The Letter

I have lost count of the people who have told me that they thought of my father as "such a nice man", and not just after he died; when he would be away from the shop, they would ask about him and tell me he was a nice man, because he was.

According to mom, it wasn't always so; he could be quick to anger and lash out. But in the mid 60's, when he stopped painting houses and went back to shoe repairing, he headed to New Orleans with his two sons from his first marrige, who were still in construction, and he worked in shoe repair shops there, for some time. In New Orleans he found religion, or, rather, religion found him; one day a nice couple knocked on his door and got him interested in the bible, which dad said had never interested him before, but they sat with him once a week and helped him study this enigmatic book. The irony did not escape me: an alcoholic going to live in New Orleans and getting to know Jesus.

When the time came that dad decided to move to Texas, the nice couple only insisted that he send them his new address. Which he did, when he was settled in Texas; one day some nice gentlemen showed up at his door and they continued his bible study.

So, father became a nice person, whether it was religion or the mellowing of old age, is debatable. It didn't happen all at once, mom and dad still fought, but now dad was full of self-rightous vim; she knew how to take care of that, though.

Mom told me this story over a glass of vermouth on ice; i had told her that i went to El Mejicano's restaurant with friends and had a sangria on ice and had liked it. She said: if you liked that, you should try some of this....and she brought out a bottle of dry vermouth from the kitchen and we had a glass, she had her's neat. 

So, i was still little, it was shortly after we moved out of the shop, into the house on Holly street; she said dad was going on and on about the misconduct of a certain family member and how the bible clearly spoke against such behavior. I guess she thought he was being judgemental without all the facts or he was just getting on her nerves; so, she takes out this card with a huge scarlet letter on it and waves it in front of his face. 

Well, not literally, that's just how i picture it, and i thought it would give the story dramatic effect. But mom made it clear that she thought that it looked pretty ridiculous for HIM to be pontificating. So, that put a stop to it....for a little while.

I suppose dad could not have this card looming over his head every time he wanted to pontificate, so he went about getting absolution. So, he decided to go to the man who conducted our home bible study, an elder in the congregation, to confess and ask what he could do. What the elder came up with, and he was actually elderly, was that father had to write a letter to Miss Tress renouncing her forever, and he should swear an oath that he would have no more contact with her. I asked my mother: what happened after he sent the letter? and she said that dad went back to being his pontificating self because he'd recieved absolution by his letter writing. But, what happened with you-know-who, after he sent the letter? i insisted; mom claims that nothing changed, as far as she knew, he kept visiting his other children, and we have to assume that she's there, where else would she be?

So, mom went on: sometimes your father would become insufferable,
and now i had the scarlet-letter card and the you-broke-your-oath-to- an-elder card. This ate at his soul.

An interesting asterisk to this story: that elder left the congragation after a disagreement over some issues concerning dogma, nothing to do with my father; he was going to go start his own congregation somewhere and wanted us to join him, but other elders convinced dad not to.