Standing next to his wife of many years, dapper in his dark suit and bow tie and framed in the center of the doorway of a snazzy local restaurant, Dad was almost looking at the camera. He rarely looked into the lens of a camera when his picture was being taken but this time I almost got him, snapped the shutter before he could find a horizon.

It had to be around 1956, I recently returned from the army and we were celebrating that return. Dad had lost his business, was depressed and Mom had gone back to work so I insisted I treat them to dinner.

I developed an interest in photography during my twenty-five months on Okinawa in an overt effort to stay out of trouble, and continued taking pictures at home. This one shot seemed to capture an upbeat moment. There were few of them. I guess that's why I like this particular photograph.

His Sure Cure

They're both gone now, of course

Dad first, the normal pattern

his spirit returned to the source

if one believes in that recourse.

His melancholy, gone from him I'm sure

to his soul's relief, he won't endure

for sadness, not the best technique to cure

he's not remembered in some form of caricature

His earthly unrest has all decayed

like the dust of his worn out flesh

his lifelong efforts finally rewarded

probably not quite the way he ordered.

Way back in the good old days of the black Kodak Brownie box camera, my mother (I think) took my photo standing next to Dad on a Father's Day. A black and white print, fer schure.

We were on the side lawn of our home that sat on a nice corner lot in Glen Rock, New Jersey. I was in charge of mowing the extensive lawn. I haven't seen this photo in decades but it stands out because there weren't many pictures of Dad and damned few of the two of us.

I was over seventeen years old and driving but under twenty-one, since obviously the draft for the Korean War hadn't impacted yet. We stood close, my arm around him, we might have come from church since we were both in sharply pressed trousers and white shirts, Dad in his usual bow tie. But, Dad was always well dressed. I appeared just about as tall as he was, and glad of it at 5'6". My family members were all short. Mom was "five foot nothin'." Dad said he was 5'8".

We had recently moved from Brooklyn, NY, to this lovely three story brick home in the "burbs." I had the top floor to myself, a bedroom, bath and another room for book cases and stuff. Not that I read much. These were the good times, but, as they say in the classics, "The times, they are a changin'." Soon, Dad's business faded away, he became depressed, I joined the Army medics to escape the infantry pipeline to Pusan and mom had to go to work after her mother who had lived with us, died. As that old hillbilly song said, "Life gets tegis, don't it."

Glen Rock was, and still is, a fine town. And the Eire Railroad runs through it. Twice, at each end of Main Street. I remember taking commuter trains with steam locomotives, as well as diesel powered trains, commuting from Glen Rock to Hoboken, onto a ferry and a subway into Brooklyn to college. I was a lousy student, immature and too easily distracted from academics by hot rods and cool chicks. I didn't appreciate the fact that lousy students became targets for the North Koreans. Really stupid.

I'll have to go back and look for that photo. I wonder if the brick BBQ next to the two car garage is in the picture. And the bird bath and Mom's flowers. And did the lawn need cutting again?