Positive Energy

I have always placed a high emphasis on trying to help leave you all with good memories. Maybe it is a character flaw if I've overdone it, but confidence is high that it has worked out for you all more often than not, right?

As I've said before, Dad was always super high energy about memory making, and doing his best to be what he thought was the best parent possible. His own mom and dad, my Grandma Shirk and Grandpa Billington (Frank Jr), split up when he was fairly young. Grammy Shirk ended up marrying a not very nice man, Stanley, who really didn't treat her kids well, and in particular seemed to harbor great disdain for Dad, who was the oldest of the siblings. To hear it from Aunt Lynn, Uncle Johnny, and Aunt Barbara, Dad did his best to just stay out of sight, in the upstairs or attic, or basement, or out with friends, to avoid coming into contact with Stanley and having to absorb whatever physical or verbal abuse might get directed at him.  Dad missed out on having a good dad around, and I think he tried hard to compensate for that. Even after he and Grandma Crook split up, he kept up as best he could.

Up until I was 7 years old, my parents were together, and I didn't realize it until much later in life, but Dad's energy to try to be involved with us kids seemed limitless. As a young kid, I thought everyone's Dad did of course did those kinds of things. Later as an adult, I realized how much more he did than most parents, and for me and my siblings in particular, and more than I was ever really able to do for you guys, and that is really what led me to always try to compensate in my own way, because I never was able to match his energy level like that.

I can remember, when I was in day care during the work day, because Mom and Dad both worked, that every holiday Dad would make sure my wardrobe was ready. For example, on St. Patrick's Day, I didn't just have green pants and green socks and a green shirt... Dad also spray painted my saddle shoes green!  We would sit in a circle, I'm like 4 or 5 years old, and the staff would be leading a sing along... "I see someone with a clover bow, a clover bow..." and working their way through the kids. When they got to me, it was always, "I see someone in alllll green". No matter what holiday or event, Dad made sure my outfit was not lacking.

After day care, when I was in regular elementary school for the first time and all of 6 years old, there was going to be a Christmas program for the students and community to mark the beginning of the holiday break, and Santa Claus was going to be there for photos! Pretty cool! I mean, I knew Santa was not real by then, but at 6 years old, it is still neat.

The big day came, it was exciting to go to the school at night, just a totally different vibe than the school day. We got in line to get our photos taken, and when my turn came, I was parked in Santa's lap, and he asked what I wanted for Christmas.

Wait. I totally know that voice!

I turned and looked at him. Most of his face was obscured by the bushy white mustache and beard, and of course his hair was covered by the red stocking cap, but there were his eyes. Dad.  MY DAD IS SANTA CLAUS.

I kept my cool, because I for whatever reason decided his secret needed to be kept safe, but I still wanted to tell EVERYONE that SANTA IS MY DAD!

I still don't know how he arranged that, and didn't know until later that he didn't borrow a Santa suit, he bought it outright. He did the Santa thing for several years and at some point I noticed his suit hanging mostly hidden in the back of his closet. Even after Mom and Dad split up he did Santa for many years at my school as well as the school in Maple Valley where he ended up moving after marrying Laura (Grandma Billington).

But that was not all. The elementary school in Maple Valley also had an annual carnival in the spring, which felt a lot like the Halloween events at the Rice Lake Fire Station in Duluth, or the Trunk or Treat events at the big church in Vancouver. Lots of little booths with skill throws and toss the rings and dart the balloons and stuff like that. The first time I went to one of those, I didn't notice that he disappeared shortly after we arrived. Was having too much fun playing. At some point I heard the voice of someone entertaining kids with silly magic and making balloon animals, and it gave me the exact same kick as Santa Dad. There was this tall and round clown decked out in a full silly head to toe costume with goofy shoes, heavy face paint, big red nose, and fabulous rainbow wig. And yes, of course, it was Dad.  I had not known he knew how to do clown stuff. He had the voice, the mannerisms, the silliness. He surprised me all over again that night. And when I had found Dad's Santa costume in his closet those years later, yes, this clown suit was right with it.

