October 2024

October 1987

Last June I penned an honorarium for my father titled June 6, 1974. I had not planned to write an epilogue but I struggled with market vibes this morning. So, I wrote about this week in October 1987.

For most of my early life I didn’t pay much attention to the time or the dates on the calendar. I knew the last bell at school rang at 3 o’clock. I had to be home before dark. I felt a wealth of freedom on Fridays playing in the park until the last glimmer of daylight. Saturday mornings from the moment I opened my eyes it was already Monday. Time was always a feeling, not a number. And so, the years passed.    

Until one day I realized I was keenly aware of the hours and days. I had a job, and I was making a lot of money. I was good at it, and I liked it. I bought a Rolex, and I liked that, too. My father and I had made peace with all the baggage of expectation and disappointment that all sons and fathers have, and none of it was planned or achieved by purpose or intent. It was simply the open road of life unfolding under each footstep one at a time.  

We were living in a two-bedroom ground floor apartment facing Gramercy Park in an old Stanford White building. Every morning at dawn I’d go around the corner to a Greek diner and get the Times and Post and bagels and coffee and wheel him into the living room. We’d usually have breakfast in silence and read. Occasionally he’d mumble or grunt and I’d agree. Then, before I took the train downtown, I’d put out ten cigarettes, his ration for the next 24 hours, which he would count scrupulously one at a time with an index finger.   

I hired a nice young man who rode his bike all the way from the Bronx every morning to wheel my father out to the park across the street for a few hours where he’d read about World War 2, rain or shine. Every night we ate TV dinners or take out and watched Jackass-John Chancelor on NBC, and Walter Crackpot on CBS. I was a rookie broker, and my father was my mentor and a good one. Before I turned in, I filled his silver flask with a half pint of gin and set it by his bedside with a silver jigger. He drank every drop smoking his last few cigarettes watching Johnny Carson from eleven to midnight.    

On Sundays we’d go to Beefsteak Charlie’s on 5th Avenue and 12th street for the early bird dinner. We drank icy cold Martinis and ate steaks and baked potatoes slathered with butter. I’ll never forget watching the subtle swirl of sour cream from the corners of his mouth in the stemmed Martini glass as he sipped and chewed chunky bloody bites of rare beef like a ferocious old animal. In between Martinis we’d talk about the markets, and he’d offer wisdom like, “The arch enemy of stocks is rising interest rates,” among many other adages. He ran an ad agency in the 50s, and Listerine was his biggest client. One of his better moments as an investor was shorting Farnham’s Toothpaste. "I never covered it,” he said. “It went to zero.”     

One evening in October 1978 he choked on a bite of meat. His face turned bright red. He couldn’t talk or breathe. No one had ever heard of the Heimlich Maneuver. I slugged him on his back with 100% of all my might a couple of times and that didn’t work. I was terrified. I could see terror in his eyes, so I pried his mouth open, rammed my index and middle finger way down his throat and snagged it just enough to pull it out by hooking and dragging it. There was a circle of waiters and diners around us and a great sigh of relief swept through the room. When a son and his father eat Sunday dinner together at the same restaurant for a couple of years, there is a kinship in the ritual.  

It didn’t change anything. I put out his flask as usual. I might have said, “Close call tonight, or I’m glad you’re ok.” But he was more interested in Carson’s monologue and knocking back his first shot of gin. “Yup. Hand me that lighter, will ya?” Sure Dad. “What?” Nothing, Dad. See ya tomorrow.    

After a while we parted ways. It was time. Here’s the old soldier at Alfredo’s in Rome celebrating his 68th birthday in 1981.    

He died overseas on October 17, 1987. I promised him wherever he was I’d get him home. I had not been “home” in 18 years. I was on the exchange when I got the call.  

I called the town mortician who knew him since they were both kids. He took care of everything, bringing the body back to the States, putting the obit in the local paper. Once the obit was published my aunts and uncles all called me. My wife and I were married in May of 87 and we stayed with my father’s first cousin and family.  

The night before his funeral (today October 25) at the small country church where he was baptized, and I was baptized, my uncles had a big dinner for everyone. My sister drove straight though all the way from Cincinnati. All my friends from childhood were there. Talking about the time we shot a big fat rat with our BB guns in the stables and dipped it in green paint and nailed it by its tail above the tack room door.  

My sister’s old boyfriend showed up drunk and disrespectful and all the men chased him off. The army sent an honor guard from Camp Drum to the funeral service, including two officers and several enlisted men. They fired three shots with carbine rifles and folded the flag draped over his coffin emotionlessly and perfectly and gave it to my sister who was beside herself with sorrow.  

Three weeks later the house next door to our farm came on the market for $74 thousand dollars. I got in a bidding war sitting on the steps of the gold pit and bought it for $108 thousand that day. In a way my promise to bring him home brought me home. It was his last gift in life to me.  

I love these autumn days when flannel shirts in October might just as easily be sweaters in April. Not whole days really, but moments that flit by the imagination with memories. I could be in school in Paris or Rome or Gramercy Park in 1978. 

It could be anything… the blonde hair of a pretty girl, windblown on the corner of 5th Avenue waiting for a light to change, cast up against the sky like a waving scarf, luminously brilliant above the colorful street or the yellow steel of a cab hurtling downtown impervious to pleading arms hailing a fare.  

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend. I’ll be on the markets next Monday.