Remembering the Good Things (on my Father)

Who was Basil Rowe?

 

Or was he Charlie, And did it matter?

 
I knew the man well, or so I once believed, having been born his eldest child and only son… But he passed in 2005 and I am now sixty-six: wise enough these days to know that one’s child might know relatively little of one’s sire, and vice versa. After all, there is so little that he knew of me, and I regret that. But isn’t that often how it is?

Beginnings

 Dad was born on November 7, 1931, in Garrett’s Sacred Heart hospital, and his name was heralded in the Garrett Clipper as Basil Charles Rowe. From that day on, at least until he left Garrett for the Air Force, Dad was known by all of his schoolmates as Basil, or more affectionately as “Bay.”  Yet by the time Dad enlisted in the Air Force and began courting Gloria Filiault, his wife to be, Basil was going by Charles or Charlie.


Of course many people choose to use more or less formal names as they come into their own, and I have done much the same. Not always terribly significant, though obviously a name change does signify something important, and in Dad’s case the change from Basil to Charles harbored profound meaning. More on this to come, but for now let’s return to the very beginning: his father Perry Rowe and the Great Depression.
 

These years (1929 throughout the thirties) were formative and shaped long-term attitudes and behavior profoundly, well beyond those years throughout which Basil, born in 1931 came to be… And while there was generally enough hardship and uncertainty throughout the depression, father Perry died as Basil, now “the man of the house” turned ten. Years later Dad attributed his father’s death to alcohol.

 
Perry seems to have been, at least at some point, a cruel and violent man. Grandma told me he was apt to fly into a rage and break a dish should his supper plate not be warm… frightening, but no one has told me that Perry otherwise abused his own family.

 
However, when I happened to be selling carpet circa 1980, I was told by a retired railroader that Perry was a brutal man who relished beating hobos riding the trains. I don’t remember any details, but was shaken, as the man seemed very sincere and credible. And I do recall that for some time Dad kept Perry’s brass knuckles and a blackjack (used for beating people) in a box. Not that Dad ever used them, I am certain he never did any such thing, but those discoveries do corroborate that railroader’s take on Perry.

 
And then when I was about twelve I noticed a large, mysterious, locked, very intriguing and very strong trunk in the garage while mowing Grandma’s lawn. I asked Dad what was in it, but he never said, except that the contents were sensitive, related to Railroad personnel, and could cause a lot of trouble if the box were opened.

Many years later, he told me:

You see, there had been a big union strike, and Perry, who had been a union man, became an informer. Once the strike ended, Perry emerged as the top dog for B&O security between Chicago and Toledo, and that is how Perry came to own so much land (before it was subdivided following his passing).

 

This history I learned directly from Dad.

 

His Earliest Years

 

Perry’s passing required Grandma to work at Garrett’s Creek Chub factory, a job she hated, and observing her unhappiness in that factory was formative for Dad. Despite his youth, or perhaps due to Perry’s general attitudes, young Basil felt a duty to work as soon as he could- a duty that he quickly came to enjoy.

 

I remember Dad and Grandma both telling me at different times how much gratification Basil found in work, and I distinctly remember Dad telling me he loved to work as a child because he could do a good job. My guess is that his employers were generally quite pleased, thus reinforcing perhaps an innate impulse. In any case, his life-long calling seems to have been WORK spelled in capitals.
 

Earliest Photographs and Memories

Some of my very earliest photos and memories of Dad center about work. In one photo I am sitting in a wheel barrow which he had been using, and in another you can see he had been wearing work boots. These photos were very early, and I cannot recall any of them except per the photos.
 

Perhaps my first true memory of Dad was when he was he was constructing a house on land subdivided by Grandma and ultimately purchased by the Nistles (misspelled). Dad was well up the ladder when it toppled over… very memorable and frightening.

 
But the memory most disturbing to me centers on Mom’s short-lived system of gold and black stars. Behaviorism was the rage those days, and she had read that rewarding good behavior with gold stars and punishing bad behavior with black stars would improve family dynamics. But apparently this approach did not work with everyone. I do not remember the details, but Mom later recalled, and I have a vague but definite memory of, sneaking into the box of stars and pasting inordinate numbers of black stars on Dad’s chart.
 

Why? I have no recollection at all. But sadly, it was a harbinger.

 
Nevertheless, Dad continued to try in his own way. Once he took me to work with him at a construction site, I must have been five, and still remember those eight or so hours as the most dreadfully boring time in my entire life. Or, a couple years later he would take me with him now and then to Fort Wayne, where he would spend hours buying electrical supplies for his side-business while I learned patience and manners. Again, hours and hours of unimaginable boredom, or so it seemed. But he caught on pretty well and it wasn’t long before he knew we had little to say…




Or so it seemed, but I know it wasn’t really that bad. Just a serious mismatch in sensibilities and interests. After all, I was just a kid and he was an alpha-adult…


 And definitely finding more and more to do in the way of serious work.
 

