Every Day is Kids' Day

It would be too easy to get sentimental on my first Father's Day without my dad. I'd rather share a memory of my dad in his prime. This story has a little of everything: my dad as the skilled and fearless craftsman, who makes a snap decision that saves the day. And the whole reason the day needed saving was that he was trying to make me happy.

When I wanted to play drums as a kid, my father took me seriously. After much searching, my dad bought me a very old jazz drum kit from a very old jazz drummer. Together we learned all about tuning the drums, taking care of the hardware, what to do when it turns out you've bought drums in metric sizes that won't use standard size drum heads, etc.

Since it was a used kit I had to deal with the fact that the drums bore a garish glittery green finish. This was the mid-80s and I was 11. The idea that something could be so dorky as to become ironically cool didn't exist for me yet. In the 80s I'm not certain that concept existed for anyone. But green they were, and there was no getting around it. It was still pretty great to have any drums at all.

After about three years during which I became an adept drummer, I could take the green no longer. I'm sure my dad felt he could no longer deal with my whining about it. He could stand being in our modest-sized house while I pounded away on the drums for hours without a break, but my complaining about the green drums finally drove him to seek out a solution. He was very handy anyway, and was never afraid of a project. Over the years I'd stood by while he splayed the guts of TV sets and other appliances out over his professional-class work bench. I'd seen him replace a power window mechanism in a car door, and install a tile floor in a large room. Turning my ugly green drums into something better suited to my private sessions re-imagining the drum parts on "Appetite for Destruction" surely was within my dad's reach.

Some twenty years later I still don't really know what his plan was, or how he managed to pull it off, but I can say that a blow-torch was prominently involved in the early steps. The first drum he started with was the floor tom. This is the deep-pitched drum that is roughly the size and shape of a small keg of beer.

Here is where this tale of fatherly devotion turns to one of fatherly calm in the face of serious danger. That glittery green material on the drums turned out to be highly flammable. In the room where he kept a large and valuable record collection, my dad had the drum on its side on a parquet floor when the whole thing went up in flames. He started to roll it on the floor hoping to snuff out the fire. No luck. The smoke alarm started going off and my mom called from across the house to ask what was the matter. My dad had to decide how to get her to help without freaking her out - and he had to do it while holding a burning wooden shell with a blow torch and all his records nearby - not to mention his own body.

He made a split-second decision that made all the difference. He didn't shout, "FIRE!" Smart man that my father was, he shouted, "WATER!" And that is what my mom brought into the room quickly. And that is how he got the fire out and everything calmed down within a few minutes.

He finished the drum job without using the blow-torch, and I played my shiny, black, good-as-new, drums for years after that.

If you are a dad, or if you will be with your dad, I hope you have a terrific Father's Day.