My Father

I reached the age of sixty two a few months ago, more by luck than judgement, and I now have a deep understanding of just how young my father was when he died. I am now all of twenty years his senior at this point in time, and look back on twenty years that, taking into account the fact that there have been the inevitable ups and downs, I would not have missed. But I digress; I see my father now from the perspective of my advancing years, and yet even as I look back I find it very difficult to find fault with him. I have no doubt that if it were possible to ask him; he would not say the same about me. In my youth I was a fool, not in any kind of criminal way, but merely in the stupid decisions I made; this I freely admit. I can only but hope that, from were ever he may be now, that he would look upon my later years at least with some pride. I look back on him as a son should look upon a father, I of course can not say that I knew him as a work mate, nor can I say that I knew him as a spouse. In these aspects he may have been a totally different person. But he was my father and I knew him as such. He was a kind and gentle man; I would even say he was one of nature's gentlemen. If I have treated my son half as well as he treated me I would be grateful.

He did not drink a great deal; the times I have known him to drink were very few and far between; and shortly after arriving home he threw it down the toilet. No; a drinker he was not! A smoker yes; and it is my opinion that this is what killed him. He died three days before Christmas and that left a big black void in my life, and I have to admit that it hurts as much now as it did then. Even as I write this and even at the age I am; there are tears in my eyes even now. No; time has not healed this wound nor will it ever, this is one scar that I will take to my grave. Nevertheless I have fond memories of him. I can see him now, watching TV (or should that be trying to watch TV) when he desperately needed glasses. He used to go down to Woolworth's store and buy a cheap pair of black plastic opera glasses with legs just like ordinary specs. You could adjust the focus on each eye and he would sit and watch TV at night with them. Every time he got a new pair the first time he put them on you would hear "Now that's champion". Of course my dad had a habit of sitting on them and snapping off the legs. So into the kitchen he would go for running repairs. He would heat up an old knife and apply the knife to the broken leg and weld the two plastic pieces together. Mind you after they had been repaired four or five times they ended up in the bin and he got a new pair. I don't know how long this went on for but one day my mother told him she had made an appointment with the opticians and that was the end of a good customer for Woollies.

There was one other piece of engineering that he used to do; he had cycles from before the time I could walk I could walk. Of course the inevitable happened and they broke down. I remember my first experience in seeing my dad perform an operation on one of his many bikes, but I can't for the life of me think what part was giving the trouble. I think I was about four or possibly five years old at the time and the bike was upside down with an assortment of bed spanners lying on the ground. I had this urge to go out and help him and so I stood watching from about two feet away as small boys do. I could tell by the sweat dripping from my dad's forehead that things weren't going as planed. Nevertheless this was his only means of transport and one way or another it was going to be fixed. As my dad struggled with whatever it was that was causing the problem, he told me to go to the coal shed and fetch the persuader. This being my first time in engineering I had no idea what the persuader was, but I knew the next time. The persuader was a large axe with a big square block of metal opposite the axe end and it had a shaft of about two feet in length. It was called the persuader for an obvious reason. My dad used it to persuade pieces of metal that were never meant to be together to fit together. If bed spanners didn't work then the persuader would. The use of this particular engineering tool had other consequences. The use of this apparatus was usually accompanied by very loud noises as the metal in question shouted and screamed as they were persuaded into position. The exercise required in this operation also brought on a profusion of sweat as well as a muttering of some incoherent words under his breath. I must admit that as the operation was reaching a crescendo I had to vacate the area because I would be in fits of giggles. It was most peculiar how my giggling seemed to increase my father's ill humour.

Since he was a miner and most of his life was spent in the bowels of the earth, his favourite occupation was walking. At the first opportunity he would be out of the house and walking. The down side to this was that we had to accompany him. My five year old legs were worn down by a good five inches because of this. I must have been mentally scarred because of all this walking business because I don't really like bipedal perambulation even now. I remember that it was on Sundays that we had the marathons. My father would take my younger sister and I for a long walk while my mother made the Sunday dinner. At the time it seemed doubly unfair on me as my sister got carried part of the way but I walked all of the way. It was horrendous; we walked miles, well at least one. I can remember there was one particular walk that I really enjoyed. He took me to a site next to the pit where he worked and showed me an enormous drag line. It had been brought in for open cast mining and it was huge. It's bucket could accommodate a bus, if not two. This machine had no wheels; instead it had feet that it walked on. It was so prestigious that it even had a name, it was called Big Geordie. Now I know not whether this was its true name or whether it was one given to it by those who worked it. No doubt there are some out there who will know the answer.

Due to the fact that my father was a miner he was not allowed to join the forces during the great blood letting of the Second World War. Instead he was allowed to join the fire service, what was then called the NFS (National Fire Service). I have already written about this in another piece, so if this seems familiar then I apologise. So: he told me once that when Sunderland was bombed he was ordered to the scene to bring the fires under control. It was this fire that frightened him. I always wondered why it was that he poured water on our coal fires before we went to bed. But this was the reason; he was on top of an extending ladder directing the water into the heart of the flames. He had a serious lesson that day as to the power of fire. Never were we allowed to go to bed even with hot ashes in the grate, I have seen the hearth swimming in water and my father actually feeling the ashes to see if they were hot. I can only imagine the fear that those fires instilled in my father.

I have no intention of treating you to any more of my reminiscences about my father; I have no doubts that you are already bored enough. But I have to say that the writing of this has been something of a cathartic exercise for me, in the emotional sense that is. Suffice it to say that he is sorely missed and although this is not a long piece I am pleased I have now put this tribute to my father in writing. There is one last thing I will say; the one memory that comes to mind every time I think of him is the time when he and I were alone in the kitchen together. He had just cut himself a large piece of pie and for no apparent reason he began to do a jig in the middle of the floor. I almost fell of the chair laughing. Well if you haven't got the message yet; this is a tribute to my dear old dad.

The End