Father’s Stick and Other Measures of a Man

I’m holding in my hands a device made by my father, circa 1966. He was always good at making things, and still is, and I’m proud of this handy little item. It’s about four feet long, fashioned from an old broom handle, and from one end protrudes a quarter-inch-diameter metal rod, which is bent at the end to form what looks like the top part of an “s.” The rod is set in a hole at the end of the wood, which is wrapped tightly with wire, then shrink-wrapped so the two pieces will stay together.

Dad made this for me to catch snakes with when I was a boy. New, it featured my name handwritten down the wooden handle in the clear, no-nonsense printing my father used on a thousand blueprints and designs he worked on as an engineer. The ink has long faded, but I know exactly where my name was because it held up for a surprising amount of years. I’ve probably caught 100 snakes with it. In fact I used it just last week, when a large and unhappy Western rattler wandered onto the driveway and did battle with my dogs. (No one was hurt in the encounter.)

I’m thinking about my father because Father’s Day is this Sunday, though I think of him a lot anyway. Curious about what the World Book Encyclopedia would say, I looked up father, and found it sandwiched between Fates (“The Fates were stern and gloomy goddesses. . . . Men offered them gifts to escape death, but never to thank them for blessings. . . .”) and fathom, which is of course a “six-foot unit of length used to measure ropes or cables and the depths of water.”

Father, I was a little surprised to learn, “is a title of honor given to those who establish anything important in human affairs.” The World Book goes on to list some great fathers: Father of American Methodism (Francis Asbury), Father of Angling (Izaak Walton), Father of English Prose (Alfred the Great), and Father of Lies (Satan).

Father’s Day, I learned, was started by Mrs. John Bruce Dodd of Spokane, Wash., in 1910.

But historical fathers and holidays for fathers interest me a lot less than my own father, who was probably the single greatest influence on my life and who, in many ways, still is. I doubt that he’ll ever be listed in World Book as Father of Jeff Parker, but this diminishes him not one bit in my eyes.

It seems odd--and awfully self-involved--that we usually remember parents by listing what they gave us. But we can’t remember them by the things they tried to give us and we were too dumb to take, so we’re stuck with the actual rather than the ideal, which is probably a good thing.

Few could rightly desire to be remembered by a snake stick. However, that snake stick seems wholly representative of my father, for a number of reasons. First, as I mentioned, he made it himself, and making something yourself has always been a point of pride with my dad. He’s a born inventor, designer, improver. My brother once gave him a book for his birthday titled “All the Things That Robert Ford Parker Can’t Fix,” and the pages of the book were all blank. Of course, Matt made the book himself.

Second, Dad made that snake stick well enough to last 28 years and show no signs of giving out soon. I can’t remember anything that my father made--from the bow he crafted for me when I was 4, to the doghouse, lizard cages, gun stocks, cabinets for the camper and a host of ingenious gadgets for his current passion (growing grapes)--that wasn’t built to last.

There’s an inherent contradiction in a snake stick of any kind that, for me, symbolizes one of my father’s best qualities. A snake stick is built for handling dangerous or poisonous serpents, which by definition are best left unhandled. But my father would never quash an enthusiasm. He would never have forbade us from playing with dangerous things, so long as we had the right training and the right tools for the task. The stick says: If you’re going to try something weird, son, take a chance, use me well, and go for it!

I’ve seen this concept of brinkmanship in my father for as long as I can remember. He’s probably never put it so prosaically (Dad’s a great raconteur, a superb rhetorician), but there’s been a “when in doubt, go for it” strain in him for, I can only assume, his entire life. Of course, this attitude has gotten him into trouble, but it’s gotten him more good than bad, and any trait that yields a plus in the final column is OK with most of us. Without it, nothing very interesting would ever get done.

It’s telling, I think, that Dad made this snake stick with materials at hand, rather than buying ones he thought might make the ultimate, envy-of-the-block snake stick. My father was never the kind of man to do much for appearance’ sake. In fact, he took a certain relish in flying in the face of convention, caution, the socially approved.

I clearly remember more high-tech tools, but they were heavy, unwieldy and unforgiving. One, made from a golf club, was so rigid you were likely as not to brain your poor snake if you didn’t keep an awfully light touch on it--the very lightness of touch that can let a rattlesnake slip the pin at the last second and sink its fangs into your thumb. Dad’s design--inexpensive and easy to produce--has an ingeniously right amount of give. Perhaps it was his engineering background that led Dad to employ so perfect a weight-to-strength ratio. More likely, he just saw the broom handle and metal rod and went for it.

One can say that the primary purpose of a snake stick is to keep certain things--snakes--at a safe distance. My father has kept lots of other things distant also, on the surface, at least. He doesn’t call every week. He rarely writes. (Neither do I.) But through 40 years of being my father, he’s come through for me in every way that matters. He’s felt my heartaches and my joys; he bailed me out of jail and watched me graduate from college; he smiled when I married my love, and cried when we buried her; he drove 600 rainy miles to sit in Edwards South Coast Laguna cinema and watch the debut of “Laguna Heat.”

Yes, a snake stick keeps distance, but more importantly, it keeps you engaged with the object of your desire. Men of my father’s generation were accused of being distant, just as men of my generation are accused of exactly the same thing. It’s a tired old song, and the words are true.

But distance is necessary, and it is good. Distance is bridged within hearts in the time it takes electricity to jump a spark plug gap. (Dad would know exactly how much time that is.) I’ve learned from 40 years of being his son that distance is not disconnection any more than the line of the horizon is the end of the world. Distance is what the hawk glides over, what the waves build upon, what you love someone across.

So, from my distance to yours, a short few hundred miles: an arc of spark from heart to heart, son to father this special Sunday in June. May we share many more.