My father was a quiet man.

He was a man of deeds. A backyard superhero with a ready utility belt of tools and dynamic powers of common sense; a real-life matinée idol jumped off the silver screen to come to my rescue and save the day. Sure, he wasn’t faster than a speeding bullet, able to out run a train or stop an accident from happening. Okay, he wasn’t able to leap tall buildings in a single bound or keep from falling off a slippery roof while pretending to be Santa Claus, peeking into my window one Christmas Eve. He wasn’t invincible. He wasn’t a celebrity. He was human. He had his flaws. But he was my amazing dad, the leading man in my life.

My father wasn’t a tall man. He had an athletic build. Broad shoulders, the kind others find easy to lean upon like a bridge over troubled water. He could carry a heavy burden and accepted his crosses in life. He had small feet and hands. Very strong hands.  He used them well. I remember how they looked on the steering wheel, how they worked on a puzzle, how they grasped onto tools, how they reached out to help even before you knew you needed any, how it felt to hold onto them. Security. Warmth. Compassion.

I have my father’s hands. I mean: They resemble his. When I look down at my hands as I am typing on my keyboard, I see the similarities. They have the same structure under the casing of skin, thick knuckles with identical patterns in the lines and creases, even more so as I age; stubby fingers with nails trimmed short yet still apt to attract particles of dirt under the waxing crescent tips. They would fill his gloves but not completely.

I appreciate that my hands remind me of my father, but I realize mine are not so useful with a tool or as important as his were. The last thing I focused on the last time I looked at my father’s body was his hands because I knew I would miss them.

“Hey Dad, can you give me a hand?”

I certainly miss saying that. And I am not alone. I know others miss him, too.

My father was a fireman.

He responded to emergencies and calls for help. He fought fires and helped to save people’s lives and property when he was on duty. It was his means of earning a living. But he was also an appliance repairman on his off-duty days. When something stopped working or was broken, he was called upon to fix it. Repairing things was his second job but it was his first occupation.

There is a funny story about me told to my parents by my kindergarten teacher. At an open-house, she recounted that during circle time she had asked all the five-year olds to stand up and say what they wanted to be when they grew up. The boys wanted to be astronauts, policemen, firemen, engineers; the girls wanted to be ballerinas, nurses, teachers, mommies. When my turn came, I stood up and said, “I want to be an appliance repairman.” My father liked that story.

Sometimes, especially when things stop working or break around my house, I wish I had followed my kindergarten ambition. But I followed a different dream into adulthood.

When I was starting out, making my way, I consulted with my dad and asked him for advice when I encountered questions or problems, though he often frustrated me with his method of guiding me. I would come home to talk to him.

“What should I do, Dad?” “What do you think you should do?” “I could do either this or that, which one do you think would be best?” “Which one do you want to do?” “If I do a, I think b might happen.” “Would b make you happy?” “If I do x, I think I might fail.” “Why don’t you think you’ll succeed?” “If I choose y, I’ll have to give up z.”  “Is z more important to you than y?” “Should I buy it, Dad?” “Do you think you should?”  “Yes.” “Why?” “Why won’t you just tell me what to do?” “Because I want you to tell me what you want to do. Whatever you decide, if it’s your decision, I’ll support you.” 

Back and forth…we tossed the ball.

My father worked hard all of his life.

Early in his career, my father apprenticed and was licensed as an electrician; so, he understood wiring and lighting, how to complete a circuit, the importance of being grounded. Eventually, his mechanical aptitude and need for employment steered him in a different direction. He became a serviceman. He fixed major appliances: Refrigerators, washers, dryers, stoves, air conditioners. 

He could work on cars and small motors also but he didn’t like to. He could build things but he wasn’t a craftsman; mostly he fixed things and improved things. He made things last. He made life better.

He was a handy man to have around. He was generous with his talents. He did work for neighbors, friends, and relatives and would take no pay. These were pay-it-forward favors and after my father’s death, my mother had a line of people happy and willing to provide her needed support and assistance.

Maybe he knew there would be rainy days.

Maybe I noticed how my dad reflected the traits of Henry Fonda’s lone wolf working man, Clay, in the film Spencer’s Mountain; maybe a little of George Bailey’s ethics about taking responsibility in It’s A Wonderful Life; and also possibly a bit of Vito Corleone’s philosophy on reciprocity in the opening scene of The Godfather: “Some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day, consider this justice a gift on my daughter’s wedding day.”

