“OK, Daddy-O! I Get it”

The doctor told me as he left the room that Dad was still able to talk a little today, but he wasn't making any sense.

“Hi-ya, Daddy-O!” I said as I sat down at his bedside.

It was already a little past the posted visiting hours, but I wanted to follow-up on my brother's visit with him yesterday. Dad had spent over an hour telling Evan that he had something important that he wanted to say, without ever saying what it was.

“So, Daddy-O”, I asked, “what did you want to tell Evan last night?”

“Daddy-O” was my own special name for Dad. As a teenager, I would occasionally allow the slang of my generation to slip into our conversations, saying things like “my feet are bummed out” or “that teacher is outa-site!” Dad would gently chide me for my imprecise language, and then a verbal back and forth would ensue: the fledgling scholar versus the Ace of English. Sure, I could occasionally “turn” a clever phrase, but he could always in turn turn the tables. Eventually I would concede the match by saying something in the old slang of the by-gone beatnik era. Something like “OK, Daddy-O! I get it!” Well, the name “Daddy-O” stuck.

“Daddy-O, what was it you wanted to say?” I repeated. He said, “Marbles on the sidewalk”. Well, I thought to myself he must be referring to playing marbles on the sidewalk. I can understand playing marbles on the sidewalk, that isn't completely incoherent. Playing marbles was very popular with boys growing up in the Depression. It was possible for a deft player like Dad to acquire quite a collection of marbles for basically no money, and you could carry them with you everywhere in a little leather pouch, always ready for another pick-up game with other little boys…all you needed was a sidewalk. A kid like Dad always held a few back so that he could win back tomorrow some of the ones he might lose today. “OK, Daddy-O”, I said, “marbles on the sidewalk. What else?”

“I was a lamplighter”, Dad continued. I knew that in his youth his way home was lit by gas streetlamps, so I asked him about being a lamplighter. He said that some of the lamps he'd lit had gone out, but some still burned. I asked him if Evan and I were some of the lamps still burning. He nodded his agreement, but said there were more lamps. I observed to him that we had indeed passed the spark of life on to his grandkids, and he also agreed with that. I thought momentarily of my older brother Alfred Tallman Marshall Jr., whose brief life was snuffed out at age 5. I then asked Alfred Sr. if the Angels baseball team was another lamp he had lit. He agreed once again, and then said, “games are important”.

My Dad loved games and especially sports, but I think he loved sports so much because they were, after all, games. As a child of the Depression, he enjoyed untold hours of sandlot baseball, played on a vacant lot, where one kid would bring a ball and another kid a bat, and every kid's prized possession was his own leather fielder's glove. Later in life, Mom and Dad loved to swim together. They swam long distances almost daily, either in their backyard pool, or frequently in the bay water at Belmont Shores in Long Beach. That passion for swimming passed easily to me. Also, as a young man, Dad loved to play tennis with his friends at Brown University and later at Harvard Law School. Evan and I grew up playing so much tennis with Dad that Evan became a high school tennis champion. And when Dad retired at 70, he continued to play tennis daily for almost another 20 years. I could almost hear Mom's voice saying, “He lives to play tennis and he plays tennis to live.”

Just then I heard my Dad's voice again. “Baseball in the headlights”, he said. Well, I knew what that meant. He used to drive the three of us down to McKinley Field to throw the football and take turns at batting practice. When it got too dark for the trio of intrepid athletes to play anymore, he would pull the '56 Buick to the edge of the grass, turn on the headlights, and we'd play for another 10 or 15 minutes. “Aha”, I thought, “taking the joy of the moment and making it last a few moments longer, that's what he means by baseball in the headlights.” “Those lamps you lit were actually headlamps,” I joked. He smiled. I told him that the California Angels must be playing at home tonight “because that stadium you got them was sure lit-up. I just drove by it on my way home from work.”

Dad's specialty as a lawyer had been reconciling Southern California sports teams and their owners with the cities that hosted them. You could say a lot of people enjoyed a lot of games because of my Dad. Yes, “games are important”, I thought. Despite my Dad's best efforts over the years, the Rams eventually left Los Angeles. That lamp had gone out. But Dad's handiwork still burned brightly in the night sky over Anaheim.
“Games are important”, Dad said again, then rested for awhile. While he did, my mind drifted back to long ago when he used to sooth me to sleep with his singing. He sang old Baptist hymns and Stephen Foster songs as lullabies. He had a great voice. He could belt out “Off we go into the wild blue yonder” as only an airman can. He knew it as the song of the “Army Air Corps”, having flown in the Pacific Theater in WWII. Dad loved music, but it could also be a kind of game for Dad. In the old days, if I turned on the classical station, he could often guess the composer and sometimes even the artist. I had recently told Dad of working with the daughter-in-law of Artur Rubinstein, and bragging to her that Dad could identify Rubinstein's piano artistry just by listening.

In high school, Dad worked repairing church organs, but he had no training performing on that or any other instrument. But he sure was an accomplished listener. He collected classical records the way I collected baseball cards, buying something nearly every week in hopes of rounding out his collection… all nine Beethoven symphonies, both Brahms piano concertos, all five Mozart violin concertos. This habit was a holdover from his days in Cambridge at Harvard Law School, where he acquired a marvelous and much loved collection of folk music on 78's. Most of these shellac recordings ended up broken by a certain clumsy 6-year-old folk music enthusiast named John, trying to reach the top record shelf. The records were shattered, but my love of folk music has remained intact to this day. There was Dad being a lamplighter again.

I had stayed for over an hour. Dad was getting sleepy so I kissed him goodnight and mused to myself as I left. So the doctor had misunderstood. Yes, Dad was quickly losing the ability to speak, but he still made sense. Dad had a lifelong love affair with the English language and could always use it to communicate his exact meaning. It was unwise to paraphrase Dad, and nobody, but nobody, got away with putting words in his mouth. Tonight he had said exactly what he meant to say: “marbles on the sidewalk”, “baseball in the headlights”, “games are important”, “I was a lamplighter”. Not only had Dad's English always been perfect, but it was deliberate, and this time it had taken him a whole day to come up with these short phrases. They weren't linguistic jewels. They weren't pearls of wisdom. They were just four beautiful, shiny, verbal marbles, the last ones he had, that he gave to me so that I could carry them everywhere, in the little leather pouch of my heart.

For a little boy in the Depression, the simple joy of playing “marbles on the sidewalk” helped him to later recognize and maximize the moments of simple joy in adult life, like when he and his two young boys played “baseball in the headlights”. His long and arduous career practicing law was made possible by a hard-work ethic that cried out for a little balance from simple diversions and simple joys. Yes, Dad, “games are important”. And his tireless toil and incandescent inspiration had enabled his two sons to become career musicians. Sure, music itself is a gift from our Heavenly Father, but our love of music was a flame sparked and fanned by our earthly father…yes, Dad, in so many ways, you were a lamplighter. And yes, Dad I understand. For one last time, you were able to say exactly what you wanted to say. OK, Daddy-O. I get it!

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Pierce Brothers Turner & Stevens Mortuary

Alfred Marshall

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Alfred Tallman Marshall

18 April, 1921 – 26 December, 2012

Pierce Brothers Turner & Stevens Mortuary

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