My dad and my
uncle owned a tank and pump business together. It went out of business in the
mid-eighties. Along with the tank and pump business, they owned a carwash. Both
businesses were on the West Side of Buffalo. My father was at the tank and pump
shop one day when his employee at the car wash called him. Apparently a
disgruntled customer was claiming the car was somehow at fault for getting
water in his gas tank. The angry customer was threatening to take the entire
cash register drawer.
Dad said he would
be right over. He owned a .38 revolver. Their business was in a rough part of
town. One time someone actually broke into their shop and poisoned their guard
dogs, two ill-tempered German Shepherds named Boots and Heidi. That’s another
story for another time.
Dad went over to
the carwash and walked in. As he told it, he flashed the .38 to the angry guy
and said, “You still want to take the cash register drawer?”
The guy beat it
out of there pretty fast.
Another time my
parents were picking up our dog from the groomer on West Utica Street. As they were getting into the car, a guy
walking down the street started harassing my mother for money. Dad said, “You
can walk away, or I can put a bullet in your ass.”
When I was around
twelve-years-old, a neighbor refused to give back my basketball that had
bounced into his yard, Dad took me to his house. It only took a scowl and a few
words from my father to get the ball back.
Dad took zero shit
off of anyone. He was an old school tough guy. The tough guy was also the guy
that spent every Christmas staying up all night to assemble my toys. The same
guy that got teary-eyed the first time he saw his newborn grandson. The same
guy that I spent countless Sundays with watching and talking football. The guy that had a soft heart but would go
full Grizzly Bear if his family was threatened.
He liked to have
fun with store clerks. I remember him setting down a quart of motor oil on the
counter at Wilson Farms and saying: “My wife wants oil for a salad, is this the
right kind?” He said it with such a straight face that the clerk was left
dumbfounded. He chuckled a moment later and let the clerk off the hook.
That was Dad: tough guy, family man, prankster.
He’s been gone ten
years. Thinking about him on Father’s Day.