I don't remember how many years he did these things, but this is a level of community involvement that I don't feel like I was ever able to match. He wanted to make good memories for us kids, but not just us, rather for all kids. In those years, he poured his energy into trying to make things better for any children who might be having a rough go. He always seemed to be trying to make the world a better place, in his own way, and I'll always be grateful and proud of him for that.

So I had you guys pick topics, and Indie chose first. "Clown sounds fun."

Yes, it absolutely was.

The Prankster

Dad was known, mainly when he was younger, for being willing to invest a great deal of time in order to pull off a great prank.  And he knew how to work with others.

Not that he wasn't afraid of impromptu fun, either. Once, when he and his younger sister, Aunt Barbara, were walking in the relatively new Lloyd Center Mall in Portland as teenagers, in the middle of the crowd, without any warning whatsoever, he stopped cold, and in his commanding voice announced:

NO! NO, I DON'T CARE IF YOU ARE PREGNANT, WE ARE NOT GETTING MARRIED!!

And then he stormed off, leaving her stunned and speechless, shocked bystanders left to draw their own conclusions and having no way to know they were actually siblings.

Aunt Barbara tells this tale with a chuckle now, but I'm sure it was highly mortifying then, being around 1960 when things weren't as loose as they are now.  I seem to recall that this was not unprovoked, that she had pulled something on him earlier and this was payback.

But this is not the tale to tell with this post.

Dad was a complete gearhead, owing to his propensity to take everything apart to understand it and put it back together again. Following his short stint in the Marines, in fact, he worked at a car dealership doing repair in their garage before getting his first big break with Boeing outside of Seattle in the late 60's. Cranking and wrenching on 1930s and 1940s roadsters was totally his thing back in and after high school.

So he and a group of his compadres set up one of their cars for the event. They rigged up a metal cup of some sort on a hinge or swivel, over the exhaust manifold, which is the hottest thing on a running car. Ran a pull cable or string into the passenger compartment to tip it on demand, and filled it with old motor oil.

Then they filled a few baskets with really critical car engine parts. Things a car absolutely cannot run without. Including things that you can't even get to without a few hours of labor digging into the engine. Things like pistons, pushrods, intake/exhaust valves, rocker arms and springs, radiator hoses, distributor caps, spark plugs and wires.  Major components. And they nested these in the engine compartment of the car.  Mind you, cars in those days had huge engine compartments with lots of extra space, they weren't hyper engineered and packed tight under the hood like cars today.

So then like eight guys would pile into the car and head out for downtown Portland. And when the timing was right and they were drawing up to a very busy intersection and were going to be at the front, someone in the car would pull the wire and tip the cup.

The oil would pour onto the exhaust manifold and instantly create billowing clouds of grey/white smoke that would pour out of the engine compartment. The driver would drop the clutch as they rolled to a stop, making the car lurch a bit before sputtering the engine dead. All the guys would jump out like it was a clown car, throw open the hood, and "go to work!".

So there they are appearing to discuss what's wrong, and guys would grab a part from one of the baskets, a couple guys would look at it, shrug like yeah we don't need that any more, and toss it over their shoulders into the intersection. There were so many guys crowded around the engine compartment that none of the bystanders around them could see what they were actually doing. Over the next 60-90 seconds, these guys are crowded around a heavily smoking car and chucking parts onto the street like nobody's business.

One of the guys was a spotter, and when he saw the light for the other direction go yellow, he gave the signal, everybody jumped back, someone slammed the hood down, they all piled in, started it up, and drove off, leaving a cloud of smoke and critical car part debris and dozens of flabbergasted onlookers to try to process what they'd just watched.

Dad loved telling this story. They did it more than once, sounds like always to great success.  And yeah, they littered, I guess.... but it was the late 1950's. Kids being kids, right?

Good times!