Dad. William Wharton
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beer. They serve the roast beef with a good dab of horseradish. Dad and I both love it. We talk about the Italian horseradish vendors in the streets back in Philadelphia.
The crowd here is just as informal as the Oar House. There’s laughing and kidding around, flirting and counter-flirting. After we eat, we go through the backstairs into the Oar House. We luck out with two seats high on one wall where we can watch the dancing. I get another pitcher of beer and we sit there in the center of chaos.
I see the ID checkers and bouncers drifting toward us. They’ve been picking on the younger-looking people and checking. They come up to us.
‘Ah, here they are.’
It’s the taller one, a husky guy with a great bushy handle-bar mustache.
‘I knew you guys went in the restaurant just to sneak in here.’
He smiles.
‘OK, let’s see your ID there, fella.’
Dad looks up, smiles, laughs.
‘You’ll have to throw us in the clink, sonny; we don’t have IDs. I don’t drive anymore and my son here lives in Paris, France.’
It’s good hearing Dad so proud and assertive.
They laugh and move on. We finish our beer slowly. It’s getting close to eleven; I figure we’d better be on our way. We go toward the door. Some of the crowd’s been tipped off about the motorcycle and come to watch us take off. I help Dad strap his helmet because his hands are shaking. I strap on mine, kick the starter and she turns over first time.
It’s a cool, relaxing trip home. Dad’s getting to be a good rider; leaning on the turns, not fighting me.
Next morning when he comes to breakfast, I see he’s not shaving again. I don’t say anything. We’re going to see Mom at two and by then it’ll be really obvious. Dad does the dishes and I sweep. When we’re finished, we go out to straighten up his shop.
He has some of the finest tools I know. They’re fitted to the walls with painted silhouettes in white to signal when they’re not there. The tools which aren’t on the walls are in metal toolboxes with rollered drawers. His old carpentry box is there too, everything in order, including a wood-handled Stanley hammer and three Deitzen saws, two crosscut, one rip. Dad’s always been a toolman and knows how to use them. Dad’s tools are a biography and description in themselves.
Out there in the shop, I ask Dad what he’s going to do about Mother and his beard. He can’t pull the mask routine again. He says he’s going to tell her he’s growing a beard.
‘Gosh, John, she gets her hair cut and dyed without asking me; why shouldn’t I be able to grow a beard if I want?’
‘But, Dad, it’ll kill her for sure.’
He looks up at me from his bench.
‘You really think so, Johnny? I don’t want to kill her.’
The way he says it, it’s as if he’s thought it through and decided not to kill Mom after all.
‘OK, then, I’ll shave. I’ll wait till she’s in better shape before I tell her.’
Afterward, we go inside and he shaves before we head for the hospital.
We’re still plodding along at a regular fifty-five. Dad seems to think he’s in France driving that tin-can Renault 4L of his.
Actually, America’s too damned big. We should split into five or so countries. We could have an uptight country for Puritans and phony New England liberals in the Northeast. We could have a down-home farmers’ sort of country in the middle somewhere. The South could be an old-fashioned slave-based country for people who go for that kind of thing. Texas would be a militarist, Fascist country and California with parts of Oregon could be the swinging place.
On our map, we’re hardly making any progress at all. Dad points his finger to a town called Glenwood Springs and decides this’ll be a good place for us to stay tonight. Tomorrow we’ll be going through Vail, a big ski resort where Ford used to hide when he was supposed to be President. It’s beautiful country around here: pinkish rock out-croppings with shades of purple; even some blue rock, almost black.
We push hard the rest of the afternoon. Once, believe it or not, he actually cracks sixty.
I get thinking about school again, maybe preparing myself for the big knock-down-drag-out discussion.
UCSC; ‘UCK SUCK,’ we called it. All the students seemed so dull, placid, weirdly naïve. At the same time, I was continually running into karate black belts or champion archers or chess champions. I played tennis with some schmuck from my biology class and he pounded balls past me so hard I couldn’t touch them. It was enough to give anybody a permanent inferiority complex.
In classes, though, I thought I was way beyond the rest. I’m asking the only intelligent questions and the professors are talking directly to me. But then, when we take exams, these freaks wipe me out. Those California robots are tough competition; I almost failed that first quarter. I’d no idea how hard I’d have to work. In their laid-back, casual, California way, they were learning like crazy.
What they knew was how to take exams. They were expert learners for examinations. They didn’t bother shit learning anything not likely to be on a test. Also, they were absolutely psychic figuring what would be asked. They’d learn only this stuff, not thinking too much about it, then give it back in blue books.
In the beginning, I’m trying to understand. I’m asking questions and trying to think. But there’s no room for questions or thinking at UCK SUCK. No way! It takes all your brain power passing exams. Maybe some of it’s supposed to stick to the sides of your mind when you pour it back, like making pots with slip in a dry plaster mold.
Anyway, I don’t want any more. I don’t know what all that forced feeding has to do with survival. What good is it having a piece of paper saying you went to college, licked ass and crammed for four, six or eight years?
I can say I went. Who checks? I’ll say I graduated, say I have a Ph.D. Who knows the difference? Nobody will call up and ask. Most times you take a job and fill out an employment form. I’ll say I have a Ph.D., two Ph.D.s, what the hell, do it right. I have a Ph.D. in physics and another in chemistry.
There aren’t enough people in the world who can ask an intelligent question in those areas. Hardly any physicists could even trip me up. They all get specialized so soon, none of them know what the other guy’s doing. One peon’s off tracking down a wee bit of charm from a quark falling off the side of a neutron and doesn’t know from hell what an optical physicist might be into. None of them remember anything about general physics. I’ll just say, ‘That’s not my area.’ I’ll spend three days memorizing twenty or so of those constants and I’m home free.
I’ll get myself a good printer to mock up a beautiful diploma and dingle some names to sign on it. Rupert Crutchins or Part Faley. Or I’ll make friends with somebody working in a registrar’s office at a university; have them mail off a set of photostat bogus credentials and records for me, give myself a 4.0 average; make it impressive, scare everybody.
Most likely, I’m only going out to work in industry anyway; help Exxon make another billion or two, what’s the difference.
The whole thing’s so phony. If you can do something, you can; if you can’t, you can’t. School and papers don’t change much.
Up in Oregon I passed myself off as a choker. I faked the name of an outfit and said I’d worked there. They didn’t dash out and check.
Sure, I made some booboos the first few days; they must’ve thought I was a raving idiot. But by the end of a week I was making it, same as everybody else.
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