Lee Geiger

Well, ain’t that somethin’

Robert Harold Geiger, 1924-2009

Dear Dad,

I see by the calendar that tomorrow is your birthday. If my math is correct, that makes 95 laps around the Sun for you. Sadly, the last ten have been below ground.

Lately you’ve been on my mind, so I figured the best way to reach you was to write. I’m guessing cell coverage in Heaven is spotty, and that the WIFI isn’t much better. I’ve tried praying to you, just like I do with Mom, but she always seems to get back to me. You might want to check with God and see if you’re blocking me.

I’m not upset with you, Dad. Bitterness and hate are emotional viruses carried only by those who wish to be bitter and hateful. This is also not a letter from a son scorned. Unlike my older brothers, the relationship between you and me, while not especially close, was relatively easy and painless. You left the dirty work of discipline to Mom, which made sense since she was, at 4 feet 11 inches and a hundred pounds dripping wet, the toughest hombre of the family. You were a good provider during my childhood, and though we moved around a bunch (and attending eleven schools in twelve years was no picnic), it wasn’t the Bataan Death March. I had a roof over my head, clothes on my back and food on the table, and you came to as many of my games as you reasonably could. You also made sure I had an orange VW Bug to drive when we lived in Carmel, a real treat for any teenager. But I do have some questions about the reason we moved there. Was it really because Mom didn’t like the weather in Chicago?

Now that I’m a baseball season shy of turning sixty, I’ve developed a greater appreciation of what your life was like. You grew up dirt poor in Depression-era Mississippi, broke Japanese codes during WWII, came back home and married Mom, adopted her infant son, and then had four more sons of your own. You worked long days and went to school at night, and you did your best to make a name for yourself in the freight distribution biz. I tip my hat to you, Dad. You did what you thought you had to do to support your family. Quite the magnanimous effort, and one deserving respect. However, I’m not sure I would have waited until my oldest son was in his forties to tell him he was adopted. But that’s just me.

The whole Geiger Distributing thing in Chicago during the 1970’s was a noble effort. I immensely respect any person who assumes the risk of having to meet a payroll. But in your case, I think we can agree that the liabilities of running a small family business far exceeded the assets. And I’m not just talking about the dollars and cents. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my lifetime it’s that passing money back and forth among family members is a VERY BAD idea. I won’t speak for them, but I completely understand why my older brothers are not fans of yours, then or now. You treated them like indentured servants, playing them off each other like rank and file employees. Plus, you got greedy, and when you were flush you refused to share the wealth. You and Mom spent your weekend nights playing hard at Chicago’s Playboy Club while you sons and their wives could barely afford the Sizzler buffet. I’d be white-hot upset with you as well if I were them. I was just a snotty-nosed kid back then, virtually an only child, and I never got a whiff of the family tension running amok between you and your four oldest sons. But telling them that your long-term strategic plan for the company was for their littlest brother to graduate from college so he could come back and run the family business wasn’t the best idea you ever came up with. For all of our family’s notorious faults, which are sadly too numerous to list, we stubborn Geiger’s are hard core grudge carriers, and it explains why the last family reunion took place in 1983. Ironically, I recently visited the old Geiger Distributing site at 1858 South Western Avenue in Chicago, and the massive freight dock that was specifically built for you is no longer there. Gone, vanished, bulldozed into nothingness. The only thing left are weeds growing from cracks in the cement truck yard. It’s like nothing of consequence was ever there, which may be uncomfortably close to the truth.

Looking back, I can’t imagine what you must have gone through emotionally after losing your business and becoming flat, stinking broke. Made worse by the fact that it happened virtually overnight. There you were, in your mid-fifties, having to start all over. Again. I tremble just thinking about it. Those who weren’t on your side said it was karma, payback for being a jerk of a boss. My simple analysis says it was bad business, that you put all your eggs in one basket, and when that basket was taken away the blow was fatal. The blow could have been softened if you had saved a few shekels when times were good, but that’s hindsight. Nonetheless, it took me decades to do the Christian thing and forgive you for moving Mom from her Carmel dream home to that s-hole apartment in Salinas. The ensuing depression nearly killed her. I came out of those trying days in one piece, and truth be told the boom-to-bust experience at eighteen spring boarded my ambition to achieve a certain level of financial success. But there came a point shortly after you died where I needed a dose of professional help, a mental massage if you will, and found myself one afternoon bawling my eyes out in a Berkeley basement. After much torment, I finally realized that what was causing so much angst within my soul was that my greatest fear in life, buried so deep in my subconscious that I never even knew it existed until the emotional scab was ripped off, was to experience what ultimately happened to you…to wake up one day realizing you’ve lost everything, and then to pass from this Earth and not have a single one of your children come to your funeral. Those two images I had of you frightened me down to my boots.

I also can’t imagine the agonizing pain you experienced after Mike died. I’ve been told countless times that the agony a parent experiences after losing a child is beyond comprehension. Mike was fifty years old when he mysteriously passed, and by all accounts he was considered the black sheep of the family. I’m not afraid to admit that I found his company borderline unbearable.  But you took it upon yourself to care for your middle son, even in death, stowing his ashes in a closet so that one day he could lay next to you in eternity. You and Mike now share a casket in Mississippi, and that’s good. But to be completely honest, I really wish you two were lying next to Mom in Sacramento.

By the way, I still own the rights to the plot next to her. Maybe I’ll set up a bar for her. You know how much Mom enjoyed her afternoon highballs.

