Carburetor

Carburetor, oil on canvas 18×24″, 2022

My Dad served in the Korean War as a tank mechanic. He spent most of his service on the Japanese island of Hokkaido. His post kept him out of harm’s way and gave him a chance to build confidence in his mechanical and problem-solving skills.

After the war, he worked as a machinist, as a part-time contractor, and as an all-around fix-it man. He did some of the work on our cars and left broken parts lying around the garage.

An art teacher in high school asked us to draw a carburetor. Mr. Wolfe told us that if we could handle that, we could easily draw portraits. I struggled with that exercise but was also struck by how evocative that piece of machinery had been. It had a sense of mystery that traditional still life subjects lacked.

When I began painting still lives shortly after graduating from college, I asked Dad for a carburetor. I put it in a set-up with a pink shirt, a toy pistol, and a shot glass. I thought of the resulting painting as an indirect portrait of Dad. The pink shirt reflected his soft side. (He cried while watching Shirley Temple movies.) The pistol stood in for his hunting rifles. Dad liked drinking Canadian brands of blended whiskey, hence the shot glass.

I’ve recently returned to painting still lives. Dad died a little more than a year ago, and my thoughts have been on him lately. I placed that same carburetor on my dresser top along with two pinecones (Dad was at his most peaceful walking in a forest). The rest of the debris has been acquiring dust in situ for some time now.

Like Dad, I litter dressers with coins, keys, papers, and an odd assortment of things that have no permanent home. Like him (he jumbled tools and supplies in his work storage area), I create things out of cluttered messes. This still life, in some ways, is my way of memorializing him.

The Shirley Temple Effect

My Dad looked and sounded tough.  Kids in the neighborhood stayed away from our house after he came home from work.  They knew that tempting his wrath was like pulling Godzilla’s tail.

Dad’s dark looks and growly demeanor scared me too, but not as much as they scared my compatriots.  I had an advantage.  I had carefully studied Dad as he watched Shirley Temple movies.

Shirley was a kid star in the thirties.  She had an adorable round face, curly hair, could sing and dance, sided with orphans and disabled children, and thawed the hearts of crusty old men.  You didn’t want to be cast as her birth mother as your part would last about thirty seconds.  (Your character might have good intentions, but rushing down the street to get a cake to your kid’s birthday party could get you run over by a speeding Studebaker.)  Miss Temple would wander the movie world as a homeless child until an arguing couple or a misanthropic hermit adopted her.  She would instill warmth and humanity in her new household and gradually coax her caretakers to take on more positive outlooks.  She achieved miracles and changed hearts with thoughtful gestures and chipper song and dance routines.  She relentlessly delivered the message that life is worth living if you make up your mind to greet each day with a smile.

But the sunny times only lasted so long.  A misguided social worker sporting thickly-rimmed glasses and spinster clothes would steal her away, or a cruel governess would lock her in a cold garret and deprive her of necessities.  These slashes in the tapestry of bliss usually occurred somewhere near the end of the second act.  Shirley would cry out in tears as she was torn from the arms of a loved one: “Grandfather!  Grandfather!” or “Captain, don’t let them take me away!  Please Captain!  Please!”

My father knew that Shirley would find a way in the third act to return to her improvised family.  But he would start shaking at the shoulders during the traumatic scenes.  He lowered his head, sniffled just a bit, and then retreated to the bathroom.  He returned just in time to witness Shirley put a clever plan into action.  He sat back and relaxed as Shirley rejoined Captain January or her Grandfather or her M.I.A. father in the last scene.  Folks would burst into song as the little mop-top led everyone in a tap dance extravaganza down main street to celebrate yet another happy ending!

Dad’s mouth would twitch in a flicker of a smile as the camera zoomed in on Shirley Temple’s twinkling eyes.  America’s sweetheart had ventured forward in time to win yet another victory, and Dad had given himself away.

A List: Love’s Labor Lost and Found

1.When I was five I loved Shirley Temple. I felt sorry for her when an evil spinster or a policeman tore her from the loving arms of her crusty but kindly grandfather and carried her off to orphanage hell. I wanted to hug her and make her feel better as she wept.

