My dad saved it for 55 years...

One of the strangest things my mom and I ever found among my dad's possessions was something we found in the very first week after he died, and now that it's in the Christmas season I find myself thinking of it again - an Esquire Magazine from December 1959.

My mom seemed to feel in those first few days of grieving that it was very urgent to clear out his office so she could "get things organized". I found this upsetting. I wanted his things to stay just as he'd left them.  But I figured the clearing out frenzy was part of my mom's process, so I didn't try to stop her. I just sat in there with her to make sure she didn't throw anything out that I'd want to keep.    

Then there it was, at the bottom of a pile of stuff on the floor by his desk, under a bundle of tax returns from the 1990s - a dusty volume with a shiny gold cover.  

"Well I don't think we need to keep this" my mom said and tossed it in the recycling bin.  But I couldn't resist digging it out.  It was a enormous - 10 by 13 inches and 382 pages thick - and the cover promised pieces by William Faulker, Thomas Mann, Arthur Miller, Dorothy Parker, and George Bernard Shaw. 

As soon as I started leafing through it I found myself mesmerized, but not by the writing.  It was the Christmas edition, chock full of gift ideas and I couldn't stop staring at the ads.   

The first thing I noticed was how many of the images looked like they'd come from straight out of Mad Men. There was one that looked like Roger Sterling's office, full of men drinking Rye over the course of a business meeting.  And another with a grateful "Girl Friday" that could have been Don Draper's secretary.

Then there was this one - the spitting image of Don Draper himself.

  

The next thing I noticed was the weird way the women were smiling. 

Did women really smile with their mouths open back then? 

Next came an ad from the Cuban Tourist Commission. I recognized the view right away.  It's from the Turquino Room of what was then then Havana Hilton (now the Habana Libre). I noticed only one thing missing - the 24 story Hermanos Ameijeras Hospital which was completed in 1982.  Other than that, not much has changed. 

At first I thought the timing of the ad was funny.  It came out in December of 1959, just before the Cuban revolution was about to triumph in January, so they were inviting people to visit what would soon be a very different place. But then I realized my timing was off.  Fidel Castro took power in January of 1959, not 1960, so when the magazine was printed he'd already been running the country for almost a year.   

The text alludes to the change only peripherally. "Havana has come a long way since Columbus found shelter for his ships in her protected bay...  Now skyscrapers cut through the clouds to herald the new age and a future that promises to far outstrip the past."

I guess at this point Castro's economic strategy still included attracting American tourists? Apparently it took a few years for relations to decline so much the U.S. imposed their travel ban.

  

Given the magazine is from 1959, I wasn't surprised the portrayals of women aren't very feminist. Mostly they're devoted-looking wives or sultry-looking girlfriends, all enraputured by gifts of jewellery, flowers and perfume. 

I was surprised though by the ad below, which proclaims unabashedly that "Men are better than women!" and shows a woman dangling by a rope.  It goes on saying "Indoors, women are useful - even pleasant. But on a mountain they are something of a drag. So don't go hauling them up a cliff just to show off your Drummond Climbing sweaters. No need to. These pullovers look great anywhere." 

What did my father think of this? I like to imagine he disapproved. After all, he married my mother two years later - a chemist who had more education than he did. 

But perhaps these types of portrayals were so prevalent in they didn't even bear noticing, they just blended into the scenery.   

The thing I really don't understand is what the Esquire was doing on the floor of my dad's office. Why did he buy it in the first place? And what possessed him to save it for 55 years?  The father I knew read Macleans and The Economist, not men's fashion magazines. He used to wear suits all the time, even when he was gardening, but he took no notice of his lapel widths and whether they were the latest fashion (there's an article about lapel widths on page 190).  He wore his suits until they were threadbare, much to my mother's chagrin. She always hoped to get him into clothes she considered more "stylish". Over the years she tried buying him jeans and bolo ties and turtlenecks, all to no avail. 

He didn't meet my mother until 1960 though.  Maybe in 1959 he was a different?   

It's also possible he bought it to peruse the gift suggestions. Maybe he wanted to know what the best gift would be for his boss ("Walker's Deluxe 8 year old bourbon comes already wrapped in glittering ribbon and foil, topped with a luxuriant bow" - page 109).  Or what kind of radio to buy for his dad ("The Sony TR 810 is the world's slimmest 8 transistor radio - only one inch thin - and comes complete with battery, earphone, and carrying case, $49.95" - page 290).  Or what kind of coffee maker to buy for his mom ("The Gold electro-plated West Bend Flavo-Matic Percolator brings you the utmost in elegance and makes 6 - 8 cups, $24.95" - page 333). 

