Dad - Now I can stop telling the stories

Our last coherent conversation was our most frequent… whether I went to Mass.  I lied about going for a few years. Bucked up. Found my integrity. Told the truth and discussed, bantered, argued, made peace, argued some more, agreed to disagree, argued some more.

No such thing as Gay. Except, well maybe the guy that drove the cab in their one-taxi town… he was light in the loafers.

Man of unmovable faith in God. Any argument with believer, no shows or atheists ended because all began with God as “first cause”.

Loved my mom since he was six years old. He called her Beautiful. He called her Mary Idabit.

He almost married my college roommate’s boyfriend’s mother. And he dated the mother of the Catholic priest where I went to college, who told me I should follow my heart whether I should go to Mass. He left the priesthood.

Hogan’s Heroes and MASH were their favorites, but he never served in the military.

He asked my mom to marry him. She said no, once. He said, many times that "I can't believe someone like your mother would marry me."

He played the saxophone and football in high school. He played in the same league and maybe against Gerald Ford. He loved music and I often heard him whistling. I think he was an optimistic man, with a pragmatic stripe and a Plan B in God knowing what he was doing.

The one argument between he and my mom ended with, “No wife of mine will work.”

My mother saved quarters from grocery change to buy him an organ for Christmas. Another year, she saved for a bicycle. He played every evening after dinner or after his bike rides in the summers.

He quit a hard-to-come-by job during the depression, because the grocer wanted him to put his finger on the scale.

I liked to make him laugh. I remember when I was about seven having been sent to my room for some action, likely “You may not contradict.” I came out, before my penalty time elapsed and streaked through the living room in a clear plastic cleaners bag.

Mom would have the kitchen clean by four forty five. He arrived home no later than five thirty except the third Thursday of the month when he had a board of directors meeting. Upon arriving home, he hung his suit coat, removed his tie and sat down in the living room to a martini. No cheese and crackers, less gin, more ice after the heart attack. My mother sat next to him divided by an end table with a Manhattan. Her drink remained the same after the heart attack.

He quit Michigan Agricultural College (Michigan State) during the depression after a year, maybe two, when the money ran out.  He reminisced about Sunday nights. None of the boys had money during the depression. Food Service closed. They’d chip in and buy a loaf of day-old bread and a jar of peanut butter to share.  

His name was John Frederick Longe. His father was William Frederick Longe. My brother is James Frederick Longe. My son is Alex Longe Frederick.

William Frederick (Fred) Longe died a saint in 1924 when Dad was ten years old. The Ku Klux Klan burned a cross on the lawn while he lay dying. The furniture factory owner, another Fred, turned off the factory work whistle to lessen the excruciating pain Grandpa experienced when it blew. The Knights of Columbus, dressed in full regalia, marched in his funeral procession, so did the Masons – an unthinkable event at the time, brought about by Grandpa as Grand Knight of the K of C and community organizer, invited them to participate in a successful joint minstrel show. The town band marched silently, without instrument to honor him too. At ten, Dad wouldn’t understand the significance of these occurrences, but the telling and retelling of them by his uncles and family seared a brand that guided him.

One visit in Florida, my husband and I slept on an air mattress under the Christmas tree near the dining room. Sleeping a little later than Dad’s breakfast time, he rattled dishes till we woke and scolded us by starting a sentence with, “In this household, we”. My husband, cranky from a fitful night sleep, exacerbated by his 6’4” frame tangling with frisky Christmas Tree needles, interrupted him and said, “John, could you just give me the rule book?”

The neighbors often commented on our perfect lawn. For years he mowed it, though my brother took it on and later I did. It didn’t receive the same acclaim when we were the landscapers.

The Christmas parties for the Detroit brewing industry were legendary. Decorations included an aluminum tree with rotating color and boxes of glass balls on varying lengths of red, green or gold ribbon hung by jamming the hook into an acoustical tile in the basement ceiling. The Harmonie Club on Belle Isle, which my dad was a board member, would cater with the best chef, in uniform cutting from a two-foot high prime rib. He stocked the refrigerator with the Strohs, Gobel, Altes..., any which would be represented by their brew masters, chemists and presidents. No one was allowed to request a brand. Jesse, if not given a cocktail order, just opened the door and pulled the next beer on the shelf to hand to them… with a glass of course. Just before one party, maybe I was nine, I was told to anticipate the needs of a guest. Bring a napkin if they didn’t have one. If their plate was empty ask first what I should get them or offer to take the plate.

We had a cottage on Lake Chemung until the summer before I turned ten. I remember my dad taking me out in the middle of the lake very late one night to see the Aurora borealis. I also remember a cold winter day, sledding down the hill onto the frozen lake, and a cold spring day raking the muck from the shallow waters and spreading a dump truck of sand to create our beach.

He promised once to take me to a store to buy a guitar with my babysitting money. Wearing a tie, he wouldn’t let me get in the car until I dressed up. “We don’t want them to think we are rubes,” he explained. It means an awkward, unsophisticated person.

