MY PARENTS: CHARLES F. BAILEY AND MILDRED PINNEO BAILEY

WPCNR THE SUNDAY  BAILEY. By John F. Bailey. Republished from The CitizeNetReporter of June 17, 2007:

This week celebrates a great American Father, mine and the other fathers across time who provide an eternal legacy their sons and daughters rely on every day and think about their fathers every day.

Charles F. Bailey.

He is my father. He was born November 17, 1918.

My father gave me four pieces of advice in life: Always drive an air-conditioned car. Always central air-condition your home. Stay out of court.

And, oh yes, don’t sit in traffic. Take the next exit and wing it.

Always take the service road on the Long Island Expressway. (He would have loved a Garmin.)

In retrospect, his advice has served me well.  I am always comfortable. I sit out traffic delays in comfort. I have not made lawyers rich.

He was not an emotional man. He was a banker and always wore suits crisp white shirts with French Cuffs to work. Starched.  To work.

I have fond memories of going to meet him in the days of steam engines in Pleasantville – when train tracks were at grade with Manville Road at the old stone station.

I was most impressed as a young child by how he always smelled of coal cinders when he got off the train – like commuter’s cologne.

Sadly on today’s electric trains you do not get that. You always heard those steam engines coming. Chuffing doing serious work.

You could see them coming around the bend but you heard them first.

Bell ringing ,chuffing, puffing : Clouds of very busy, inspiring industrious black smoke streaming at the horizon down the line. The steam engines of the past were living things to me, always moving.

He’d get off the train.

My mother would move over and he’d drive the old Hudson Hornet home. He always spoke quietly. Never raised his voice. Drank scotch and soda in the winter. “G & T’s” in the summer, martinis with George and Howard two close friends. He smoked Chesterfield, Philip Morris, Marlboros, Kents with the micronite filter.

He set up a Lionel train set in our basement – perhaps our unspoken connection.

When I was sent in by train for the first time to meet him at the office during Christmas time, he’d have his secretary Margie greet me at Grand Central Terminal which still is a very big and scary place to me .

He would take me to lunch at Jack’s Monte Rosa Restaurant on 49th Street – which I thought was a very great place. Hub bub, tinkling glasses. Sharp-dressed waiters in white jackets black bow ties.

When I first went to it with him, I was a little disappointed that it was not more glamorous but I was really impressed that Jack the owner greeted him by name.

“Hi, Mr. Bailey. How are you doing?”

I thought that was great that my Dad was greeted with respect.

When I first started working in Washington, D.C. in 1968 I ate regularly at a restaurant below the television station WMAL-TV where I worked, it was called Marty’s Italian Village.

Marty, the owner (who looked like Humphrey Bogart, the only thing missing was the white sport coat) started calling me when I came in around 7 PM, ‘Hi John, how are you?” People would look at me. They thought I was big.  I liked that. Feeling big in my small world at $90 a week.)

When my father came to visit me in Washington where I worked. I took him around town. I told him when he got off the plane. “Hi, Dad, welcome to my town.” I wanted to impress him. We’re always trying to impress our fathers. At least I was.

Another Father time was when my Dad came out for Dad’s Day at college.

I mean this was a big thing to me. He watched me do play-by-play of a football game from atop the press box in 15 degree weather. It was cold. But he watched. Acted impressed. He hated cold weather. No watching from the warm press box for him.

Another time he impressed was when I lost a job where I was working at the television station that I was being considered for. I told him how unfair it was, he put things in perspective:

“Puggy, he said,  “The film manager wasn’t going to put you in as his Assistant if you were going to be bucking him all the time.”

It put things in perspective. No false sentiment. No making me feel better, he was tough enough to teach by being realistic while telling me not to feel sorry for myself.

It was one of my first lessons in how telling the truth puts situations in perspective. You know the truth, should we recognize it when it is told to us is a way to stop feeling sorry for yourself, that whatever event happened to you it happened not because you handled it wrong, but because others were weak.

Then later in my career, I was fired out of a job completely blindsided. He again intervened, saying to me he thought what the agency head had done was a terrible thing. I needed that at the time.

It taught me then, when bad things are done to you, the person doing them was a coward and took the easy way out.

He also, in a very supportive move, told me if I could make $1,000 a night writing a free lance direct mail package, I should keep trying to do that.

