March 2, 2012

Shantung, or Shandong, is a province in northeast China. No, wait, don't go back to Angry Birds. This is about what Dad did the summer before I left for college.

Anyway, in Shantung Province a weave of silk is produced that is closer to coarse than to fine, offers a rough surface to the hand; some threads are thicker than others. As a consequence, the silk wears exceptionally well and retains structure. For these reasons, Shantung silk is very much in demand in the making of men's suits. This is especially true, or was so in the 1950s, among Italian designers and, it then followed, such suits as were made by these designers, and/or the copies and "knockoffs" they engendered, were very popular among certain men who made their living off the books, shall we say,  and their friends. Dad's experience with the two gunsels from Tulsa notwithstanding, the life represented by such a suit seemed to him a glamorous one, a classy life. If he was always careful not to take unnecessary risks, he still liked to look as though he might. And look as though he might have chosen well to take that risk. The suit might be evidence of just such daring and the necessary good luck to make it feasible.

Such a suit as he might have would have to conform to certain prescriptive criteria. It must be modern, so it must be single-breasted with two buttons; none of that Ivy-League three-button pretension for men who risked all on a throw of the dice or a woman's glance. It must be at least somewhat "continental," so the jacket had twin side vents, not a centre vent, and the trousers were tapered and cuffless and were secured with a waist tab, not a belt. On the occasion when my father would wear a pair of trousers with belt loops, he would use a tie or a scarf instead of a leather belt. This was what Fred Astaire did in his movies and Dad was a close observer of all that Astaire did. It was Dad who told me, many years before I was introduced to "film studies,"  to watch Astaire's hands as he danced. Dad pointed out that Astaire never let his hands occupy a flat plane; he always kept one or two fingers bent at the second joint and his index finger always seemed about to point to something at a slight angle away from his partner. The reason, Dad explained, was that Astaire's hands were huge and very white and if he did not do something to break up the plane they filled, they would command the screen given the white lighting used in black and white cinematography and distract the viewer from the dance. 

Don't ask me how he knew that; I think he had a natural affinity for performance. For a working man he had such varied, even exquisite tastes. He loved jazz, especially the clarinet, and he loved ballet, especially Maria Tallchief. Of course, he was a sucker for Cyd Charisse. But he loved gospel and country and western music, too. And it was he who said that the decline of rhythm and blues into mere rock 'n'roll could be dated from the first time an electric guitar replaced the sax in the solo break.

But in the summer of 1958, my classy father came up short on the judgement tip. As I said, we had come to a fork in life's road (I wish I hadn't said that, but there it is, today's cliche) and, I don't know, I suppose he felt lost, or maybe threatened. Father-son conflicts are pretty old hat but they are real enough and in a case like this, where we had no real reason to be angry with one another, whatever emotions that arose, for each of us, ran below the surface. I can't recall any specific emotions about leaving or about transcending my dad or replacing him. I know I always wanted to be like my father, or least like about eighty percent of him, but I never wanted to be him. As for him, I don't know what threat he might have perceived in me. I might be off to be in the world in a way he never would be, but that world, whatever it was, seems to me even now to have few of the characteristics of the world my dad loved to entertain in his dreams for himself. As for that ol' Oedipal arm wrestle, I doubt he worried about me. He and Mom were pretty unhappy and she had found her own substitutes by then (the "to be told later" parts I promised earlier), but try as she might, I was not one of them.

No, I think it was nothing quite so dramatic. It was just that part of my dad that was less than he needed to be, the part of him that was vain and petty and thoughtless, perhaps heedless is the better word. Let me just posit that it was my vain, bewildered father who walked into the men's department of Selber Brothers Department Store that Saturday in late July of 1958, not Fred Astaire.