thedrifter
01-14-07, 08:37 AM
Limiting the power of sentimental value
FRANK GERJEVIC
AROUND ALASKA
Published: January 14, 2007
Last Modified: January 14, 2007 at 04:40 AM
My father's black gloves are tattered, their Dupont Thermolite Micro insulation fraying through holes in the fingers and palms. The gray, worn weave catches bits of spruce on hikes down the trail behind the house. They're still soft and an easy fit, but I wouldn't trust them in serious cold.
Neither would my father. I wear them mainly because they were his and they still work. Were he still alive, he wouldn't wear them now. He's been dead almost six years, but his voice still rings clear, true and unsentimental in my head.
"What the hell's the matter with you? Git rid of those damn things and get yourself some decent gloves. How long have you been in Alaska?"
The old man wasn't all hard-nose all the time and understood sentimental value. He also would have understood that I'd wear them long after they were worn out just to irritate him, just to hear him say, "What the hell's the matter with you?"
And the answer, of course, is, "Just the usual, Dad."
I keep the gloves because they are all I have left of the things my mother sent north some months after my father died. A pair of watches, two sets of binoculars. The good gloves. I haven't worn a watch in years, but the binoculars got some use before a fire took them. Now it's just the gloves.
I'll lose them before I throw them away.
My old best friend is a Buddhist living in Australia. He once wrote to me that externalities don't matter. Another old friend from college days who went on to West Point and later the Marines told me he didn't buy souvenirs when he traveled. He pointed to his head and said he kept his souvenirs up there. On the other hand, he refused to part with an old 45-rpm Beatles record jacket with the Fab Four's autographs that he'd gotten as a young teenager in Hamburg, when his Air Force father was stationed in Germany and the Beatles played in Hamburg's red-light district.
When I was a boy, we'd sometimes fish for perch from the Neff Road breakwater in East Cleveland. It was a fine place to fish. The sun baked the big, flat rectangles of rock on top of the breakwater. Someone usually had a radio, and either rock or an Indians ball game would drift out over the water, mix with sweat and sun and stringers of perch. The rocks would be crowded, but nobody said "Fish on!" because perch required no room to land, no net and little time. But it was still a thrill to feel that life on your line.
One Sunday afternoon, I caught a snag after a cast off the rocks. After trying to work it free with no luck, I asked if anyone had a knife to cut the line. An old man handed me a pocketknife and asked me to be careful with it. I cut my line and dropped his knife deep into a cleft of rocks. I told him I'd get it and worked at it, sweating and feeling miserable, first trying to find and then trying to reach it with my arm and the fishing rod. Out of reach. I don't remember for sure, but I may even have tried to hook it with a line.
And I can still hear the old fellow's words, something like:
"I had that knife for 40 years, then I loan it to somebody and look what happens."
He kept fishing. I couldn't take his hard look. I left the scene of my sin against this old man's treasure, conscience-stricken and knife unretrieved.
I suppose there was a lesson here for me, about extra care for what you borrow -- or maybe about not casually borrowing anything precious to someone.
And another lesson that landed later: "You cranky old ..., why'd you go and make a young kid feel that way? That gonna get your knife back?"
Yet to this day, I wish I'd found a way to rescue his knife.
Lesson to heart: If one of my kids loses my father's gloves, there will be no recriminations. Besides, I'll know it's my father at work, getting his grandsons to do what his son won't.
Frank Gerjevic can be reached at fgerjevic@adn. com.
Ellie
FRANK GERJEVIC
AROUND ALASKA
Published: January 14, 2007
Last Modified: January 14, 2007 at 04:40 AM
My father's black gloves are tattered, their Dupont Thermolite Micro insulation fraying through holes in the fingers and palms. The gray, worn weave catches bits of spruce on hikes down the trail behind the house. They're still soft and an easy fit, but I wouldn't trust them in serious cold.
Neither would my father. I wear them mainly because they were his and they still work. Were he still alive, he wouldn't wear them now. He's been dead almost six years, but his voice still rings clear, true and unsentimental in my head.
"What the hell's the matter with you? Git rid of those damn things and get yourself some decent gloves. How long have you been in Alaska?"
The old man wasn't all hard-nose all the time and understood sentimental value. He also would have understood that I'd wear them long after they were worn out just to irritate him, just to hear him say, "What the hell's the matter with you?"
And the answer, of course, is, "Just the usual, Dad."
I keep the gloves because they are all I have left of the things my mother sent north some months after my father died. A pair of watches, two sets of binoculars. The good gloves. I haven't worn a watch in years, but the binoculars got some use before a fire took them. Now it's just the gloves.
I'll lose them before I throw them away.
My old best friend is a Buddhist living in Australia. He once wrote to me that externalities don't matter. Another old friend from college days who went on to West Point and later the Marines told me he didn't buy souvenirs when he traveled. He pointed to his head and said he kept his souvenirs up there. On the other hand, he refused to part with an old 45-rpm Beatles record jacket with the Fab Four's autographs that he'd gotten as a young teenager in Hamburg, when his Air Force father was stationed in Germany and the Beatles played in Hamburg's red-light district.
When I was a boy, we'd sometimes fish for perch from the Neff Road breakwater in East Cleveland. It was a fine place to fish. The sun baked the big, flat rectangles of rock on top of the breakwater. Someone usually had a radio, and either rock or an Indians ball game would drift out over the water, mix with sweat and sun and stringers of perch. The rocks would be crowded, but nobody said "Fish on!" because perch required no room to land, no net and little time. But it was still a thrill to feel that life on your line.
One Sunday afternoon, I caught a snag after a cast off the rocks. After trying to work it free with no luck, I asked if anyone had a knife to cut the line. An old man handed me a pocketknife and asked me to be careful with it. I cut my line and dropped his knife deep into a cleft of rocks. I told him I'd get it and worked at it, sweating and feeling miserable, first trying to find and then trying to reach it with my arm and the fishing rod. Out of reach. I don't remember for sure, but I may even have tried to hook it with a line.
And I can still hear the old fellow's words, something like:
"I had that knife for 40 years, then I loan it to somebody and look what happens."
He kept fishing. I couldn't take his hard look. I left the scene of my sin against this old man's treasure, conscience-stricken and knife unretrieved.
I suppose there was a lesson here for me, about extra care for what you borrow -- or maybe about not casually borrowing anything precious to someone.
And another lesson that landed later: "You cranky old ..., why'd you go and make a young kid feel that way? That gonna get your knife back?"
Yet to this day, I wish I'd found a way to rescue his knife.
Lesson to heart: If one of my kids loses my father's gloves, there will be no recriminations. Besides, I'll know it's my father at work, getting his grandsons to do what his son won't.
Frank Gerjevic can be reached at fgerjevic@adn. com.
Ellie