And I hope everyone is having a Happy Father’s Day! To those of you lucky enough to still have your dads, cherish this day. To those of us who have only memories, try to make them fond memories. This is one of my favorite memories of my father – nothing earth shaking or life-altering, but quite typical of our father-daughter relationship. If you’re curious, follow me below yonder elegant squiggle.
To begin with, I have to lay a little family history on you. I apologize for interrupting the narrative flow with awkward exposition, but I promise you – it all has a direct bearing on the tale.
My mother was what we in dogdom call an “Alpha Bitch”. This is not a derogatory term. I don’t mean to imply that mother did not have some excellent qualities. However, she managed to combine “Alpha” with the legendary strength of African-American maternity – to the worst excesses of both. Hers was an iron fist that saw no need of a velvet glove.
My father, by contrast was a quiet man. (Largely because, as one of my uncles was heard to remark, “He never gets a chance to get a word in edgewise”). He was also possessed of a dry and decidedly quirky wit. Example: One of the many atrocities visited upon an unsuspecting public in the 1970’s was a disgusting quasi-leather substance called “Naugahyde”. My father had a coat made of this material and one day, in my six-year-old innocence, I asked my dad what kind of animal was a “Nauga”. Unhesitatingly, my father described a cloven-hoofed ruminant, smaller than an elk, but larger than a reindeer and both female and male of the species had antlers. It was years before I learned the truth. My mother was a merciless disciplinarian, but my father could shame me to tears with a single glance.
My parents and their siblings came of age in the era of the Scottsboro Boys and Emmett Till, years before Mama Rosa staked her courageous claim to that bus seat. As such, a rigid protocol was expected and the next generation was held to the same high standard. Reverence for education, faithful attendance at church, respect for the preceding generation. And above all, perfect deportment in public. After all, they explained endlessly to us kids, we were “Ambassadors of our Race”. In a nutshell, the family was and still is, irredeemably “bourgie”
(If you don’t know what this term means, I can’t help you. I refer you to Louis Armstrong’s famous explanation of jazz: “If you gotta ask, man, you ain’t never gonna know.”)
Given this predisposition, it should come as no surprise that when our town opened its first permanent art museum, my family were frequent and enthusiastic visitors. One day, my Aunt announced to my cousins and myself that she had a special treat for us. An expedition to the art museum had been organized. We would get a private tour, courtesy of one of her good friends, the Assistant Curator. Eyes rolled, but we were too well trained to protest and the next Sunday, we piled into her cavernous station wagon, to have some culture stuffed into our heathenish heads.
A word about our destination: The Indianapolis Museum of Art is not the Metropolitan or the Art Institute of Chicago. It’s not a big place now, and it was even smaller back then, but they had some lovely pieces. Not a lot, but what was there was “Cherce”, to coin a phrase. Its chief beauty actually lay in its setting. On the old Eli Lilly estate, nestled among old-growth hardwoods and on a bluff overlooking the White River. The view from the rear terrace was stunning in any season, but in the fall, the chorus of colors echoing off the brown water was breathtaking.
I should explain that I was not disinterested in art, just that my interest was limited to the representational. Start with the Cave Paintings of Altamira and stop at the end of the Impressionist Age and that’s about it. Abstracts, cubism and anything “Post-Modern” need not apply. So when we got to the wing that housed the collection of modern art, I plastered a “Gee Whiz!” expression on my face and prepared to practice napping while standing. This turned out to be a bad decision. If I’d been paying attention, I wouldn’t have been caught completely flat-footed when The Assistant Curator turned to me to ask, “What do you think the artist is trying to say with this piece?”
We were standing in front of a wall on which had been placed three geometric figures, each painted a bright primary color. Made apparently of plywood, there was a giant yellow triangle, a giant red square, and I was standing directly in front of a giant blue circle.
Now, on the McMaster Scale of SmartAleky Teens, I was slightly above average. In other words, I had a mouth on me like a green-broke colt. Sometimes it just bolted for no particular reason. On this occasion, my mouth slipped its halter, kicked up its heels and I blurted out:
“It’s a great big f*cking blue dot on the wall.”
Oh $hit.
My cousins giggled in horrid fascination. My Aunt scorched me with a glare that told me in no uncertain terms that I Was In For It. Not only had I dropped the “F” bomb in public, but I had disgraced myself, my family, and as far as I knew, every African-American in North America. As for Madame La Curator, she was suffering from some sort of tight-lipped, quivering petite mal seizure.
That was the end of the tour – or at least, that’s the last that I remember of it. The drive home was mercifully short, but my Aunt blessed me out all the way home. And she managed to do this without raising her voice or uttering a single cuss word, which made it worse. But bad as this was, I knew it was going to be nothing compared to the satchel charge of whup-@ss shortly to be directed at my head when my mother heard about the incident.
I was not disappointed.
After a whipping the severity of which would have been brought to the attention of any modern day DCFS caseworker – if not Amnesty International – my mother adjudicated me delinquent and handed down the harshest sentence in her repertoire. No horses and no riding. For a month. No, indeedy, I would be spending that extra time applying myself to the Study of Art. She would commute my sentence only if, after sufficient study, I returned to the museum, delivered an apology to both La Curator and my Aunt and demonstrate that I had become sufficiently appreciative of arts moderne.
Well friends, apply myself I did. No convert ever studied Holy Writ with such fervor as did I, that whole miserable month. A tenth circle of horseless hell that not even Dante could have envisioned. My father watched my ordeal, but said nothing. He rarely interfered with my mother’s punishments, even if he felt they were manifestly unjust. He occasionally gave me a silent sign of sympathy – he had the horse gene too, and he knew I was a hurtin’ puppy.
At last, my mother pronounced satisfaction with my efforts and announced, if I performed adequately she would lift her injunction. She arranged a return trip to the Scene of the Crime; said expedition to take place on Sunday next. Everyone wholeheartedly approved of this agenda except my father. It was not that he objected to a museum visit, he was a deeply cultured man. But the next Sunday was Father’s Day and he was looking forward to exercising his Dad-Given right to wallow in indolence, sloth and baseball prior to firing up the bar-b-que. But he wisely said nothing, merely put on a suit and tie and off we went. (In those days, no A/A would ever entertain an outing on a Sunday without being properly dressed, and that meant “dressed for church.”)
At the museum, I presented my Aunt and the Curator a florid apology and we all trooped off to the modern art wing, where I would demonstrate my newfound knowledge. We stopped in front of the geometric pieces and, after an encouraging nod from Madame, I declaimed:
“I guess what strikes me most about this work is the sense of isolation that it presents. You see how far apart the pieces are? Yet they are all in the same ‘family’, all geometric pieces, but so distant. Perhaps what the artist is trying to suggest is that we, society I mean, are like the pieces – we are alike, but too far away from each other.”
In short, it was the biggest line of bull$hit I had ever laid out (to that date).
I finished my recitation and looked tentatively at my audience for their reaction. My mother was beaming. My Aunt was beaming. The Curator was beaming. It was a beamish moment. My father was not beaming. He stood in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders. Leaning forward he planted a gentle kiss on my forehead. The smiles grew brighter.
Then my father lowered his head and whispered into my ear, gently, tenderly:
“It IS a big blue f*cking dot on the wall!”
I surely do miss that man.