A Daughters Love

I wish I had a good line to start this with. All good stories and books start with these wonderful lines. Call me Ishmael — Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851), It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859), “Dear Penthouse, I never thought it’d happen to me..” Penthouse Letters, (every single one). I don’t have a good line to open this with. I just have a title. One that has been rattling around in my brain for months now. Unfortunately, whenever I write it in my head I seem to skip around. I’ll trying not to do that here (fingers crossed) but I’m making no promises.

I was born into an upper lower-class/lower middle-class family. What does that mean, you may wonder. It means that we got a disconnect notice for electric and we knew that we had ten days after the date on the bill to get it paid. We might be down there three minutes before the close of business on the tenth day but the amount to pay to avoid disconnection got paid. It meant that eating out was a treat and the fancy restaurant came once a year at income tax time and that was a meal at Red Lobster. My dad worked, when he worked, as a truck driver. My mom as a manager at a transmission shop. When dad worked he was on the road a lot and mom was never home. This meant that I stayed by myself at a young age. I remember staying home from school sick by myself in elementary school with my mom calling me to check on me. I remember coming home after school to an empty house and doing my homework because I knew it was expected of me. But what I remember most is the fights and the alcohol. Maybe I shouldn’t say the most because there are good memories in there. They just seem to be muddle in with the others.

The best cherry coke I ever had I made myself. I was sitting on the bar at the local watering hole and the owner pulled out the biggest jar of cherries I had ever seen. It was beautiful and delicious and I can honestly say I have never tasted anything better to this day. I learned to play shuffleboard, pool, and put so many quarters in various video games I could probably buy a house if I had banked them. I knew at a young age that if mom or dad got a beer that meant there were two or three quarters in change sitting on the bar that were up for grabs. It all depended on the time of day. Nobody looked twice when I came in with either of them. The regular bar warmers would all watch their language when I was in there, in fact I heard more curse words at home than I ever did at the bar. Woe to the non-regular that came in and started slinging about the mighty ‘F’ word. A regular would get up and have a chat with them and I would get an apology from a grown man or woman and a couple quarters to go play the game. Halloween I would always stop by so my ‘Uncles’ could see my costume and the owner would take me behind the bar and lift me up and let me pick whatever candy bar I wanted from the shelf behind the bar. I got well wishes on my birthday. Candy on Valentines. Candy Canes at Christmas. Everyone in that bar watched me grow up until we moved away. To this day I still feel completely comfortable walking into any bar anywhere. All bars are the same to me. Some a bit rougher, some a bit wilder, some a bit weirder. In the end the make up of the clientele is the same as what I grew up with. To this day, some twenty odd years later, I can still remember the phone number for that bar. That is how many times I called to either talk to dad or mom. I even went to the funeral for the nice gentleman that owned the bar when he died.