Setting the Temperature and the Tone
For my step-father’s 90th birthday, I’m re-posting an essay I write on this day a couple years ago. It’s a re-run, but for a true original.
Atlanta, GA
November 16, 2019
“Little by little, the look of the country changes because of the men we admire.” – Melvyn Douglas in Hud, 1963
“Even da big boys don’t do that!” – Augusta National caddy to Jerry Miller, after he birdied from a fairway bunker, 1987
A year ago, we reviewed the manner and means by which my mother introduced herself to Jerry. Today, we recall how he was introduced to us.
In Switzerland, meeting a man she would likely not see again, my mother decided to spice-up her résumé. Already a successful travel agent and burgeoning business owner, she also became, for this trip, a renowned attorney and a concert pianist. That was four decades ago.
Upon returning to Tampa, she received a phone call. The man to whom she marketed her elevated Alpine credentials lived within sixty miles, and wanted to see her.
The feeling was mutual, but left a pit in her stomach. For while she had innocuously embellished [Latin: “made up”] a few fraudulent aspects of her life, she had somehow forgotten to mention a couple genuine ones.
Her children.
I was 10 or eleven years old, my brother about eight. At some point, if all went well, Jerry would probably find out about us. After all, my mother couldn’t leave me waiting at the airport forever.
Like a scalpel to a delicate operation, she had to come clean. But how? She once told me how she did it, but it was years ago. Like the rear windshield after a few drops of rain, the details are spotty. But we adjust the mirror, squint, and look back.
I don’t think I was in the room when she broke the news of our existence (tho’ having me there would have been a less subtle way to do it). Based on what I recall of the story, let’s imagine that day thru the eyes of whatever fly happened to be on the wall…
My mother answers the door, welcomes Jerry in, and invites him to (or strongly suggests that he) sit down. Let’s take some artistic license, go out on a limb, and assume a couple glasses of wine adorn the scene.
The stage set, the overture complete, and perfunctory recitatives out of the way, it was time for the aria.
“Jerry”, she said ominously, “there is something I haven’t told you, but that you need to know.”
Somewhat startled, he looked up apprehensively, braced himself and…like Linus with his blanket…clutched his wine glass.
“Oh? … What is it?”
“Well”, she continued, “I should have told you sooner, but wasn’t quite sure how. And the time never seemed right.”
Nothing good has ever followed such a sentence. Jerry’s face grew pale as he sank further into his seat. He knew this woman was too good to be true.
“That’s OK”, he lied. “You can tell me.”
After a deep breath, she took one more drink and, like an RAF pilot over Hamburg, opened the bomb bay doors.
“I have two kids”, she blurted…and then stood back, waiting for the smoke to clear.
Jerry sat up, dusted himself off, and emerged, unscathed, from the debris. The color slowly returned to his face…but he retained his hold on the wine glass.
“Is that all?”, he exulted.
“Is that all?”, my mother asked, almost as perplexed as she was relieved.
“Yeah”, he exhaled. “I was afraid you were going to tell me you aren’t really an attorney!”
From that moment…which probably didn’t happen as I described, and may not have occurred at all…our lives improved. Not that Jerry didn’t have plenty of days when he didn’t wish my mother could exchange her sons for a law degree.
But he initially tolerated them, always taught them, and soon treated them as his own. They eventually reciprocated, in their intransigent teenage way. Their home consolidated, and their horizons expanded.
Incomparable impressions of Donald Duck and WC Fields became commonplace. Frank Sinatra, Bo Schembechler, and Johnny Carson joined the family. Desiccated martinis, enervating whites, and soothing reds spurred happy-hour conversations and after-dinner debates. Two-inch steaks and Jerry’s homemade spaghetti rendered rival sirloins and sauces almost offensive. And, as Brett would vouch, we had fish every night.
It’s been said that some people enter our lives as thermometers, others as thermostats. Some merely register the temperature, others change it. Jerry changed it…and our family life grew warmer.
He struck a welcome tone, paternally harmonizing the raucous vibrations of untuned teenage strings. That reliable chord remains a steadying influence whenever life’s notes turn sour, or shift off-key.
Jerry instilled or reinforced my lifelong affinity for golf, wine, and travel…particularly for all three at once.
In 2006 he, his son Kevin, Brett, and I mixed them in style along the Wisconsin coast…spending three days sampling as many golf courses, several wine varietals, and a Brewers game on a trip to Whistling Straits.
That remains among my more enjoyable and memorable weekends. The courses and company were wonderful, but a particularly persistent memory comes from high in the rafters and late in the Brewers game in Milwaukee, when Miller Park ran out of beer.
Out of beer. At a Brewers game. At Miller Park.
As an amiably inebriated group of guys in front of us…who were no doubt largely responsible for the drought…told the vendor, this should not have been possible at a ballpark built next to its namesake brewery.
As with my love for the finer things, Jerry also facilitated my relationship with the finest. I am probably married because of…or perhaps despite…his patented spaghetti sauce. After a 1993 visit to Tampa, Jerry froze some for me to take back to Philadelphia.
So armed, I invited a beautiful woman to my fashionable Valley Forge apartment. There, like a destitute entrepreneur seeking VC funding, I used another’s assets to flatter my balance sheet and enhance my pitch.
And it worked…to a point. Rita loved the meal, and appreciated the man who made it. But she already knew her host well enough to know it wasn’t him.
After all, anyone who could make such a meal would probably own at least a few pots and pans. And his refrigerator would likely chill more than watery beer, stale milk, and salad dressing as neglected as a vegan in a steakhouse. But the evening wasn’t a total loss. If nothing else, it made Rita want to meet my parents.
Jerry is as durable as he is dexterous. He has survived deadly car accidents, debilitating knee injuries, and the last eight years of the Ohio State rivalry.
And that’s just since we’ve known him.
He’s also been struck by lightning, gone to college with Ted Kennedy, and lived in Detroit. Jerry has been in scrapes so hairy they make Sasquatch look like Kojak. But he has also holed-out from the sand on the 10th hole at Augusta, which makes up for a lot.
Spending my weeks in Columbus, I am reminded Jerry once observed that Ohio State fans are the most rude, obnoxious, and deplorable of any in the land. Midwest Nice apparently checks its gentility at the Ohio Stadium gates.
Based on Jerry’s testimony…cloaked like a Medieval abbot in maize and blue modesty…the lovely Columbusans (Columbians? Columbianos? Columbanians? Calumnies?) apparently treat visiting Wolverines with a coarseness and vulgarity that Philadelphia fans would envy.
Which is outrageous ingratitude. Particularly since we all know that when these same Buckeyes make their way to Ann Arbor in a couple weeks, they will stroll into the Big House as honored guests, on a red carpet, with rose petals under their feet. There’s a reason, after all, that halos are maize.
As a fan, Jerry yields to no one in his humility and empathy. Anyone who rocks U of M socks, displays a Wolverine wall-clock, and stocks a Michigan music box…all of which repeatedly (ask my mother) play “Hail to the Victors” at the push of a button, top of an hour, or lift of a lid…is no doubt eminently gracious, humble, and reticent toward his benighted collegiate rivals.
Melvyn Douglas’s observation in Hud that, little by little, the world changes because of the men we admire was meant as a warning to his naive grandson, who idolized Douglas’s selfish, ne’er do-well son.
But admiration also flows uphill, following and forging worthwhile channels as it streams toward higher ground. Little by little, as we ascend, our world improves, because of a man we admire.
Today, on his birthday…for all he has done and all he has meant…we appreciate such a man.
We hail Jerry. But we are the victors.
