The Loh Road to Deity-hood
It’s Father’s Day, a time to set cynicism aside and give thanks to our patriarchs, an assignment I’ve always struggled with, I admit. Part of the problem is cultural: Having come of age in the 1970s -- a member of the Not Exactly the Greatest Generation -- irreverence and ingratitude seem literally wired into my being. At the same age that our forefathers fought from World War II bunkers, we slackers were lolling on therapists’ couches. Our style is to blame parents, not praise them.
And yet the latest issue of the Utne Reader has declared my own father a god. A god. I ask you, isn’t that a bit over the top?
On the one hand, I can see how I’m partly to blame for my 80-something Chinese father’s ascendance to guru-hood. After all, until now I have been Mr. Loh’s chief chronicler -- although I’ve always seen myself more as hapless daughter than divinity-rapt apostle. The fact is, as I’ve explained, my father, a Malibu-dwelling retired aerospace engineer, treats life as an ongoing science experiment. As if in search of philosophical truth -- or perhaps simply to annoy his children -- he has made it a habit to ignore society’s norms: car driving, trash recycling, Starbucks buying, women’s rights, clothes.
Yes, it’s a varied list. To start with, for the last 40 years, my father has thumbed rides (sometimes with my adolescent self helplessly in tow) up and down Pacific Coast Highway. His rationale: “Hitch-hiking in Los Angeles -- you meet such nice people that way!” And indeed, defying all statistics to the contrary, he does, including his most famous friendly neighborhood driver, Anjelica Huston. At Starbucks, you won’t see my father spring for a latte, but you will see him conspicuously pour together the dregs of strangers’ abandoned Ventis right at the counter, to enjoy in a dumpster-salvaged cup of his own.
With all this free-form scavenging, I think it’s a miracle that my dad’s still alive, and that none of his ex-wife Chinese picture-brides have killed him yet (a story for another day). But the real miracle is that, the more he misbehaves, the more my dad rises in folk-hero status.
His transition into actual iconhood occurred a few years ago at the hands of a Malibu rock band that wrote a grunge rock anthem about their neighborhood eccentric (titled: “Mr. Loh”). While to some, the sight of a small, grunting Chinese man doing calisthenics on the beach in only a tiny ripped Speedo -- or less -- might trigger a call to the authorities, to the counterculture surfers of Boy Hits Car, it inspired only awe. It moved them to compose the plaintive “He is the Egg Man”-like cri de coeur: “Mr. Loh’s not afraid to be naked!” -- howled over Pearl Jam-like guitars.
Which is where the Utne Reader comes in. In his essay “Worshipping Mr. Loh,” Portland writer Steve Wilson describes hearing my “This American Life” radio piece describing the way my father’s let-it-all-hang-out proclivities were rewarded and finding the tale absurd. At least initially.
For months afterward, Wilson and his wife would invoke “Mr. Loh” and his freedom from the mundane in ironical mantras. While circling a parking lot, they’d mutter: “Mr. Loh wouldn’t need a parking space, Mr. Loh is beyond parking spaces ... “ And then, lo and behold: a parking space! Half-jokingly, a small household “Mr. Loh” shrine followed. And eerily enough, a local lottery was won, graduate school gotten into, a baby conceived.
Which is to say that while praying to “Mr. Loh” may not have guaranteed the desired outcome, for this Oregon couple, it hasn’t hurt: “In moments of uncertainty,” Wilson writes, “Mr. Loh provided a focal point for hope and decision, gave us a receptacle for anxieties, and, ultimately, got results ... “
And so, I guess, why not? After all, in times when Mel Gibson’s Catholicism can succeed side by side with the romping, lusty paganism of “The Da Vinci Code,” a gentle Third Way seems harmless enough.
But surely a deity must have felt stifled, toiling all those years as a strait-laced Hughes engineer? Perhaps, but he persevered and even once -- I now remember -- gave me a car! A Hyundai, but still.
Uh-oh: I feel a small wave of gratitude coming on. Let me choke it out -- here’s one for the Wilsons’ personal god -- thanks and “Happy Father’s Day!”
Sandra Tsing Loh’s “The Loh Life” airs Thursdays on KPCC-FM.