People take it for granted, don't understand how important it can be until it's gone. My father died, I'd just started at UMass.' but I wasn't going there because Harvard turned me down. I was going there because that was all my parents could afford. I was still living at home.
'So now he's dead. My little brother Chris's only ten and anyway, he's in school all day. My mother didn't have a job then. She's at home all by herself, like she always was, but now things're different. In a big way they are different. Nothin' to look forward to all day now anymore. My father comin' home at night: that'd been her big event.
Hadn't been that big a deal for me and Chris. Lots of other people alia around us alia time. School all day; inna summer we're out playin' ball an' so forth. Goin' swimming. All that stuff, onna weekend with our friends. Didn't think about Dad comin' home at night like she did but after he was dead, we did.
'My father loved to talk. 'Talk your ear off if you let him,' people used to say about him. 'On any day I got nothin' to do; I'm just sorta killin' time, you know?' John Casey used to say, 'those're the days I'm glad I got Pat. Never a dull day with Pat. Busy days, I'm still glad we got him. He's a large part of what makes our business successful valuable employee. Best salesman we got, which's why he's the manager.
''But say it's a brutally hot afternoon, July or August; nobody's around. You're open but you know: no one's ever comin' in. They're all at the beach, Mountain Park, on vacation. No one in the world's buyin' cars. We're all fallin' asleep at our desks.
' 'That is a day when I'm glad we got Pat on the payroll. All I got do to get through a slow day like that not makin' any money; can at least have a good time is go down in the salesroom. Pull up a chair beside Pat's desk and say: 'Well, Pat, whatcha think's goin' on?' Anna next thing I know, my sides ache from laughin'. I mean it: they literally hurt and it's time to close up for the night.
''I'd rather all the days're busy, naturally I wouldn't think of interrupting him. After all, havin' laughs ain't what we're in business for. Pat was on one of his patented rolls, there, he'd get onto sometimes, he'd have four sold by two the afternoon, when he'd finally break for lunch. And then two hours later, when he finally came back he did not like to hurry his lunch he'd have another prospect he picked up in the bar at Henry's Grist Mill. By five he'd have him sold five inna day.
''All you hadda do with Pat was leave the guy alone. When he was on a hot run, all you could see was smoke. So, it's more'n his talk that we're gonna miss; we're all sure gonna miss the man too.'
'He'd come home,' Merrion would say, 'and wed have dinner and he'd tell us what he did. Who came in the dealership. What they had to say about what was going on. Talk and talk and talk. And most of what he talked about I thought about it quite a bit since then, when he died wasn't cars at all. Or baseball; wasn't golf. I don't think he ever played golf; don't think it ever crossed his mind. Basketball or football, anything like that; it was politics. When he picked the subject, as he could, at home, he picked politics.
'He knew about sports. He kept up with the games and the standings and so forth so he could talk about them if that's what his customer had on his mind. He read quite a bit too — Saturday Post. Collier's. Life.
Time 'nd Sports Illustrated. Reader's and Catholic Digest. Belonged the Reader's Digest book club. Every month unless you sent the card back, you got three or four books in one. Said he wished he could sell cars like that, send a card to people sayin' 'You don't mail this back to me, two weeks from today, you' ll bought a brand-new car.' They were mostly for my mother, but he generally tried to read at least one of them. Few of his customers taught up the road; hadda to talk to them too.
'He considered it part of his job, keeping the customers happy. You asked him how come he was so good at doing what he did, he made no secret of it: 'The guy who buys a car from me today for the first time did not become my customer today. He became my customer three years ago, four years ago, whenever I first met him. Outside of church; having a few drinks. Rotary; Kiwanis; communion breakfast; town-committee meeting. Somebody's wake.' Dad belonged to all the service clubs, went to all the wakes and breakfasts. But the one he liked the best was Democratic town committee. He always said he was glad he wasn't sellin' Cadillacs, 'because then I would have to be on the Republican committee.' Always hadda sense of humor.