These are all films I watched with him at one time or another and most of them we watched together multiple times. These views helped me understand what mattered most to him in his life.

My father paid attention to details.

He took care of the trees but he didn’t miss the forest in doing so; rather, his attitude was: In order to take care of a forest, you must take it one tree at a time. Problems in life loom large and are complex. The big picture can be so overwhelming, you cannot begin to act or feel hopeless to even try.

He would say: “Put one foot in front of the other.” “Make what little difference you can in whatever you do.” “Make some progress in the place you are at every day.” “Do your best is all anyone can ask.” “Do what you can now.” “Take care of today and tomorrow will take care of itself.”

He learned how to fix things by taking them apart.

People who knew my dad in his life said he could fix anything. But mostly I think of how he kept things working by paying attention when no one else did. Prevention. Maintenance. Back-up (a collection of spare parts). He played chess with things he was responsible for. He anticipated the eventual breakdown. Maybe because he was a repairman.

My father did for others all his life and he did for himself because he always said, “If you want something done to your satisfaction you need to do it yourself.” He believed that and he practiced what he preached. My dad knew what things he could do, and he tried things he felt confident he could do, but he also knew clearly what he could not do and when was the time to hire others.

After my dad died, we discovered all the little jobs he did around the house that went unnoticed before. We learned of these invisible tasks because odd things would break, or overflow, or fall down, or stop working, and we started to see how he must have routinely walked around and checked on things in silent service; how he twisted a bulb in a socket a quarter turn to keep it tightened over here, added a drop of oil on a hinge or glue on a chair rung over there.  

It has been a funny story to tell how my mother thought there was something wrong with the light fixtures in the home they had lived in together. Light bulbs were burning out. “That light bulb has never burned out in 30 years,” she would claim. Truth be told, she had never changed one in their married life together. And I had to think about the fact that my father must have had a routine round going to replace all these light bulbs in the house before they burned out or before my mother had a chance to notice.

My father took care of things. 

He didn’t hide things. My mother knew where all the important paper work was and all the bank accounts and insurance policies, car titles, keys, and tax records. She didn’t know how to operate the pump to put gasoline in her car or change a furnace filter.

He also left us things. Twenty years later, we still raid his supply of screws, nails, washers, hoses, wire, and plastic pieces in labeled containers from the deep shelves under the bar he built for entertainment in his basement rec room. When something breaks, we often find, even now twenty years later, he had kept a back up in reserve and we make the replacement.

He was methodical about completing tasks. That his sudden death at an early age, 58, left him in the middle of making a grocery list for the canned good pantry he kept stocked, with supplies he had purchased in advance for small home improvement projects he was planning, and with unspent money left in his money clip seemed wrong for his character.

There were no objects out-of-place or mess left lying around in limbo because he always picked up after himself and put things away before he went to bed. He liked things neat and tidy. He used to sweep his freshly mowed lawn with a broom to disperse small stray grass clippings the mulching blade left behind. The lights and ornaments on the artificial Christmas tree he set up and decorated annually were perfectly straight and evenly spaced as if with a ruler. He hung silver icicles one strand at a time.

As it happened, I inherited his artificial Christmas tree. Each year I take it from the large cardboard box in my crawl space and assemble its skeleton of branches just as he did. I have his ornaments also, but I keep them packed away in the same box that he wrapped each one and put it away for the last time. I decorate his tree with the ornaments that have we have accumulated as we build our own family tradition. But even if I used his box of ornaments, I know I could never duplicate the same display he created. I don’t possess his patience or sense of order and balance. It is a picture of perfection I hold in my mind.

My father loved Christmas. He also loved music and movies.

In all these things, I can still find him and reconnect with him there. It’s an ongoing relationship with a lot of history.

My dad was a kid who went to the movies in the 1940s before there was television. 

According to the historical cost calculator at (www.davemanuel.com), in 1933, the year my father was born, a movie ticket cost about 35 cents. The price dropped to 25 cents during the Great Depression and crept back up to 35 cents around 1945, when my father would have been going to movies with his friends. The year I was born, in 1959, a ticket cost about 50 cents. When I was going to movies with my friends in the 1970s, it was up to about $1.75. In the 1980’s, it had increased to about $3.00. And, at the time my father died, in 1992, it cost $4.00 to see a movie. Today, it costs $8.00, or more, in 3-D even though there are a lot more ways to see movies than ever before.

