Dad's Winter Coat

Lately, I've been restless, prowling. I don't like to go straight home after work anymore. I have to get there sometime, of course--at least until Lottie and Ms. Christopher figure out how to open the tins of Friskies Senior themselves, anyway. But these days, I make stops on the way home: at book stores, record shops, movie theaters, bars. (Yes, restlessness can get expensive.) But last night, after a quick sightseeing tour through Borders at State and Randolph, I wandered over to Daley Plaza.

Daley Plaza, named for the longtime mayor of Chicago (and father of the current longtime mayor of Chicago), is best known for the Picasso sculpture that stands there--a sculpture so initially befuddling to natives that there was a strong temptation to send it back for a refund. In the summer, farmers markets are held there--great source for fresh apples, spices and catnip (not to be used all at the same time, you understand). And at this time of year, an enormous tree (itself composed of 80 or so smaller trees) stands at the south end of the Plaza with a German-style marketplace occupies much of the rest of the space. The marketplace consists of small shops selling seasonal goods, traditional foods and drinks to either warm you (cider) or make you not care so much that you're cold (beer).

I walked around the Plaza for a while, the scents of brats and cinnamon weaving around me, the sight of glass angels tempting my wallet and my heart, the sound of couples cooing over the size of the tree sending my hands ever deeper into my pockets. Snowflakes tumbled down around the Christmas tree, through the ribs of the Picasso and onto the Plaza, its booths, me. I barely noticed. Maybe because I was lost in thought. Maybe because the smells, sights, sounds distracted me. Or maybe because of Dad's winter coat.

Dad's winter coat is an ugly brute. It must have been a deep blue bordering on navy at some point in its distant past, but now it's faded almost to the point of pastel. Its lining isn't much better: what had once been dark red was now more of a medium-rare pink. And the overall condition of the coat? Like its wearer had tumbled down a hill, gotten up, and repeated the process--a few thousand times. Small rips in the corners of the pockets. A bit of insulation dangling from the medium-rare lining. A 90-degree gash on the left shoulder (more on that in a moment). And the right armpit has a split that I have yet to sew. (Yes, I can sew. Why do you ask?)

Overall, the poor thing is by no means fashionable and looks like the Salvation Army would reject it.

Then again, it doesn't look that much different than it did 30 years ago--when Dad stopped wearing it entirely.

Back then, Dad worked as a switchman for one of the major rail lines, usually pulling second or third shift. Even with that schedule, though, he always found an open bar to spend some time at before coming home and having a few more brews. Sometimes the bar was a neighborhood joint, like Tuman's Alcohol Abuse Center (no, really, that's what it's called), but sometimes he'd sit in whatever was open at those less-than-godly hours. He was an alcoholic, and it cost him big time in the end, with his body giving out on him at age 60, even though he had been clean and sober for more than a decade beforehand. The damage had been done--it just took that long to catch up.

But his drinking cost him in the short run, too, putting him in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time.

One winter morning after finishing his shift, Dad was in a bar on the South Side--don't ask me the name of the place, because if I ever did know it I forgot it long ago--when a fight broke out, as will happen after too many hours of too much drinking among too many with too few brain cells when they're sober. Dad wasn't the barroom brawl type. Just not his style. No doubt, he was just drinking quietly and not bothering a soul when the fists started to fly.

And it didn't matter a damn anyway. Somebody still grabbed him and threw him head-first out of the plate glass window at the front of the bar.

He didn't spend much time in the hospital. Didn't need to. He got cut up pretty well on his hands and was still pulling stitches out years later. His face didn't get slashed, but a piece of glass found the optic nerve of his right eye and severed it. (At least I think it was his right eye--he didn't lose the eye itself, so no one would know he was blind in either eye unless he told them.) The rest of his body was fairly well protected--by the winter coat. Only that 90-degree gash on the left shoulder remains as evidence of what happened to Dad that cold morning.

Without the sight in his eye, Dad couldn't work as a switchman anymore. Never mind that the man could see better with that one functioning eye than most folks can with two good ones--he somehow always saw the bus coming before I did at the stop and could eye a storm on the far horizon hours before a single raindrop fell. But rules are rules. Dad got a pension and went on to do other things with his life, chiefly working jobs in factories where his lack of vision wasn't an obstacle to doing good work. And he did well enough, helping to support his family and put one child all the way through college.

But the winter coat? It didn't fare so well. After the incident at the bar, it was relegated to a hanger at the back of the closet in his bedroom. And when we moved into our house, the same coat stayed on the same hanger and went to the same position of the new closet, which is where Mom and I found it after he died in 1995.

I guess I understand why he didn't want to wear the coat anymore after that night. The coat as a whole, and the gash on the left shoulder in particular, no doubt reminded him of what had happened, what he had lost, what that night had cost him--even though the coat had likely saved him from further debilitating damage, if not death itself. Why, then, didn't Dad just throw the coat away? Or donate it to charity? Or give it to one of his strapping sons? Was it a reminder of good times as well? Did he not want to throw the good away for the sake of the bad? I'll never know--Dad took that tidbit, and so many others, to his grave.

Once Mom and I had found the coat in the back of that bedroom closet, though, she had no objections to letting me take it, if I wanted it. And it wasn't like I didn't have winter coats of my own. But it was his. It had history, both good and bad. And it was warm.

So as I did circles around Daley Plaza last night, I might have felt melancholy or restlessness or happiness or whatever. But I sure as hell didn't feel cold.

Thanks, Dad.