Choosing Straight, Part 5, (Rated - PG)

Moon over Skyscraper Mountain - Independence Mine State Historical Park, Hatcher Pass, Alaska

One day, when I was about nine years old, (yes, nine) I was hanging with some buddies at a friends house. There was maybe three or four of us, and we were just messing around, you know, killing time, looking for something to do, and for some reason (I don't remember why) we ended up down in the basement.

Now it was a typical basement of the era. Some of you might remember the kind, always dark, always damp and musty smelling, and always accessed through - The Cellar Door!! (Crash of thunder, dissonant chords! (Tri Tones, minor seconds, that kind of stuff.) Imagine Darth Vader type breathing, and a deep, threatening, voiceover. )

"What terror is it that waits... Behind The Cellar Door!!" (Suddenly! Lightning flashes! Thunder rolls! And some chick Screams!)

Well, of course, as anyone who's a fan of horror flicks knows, nothing good ever lies behind - The Cellar Door!! (What's behind - The Cellar Door! - is not at all like what's - Behind The Green Door! (As I would learn to my delight several years later. But I don't want to get ahead of myself) So be sure you never confuse the two. At best it could lead to several moments of really awkward silence, and at worst you could end up getting eaten alive, but not in the good way.))

Opening - The Cellar Door!! - usually revealed a steep, rickety, scary stairway, (with no bannister), leading downward into - The Darkness!! - Yes!! - The Darkness!! - where - The Furnace!! - lurked like some - Hungry!! Multi Tentacled!! Evil!! Gigantic!! Metallic Squid!! - waiting hungrily, down there in - The Darkness!! - for the first opportunity to grab you! with its huge metallic tentacles, and then to suck the life!! Yes! The very life! from your body, before throwing the empty husk that once was you into the corner onto its ever growing pile of victims!!

(Ever had the bejesus scared out of you by an overflowing laundry basket?)

That's why no one under the age of twenty one ever went down into the basement alone.

It was also the place where dad kept all his tools, and hung up his girly calendars. (If you had that kind of dad. Which I did not.) It was the place Dad went to get some away time. The place where he worked on his projects. His shop. His "cave" as it were, (if you're into that whole "Men from Mars, Women from Venus", thing.) The place where Dad could go when he needed to hit something with a hammer.

Some dads had a den, some dads had the basement, some dads had the garage, and some dads had the neighborhood bar down on the corner. When I was a kid you could learn all you needed to know about a buddy just by knowing where his dad hung out.

Well, except for invisible dads.

Nobody seems to think too much about invisible dads today (folks didn't think too much of them then, either.) Today it's no big deal, loads of invisibles wandering around out there, only now they're called "sperm donors". (Brief history lesson - At that time no one, and I do mean No One, would have even thought of saying the word sperm out loud, let alone referring to someone as a "sperm donor".) But when I was a kid, there was a definite stigma to having an Invisible Dad. And it was just another one of the many things you had to figure out for yourself. After a while you'd just know, and the rules were you didn't ask, and you never brought it up first.

Some kids even made up stories about their invisible dads. It was sad.

But, if your friends dad was a visible, then sooner or later you had to meet him. And meeting a new buddies dad was always fraught with a certain amount of anxiety. (Which was, as we would later discover, a totally different, and infinitely smaller type of anxiety to be fraught with, especially when compared with the anxiety of meeting - HER dad.)

And, of course, this was way back in the dark ages of Mr and Mrs, and don't you dare forget it! (To address one of my friend's parents by their first name? "Hey Phil, wassup?" Unthinkable. At best, you'd get "A Lecture" (there were an infinity of them) and at worst, you'd be smacked into the middle of the next week. But this was admittedly in the dark ages. Hell, even at fifty I still stumble over it sometimes.))

Some dads were cool. (Remember what your dad taught you - Look him in the eye, firm handshake.)

"Pleased to met ya kid."

"Pleased to meet you, Sir."

"Call me Mr Smith."

"Yes Sir!"

"Mr Smith." Friends dad smiles.

"Yes sir, I mean Mr Smith, sir..."

"You two go out and play somewhere, and stay outa trouble."

(Sometimes a parent would tell us "Why don't you two go outside, and play in traffic!" but we never did that, cause we knew they were just being silly, and besides, playing in traffic would be dangerous. Unlike, say, playing with matches and gunpowder.)

Talking with your friend later you'd say, "Wow! Straight to Mr Smith! Your dad is so cooool!"

And he'd reply, "Yeah. He's OK, an he hardly ever yells, 'cept if I do something stupid."

Then there were the Recliner Dads.

I often wondered if they ever went to the bathroom, since I never actually saw one move. (I figured that was just another one of those mysteries, you know, one of the "You'll understand it when you're older" ones. There seemed to be no end of them.)

They were never found outside of either "The Den" or "The Living Room", where... they... Reclined.... (I sooo wish I could make the font recline. (you know, the other way)) resembling nothing so much as a beached Beluga Whale. Reclining there, in a dirty white t-shirt, beer belly bulging, cold one in hand, watching network sports, and belching.

"Bloooooorrrphhh, Brrraaaaaappp!"

"Good one Dad!!"

"Thanks son."

Moms voice from kitchen, "That's not funny Marty!! How's he ever gonna learn any manners?"

Dad rolls eyes, makes face, silently mouths "learn any manners..." then farts. Son falls on floor in hysterical laughter, then stifles giggles, dad and son make brief eye contact, male bonding occurs. It's a beautiful moment.

(Another brief journey into the history of the world - Believe it or don't, there was, A Time Before Cable. Hell, we hadn't even landed on the moon yet! No satellite TV, on account'a there weren't no satellites. No Dish Network. Only three broadcast channels, Three!! That was it!! ABC, NBC, CBS!! That was all she wrote. There were no remote controls! That's why people had kids, as in, "Hey, you... kid... whatever your name is... yeah you. Get up an change the channel." The decline of Western Civilization can be traced, directly, to the invention of the remote control. Gangs are what happens when young men have too much free time, and nothing productive to do.)

You may well have met a Beluga Dad.

Shoot, you might even be a Beluga Dad

(Another historical digression - I did not, at that time, know that they looked like a beached Beluga whale, as I hadn't yet seen a Beluga whale, beached or otherwise. But the first time I saw a Beluga in Turnagain Arm, I thought, "Wow! That looks just like a recliner dad!")

Beluga dads. The ones that grunt.

You knew you had arrived when a Beluga dad grunted at you as you passed through his field of vision, (we all learned, early on, to never walk between any dad and the TV screen), and said, "Hey you... Kid... yeah you... whatever your name is... Go to the fridge an get me another cold one." Meaning, of course, a beer! Wow! You were actually going to touch a can of beer! A grown-up had asked you, you! to go get him a can of beer! It was a magical moment. And at that moment you knew, you knew! that someday you wouldn't just get the beer, someday you'd get to drink the beer! And that day had just moved one day closer!

Ah, the anticipation.

You modern kids have no appreciation for the finer things in life.

Then there were the dads who fixed you with the hairy eyeball and the, "What fresh Hell is this!" face. Those friends always came over to your house to play.

And I've wandered off topic again.

But tomorrow, I promise, "The Truth" will actually be revealed!