Memorials and Memory

  The purpose of memorials, it must be, is to assure lasting memories after all remembrance is gone. Because after your contemporaries are gone, only the next generations of your children and grandchildren will remember who you were or that you ever existed, except for those who may pursue the arid history of genealogy.
   The memories I have of my father appear from time to time as if served up on a sheaf. He would sit on the front porch on summer evenings after supper, and be greeted by almost everyone  who walked into the store, or down the street, though only a few families lived on River Road.  He was respected as a solid, hard-working man of his time, not much different from others of his generation.
    He played the violin, the fiddle he called it. A self taught musician who went from farm boy to owning a fiddle, though how that came about I never knew. His musical talent evidently did not transfer to his heirs who had much more opportunity but no heart for a musical career.  That's how my father met my mother though, playing at the country dances she and her sister attended.
   My father had another talent that did not survive his generation: he could build a solid structure out of nothing but recycled scrap materials. The outbuildings he constructed were true and sturdy. They lasted many years after his death.I see him working on the building frame, always with a homemade plumbline--a heavy washer on a string served the purpose as well as any tool ever sold.
 He almost always wore a hat outside, a fedora.  In his earlier days, one of straw in the summer, but in later years, he wore the felt hat year round. And when he was able to afford the luxury of buying himself  an electric power drill, he delighted in using the buffer to shine his shoes.
   He read every night after supper: the newspaper of course, and True Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, and True Detective.  I think Dorothy inherited his affinity for crime solving stories.  He did the daily crossword puzzle, and later the word jumbles when they appeared in the paper.  He taught me to play checkers and I felt proud when he complimented my skills, comparing me to some of the best players who competed at the old train station. And he kept a bottle of Saratoga Vichy Water by the side of his chair, and occasionally indulged in a pint of Sealtest Maple Walnut ice cream. (Which only he liked back then.)
  My father attended church every Sunday.  He sat about 4 or 5 rows from the back of the church, always on the left side. For some reason, never explained, he decried what he called "front row Catholics."
  His sense of humor was somewhat unexpected and even more unpredictable.  He once bought a magic kit that included both a Dribble Glass and a Whoopie Cushion, and utilized both on the unsuspecting.  He enjoyed Jack Benny's radio show, kind of pleased when people said he looked like him. He admired the voice of Caruso and so Mario Lanza.  One of the very few movies we ever went to as a family was "The Great Caruso."
      We didn't own a television until the mid 1950's and he then enjoyed watching one of his favorite sports--boxing. I used to watch the Friday Night Fights with him after others had gone to bed.  They came on at 10 p.m., I recall.  And then Dragnet. That was on Thursdays and was a family must-watch show,
  Of course he was an avid and lifelong Democrat.  The party stood for the working class and he was a true proponent of labor unions, anathema then for the Republican party.  Anyone who wanted an exciting conversation had no difficulty bringing up a topic.  He was loyal to what he believed to be true.
   When the dog that was mine from when I  was 8 years old died some 11 years later, it fell to my father to bury her.  He ordinarily did not give in much to emotion or to frills of any kind, but he said he could not bear to put Lassie in the cold bare ground, so he built her what he called a "rough box."  I didn't watch but he laid her in that wooden box and buried her in my mother's flower garden. That is what I  remember.