Whiskey Seven Quebec Ocean Easy
Even at 64 years of age the door of my dad’s shop is hard to open. The warped wood, splintered with the years of weather and neglect, the doorknob that doesn’t want to respond when my terribly arthritic hand works desperately to try to turn the rusty orb. Then when the orb does seem to respond with the bodily strength and control to both push the door open across the warped floor while gingerly nursing the swaying pain of glass that has been slightly shattered by a neighbors (or maybe a brother's) “toy” gun. It had been six years since I had attempted to crack the portal, I didn’t really know why today was the day. At 5 years old I would sneak in to watch him work and play and smoke his pipe, but today, the reasons might come to me.
Dad died 5 years ago on January 30, it was snowing, his favorite thing. He had given up. There wasn’t a real cause of death. He had been an alcoholic, so his liver and kidneys were shot. But the last 20 years of his life were taken over by a sort of depression that I did not really understand. I remembered the depression as I saw an empty Old English 800 bottle on the floor of the shop. For a moment I felt like kicking it, because when I was 18, his drinking made me so mad, but at the end of his life, I brought him his 4:00 PM beer. I just wanted him to feel okay.
I continued to walk through his shop, and I saw sailing magazines from the 1970’s. He built a sailboat in our garage. He sailed it on Detroit Lake one summer in the Cascade Mountain Range. Then he did not. That is how it went with dad. He did things. Then he did not.
There was an old leather cabinet in the corner of the shop, the kind you find in antique stores. It had three small shelves in it and I opened the bottom one. It was full of pictures and postcards and smelled like tobacco. In that bottom shelf I remembered more of my childhood with my dad. Before the drink.
Still in the shop, on the top shelf near another broken 4 paned window, is an old HAM radio, with a dial knob and lights. Those lights used to glow a beautiful teal and yellow as he turned the dial. As he turned the dial, voices would crackle through the small speaker. The voices would shout letters and numbers in sequences and I learned what these were. These were call numbers, or names. My dad had a call name W7QOE. Whiskey Seven Quebec Ocean Easy.
I wanted so much to do what my dad was doing so I remember learning Morse code and he told me about a women’s league in the 1940’s that were Ham radio operators during the war. I loved this time with my dad. I learned when my dad said YL, he was telling them that I was in the room “Young Lady” and when they said OM, that meant “Old Man” which was a term of endearment. R or “Roger” meant yes and so many more acronyms. I became a student of the world. Right there in that cold, smokey shop in Aloha, Oregon, next to a wood stove, on a tiny footstool, I listened to men and women with accents from far off places and dreamed of the day I too could talk to them with funny phrases and call myself by letters and numbers.
This was a thing that my dad did for a very long time. As I go through these cards, I wonder why he stopped being a radio operator. It was the happiest I remember seeing him. The post cards used to be all over the shop. He would staple them all over. Why did he take them down? Why did he stop?
The sadness took over a bit at this point, and I am done with the shop for the day. I laughed a little thinking “Time to close up shop”. There is more to dig into, to look through, but uncovering is as much about me as he is, and today I am not ready. I head to the door. My nose is running but not from tears, from the dust in this old place. My wrists hurt and I am worried that this is the time the glass breaks. So, with the same strength and gentleness I once again close the portal hoping the window stays intact because I know once the glass is shattered, I will not be back.
