(Scrolling back to 1949 in this memoir will provide baseball junkies with the very essence of the game and the father/son relationship to it)

                                                        BIG MOE TAKES CHARGE

1968, South Lake Tahoe

      “Who’s the dog?” Dad wanted to know

     We were driving along the lake on route 50, halfway between the clubs and motels where I worked and my apartment, where I was headed. He had picked me up, much to my surprise, around one in the morning, after finding my apartment empty and after asking the bartenders at the Keno bar in Harrah’s where I might be. They told him they had no idea and so he searched the Sahara and Harvey’s and was finally headed back to my place when he picked me up hitch-hiking home.

     “That’s Duke, my new best friend. Siberian husky.”

      “He stuck that cold nose up my ass when I was looking in your window to see if you were alive and I thought it was a goddam bear.”

     He glanced at me, trying to get a good take on my condition, explaining he’d come up after discovering I’d drained my bank account and quit writing mother and chastising me for refusing to have a phone so I could stay in contact. Mother was worried sick about me. When we rolled up to the apartment he finally got a good look at me and almost gasped as he stepped close. There was a lot of moonlight.

     “You look like you lost at least twenty pounds, boy. You look like a goddam scarecrow and your nose sticks out like a goddam beacon.”

     He got his overnight bag from the car he’d rented at the Reno airport as Duke greeted us, up on his hind legs to nestle my chest, then repeating the overture with Dad. “Jesus, great dog. We had a little talk earlier. Is he yours?”

     “Lives across the street, but he’s adopted me.”

     I opened the door and Dad came in and hit the light switch and asked, “Where’s your goddam lights?”

     “I gambled away my deposits. Gas and electric.”

     He sighed as I lit a candle. He peered around. “Jesus Christ, this place is the black hole of Calcutta. I’m almost glad I can’t see anything, but I can smell it. What the hell’s going on with you, Dell?”

    

    I suggested he stretch his legs and we walk Duke down to the Lake, explaining this was a ritual. After the walk, he sat on a chair in the kitchen and said, “You have running water?”

     “Yeh, it’s cold. Tough shaving. Like the army.”

     “I thought the army might give you some direction, do you some good.” He yawned. He looked beat. “Well, you get some sleep. I’ll take the sofa. We’ll hash things out in the morning.”

     I collapsed in my uniform. I needed a year of sleep. Somehow, having Dad here allowed me to sleep and sleep and sleep, and when I walked into the kitchen around noon there was light, everything working, and the place had been cleaned, immaculate.

     “Take a shower, dummy, it’ll be a real luxury after the way you’ve been living.” He stood, walked over. “What happened to your puss? You been fighting? Your eyes are piss-holes in the snow.”

     “You don’t wanna know.”

     My voice was dismal, and the statement bludgeoned Dad like a body blow and he sat down and hung his head and placed his hand over his eyes and looked away and tried not to cry as I stood and went to the shower and soaked up the soothing hot water and dressed in clean clothes and came out. Dad sat at the kitchen table holding the manuscript I’d sent to a publishing house in New York months back.

     “I’m sorry,” he said. “They rejected it. Hell of a birthday, huh?”

     I realized yesterday had been my birthday. “Ah, don’t worry about it, Dad. I expected it. I’m not ready. I just wanted to test the waters. It was a shot in the dark.”

     “You put a lot of effort into this, son, and I read it, and I think it’s good.”

     “It stinks. It’s amateurish gibberish.” I walked over, snatched it from him, proceeded to tear it apart, and dropped it in the trash can. I sat back down. Dad stared at me, and his face was something I could not look at. I had made this man suffer, this man who was a man loved by all, who made decisions and built a business out of nothing to support his family and loved his family and was always there for his family and who had become involved with people in business and helped them out when things went bad and was admired and in some cases worshipped by them and whose team mates in the baseball world regarded him as the first guy they’d want to be with in a foxhole, this Jew, this Mensch, my father, crying, and why had I done this to him, why was I putting him through this?

     “Dell,” he said, looking up at me. “I think I probably screwed up pretty bad raising you…”

     “No! You did the best you could, the only way you knew how. You always put me first, were always THERE for me. You were mostly right about a lot of things. I realized that in the army. It’s me, Dad, I’m a different kettle of fish than you, or Mom, I just am, and it’s got nothing to do with you, and I’m not trying to get back at you, hell, not at all, no, I’m just trying to grind my way through things, and it’s gonna be the hard way, it’s not gonna be an easy path I’ve chosen, and it has to be if I’m gonna be worth a shit as a writer. Look, I don’t want you or mother worrying. I’m gonna be okay, Dad. Trust me.”

     The way dad looked at me, I knew I must go to him, and I did, and we hugged, and he hugged me hard and told me he loved me more than anything on earth and respected me for the path I’d taken an wouldn’t trade me for any son in the world, and I said I knew that, had always known that, and we disengaged and stood awkwardly and then we sat down, and when things calmed down and we sat drinking coffee, he said, “We better go  your car running.”

     He was aghast when we reached the Harrah’s parking lot and he observed the dents and ball bat, his model, in the back seat. He got the VW towed to a garage where a mechanic installed a new battery and generator while across the street at a diner he bought us bunkhouse breakfasts which as always tasted extraordinarily good.   

      We drove back to the apartment. He handed me a twenty. “This is to eat on. Don’t gamble it.”

     “I won’t. Gonna ask for extra shifts. No boozing.”

     “I don’t want to see any more bruises on your face either, Dell.”

     “You won’t.”

     We shook hands. He hugged Duke, the dog, got into the rental, beeped, and took off. I went to work and asked my supervisor for extra shifts and worked 30 straight shifts, some overtime on weekends, walked straight through the casino after work every shift, went home, cooked a steak for Duke and myself, took him on a walk, went to bed. I made back all I’d lost, paid back everybody, built a moderate nest-egg, and left in October, ready to hit the road ala Jack Kerouac, and try and find out if I had what it took to be a writer.

     I never gambled again, not even on a game, and nobody ever witnessed bruises on my face again unless I got in a good bar fight

     (Next Sunday installment: Final epilogue in 1978)