by Youngbear Roth

Created on: March 28, 2010

"…something else I do not recall after his standard 'Your mother wants me to talk to you,' intro - I can't for the life of me remember my father's words. …"

Author

I will show you a father and son snapshot.  It is not digital and does not appear clean and color balanced on any screen.  It is small and old, black and white, creased with a food stain in one corner.  I keep it in an old fashioned photo album between two pages.  It is of a young man in his twenties sitting under a tree in a public park.  He looks down and smiles a smile of no agenda, no idea of what is coming next.  In his arms is a small infant; almost death, a troubled birth only by the good graces of a doctor and a hospital that decided not to charge a young couple living in an East Los Angeles garage in poverty. It is the most important item I own.  It is my father smiling down at me.  It is the first and last time I ever experienced such a pure smile from my old man.  Now, he is old, sick and dying.  It is time to write this.

I've committed to the fog of memories many cafes where we sat while ostensibly I listened and the old man pontificated upon the subtle, philosophical life, sucking grease off heavy restaurant plates like a wet-vac.  At fifty-eight I've not parented though I survived being a bad seed, the troubled son who spent seventeen years living in my parents' home.  I recall Mom imploring Dad, "Speak sense to your son, before he ends up in prison like the rest of your family."

We made the rounds, Dad and I: pizza joints, always with plenty of sawdust; ancient Angelino beef-dip institutions on skid row where manhole covers appeared to ripple in the summer heat; Dad's favorite Mexican food spot on Olvera Street; a rat infested chow mien palace in old Chinatown; The Apple Pan on Pico in Hollywood, where we waited in line to be piled at the counter like scavenger fish licking ketchup off butcher paper; a park bench and Hansen's natural juices in fifty cent pint glass bottles from a vendor in Griffith Park.

One fated afternoon Dad and I sat in the gull squealing breeze off San Francisco bay, Thousand Island dressing dripping everywhere while we ate. Inhaling salt air, I wolfed a face full of the largest cheeseburger on the planet at Fisherman's Wharf across from the Golden Gate Bridge. I felt angels delivering me into nirvana, and while slowing to relish this work of art, picking at browned French fries, we transcended

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