My Father; Budding Arborist and Fire Truck Thief

A Comedy Memoir in Two Parts Regarding My Father, Specimen Of Man

One particularly sweltering July Sunday on the way home from church, my father is in a foul mood contemplating the mowing he has to do when we reach home.

We have acres of yard that he mows.

Thank goodness my grandpa has a riding mower that Dad can borrow to mow our yard with, because if anyone had to push mow the yard it would take all summer to accomplish; a never ending task.

Why my parents decide to mow so much of the yard and not let some of it just be wildflowers and tall grasses is a mystery.

I am keeping my mouth shut at any rate because the previous weekend I had helped Dad plant saplings and that turned into a disaster of comic proportions as usual.

Dad comes home from work that Friday night with three five foot tall maple saplings with huge soaking wet root balls weighing down the bed of his Chevy work truck.

“I got these from the work site today, Bonnie,” he says triumphantly. “We can plant these along the western side of the house like you wanted for the sun shade.”

Mama looks at Dad doubtfully. “Greg, how are you going to plant those by yourself? They have to go in the ground by the end of the weekend, and I can’t help you.”

My mother had hurt her shoulder helping stack cords of wood the previous weekend, which my father had told her she shouldn’t have been doing in the first place.

We kids had gotten blasted for it, as usual.

The target, the kids.

“Don’t worry, Heather will help me,” he assures her, and looks at me.

I freeze in place and will my face not to change expression.

Helping Dad with any chore or outside task is almost always a guaranteed disaster, ending in mortal sin, burning hatred, injury, and almost certainly a grounding.

Saturday dawns bright and sunny, dammit.

My father pulls his truck around the house to the western side, and lowers the tailgate.

The trees loom large.

Water runs out of the bed of the truck.

“Gee, Dad, do you think you guys soaked those trees enough?” I say caustically. “They might not have gotten enough water.”

I wonder silently how much they each weigh.

“Shut up smart*ss,” Dad growls at me.

He hates doing stuff like this as much as I do.

He is only doing this in one of his everlasting, never, not once, ever bids to please and make my mother happy.

She always complained that the afternoon sun struck the west side of the house directly and had no block.

It heated the house too much, too fast and made us miserable all summer long.

Air conditioning was an unaffordable luxury that really wasn’t needed in northwestern PA.

In theory, yes, planting a tree sun block makes sense.

However, these trees should have been planted when the basement was being dug for the house itself.

Not ten years after the house has been standing.

At any rate, Dad was trying.

With monumental effort, we pull the first tree down off the truck bed.

It weighs thousands of tons.

My arms feel as though they are being torn off at the shoulder.

Dad weaves a colorful tapestry of profane observations of the tree, the sun, the incline of the hill we are attempting to plant the tree on, the truck, and life in general.

I stifle my own colorful tapestry, as I knew I was forbidden to weave my own.

Dad proceeds to dig a gigantic hole in the yard.

“Dad! Are you planning on burying the truck, too?” I say sarcastically.

Sweat is pouring down my face and I feel filthy and mean.

I am beyond caring whether or not I get grounded or even clobbered for being rude.

“Didn’t I tell you to zip it?” he rasps.

The air is sickeningly still.

I would have given anything for a small puff of a breeze.

The sun is beating down, merciless.

Dad is breathing like a freight engine steaming.

His shirt is soaked in sweat.

His dark skin is almost purple. Grass and dirt are flying.

“Want me to light you a Camel, Dad?” I say, snickering. I am in for it.

Dad rewards me with a piercing glare. “Get the ladder out of the truck, wise*ss.”

I go to the truck bed. Eyeing the ladder in it, I look back at him over my shoulder.

“You have to be kidding, Dad! This thing? Why don’t I go inside for a minute and make you a real ladder with Mama’s glue gun and popsicle sticks.” I snicker nastily.

In the bed of the truck is the sorriest excuse for a wooden ladder I have ever seen.

It is covered in paint and putty. One leg appears to be withering away.

It’s Charlie Brown’s ladder.

“I am going to get PO’d in a minute, Heather,” Dad huffs.

He throws the shovel down.

His dark curly hair is in wet ringlets, just like mine.

“Seriously Dad. This ladder wouldn’t hold Mama. Look at it!” I say incredulously.

“Give. Me. The. Ladder.” Dad says in an ominous Voice.

Without another word, I pull the ladder out of the truck bed and hand it to my father.

When that Voice is used, obedience is the only option, even if mortal peril is at hand.

(That Voice is the cousin of the Maple Leaf Village, Canada, voice. The Voice that had me less afraid of Canadian kidnappers than my father after one revolution of the Tallest Ferris Wheel in the World with a man who had hidden his fear of heights until a quarter of that revolution.)

Dad opens the ladder.

It creaks piteously in protest.

I heroically struggle and successfully smother a laugh.

He and I set the tree in the hole and backfill it.

“Why do we even need the ladder?” I ask.

“Because I have to tie the tree so it doesn’t get knocked down by the wind

before its root system develops,” Dad explains.

He gets twine and two steel posts out of the truck bed and comes over to the tree.

“Grab the rubber mallet, while I tie this twine up high on the tree”, Dad says. He moves the ladder over to the tree and tries to steady it next to it.

