Family Business

Dad frets over the young saplings dotting the sidewalks of downtown Grand Island. From his office on the bottom floor of the Yancey Hotel on Second Street, he examines and waters them frequently. As one of the members of the new Downtown Improvement Committee who acquires the trees, he feels responsible when they droop in Nebraska's harsh mid-summer heat.

Carry and Dad

Dad loves his baby trees, loves downtown, and loves owning his own business - First Holiday Tour and Travel. Sometimes driving by the corner of Second and South Locust, I catch the stoplight and stare through the long windows of the Yancey willing Dad and my sisters to glance up and wave. Dad likes having his kids around so much he persuades some of us to work for him. Joe, Mick, Rick, Deb and Mary all will be employed at the travel agency at one time or another. I love watching Dad and my brothers and sisters manage the family business together. The rest of us pop in from time to time to help answer phones or fetch the mail from the post office.

By the end of the 80's, we've all left home except for Tommy and Jeff who are still in high school. Dad's feeling bereft without a house full of kids. The travel agency is his way of keeping us close. After we reach adolescence, Dad suddenly becomes awkward and finds it difficult to be physically affectionate. Mom could hug the stuffing out of us, but Dad blushes and doesn't seem to know what to do with his hands. Debbie realizes this and loves to embarrass him. After work at the travel agency, she and Dad make their way to the parking garage strolling down South Locust in the rosy twilight. Then Debbie ever so casually reaches out to grab Dad's hand and swing it a little. Sometimes she puts an arm around him or snuggles her head against his shoulder.

"Stop that!" Hugely embarrassed, Dad shakes her off, but Deb only laughs. The very next evening, she does it again. The younger kids tease Dad in a way that we older kids never would have. Dad was a different father with us - loving but stern, disciplined, exacting.

"You need to get after these kids!" I scold Dad one day when my younger siblings are all still at home. "Why don't you discipline them like you did us?"

He shrugs. "It didn't do you any good," he sighs wearily, as if Joe, Mick, Rick and I turned out to be serial ax murderers.

At the travel agency, Dad and my siblings talk and joke and grow very close. Sometimes the atmosphere is more relaxed than it should be. Mick, ever the practical joker, takes full advantage of the casual freedom that comes with a family business.

One morning, Mary arrives at the travel agency to discover the door ajar.

"Mick?" she calls. The office is dark, and Mary wonders if she neglected to lock up the night before. She steps into the office and gasps. The safe is wide open, cash is strewn all over the floor, and then she sees my brother's hand outstretched on the floor behind the counter. Paralyzed with fear, Mary can only gape at the terrible scene.

The hand moves, and Mick laughs. He rises from behind the counter and leans over it laughing helplessly at Mary's terrified expression.

Mary and Jeff

"Mick!" she screams. "How could you? That's the worst thing you've ever done to me!"

Furious and trembling, she collapses into a chair. "I thought you were dead!" she moans and buries her face in her hands.

Abruptly, she sits up. "Hey, I know," she grins. "Let's do it to Deb."

Deb's reaction is just as gratifying, and Mick and Mary howl with laughter. Wisely, they refrain from pulling the joke on Dad and clean up the office before he arrives.

Dad, though he loves office banter with his kids, is the consummate professional. Every day he arrives at the office in one of his immaculate suits, specifically purchased for his bigger-than-life frame, and a starched shirt he's carefully ironed himself the Sunday before. At precisely 7:30 he switches KRGI radio to Paul Harvey's morning broadcast, arranges his desk, and fires up the computer. First Holiday Tour and Travel is open for business.

During slow times in the office, however, even Dad relaxes. One afternoon he takes the opportunity to slip out the hall door to use the restroom.  In his absence, a customer arrives, and Mary waits on her at the long counter in the front. Dad has no idea Mary is helping a client when he steps back into the office and issues forth an endless, deafening belch so loud it fills every corner of the office. Dad, impressed with the result, chuckles in appreciation until an agonized Mary politely draws his attention to the appalled woman behind the counter.

