People

Dad was a cigar chomping sales and delivery truck driver. He was stocky and weathered, with wispy white hair claimed to be from “Swedish ancestry.” He spoke in a deep, gravelly voice that caused the earth to shake to its core. A characteristic of Dad’s vocalization was that almost every word in an utterance was unintelligible—as if he had his mouth full of mashed potatoes—except for copious cuss words that were clearly both intelligible and vitriolic. To his credit, I never heard him drop the “F-Bomb.” To say the least, Dad’s speech scared the stuffing out of Rich and me. Overall, Dad was rather gnarly.

We did not see much of Dad during weekdays as he left for work very early and arrived home in the evening “dead tired.” He was twenty-plus years older than Mom. His health was in decline, and he had suffered several strokes and heart attacks by his early sixties.

Dad subsisted on comfort foods cooked with lots of bacon grease and salt. Back then, everybody kept a coffee can on the back of the stove, right next to the big cardboard canister of salt, and collected bacon grease for flavoring.

As was common for Kensingtonians, Dad made a few bucks “on the side.” He drove for the bakery products division of a major brewing company, and his route took him to Delaware. At the time, Delaware had no sales tax, and tobacco products were priced cheaper there than in Pennsylvania. Dad took advantage of his delivery route to buy the cheaper tobacco products, and he bought his company’s beer at an employee discount.

On Friday nights (traditional blue-collar pay night) and Saturday mornings, Dad sold the tobacco products and beer from the trunk of his car and also “took book” (a term for unsanctioned off-track horse betting).

Sometimes Dad bartered with neighbors. For example, he would exchange a six pack of beer or a carton of cigarettes for a television repair.

Dad was proud to be a union member and a member of a prominent fraternal order. Although at the time I did not understand what those affiliations meant, he told me they “saved our a****” a few times. From childhood-through-young-adulthood, Dad was mischievous and constantly in trouble for something. He dropped out of high school to join the navy. In older adulthood, he was described as “devilish.” One can clearly see the genetic transmission from Dad to Rich and me.

Dad’s proper name was “Lewis.” His nickname was “Lew.”

Mom was a petite woman with curly brown hair and glasses. She met Dad, then a dairy products deliveryman, when she was in her late teens and residing in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Mom grew up durin