Driving with Daddy

When I was a kid I spent a lot of time in the car with my father.

    Until I became a preteen, if he needed to visit a relative, I rode along.

    Until I got out of high school, if he needed to pick up and return relatives after holiday dinners, I rode along.

    Until I got out of college, I worked summers at his company. If he was going home when I was, I rode along.

Hours and hours of conversation and I remember none of it. 

I do, however, remember the singing. I think we preferred to sing after dark. (What? Did we think no one could hear us after sundown?) But, daylight could not stop us. Nothing could stop us. Our repertoire included American classics from the 19th century that everyone back then seemed to know (think Steven Foster), classic numbers from the American Song Book (Cole Porter was a favorite), and tunes from current Broadway shows (the "Lida Rose/Dream of Love" duet from The Music Man played a key role in our repertoire).

For people who could not actually sing, we were pretty good singers. In a world where one could earn points for enthusiasm, we would have been stars. I don't recall any practice sessions. I have no idea how he taught me to sing harmony. I guess he just led by example.

We also prided ourselves on our ability to sing off-key. Our "Long, Long Trail Awinding" was painful. Even we couldn't stand to move beyond a few bars.  

I wish I remembered more details and not just about the singing. I can only picture isolated moments from those drives even from the trips that occurred regularly.

On many Sunday afternoons, I rode with him to see his half-sister who, because of schizophrenia, was hospitalized for most of her adult life at the Norristown State Hospital outside of Philadelphia. Most of my memories are negative. My aunt, looking dazed, left bright red lipstick stains on cigarettes even though she never appeared to inhale. (I only figured that out as an adult.) The hospital was big and old with a marble entrance hallway that was often cold and frequently populated by patients with similarly vacant stares. It could have been a Hollywood set. A horror-movie Hollywood set. Looking back, this might not have been the best kid activity, but I never minded.

I imagine I went along at all times of year but what I can envision most are summer days when we took my tricycle along. There was a lone tree sitting on top of a mound that I am sure looked like a mountain to me.  Looking back it may have soared to heights of three, even four, feet. My father would lift my tricycle to the top, position it and I would ride down. I can’t imagine how many times he had to repeat this process, but he never complained. I think he was happy for the company. Or, maybe he liked seeing something joyous (childhood) in the midst of so much sadness.

I would make trips with him to see his mother's family. She had died when he was around seven leaving behind just one son, an only child. However, she had a huge number of siblings. I'd have to check the census to see how many. I never met all of them but my father was a dutiful nephew to all of them. And, they were doting aunts and uncles to him. Several of them still lived in the house where their parents had raised them, referred to as Third Street. Where on Third Street? I don't think I ever noticed or asked. The house was a three-story row home that looked the way most people envision row homes, lined up along a narrow street with white marble steps and not a spec of vegetation in front (although there was a lovely private fenced-in garden in the rear).  I imagine that even in a six-bedroom house, the family was crammed in although another thing I am not sure about is if they ever all lived at home at the same time. I wish I knew more about all of them but the main thing I recall is the ride to and from Third Street.

The journey, not the destination, mattered most.

    I remember a road that was like a roller-coaster when, in our pre-seatbelt car, I loved flying as we went over the bumps.

    I remember getting excited when we saw "the men," large metal electrical transmission towers that carried high-voltage electrical wires.

    I remember spending an entire trip trying without success to cross my legs the way my mother did when she rode in the front seat.

But most of all, I remember the singing. 

There was a long, long trail ahead and we were going to sing our way to the end. The end came way too soon for my father. He died at sixty-six. Forty-nine years ago as of this writing. I am still singing my way along. 

© 2023 Jane Kelly

Golf Lessons from Dad

I was never athletic. Luckily for me - bad for females in general - sports wasn’t a big thing in the life of most women in my day. As far as I knew, I did not have an athletic gene anywhere on my genome. Not even a recessive one for shuffleboard.

It isn’t that my family wasn’t into sports. They were. But by the time I came along sports in our house involved more watching than doing. 

My mother had ridden in her youth. We have lots of photos of her on horseback over the course of the 1930s. Then according to her account she was thrown and dragged. She never got on a horse again. I don’t know how much she ever played tennis but she was quick to hand her racquet over to me as soon as I was old enough to hold it. (Notice I did not say “use” it. Another story.)

My father was not a scholastic athlete but when younger he did play tennis and row sculls on the Schuylkill River. By the time I was born, he was in his forties and limited himself to golf. He was over fifty by the time I was ready to hold a club. Or, at least by the time he thought I should be ready. So, off we went for a round of golf together. 