Or maybe he was like me - enticed by the promise of fiction by William Faulkner, Thomas Mann and Arthur Miller. And maybe, like me, he kept getting so distracted by the ads he never remembered to read those pieces. Maybe that's why he saved the magazine for so long. Did he keep thinking one day he'd get around to reading it?






UPDATE - December 14
Apparently the open mouthed smile isn't just a thing of the past.  I was waiting at grocery check out yesterday, getting my weekly update on gossip by reading at the covers of the magazines (apparently Angelina Jolie has a new man in her life) when I saw this photo on the cover of Woman's World:

Should my dad still be driving? Plus two other questions about cars.

1) Should my dad still be driving? 

Two years ago, at the age of 87, my dad bought a new car. It was a pale gold Toyota Corolla. I wasn't pleased. Not that it was a bad car. I actually quite liked it. But I'd been hoping he'd take the death of the old Ford Taurus as a sign he should stop driving.

In those days whenever he drove me somewhere I'd start wishing it was me behind the wheel, not him. I looked for slow reaction times, and took notice if he drifted in his lane, and I got especially nervous if he had only one hand on the wheel. But then I wondered if I was being ageist. I myself drove with one hand on the wheel all the time. So if he were a younger man and drove the exact same way would I have worried? I wasn't sure.

It would mean a big change if he had to quit driving. My parents' house was twenty minutes from the closest store on foot, and my mom didn't drive, so they'd have to move or take a lot of cabs. 

I decided as long as I didn't actively fear for my life when he was driving, or the lives of other people, he was probably fine. And I was grateful that each year he had to get tested before his license was renewed, even if it was only a written test.  

Then this year, in the middle of June he handed me the keys when we were on the way to get him an ultrasound. He said he felt tired. So I finally ended up behind the wheel instead of him. After that I drove him all the time, but the only places we ever went were doctors' offices and the hospital. 

2) Mitten, marauder or moustache? 

Edwin the brave kitten investigates (Photo Anita Ayres).

My dad's gone now, but the Corolla is still parked in my parents' garage. The estate lawyer said it didn't make sense to put it in my mom's name because she couldn't drive it. So in September on my monthly visit to Ottawa to make sure my mom's okay I went to the Service Ontario office with a pile of paperwork (the death certificate, the will, proof of insurance, safety check, etc) and walked out with a pink slip that had my name on it.

I've never owned a car before. One thing I hadn't anticipated was how hard it would be to keep track of which car was mine. I see gold Corollas everywhere now.

After my parents bought it, they started noticing gold Corollas too.  It turns out 2012 was a very popular year for Corollas.  It was the year the Corolla overtook the Ford F-150 as the best selling vehicle of all time. 

To keep track of which was theirs, my parents made up an acronym to go with the license plate, so BNMP 453 became Brave Neutered Male Pussycat.  (I like to think the name was a tribute to my Edwin, who at the time was a brave recently-neutered kitten.)

Sadly, transferring the ownership meant getting new plates for the Corolla. Now my mom and I are having trouble coming up with an acronym that's as memorable for BVRM 875. My favourite is Big Velvety Red Moustache, but my mom says moustaches can't be velvety. Others we've tried and rejected include:

- Beth's Vehicle Remember Mother (too literal)
- Big Venomous Reptile Marauder (too evil)
- Beautiful Violet Reflective Mittens (too random)

I've always thought vanity plates were a bit silly.  But maybe one reason people get them is just because they have bad memories? 

3) Is my car haunted? 

For the longest time, whenever I got behind the wheel of my new car, the first thing I'd notice was the dust on the dashboard and the salt scum on the floor mats.  It made me feel like a bad car caretaker. I'd think about how unwell my dad must have been feeling last spring, that he never took it in to get cleaned. A lot of dust is just dead skin, so I'd think about how I was sitting there in a cloud leftover from my dad. I kept wanting to clean the car, but my visits to my mom are always rushed, so I never had time. 

