September 23, 1938.
It used to be surreal for me when this day would come. As the years have passed, the date has lost some of it's strange factor, but has not become any less significant. Years ago on this day we would celebrate, eat cake and be merry. Now it is a day that reminds me of what once was.
My dad was born Clark Lawrence Franklin. He was named after two suave actors of that day, Lawrence Olivier and Clark Gable. He was not fond of the name, so he went by Larry Clark Franklin. He was raised in the Los Angeles area. I don't know much about the childhood he led, other than the fact that it was some tough living. He went into the Air Force at a relatively young age to become a DJ in Guam, playing music for the armed forces radio. I have heard he was a pretty popular DJ, one who was recognized by soldiers all over the place.
He went on to work in some radio and television, making an appearance in a bit part in the TV series Dragnet. In the 60's he and my mother were hippies in SF, selling anti-government and pro-peace propoganda along with an assortment of pot smoking accessories from the side of a milkvan they travelled in. He went on to design jewelry, traveling up and down the California coast selling his wares. He was profiled in the LA Times and the San Francisco Chronicle for his unique jewelry design. In the 70's they had the three kids-- My two sisters and me. In the early 80's they turned their attention to selling handmade leather belts with an assortment of belt buckles at street fairs, craft shows, and other events all up and down the West Coast. This went on until the late 80's, when my parents decided they wanted more stability for us than the traveling circus we had been raised on. They decided to scrap the leather and belt buckles and move on to open a series of Poster stores in Colorado, providing us a solid home and a whole lot less traveling.
My father's body was always an issue. It was an entity upon itself. He was a gigantic man, 6'5 and around 400 lbs. He tried every diet in the book, and nothing freed him from the confines of his own body. His health was a constant issue as long as I can remember. In my childhood, rarely a year went by that he was not admitted to a hospital for some sort of visit. He had issues with poor circulation in his legs, skin irritations, and a host of other medical type issues. In his last 5 years he always used a cane, and was on oxygen all the time. He could not move properly-- we had to put his shoes on in the morning and take them off each night. He was also losing his eyesight. He had to go in once a month and have a painful laser procedure that shot the surface of his eye thousands of times.
The constant medical problems made my dad an incredible angry person as I would guess many people would be if their body had betrayed them like his body did to him. He yelled at everyone. A lot. He was a verbally abusive person. A lot of my later life was spent behind the door of my room hearing him yell at my mother, hiding in the shadows hoping I would not be the next target. I think his anger was bred from shame, although I cannot make excuses for him, nor will I try.
I will say he was still a loving, incredibly intelligent wonderful man at times, almost like a Jekyll and Hyde scenario. He could be the most sensitive tender person in the world, openly weeping in when we did something to make him proud. He had a great deep belly laugh, the kind you could hear for miles. He could school anyone at Trivial Pursuit-- to him, it was not even a contest. He won awards for his photography, and loved to draw.
One time we were sitting in the kitchen and he pulled out some fireworks, snakes to be exact, flipped the kitchen fan on and started lighting them off in a pie pan. He did it because he knew I would laugh and get that feeling kids get when they are doing something they should not have been.
Other times he would ask us if we wanted to see an imitation of a lighthouse. He would proceed to turn his head over his shoulder with his eyes shut, and as his head was beginning to face forward he would open his mouth and his eyes as wide as he could, only to slowly shut them as his chin hit his other shoulder. We loved that. Life with him was truly the best of times and the worst of times.
In June of 1990, I heard him and my mom talking in the room next door. He couldn't feel his legs. He couldn't all morning. Couldn't move. He had to relieve himself in bed-- he had no other choice. The ambulance came, and it took six men and me to carry him down the stairs on the gurney. We followed the ambulance to the hospital, where we were called into a room to hear he had a brain aneurism. A blood vessel had burst in his brain, and the pressure was building in his skull. We went to see him, and he told us he loved us. We were told he chose to try the natural route to healing rather than try surgery to fix it. Either way was 50-50.
He regressed quickly over the next week and a half. My family and I basically lived in the intensive care waiting room, subsiding on hospital food and dated magazines. We slept in the waiting room or at home, but were never away for very long. We would take turns going in to see him, to tell him our thoughts and read to him as his body faded away from him. After it was decided he was brain dead, we chose turned off the respirator. It only took a few minutes for his body to stop. We were all bedside when it happened.
It is funny how little it affected me. Maybe because we had already prepared ourselves for what lied ahead in his countless other visits to the hospital in our youth, or maybe it was the time we had already spent together over the past week and a half where I was able to say everything I was able to say. I was disappointed to have him gone, but happy he was free from the shackles of his body.
It's funny that you get what you get from your parents, and a lot of what you get you don't have a choice in. All I know is in the end, my father will always be there, and I thank him for giving me the open mind, for hurting me so I know how not to hurt someone else, and for giving me the hereditary gift to kick ass at trivial pursuit.
Happy Birthday, Dad.