My father knew the value of a dollar.

Knowing my dad had to pay good money to see a movie when he was young and he didn’t have much is a testament of its value to him. There are so many things that he did without. He told stories of having a bicycle without a seat, only two pair of pants and three shirts to attend school, and the endearing family story of how my father and his sister surprised my grandmother one Christmas by saving and putting their money together to purchase their mama a new stove.

He saved his money for his loved ones.

A poor kid like my dad needed to somehow come up with an extra quarter a week to go to a theatre and pay for a movie. He had lied about his age, said he was 11, to be able to get a paper route when he was only 9 years old. He did this to help his widowed mother support the family. Because he worked, she could worry less and he it also meant he had some disposable income of his own to pay for his love of movies.

My dad recalled spending Saturdays at double or triple features where there would be cartoons, newsreels, serial shorts, a B-Movie selection, and the feature presentation. It was a golden age spent in the big ornate theatres of the day. He also worked as an usher for a time, but there was some trouble related to letting some friends sneak in a back door for free, and that ended his movie career abruptly. 

My dad was always more of a film connoisseur than a critic. He liked a good story.

My dad liked westerns, gangster flicks, war films. He admired Glenn Ford in Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse–that film was one of his all-time favorites and he considered Glenn Ford one of the most underrated actors of his generation. He liked to root for the underdog in a game and back the long-shot in a horse race.

My father appreciated the Great American classics–epics, adventures, mysteries, romance, suspense–dramas more than comedies–although he idolized the work of the silent comics: Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, but especially he praised the work of Charlie Chaplin and appreciated the little tramp’s genius. It was why I selected Chaplin’s tune “Smile” from the end scene of his 1935 film Modern Times to be played last at my father’s funeral service. I feel sure my dad would have supported that choice.

My dad liked television because he could watch the movies he loved at home. He also watched sports: Football, basketball, but especially baseball games.

When I was growing up,  for many years, we had only one TV in our living room for shared viewing. It was called a console back then and considered as a piece of furniture, but really it was an appliance with dials and knobs and tubes and wiring inside. My father understood how televisions worked and he took several broken ones apart but he never learned to fix them. So, he was careful about purchasing TVs. He researched features and components and read technical reviews. He never bought the cheapest model nor the most expensive. He studied the mid-price models until he found what he wanted, and then waited for a sale, or negotiated with the salesman to obtain a deal for paying in cash upfront rather than making payments on time.

In our town, we had a local celebrity called Fritz the Nite Owl who hosted old movies shown at 11:30 on Channel 10, sometimes with witty audio commentary. My father and I stayed up and watched along with Fritz when there was a good one on during the summers, and once in a while on school nights when a favorite movie was being shown. I was an A student and my dad let me stay up to watch. In those days, you had to make the time to watch a movie when it was being shown. There was no way to save it for later.

We saw a lot of the old classics together that way.

My dad was more of a film historian than an analyst.

He had an uncanny knack for remembering the names of all the old character actors, especially from the Hollywood studio system days when character actors made walk-on appearances in hundreds of films. My dad stayed to the end to read movie credits and he taught me the importance of that. 

It embarrasses and annoys my two children when I do that in theatres today, but I have pointed out that some directors reward this practice by attaching blooper reels, surprises, or featuring full versions of songs by popular artists. Because of special effects, movie credits today may have hundreds of names. But being one of many doesn’t lessen the importance of being one. If it was me, or my child, I would wait hours for that name to be read. I can wait the few minutes it takes to pay respect to another son or daughter’s contribution. “You’re weird, mom,” my children say.

I may be weird but I know trivial pursuits are sometimes rewarded.

In the late 1970’s, my father helped me win an “I Stumped The King of Trivia” t-shirt on a local radio call-in show hosted by Steve Boom-Boom Cannon. One evening the question he posed was “Who was the actor who kills Willie Stark in the film All The Kings Men?” My father knew for sure the name of the actor was Shepperd Strudwick. I made the call and got on the air. Steve announced the answer was correct. Having the answer to the question was part one of the challenge. You then had to be able to ask Steve a question he could not answer. I came up with the trivia question that stumped him off the top of my head. “What Eyes of Laura Mars star played Ryan O’Neal’s across the hall neighbor at Harvard in the movie Love Story?” Steve guessed Faye Dunaway. But I knew the answer was Tommy Lee Jones. So, my father and I won this game together. And I got to keep the t-shirt.

