And it's William R. Eagan at the wire!
"Can I get an extra water for my
dad? He's looking a little parched."
The waitress looked around the
room. "Sure. Will he be joining you later?"
"He's right here," I said,
tapping on a green cardboard box no bigger than a
softball. "Would you like to meet him?"
"I'll get that water," the
waitress said and left.
I was having breakfast with my
buddy Big Billy D. at the Pine Cone restaurant in
Sebastopol, California. He was giving me The Look.
It's the look most of my friends have given me
from time to time, the look that seems to ask,
"Could somebody tell me why in the fuck I'm
hanging out with this guy?"
"You know, Mike, that joke's
getting old." Then he laughed at me, loud enough
to fill the room. "Hyuck, yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck,
yuck." He stopped cold, his face went blank and
then he said, "Seriously, man you're bumming
everybody out."
"Hey, I'm just trying to deal
with my dad's death."
He took a long sip from his
coffee cup. "Yeah, I'm sorry. Do what you have to
do."
Man, it was great! Not at first,
of course. At first it was horrible: dad in the
hospital dying, seeing him three days before his
death, ashen and emaciated, old for the first time
ever.
And the night of his death, Oct.
9, 1993, came as a shock. Sure, we knew he was
dying of cancer, but the doctors said he had three
months to live. Or so they thought. Fortunately,
my brother had flown in from Florida in time to
see him alive and my mother (they split up in
1970) had paid her last respects. I had taken the
Greyhound in from Austin, Texas and figured on a
nice long visit with my dad. Three days later he
was gone.
The night before my brother was
to go back to Florida, we got the phone call. Dad
died. Heart attack, the doctors said (or so they
thought). Come identify the body, sign the papers,
pick the funeral parlor and do it all while crying
your eyes out.
At least my brother Dan was
there. At least we both saw it through to the end.
Yeah, my dad's death was a
horrible, horrible experience. He had been my
friend, a bohemian (although he never knew it),
sports fanatic and semi-professional gambler. A
laborer all his life, his big dream was hitting
the ultimate trifecta. He loved the ponies. But
every year it was the same -- he'd win money in
the fall and winter betting on football and then
lose it all again in the spring and summer at the
racetrack.
Still, I couldn't have asked for
a better father. I could tell him anything, things
that would have sent most fathers to an even
earlier grave.
"Dad, I'm gay, a heroin addict,
considering the priesthood, diagnosed with HIV,
entering law school in the fall and I just killed
a guy. "
His reply would have been a
genuinely sympathetic, "Jesus Mike, how did that
happen?" Of course, this is what he would be
thinking: "I understand. I play the ponies."
So I missed him, still do. My dad
died on a Saturday night. I had to wait until
Monday to deal with his body. He was to be
cremated at the Neptune Society. I envisioned guys
dressed like mermaids with pitch forks heaving him
into a huge brick oven.
I'm not sure when I picked up the
ashes, Wednesday I think. He was packed in a green
(sea green) cardboard box. I looked at the box and
sighed. I had to stay six weeks to oversee the
memorial service and get the cash from insurance
and some money market fund my dad had left my
brother and me (I called it Dead Dad Money).
Incredibly enough, the gambler had died in the
black. During the drive back to Sebastopol from
Santa Rosa, I had a moment of clarity and suddenly
realized what was going to get me through the next
six weeks. Dad was gone and I had to accept that,
because...
It was all about me now!
The first thing I did was invent
the dark riff that was to be my friend and ally
for the next 42 days. "Have you met my dad? Come
over here and meet my dad... Billy, hand me that
little green box."
For the next six weeks, I was
given a wide berth, loads of latitude, carte
blanche, the key to the city -- in short...
sympathy beyond belief. I was a dead dad addict
and all of Sebastopol was my dealer. Old
girlfriends -- women who despised me, women who
wanted me back in Texas, women who posted evil
messages about me on the Internet, women who
started 12-step groups about me -- not only spoke
to me lovingly, but offered the hand of
fellowship. Occasionally, the rest of the body
would follow.
I got laid early and often. Sworn
enemies pretended to like me. Journalists who had
always ignored my music career wrote articles
about me. People who had never heard my name
uttered in public wanted to stand next to me. I
sang on the radio twice, performed to two
standing-room-only gigs at Jasper O'Farrell's Pub,
ate at the finest restaurants and homes in West
Sonoma County and never had to stay in a motel one
night.
