My dad’s birthday, 2005

Today would have been my dad’s 91^st birthday. He certainly wasn’t happy when this picture was taken. I can’t quite tell whether this picture was taken very shortly before or very shortly after his father (my grandfather) died. And his relationship with his mother was always difficult. It went downhill from here.

And it’s an absolutely terrible picture of her. She was actually quite beautiful in her youth. She couldn’t have been too much over 30 when this picture was taken.

The picture is old and faded but holding up pretty well for a picture that’s about 80 years old.

My dad grew up in a very rough neighborhood in St. Louis surrounded by drunks, gamblers, and crooks. His playmates were young toughs. The building at 14^th and Clark doesn’t exist anymore. He lived above the saloon, ahem, restaurant that his mom and dad ran (and his grandfather owned). Nearly from the time he could walk he had a job: taking meals to the jailers and prisoners in the City Jail and to the other workers at City Hall and at the City Morgue. Can you imagine a little kid pulling his wagon loaded with meals into the City Morgue?

Nonetheless he was a rich kid. Since he was the only male grandchild in a family that was highly patriarchal his grandfather was crazy about him. His grandfather owned a dairy and was a political boss (that’s how he got the lucrative city contracts) in addition to owning the saloon and restaurant, and, consequently, he was pretty well off. So my dad had baseball equipment (we’ve still got the catcher’s mitt and mask), books, and a rifle. When he was a teenager he had his own car—a red Model A Ford.

He skipped several grades, was a champion tennis and handball player, and went to college and law school. Phi Beta Kappa. Honors. Law review. I doubt he ever got a grade lower than an A in his life. He travelled in Europe after law school. But that’s another story.