Sitting and shivering while the car warmed up took a little grit. It took a full five minutes to warm up the car. So I would shiver a little and wait to turn on the fan. The first hint of heat meant I had done my job well.
I am confident to a fault that I did every task that my father asked me to do. From the view of a half-century later, I only wish he had asked more of me. He faced most of his challenges on his own.
If we all went out to a cold car and drove, warmth took longer. We would have to drive two miles, to the foot of Matznick's hill, before we all stopped shivering. So it was my job. I was glad to do it. I guess remote starters have replaced me at this duty.
We would listen to Gospel music from Renfro Valley Kentucky, broadcast special on the radio for Sunday morning. Went on the air in 1943 during the World War. It would sound better when we were all warm in the car. Warm speakers work better and warm children can't listen while shivering.
Dad kept his vinyl in a cardboard box, kept secret in a closet of the master bedroom. If one withholds secrets from a child, the child will raid every chest of secrets within reach. By senior year, I wore his shirts until threadbare. I read his magazines. He sold the vinyl.
He owned all the albums of Johnny Horton. He collected Johnny Cash. He was often at work, so I would spin them on Matthew's HiFi, a gift from his godmother, without Matthew's permission. Matthew preferred show tunes, Andrew Lloyd Webber foremost.
I had Jesus Christ Superstar and the Battle of New Orleans memorized by the time puberty hit me. Matthew moved onto the Rocky Horror Picture Show and Cats. When I finally saw Lord Webber on television, I wasn't sure what kind of man wore his hair like that. Mod, like a Beatle or a Stone, but some message more was encoded in the coiffure. Matthew went to cosmetology school to figure it out.
I found Matthew's copy of T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats after he moved out, the 1939 edition. He had started a relationship with a rare book collector that would last until his final day on Earth. I sometimes came across Jim, Matthew's partner, on the fourth floor of John King Books, Detroit. He could still read then with his left eye if he held the book close to his face.
Last night, it dawned on me that father, Edward William, probably warmed up the car Sunday mornings for his father, Edward Jacob, given the keys to the Nash Rambler. A rite of passage, he had accepted the keys and the job, one big step toward actually driving a car a journey. In time, the job became mine.
Terry Lee Goffee has a serious claim to the title of the ultimate Johnny Cash impersonator. The Johnny Cash clan reached out to him to write a tribute song to the Man in Black the day of Cash's passing. He wrote all night, recorded in the morning, made the airwaves by noon.
I heard Goffee's act from the balcony of the Calumet Theater, Calumet, Michigan. I was sitting up in the balcony, watching Goffee put a woman into a trance with a grin, when I knew I had completed a journey into my father's world. The Calumet Theater had opened its doors March 20th, 1900. I could be sure that father had taken in nights of music with his mother and father, Aino and Edward. Hopefully from the front row of the balcony. One could drop pennies on stage from that balcony.
Trust me, Goffee wears the black better than any other impersonator, but go to see them all. I never miss a chance to see Cash imitated. Cash impersonators might just outnumber Elvis acts, so I'll never run out of fun. See if the impersonator can put a fan in trance with a grin, just like Johnny could. One favorite Cash musician changes into Neil Diamond at intermission. Can't remember his name, but he hosts quiz nights, serves as a DJ and gigs with five bands around the scene in Grand Haven.
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