11:11:11—Hi, Dad!

I think about my dad a lot. He died at the too-young age of 55. I was 27 and I look at my daughters now, 34 and 28, and wish that I was at least half as wise when I was their ages so I could have talked so much more with my dad.

My dad was an interesting guy and he was interested in a lot of things. I am interested in many of those same things only I didn’t realize it in time. I regret that I didn’t talk to him about them. I was too wrapped up in my own life, married with children, too separate from my parents.

He would clear off the coffee table and put a pencil in the middle and stare at it for the longest time, trying to move it with his mind. I think about that and realize that we share the same curiosity for things like the power of our minds, physics—string theory, parallel or alternate universes, the great unknown.

I have a book, written by a friend/coworker of his, called “The Power of the Subconscious Mind.” I met this man when I was 12 and he signed the book for me. My dad really hoped it would spark something in me, I think. Back then I was unsparkable. But I kept that book and thought about that meeting every time I looked at it. Have picked it up several times and read some of it, and expect to try again. I normally don’t read self-help books, especially all the way through, and this has been no exception, but I keep it.

The older I get, the more I think about the small things I remember about my dad, and see that I missed so much of what made him into the kind person he was. And kind he was. He was always ready to give someone a helping hand. He had many talents but kindness coated them all.

And little kids loved “Uncle Lee.” He would teach them to play cards, all kinds of games and tricks, and could relate instructions in a way that kids could understand. He made them laugh; they liked his attention.

My dad was a tinkerer and a fixer. He fixed small appliances, going “down cellar” where he had a workshop. People brought him toasters that stopped working and he would fix them, and not charge them for it. He would laugh, saying that most of those toasters just needed a good cleaning.

He also built electronics, such as his prized reel-to-reel tape recorder. He bought kits from Heathkit (see http://www.heathkit-museum.com/hvmhifi.shtml for their electronics museum). He was good at that stuff and I think he might have been happier working in that field. Not that he was unhappy. I think my dad was pretty content with his life, working in the city, coming home for supper every night, puttering around the house and yard on the weekends. He liked being home, oiling the things that squeaked, taking care of his tools, repairing what he could.

My dad also liked dressing well for work; one of my jobs was polishing his shoes every Sunday night—he had two pair—and he wore suits to work, carrying his jacket carefully so as not to wrinkle it. In winter he would carry a car coat. He’d rarely actually wear it but he carried it with him just in case of emergency.

Although my dad was a homebody, he was always welcome at any party or gathering. He always had a smile and joke and liked people to be at ease. One of his favorite jokes was an insurance joke (he was in the business), a bumper sticker that read: Have You Hugged Your Actuary Today? Cracked him up!

He was an anglophile and while I knew we liked the same things, same kind of comedy—Laugh-In (it had a lot of British humor in it and we loved Judy Carne’s accent) and The Two Ronnies—I was older before I put a name to it. I was always fascinated with England and the rest of the U.K. and Ireland but just recently realized I got it from him. I should have known because we would watch Laugh-In or The Two Ronnies together, laughing so hard, we couldn’t speak although we tried to. He also loved Benny Hill and a good, raunchy joke!

Things that annoyed me about him when I was a teen are the things I remember with such fondness now. There were three or four songs off the Top 40 pop charts that my dad really enjoyed. He recorded “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” on his beloved reel-to-reel and thought it hilarious to blast it at 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning so his kids wouldn’t get to sleep in.

Another way he’d occasionally wake me up was he’d tiptoe upstairs to my door, turn the knob quietly with one hand, then he’d pound the door open with his other. I’d lurch up in bed, royally pissed off, but I couldn’t say a word, just glare while he laughed and told me it was time to get up. If I let loose my anger, then I was in for it. If only my eyes were lasers … now this is a favorite story of my growing up.

His other favorite songs included “Mrs. Robinson”—I have theories about why he liked it—and “American Pie.” He loved that song because it rhymed and he knew all the words after the first time he heard it, so he said. Whenever I hear those songs on the radio, it’s like my dad is saying, “Hi, Daughter.”

Speaking of rhymes, I get my fondness for ditties from my dad. He would write little rhyming poems every now and then; I’m not quite sure of the extent of them. But I have just one of the ones he wrote me still. I treasure it as it’s in his handwriting, too. I had it laminated a long time ago as the paper was decaying.

My dad was a woodworker as well. He taught himself to build things, from stuff he built when he was a young boy to the year everybody got round pedestal end tables for Christmas. “Down cellar” was his ’60s version of today’s man cave. And he was very proud when he added a lathe to his workshop. He built the table it was attached to out of 2x6s or 2x4s (I bet my brothers know what it was built from.)

There’s also a story I was told and have repeated that he built a digital watch, or clock, when he was very young, years before any of that stuff showed up in stores. I don’t know who told it to me and I even imagined that he was sad or wry that he didn’t have the help or resources to patent this or any of his other ideas. I think that because I have had a couple of great ideas in the past, never believed in them enough to do anything with them, only to see one come to pass years later. I also like to think my dad thought similarly to me, that if he had one great idea, he could have another.

My dad at one point bought or built a digital clock that showed hours:mins:seconds and it would tickle him to death if he could see it when it turned to 11:11:11. Every now and then, he would tune The Grundig radio in the office (my brother’s old room) to Greenwich, England, and turn the volume up really high so he could hear the ticking or gonging (funny I can't remember which, although I think there was also a voice) from anywhere in the house. He would make sure all the clocks were set as precisely as possible. He was so tickled by that. I loved that about him.

But my favorite story about my dad happened on what I believe might have been his very last birthday. It was a beautiful summer day. At one point, I’m sure he was on his lounge chair in the driveway, his iced tea and an ashtray next to him, watching the grass grow. My dad liked to read, detective novels—go figure—and when he needed another to read, he’d go to this newspaper/magazine/bookstore place at the TriTown Mall the next town over (it was open on Sunday mornings when nothing else was, which he liked).

So he decides to take off for the place, only this time he decides to take the highway instead of the back roads. He’s tooling along when a car pulls up alongside him and stays steady. He looks over to see who’s there, and lo and behold, a young woman leans out and pulls up her shirt and flashes him.

As I write this, I realize now that it was amazing my dad didn’t get into a wreck. He was so excited and just couldn’t believe it was anything short of a setup by his friends, as if they knew he’d be on that road at that moment. He told that story over and over for weeks, months. His all-time favorite story, by far. I loved that about him, too.