My dad's best friend died this week. He's important to me as an incomparable character from my childhood, a huge personality full of kindness, quirkiness and charm.
He looked a lot like Hagrid from the Harry Potter movies. 6'7, 400 lbs, unique personality all day. He had a long black ZZ Top beard and a heavily balding head, and dressed in the James Dean inspired 90s biker dude uniform: black shirt, hard-living Levi's and big biker boots. Rode bikes, collected classic vehicles, along with a lot of other stuff, anthropological specimens, antiques, guns, anything historic, you name it.
I always loved that he looked scary as hell to normies, despite being one of the nicest people anyone could ever hope to meet. I used to laugh at how shocked neighbor kids and friends were when they met my dad for the first time - they really would have lost it seeing Don.
My dad would take me to the house Don shared with his wife and kids on Saturday nights. I was the oldest child at the house on those nights, so I'd sit at the big picnic style table in their dining room with the guys even though I was still only single-digit age and probably very not wanted there. No one told me to get, though. They'd talk and drink and share bawdy jokes I didn't understand while I stacked rifle bullets on the table and tried to make them stand together like houses of cards. Eventually I would be sent off.
Don would always shake my hand every time I was leaving and say, "Miss B---, it was nice knowin' ya." The first time I remember him doing it, I looked at my dad, like, why are we never going to see him again? They both just laughed.
They would take me dove hunting with them, from a super young age. Don's favorite story was the time I thought I had gone...dumb? because I couldn't hear myself talk. After a minute, I started screaming, "I can't talk!!!" My dad walked over and pulled the huge ear protection off my head and it was fixed. The first time I heard that story, it was Don who told it and my dad seemed to be triggered like, "Oh yeah, that did happen!" Now he tells the story every few times I see him, but only when other people are around. I also have a vague memory of finding a broken glass bottle, shattered into tiny pieces. The glass was clear and had been washed clean by many rains, and glittered dazzlingly in the sunlight. I crouched to run my hands over the glitter, and was slapped away just in time by someone.
All the guys had nicknames. Big Don, Slow (Slowie), The Doctor, Chaz, Mr. Danger. When Don's young daughter would look out the tall window by the door when we knocked early on a Saturday night, we'd hear her scream, "It's The Doctor!! And Britt." And Don would be there behind her when the door opened, "Hello Doctor B---! Hello Miss B!" His daughter is now a grown woman I barely recognize, other than she's tall as hell too.
They would give me one Dr. Pepper (in a frosty mug always) and my night was set. When he came to our house, which was significantly less gracious under the administration of my stepmom, he always bore gifts. Around Easter, he'd show up with a tiny basket of chocolate eggs that also contained a plastic egg full of quarters - big treasure for a small kid then.
He was a big guy, often overweight due to his appetites which required lots of Guinness and big 4" porterhouse steaks. His wife had a lot of family in Britain and he went back to visit them with her, which resulted in lots of pics of him stooping into tiny old British pubs where the doorway came to his chest. He was like the myth of ancient European giants come to life.
He was from the south, very religious and very superstitious, was terrified of ghosts, which he called "haints" without irony. One time, I started exploring a big intact turtle shell he had brought home from some day out shooting in the desert. Once I picked it up, I realized it still stank terribly from the bits of flesh that he had missed deep inside the shell. Weird core memory.
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This is the Don that I knew. I love the grease on his fingers in this photo. He looks so happy here. I think he genuinely was. I used to sit in that garage and plink on a hundred year old piano he rescued from St. Francis in the 90s, playing Dixie because it was easy by ear and I had heard it in movies, and was personally obsessed with the 19th century. I played it one night when he was in earshot and he said, "Yer playin' my favorite song!" I can hear his voice in my mind still. And no, he wasn't a confederate at all. Just a fan of pop music from the 19th century. I think I could still play that now given some historic set of keys.
He was full of grace and mercy and loved my dad's mom, visiting her on his own steam in the few hospital stays that happened before her death. He would bring her McDonald's filets o' fish on Fridays, in honor of her Catholicness. He never told us he was visiting her, we always learned it from her after the fact. Brought his wife and daughter to sit with her for hours and talk about tv, and her memories. Now that I have another old grandmother that no one visits but my mom and I, I appreciate it even more. People are forgetful about the still living elder generations. Not me, but lesser people.
My parents and aunt and uncle went to his funeral the other day, a big family showing. I'm sorry I couldn't be there, even though it would only have been to hear them testify and quibble about their dad, dead since the 60s. They can never keep their shit together in company or public, always have to grind their axes in the wrong places.
I know that's my fate when I meet them this Thanksgiving weekend. Listening to that shit. I still eat it up because I need first person accounts of everything. I'll try to redirect them to stories of Don, which is all I want to hear right now.
Ok, I'll pick the song.
Thank you, and nice knowing ya.
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