Checking the Signs

My favorite activity with my father was checking the signs. Perhaps we only went a few times, but those few spoke love to me so powerfully that looking back it seems like we went every week night.

Dad owned a neon sign company and he included me in a nightly ritual he called “checking the signs.” After dinner we circled town in his big Buick hunting burned-out bulbs on signs that his crew would repair the next day.

We whistled, we sang, and we honked our way through a tunnel. “I’ll check on this side of the street, and you check over there,” I directed. But invariably he peeked. He taught me to whistle and to sing the only two songs I ever heard from him: “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” and “Show Me the Way to Go Home,” old World War II songs.

For a nightcap we swung on soda fountain stools at the local drugstore and drank nickel Cokes from squatty glasses: his was chocolate; mine was cherry.

Fathers too often waste time and money seeking the spectacular to share with a child. My dad had singled me out to share a simple outing that found him in his element. What was a pleasure for him has become a cherished memory for me, of love amidst everyday life. I have few memories with my father, who was a quiet, hard-working man and died when I was a young adult. But this one is enough. It fills me up.

Now, thanks to some old family photos that have cycled to me, I can give my son Tim a link to my father, this grandfather, who died before Tim was born. As it happens, in a city far from Topeka where my father owned Neon Tube Light Company, Tim works as a sign fabricator.

 In this photo, taken in about 1933, my father, age 22, is pictured fourth from the left. And his father is on the far left. They are delivering their first big sign job to the Tioga Hotel.  

“We carry our ancestors in ways we don’t know or understand,” said James Walsh, a University of Colorado history professor. But without photos or stories–or the stories behind the photos–these connections are lost to us.

For Christmas I had this photo framed and gave it to Tim for his office. But now that I think about it, I should have framed a copy for myself as well, because I hold memories of a father who checked the signs with me, and of my son who is living his own (related!) stories.