He was a wonderful man, and he raised a wonderful daughter. Can't get any better than that!
You live what he taught you 'Semper Fi'
Here is something I think catches the essence of my Dad.
VIC
June 1957...
They sat by the kitchen door, on the floor, every house we lived in from my earliest memory. Heavy thick leather, long rawhide laces, thick stacked leather heel, the toes re-enforced with steel. A fancy shaped flap of leather that covered the laces. They had walked hundreds of miles, climbed steep mountain trails.
Red Wing logging boots. Custom made. I’d try to wear them when I was small- my feet swimming in them, so heavy I could barely lift my feet. He cleaned them with Neatsfoot oil and saddle soap. Re-heeled, re-soled. Sent to Red Wing and returned. They’re gone now- I don’t remember when they left. One day I noticed they were not by the door any longer.
Perhaps they went to join the short brimmed Stetson, wool Pendleton shirts, Evans Cherokee leather slippers. Hickory work shirts- blue and white striped- just items of clothing- but they are integral to the memory of my dad.
I popped all the buttons off one of those shirts the summer I was seven and trying to put the laundry through the ringer of our old ringer washing machine.
The fronts and sleeves of those shirts had hundreds of tiny holes- caused by the sparks from welding. The sparks somehow got in through the heavy welding leathers he wore. A black quilted cotton cap under the heavy hood, the elbow length gloves he wore to hold the stinger and rod. He tried to teach me to weld- I was afraid of those sparks.
The world was dark and strangely colored looking through the thick green glass in the hood. We’d look at solar eclipses through that glass. For a time I thought the boxes of welding rod were sparklers like the ones we had for the Fourth of July.
Long flat rectanglar pieces of soapstone chalk to mark the sheets of metal he cut using templates he made. Big green cylinders of gas- Helium, Acetylene, Oxygen, the gauges bolted on the tops.
Zippo lighters, filled with Ronson lighter fluid. The flints used in the Zippos came in a plastic square- rows of three.Shaped almost like chunky pencil leads. One of my mother’s empty gold lipstick cases with the slide that twisted up the tube- lipstick replaced with mentholatum.
He wore dungarees- decades away from becoming what people call jeans. Slightly flared legs- loops for tools attached to the side seam just above the knee. Denim bib overalls- small pockets on the bib- tire gauge, tiny screwdrivers, the lighter and pack of Camel’s cigarettes. Two or three sticks of soapstone chalk. A big bandanna handkerchief in the right back pocket of the overalls.
He wore wool long johns and heavy wool socks in the winter. I used his worn out wool socks to polish the oak parquet floors we had in the living, dining room and hall. Wildroot hair cream to tame the cowlicks in his fine, nearly white blond hair.
I have the same cowlick in my hairline at my forehead. I call it the ‘unicorn’. He’d spent his life working at jobs where you get dirty and nasty for days at time.
He liked to dress up when the occasion arose. French cuff shirts with Montana agate cuff links and tie bar. Silk ties- some of them with painted scenes. Wool dress slacks, pleated and pressed. Dress leather Evans short Wellington boots, leather oxfords, Evans Cherokee leather slippers.
He had wool topcoats- thickly lined. Worn for trips back to Montana in the winter. He wore a blue suit when I was married- a Sixties cut. Something from the Forties would have looked so much classier.
I bought him Pendleton wool shirts to keep him warm. He had a thick wool bathrobe when we were young- blue plaid. It had a wide wine colored sash we played with. Rolling it up and unrolling on the floor for hours. I don’t remember when it was no longer in the closet.
Pocket knives with every imaginable type of handle. Mother of pearl, bone, Bakelite, hammered metal. All with blades honed to razor sharpness. He had played ‘mumblety-peg’ as a child.
One player would place a hand on a board or the ground-fingers splayed wide. The other would flip an open pocket knife- the goal to have the tip of the blade land as close to the point where the fingers were joined to the hand splayed out. Errors were painful and sometimes caused permanent damage.
His uncle taught him to swim by tossing him in the Clark’s Fork of the Columbia River. Swim or drown in the frigid rapidly moving water. He swam. Not much of a learning curve in his childhood. That same year he was bitten by a sow as penance for being in her pen with her piglets. He got peritonitis and was hospitalized.
