Coin he gave me has heft, and weight, and size, and art

Not really worth anything to anyone but me

Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

It was about Christmas time, five years ago I think, when he pressed the big round steel coin in my hand at the nursing home as I was leaving.

The coin was bigger than a dollar, with a Big Horn Sheep on it. But Dad knew I always liked coins and this one appealed to me, for its heft and size, its weight, and art. I think it appealed to him for similar reasons.

Not really worth anything to anyone but me.

I had a hard time figuring out what had happened to him. He had always been solid as a rock, and still was in most, important ways. Except he really did not know what was going on.

It was like the the record-player was skipping. He talked about the way "they" had changed the maps on him. Moved all the streets around. I think he felt the county was responsible, or the state. Maybe even the army.

My dad was in the army, in the '50s, and knew that they required respect, but you have to keep an eye on them.

He would tell you he was making good money at "Cornbinder" in Detroit when when the army needed diesel mechanics for International Harvester powered tanks. He thought it was just cheaper for the army to draft him and pay him corporal wages, instead of contracting IH, in the buzzing '50s.

Oh well, they could have sent him to Korea,  but instead, tank school in Japan.

His two older brothers had been at war with Japan in WWII, he was teased, but he went over there to educate them. How to fix tanks.

He was a monkey under a hood... Popeye arms and a sense of how the gear turned, where the cog fit, sound of the click... part of the machine.

I never understood that sense. I liked cars, respected them, sometimes even knew how they worked. Never felt them, like he did. He could just drive any of my beat-up old rigs for a few days and the vehicle would run better for a time.

I think it was different in later years. The sensors, computers, putting it on the monitor to read the chip, he tried to keep pace, but by the time he retired, he had enough, I think.  And after that, it was even more confusing.

He still kept pretty busy after retirement, helped on wrecker calls for years.

My friends in the Dolores all marveled at his dedication to walking Amos, my brothers part Great Dane that he reverse-inherited and the damn dog dragged him around the river city.

When the dog was gone, he still liked to walk. Dogs are good for that. I like to walk, especially with my dogs. Up early, no need for an alarm, get going, we are burning daylight.

My dad always, always, always understood that he was to take care of us, and my mom.

Part of the job was, he knew, to get us to the point where we could take care of ourselves.

He did that, I think. And take care of Mom.

The challenges can creep up on you in a lifetime.

Cars and engines change from a thing you sense and smell, and feel, and know by their click. To something you need a $200,000 monitor to figure out.

That monkey muscle gets tired, and your joints twist,  and your cogs slip, and your gears don't mesh.

Reality becomes someone else's.

When you are used to taking care of things, it is really hard when you can't. But you try with all your heart, and soul, and memory, of what once was.

In the end, it is almost impossible... painful ... frustrating...

But the coin he gave me has heft, and weight, and size, and art.

It is not really worth anything to anyone but me.

Fixing things, more than just part of the job.

I think the first time Dad had to help me fix my car, I had shaved too much off the sides off my pinewood derby block and it was dangerously out of balance. It sort of wobbled to the left and jammed two wheels against the track edges. It was light, out of alignment, didn't roll right, and it looked like a needle-nose Stutz Bearcat, but without the speed. As usual, we (my dad telling me what to do) eventually got it running.

Usually with a smile on his face, but sometimes muttering uncontrollably and shaking his head, Dad fixed quite a few of my automotive indiscretions over the years.

Dents were the deal with my first car, the green Vega. Body work was also common for my "Silver Bullet" pickup. He also kept my older sister's Chevy II running long enough that you could splash yourself through the floorboards if you went through a mud puddle, and later, a '59 Plymouth known as the "Batmobile." My younger brother and sisters stories were similar as well.

Of coarse, he fixed a lot of things other than cars, over the years. He would tell you it was just part of his job of being our dad. Believe me, it was more than that.

Following are some related stories. Click on the title to view:

On the road to ruin, but making good time.

Mean, green, and not too far in between.

Wolverines in Colorado?

Message driven home.

Message driven home

Or maybe he identified a teachable moment.

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Communication takes on many forms, of course, but my dad is never one to lecture. He usually didn’t say much at all. It doesn’t mean he couldn’t drive a strong message home, loud and clear. I remember vividly one such message on a Sunday morning about 40 years ago.
He roused me early that morning by calling down the stairs to my room in the basement, “You need to help me go get a wreck,” was the explanation. Dad worked as an auto mechanic at local garages and supplemented that by driving a tow truck in the off hours.
Over the years, I had helped him on occasion so the request didn’t come out of the blue. Besides, as a teen waiting on being old enough to drive, I really didn’t have anything going on that morning.
He already had the truck out front because he had spent half the night working on this same wreck. He was just taking a break for breakfast and decided he could use my assistance. Or maybe he identified a teachable moment.
We jumped in the old GMC one-ton and it rattled its way the seven or eight miles upriver to where my dad had been able to drag what had been a 1957 Mercury off of a huge cottonwood tree. Near where the straightaway ends and the river elbow bends around Neilson’s hay barn, the crumpled steel lay on the edge of the highway, barely recognizable as once an automobile.
It was really two balls of sheet metal and iron. Soon as we got there, he lined me out by handing me a hack saw and telling me to cut two strips of metal that connected the two balls of wreckage. “We will cut them apart and haul it in pieces,” he explained.
It took less than 10 minutes to separate the two balls, so he had me gather the hundreds of cassette tapes and other miscellaneous debris strewn for nearly a quarter mile from the cottonwood tree that Mercury wrapped around.
“How fast was this going when it hit the tree?” I asked, amazed at the explosive force that apparently blasted everything in the car hundreds of yards in every direction.
“Too fast,” said my dad in his usually limited discourse, but added, “State patrol estimated more than 130 m.p.h.”
Having helped him before, I had seen my share of blood and gore at some of the wrecks he had gathered up but noticed nothing in that manner with this vehicle.
“What happened to the driver? He can’t have survived,” I asked.
“Nope,” answered my dad. “Found him up there against that other cottonwood,” he said pointing to distant tree down near the river. “Neck broke.”
I guess that why my dad never really had to give me the ‘Don’t drive so fast’ lecture.
I got the message anyway.
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