2. At seven I fell in love with Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills in the movie, “The Parent Trap”. The young actress played a set of twins who had been separated by a divorce and didn’t know of each other’s existence until they met, by chance, at summer camp. I adored their curly short hair and big round eyes, and my heart went thump, thump, thump when they played guitars and sang, “Let’s get together, yeah, yeah, yeah.” If only we could…At school I two-timed the movie twins with a skinny, little girl with freckles named Laura. She had a great sense of humor, and I enjoyed talking with her every morning on the playground before the bell rang. The only problem with our relationship was that she punched me with her bony fist every time I made her laugh. It was meant as an affectionate gesture, but her knuckles separated the thin strands of muscle in my upper arm before colliding with my bone. I decided, reluctantly, after a month of her sadistic love, that I valued the structural integrity of my arm more than her.

3. In fourth grade I probably fell in love with Sharon. She was a happy go lucky girl who didn’t have all that much to say. I don’t remember any significant moment of romance between us, but that I enjoyed chasing her around the classroom at lunch time and she enjoyed being chased. I guess that I secretly longed for a deeper, more meaningful relationship and began to allow the distance between us to grow wider and wider.

4. In eighth grade I kinda/sorta liked Eileen. All the kids were starting to pair up, and while I didn’t feel any lust for her, she seemed like the most natural candidate. She was the smartest girl in our class, and I was near the top among the boys. We were both quiet and studious and took things very seriously. The main difficulty we had in jump starting our passion was that she looked like a hunted animal whenever our eyes met. She lived in terror that I might actually walk up to her and ask her out. I believed in the virtues of kindness and mercy and left her alone.

5. When I was a freshman in college I fell in love with a girl named Madonna. She dumped me after a couple months, and when I recovered from that blow I began to look for another target for my desperate affection. A young woman named Karen sat in front of me in speech class. She was a short brunette, petite and cute. I tried chatting her up one day, but her cold response warned me away.

I gave several awkward speeches at the beginning of the semester, and tried very hard not to look in her direction while I stammered and shook at the podium. I eventually got the hang of channeling my nervous energy into making stronger performances. I began to relax and enjoy public speaking. I wrote a skit and acted it out with three other classmates. We made satirical references to the health clinic and administration at U.D. and got a few laughs. Even Karen smiled a few times.

My final exam that semester was in biology. I filled in scan-tron dots for two hours, and after I answered the last question I felt my brains seize up in a massive, mental Charley horse. I stumbled out of Wohlleben Hall and was confronted by Karen. She looked up expectantly as if she wanted something from me. I was puzzled:  she had never bothered to talk to me in class. She hemmed and hawed and said something about living in a little town close to Dayton and that she had a summer job but would have lots of spare time and she thought that I was from Dayton and…then she trailed off into silence. She blushed and looked embarrassed. I rubbed my eyes and stared down at her and couldn’t imagine what she wanted from me. I wished her a good summer and walked away, but noticed that her shoulders slumped and head bowed after I spoke.  It didn’t occur to me until a few minutes later that she had been hinting around for me to ask her out. I ran back but couldn’t find her anywhere. I felt like a complete moron.

She wasn’t a science major, and I didn’t see her in any of my classes the next fall. But one day I was walking along Stewart St. near the campus with a friend. I saw her in the distance with a male companion. She glanced in my direction and a look of recognition crossed her face, followed by hurt and embarrassment. She hung her head and took the hand of her boyfriend for comfort. I felt the urge to run up to her and explain that I was a blockhead when it came to reading signals from women, but managed to restrain the impulse. I knew that anything I would say would only make matters worse.

