My Father, the Teacher?

One of his fondest memories

One of my father’s accomplishments that he was most proud of was the fact that for a few years he was a teacher. It was quite the accomplishment considering that he was a high school dropout.

My father’s father died when my dad was just eleven years old. His mother was left to run the family business just as the Great Depression began. So she told my dad to drop out of school so that he could help her run the small ethnic deli/grocery. His main job was delivering milk early in the morning to people in the neighborhood. He made one penny for every bottle he delivered. He considered himself rich.

(He told this story approximately three million times.)

Eventually, the business was forced to close. My dad’s brothers went to work in the steel mills but my father would have none of that. He wanted to be a baseball player. His life dream was to pitch for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

But he never made the team and instead joined the army and began a long military career. Before long he was in England in the middle of World War II. He never saw any combat, though, because he became a mechanic. He worked in the motor pool fixing tanks and trucks and jeeps. It was something he got very good at.

Right after the war he was transferred to Germany to fix army vehicles there. At that time there were quite a few baseball players who had been drafted into the military so, to entertain the troops and keep up morale, the army created an army baseball league. My dad tried out and made one of the teams. When he wasn’t fixing tanks he was playing baseball with a lot of guys who would go on to have Major League careers after they got out of the army.

Another story he told three million times was how he struck out Ernie Banks on three pitches. Ernie would go on to become a legendary Chicago Cubs player. I can still my dad, “The first pitch was an inside fast ball that Banks just stared at. The second pitch was an outside fast ball. Banks swung and missed. I got him on the third pitch with my signature knuckleball. Banks swung and missed by a mile.”

My dad actually threw a no-hitter once while in the army league. But every time re-enlistment came up, instead of leaving the army to pursue baseball back in the States, he stayed in the army. He loved being in Europe and he loved working on vehicles.

While in the army he took classes and finally got his GED high school diploma. While in Germany he met and married a young frau who worked as a secretary and was trying to learn English as fast as she could.

Eventually he was transferred back to America. I was inside that frau’s belly as she arrived at Ellis Island with my older brother in hand. A few weeks later I was born. (A story my mother told three million times was how she vomited non-stop on the boat all the way across the Atlantic Ocean.)

I spent the first eleven years of my life moving across America from one army base to another to another. I thought that was normal and I kind of liked it.

Near the end of his army career my dad was transferred out of the motor pool. He no longer worked on vehicles. Instead, the army made my father a teacher. His class was called, ‘The Workings of the Internal Combustion Engine.’

The notion of being a teacher was so foreign to my dad that he was at first nervous about this. But it turned out that he was a natural at it. His radiating charisma and his endearing wit made him extremely popular among his students.

Most importantly, he learned that he loved teaching more than just about anything he had ever done. During his final years he confided in me that being a teacher was the most rewarding and enjoyable time of his life.

Eventually, the army forced him to make a decision. He could either quit the army or re-enlist and go to Vietnam. He had four kids to take care so he did the smart thing and quit the army. His teaching days were over. (Almost.)

The family moved to the Great Southwest Desert where we had lived before. My dad got a civilian job which he called boring. But he also began taking some night classes at the local community college. The main reason he did this was because he got paid to do it, thanks to the G.I. Bill. It was his way of earning some extra money.

But he really missed teaching so he took it out on me. When I turned 15 my dad announced that it was time for me to learn about cars. So every Sunday morning for what seemed like years he held class on the driveway in front of the house in front of the opened hood of his Chevy. I was his lone student.

I hated this! I barely listened. To me, there is nothing in the entire world more horrendously boring than the internal combustion engine. And there is nothing more disgustingly gross than getting car grease on one’s hands!

Seriously, the last vehicle I owned I had for two years and during that time I never once opened the hood. If a vehicle I own breaks down then I just get rid of it. There is just no way that I will get car grease on my hands.

I did, however, get to experience my father teaching and I have to say that he was very good at it. I was just a really bad student.

The classes finally ended and the actual driving began. This I found much more pleasurable. Of course I felt really, really bad when I wrecked my dad’s car. Then I got my own car and within a year I totaled it. I’ve been a very good driver ever since.

Sadly, I was my dad’s last student and no doubt his worst. My father never again got to be a teacher.

He did, however, continue being a student. He kept taking night classes at the community college for several years and finally at the age of 61 he graduated from college and got his diploma. My father was a college graduate!

Then the next year he died.

A few days ago I wrote a story called, My Dad and Paul McCartney. I got some comments from readers saying what a lovely Father’s Day story it was. Well, I have to admit that the fact that Father’s Day was approaching never even occurred to me while writing that. It was just a story that happened to pop up in the old noggin. There was no intention of it being a Father’s Day story but the timing was obviously perfect. So I decided to intentionally write a Father’s Day story to go with it. Thanks for reading this additional story.

After a cursory scroll through my Archive I remembered that I have written other stories about my dad, a few of which are listed below.

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