I’ll say one thing about you, Dad. You were a survivor. You knew how to persevere. You overcame the rise and fall of Geiger Distributing and eventually reinvented yourself as a flea market guru and auctioneer. But more importantly, you dedicated yourself to taking care of Mom, especially after she was diagnosed with cancer. With barely enough money to afford food and rent, much less health insurance, you cooked the Geiger Auction Sales books to provide for her care, a decision the IRS wasn’t too thrilled with. But that’s okay. I know why you did it, and I might have done the same thing if I were in your shoes. Only you, born with a spirit that tried to make the best of everything, would compare serving time at a minimum-security prison to hanging out with your Navy buddies. But that’s just the way you were wired.

Despite what you put her through, Mom died happy knowing you were there by her side. Though I can’t recall much about our relationship when I was young, I’ll never forget those days you and I spent together after her funeral in 1986. You were a broken man, and you opened up to me like never before. We weren’t father and son—we were friends. I was a young adult by then, armed with an MBA, a fantastic wife and a future on Wall Street laid out in front of me. You rarely offered advice, and to be fair I was too arrogant to ask for it. You were a first-ballot Hall of Fame grandfather to Ross and Keith, and for that I am eternally grateful. But let’s also be honest about something; you ignored a lot of your grandchildren, and that’s just something I’ll never be able to understand. By the way, Ross got married in 2017. We all really wished you could have been there. You would have been so proud of him, Dad. He married his soulmate, a bright and beautiful classmate from Brown. They live in Boston now, so we don’t get to see them very often.

I miss you, Dad. I truly do. And I’m know there are many others whose life you touched that miss you as well. I really miss those Sunday afternoons when we’d park our butts on the couch and cheer on the 49ers, or sit on our back porch at night listening to you regale us with hilarious stories about you and your wacky brothers growing up in Columbia, MS. I mean, did our name really evolve from Gieger to Geiger because some dopey painter misspelled a sign above your Dad’s auto repair shop, and it was cheaper to change the name than repaint the sign? And I miss watching you play with my boys, who always looked forward to your visits. When you left California in 2004 to rejoin your brothers and cousins in Mississippi, as well as move-in with a former high school classmate who promised to love and take care of you, I thought for sure you’d make it back here to see your grandkids. But you didn’t. That’s on me as well. Airplanes do travel in both directions, after all. At least my memories of you are while you were still in good health.

I’m still racked with guilt about not attending your funeral. I have a reason, though some may call it an excuse. The day you unexpectedly died, June 12, 2009, was the day Ross graduated from high school. We were leaving two days later for a long scheduled three-week European family vacation. I’m not sure if you know this, but I called the funeral home in Mississippi and gave them my credit card. Your wife, Mary Annette, was a good sport, and she later joked that instead of an inheritance I got an invoice. She’s a good lady, Dad, an angel brought down from Heaven. I’m can’t tell you how grateful I am that she was there for you at the end.

By the way, I recently tried to visit you (and, by default, Mike). Last Memorial Day, in fact. The Pretty Blonde and I were in New Orleans, the first stop of week-long trip that also took us to Mobile, AL to meet several members of her extended family. What a hoot they are! The last leg of our trip took us to Orlando, FL for Keith’s graduation from Full Sail University. You’d be really proud of him too, Dad. Your skinny grandson, who you always said was going to do something really special with his life, was the class valedictorian. Pretty cool, right? We all wished you could have been there. Keith now lives in Waterloo, Iowa, not too far from Mom’s (and Radar O’Reilly’s) hometown of Ottumwa. Only Keith’s busy programming video games instead of corn.

Back to my story. That morning, I suggested to The Pretty Blonde that it would be a better use of our time to finally visit your grave than to scarf down another few thousand delicious calories at some famous NOLA eatery. “Hattiesburg, MS is only two hours from here,” I told her shortly after we woke up, “and we’ll still have plenty of time to meet your Mobile relatives for an artery-clogging supper of fried everything.” She misses you as well, so it was an easy sell.

The drive north on kudzu-infected I-59 brought back tons of memories. I can still see you changing that flat tire with the family dishwasher sitting on the side of the highway. How many other families would think to pack a major kitchen appliance in the trunk of their car while moving from Los Angeles to Chicago? I just tell people that that’s what normal Geiger’s did back in 1972. And 1982. And 1992. And…Honestly, Dad, whenever I tell people stories about our family, they simply can’t believe them. Who lives like that?

Seeing that it was Memorial Day, I assumed the cemetery would be open. And I was right. What I was wrong about, however, was that there isn’t just one cemetery in Hattiesburg; there are five. And even though they were open, the actual people working there had the day off. We eventually pulled into one cemetery and tried to contact nearby funeral homes and newspapers to locate your permanent address. No such luck. And it didn’t help matters that the contact list on my phone doesn’t contain a single Geiger family member living south of the Mason Dixon line. The Pretty Blonde suggested we start wandering up and down the grassy manicured aisles eyeballing tombstones, but seeing that it was 95 broiling degrees with a thousand percent humidity, I felt it was wiser to get back in our air conditioned rental car than have our children discover that their parents died of heatstroke while foolishly trying to find a needle in a stack of needles. We got back on the road and headed toward Mobile, and instead of savoring the BBQ shrimp at Mr. B’s Bistro we stopped at a gas station Subway and split something resembling a roast beef sandwich. But we were perfectly OK with that. The journey to find your final resting place was still a barrel of fun, an adventure we’ll talk about the rest of our lives.

You lived quite the life, Dad. It wasn’t perfect, and neither were you. You were complicated and flawed, but you were a good man. You did some good, and you made some bad mistakes. You were a bastard and you were beloved. You had reasons to hold your head high and pump out your chest, and you put yourself in situations where your tail was soon between your legs. You took care of those you loved, and at times ignored those who wanted to love you. The bottom line is this; you were human. And aren’t we all.

Happy 95^thBirthday, Dad. I promise to one day make it to Hattiesburg to visit you and Mike. Please give Mom a hug and a kiss for me and tell her I’ll be dialing up a prayer to her real soon.

Love,

Lee