Bucko!My father passed away last year. We never spent much time together, so much of Bucko’s nature came from the other side, and in particular Grandma Moon. But there is a small piece of him in here somewhere.
When I was eleven, I came to visit my dad and he and his wife took me on a camping trip up to the northern seacoast of Maine. At one remote spot we stopped, there was a beautiful little stream and I wanted to go fishing. I learned to fish at the feet of my Grandma Moon when I was three, so it was no surprise that I had my fishing rod and tackle box with me on this trip.
Dad was easily the most brilliant man I’ve ever known, but he didn’t know one end of a fishing pole from the other. That didn’t matter, because I did, and off we went together. He sat on a big rock watching me fish, smoke curling up from his pipe, which as it turned out protected him from the black flies, while I got eaten alive. As luck would have it I hooked a beautiful little trout, my first in fact, as there aren’t many trout in rural Georgia where I come from. Dad came running over as I landed the fish and after looking at it, asked me what I was going to do with it. Dad was perhaps the most gentle and compassionate soul that ever walked this earth and I’m sure he wanted me to let it go. I on the other hand wanted to eat it.
He loved Hemingway. One of the first things he ever read to me was Hemingway’s Big Two Hearted River and in that story the hero catches a couple of trout, dispatches them and takes them back to camp. Knowing my father, the only reason he relented was that there was literary precedent. Good enough for Hemingway, good enough for me.
There are those who would argue we were similar in nature, but I don’t think anyone would ever argue we were similar in nurture. Life chose to separate Dad and I when I was four and we were raised in distinctly different circumstances.
My father was born in Rome and raised in a remarkably cultured home. His parents and grandparents prior to the Russian Revolution moved in the highest circles of Russian society. I was raised in the American south by a family deeply rooted in southern soil and tradition since long before the American Revolution. My father spent his youth hiking and climbing in the Italian Alps. I spent my youth hunting and fishing in the pine woods of Georgia. My father was a professor at Williams College. I was a football player at the University of Georgia.
Simply put, my father was caviar and I was grits. My one regret is not growing up with him for I’m sure I’m much the lesser for it.
I was looking through a scrapbook the other day. I have a number of them along with boxes of letters and other things he sent me over the years. Most children get postcards from friends and family with pictures of the beach and statements like the “weather’s fine, wish you were here.” I on the other hand received post cards depicting fine art—Van Gogh, Wyeth and Chagall. In one particular instance it was Chagall’s Blue Donkey. The lesson being, art is about what you want it to be as opposed to what it’s supposed to be. In every conversation or letter over fifty-five years he never failed to try and teach me something.
When I was about thirteen, I came again to visit Dad. Like any thirteen year old, I was happy school was out, no more homework, and I was going to spend some time with my dad. The first night we sat down for dinner and he laid a book on the table. It was William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.
“Paul, you’re going to be here for two weeks and I want you to read a book each week,” and he slid the book across the table. It was summertime and the last thing I wanted to do was learn anything—certainly not on purpose, but I sighed, said ‘yes sir’ and figured it couldn’t be too bad. Then he said,“And I would like you to write a one page synopsis on each book and turn it in to me when you finish.” Damn.
But he had a way of making these things palatable and I would find myself reading my book on the top of Greylock or Pine Cobble, or sitting in his canoe on some Vermont pond. I’ve lived in Vermont now for twenty eight years and people often asked how someone born and raised and washed in the blood of the south if you will, could leave and move of all places to New England. On reflection, the answer is because I learned to love it through my father’s eyes. It was the perfect place for him. He loved its beauty and simplicity. He loved its wilderness and its culture. It was paradise for him and has proven to be that for me as well.
I travel a great deal in my work and I have a little book that goes everywhere with me. In it are pictures of my children and a letter which I’ve carried ever since Dad wrote it to me. A few years ago I was struggling a bit with work, finances, all those things that tend to drag us down from time to time. Dad and I talked on the phone and he must have sensed it as two days later I received this letter.
“Dear Paul,
You sounded despondent on the phone last night. I don’t know whether the cause was just an accumulation of routine annoyances, or whether that avalanche of meetings you mentioned is the symptom of some troublesome upheaval brewing.
At any rate, I felt the urge to drop you a line and say, ‘Buck up guy!’ This too shall pass. The snows of yesteryear melt and the flowery meadows appear in their place. May this happen to you soon. Virgil agrees. He put it more tersely: ‘This too someday will be useful to remember.’ Wise individual, Virgil. No wonder Dante chose him as his guide through Hell.
Mayakovski, poet of the Russian Revolution, in a satire on bureaucracy describes a functionary, the upper half of whose body attends one meeting, while the bottom part sits in another meeting…
Hope you will soon get all the parts of you assembled and knee-deep in the surf, battling some courageous fish.
Much love to you in the meantime,
Dad.”◊