This week I'm in Ottawa again, and I was driving past the Minute Car Wash today when I realized I actually had the time to stop in.  Never having owned a car before, I wasn't sure what to expect.  I had to hand over my key to an unenthusiastic man in a parka. He gave me a ticket, pointed me to a waiting room, and said it would be twenty minutes.  The waiting room did not inspire confidence. There were plastic plants, and a table set up with stale coffee, and a Cold Drinks vending machine that looked like it had been there since 1973. But there was also a big glass window from which I could watch the team of three cleaners go at my dad's car, and they seemed to be doing so with great efficiency. There were vacuums and hoses and spray bottles all being deployed. 

When I got back in, the car smelled of Windex. The salt gunk was gone from the mats, the windows were spotless, and the dashboard was dust free, except for some clinging to the steering wheel base. 

I thought about complaining about those bits of remaining dust, but then I realized I was glad.  There are still a few bits of my dad left to keep me company. Me behind the wheel. Him not. 

A tale of tiny trowels and big erasers.

My mom has been cleaning out my dad's desk, and in the process discovering many random treasures. My favourites include: 

• A Kodak film container that's so old it's made of metal not plastic. And it still has a roll of film inside.
  
• A tiny sterling silver trowel that my dad traced to Birmingham in 1911-12 based on the hallmarks. My mom thinks it's supposed to be a bookmark, which reminds of the scene in Breakfast at Tiffany's where George Peppard and Audrey Hepburn go to Tiffany's and make fun of a sterling silver phone dialer.
  
• The slide rules my mom and dad each got when they started university. My mom's is monogrammed; my dad's is not.
  
• The instruction manual from a Digi-matic SR-8 calculator (calculator itself nowhere to be found). "You'll find many uses for your electronic calculator" it says. "Budgets...Stock and Bond Investing...Slide Rule Calculations." I guess that was why slide rules got shoved to the back of the drawer.
  
• The giant eraser and accompanying note I gave my dad for Christmas as a joke when I was twelve, because he was always asking to borrow mine. "Dear Dad," I wrote.  "I know you are perfect and never make mistakes, but just in case..."

They are all useless objects (even the eraser, which is hard and dried out). And yet somehow each involves a heart-rending decision - keep or throw out?

I miss him so much right now.

Now I sit at his desk

My father, Harold E. Jones died peacefully on Friday at 4:20 in the afternoon. He was a lovely, lovely man - quiet, unassuming, wise, funny, responsible, generous, and always curious about the world.

Now I sit at his desk, afraid that with each object I touch I am erasing him, because if I move something it will no longer be in the place he last put it. But I can't stop myself. Looking through his things is a way of feeling close to him, to breathe in the workings of his mind and his heart.

In the central pile that built up over the recent months when he was feeling unwell I find prescription receipts, the owners manual for his car, direct mail solicitations from Oxfam and the NDP set aside for consideration, and lots of notes about the local food bank board, for which he served as chaired up until last month. (When he delivered his chair's report at the Annual General Meeting in June he got a standing ovation).

By the lamp base there's a pencil sharpener, a fortune cookie he never ate, and an old roll of brown string - Three Bee Gimp Superior Quality, 90 yards, Made in the USA. The paper wrapper on the string claims it is "Ideal for Knitting and Crocheting berets, hats, scarfs, bags, and collars, etc." (Why did he keep these last two objects? Did he have a plan for the string? Was he keeping the fortune cookie out of superstition?)

On the bookshelf he had arranged his dictionaries in chronological order by year of publication (I think it's fair to say he was a little bit OCD). He also taped notes to himself for things I suppose he wanted to remember: A phone number for Monica (who is she?), instructions on how to reset his watch (counterclockwise to change the date, clockwise to change the day), and a sticky note that says "Iraq oil costs $1-3/barrel to extract, Economist, Aug 16,2008, p.47" (Why did he care about that particular fact? I will never know now).

By the phone there's a note dated 18 March 2014 that says "Radiation Therapy North, room 1121, my first appt on Mar 28, 20 treatments, 4 weeks."

He went faithfully to room 1121 every day for a month, and his doctor told him the treatment would probably bring about a remission, but sadly that wasn't so. His PSA levels rose instead of falling, and by the end of June the cancer had spread widely into his bones.

He had always been extremely healthy. He was 89 and had never spent a day in the hospital, never even had a headache. Almost every day he found a reason to walk over to the shops on Bank Street, a forty minute walk there and back, but it would almost always take longer, because so many people knew him and liked him, and he would stop to chat.

I wonder if he went so quickly in part because he had never been sick? After all, it only took five weeks to take him from chairing an Annual General Meeting to lying in his deathbed. I think his body didn't know how to fight an illness once it had set in.