Jean's Dad

In the period right after Jean and were married we would fairly often be at her parents for an evening meal — sometimes around the table in the kitchen, or on more notable occasions around the dining room table. What I remember most about these meals were the leg-of-lamb repasts; lamb was a meat that we never had when I was growing up in the Midwest, and after I was introduced to it in Jean’s mother’s suppers it became one of my favorites. I still feel that the well rendered fat portions of the leg of lamb, like the outer crust or the “tail” are about the tastiest meat items that I have ever encountered.

During the meals, in the wintertime, there would often be a fire in the fireplace, tended of course by Jean’s dad (who also did the carving of the leg of lamb or roast as the case might be). My recollection was that he usually burned coal in the fireplace — I remember the sack he had it in, down in the lower floor of the house. Where he got it I don’t know — by the time I was aware of it, it was proscribed as a fuel in the Bay Area. He had modified the fireplace to make a smaller fire easier and more effective, by the insertion of some fire bricks.

Jean’s mother was a placid person, at least on the surface, and as I got to know here there developed a warm relationship between her and me. In some aspects of her personality and habits she was much like me, and that may have contributed to our regard for each other.

Jean’s father on the other hand tended to be a crusty, rather morose individual who would often act in a curt, abrupt manner even with his old-time friends such as Al Flint. When he was so disposed he could be absolutely charming in demeanor, and I really think on those occasions he was just as much himself as when he was unsmiling and dour. I suppose you could say he had a sort of split personality.

He tended to be dilatory in maintenance around the house, but when he undertook a task he did it with extreme attention to detail and the quality of work he did. During the years I knew him he did some painting inside the house, and I think he took out the old plaster and replaced it with sheet rock in one of the rooms. But my recollection is that he never complete the entire house.

At one time we had some pieces of linoleum which I had recovered from some use we had made of them (perhaps from the girls’ bedrooms) and I finally cut them to fit the kitchen floor at Stuart Street and laid them down (either to cover the old linoleum or the bare floor — I can’t recall which). Jean’s mother at some time in the past had purchase some linoleum from a door-to-door salesman and the two linoleum rolls stood in the back porch all the time I can remember. To my knowledge the linoleum was finally disposed of after Jean’s dad’s death; during all the years the linoleum stood on the back porch he had never gotten around to putting it down on the kitchen floor.

He was still working when Jean and I were married (he had retired from the navy yard at Vallejo but we was working for an old friend of his, Fred Staddelhofer [sp?] who had some sort of pump or machining business in south Berkeley) but he stopped that fairly shortly. He then turned his attention to some upkeep jobs on the residence, one of which had never been done in all the years the family lived there. Before he could start this though he decided he needed to replace the outside back steps and this project took a couple of years at least.

At this time he also did some work on the laundry room window. He started painting on the back of the house and he did complete this in its entirety. Next he turned his attention to the sides and front of the house, but his attention was diverted from painting to filling in the little holes alongside the framing of the front doors, formed by the grooves in the house siding. He made little triangular pieces of wood to fit in these holes and proceeded to fill them — at least he started, I don’t know if he ever finished.

Sometime in his later years he finally decided that he would never finish painting the outside of the house and he hired Ray to do the job — which was then done quite expeditiously. During one of his trips for hospitalization he was absent from the house for awhile and I painted the front porch and steps with porch and deck paint. He would have used some concocted mixture of his own which I daresay would have lasted a short while, while the porch and deck paint was I believe still serviceable when the house was sold after his death.

On occasion Jean’s dad would do something that appeared to be utterly irrational. The most notable of these incidents related to the old P-38, the Plymouth coupe that he hd at the time Jean and I were married. This was certainly a serviceable car, but I think he had the practice of using some old motor oil he had saved somewhere long the line and this may had contributed to its “throwing” a connecting rod. This happened I believe as he and Jean’s mother were returning to Berkeley from a visit to the Rosels.

Anyway he limped on to Stuart Street with it and subsequently he bought the 4-door Chrysler that he had the rest of his life, and which he was driving when he had the accident that resulted in his dying. The Plymouth he proceeded for some reason to dismember, piling the pieces in the back yard where they lay for a long time. Why he did this is quite incomprehensible to me. Eventually I think Ray disposed of the pieces, or helped dispose of them. He, like me, regarded this action by Jean’s dad with amazement and astonishment.