Got a Wife and Kids in Baltimore, Jack, I went Out for a Ride and I Never Went Back

Since I don't think even one photo of me and my dad exists in the world, here is one of my mom and dad.

 

When you are the youngest kid in your family, nothing you remember is ever true. Your siblings will tell you that after you relate some memory that you thought really happened. "No," they will say. "That never happened". So,  all I really have are things that I thought I lived, but I was probably wrong about. That is how I will talk about my dad, through the things I thought happened, and the ways people who didn't like my dad told me they happened, and the ways people who had biases the other way told me they happened.

I was four years old in 1969, when my dad disappeared. For years, that's how I thought about it. That he was there one day, and then, poof! He was gone. When I got older, I thought that maybe he killed himself. He wasn't the happiest person who ever lived, that's for sure. So, it wasn't out of the question. Also, as a kid, it was too embarrassing to think that your dad ran away. Adults shouldn't run away from home, should they?

Even though I was very young, I think I have some actual memories of my dad. Of course, they are more likely things that someone told me happened, or maybe even something I saw on TV and my little kid brain incorporated it into my memories. These are the things I think I remember about him:

1.) I have a vague memory of going to the Superstition Mountains and being terrified. I had just seen or heard something about the Lost Dutchman, and also I was afraid of snakes. I wouldn't let my dad put me down, and he was rightfully annoyed with me.

2.) My mom went back to work at some point, and our dad watched us during her shifts. I remember him taking us to the race track, Turf Paradise, and us being so bored that we would spend hours picking up the paper betting stubs and making a little basket out of our t-shirts by rolling them around our arms, and when we had enough stubs, we'd release our t-shirts from our arms and the stubs would go flying into the air and we would start all over again. The horse racing track was way better than the dog track. All I remember of him taking us to the dog track, was the flies that were everywhere. At night our dad would take us to Sky Harbor air port, where he would watch the planes land and take off over, and over again. That was a little obvious foreshadowing, huh?

3.) I remember watching "The Wizard of Oz" and the scene where Dorothy is looking through the crystal ball at her Auntie Em, but then her picture turns into the witch, and I was so terrified that I screamed and my dad picked me up, and calmed me down.

4.) I have one last, weird memory that we're at someone's house in Scottsdale where there is an above ground swimming pool. Did we have an above ground swimming pool, or were we at someone else's house? I have no idea. Most of what I remember is a feeling. One of the other dad's at this outdoor party picked up my mom and threw her in the pool. They were laughing, but my dad was mad.

Okay, so those are the only memories I have of my dad. It still seems like a questionable amount for a four year old. Which is why I prefaced the whole thing with my little talk about memory...Or lack thereof.

How the story was told to me by both people who loved and hated my dad was that he left my poor mother with a four year old, a five year old, a six year old, and a nine year old, we were being evicted from our house, and he had run up every credit card he could get his hands on.  Eek! We moved into my Grandma Maxine's house (my dad's mother), with our Aunt Lee and her three children. All I really remember about that time is waking up to different tree shadows on the wall, and my brother falling off the top bunk bed. 

The story goes that the only way my mother wouldn't be responsible for my dad's debt was if she divorced him. It would take seven years before we could have him pronounced legally dead without a body. My mother was very Catholic and didn't believe in divorce, but my Grandma Maxine helped her with it all and even went to court with her. I hear the judge was amazed that my mom's mother-in-law would not only approve of the divorce, but actually go with her to court.

Eventually, my mom found a house in a bad part of  Phoenix where they were soon to build the Maricopa County Freeway. When I was at the end of first grade, we finally got some government funded housing in Mesa, where I was probably the happiest during my childhood. My mother died of a stroke when she was 42 and I was ten, and I was truly heartbroken about it for years and years.

Since we, or his mother, had never heard from my dad, I just assumed he was dead. Especially after I had my children, I couldn't imagine how a person could still be alive and not give a shit about what happened to their spouse and children. Alternatively, I had this very slight worry that my dad would come out of nowhere once his health was failing, or if he thought he could get money from us, and expect us to take care of him. Luckily, that didn't happened.

What did happen in 2013, was that my cousin Jo Anne was looking up her genealogy, and found my dad's obituary online. Guess where and when he died? Okay. I'll just tell you. My dad died in Hilo, Hawaii in 2009 of COPD. He smoked like a chimney when he lived with us, and I'm guessing that didn't change after he left. He is buried in the VFW cemetery in Hilo. One of these years, if I can get the money together, I'd love to go to the Big Island, mostly to ride bikes and check out the volcanoes, but if I was going to be there anyway, I wouldn't mind checking out his grave. It's the only physical thing there is of him (that I know of) after he left us.

 

Thanks to my cousin Jeff for taking this photo of my dad's grave in Hawaii.

In his obituary, it said he left two children, Bill Jr, and Ella. My brother is named Bill, but he was never a JR. I have a sister named Erin, but not Ella. My brother thinks that whomever it was who took care of him in his last years or months, just got the information wrong that he told her. Who knows what kind of  mental state he was in at the end. It's possible that he had two other children after he left us, but I did some internet searches for those names with no luck. It's also possible that he told his caretaker two names, that she then got mixed up, and totally forgot about me and my middle sister. It's sad, but he had only known me for four years when he left, and he was gone for forty years before he died.,

I've been meaning to write about this for years, because that's how I process things, but even after writing about it, I think I have a long way to go before I make peace with and/or sense of my father's story. I guess now you all know where my abandonment issues come from...The hardest part for me to process, is how he couldn't have even called to see how we were? Or maybe sent a couple of dollars in the mail whenever he had them? I'm sure he figured we wouldn't be at our Scottsdale address, since he was the reason we were being evicted, but he could have sent them to his mother. Was it shame that kept him from any kind of contact with us, or maybe it was the fear of getting caught? 

There are two things I know about him; one was that he definitely had his demons, and two was that he loved us and my mom. I did feel that back then. He was a photographer, and I believe he wanted the freedom to be brilliant at it. He also wanted to be a husband and father, but he wasn't able to do both. In the end, I have no idea if he kept up his photography. I would like to think he did. If he chose his art over his family, I hope he was able to capture incredible images. I would love to see them.