My dad and I made an unbeatable team at the Silver Screen edition of the Trivial Pursuit game when it came out in 1983. No one would play against us. So, we played it with one another. When we had exhausted the questions provided, we improvised our own version by making up an original question based on the topic of the printed cards we drew from the deck. I lost often. I learned a lot. It never got old. I miss playing games with my dad. I have never found a better partner.

Back and forth…we tossed the ball.

When cable TV arrived, it cost a monthly fee to be hooked up. But my frugal dad thought it was worth the price and signed the household up to receive the service. It definitely broadened his horizon. Ted Turner’s superstation WTBS from Atlanta, WOR and the USA Network from New York, and WGN from Chicago, and WUAB out of Cleveland all showed classic movies as part of their weekly schedules. There were premium movie channels that cost extra, but which offered the chance to see recent releases before they made it to cable or network program schedules. The floodgates had opened, and movies my father loved and remembered that had not been seen for many years became available to him.

Still, in those early days, you had to make an appointment.

I remember how my dad studied the weekly cable guide that came with the Sunday paper and followed a plan to schedule his time to see his favorite movies showing when he could. Sometimes it meant waking up in the middle of the night to catch a rare classic. He would often take a nap in the early evening so he could stay up late at night or be up in the early morning to see an old film he remembered from his youth. He would alert me of times and invite me to join him in watching certain ones he wanted me to see. And I would join him when I could.

Among his all-time favorites: Spencer Tracy in Northwest Passage and Bad Day At Black Rock; Henry Fonda in The Return of Frank James and The Ox-Bow Incident; James Cagney in White Heat; Gregory Peck in Duel in the Sun;  John Wayne, he truly admired, especially in the westerns: Stagecoach, Red River, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, The Searchers, True Grit and The Shootist. 

Humphrey Bogart he would watch in anything.  He loved Bogie and had something good to say about every role he had played; Casablanca, Maltese Falcon, African Queen–all favorites. He was especially fond of of the western Treasure of the Sierra Madre. This was a film he never grew tired of and always watched whenever it was on.  In that film, he loved Walter Houston’s performance.

My dad liked Errol Flynn in They Died With Their Boots On, and as the swashbuckler, and also in The Adventures of Robin Hood.  He strongly related to Gary Cooper in High Noon and admired the performance of Katy Jurado in that film.  He loved James Dean in Giant; Paul Newman in Hud, Cool Hand Luke, and The Verdict; William Holden in Picnic; Robert Mitchum in Rio Bravo; and he enjoyed Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin doing their own singing in Paint Your Wagon. 

My dad always had a soft spot for the MGM musicals and not only because musicals were my favorite film genre. The one musical we tried to never miss was Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. My dad was also great fan of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, not just because he loved William Goldman’s screenplay and admired Newman and Redford, but because he loved the song “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” He wore out that soundtrack album playing it so often, I bought him another copy for his record collection.

These are all films he taped to save once there was such a thing as home video recorders. This is how he left his keepsakes for me.

In movies such as these that we watched together, I can see fictional brushstrokes that reveal a real-life portrait of my father. Meaningful stories that inspired him, characters he related to, scenes that left lingering impressions, dialogue or lyrics that rang so true and resonated in him. By focusing my attention on what he saw in this way, he showed me unspoken matters of his heart and soul. In shared ways of seeing, I could understand my father in deeper ways than if he had written me the story of his life in 100,000 words.

What caught his undivided attention in music and movies illuminated his character to me, and fortunately, at prime times, I was in ready fielding position, so, “I got it.” And even though he is gone, knowing these clues exist, offer a kind of treasure map and keep me close to him in spirit.

“Hey, they’re showing To Kill A Mockingbird on cable tonight at 11:30.” And even though we had seen that one together before, I would say: “I’ll be home. Let’s watch it.”

When I stumbled upon it at a flea market in the early 1980’s, I paid a whopping $50 dollars for the soundtrack album of that film (rare in mint condition) to add to my father’s collection of film soundtrack recordings. In those days before video recording, film lovers could re-live a film by putting on its soundtrack and as the musical score played, remember the scenes from a favorite movie playing out in their minds. Some soundtrack recordings even featured clips of key dialogue. So, my father and I watched and we also listened together and we remembered and we shared.

Is there a better way to know a person than by making a point to know and understand what one loves and relates to and share in moments that provide meaning and inspiration?