Growing up, my father was like Dr. Jeckyl and Mr.
Hyde. He had two sides: there was my dad and then there was the man. Dad was his
bright, beaming side- the playful undercover Sailkot Palestinian. Then there was the man. The man was his
dark shadow, the perfectionist who drowned his pains in alcohol.
I did everything I could to please the man. My first clear memory was me
and the man working together at his
store in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. He owned quite a few businesses over the years
and at the time he had a beer distribution warehouse. It wasn’t pretty-just a
huge dusty stockroom with piles of beer cases and a cement floor. You didn’t
come in for ambiance-just for some beer and some snacks. At the warehouse
people couldn’t buy beer by the bottle-only by the box. While I swept the floors and cleaned up in
the back, many a stranger would come in to pay the man so they could drown their sorrows by the caseload.
As a kid, everything was an adventure to me. I’d run
up and down the aisles of stacked beer cases counting each one, playing
whatever mental games I could invent to make it more interesting. The man
would yell at me to stop. I think what he intended to be an apprenticeship like
he had with his father turned more into him babysitting me while running the
store. Both of us couldn’t seem to understand why the other was behaving the
way they did.
The
man
and I were in the beginnings of a life-long culture clash. There he was,
looking at me playing and having fun- and wondering what was wrong with me and
why I was so irresponsible.
Meanwhile I looked at him wondering why he was so
angry at me all the time. Except when he was dad. On those days, if for
some reason he was in a good mood, he’d let me bring my dog in to work. Boy,
those were fun times. I’d have somebody to play with and it was entertaining
seeing my dog in a different environment. She would go crazy sniffing stuff and
exploring the warehouse. I tried to stay in the back so when the bell hanging
over the door jingled, I wouldn’t get into trouble. That was the unspoken rule:
when a customer came in, I had to be quiet. And if my dog saw someone
unfamiliar enter the store, she would start barking. So I tried to keep her in
the back.
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