Dad always told the best stories! Like when he was a kid and his father, Harry, came home from a long business trip. Harry greeted my father and his brothers, Harold and Joseph, but the children didn’t say a word in response because they were in front of the television that Harry had purchased prior to his trip, transfixed. So Harry very calmly and wordlessly went over to the TV, picked it up, yanked it out of the wall, walked to the window, and tossed it into the alley next to their apartment, where it exploded onto the cement.
Or how, when dad was an adult and working at his family business, Wally Stereo Tape City, he had Miles Davis as a regular customer. Wally Stereo Tape City was the first company to install eight-track tapes into car radios. Miles, dad said, wanted one. So he worked with the legendary jazz musician and struck up something of a friendship. “At Miles’s parties, there were sugar bowls filled with cocaine,” dad said. “That’s just how he rolled.”
My father would talk about seeing Bob Dylan play at Washington Square Park and “the Reggio.” He’d talk about living in Cuba before the Revolution, buying leather boots in the Costa del Sol, visiting San Miguel de Allende then deciding he’d just stay there for a couple years…there are so many more. Of course, dad being dad, I can’t be too sure whether these tales were completely true (he loved an embellishment, whether it was silver glitter he’d put all over his face because it made him “look younger,” a rose clipped from the backyard and pinned into the lapel of his suit, or a boldfaced lie lol). But his stories were always big and filled with adventure, exactly how he lived his life. Happy Father’s Day, pops. Miss you forever ❤️
