Hot Flashes




 

 

The good stuff

Dear Boompa,

Without your Ramos fizzes, Sundays really hang me up the most.

It’s been 30 years since your bod fizzed out, Dad. I remember the day when you hailed a divine parachute for a warm piano bench in the sky, for the sound of the first perfect chord on a freshly tuned baby grand. Lid lifted. Left foot tapping in time. Nearby, a Tom Collins with plenty of Tom and plenty of ice. The good stuff.

Now that you’re iced in more ways than one, I can just imagine you jazzing it up in that permanent floating piano bar.

I hope St. Peter is accompanying you on the bass because I’m tired of you asking me to learn to play that beast.

Can’t you find Ray Brown up there? Ask him to sit in for a few if St. Peter doesn’t have the “stuff.” I just heard Ed Shaughnessy joined your celestial digs, so you’ve got a heck of a drummer in your midst. He used to live out here, Dad, and he even liked my column. Better grab that guy before Oscar Peterson gets him.

In my limited capacity to remember, I can still hear the rockin’ jukebox Sunday mornings on Adair Street when you’d jam it up. A solo jam.

It wasn’t always pretty. Wearing your signature gray checked robe, leather slippers circa Ben Hur, Lucky Strike burning, bald spot gleaming, escaping the list of honey-do’s and seated at the piano with white chicken legs glowing.

That’s after you’d strolled outside to retrieve the Sunday paper and old Harold Bell hollered as loudly as possible, “Hey Birdlegs!” You’d laugh and answer him with your flirty Swedish jig. The Rockettes never called but the neighbors laughed.

What can a guy do? There’s no hiding those spindly things. Thanks to Harold, everyone in the neighborhood knew that beneath your fine gabardine trousers were two of the skinniest pins ever attached to a beating heart.

They always looked especially stylish in summer with black socks and Bermuda shorts. It’s a blessing you had to wear a suit to work because if you were a lifeguard, they would have dressed you in Mary Pickford’s bloomers. The pins didn’t matter because you could crank out the tunes.

The good stuff. You had those “jazz trio minus one” records blaring behind you, the ones with drums and bass that set you up to be the piano man. If they were very loud, you could really get into it and that’s what drove Mom nuts. The air was blue. With windows wide open, you played on. . . .

And the neighbors listened. “Hey Birdlegs!” Mr. Bell would shout, “ You screwed up the bridge again! Better keep practicing. Your wife sounds better than you do.”

Whatever happened to those records? I think Mom served guacamole on them at your memorial. Is Mr. Bell still hollering at you up there? “Hey Birdlegs, you need new material, and get St. Peter to give you some bloomers.”

Oh, I miss you, Dad, but your legacy lives on. You have a bunch of great-grandchildren and three of ’em stand atop the same noble skinny pins.

I don’t know if they’ve learned how to fix the toilet so it rains in the dining room, right through the chandelier. Or if they’ve figured out how to tie a bow tie. Or if they know how to spit shine shoes or how to destroy a perfect marinade with liquid smoke. Or how to count their blessings. Or how to be gracious. Or how to build an iron ore mine out of toothpicks.

What I do know is those bird legs come with good stuff. Plenty of orange flower water in those fizzes, plenty of heart and soul at the piano, plenty of reasons to recall how fortunate we are to have each other.

And how fortunate I was to have you. Lots of good stuff. Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

Elizabeth Kirby has been around a long time—a resident of Thousand Oaks since 1983, whose glass is usually half full if she can find it. Her column, “Hot Flashes,” appears bimonthly in the Acorn. You can reach her at kirby@theacorn.com or kirby. hanson@verizon.net.


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