Dad left MAC and an uncle or cousin, not sure which, took him on as an apprentice brewer in Toledo, OH. He attended brew school at Siebel Institute and lived blocks from where I lived when I first moved to Chicago. At some point, I don’t know this chronology either; he became brew master in his hometown of Ionia, MI and ran a second brewery in Port Huron. He moved my mom, sister and brother to Port Huron until he took a job with a supplier, a malting company in Detroit.

“Let’s not be goops,” a phrase he brought out at neighbors, relatives and the vestibule at church that related to standing with coats buttoned to leave, saying good-bye and one more thing.

Overall pants were not allowed at the dinner table. He served each plate of food individually, taking orders for more or less, but never none… unless one was company. A question or joke for each person served. My friends who stayed for dinner were scared and at the same time awed by him. No one else had a dad who served dinner every night, not just Thanksgiving.

He wouldn’t eat tomatoes, ketchup, onions or horseradish but loved shrimp sauce.

Zucchini was consumed only for the sake of eating.

Serve from the right, clear form the left. Forks, spoons, knives, salad forks and shoes all had their proper places.

The weekend my brother graduated from Notre Dame, while my mom and sister stayed in South Bend he brought me home for my eighth grade graduation and party. As an adult, I can only imagine the discussion my parents must have had about how it would work. I am grateful that he thought it important.

Truth, integrity, fairness expected, required, practiced.

Worst handwriting on the planet.

At one point, I visited Dad with Alex. Mom may have been in the hospital that trip. Alex talked back to me. I, wanting to prove what I learned, washed his mouth out with soap. He got sick. I learned a lesson in reenvisioning parental expectations.

Made a pact with God to go to church every day if he survived his heart attack at age 48. Renegotiated after a stroke ten years later.

When I was eleven, my parents traveled to Florida for a Master Brewers Association convention. While they were away, Wilda, our housekeeper stayed with me until Friday, when a man wearing glasses, in a tie driving a huge Cadillac picked me up wearing a wool red plaid two piece dress and took me to the airport to fly to Florida to meet them. Standing near the pool at the Fountainbleau Hotel in Miami, still in my wool outfit, Dad introduced me to Augie Busch. He told me to remember meeting him. I do. And I remember flying by myself for the first time.

I don’t remember my parents helping me with my ACTs or SATs, nor taking me to see schools or helping me write essays. I do remember the summer after graduation saying that I thought I might not go away and stay and become a secretary. That announcement may as well have been a war decree. Nothing would stop me from going to college. I would not become a secretary.

On the other hand, he could not understand why I would leave a perfectly good job to start a company.

In retirement he created octo-lunch. He cut fruit in eight pieces, eight slices each of apple and pear, eight grapes, eight orange or tangerine sections with eight Ritz-bits. It took him several years in Florida to go to dinner without a tie, though I am pretty sure he never went to church without one.

Couldn’t get drunk on beer.

Talked to Ken, his best friend from high school every New Years. He’d also played football but went on to a scholarship at Marquette. He broke his neck one of his first plays in his first game. “Poor fellow.” Years later, Ken broke his back falling from a ladder as a maintenance man at a sanitarium in Traverse City, an accident that nearly killed him. In his cups one night awhile after, he smashed all the trophies from his athletic days. “Poor sap,” my dad commented when recounting the story. Another night, in his cups, Ken called my dad to tell him he just left his baby at college. My dad said he was in the same boat. Turned out, the two of us girls were at the same school and the men were there at the same time. The old friends planned a weekend with a football game as the highlight. Ken on crutches needed assistance. When the four of us drove into the parking lot at the stadium, a man with a flag  waved dad off. He rolled down the window, “I gotta come through, I gotta cripple in the car.” 

Hmmph. He said it as a first response to many comments and questions. More as he got older.

When I was fifteen, he and my mom returned from a convention. When I asked about going to retrieve Debbie the dog from the doggie hotel, I was told she wasn’t coming home. Her body riddled with tumors, I knew it was time, but I was distraught. Dad came into my room, lay next to me and put his cheek next to mine to console me. I cried and hiccupped and sighed and heaved. He talked and whispered and talked some more. I could feel his breath on my face. When I stopped carrying on, he patted my back. I sat up, stared at him, angry as I’d ever been and said, just so you know, I didn’t hear one thing you said. Your cheek covered my ear.

I don’t know anyone who knew him who didn’t respect him. My friends called him Mr. Longe, even as grown adults.  

He had a devotion to Mother Cabrini and at least once came to the retreat house in Niles for a retreat. I pass it frequently and think of the long drive he made by himself.

Each of his uncles, his father’s brothers and mother’s brother played a significant role in his life. They were the village that raised him. They helped him get jobs, encouraged and discouraged him. He respected them and never crossed them. When a dog that followed Debbie, bit Uncle Doc, the dog was euthanized the next day.

I have the same deep crinkle lines that run the side of my face as him and my nose favors his. There are photos of him as a young man that double for my son. There is a picture of me that looks like his father. Yet, sometimes I unexpectedly catch myself in the mirror and see my mom.

He loved to tell stories. As he got older, he cried at family gatherings, always grateful

for his family. He always told us that he loved us. Though he’d been uncommunicative the last few months of his life, he said, “goodbye boy” to my brother earlier in the day that he died. We loved him.