Popcorn With My Dad

Some time ago I began what was to be a collection of short stories about my dad. I only wrote two. Then I allowed myself to become distracted with other things and I never got back to it. After my post from last Friday I have been thinking a lot about my dad. I think of him often anyway, but after Friday I have been missing him more than usual. What follows is the opening to the collection and then a story about us having popcorn together. I love this memory. I'm glad it is one I wrote.

Background

My father was an alcoholic. In the minds of some that makes him a terrible father. My brother and his wife certainly think so. But not to me. To me, he was more than just a drunk. At times it didn’t seem like he was much more, but he was.

To begin a description of someone with such a negative statement certainly forces the reader into a certain train of thought. And yet the only stereotypical thing about my father being an alcoholic is that he got drunk. In my years there were no rampages, beatings (well, there was the one time), gambling, other women, etc. There had been beatings of my older siblings, especially my brothers and one of my sisters, but by the time I was five those had passed. This means my recollections of my father are quite different than those of older siblings who had to endure the Terrible Years. My memories are less cruel.

The simple truth is I love my father. It was true then and it is true now. In fact, I do not recall a time when it was not true, despite my telling him so once. But that was just because it was the only weapon I had, and in a battle you always fight to win – or at least inflict as much damage as possible in defeat. I have always regretted that statement. Not only because it was a lie, but because I think he believed it, possibly to his dying day. I struck a devastating blow which never should have volleyed.

My father was not a perfect man. He had more faults than I care to go into. But he was my father. And I do love him.

Popcorn

I love to tell this story about my dad, even though it happened in the later years and more fittingly belongs at a later time in the telling. But in many ways I believe it reveals the relationship I and my dad had. It is a happy memory, although it does not compliment him. But I always smile when I think about that time in Coon Rapids.

We were renting a small dark house in Coon Rapids. It was our third house in four months. The first house had burned to the ground (another tale about my dad - no, he wasn't drunk at the time), the second we had rented from the general contractor who was building us a new house, and this third house, which we moved into when the first rental house sold.

It was a Friday night and dad was expected home. He was an over-the-road truck driver. He had been a city driver, doing all the work city drivers do. Then he had become an over-the-road driver, which he liked much better. He had a steady route, from Minneapolis to Chicago and then back again. He would get a call to drive a load and he would be gone from three to five days depending on how long it took for his return load to be ready. He usually knew going out when he would be back and so we were nearly always forewarned.

Forewarned is forearmed, they say, and we knew that if he was not in the house by five or five-thirty, he was at the Wiggle Inn – his favorite tavern. That meant a drunk man who could be quite argumentative and combative. He never was physically violent, but his verbal outbursts were sudden and indefensible. At a quarter to six we knew: he was at the bar.

My mother was in no mood to put up with drunkenness this night. (When my father was drunk he took special notice of the stupid things my mother used to do. She did a lot of stupid things, too. I think it was a kind of psychological warfare she waged against him.) She announced she was not going to be home when he got home. She would go shopping, and anyone who wanted to could come along.

Now I don’t mind shopping. But I must have money. I hate looking at things I want when I know I can’t have them. But I had no money. (Neither did my parents, for that matter. But that never stopped mother.) But shopping without money is not my idea of a good time. I can do that by staying home and looking at a store catalog. That is how I window shop. So the thought of a three hour shopping spree without money did not appeal to me. It did, however, appeal to my two sisters who were still at home. They sided with mother and the three of them left.

Mother very much wanted me to leave, too. Not because she cared about my welfare or anything like that. She just wanted to get back at dad for getting drunk. Make him come home to an empty house. Punish him. That was what she wanted. But I was playing the percentages. You see, there was no more reason to believe dad would be home sooner than later. Sometimes he drank until eight or nine. Sometimes he didn’t. But if he did that would give me the house to myself for an entire Friday evening. What more could a sophomore in high school want? (Well, a date, perhaps. But none of my parents children dated until after they left home. I’m not sure why.) So a night with the television was better than a night with my mother and two sisters. You take what you can get.

For me, a night alone with the television was a night for popcorn. Especially if the night was Friday. Back then there were a lot of good shows on Friday. It’s interesting though, that thirty-six years later I cannot recall a single one. I guess they weren’t that great after all. But I was content. Anything on television goes good if you’re eating popcorn. That’s my philosophy.

