Killer is Me; Alice in Chains
Another First Kiss; They Might be Giants
Cry Baby; Janis Joplin
Finished with Lies; TMBG
Undo; Bjork
Violently Happy; Bjork
Ana Ng; TMBG
One Step Closer; Linkin Park
Cornflake Girl; Tori Amos
The Anchor Song; Bjork
Guitar Flute & String; Moby
Dig My Grave; TMBG
Sorry I am; Ani di Franco
Requiem; Mozart
A Place Called Home; PJ Harvey
Blew; Nirvana
Kick out the Jams; Rage Against the Machine

Today is my dad's 76th birthday.
Radio Shack sucks.
Who the hell doesn't know who PJ Harvey is?!?
I seem to have forgotten how to operate a fax machine.
Do I come across as deep?
I hate stupid motherfuckers.
I have presents. Lots of presents.

It's not morning any more and got back into the swing of things which is why I gave up continuing the entry from this morning. So I'll continue now, but my outlook has changed with the time of day so... yeah... anyway..

Today is my dad's 76th birthday. It's kinda weird to think of it. He's seen so much and yet, that ain't much at all. He was born just a tiny bit before the Depression and some of his earliest memories are of huddling in a huge bed with his brothers while a sandstorm beat the heck out of his father's house in El Paso. He's told me about going to bed with on a half a tortilla in his belly, about the time when his father couldn't afford the minimum payment of a quarter to keep the power on in their house and the man from the power company came with a large pair of wire cutters and reached up and cut the main powerline in the house. He told me about the two horses his father had to shoot because he couldn't afford to feed both them and his children. He told me about a pair of silver pistols with pearl inlaid handles that his grandfather had given his father that his father sold for $5. They would probably fetch $500 today.

He told me about the Hoovertowns that sprang up on the road between Texas and California - the promised land. Where kind people went out shared what little they had with other travelers and the children lined up by color for some scraps to take to their families. The order of the line, of course, was determined from fair skinned to dark. My dad and his brothers got to go ahead of the few black kids. He told me that when his family was preparing to move to California his older sister would tell him scary stories about how he would have to learn to speak a different language - in California they speak English, you see.

He told me about how his father had moved to the US from Mexico and worked hard to bring his wife, her two sisters and their families into the country. After they moved north across the border they moved west to California long before my dad was born. They were still doing okey when my dad's family arrived and treated their cousins as beggers who should be grateful for their magnanimity. My dad told me about growing up in Orange, on Cypruss street and escaping hot Summer Saturdays by blowing a whole fifteen cents at the movies - a dime got you a ticket to the double feature and the nickle was for a scoop of ice scream. He told me of being terrified of his teachers and being afraid to speak because his English wasn't very good and having to stay after school to write on the blackboard the sentance, "I will only speak English at school." one hundred times. And that was when the teacher didn't smack him or rap his knuckles. As long as he didn't have chores after school he didn't mind staying, but if he had chores then he had to leave right away, sometimes slipping out the window. That meant the difference between being beaten by his dad twice - for being late and for getting in trouble at school - and once by the teacher and once by his father - for skipping detention and for getting in trouble with the teacher, respectively.

He told me about going out on a Sunday morning to buy some bread for his mother and hearing the news on the radio at the store that Pearl Harbor had been bombed earlier that morning. He told me that the first thing he did when he got up on his eighteenth birthday was to register for the draft. He asked to serve in the Navy and got his wish. Three other brothers also served, two in the Army and one in the Navy. He spent a lot of time in Hawaii and then the Phillipines, the Marshall Islands, Iwo Jima and finally Japan. He used to scare me with those stories, but I've come to realize that he must have left a lot out. His stories have always been about waiting pensively, of dancing close to danger and having someone, or something, more powerful haul his ass out. To this day he doesn't like fireworks. Even on TV. He says it reminds him of how they would bomb an island all night long before sending troups ashore the next day. It was a way of "softening" the enemy.

When he came back everything was different. Including he himself, but took him a while to realize it. Because of his childhood he had started first grade at the age of nine which put him as a freshman in high school at the age of eighteen. When he returned from the war he was definately too old for high school, not just in age but in experience. He put himself to work through all kinds of odd jobs with buddies he had met in the service. He was a custodian, truant officer, an assistant at a school for the deaf and a truck driver. He had a falling out of sorts with his family and spent most if not all of his time in Los Angeles.

At this point the order of the facts that I know gets confused. Someone pointed out that he should seek a carreer in teaching, that he was good at relating to kids and teaching them stuff. About that time the GI Bill was coming to the fore and guys were getting a helping hand to get their lives back on track. My dad went back and got his GED and looked into higher education. This was the sixties, affirmative action was affirmative and those against it were justifiably chastized. Kennedy got everyone inspired to give back and the Teacher Core came into being. And somewhere in the mix my dad got paid to go to school and become a teacher. He worked fulltime and persued his masters at USC.

(Side note to myself: I have to remember to ask my dad or my mom if they know where the picture of my dad and my Grandma standing under Tommy Trojan. My dad is standing there in his gown and cap and my grandma looks all tiny and proud.)

At some point he moved back to Orange County and bought a house in Fullerton and met a woman with a daughter, married her and they lived in the house together. Like I said I don't know the dates on this, both of my parents have only told me once each about her. She died and her daughter happened to be ready to move out at the same time. I don't know anything more about that, though I wish I did.

Then in 1974 my dad met my mom at church.... They got married in 1976 and I came along a year later.
My dad kept on teaching. He's a very ghood storyteller and he taugh junior high history and geography at Lathrop Middle School in about the most dangerous part of Santa Ana. He's certainly the best history teacher I've ever had.

He retired the same year I graduated from high school. I've been more distant from him since then because I've been away from home. He's changed some. He took up music in many forms a long time ago and fell in love with harp music and harp making. If you're thinking angels playing tall heavy things with crowns on the tall posts and pedals at the feet, you're totally thinking of the wrong thing. Close, but not quite.

He likes the latin sound a quite a bit and in Paraguay there is a particular sort of harp that is extremely light, there are no pedals, the post is rather short and the strings are nearly half an inch apart. Similar to is the Mexican harp that has tuning levers above each string. This is the sort of harp you might see in Mariachi band, if they have a sort of Carribbean sound.

He's made a few of these harps and gives them to friends, ocassionally for some money. He took up the violin and sometimes teaches with a children's band to the very youngest and most new to the instrument. He's even learning to compose on a computer, though they are mostly old songs his father used to sing.

One change that has been sort of creeping in has been his faith. He has always been very dedicated to his church and faith but in the past few years it has morphed into a feverish love for Mary Mother of God. He has read the many works of saints who have dedicated themselves to her and he wishes to follow in their steps. It's a little alienating because a person's faith is by nature a part of their personal self. It can be communicated but it can't really be shared. I'm glad he feels so sure because clearly it gives him a lot of peace, but it has changed him.

My dad was once the tallest, strongest and smartest man in the world and I never wanted that to change. *sigh* it may be selfish to say so, but I never want him to go away.

More tomorrow. Maybe.