When I was 10 years old I accompanied my father on his Saturday money pick-up route. He owned vending machines in a few service stations, bars and luncheonettes. He had a guy stock the machines with coffee, cigarettes and candy during the week, but he made the rounds himself to get the cash.
I really liked going with him because I usually got a candy bar, saw some weird-looking people, and had lunch with him at one of the barrooms. I think that is where I picked up my now too common habit of dining with bartenders. It was also one of the few times during the week I was alone with him. I loved to watch him open the machines with this strange looking tiny key, that had a short, hollow, round shaft. The door would swing open and he would reach down to a metal container filled with nickels,dimes, and quarters. He would pour the loot in a thick cloth bag and lock up the machine. I carried the bag for him sometimes. It was so heavy. I was quite sure we were very rich, but just wanted to be quiet about it.
The candy bar I had at 9 am was wearing off fast and I was getting hungry. Today we were going to have lunch at Ed's Tavern, a working class joint with that unmistakable smell of beer, urine,and smoke, topped off with a subtle whiff of middle-age despair. Ed's was in East Haven, a tough little section of the greater New Haven area just over the bridge. My Uncle Jimmy was the bridge operator and we would beep and wave at him as we passed by.
My father would order a half dozen clams on the half shell and a shot and a beer. I would get a coke. Then for lunch, it was an Italian sausage sandwich for him and a cheeseburger and fries with a coke for me. I sat at the end of the bar so that I would be less noticeable and not annoy the regular patrons with my youthful face and shinny blond hair. When you are getting loaded at noon, a kid like that can piss you off, but it was O.K., I was Big Bob's kid. I had learned how to fit in to this club of World War Two working stiffs. I was quiet, and when Big Bob gave me a quarter to feed the oldies juke-box, I pick the right tunes. I only played "Mack the Knife" by Bobby Darin, my old man's favorite, or "Kansas City" by Wilbert Harrison, because I heard my father once say "It's got a good beat."
"Are we going to Ed's now" I asked, my stomach rolling.
"One more stop," he said " I got a new location."
The new location was a library at Yale University. Yale, the school of Presidents, good and bad, baseball commissioners, captains of industry and Brooke Shields. The second oldest College in America. The place that invented Ivy League clothing. Yale was New Haven, and anyone who grew up there knew how brilliant you had to be to be admitted. Or at least have a family with a great deal of pull.
We walked into a hallway and stripped the coffee machine of it's silver provided by the caffeine charged students readying themselves to run the world.
As we were about to leave the hallway, my father took me by the hand and said "Look in here."
I peered into the actual library. I had never seen a room like it . The walls and floors were dark, heavy, wood, the massive study tables the same, and over each table were hanging two green Tiffany-style glass lamps. The rugs were rich tones of burgundy and navy. Enveloping the entire room, bookcases with very important looking, thick, leather bound books. It looked like something out of an old English movie I had seen on late night TV.
There were about a dozen future leaders of our nation, staring into their reason for being there. It was the most silent room I had ever been in with that many people.
My father knelt down next to me and breathed,"Some day I would love for you to go here."
I nodded, and we both agreed, I would go to Yale and become a lawyer. He never finished high school.
Two years later my father took all his bags of silver and bought a restaurant. We were broke in three years. He fell apart emotionally. I left home at 17, had a child at 19. I put myself though two years of a small college,then got caught up in radio, and that was the end of my formal education.
Last Monday along with about 900 other parents, I sat in the quad of Wake Forest University, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, a school called "one of the new Ivey League." The sky was a rich blue, the green of the lovely oaks that ring the quad swayed,caressed by a soft spring breeze. My eyes searched the stage for her, and then I heard the words I had waited so many years for.... "Landon Lacey." My daughter was a graduate of a top tier university.
Bells rang out announcing the end of this great day, and Landon, her mom and sister, her uncle and brother, her maternal grandparents and friends, and her father, all went out for a celebratory lunch. It was wonderful, one of the great days of my life. We gave Landon gifts, laughed, took pictures, and hugged each other.
For a moment I left the family to remember my father. By coincidence, he moved with my mother, sister and brother, from New Haven, Connecticut to Winston-Salem in the 1980's to restart life. He died 20 years ago.
I hope his spirit was in the breeze last Monday. It was as close as we ever got to that day at Yale.
He is buried about three miles from Wake Forest.
