Nurse the Hate: Jim's Dad

Jim’s Dad died in a hot air balloon accident, which was unusual for a man born in this town.  The official story was that the flame went out on the propane tanks due to an equipment malfunction, but it was understood by those in the know that his old man was drunk and forgot to change the tanks out from the previous day.  He just ran out of fuel.  The gondola slammed into a hillside killing Jim’s father and severely injuring the honeymooning couple he was captaining.  Jim had a perverse sense of pride in the story and liked that his father had perished in such spectacular fashion.  Quietly wilting in a hospice was not really his style.

His father was a man that thought of himself as a modern embodiment of Hemingway.  He was a man that liked to fish, drink and be the loudest voice in the room.  He wore a short cropped mustache and weathered salt stained fishing cap.  The effect made him look more like Quint in “Jaws” than Hemingway, but he would have liked that too if he’d known.  When we were kids he would roar us out to past the break in his boat where we’d fish for stripers.  He’d put the radio on to the Big Band station and get excited if a Duke Ellington number came on.  We’d stay out until the sun began to set in firehouse red and pumpkin orange skies.  I always thought it was so cool that he’d let Jim dock the boat when we came in.  It wasn’t until years later I recognized that he let Jim do it because he was too drunk on the cans of Pabst he fired though all afternoon to dock it himself. 

Jim’s Old Man was living in the boat one summer.  He pretended that it was because he loved the water so much that he wanted to spend the summer down at the dock.  The real reason was that Jim’s mom had caught his Dad fooling around with his receptionist.  His Dad and the receptionist had a regular Thursday at the Quality Inn for about 18 months before his Mom caught wind of it.  I remember the receptionist showing up at one of Jim’s and my Little League games once.  She smelled like coconut oil and when she smiled you felt good.  She disappeared after that summer down on the dock.

Jim’s Dad used to eat at this place called The Sloppy Duck, right down from the dock.  It was one of those clam shacks that did great tourist business.  All the yokels from inland would think they were having an authentic island meal.  Almost all the fish was frozen brought in by that front company that went under when they finally broke the Whitey Bulger mob.  Jim’s Dad, his buddy Sully, and whatever other guy in trouble with his wife was bunking on the boat would watch the Sox on that grainy color TV by the bar.  That was the summer that Louis Tiant and Spaceman Lee had great stuff.  Jim and I would pretend to be Tiant, aping his windup and tossing rocks into the surf.  When Jim’s Dad was a few beers in and the Sox were winning, he’d give us change for the pinball machine.  It was a Gottlieb “Royal Guard” machine.  I bet my high score still stands.

I slowly fell out with those two.  We got older, Jim’s Dad moved back home and eventually got divorced.  I lost touch with Jim after I went to college in the city.  I had heard his Dad moved West but I didn’t know anything about that hot air balloon business.  I guess he saw an ad in the back of some magazine while he was waiting at his dentist.  He thought about it during his root canal, called the number from the ad, and just like that was in the hot air balloon business in Napa California.  He was an impulsive man.  He drove straight across the country starting the next morning.  I don't think Jim knew he'd done it until The Old Man had already figured out how to fly the damn thing a couple weeks later.

I just saw Jim over the holidays.  I stopped by his store.  There behind the counter were a couple pictures of his Old Man, framed in memoriam.  In one he’s older than I remember, smiling in a gondola waiting to lift off in his balloon.  In the other, he’s just like I remember him.  Fuller faced with a broad mustache.  He has that filthy cap on his head grinning ear to ear with his hands on the boat’s steering wheel.  Jim told me over beers at the Sloppy Duck that the picture was taken that summer he was living down here on the dock.  We were sitting in the same stools that Jim’s Dad and Sully used to sit in.  Jim cleared his throat and said he misses his Dad every single day.  We raised our bottles to The Old Man and took a deep pull of cold beer.  Then it was quiet.  We sat not saying anything for a time and watched the Sox on the TV above the bar.