Jay's Dad Art

Well, things are sprouting all over, and I don't just mean my fungus-free peonies. My good friend Jay and his lovely and gracious wife are having a baby.

I've known Jay since junior-high school. We were sci-fi outcasts, movie dorks who didn't quite fit in with the normal jock and rock crowd. He was and is a good friend and I'm pleased as punch with this news. Jay tells me that the baby will be a boy.

Art, Jay's dad, passed away over 15 years ago. I remember the funeral, but mostly I remember Art. Art was definitely old school. He was a decent man, but he had a gruff, authoritarian nature about him. They were separated by more than a generation. Art seemed to be the age of a grandfather than a father. Art was befuddled (and probably exasperated) by his creative and intelligent son.

That isn't to say that Art wasn't good man. To my knowledge, Art was generally permissive. All I remember is that he expected the chores to be done, and was amazingly tolerant of monumental idiocy. Jay and I took their fancy land yacht for a ride one day when we thought his parents were safely on their way out of town. We returned to find the other car in the driveway. Art was incredibly calm under the circumstances. I don't think they even called my mom, and Jay was grounded for only a little while. We never did it again. Art would be amused to know that my sons did the exact same thing to me, and I handled it pretty much the same way. They never did it again, either.

Art was not exactly jovial, but certainly not humorless. He told corny jokes so old we had never heard them. I distinctly remember an outing to Ondendoga Cave where he and Jay invited me as a guest. Art was relaxed, laughed easily, and made the trip pleasant. We ate KFC on the way home, a real treat.

I was from a broken home, and was desperately short of good male role models. Sometimes I think Art barely tolerated me, but because of Jay's love for me, he made room in his heart for his friend. This must have been a challenge, and I am grateful.

Now Jay is about to be a father, though he himself has been without one for close to twenty years. Jay will have a son, as did his father. Jay runs the family business, and I believe he has grown it, all the while pursuing show business through amateur film. Art always wanted to be in radio, and Jay's creative pursuits arguably mirror his dad's. Jay even lives less than 100 yards from his boyhood home.

By almost every measure Jay is his fathers' son, a wonderful legacy. Art was a good man who raised a fine son. Jay too will be such a man, because I know definitively that the apple didn't fall far from the tree.

Tim McNabb