Two years later his eldest sister who was ten at the time- knocked over a kerosene lamp and their house burned down- nearly killing his two sisters and himself.
He started smoking at age eleven- fifty-five years later he would succumb to its’ damaging effects. So little viable lung tissue left that every breath was tortuous and gasping. Brief lapses in time where he didn’t smoke. The longest period was after he suffered a ruptured aortic aneurysm and reflexive heart attack.
The medications he took made the cigarettes taste bad. Unfortunately he was able to acclimate to the taste and resumed smoking. Nothing much was known then about the harmful side effects of second hand smoke.
My brother and I bear chronic health issues stemming from years of being immersed in second hand smoke. I like to think that if he had known it would harm us he would have not smoked inside. I hope he would have, but I’m not sure.
He was a jack of all trades and master of many. An accomplished musician, cabinet maker, machinist, joiner, logger, mechanic, welder, fabricator, inventor.
He could do calculus in his head- no mean feat for someone who had to leave school to support his family. He counted cards in his head as well- making him a fierce opponent in card games.
He had hunted for food growing up, and found hunting for sport to be wasteful. We grew up with guns and hunting knives in the house and; at least for me- no inclination to play with them because we were taught they were not toys.
He was a perfectionist to the nth degree. If he could not do something perfectly, or make something perfect- he would work until he could. He made me all sorts of toys, a jungle gym, stilts, furniture. He took a bicycle from the dump and made it new again. Even after all these years when something breaks I wish he was here to fix it.
He waited in the parking lot of an empty supermarket nearly every night for three months while I rehearsed for a musical in high school. We performed at a professional playhouse, made a recording, which was lost when I was in a hurricane in 1970.
He taught me to drive- the acres of empty parking lot at Santa Anita Race Track. We rode the Matterhorn ride at Disneyland the first week it was added as an attraction.
He wanted to teach me to fish- fly fishing in particular- but I was not enthused. We had all manner of game that he hunted- bear, elk, moose, deer. Fish not often. I have little taste for meats and none for fish and fowl.
I spent hours sobbing at the kitchen table because math is not my friend and he worked problems as a source of entertainment.
He chewed ice and ice cream, loved root beer floats made with Dads’ Root Beer. He never met a pie or cake he didn’t like. Never weighed more than 146 in his life.
He lost his father at the age of four- a victim of the massive world wide Swine Flu pandemic of 1918. He had been a section boss for the Northern Pacific Railroad, most of the family worked for the NP at one time or another. Steady, year round work, more money than most jobs paid.
My grandmother re-married. He never said if he liked or disliked his stepfather. He had a half brother 12 years younger. His stepfather died when my uncle was small. If I heard his first name, I don’t recall it. Grandma would marry a third time, and some where along the way- he died as well. She was always Grandma Rancourt to me.
He worked in a road crew for the railroad, worked ‘green chain’ logging. He lost the tip of the ring finger of his right hand working on the green chain. He was a tracker for the US Forest Service in Montana- working out of the Tarkio National Forest.
He followed the Elk and Moose herds- marking their movements, hunting the sick and injured and removing them from the herds. He was on horseback, had a string of pack mules- living in the forest for weeks at a time. He was struck by lightning while in a tree stringing telephone wire.
Later in his life the point where the lightning had entered his body would become a source of near constant pain. My mother would rub ‘Heet’ liniment on his back and shoulder to try and diminish the discomfort.
He worked for Hart Oil Refinery after the war- stoking the boilers, driving a tanker truck. He worked 12 hour shifts and slept on a cot in our basement so that I could play upstairs.
He loved listening to boxing on the radio. One of my earliest memories is calling down stairs ‘who’s fighting, Vic?’ He had raced cars as a young man- mostly Model A’s that he had ‘souped up’. He had won ribbons in school for track and boxing. He played many instruments and had a pleasant singing voice. I have his Tonk tenor banjo- purchased before the war.
I thought him invincible and able to make or fix anything. I was wrong. He was mortal, just as we all are. Faults and foibles and flaws. He was my hero.
