AQUARIUM STANDS AND CANOPY

When people talk nostalgically about the importance of family, it is difficult to explain the set of conditions that I grew up with. Even when they hear stories of my early years they tend to insert the concept of their own father or the Gestalt of fatherhood. Even my closest friends have difficulty imaging how bizarre things were. My friend of 45 years, Kevin Madden, reveres my father to this day and speaks glowingly of him when the subject comes up. I loved my father in many ways but living with him was impossible. He was a lot of fun to be around under the right conditions, particularly when I got older and out from under his roof, but he was woefully remiss in his duties as a father and a husband, which made my life a lot more difficult than it might have been and robbed me of the luxury of naiveté and the irresponsibility of childhood. There comes a time at a very early age when saddled with an irresponsible father that you have to come to terms that your father is not a hero in the John Wayne mold or the wise Solomonic figure played by Robert Young in the television program Father Knows Best. It tends to distort ones vision of humanity at much too early of an age.

By the time I was eighteen years old, I had long been disabused of any notion that my father, Alexander Liddle Macfeat Jr., was operating within the normal standards of societal behavior or even within the law. He was impossible to pin down on any subject and what explanations he did give were deliberately vague with the obvious intent to deceive. Various vehicles and items would inexplicably appear at the house only to disappear soon afterwards. After a while it made no sense to question him about anything since getting a straight answer out of him was like trying to capture helium in a bucket.

He was on the other hand quite handsome, over six feet tall with gray hair that was combed straight back, slim but strong and he had a wonderful and spontaneous sense of humor that made him entertaining and charming. Although he was thoroughly irresponsible as a father he was generous in social settings. He was a particular favorite with women, often married, that kept him in a certain amount of trouble his entire life. As a very young boy I remember being told by a friend of his, Hal Robeson, that my father was a "man's man," which at the time made absolutely no sense to me. Despite Hal's analysis of the situation, Alexander would have to be considered a ladies man, perhaps a bit too successful with them considering his own marital status throughout much of his life.

At the beginning of the summer I was nineteen and out of work, which unusual for me because I had been working every summer since my early teens. My father's drinking, gambling and womanizing often took precedence over providing for the family. I worked at an early age to ensure that I wasn't adversely affected by his unrepentant hedonism beyond having the utilities shut off and the house occasionally being put up for Sheriff's Sale. The majority of time in my last few years of living in the family home I was living there on my own. My parents would stop by to check in on occasion and stay there from time to time. I moved out of New Jersey as soon as was possible and was living in an apartment near the school I was attending, Philadelphia College of Art.

I got a call from my father asking if I would be interested in helping him move a couple of air conditioners. He was generous as far as paying for a days work so I jumped at the chance. I didn't ask why he could possibly need two window units, since he was living in his girlfriend Doris' house which had central air conditioning and his answer would have inevitably been incomprehensible anyway.

I took the 8:00 train to New Jersey and my father picked me up in his Ford pick up truck at the High Speed Line station closest to his house. We drove a short way and pulled into the large gravel parking lot of the local police station. I began to suspect something was suspicious given my father's aversion to the police and the fact that I knew that he was having an affair with the young and attractive girlfriend of the chief of this town's police. The chief was my father's age but neither young nor attractive. He was at least 350 pounds and lived with his mother his whole life. I suppose his girlfriend loved a man in a uniform or with power or some other perk because it wasn't for his looks or personality, which was downright surly.

We pulled up to the back of the police station and knocked at the back door. It was answered by the man that used to do yard work for my father, Bobby Davis. Bobby was the maintenance man at the station and was a small guy but wiry, with forearms like Popeye the Sailor Man. He also had an enormous set of ears that stuck far off his head and was missing teeth. My father addressed Bobby because I couldn't understand a goddamn word that he said. He had a wicked speech impediment, but somehow A

Only one end of the big tube goes out the window, but the piece that keeps outside out and inside in is too long for the window. So Galen's making a cardboard, aluminum-covered substitute.