I really needed that. It started my career, working for myself. If I did not like a client or they treated me badly or they stiffed me (common behavior in the advertising business). I did not take a job with them again, and with new clients I took half the fee upfront. When I asked for upfront money, the possible clients simpered “don’t you trust me?” I would simply answer “It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s my policy.”

Dads are there to say the right things to you at the right time. Sometimes it is not always the right thing, but they try. Often, if you’re lucky, as I was, they say the right thing. Always — when you really really really need it. Not the wrong thing.

With my father, who was not really my father, since I was an adopted child, it was never all about him, it was all about you. Making me better, even when it hurt him to say things that were the truth.

When I bought my first house in White Plains. He never criticized the house. But when I sold it, he complimented me, “I think it’s great how you came out of it (the crummy first house).” He was a personal trainer.

The good ones  train you to run a race. If you stumble, no one hurts more than they do. When you succeed, no one is prouder. The good ones push you in front of the cameras, they say interview her or him. They did it.

They know what you should do, but they can’t tell you, because you won’t do it if you’re a kid.

But the more subtler of them tell you anyway in hopes it will sink into the rebellious offspring mind. My dad was subtle.

Another fond memory: My father took me camping once at a friend’s cabin in Pennsylvania. Funny thing was there was such a great comic collection we wound up sleeping in sleeping bags on the porch of the cabin. That was funny.

Another time when I was being threatened in college over a position at the radio station, I asked him if I should just abdicate and assign a play-by-play position to the person who was being forced on me. He advised me to “stick to your guns,” so I reported the threat to the Dean.

The position was compromised, but I was never threatened again.  He never shared my love for baseball and sports.

In fact he never played catch with me all that well or that often.

I mean I could have made the big leagues (pipe dream) if he played catch with me more. But that’s a small criticism.  I wish I had more of his financial acumen. But I do not. I married that.

As you grow into your 30s and 40s, little things they say to you you begin to understand.

My father never struck me.

He always disciplined me with quiet words. I have not always been that way as a parent myself, being somewhat volatile. I wish I had his even temperament. He always asked me to take care of my mother. And the only time he really got mad at me was when I had made my mother upset with me.

He was a little like Humphrey Bogart in movie roles in the way he disciplined, I remember he would say admonitions quietly. Such as when I got an F in an English course at college.

He told me, that was the last F I would get at Ohio Wesleyan, because the next one he would stop paying my tuition.

That had an effect. And that was when tuition was only $3,000 a year.

I have taken to, after my children have grown, telling them always “Be careful,” “Don’t do anything stupid because someone suggests it,” “Do not go anywhere alone without telling people where you are going,” “Don’t lose your temper,” “Don’t tailgate,” “Don’t stand close to the edge  of a severe drop.” In hopes that when I am not with them, they will remember it when they need to remember what you said.

I think of him every day of my life. I become more like him every day. He is always lingering in the background of my thoughts. I do not know what he would think of what I am doing now.  But, he’d say — “If that’s what you want to do. Do it.” He also would say,

“You have to make yourself happy.”

I also think, even today of what advice (laconic as always) he’d give me in a situation.

I wish I could discuss property taxes with him. Banking today and how it has become a predator system.

I especially have to salute him, because I am an adopted child.

That alone makes me appreciate his love and acceptance with a sense of awe to this day. He loved me like his own son. Because in his mind, I was.

He took responsibility. He did what had to be done.

You never outgrow your need for Dad.

The good ones are immortal, alive and with you in your head when you need them.

They are the  ghosts that comfort always. Haunt you in memory. You’re always  glad when they drop in on you.

You feel them warmly when you do good.

You feel their sympathy when you have done wrong. They are your conscience. They are the God of Judgement in your head. Your trusted advisor.

Immortality is leaving a good memory of you with the ones who knew you.

Because what you give them, lives on for generations.

Your children will talk of you because of the good things and behaviors you gave them when you needed them and you never lose those tools Dad and mom (it is a team effort) gave you.

I miss my Dad and Mom. They probably have discussions over me to this day.

Charles Bailey. He died in 1986.

His legacy and my mother’s to me keeps me going every day.

I also remember my wife’s parents who welcomed me into their family when I married and who raised an extraordinary woman.

I think there should be another holiday.

Parents’ Day.

Don’t you?