Sure, I was nearly arrested on
the streets of Sebastopol for a long overdue,
unpaid traffic ticket. But I just whipped out $600
of Dead Dad Money, and the coppers let me settle
it the next day in court. Life was good. Honest to
god, if I could get away with it right now I'd
call up all my friends and say, "Guess what! Dad
died again."
So what about dear old dad? Well,
his insurance-selling friend Bob (who inherited
all 26 of my dad's books on horse racing formulas)
thought we should have a memorial service, but I
nixed it. I wouldn't have bored my dad in life,
why should I in death? His other buddy Jim, a
newspaper editor, thought we should get his
friends together for a formal dinner. That was
closer to the mark. Finally I hit on it: we'd all
get together on a Saturday morning before post
time and have breakfast, then take his ashes and
spread them around the race track at the Sonoma
County Fairgrounds. The idea was met with
handshakes and high-fives all around.
Jim's job was to find out if we
could get permission to spread dad's ashes at the
track. A few days later, he called me and the news
wasn't good.
"The people at the race track
said we need to get permission from the Board of
Health. Forms need to be filled out. It could take
time."
"I say we just do it." He readily
agreed.
We met at a Greek restaurant just
outside of Petaluma, the town where my dad had
lived. Although he technically died of cardiac
arrest, his real problem had been stomach cancer,
so it was only fitting that we had an all-you-can
eat breakfast of bacon with grease, scrambled eggs
with grease, sausage with grease, biscuits and
gravy with grease and a side order of grease. We
smoked cigarettes. We looked cancer in the eye. We
did it for dad, who posthumously paid the bill
(more Dead Dad Money).
Most of my dad's friends made it
to the William R. Eagan Memorial Meal: Jim the
editor, Bob the insurance guy, Big Billy D. the
singing bartender, Diane the babe, Pete the postal
worker and me -- the professional mourner. Only
three were missing from the group: Richard (a
lounge piano player who once ran for mayor of San
Rafael on the socialist ticket), Bob (a Damon
Runyan figure who had died a few years earlier),
and my brother Dan (who was back in Florida
cramming for his final exams).
We pigged down the meal and
headed to the race track. Saturday featured
off-track betting in the main pavilion, but no
live races were being run. Since it was November,
there weren't even golfers playing on the
nine-hole golf course in the middle of the track.
The track was all ours.
I had mixed feelings about
dumping the ashes. First, without the box of dad's
ashes, I'd have to come up with a new pickup line.
Second, it would be nice to take the ashes to
Austin and run the riff there. Third... couldn't
we go to jail for this?
Once on the racetrack, we had to
decide where to dump the ashes.
"Why don't we spread them at the
finish line," Bob said. Good idea. I opened the
box and grabbed a handful of ashes. Somehow I felt
like I should say something, but I wasn't sure
what.
"This is for teaching me
baseball," I said and spread a few ashes along the
finish line. I grabbed another handful and said,
"This is for all your friends here." I grabbed
some more ashes. "And this is --"
Bob broke in. "God damn it, hurry
up, we're gonna miss post time!"
"This is for you dad," I said and
quickly dumped the ashes in as straight a line as
I could. We fled the track and hurried to the main
pavilion. When we reached the ticket booth at the
entrance, Bob blew our cover.
"We just spread Bill out at the
finish line," Bob said, loud enough to be
arrested. He babbled like a waitress on crank.
"Did you hear? We dumped Bill's ashes at the
finish line on the track."
Bleary-eyed old men with
mismatched shirts and ties approached me,
reverently.
"Are you Bill's son?" they said.
"We knew your dad. He used to win."
Well, maybe. Dad used to win
betting on football games. In fact, on the last
day of his life he also called his last shot. UCLA
was ahead of Washington State by two touchdowns in
the fourth quarter and looked to have the game all
sewed up.
"Looks like UCLA's got this one,"
I said.
He was nearly asleep and barely
whispered, "No, Washington State's gonna get
them." Sure enough, Washington State won.
"He called his last bet," Bob
said.
Not exactly, I thought.
Having once worked as a newspaper
reporter, I still had some connections in the
business. That helped me get my dad's obituary
into several newspapers, including the Petaluma
Argus-Courier, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat and
the newspaper in his boyhood hometown of Tracy,
Ca. I got to write the obit and they printed it
word for word except for the first line. Every
paper cut out the first line.
The first line read:
"Gambler William R. Eagan -- who
once bet that he would live to be 100 years old --
lost his final wager on Oct. 9, 1993."
Sonofabitch, I wish that bet had
paid off.
* * *
STANDARD DISCLAIMER: This column aims to be
funny. If you can read anything else into it, you're
on your own. Copyright 1997 by Mike Jasper.
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