This is the Day of the Dad in The Common Room

A day late. I had troooouble finding it.

From my Daddy’s newspaper column __________

This is the day to remember. Way back at the first of this century, William Oscar Broscoe, the handsome grocery delivery boy, grabs up purty lil Ida Mae Sampson in Haileyville, and they wed with grande dreams of success and glammer in the days to come. T
hey do not plan on two world wars and a long Hoover Depression extending thru the fambly lifetime…nor do they expect to raise five raunchy sons and a blonde dotter right thru these times.
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I am third in line, and we live in a big ole house with a pot-belly stove, and Dad is a merchant of some success in Hartshorne and Wilburton. He is beeg, and has great hands, and a twinkley eye and several gold teeth in a winning smile. and he can sing every word of every song from Green Corn to Grand Ole Rag. He operates, in several different years, the Briscoe bakery, the Briscoe Cafe, the Briscoe Jewelry Store and even more. His cheerful manner and industrious behavior does us great. Except that in these towns the Mines run everything and the frequent shut-down and lay-off sends customers back out to the “Company Store”

Dad gives credit and slowly folds up into the hands of some “Receiver.” and the mines re-open and we start all over again. and in the late Twennies, we bust for keeps. Dad takes the passenger train to Shawnee, queen of the oil fields, and starts the fambly fortune out again. He sells clothes custom-made door to door. He works for other merchants. Things pick up, but 1920 ends it all. the trains are gone, the oil fades away, and every soul you know is broke, broke, broke.

Ole Oscar gets him a used tin oven for a four burner range, and cooks pans of hot buns, four doz at a whack. At eight cents per doz, you can buy three rolls for two cents. Door to door in a display case built from orange crates. We eat a lot of yesterdays buns for food and run a little thin sometimes, but from that point Dad builds a winner. He never quits smiling and twinkling, and I learn a wealth of songs just by being around. “Rabbit, rabbit, you gettin mighty thin…Yes by golly, but i gettin thru the wind!” and “Oh a preacher went out a huntin, twas on a Sunday morn…” Shawnee in the Twennys and Thirties is the showplace of the world. Due to the railroad terminals here, all the circuses and wile west shows and carnivals all come to OUR town instead of the mess in Oklahoma City. The tickets are cheap enuff for depression, but of course out of sight for po people. Dad (and Mom) bust a gut for days so me and R can walk down to Ozark Park, on South Beard and sit in the little ring. We do not eat much in that period, but dad sings and sez he is not raising depression boys to sadden the world, and we go to the circus. Ringling Bros, Barnum and Bailey that is. Neighbors are not happy with us. and same way with Tom Mix and Tony, and the 101 Ranch. We even spend a buck apiece, me and Ralph, and fly in an open-seat (no belts) ole fighting plane from WWI. We take off from right where the Cinderella is today. And, as years slowly trudge on, the business gets better, but the workdays of the baker get longer, mostly like 14 to 16 per day, including Sundays.

Dad sings just like always, and I am the lucky kid that hangs around and learns ever word. and in between tunes, dad has the time to toss off words of wisdom to lil kids, lik “You leave other people’s stuff alone, and then they maybe leave YOUR stuff alone, and we all get along.”

I remember a friend swipes a ModleT. toy from Kress, bright red and tiny with wheels and then he is askairt to take it home and gives it to me. I am in great joy. Then after awhile I try to visualize me taking the new car home. First, nobody ever gives a lil boy a new car. and in po times nobody is likely to just “find” a new car. and nobody lends me such a nice toy. Maybe Dad thinks I steal it myself. Finally, I just drop the lil car down a manhole up back of the drug store, and now I do not need to explain wherecum.

One day a kids ball team breaks a window and I am just a watcher. But Dad has a business and has to dig up the 22 cents to replace the glass, and then he walks me up there and tells me to cut the man’s grass for the rest of summer, with a arm weed sickle, on the knees. I holler Hey you pay the man once, but pop sez, “and now you are paying me. It is not MY friends who break the windy.”

And at Horace Mann school in tender years, lil Brother Ralph complains the teachers are unfair. Dad thinks a while and sez “There are a few teachers who are not great. Maybe there is one or two who work you real hard. But amongsk the hunnerts of teachers, most are right…so if you get a whupping in school, you know now that you get twice as much when you get home.” That’s plain, ain’t it?

My Dad, who loves John Philip Sousa, loves me when I get to be drum major of the band, and he beams mightily when I get to be Eagle Scout. But one day after I am 18, I try my first (and only) cigaret and Pop calls me into the dough bench where he hand-rolls the buns, and he sez, “Eagle Scouts do not smoke, do they?” and after stalling around with protests, I have to admit “No.” He tells me to take 15 seconds to decide, am I the Eagle Scout, or am I out of it so I can smoke with the bums? It doesn’t take the 15 seconds.

One or two Satidy nights in the month Dad takes an hour off. He pulls his chair up near the light, and he rares back and lights his White Owl, and he reads about Ephriam Tatt or the Caterpillr Tractor man Alexander Biggs in the Satidy Evening Post. He is in this position the night before Betty Sue marries me at the corner church. And I kinda tear-lumpy try to tell Dad how much he means to me, and then I mistakenly ask if he can advise me on my behavior as a new groom. He sure-enuff turns red, but after a bit he does say these words: “You do not mess it all up now by asking marriage counseling from a big ole unemployed grocery boy, who fathers six chillun in two wars and a Republican Depression.”

Well, dad literally works himself out and into the Other World, twinkley eyed to the last, and sometimes still wording a lil ditty about Abdul Abooboo Amir.

I cling to these endless songs from the heart and a lifetime and still ditty a little myself. And I hear his last foretelling, when I am a young man…”These are good times, but one day the rich will garner up all the money again, and prices will rise and wages will fall, and we reach another bottom with a few men having all again. But have faith, for in your lifetime, you will meet another Roosevelt and another Truman, and we get it back again, when you are ole.”

That is real hope. And Pop, when I am a young man I am tall and unlovely (even with MY two gold teeth) and have Dart soles stuck on the bottom of my shoes, and one blue serge suit…but I live in your bakery for years and me and my clothes and stuff smell so gooood like apple pie and hot bread and whiz bangs that Suzy lets me choose her and we live happy ever after.

......”and the Robin sings above you…”
Happy Father’s Day

• Sunday, June 18, 1989 - RHB -

And to you Daddy, wherever your sweet soul soars.
Your Grandchillun’ and Great-grandchillun all played John Phillip Sousa in the band, your great grandsons are Eagle Scouts, everyone sings Grand Old Flag again, and I just taught little Elizabeth “Abdoul Abul-bul Emir”.

June 2018 – The flag droops low these days, Daddy, but we hang on. Another generation grows up with your great-great-grandsons playing Sousa and pledging their Scout Oaths. A mocking bird sings in the holly bush outside my window. Sometimes, I could swear he whistles “Barnacle Bill the Sailor.”

Last updated June 18, 2018