“Do you want me to hold the ladder, Dad? It looks pretty shaky,” I say.

I eyeball the setup dubiously.

“It’s fine, Heather,” Dad says edgily. He steps up.

I am reaching into the truck bed to grab the mallet when I hear a ripping, cracking sound.

I whirl around in time to hear my father shriek and see the ladder collapse with my father entangled in it, and the entire hodgepodge roll down the hill, wrapped in twine.

I sprint downhill to the scene, my heart doing double-time, wondering if Dad is dead or has broken limbs.

Almost immediately, I hear a cacophony of cursing and relief floods me, so I know he is alive.

I croak out, “Are you ok, Daddy?”

“I am fuc*ing fine.”

I collapse in laughter.

I cross my legs so I do not pee my pants.

I cannot help it.

Now I know he is all right, the entire thing is hilarious.

It will take him a few minutes to disentangle himself, I reason.

I am allowed the luxury of laughing myself silly without fear of immediate dismemberment.

“It’s not fuc*ing funny. I could have been killed.”

“I-I’m sss…ssss…..sorry Daddy. I ccc-ccc-can’t hh — ehhuhelp it.” I hiccough out.

A window in the house flies up, and my mother calls out:

“Greg Shall, I told you not to use that old, rickety ladder! I am so glad you didn’t try to make Heather get up on that thing! Now go throw it in the burn pile, please!”

and slams shut.

My dad glowers darkly at me and starts to trudge up the hill, holding the twine.

He turns back and smirks, “You can put the ladder in the burn pile.”

“Okay, Dad,” I stutter out, somewhat remorseful of my unrestrained laughing jag.

He finishes the first tree while I take care of the ladder, lugging it uphill and throwing it on the pile of stuff to burn.

We finish planting the other trees in near silence.

They are lopsidedly tied off, and we use the truck bed as a ladder, but it works.

A t any rate, this weekend is only a mowing Sunday weekend, which I thankfully am exempt from because I do a “sh*t job mowing”.

We are driving my Aunt Marcia’s second car currently, as ours is in the shop.

She had warned my father that the “check engine light” was always on and that the garage had given up trying to figure out why so to just ignore it.

We pull in the driveway from Mass.

It is a very hot, sunny July day.

My mother is home with one-year old Luke who has a summer cold and is teething.

We head in to change into shorts and tee shirts.

I am upstairs when I hear Mama scream to Dad.

I thunder down the stairs, pulling my shirt on as I go, terrified, and thinking Luke is dying or something equally awful.

My mother never screams. Ever. Everyone else, it is a regular occurrence.

Not her.

I see Dad sprint outside in cutoff jean shorts, no shoes, no shirt.

I look out the window to see what the fuss is about.

The car is completely engulfed in flames!

The heat is palpable through the window.

I watch Dad take off like a shot through the woods.

No shoes.

No shirt.

Cutoff jeans.

Running through the forest.

“Where in the hell is Dad running to?” I yell, totally dumbfounded.

My mother is on the phone to the fire department in town. “I don’t know! Get the hose and spray the side of the house!”

My 7 year old sister is sobbing.

Luke is toddling around, oblivious to the confusion.

I run through the house and down the basement stairs, outside and around the house to get to the hose to spray down the side of the logs on the house so it doesn’t catch on fire.

The water hisses and steams as it touches the logs.

My face feels like it is going to burst into flames itself.

The car looks like a gigantic fireball in the driveway.

The heat is incredible.

Waves of heat are shimmering off the house and the grass around the fire.

Suddenly, an ancient fire truck emerges seemingly out of nowhere, and rumbles down the driveway.

My father leaps out of the driver’s seat, to my utter astonishment.

It dawns on me that my father ran through the woods the mile to Oswayo, appropriated the old fire truck parked downtown and drove it up here.

I had no idea that old thing was even operable.

And he did it with no shoes and just a pair of old crusty jean shorts on in less than ten minutes.

Respect and awe for my dad surge anew.

“Get the hell inside the house, Heather! You could get killed if that car blows up!” Dad shouts at me, as he pulls the gigantic hose off the side of the huge truck.

I scramble to do what he commands, leaving the puny garden hose spraying on the grass.

I start to cry when I realize that he could be killed if the car blew up.

He seems invincible.

“What in the world… what is going on?” my mother cries out as I come in the house, panting and sobbing, streaked with soot. “Did your father get that fire truck all by himself?”

“Yes, and he said the car could blow up,” I blurt in a high sob before I think, and my little sister cries in terror even louder and my mother glares at me.

“The car is NOT GOING TO BLOW UP,” Mama says and hugs my sister close.

She calms down.

“Yes, Mama,” I say, chastened.

I even give my little sister a loving squeeze without being told to.

My father gets the fire out before the Fire Department gets there with the “modern” fire trucks and proper gear and attire.

My mother says that this event only cements my father’s overlarge ego as Lord of the Kickass Manly World and King of All Things Masculine.

I secretly agree with this assessment, though I never tell either of them.

My dad IS King of Man… in my eyes he is the “go-to guy” for all protection even before the fire, but this event nailed it down for all time.

Thank you for reading this memoir excerpt!

Bittersweet Symphony is the memoir written about Heather Wargo’s upbringing in rural Pennsylvania by an Italian father and Irish mother. It is in its final editing stage.