My dad carried a handkerchief. I never once saw him use a Kleenex, ever. Many years after he died my mom explained it. She said he carried two handkerchiefs everywhere. One was for himself to use. The other was always clean and pressed and it was to offer to a lady who was crying, or a child perhaps – the always clean “company” handkerchief.
My father was born in 1930. He was old school, 100%. I loved that.
I remember years ago a younger lady I worked with telling me how her father styled his hair with products and used hairspray every morning. I almost laughed. My dad took a small black pocket comb, wet it in the sink, and combed his hair straight back from his face, every morning. That was his version of “hairstyling.”
I am pretty sure I am the last generation of folks who saw their dad carry a handkerchief.
Dad always smelled like Brut aftershave in the morning, when he got in the car to go to work. He also shaved every day, except perhaps when he was on vacation. One summer I worked at the bank where he worked and I caught a ride into town with him every morning. I loved to see him in his nice suits, smelling wonderful.
Dad would rescue people he loved. When I started college I couldn’t balance a checkbook. For months, I would call him in tears and he would talk me through it, over the phone. My uncle called him once and said he was in Europe and couldn’t get a traveler’s check cashed (or there was some money issue) and he was broke. Dad wired him a thousand dollars an hour or two later – back when that was a lot of money. It helped that Dad worked in a bank, of course.
When my best friend moved to New York, she couldn’t open a bank account for some reason. She called Dad and he got it worked out for her, the same day.
I called him the day I was due to come home from college and said I had a terrible ear infection and I was running fever. I was in so much pain. I couldn’t finish loading up a u-haul and drive 5+ hours home by myself. Dad got a ride to Athens with one of his officers who happened to be going to Atlanta the same day, and loaded up the u-haul and drove me home to Knoxville, with me huddled in the passenger seat crying. To distract me from my utter misery, he told me stories. For hours, in the heat, he told me stories as we crept along in my old car, never able to go more than 50 mph. My favorite one was very short. I asked him how he decided to marry Mom. He said the first time he met her he looked at her and knew he would marry her.
Love at first sight.
How often do you hear that, nowadays?!
Dad was raised Baptist but became Episcopalian after he and Mom had been married a short time. He always went to church, and worked hard to support and help the church – teaching Sunday School, raising money, volunteering to help in many different ways. He wasn’t a big bible reader, but he believed in God, and he would tell you he had a solid faith. I know he did.
The day my dad found out he had cancer was a really difficult day for us all, a heartbreaking day. Mom called me, and I got in the car and drove home. By then I lived in Atlanta and Mom and Dad were in Augusta. When I got there, Dad had already made his peace with the diagnosis. He had told Mom, “I’ll get to meet our son in heaven.” Shortly after Mom and Dad married in 1957 Mom got pregnant, carried the baby 5 months, and miscarried. It was a boy. Dad was devastated. The prospect of meeting his son got him through those weeks between diagnosis and death. I’m sure it was a joyful reunion, when Dad was reunited with his parents, beloved aunts and uncles, and his oldest son.
Today is Dad’s 90th birthday. I know he and Mom and his brothers, son, parents – they are all celebrating.
Anthony H. Thompson 1930-1996.
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