The New Blue Cheer

I wanted to dedicate this to my dad.  (So now you are thinking what will follow is a great glop of sentimental marshmallow stuffing.  Sticky ooze formulated to make you sniffle and weep for someone you never knew.  I'll try not to let that happen.)  My dad, Don Maddox, was a very successful alcoholic.  (So now you are thinking, "Oh, I get it.  She's probably in therapy.  This should be full of accusations with just enough self-pity mixed in to create that delicious bitterness we all love to chew on from time to time.  Carry on."  Ok.  Maybe. I hope not.)  He died at 51 of a massive stroke brought upon him, no doubt, by his love of Canadian Club and meat.

I was 31 when Dad died and living with Scott Adsit.  (I'm sure he would love for me to refer to him as "Scott Adist of 30 ROCK FAME," but I prefer to remember Scott pre-LA.  Especially since I've had very little Scott post LA contact.)  Scott and I had not quite reached the stage I like to refer to as the "when are we going to figure out that we are best friends and no longer a romantic couple" stage yet and were still kinda interested in each other.  That I spent more time on the computer and he spent more time building action figures with putty and an exacto knife than we actually spent talking is irrelevant, thank you, and I'd be grateful if you didn't mention it again.  I do find it fascinating to reflect on Scott's fixation at the time with building these figures, since it became a huge part of his LA life.  However, I only mention this here because we were doing exactly this when my mother called.  Scott, on the sofa, making some sort of pre-Moral Orel Wonder Woman replica and I, at the dining table, chatting and writing something or another.

"I don't know how to tell you so I am just going to tell you," is how the conversation started.  And if there is one among you who can hear those words and not know that something very, very bad will follow I'd love to meet you.  It is also fascinating for me to reflect on moments like this.  Where everything seems so clear in your memory that you can nearly transport back to precisely the way things were at a given moment.  Not ANY given moment, however.  Only a precious few in our lives, right?  Maybe it is your wedding kiss, maybe playing for the first time with your favorite friend (I have both of these as well) or perhaps yours are horrible like the phone ringing for me that day.  I'm sorry if they are.

I remember her telling me about my father.  "He's gone, honey.  Don is gone."  I remember asking what happened.  "He didn't feel well.  Called his cousin Lois."  Yada, yada.  I would call my sisters (not my mother's daughters.  I was the only child of their short marriage.)  and maybe we would drive down together.  "I'd like to go as well, honey," my mother said.  Then quietly, "He was my husband."  I remember telling Scott as I hung up the phone.  "Daddy died," and bursting into into tears. 

What I remember next has lived with me since that moment 19 years ago.  Until then it had been lost, floating amid all the tiny instances of my life somewhere in my goofed up psyche.  I suddenly had a picture of my father sitting at his table in Steger, IL with a Pepsi in front of him.  I seem to remember red and green bulbs so it was probably a Christmas dinner.  His mother, my Grandmother, was seated to his left and there were the loud, half-drunk voices of my step-mother's family all around.  My father's brother, Charles, was at the table as well  and sitting with him was his wife, Gladys.  I don't remember my Uncle Harold, my dad's youngest brother, being there anywhere.  So, I can only assume that this is post-1968, post Harold, post the land-mine that took Harold.  I am sure, though, that my cousins Barbara, Debra and Steve were there along with my sisters Valerie and Lisa. 

My father loved to tell jokes, loved to hear people laugh.  Often his jokes relied on a character he created, a no-name poor soul with a deviated septum and cleft palate resulting in what my dad called a "hare lip."  Politically correct? No.  I cringe now to think of it.  Did the people my father loved love him anyway? Yes.  Further, they would nearly fall off their chairs, howling and ask my dad to tell another and yet another joke with his hare-lipped character.  My dad, not even drunk at this point in his life, would happily comply. 

I am sure he reveled in this attention.  I am sure that at this time his life was going along OK.  He was in an unhappy marriage, true, but he would often come by and spend a few hours before his factory shift drinking coffee at the dining table of my mother's house, laughing and chatting.  Need I tell you how I loved those afternoons?  My mom and dad happily living away a few hours while their own spouses were oblivious at work.  Heaven for me and, now that I think on it, heaven for them as well.  So, with a few self-made remedies his life was going along in a not-so-awful way.  He had three girls that adored him, a house he was proud of, a promotion at the textile factory he called home 8-10 hours a day.  He raised bull dogs, one he named Debbie and entertained family with good food and bad jokes.

On this day his infamous character was selling detergent door to door.  He rings the bell and when the door opens, a beautiful housewife stands before him.  He asks her, with dad's wildly exaggerated imitation of this man's afflictions, if she would allow him to please demonstrate this amazing new product, The New Blue Cheer.  She agrees, but he needs something to wash.  She gives him her blouse as he readies a tub of water, adding just a touch of The New Blue Cheer.  He thanks her kindly and begins to wash (my father's arms moving up and down as if dipping and turning the blouse in water) while chanting, face askew:

Washy, washy, washy in The New Blue Cheer.
Rinsy, Rinsy, Rinsy in the water so clear.
Take it to the nose (he brings the imaginary blouse to his nose and sniffs deep)
SMELLS LIKE A ROSE!

She is amazed but still unconvinced.  The salesman begs her to let him try again.  She agrees, this time surrendering her slacks.  He thanks her kindly and begins to wash in the same manner:

Washy, washy, washy in The New Blue Cheer.
Rinsy, Rinsy, Rinsy in the water so clear.
Take it to the nose (he brings the imaginary slacks to his nose and sniffs deep)
SMELLS LIKE A ROSE!

She is even more amazed, but yet remains unconvinced.  The salesman begs her to let him try just one more time.  Perhaps because he is a bit charming, or perhaps because she feels sorry for him (this is never clear) she allows him to try one last time.  She takes off her panties and hands them to the salesman, smiling shyly.  Even more shyly, he takes them and gently begins to wash them in the sweet water:

Washy, washy, washy in The New Blue Cheer.
Rinsy, Rinsy, Rinsy in the water so clear.
Take it to the nose (he brings the imaginary panties to his nose and sniffs deep)
There is a long pause...the salesman makes a funny, pulling face and then...

WASHY, WASHY, WASHY IN THE NEW BLUE CHEER.
RINSY, RINSY, RINSY....

The laughter from this, in my romanticised memory, roars and then fades into a echoing sort of movie laughter.

I dedicate this blog page to my father and The New Blue Cheer not because he was a perfect man, not because I still hope for some sort of reconciliation of grown-up self and my childhood memories of him.  When I was a little girl, I believed he hung the moon.  I now know that he was a flawed, unhappy man who searched for something he could not find for the whole of his life.  I refuse to believe that those two parts of myself need to come to some sort of light bulb moment of religious clarity and harmony.  They are simply two truths of who I am and and who I once was. 

I dedicate to him simply because I love and miss him and to his creation of The New Blue Cheer because it reminds me of his humor, valid or not, correct or not.  And because, somehow, it makes me think that there might just exist some magical power to make all things just a bit better, just a little more rosy no matter how many times you need to washy, washy washy.