispers a six percent survival rate. Dad’s younger brother had died of cancer a few years back. Uncle Bill was only fifty-seven when the Grim Reaper came a calling.

Uncle Bill, like all of my father’s relatives, was critical of anything that deviated from a typical Midwest lifestyle. Playing cards, visiting and eating pretty much summed it up. Most of the time discussion about what would be the next huge meal came up before the current bill of fare had been consumed. Uncle Bill was born in Nebraska and he lived and died in the cornhusker state.

My father broke the Midwest mold and moved to California in 1955. Disneyland opened that year, but the laid off steam engine train mechanic didn’t have the extra money to visit the place right away. Instead he looked furiously for a job. A friend suggested that he apply at the Edwards Air Force Base. He started out for the main base early the next morning.

The day before, in the afternoon, a scene took place at the rocket site of Edwards, situated eighteen miles east of the main base. A laborer got the call that he had inherited a substantial sum of money so he quit. A man by the name of Bill Lawrence did the hiring so he called the employment branch, instructing that person to have the worker at the top of the waiting list meet him at the rocket site gate at eight the next morning.

My father missed the turn to the main base and ended up at the rocket site gate at around eight o’clock in the morning. When the tall, lanky man in the white shirt and tie asked if he was the man for the job my father replied in the affirmative. Near the end of the work day, while my father was moving into civilian base housing the apology came in from the employment branch.

“Bill, sorry, but I forgot to call the first man on the list,” the man said.

“That’s all right. I got a guy already and I think he might work out,” Bill assured. Thirty years later, on his last day of work before my dad’s retirement, my father and Bill Lawrence took the same walk from the gate to the buildings that dotted the hill up on the rocket site.

Doctor Paz, of The City of Hope, picked me out as the family leader. He smiled in the most winning way and assured my sister, wife and I that he had got all of the cancer. We rejoiced and hugged one another. I felt a pair of eyes on me and peered into the hallway. It was the doctor beckoning for me to meet him down the hall. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

“The tumor is stage four and has broken through the wall. I haven’t removed a tumor of that mass in many years,” he began. I was stunned.

“What should I do?” I asked.

“Make him do the chemo I set up. It will be a long and difficult nine months if he makes it.”

“If?”

“Yes, if. Does your father have a will?” he asked.

Cancer is a death sentence for many people, but to my father it was merely a major inconvenience. He started competitive running in 1970 when he was 42 years old. He has run and won countless races and has a room in his house set aside for the plethora of awards and trophies he has amassed. He’s run in the Boston Marathon and has won the Pike’s Peak marathon twice. His record at the Big Sur Marathon remains intact to this day. His anti Midwest lifestyle of exercise, vitamins and healthy eating made him a source of ridicule whenever he went home for a visit. One of his rituals was to eat tomatoes every day. He also mixed a nasty concoction in his blender made of skim milk, brewer’s yeast, desiccated liver and a banana. He called the slime “Kick-a-poo juice” and drank it for breakfast religiously for years.

My father is not in touch, at all, with his feminine side and is not very emotional, to say the least. I’ve never seen him cry, even when my mother died, and he has never told me that he loves me. That’s okay with me. I know he does. Because of this we discussed his cancer in sterile terms and never let the conversations be about how we would both handle his impending demise. After half of the chemo was over we sat in Doctor Paz’s office together, waiting for the verdict. A CAT scan had been performed the previous week and we were there to get the news about whether or not the cancer had returned. He sat on the metal examining table looking more like a scared kid than a man in his mid-seventies. Finally, as we waited he asked the hard question.

“If the cancer comes back what does that mean, more surgery and chemo?” he asked.

“Not at your age, dad. It’s a quality of life issue,” I answered. He hesitated.

“So if he comes in and says the cancer is back…”

“Then you’ll probably die in the next few months,” I said, completing his sentence. After a minute he smiled and told me that he had had a good life and fostered no regrets.

As the doctor tarried, which I interpreted as a bad sign, I thought about my father’s friend and running buddy, Doctor Ollie Biederman. I had been e-mailing Dr. Ollie, a retired general practice physician, who resides in San Diego. He had sent me many a depressing e-mail telling me that my father’s chances were not very good. Ollie had been a great comfort for my dad and I wrote to tell him how much I appreciated the support he and his wife, Carol, had given my father.

