Bookends

Bookends don't always hold books.  

Sunlight can't pierce the darkened dining room through the double airlock door that leads into the Fun House Pizza & Pub.  The old wooden doors are weathered from years of sun, rain, wind and thousands of hands, shoulders, or shoes pushing those doors open.  Nothing there shows any sign of change.  In a long ago memory I held door for Dad - just us out for supper. 

At the time there were pennants on the wall above the pinball machines and next to a very large Wurlitzer juke box.   In fact, Pizza was a fairly new phenomenon in family fare.  Today, pennants still hang on the wall but the pinball machines have given way to Pac Man and other electronic video games plus other machines that challenge you to hoist a prize with grabber hooks.  They never stay closed long enough or tight enough to capture a stuffed bear or a sparkling rhinestone necklace.  On that first visit, one pennant displayed a large blue jay, the mascot of Raytown High, and another newer pennant showed a cardinal’s head from the upstart Raytown South High only four years old.

As a precursor to sports bars that wouldn’t really become common for another fifteen or twenty years, the sports memorabilia hung on the walls and celebrated the heroes of the time.  The Big 8 was the college conference whose banners hung and all of those Texas schools were still part of the Southwest conference destined to disband as the chase for TV revenue trumped other priorities for college athletics.  The Dodgers were still in Brooklyn, the Braves in Milwaukee, and the Giants were the other New York team.  Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, and Roger Maris (after the A's traded him away) were names that hit the sports pages.  Local heroes who helped Raytown defeat mighty Jefferson City or especially  like Lenny Dawson, the Quarterback, were the talk of the Fun House patrons.

On an evening a few days ago, we found ourselves at a clinic just steps away from the Fun House.  A delay in the schedule for seeing patients gave us the time for a quick dinner.  Abandoning any thought of eating healthy, we headed out for some pizza and a glass, or two, of beer for me.  It was the beer that did it.  We began to talk about memories and soon about our fathers.  Both are gone now but not their Fun House times.  Chuck liked the place so much that Winnie said it always made her think about her Dad. 

We watched as couples and families came in and went to the counter to order.  The process hasn’t changed since Chuck would do the honors for his family.  He'd  then preside over the teasing humor that was, and is, the trademark of Wilson family gatherings.  Young families still come and sit at long tables.  Kids mingle with kids and adults sip a beer, talk and laugh.  Everyone eats and stories flow.  The kids ride the coin operated pony or play the video games.  The games may have changed but the decades evaporate as you watch new people gather and talk, laugh and play.

But it was the beer.  College was nearly over and time at home was nearing an end when Dad and I went to the Fun House.  We talked about football because Dad’s first love, baseball, had ended and another World Series was in the books.  We talked about what to order – a pizza for the two of us.  Just as Dad got up to go to the counter, he stopped and turned toward me.  “Do you want a beer?”  I tried to be hip and cool as I casually accepted the offer.  It was the first time.  Dad and I having a beer.  I do not claim that this was my first beer, first alcohol or first drink nor did Dad think it was.  But it was the first one he offered as casually as if I was a pal.

Lives have markers - sometimes bookends.  In one brief moment at the Fun House Pizza & Pub, my Dad had dubbed me an adult, a friend who could share the talk of friends instead as parent to child.  We were good friends - good friends who were having a beer.  He said all that in five short words delivered as though it had happened a hundred times before.  For him, this was an overt statement.  Forty-five years later, as I drank my beer and looked across the time-warn room, the place was the same.  I had changed.  Years of wear are written on this body and travels, time and people have shaped the structure of my soul.  Having another Fun House beer zipped a path through time.

The beer would have tasted better had Dad been there to drink one with me.  I could have asked him, “Do you want a beer?”  It seems like the perfect phrase to adorn the other bookend.

--td