Father’s Day is upon us. It comes around once a year, dads come around once in a lifetime, so I thought, Dear Reader if you will indulge me, I’d like to offer up some random thoughts about my old man

            I am now 11 years older than he was when he died in his sleep on his day off. He was born in Mattapoisett, one of 10 children of a homemaker mother and a laborer father. He graduated from the ninth grade at Center School. He later drove a truck for a local oil company.

            After Pearl Harbor, he joined the Navy and was eventually assigned to the battleship Pennsylvania stationed in the Aleutian Islands off Alaska. It was cold, especially at night when he was on deck patrol. One day he spotted a notice on the ship bulletin board looking for an experienced barber. He knew it was warm in the barber shop, so despite having no experience, he applied saying that he owned two barber shops in New Bedford, Massachusetts. That lie worked, he got the job.

            He was directed to a chair and tools, which he had no idea how to use. He placed the electric sheers on the back of the next customer’s neck, an officer, and proceeded to cut a swarth right up the middle of his head … sort of a reverse Mohawk. The head barber asked him why he lied. Dad said he hated the cold. The head barber took pity on him and taught him how to cut hair. A career was born. He served as Mattapoisett’s town barber for over 30 years.

* * *

            He and I, along with my uncles Robbie and Marno, would go up to Apperson’s sawmill on Crystal Spring Road and collect pine slabs. My grandmother heated her house by burning the slabs in a giant potbelly stove in the “heater room” and used them in the cooking stove in the kitchen.

            There was a rusty, old gasoline-powered mill saw with a blade about 2 feet in diameter set up behind her house on Cathaway Lane, where the men would spend all day cutting the slabs into stove length. My job was to stack the slabs up in rows inside the little barn near the house. When we were done, the men would sit around and drink Dawson’s beer out of stubby glass bottles, and Dad would let me take a swig of beer.

* * *

            A customer once came into Dad’s barber shop for a haircut and asked to take a little off the top. After dad was done, the guy complained that he had cut his hair too short. Next time the guy came into the shop he told my father, “Don’t cut my hair too short this time.” Dad took out his scissors and clippers and pretended to cut the guy’s hair, not going near his head. When he was “done,” the guy looked in the mirror and barked, “You cut my hair too short again!” Dad pointed to the floor where there was no hair. The guy stormed out and never came back. My old man didn’t suffer fools gladly.

* * *

            For some unknown reason, my dad acquired a shotgun from one of his customers (probably in trade for a couple of haircuts), which he stashed in the back bedroom closet. He hadn’t used a gun since the war. My uncle convinced him to go deer hunting. For some insane reason, he let me go with them. We got up at 2:00 or 3:00 am to head down to the old Camp Edwards on the Cape. It may have been the coldest day of the season. We traipsed through the woods for what seemed like hours and came home freezing, never seeing a single deer. Dad gave the shotgun away and he never went hunting again and I never had the desire to.

* * *

            Our high school senior play was “Come Away Death,” a murder mystery set in a commercial laundry. I played a janitor who sculked around the clothes racks and laundry bins, leaving the impression to the audience that I was the culprit. I was not. After the curtain fell, when I came out to take my bow, my father, sitting in the center of the auditorium, stood up, arms raised up to the ceiling and yelled, “That’s my boy!” while my red-faced my mother vigorously tugged at his coat to sit down. The audience laughed uproariously, eclipsing my moment in the spotlight. I didn’t mind. It was the only event of mine he ever attended. I was just glad he was there.

* * *

            When I was about 10 or 11 years old, Rocky Marciano, the great heavyweight boxing champion, was guest speaker at the Lions Club at the old Meiling’s Chinese Restaurant. After dinner, before Marciano spoke, Dad rushed home to get me so I could meet the champ and shake his hand. I didn’t know a boxing ring from a circus ring, much less a guy named Marciano. I was already in bed, so I declined. I know Dad went back disappointed, something I have always regretted. He did bring home the Champ’s autograph, which I still have to remind me never to disappoint your parents.

            It has been 40 years since my father passed away. I still remember his voice.

            Happy Father’s Day.

            Editor’s note: Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and retired newspaper columnist whose musings are, after some years, back in The Wanderer under the subtitle “Thoughts on ….” Morgado’s opinions have also appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.

Thoughts on…

By Dick Morgado

            Alie Thurston, a naturalist presenter and lifetime summer resident with family dating back to 1914, called Cuttyhunk “the breadbasket of interpretive scientists” and said her favorite part of Old Hammondtown School’s annual trip to the island is “watching the shy students become adventurous by the end of their day.”

            The “Island Classroom” trip was held on June 1 in concert with the Mattapoisett Land Trust and the Mattapoisett Cultural Council, which sponsored 61 Old Hammondtown sixth-graders for a scientific day of workshops and activities with the STEAM Academy and island classroom.

            “The weather was perfect, and the students had a great time learning about native species, ecosystems, Native Americans and the history of Cuttyhunk,” said Ben Squire, the Elementary Science coordinator for the Old Rochester Regional School District.

            Retired Biology educator and director of the MLT Mary Cabral said the students “were totally engaged during all activities and eager to learn.”

            Two highlighted outside-classroom workshops included Wampanoag Culture with Gertrude Hendricks Miller, who emphasized respect for animals, people and plants, and Saltmarsh Exploration with Hillary Sullivan Marchwinski, a Northeastern University PhD candidate from Woodwell Climate Research Center.