And I never made small amounts, either. We had large pots and pans and I would fill them with popcorn. I would make enough for everyone to have at least three bowls. And then I would eat it all myself. As Homer Simpson might say, “Ooh. Popcorn. Mmmmm.”

Now in the “olden days” we didn’t have hot air poppers. We had cast iron skillets. One would melt a fair amount of lard in a skillet and let it heat. When the oil was hot one would drop a few kernels of corn and wait until they popped. Then a whole cupful of popcorn would be added, a cover retrieved and the pan would be shook over the heat until the popping stopped. That’s the way we did it back then.

Once the popcorn had been popped it was time to add butter. The reason for adding butter was to cover the taste of the lard. One form of fat would be used to hide another. Then a generous supply of salt would be used and we had the perfect recipe for a heart attack. It’s a wonder any of us lived.

I had just finished popping the corn. I had two very large stewpots filled to overflowing with warm popcorn. I had retrieved the butter from the refrigerator when the door leading from the dining room to the outside opened and my dad came in.

He looked around and saw no one but me. (The dining room and kitchen were kind of the same room.) The absence of my mother’s car had not gone unnoticed, nor my sisters’ absence. My father may have been drunk, but he was no fool. He knew why they were gone.

“Where is everyone?” he grumbled. I recognized the tone of his voice and wondered if I had gambled correctly. Even though I had not deserted him I could still bear the brunt of his wrath. He probably knew I had not stayed home just to talk to him. The reason I had stayed home was in the pots before him on the table. Which gave me an idea.

“They went shopping,” I said in a light and matter-of-fact voice. “I’m making some popcorn. Would you like some?”

Now if there was anyone on the entire planet who might like popcorn as much as I do, I was looking at him. My dad loved popcorn, and if I inherited my love for it from him I can only say, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” His face shifted from frown to non-descript. His wrath had been disarmed. Someone was willing to be pleasant. (If you invite someone to eat popcorn with you, you must actually stay in the room with them and socialize.)

He walked over to the cupboard and took out a large cereal bowl. (Other families used these bowls as serving dishes for salads. We used them for cereal bowls.) He dipped it in the closest pot and retrieved a full helping of popcorn. Then he started for the living room.

I was concerned. He had a bowlful of popcorn, all right, but it wasn’t finished. There was no butter. There was no salt. How would he react when he ate the lard-covered popcorn completely devoid of salt? I had to stop him.

“Ah, there isn’t any butter on that.”

He stopped and grunted, looking at his bowl as if it were some riddle to be solved. Then, to my horror, he picked up a spoon and dipped it into the butter dish which was on the table beside the popcorn. He was about to put solid – not melted - butter on his popcorn. God help me!

I had to be cool. NEVER let on to a drunk that you have caught them behaving wrongly. Everything must be normal and natural. Nothing is out of the ordinary – unless they say so.

“Ah, I’m melting some here, if you would prefer,” I said, acting as if the idea were novel and new and that the preferred way of eating popcorn was as he was about to do.

“Huh?”

He looked at the spoon and then the bowl. Then he smiled and chuckled. I relaxed. Until he started walking toward me. I hadn’t even put the butter in the pan yet.

I quickly dropped a spoonful into the pan and cranked the flame up high. (I love gas stoves.) The butter was melted in seconds and I covered his bowl with it. He salted it and then went to the
living room and turned on the television.

The crisis over I continued my task and melted enough butter for the entire batch. Then I went to the living room to watch whatever he wanted. I would not be watching my shows, but neither would I have to endure the third degree. We sat together and quietly ate our popcorn and watched something. I don’t know what it was. There was overlap in my dad’s taste in television and mine, but not a tremendous amount. He only ate the one bowlful and then he fell asleep.

After he zonked out I stayed in the living room with him and watched my shows. When I heard my mother’s car arrive I turned off the television, grabbed all of the popcorn and went down to the basement. That was where I slept. Everyone else slept in the bedrooms on the main floor. I got a small room in the basement to myself. Who cared that it wasn’t finished? No one ever came down there except to yell at me about something, and this night no one would want to risk waking dad up.

I spent the rest of the night reading books, drinking pop and eating popcorn. Despite his being drunk, we had had a pleasant evening together. Too bad the others didn’t know how to do that anymore.

NOTE: I have been keeping a daily diary for my son since the day he was born. He will turn twelve in a few days, and in all the years I have failed to record his day only four or five times. My hope is that when he gets older he will read his journal and have have memories of his own trigger. I hope he remembers me with kindness.