The doctor came in and gave a wan smile. He was about five foot ten inches tall, clean shaven and had salt and pepper curly hair. His nose was prominent and his eyes were dark and intelligent. I had joked to my wife that the good-looking Doctor Paz probably got more action than most guys could handle. I was the first to speak.

“What’s the verdict, doc?”

“No cancer. You’re clean,” he said with an electric grin. My father jumped off of the table and we hugged. I think I might have seen a tear in his eye, as I thought of kick-a-poo juice and tomatoes.

In the parking lot my dad told me that he thanked God for giving him a second chance. That was a mighty profession from Marvin Earl Powers, because he is not a religious man. He decided that he would make Dr. Paz one of his beer can Christmas trees.

“I think he would appreciate a Star of David, like the one you made Ollie more,” I suggested.

“Why is that?”

“Because Dr. Paz is Jewish.”

“How can you tell?” he asked in amazement.

“Well, “I explained, “His first name is Isaac, he went to school in Israel, and he wears a Star of David on a gold chain around his neck.” Dad, in his stubbornness, decided to make a Christmas tree anyway. I, being the good son, volunteered to drink the beer.

Years passed and I noticed that it was getting harder for my father and me to spend time together. Major League Baseball had come up with the idea to hold a World Baseball Classic, which would be a sixteen country tournament to see who had the best baseball team in the world. A friend of mine bought two tickets on E-bay for the final game at Petco Park in San Diego. He paid one hundred and twenty five dollars a ticket and planned to take his son to the championship event. I told my father of my friend’s tickets and he told me that he was jealous.

On the Saturday before the World Baseball Classic Final my friend called and offered to sell me the tickets. I called my dad and asked if he wanted to go. To my surprise he said that he “would love to go.” I then hemmed and hawed over the price of the tickets. My wife sensed my financial dilemma and seemed to read my mind.

“You’re upset over the price, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Yeah. Two hundred and fifty bucks is a lot for a ball game,” I replied. Annie was very close to her own father, who died, unexpectedly, a few years ago at the age of fifty-eight.

“How much do you think I’d spend to spend a day with my dad?” she asked. I bought the tickets.

The day was long and just about perfect. We left early and took turns driving. We first stopped at Tom’s off of I-15, which is a fun place to shop and have a meal. My father looked disapprovingly at the polish sausage sandwich I got while he doctored up his veggie burger with onions and pickles. He is in his seventies and he still worries about cholesterol.

“You know how much fat is in that thing?” he growled.

“A lot,” I answered, as I chewed the tender pork, “and it’s worth every gram.” Good thing I passed on the fries!

We visited with Doctor Ollie and Carol for an hour before the game and then headed to Old Town San Diego to catch the trolley. Because of the limited parking in the Gas lamp District, this is the best way to get to the ballpark. As we wait to board the train, my father, the laid-off steam engine mechanic, kneels down and studies the power transfer that moves the train along. I know what he is thinking. He can never see anything mechanical without wondering how it works. He discusses his findings and I pretend to understand.

The game is great and Japan beats Cuba for the first WBC Title. We have dined on fish tacos and clam chowder in bread bowls, both of which meet with his dietary criteria. We talk for hours on the drive home and enjoy the comfortable silences that break up our numerous topics. We stop for coffee in Norco and then get caught in a rainstorm that slows our progress. Going over the Cajon Pass we are stuck in traffic. The snow falls like cream pies and we wait for nearly an hour for the tow trucks to clear the accident up ahead. It is then that I regret that I am the last Baby Boomer without a cell phone. Soon we are on our way and I drop him off at two-thirty in the misty morning.

My wife is awake as I crawl into bed from my long day of driving, visiting, and baseball. She asks if it was a good time and I tell her that it was an almost perfect day despite the snow. She nods off to sleep and I lay awake thinking about how much I like my dad. I feel sleep coming on as I ponder about baseball, snowfall, and Christmas trees made from beer cans. To the casual observer these items seem totally random and unrelated, but to me, they will always be reminders of my father and how he was granted a second chance at this thing we call life.