The Young and Intermediate Years

Circa 1960 on, Dad’s life was a whirlwind of work and civic engagement:

• An electrical side business
• An insulating side business
• A small suite of apartments on Franklin Street
• A BIG building that half-way burned down, creating huge stress: the first time I ever observed him drinking and somewhat drunk at the house
• Very active in the Jaycees and Chamber of Commerce
• Volunteer Fireman
• The Shake Shop
• And throughout ALL of the above endeavors, full-time work as an electrician at International Harvester…

• Then Garrett Plumbing and Heating
• Garrett Hardware
• The Warfield Apartments (in cahoots with Henning)
• And somewhere along the line, successful Zoning Board and School Board elections

 

It Wasn’t ALL Work

In his the younger years, Dad was able to enjoy a great deal along the way. He loved practical jokes, Halloween, Maverick on Sunday night TV before driving to his third trick Harvester job, and especially Garrett football and basketball… But more than anything, he profoundly enjoyed the company of a great many men who strode through the wake of Garrett:

• Charley Davis
• Melvin Dietrich
• Joe McCorkle
• Bill Murley
• Phil Conrad
• Virgil Thomas (a colorful antique dealer)
• Jerry Mellot
• Ernie Yoder
• Don Heupel
• Walt Fuller
• Henning Sorenson
• And there were surely others beyond my memory
• Not to mention a wide range of genuine second-rank friends and well-wishers in Dad’s constellation.

A Dark Side

 
Dad did harbor a dark side driven by social class resentments and privilege. While that face did not appear often, when it did erupt, the intensity could be ugly. Once he was very angry about something with Walt Fuller, whom I know he deeply admired and even loved… Yet he once lashed out telling Walt “I’m not your nigger!!”

To be fair, the time was post-1970, when he was very stressed and drinking heavily, but I have heard enough other slams against various educated and socially privileged Garrett figures and Steuben County Lakers to understand some elements of the problem: Fancy Pants!

Dad despised on sight those he took to be “Fancy Pants”… And there were plenty enough to resent.

I will mention only one other name relating to this topic, because it was somewhat amusing and much unexpected:

Aaron once told me he was trying to sell a big air conditioning package to Mrs. Judy Morrill, a very wealthy and much noted philanthropist. Hoping to ingratiate himself with Judy, Aaron mentioned that his grandfather was from Garrett, and Judy, who had known Dad as Basil (they were high school classmates), said “Well, he wasn’t a very nice man!” Nevertheless, she did buy the air conditioning. 

Dad’s Children

 
The Rowe children indeed seemed secondary in many respects, but Dad did do his part as, at least as he and many others raised in those times understood it. Foremost, he was a provider.

We were never in genuine need or want, not even close.

Our clothes were decent, if not from Sterns.

We had season tickets for sporting events and could go to any Gala film that was not salacious.

We had swimming pool privileges, and could play outside at will.

Dad got us to and from Church Camp no matter what (thanks to Mom, but still, he took the time to get us there and back.)

He got Mom and the kids to New Hampshire most years, even by train and once airplane.

He constructed monkey bars, a Tarzan rope, and a paddle ball set-up for our fun, and kids were allowed to play outside in our yard.

Our childhood Christmas was always GRAND!

We had a regular allowance, and opportunity to earn much more if we were willing to work for it.

We were certainly not abused in any meaningful way.

And I know there were many, many Garrett kids who, for many reasons, could not say the same.

For this alone, thank you Dad.

  

Was Dad a “Success?”
 

In some significant conventional respects, the Dad I knew, while admired by many, was not a conventional “success” at all.

Think about it. He worked for years to ultimately hit on the Shake Shop, a small-size restaurant with the bathroom in a basement, but do you imagine “successful” people saw real success there? Remember, he was still working night shift at Harvester until at least 1970, whence finally he was able to sell the Shake Shop, abandon Harvester, and buy Garrett Plumbing and Heating and the Garrett Hardware store.

Maybe this would bring the success he strove so hard to earn… But no, look what happened: The hardware store created little or no more income beyond what he might have made as a wage-earner (so he told me), and Garrett Plumbing and Heating unraveled in bankruptcy!

Then he married JoAnn.

 

Existential Success

 
As a Korean War airplane mechanic, Dad’s aptitudes were sufficiently high that he could have re-enlisted as jet mechanic with terrific opportunities, yet he declined in order to go back to his railroad town of Garrett… BUT no matter what his parents had called him, or his teachers, or siblings, or classmates throughout his first twenty years, this man now knew his true identity, and that name was not Basil, but Charlie!

Dad was born to DO. I remember some 35 years ago Sonny telling me “Your Dad is a Hell of a guy! He can do anything!” And “do” he did, throughout his entire life! All KINDS of doing. This and that and another thing, and yet another and another and another!!  

Really, I don’t know anyone who has done so much doing in so many different endeavors, with so much enthusiasm, and often for no other reason but to help someone else do something that needed doing… And to my mind, his was a very great existential success.
 

Remembering the Good Things

 

It was too late for us in most ways

We could never really connect

Just superficially, forced and hollow

 

Neither of us knowing the other

At least not very well

 

Still my last words to him

As he was passing

Were sincere:

 

I will remember the good things

 

And indeed I often have remembered

Throughout these past ten years

And now

Finally writing this memoir

Has brought complete

Peace and Love