Remembering my father.

And all our plans.

To my fellow outlaws, outcasts and misfits,

To celebrate Father’s Day, I am sharing an older story about my father with some new additions. Hope you have a beautiful Sunday!

And away we go!

---

In 1981, my Dad caught a break when somebody lent him a Pontiac Firebird with plastic duct taped over the rusty T-Tops. He used a screwdriver to start it because the ignition column was torn out which meant it was stolen. That car allowed him to get to a mechanics job he scored out of the classifieds. When the guy wanted his stolen car back, Dad scrounged enough money up to buy a beat-up Harley Chopper that "needed work."

"Needs Work" is poor people slang for "this might run for about a month."

He drove me to kindergarten on that chopper. I sat between his legs hugging the chipped bobber tank as we rumbled down the potholed streets of Chicago. Neither of us wore a helmet. When the chopper stopped running, he couldn’t get to work on time, so they fired him.

It was bleak for a few months until he landed a dream job, driving disabled seniors around in a van they let him take home at night. The only condition was he could never use the van for personal use.

That's the only reason he took the job in the first place.

Every afternoon he pulled up to the front of my kindergarten school and every day I'd have to tell him my teacher needed to speak with him and every day he'd walk in and listen to my teacher explain what a lunatic I'd been. He'd beg her not to kick me out promising tomorrow I'd behave like a normal kid. He'd get in the van turn and crack me on the leg.

"What's wrong with you? The lady said you were running around class all day like an animal."

"That's not true."

"Why would she lie? She said she chased you around class while you laughed at her. What the fuck?"

"Sorry."

"Keep it up and they're gonna kick you out and then what?"

I didn't know. I tried to change my behavior. I tried to be good. It was unsustainable.

One afternoon I walked out of school, and it looked like life had been particularly cruel to my father. He was covered in oil and saliva from the wheels and mouths of the disabled people he schlepped around all day. I saw that one more problem was going to put him over the edge. He gave me a look like, "Please don't tell me I gotta go in there and deal with your teacher?" And I gave him a look like, "Please don't make me tell you gotta go in there and deal with my teacher."

He shook his head in disgust and stormed off leaving my mind racing for an escape. I couldn't take another spanking. That's when I noticed my Dad left the van running. I hopped into the driver’s seat and stared at the dashboard and wheel. I didn't know how to drive but I knew every time Dad drove, he yanked down on the lever jutting out of the steering wheel. I took a deep breath and yanked down. My stomach dropped as the van slowly crept forward.

I'm doing this! I am actually making a run for it!

Some dream but I was making it a reality. I stared at two pedals on the floor. I had a fifty-fifty shot at which one made it go. My feet didn't reach so I slid down and jammed both my feet on the right pedal. The van surged forward, bouncing me off the seat then jamming me between the seat under the dashboard, which put all my weight on the gas pedal, rocketing me down the street even faster.

I blindly reached up and yanked the wheel careening the van into a row of parked cars. Panicked, I turned the wheel the opposite way, barreling into a fresh row of cars on the other side of the street. I pin balled from one side to the other as horns honked, people screamed, and tires screeched. After I ran out of cars to hit, I rolled through the intersection and slammed into a streetlight bringing my horribly hatched escape plan to an end.

I crawled out from under the dashboard and peeked over the steering wheel. A lady ran up to the window, her eyes scanning the interior, then widening with fear.

"Where are your parents," she yelled, "Did they get thrown from the van?"

Her brain couldn't fathom the idea that I was the sole operator of this wrecking machine. I opened the door and climbed out, somehow without a scratch. People ran from every direction to help and snoop. I stared back at the street littered with dented cars and blown out windows. Then I spotted my father sprinting down the middle of the street. He was gonna kill me, so I started balling. He ran up and scooped me into his arms.

"What happened? Are you hurt?"

"I'm not hurt. I don't know what happened."

People bombarded him with questions. A few owners of the smashed cars appeared and wanted his information. Police sirens cried out in the distance. That's when reality set in that I was okay, but my Dad was not. I just got him in real trouble. He looked down and whispered, "Did you do this on purpose?"

truth hurt too much so I lied.

"I swear I don't know what happened.”

Lies are words disguised as hope.

I sat on the curb as the cops questioned my confused father who had no real answers. A truck came and towed his work van away. Later that night, the company called and fired him.

I felt responsible. Because I was.

My father woke up early and left on the hunt for work. Again.

He returned to our tiny apartment where the five of us lived; his drunk mother, his junkie sister, his do-good sister trying to make it out, and me, the seven-year-old son he had when he was sixteen and was now raising after the seventeen-year-old girl he knocked up bailed on him and their kid.

At twenty-three, he was the head of the household, forced to be a father to his sisters and a husband to his mother. After a long day of trying but failing to find work, he stood silent and stunned in the middle of the living room. He loved to fix machines and motorcycles so they could whine, roar and function. But that night, something inside him was broken and his inability to fix it was paralyzing. So he turned and walked back out, going to get the only thing he knew worked every time something was broken inside you. Before the storm door shut, I ran after him.

I struggled to keep pace with my father's long strides as we trudged to the liquor store on the corner of Chicago and Trumbull. His heavy heart pulled his shoulders forward. He came out carrying a case of Old Style tucked under his arm like a football. As we stood on the corner, I tried to break the tension with a kid gold standard.

"Knock Knock?"