I have brief memories of that day and I am fairly sure it was just one day.

    After becoming concerned that I was finding too many balls, he questioned me to make sure they had stopped rolling before I found them.

    He had me sit out a hole. I think it was the ninth hole. Whatever fairway ran by the clubhouse. Later, I thought maybe he hadn’t paid greens fees for me, but then I learned there were no greens fees for members. He was probably worried I’d be removed from the course.

    There were several creeks that crossed the fairways. I found it much safer to roll my ball across the old wooden bridges than try to hit it over the water. My estimate? I took around five strokes to get across.

    I was really good at getting out of sand traps. I mean, really good. Of course, that means I was also really good at hitting my ball into sand traps. Only one of the reasons you don’t see me on the LPGA tour.

But that wasn’t the main reason I ended my golfing career before my age hit double-digits.

There was a medical incident.

As I recall we were outside some sort of shop. It might have been the pro-shop but it wasn’t in the club house. My memory places it somewhere near the ninth hole. My memory also says it stocked ice but maybe it was only towels. Whatever. It was the spot my father picked to teach me how to drive a golf ball.

I remember his standing behind me, showing me how to position my feet, telling me where to direct my gaze, and placing his hands over mine to demonstrate a proper grip. Looking back on it, he must have said, “And now you would swing.” I, however, heard “swing” and swung.

There was blood. Not a lot. Not flowing, more like seeping from somewhere near his ear.  The people in the shop were very helpful. The details about how are hazy but no further medical treatment was required. 

Nonetheless, after that day, my father gave up on golfing as a family affair. My brother preferred caddying to generate revenue. Neither my mother nor my sister had any interest. As the youngest child, I had been his last hope. Luckily my father had golfing buddies who played every Thursday afternoon and most Sundays. 

Not that the rest of the family didn’t support his country club life. We backed him up when it came time to eat the monthly minimum - usually on a Sunday night when we climbed back into our church clothes so my mother would not have to cook.

Some of my fondest memories are sitting in the lounge area before dinner. The big comfortable sofas were definitely there but I wonder if my imagination added a fireplace for winter evenings. I like to recall a gentle fire warming the area, true or not.

My favorite visits took place in the warmer months when the patio was open for drinks and dinner was served under the awnings on the porch overlooking the course. I think those dinners shaped my taste in restaurants for my entire life. I might not have developed any golf skills but I became very good at dining.

Not every dining experiences was calm and bucolic. I recall meeting a boy my age (whom I could not identify under hypnosis) who liked to pretend-drive the golf carts. I will always wonder why the club stored the carts facing down a tall hill. I am pretty sure this kid could get the carts rolling but I don’t recall that he could get them to stop. I remember hopping off a slow-moving cart. I do not recall hearing any splashes after that and can only assume the carts never reached the precipice. No thanks to the two of us.

Eating the minimum had another great impact on my future life. One night when I was about seven, the club featured a raw bar. My first. I discovered oysters. I have memories of many trips to the buffet table. I have no idea how many oysters I ate but enough to last a lifetime. I didn’t get sick. I’d just consumed my quota. Twenty years passed before I tried again. I had one. My last.

NOTE TO SELF: I wonder whatever made my father think I’d be any better at bowling.

© 2023 Jane Kelly

Working with Daddy

Long before Take Your Daughter to Work Day (Now Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day) became a thing, one of the biggest events of my summer was the day my father took me to “the office.” I am not sure how the yearly event came about. Maybe my mother needed a day alone with me out of the house or maybe my father thought experiencing office life would be good for me. I don't actually know at what age he began taking me or how long the tradition lasted, but I know I was in elementary school when it started. I remember being in a body that was very small for the furniture. When I grew large enough to fit at a desk, I actually worked for pay for four or five summers. 

As an unpaid employee, my principle job was running numbers on an old-fashioned adding machine - probably unnecessarily. Nonetheless, I did learn something that helped me throughout my life. If your total is a penny off, you inverted two numbers somewhere. I never learned that trick anywhere else. 

I also learned that coffee breaks were important. Many of the executive staff - friends and golfing buddies - walked a block or two to meet at the greasy spoon every morning. I thought that was the restaurant name, not the category. I don’t remember what I ordered but I enjoyed the tradition a lot. The men (only men in those days) tolerated me with kindness.

After our break, I returned to the big table in my father’s office probably to put papers in alphabetical order for filing. And, then it was time for lunch.

