Dad. William Wharton
with each meal. Not only that, we had to drink the pot liquor from those vegetables. I dreaded meals: string-bean juice, spinach juice, pea juice, carrot juice; we’d sit down and they’d be there, each in a separate glass. No matter what you did: salt, pepper, catsup; it all tasted like dishwater. Mother’d savor these juices as if they were the elixir of life; she was a big fan of Bernarr Macfadden. Dad never touched the stuff, and when Grandpop or Uncle Harry lived with us, they got off, too; but Joan and I were stuck.
Then, every morning, we had to slug down cod-liver oil. I think if old Bernarr said cow pee was good for you, vitamin P, she’d run around behind cows with a cup. When we complained too much about the codliver oil, she got a brand with mint in it, like oily chewing gum. She’d hide it in orange juice, fat, minty globules of oil floating on top.
Also there was brewer’s yeast. We had to take a slug of that every morning; the taste of rotted leaves and mold. This was supposed to have some other kind of vitamins in it. Mother knew about vitamins before they invented them. She ran her life, and ours, along the ‘live forever’ line. She was years ahead of her time. Now, with all the health food stores and health freaks, she’s actually more a hippy than I’ll ever be.
She’s right, it isn’t fair. She’ll never accept. I know. Right now, in her mind, she’s figuring some way to lick this heart attack. And it doesn’t involve lying around in bed; that’s for damned sure. I can see her inventing some crazy exercise for the heart. It’s wonderful she has that kind of gumption but this time it can do her in.
Dad and I get home in time for the soap operas. I go into the garden back room and collapse; the strain’s catching up with me. When I wake, I make more detailed lists for Dad. I break down a few jobs like cleaning the bathroom and defrosting the refrigerator.
When the soaps are over, Dad takes me out to his greenhouse. He’s a great one for starting plants from tiny cuttings, especially plants that don’t flower. He has an enormous variety of fancy, many-colored leaf plants. He has Popsicle sticks stuck beside each one with the Latin name, the date and place he found it.
It’s a genuine jungle. Dad’s always pinching cuttings of leaves or twigs from every interesting bush or plant he gets near. In Hawaii he must’ve snitched a hundred bits and pieces. He packed them in his suitcase with wet towels. I’m sure Mother wasn’t too enthusiastic but there’s no stopping him here. Then, somehow, he manages to grow plants from these tiny snips, sometimes only a leaf or a bit of stem.
He’s rigged a unique sprinkler system in the greenhouse to give a fine spray. It’s tied into a humidity gauge so it turns on automatically, keeping the place jungle fresh. It even smells like a jungle; you almost expect to hear parrots or monkeys screeching in the top branches of his creeping vines. Dad spends a fair part of his free time in the greenhouse. He’s more at home there than in the house.
Staking tomato plants, spindly, soft-haired, long-legged, easily bent or broken. Heavy with dark leaves, blossms and new rounding fruit. The strong green pungent smell surrounds me. I carefully lift and catch each sprawling branch, turning it gently to the warming sun, a joining of earth to sky.
In the outside garden, Dad has avocado trees, three different varieties, so they almost always have avocados. There’s a lemon tree and what he calls his fruit-salad tree. This is a peach tree but he’s grafted onto it nectarine and apricot branches. The tree bears all these fruits simultaneously; it looks like something from Hieronymus Bosch.
He also runs a small vegetable garden, with Swiss chard, beets, tomatoes, lettuce, radishes, carrots; easy crops. Dad keeps this garden just for fun, says all those things are cheaper to buy than to grow but he gets a kick bringing homegrown vegetables into the kitchen.
After dinner, Marty calls. She’s just come back from her gynecologist and knows she’s pregnant. They’ve been trying for two years and she’s so excited she can hardly tell me. I’m ecstatic! I’m going to be a grandfather! I put Dad on the line so she can tell him, too. He holds the phone out from his ear, listens, grins and nods his head. He doesn’t say anything more than grunts of pleasure and uh-huhs but he’s smiling his head off. Tears well up in his eyes, then run down the outside of his cheeks. It must be great for him being a potential great-grandfather, to know it’s going on some more.
We put the phone down and look at each other. We’re both smiling away and wiping tears. It’s a big moment, too deep for us to even talk about.
Dad gets up and turns on the TV, but I don’t feel like watching Merv Griffin pretend he’s talking to us. I’m itching to move; I want to work off my swelling restlessness.
‘Come on, Dad; let’s go out and celebrate!’
‘What do you mean, out, Johnny?’
‘I know a place, Dad. It’s down in Venice and it’s called the Oar House. Let’s go there.’
‘What! The what?’
I say it clearly and laugh.
‘The Oar House, Dad: oar, O—A—R.’
The Santa Monica chamber of commerce made such a fuss they took down the sign. There’s only a giant pair of crossed oars over the door now.
This place has wall-to-wall stereo vibrating like a discotheque but with a terrific selection of music; music from the twenties to Country Western, rock and electronic moanings. They sell a pitcher of beer for a dollar and a half with all the popcorn and peanuts you can eat. There’s a barrel filled with roasted peanuts in the shell and an ongoing popcorn machine. A guy could probably live on beer, popcorn and peanuts, plenty of protein, carbohydrates, and corn’s a vegetable.
But the best thing is the walls and ceilings. They’re covered with planned graffiti, and plastered, hung, decorated with the strangest collection of weird objects imaginable. There are Franklin stoves, bobsleds, giant dolls, bicycles, broken clocks, automobile parts. Everything’s painted psychedelic colors.
On Friday and Saturday nights, people dance mostly barefoot. The floors are an inch thick with sawdust so it smells like a circus: sweat, peanuts and sawdust. The light is pinkish and constantly changing. It’s the kind of place I like, a good non-pressure feeling; run-down Victorian; an English pub gone pop. There’s something of an old Western bar, too.
So we drive down; it’s near the beach about ten minutes from my folks’ house. Dad stops in the doorway and looks around.
‘My goodness, Johnny, these people are crazy. Look at that.’
He points. There’s a doll hanging from the ceiling upside down without any hair and somebody painted her blue.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Nothing, Dad, it’s only decoration.’
I pick up a pitcher of dark beer and two cold frosted mugs at the bar. I steer Dad to my favorite booth in back, perfectly located for the sound system. In this spot you feel the sound’s coming right out of your head. I get handfuls of popcorn and peanuts, spread them on the table. The tabletop has a laminated picture of a girl in a very tempting pose. I hadn’t noticed that before. I’m seeing things differently, like going to a zoo with a child.
We look out at the mob. There’s a fair amount of pushing and flirting going on; strictly a jeans-and-sweatshirt crowd. You’re supposed to be twenty-one to get into this place and they’re strict, but the girls look young. Then again, almost any woman under forty looks like a child to me these days.
Dad’s watching all this. He hardly remembers to drink his beer.
‘Gosh, Johnny; this is better than Fayes Theatre in Philadelphia, back in the old days.’
He swings his head around and laughs. He has a way of putting his hand over his mouth when he laughs, covering his teeth. Both Dad and I have separated front teeth; I mean a significant separation, about half a tooth wide. Dad’s incredibly sensitive about this. His father had it too, and I’m obstinate, or vain enough, to be proud of mine. I feel it’s a mark of the male line in our family.