He didn't take the bait. He cracked open a beer and blankly stared down the street as a CTA bus rolled up. We hopped on and I followed my Dad to two seats in the back.

He leaned against the window, sipping his beer as the city rolled by. Before we knew it, the driver yelled out, "Last stop. Time to get off."

Dad's eyes were getting the glossy glaze of drunk. We ambled off and waited on a strange new corner until another bus pulled up.

"Where we going, Dad," I asked?

No answer. He was somewhere else.

Another bus arrived and we sat in the back. He drank while I stared through smudged Jheri curl smears and graffiti tags out into the night. Back then Chicago streetlights were yellow, throwing golden cones of light onto the street. I glanced over at my father, who was giving every problem he had a drink.

Two old ladies plopped down across from us. Dad was barely conscious, slumped over, resting on alcohol’s invisible shoulder. The ladies looked at me with sympathy and my Dad with disgust. Their looks forced me to take a side and seeing how I couldn't go home with them, I had to turn my back on their sympathy and defend the disgust.

The old ladies got off and I went back to staring out the window until I finally fell asleep.

"Last stop, Pal. You gotta get off," the driver yelled, jolting me awake to see him shaking my Dad.

"Whose 'dis guy," the driver asked?

"My Dad," I whispered, trying not to wake him.

The driver grabbed my Dad by his denim jacket, hoisted his limp body up and guided him to the side door. I wedged myself on the other side so he wouldn't fall over. As we staggered off the bus, the driver hurled the empty beer case at us. My Dad stumbled forward into the side of a building then collapsed to the ground in a squatting position, head buried between his legs, arms resting on his knees, like a failed test somebody crumpled up and threw out.

The bus drove off leaving us alone in the desolate industrial edge of the city. I spotted a steel bridge 20 yards away. We were by the Chicago River. The wind roared off Lake Michigan down the river ripping through the black bridge beams and sliced right through us. Dad was wearing stonewashed denim jeans and jacket and I left the house in jeans and a T-shirt. My teeth were chattering. I curled up next to him using his body as a shield from the wind.

Nobody was around. I kept looking over his shoulder at that beautiful bridge. The rivets on the bridge looked like a hundred black clinched fists. Just on the other side of the bridge was the beginning of downtown with skyscrapers so tall they touched the clouds.

I kept looking from the bridge back to my Dad wondering why we were here. This couldn’t have been his plan when we left. To buy a case of beer and ride buses with his seven-year-old son until he passed out?

Maybe this was about the bridge? Maybe one day he saw it, when he was out doing Dad things and it took his breath away just like it was taking away mine. He stood on the bridge, staring up at the cream cheese moon hoisted high above the river like tonight and said to himself, "My son Mickey needs to see this." Maybe he wanted to show me this bridge, this river, this city. Maybe he wanted to walk over the bridge with me, holding my hand, and show me Chicago through his eyes. Maybe he wanted to take me to City Hall and explain politics. Maybe he wanted to show me the Board of Trade, where millions change hands second to second, to teach me the lessons of high finance. He'd kneel down and explain compound interest, how to save the money from the career he assured me I would eventually have, how to plan for retirement, 401Ks, SEP IRAs and Roth IRAS. Buy low. Sell high. Don't trade on emotion. Then when he was through, maybe his plan was to hug me. To give me one of those magical hugs you only get a few times in your life, the kind that last so long it feels like it will never end which is perfect because that's exactly what you want. Then maybe his plan was to tell me that he loved me, would always be there for me and that the world was filled with infinite possibilities. Then maybe he thought, the end to a perfect day downtown would be to catch a game at Wrigley Field, sitting in the bleachers sipping cokes and munching Cracker Jack, watching those Cubbies win another, like father and sons do. Then maybe after the game, I'd come home to find a freshly oiled mitt waiting for me on my bed. Even though it was late, we’d play catch in the yard, where he'd teach me how to throw, catch and hit.

"Swing from your hips, Mickey, not your arms. Elbow up, head down and swing right through the ball."

Crack! I'd blast a fastball over the garage into the alley and he'd run over and hoist me up on his shoulders proudly yelling, "Home Run!"

Maybe that was his plan.

Because sitting here alone on the cold sidewalk could not have been the plan. It just couldn't.

As my father slowly regained consciousness, he stumbled to his feet, looking for something familiar to get his bearings. When he saw me, a profound sadness washed over him. A bus rambled over the bridge. Dad staggered across the street and waved it down.

Once again, we sat in the back. After a long stretch of road and silence, he turned to me.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"It's okay, Dad. I love you."

He went missing the next day.

Three days later we found him in the morgue under the name John Doe. No wallet. No ID. No nothing. He had been electrocuted on the third rail of the El train tracks. Nobody really knows what happened.

For the next twenty years, I chased down the rumors of my father and manhood until both nearly broke me.

I got sober when I was twenty seven and a year later my son was born. My wife wanted to name him Mickey but I was so ashamed of who I was and where I had come from, I wanted him to have a fresh name and a fresh start. Six years later my daughter was born on Christmas Day. Yesterday, June 14th, was my son’s 22nd birthday and today is Father’s Day.

I wish my father was here to meet my son and daughter, to know that his struggle not only mattered, but saved me in my darkest hours. Even in his absence, he was still my father and taught me what to do as well as what not to do.

Happy Father’s Day to the ones still with us, alive or not.

Much Love,

Mick

©MickBetancourt 2025