6. I turned down a chance for love when I was 23. I had an off and on crush on a poet named Kathy. She was close friends with an English major I had known in high school named Sheila. Sheila was friendly toward me when I ran into the two of them on campus as long as I didn’t talk to Kathy for very long. One day I heard pounding on my apartment door, and when I opened it Kathy and Sheila invited themselves in. They had odd smiles on their faces as they chit chatted about U.D. gossip. They eventually got around to telling me the reason for their visit. Eileen, my proto-crush in eighth grade, was a friend of Sheila’s. She apparently suffered from having remained a virgin all these long years, and needed someone to release her pent up, libidinal energy. They went on to explain that poor Eileen had talked to priests about her problem to no avail, and had recently begun to break down crying during Mass. She was wracked by nun induced guilt when it came to her sexual needs. Kathy and Sheila wanted to know if I was willing to help a poor girl finally get some relief.

The two of them sat close to each other on my sofa and stared at me with wide eyes and coy smiles as they waited for my answer. It occurred to me that they were trying to kill two birds with one stone. They were a lesbian couple, I was a possible distraction for Kathy if she ever decided to switch teams, and Eileen needed to get laid. As all of these revelations danced in my head, I imagined going to bed with a hysterical, guilt ridden woman. I knew without a doubt that Eileen was one of those Catholic girls who would blame me for stealing her virtue minutes after the deed was done.

I was too embarrassed to admit to anyone that I was a virgin myself and was starting to get very impatient to have my first go at lovemaking, but the thought of deflowering Eileen wasn’t very attractive. And the offer being presented seemed predicated on their theory that I was a man and would screw anyone available if given the chance. I told Kathy and Sheila that I wasn’t interested. They looked disappointed and left immediately, but they had accomplished one part of their mission: I no longer had a crush on Kathy.

7. In the spring of 1983 I was finishing up a B.F.A. degree at Wright State University and a relationship with a woman named Jane. At various times I believed that I loved her, but inwardly cringed at the thought of marriage. She could be randomly sweet and loving and cruel and critical with me, and I wasn’t sure which end of the spectrum would become most dominant in her dealings with me. She once told me that she was a month late, and I reluctantly agreed to marry her if it became necessary. I could feel all sorts of doors to a happy life slamming shut as I told her that I would stick by her. That crisis turned out to be a false alarm, and our affair continued to stagger onward toward its final, ugly conclusion.

I had a few opportunities for a better romance during the last three tortured months of our relationship. One was a nursing student who rented the apartment below me. She had been living with a hyperthyroidic plumber who could stand outside in the freezing cold wearing nothing but shorts and a t-shirt. She had tired of his hot blooded love and kicked him out shortly before attending a wedding in which I served as an usher. We had shared a few sympathetic looks when we met on the front porch of our building, but I hadn’t thought that love might be possible. When she came through the receiving line she gave me a sad smile and a peck on the cheek, and it occurred to me that she was letting me know that she liked me. Visions of a vengeful Jane danced in my head, however, and I let that chance pass by.

A woman in my French II class liked to talk with me in the hall during breaks. She had long, silky, black hair, and caramel brown skin and gorgeous black eyes. One day she stood a little closer to me than normal and had that expectant look in her eyes, but she said nothing obvious. I knew that I could ask her out for a cup of coffee and that one thing might lead to another, but didn’t respond to her subtle overture. (I had vowed to never two-time anyone after being two-timed by Madonna.) She grew quite angry, stormed off and never spoke to me again.  (Years later I realized that she thought that I turned her down because I was a racist.)

Jane walked into my place early one morning six weeks later, woke me up and told me that she had been seeing someone else, and that she only thought of me as a friend. I wasn’t surprised. We had stopped going to bed together for the last two months of our affair, she had previously told me that she had learned to enjoy kissing again with a man who was better at it than I, and she had drunk dialed one night from a party and encouraged a group of men to jeer at me.   Jane babbled a few more excuses and self-justifications before she left, but I had stopped listening. My attention was focused on the urgent need to kick myself hard in the ass for remaining faithful to her.

7. My wife and I met two months later. Judy was the anti-Jane: she was consistently kind, thoughtful and loving. She didn’t like the way I kissed either, but was happy to teach me how to please her. And I was happy to practice until I got it right.