''That customer of mine didn't get to know me back then when he first did because he thought he might want to buy a Ford some day and I'be a good man to know. He bought the Ford from me today because he's gotten to know me as a man uses people all right doing business with them. So when he decided he needed a new car last night or the night before, he also decided he might as well come in and see me, and 'maybe buy a Ford from Pat. Might as well, the price is right. Never put any pressure on me; always liked the guy for that.' Really as simple as that.'
'He was always schmoozing people, not that he called it that. Their pal who talked baseball with them or fishing, whatever they liked. But what he almost always talked about at home was politics, and then he died.
'At night after me and Chris and my mother got through having dinner, Chris'd go off to do his homework, watch TV or something 'til he hadda go to bed. And I'd be still sittin' there, at the kitchen table talkin' with her. What I should've been doing was studying. School wasn't easy for me. I was never what you'd've called a scholar, and with my job working for John Casey, and then on Danny's campaigns on top of that, I hadda lot on my mind. I should've been hittin' the books. But instead I am sittin' there, still in the kitchen, the this and the that, talking about what'd happened to us, my father dying like that.
'Not that we ever got anywhere, my mother and I, we had all those talks. Always the same thing, over and over again. What wed done, to get through it; what we could've done instead of that, and whether that might've been better. Then what we thought we were gonna do next. It never changed. It didn't because it didn't have to. What we were doing was hangin' on there to each other, tryin' to get our heads straight. I was really worried about her.
'I remember saying to her one night someone else'd dropped dead, someone else we knew; wed just come from the wake; I've forgotten now who it was. She just seemed so blue, really down. She really had me worried. So I said to her: 'He;y, look now, you, just in case you forgot: This dyin' business's a very bad habit. They say once you've got it, it's very hard to get over it. And the fact a lot of people that you really like, admire, and never expect to see them fall into it like Dad did, that doesn't make it any better. So I hope you're not thinkin' you might take it up. Me and Chris wouldn't like that at all.'
'None of it was easy. Then I didn't really think about it, but since then I've thought about it very, many times. The reason she was so glad to get her job at Slade's Bakery in the center, where the Video Image Store's now? She'd been pining. The job wasn't anything big; just working at the counter there, saying Hello, asking the people that came in what they had in mind that day. Putting up boxes of whatever they asked for. Brownies; eclairs; date squares; jelly doughnuts; cookies and cup-cakes; custard pies. Putting the bread through the sheer. All of that stuff. Everyone liked Mister Slade's custard pies, and he really made excellent bread. So he had a lot of business. That meant a lot of people coming in for Polly to wait on, pass the time of day with. Help her keep up with what was going on, make her feel like she's back in the world.
'That job did wonders for her. I think about that every time I hear somebody say there's such a thing as 'natural adjusted rate inflation-unemployment,' or 'structural unemployment.' That there's always gonna be five or six percent of the work force with no jobs.
Nothin' the government can do about it. It's something can't be helped. Well bullshit; that's what I say. 'Find something the poor bastards can do.' Government has got to deal with it. That's what the government's for. It's a moral obligation, and I mean that. It's not just havin' no money that drags people down; it's feelin' like they don't matter, don't count any more. They lost the parts they had to play.
'I saw that with my mother. It was having that job that mattered to her. The sixty bucks a week she got: she found a way to use it, sure; it didn't go to waste. But basically the dough was gravy. That job kept her alive.
'After that it got a lot better at home, havin' dinner the nights I was there. The food wasn't as good 'cause she didn't have time to cook like she did when she was home all the time. And also, workin' in the bakery around food all day, she wouldn't be that hungry at night. But she'd bring home different things for dessert every night, and it was a lot better for her. You could see it. She was much happier. She had human contact again.
'You got to have that. We're natural herding animals. We're not supposed to be alone all the time, and when we are for too long, we don't like it. Don't handle it well. I think if you don't have that basic human contact, sooner or later you die.
'Anyway, that day Danny came in to pick up his car, I figured if I heckled him enough, he might hang around and entertain me. You get a guy who wants to be a politician like that, he's at your command. You even hint that you got something you'd like to talk about with him, bang, like that, you own him. His life is making people like him