Lunch was usually a more formal affair, a traditional business lunch minus the martinis that were often on the menu in that era.

After lunch, I spent some time “helping” a very kind woman at the switchboard - another archaic skill. But learning skills wasn’t the objective. Spending time was. 

I suspect we “worked” a short day. My father always wanted to beat the rush hour traffic. Besides, he needed to get home for cocktail hour with my mother. It was a different time.

© 2023 Jane Kelly

Surviving 2022

I hated school. (At least, until graduate school. I went twice and would have stayed forever if they let me. But that is irrelevant to this discussion.)

I hated the first day of first grade and every day thereafter. I don’t know why. I was good at school. I didn’t work particularly hard but I got good grades, made good friends and generally had a good time. So, I am not quite sure why I couldn’t wait to get out. It wasn’t that I was anxious to be an adult. I don’t think I ever considered what that meant. Maybe I simply wanted to be a kid who didn’t have to waste her time thinking about the topics the school dictated. I was interested in a less intense lifestyle. So, I recall the thoughts I had in the third grade as I faced five more years of elementary school, four years of high school and four years of college. (We did not have a middle school or junior high.)

I’m in third grade now and next year will the last year of the first half of grade school. After that I’ll be in fifth grade and that means I’ve made it to the second half of grade school. After that, sixth is the last year of the first half of the second half . . . . 

Got the picture? I figured out my high school and college graduation dates and then, finally, the only other inevitable date: death.

My eight-year-old self calculated the oldest I could ever expect to be and came up with the year I would die: 2022. I never forgot it. So, I found it somewhat ironic when on 3/16/2022 I found a lump in my breast that was quickly diagnosed as malignant. Ironic but not particularly worrisome since it was unlikely my cancer, if fatal, could kill me before the end of the year. Of course, that was before I realized that the treatment was likely to get me a long time before the disease could.

It is now December 26, 2022 and I have to survive for less than one week to prove my eight-year-old self wrong. She was wrong about a lot. I never am not currently nor have I ever been the US ambassador to France nor am I an internationally renowned home designer and architect. I think people who like school do those things. 

Although I’ve remained blasé all year, now I am getting worried. I am not an alarmist. I don’t worry about car collisions, lightning strikes or monsters under the bed. Usually. But this next week will be different. 

It isn’t that I believe in the psychic abilities of eight-year-old me. I believe in irony. And just in case, I want to get it on the record that she knew. That little eight-year-old girl, who turned out to be me, knew. Of course . . . .

Even though math was her best subject, anyone can make a mistake. She probably meant 2032. Yeah, that’s it. 2032. 

Nonetheless, I think I’ll just stick around the house until 2023. Happy New Year. Hope to see you all next year.

© 2022 Jane Kelly

No Vacation for Mom

When I was a baby, and for at least half a dozen years before I was born, my family spent the summer in Wildwood Crest, New Jersey. Every year at Memorial Day Weekend, my father, mother, sister, brother and eventually me would arrive at a house rented by my father’s company as part of his compensation. At the end of the weekend, my father would return to his job in Philadelphia and my mother would stay at the Shore cooking, cleaning and taking care of the kids. As she liked to say, “Everyone else gets a vacation. I just move my job.” 

The situation might have continued but I, unintentionally, saved the day for my mother. Having been misdiagnosed, I would stop breathing, turn blue and, on one occasion, get rushed to a hospital in Philadelphia in a neighbor’s car. All this fell on my mother’s shoulders. My father was in the city. The next summer we all were. 

Summers in the city meant as I grew up, I was free to serve as “a friend.” You know, the person parents allow kids to bring on vacation so they don’t complain that they miss their friends. That is how I got to create memories of just about every town at the Jersey Shore (most at the southern end). I’ve continued to add memories ever since. 

I will admit that a lot of my favorite memories are old. For example, I knew little about current-day Ventnor when I started writing Greetings from Ventnor City - and I still don’t know too much. My fond thoughts about Ventnor harken back to childhood days at a guest house with my parents. I’ve gotten back to Avalon as an adult but when I think of Avalon I think of being dressed for cocktail hour in hotels that are long gone. I was too young to recall anything of Wildwood Crest. Everything I know, I know from old photos.

Throughout the years, I’ve updated my knowledge with occasional trips to many towns up and down the Jersey Shore but I know them as a tourist. So does Meg. I love learning what’s new in town as she does - which given the pandemic created quite a challenge for the upcoming book set in Avalon. That’s a story for another day.

© 2024 Jane Kelly