My dad was a classical music freak who knew little about the music except that he liked it. He’d gotten a job at the National Cash Register Corporation in 1958 when he was 19. Typical of many white-collar jobs at the time, the moment he walked into the building at 16th and Broadway in Kansas City, his career was sealed. He would work for NCR for the next 35 years.
He repaired cash registers in a concrete room with a workbench and a fluorescent bulb above him. He had a working lamp on the bench. Sometimes he was sent into the field to work directly with clients, especially after the advent of electronic registers and copiers. He saw people in their shops, and more often, in large corporate stores, like the Jones or Montgomery Ward.
He hated leaving the confines of his small workshop. He’d rather work by himself. He wasn’t good in the field, though he was a talky and gregarious guy outside of the workplace. He didn’t like dealing with people on their terms. He hated that the customers mistreated the machines. He found himself disgusted at the ways that operators screwed up the devices by sticking paperclips and scissors into holes to free up jammed devices. I remember him coming home in the evening after a day working with customers complaining and cussing.
Most of the time, however, he spent his days in the concrete room. About the time he got his NCR job, a new radio station, KXTR 96.5 p.m., began broadcasting classical music. They played all kinds, from the great composers and symphonies to little known chamber pieces and small quartets. It didn’t matter what was on the radio station, my dad listened. The commercials were never loud or tawdry. They all kept within the dignified tone of the music the station broadcast.
The music soothed him. He grew up in the 1950s and during the rock-and-roll revolution. But he was one of the few youths of the time that didn’t go in for that sort of thing. It was too jangly and loud. As a career man, working in the NCR basement, he flipped on the radio tuned to KXTR and played it all day.
I got my love of classical music from him. I can see how it eased the soul of a guy who really didn’t like his job much. We listened to KXTR when he would fix our second-hand cars that always needed attention. He would work and I had to watch and hand him tools. He wasn’t good about telling me what he was doing—he expected I’d observe and learn. His instructional method left much to be desired. When I grew up, I could do simple car repair. The big stuff—tie rods, cylinder heads, head gaskets, and oil pumps—remains a mystery to me.
One of the best memories I have of my father comes from a time he decided to buy and build a model of his favorite World War II fighter plane, the P-51 D Mustang. I have to admit, I still have an affection for the plane, whose smooth lines and futuristic (for the time) design made it look like a plane I would one day learn to fly.
The plastic model had 1,500 parts. We had to assemble everything from the engine to the machine guns (and cameras) in the wings. My dad bought the glue and dozens of paints. He cleaned off one of his workbenches in the basement, got us two chairs, and lined up all the goods—model parts, paints, glue, tweezers, paintbrushes—along one side and the part of the bench that faced the basement wall. He bought a new radio for us to listen to classical music with.
Working on the model became high ritual for us. For months, after he came home, read the newspaper, and sit down to the family dinner, he would stand and tell me it was time to work on the model. He’d grab a couple of beers before we went to the basement and sat in the chairs. When he got comfortable and had his beer open, he’d turn on the radio.
Just like when we fixed cars, I was there to watch. He meticulously painted the pieces, trimmed the plastic flashing from them, and glued one part of the plane together, then the next. While I didn’t have much to do but sit and ask questions, we were at least doing something together. The bright light of the lamp on the workbench broke dimness of the basement. The classical music filled in the space around us, giving the bare, concrete basement a reverent, almost church-like atmosphere. I became fond of the odors of model glue, oil-based enamels, and my father’s body processing alcohol. Even today, drunks don’t smell bad to me, they smell like my dad in his tender moments.
When he was working on the model, he attained a gentleness and ease of character that he normally didn’t possess. He was not a physically affectionate man. He didn’t have much to do with us kids after he came home from a long day downtown in his concrete basement. He preferred to read the newspaper and drink beer until the 10 o’clock news and stumble off to bed. He wasn’t always patient with us kids, or even with my mom.
What made the airplane so special wasn’t that we were working on it together. We were not. He was putting together this model. Just like repairing the car, I handed him paintbrushes and fetched the paint from the rows of little jars. I handed him the plastic matrices that held the minuscule parts. I ran upstairs to get him cold beers from the fridge. But when he sat down to that model, he talked to me like a human being. He answered my myriad questions—about the airplane, the war, life, and work.
I don’t know how long it took us to assemble that model. I don’t even think we finished it. My father had a way of starting a project with energy and then see that excitement wash away. The times we sat together became less frequent and ceased. But we built most of the model. It sat on the workbench and I treated it with a kind of reverence. After a while, I’d retreat to our workbench by myself and turn on the music. I took the plane in hand and zoomed it around the tabletop, pretending I was the pilot sitting in his little ejection seat.
My son recently bought Father’s Day gifts that we would have to work on together. He loves that kind of thing. One of the presents was a plastic model of the Titanic with hundreds of parts. It came with acrylic enamels (without the odor of acetone). The glue, however, transports me back to the basement with my dad.
I cleared off a space on my basement workbench and pulled a plastic sawhorse up it. Nick and I laid out the paints and brushes. We were careful to order the matrices with the parts. We read the instructions and began with the first diagram. He and I are now working on the model a couple of times a week. My goal is to finish the model all the way. It may take up months or even a year, doing one section at a time: The foredeck, the afterdeck, the bridge, etc.
Our first evening working on the model, I made sure that Nick had as great a role in its assembly that I did. We took turns cutting painting the tiny pieces and then cutting them from the plastic frames with an Exacto knife. We trimmed away the flash. He glued one piece in, then another. Then, it was my turn. After just a short time, my cares and worries melted away and I was just present, which isn’t a familiar state for me.
There was one thing missing, however, and I couldn’t identify it at first. After two nights working on the model, I realized the basement was quiet. Not a peep.
I’ll fill the silence when we next work on the model. KXTR doesn’t broadcast classical music anymore. We have to wait until after 9 p.m. to hear the classics on the public radio station. In the meantime, I have some CDs that will fill in the gaps.
As an adult, I’ve been able to do with Nick the things I didn’t get to do with my dad. We built a crystal radio, something I always wanted to do when I was a kid. We camp and hike, just me and him. Coming up in August, we will take a week out on the Missouri River from Rulo, Nebraska, to Kansas City—about 140 miles—in my canoe. Father-son stuff.
And, I get to include him in the building of the model Titanic. Both of our hands will be busy with it. Mozart and Beethoven will fill the air around us. I get to relive one of the favorite times of my life—those few months my dad dealt with me as a sidekick and not as a burden.