"I'm so very sorry," Dad reddens deeply, ducks his head, and hurries to his desk.

Poor Mary is the victim of most practical jokes in the office. Since the time she was little, my brothers have relentlessly targeted her trusting, innocent nature.

"Mary," Joe calls across the office, "you're supposed to return a call to Myra at Livingston Sondermann."

Livingston Sondermann is a local Grand Island funeral home, and Joe repeats the number to Mary.

"What's her last name?" Mary checks with Joe as the phone rings.

Clowning, Rick tries on his new Christmas sweater.

"Mains," Joe says.

Mary falls for it hook, line and sinker. "This is Mary from First Holiday," she says in her most business-like voice. "May I speak to Myra Mains?"

She hears it as soon as she says it and immediately bangs down the receiver to glare at Joe who is enjoying his joke immensely.

"Did you actually ask for My Remains?" he pretends to be shocked.

"I hate you," she snarls. But in the end, she always laughs. Nobody takes a joke better than Mary.

The travel agency becomes a family gathering spot of sorts. If we have an itch to see each other on the spur of the moment, we simply jump in the car and head over to the office. There's always a cup of coffee, Dad's face lights up with his big grin, Deb and Mary fill us in on the gossip, and Mick entertains us.

In the party room a floor above the office, we celebrate family birthdays. Rick never ceases to surprise me at these gatherings. Even more sentimental than my sisters and I, he reaches across Dad's awkward hug barrier and grabs our big father before he departs.

"I love you, Dad!" he says almost jokingly. But he means it. A very young man, Rick experiences deep regret that he never told Mom what she meant to him. He refuses to make the same mistake with Dad.

Rick's hugs embarrass Dad, of course, but he seems to like it. It gives us all a little courage to reach out and pat our huge father on the shoulder or land a quick peck on his cheek. I long to throw my arms around him to lock him in a proper embrace, but that would be altogether too much for Dad's sense of propriety.

The travel agency office on the bottom floor of the historic, stately Yancey Hotel becomes an unlikely second home to all of us. In the years after Mom's death, it's almost a symbol of new starts. Life goes on, and we are managing together. Who would ever have thought all those years ago when Dad and Mom crammed us into the old brown station wagon dragging us from Denver to Grand Island that the corner of Second and Locust Streets would become so dear?

It was a long time ago. Today I am past 60 but have gone out of my way to drive by the long empty old travel agency and stop at that same corner with nostalgic yearning. I miss seeing Dad through the long windows of the Yancey. But he'd be happy about his tiny saplings. They're fine, respectable shade trees now nourished by the good Nebraska soil.

Mom and Dad are part of that good Nebraska earth, too, and the ten children they brought to Grand Island 45 years ago have grown and flourished like the trees.

If I look hard through the long windows of the now vacant office, I can see my sisters tending the phones and Mick laughing with a customer. Dad stretches his long legs and folds his arms behind his big, impressive head. With deep satisfaction, he surveys his little kingdom.

The stoplight is green. I sigh deeply and drive on. It was all a life time ago.

But it seems as close as yesterday.

Tool Man

The way Dad snores - like a gasping, shuddering chain saw - could wake the dead.

Because he's lonely for our mother sleeping beside him, Dad purchases a small television set for his bedroom to keep him company. Every night he turns up Johnny Carson to an ear splitting decible, guffaws for ten minutes, then promptly falls asleep. So it begins - a dueling cacophony between Carson's banter and Dad's snoring.

"I can't stand it any more!" Terri stomps into Dad's room, violently switches the t.v. off, and curses all the way back to bed.

Terri

None of my younger brothers and sisters can sleep through the racket. It's Carry who comes up with the idea of the "Clapper", a sound activated marvel. The little kids pool their money together and present it to Dad for his birthday.

"Before you fall asleep," Carry explains to our father, "remember to clap. The t.v.'ll go right off!" A remote would be just as easy and far cheaper, but Dad misplaces it the day after he purchases the television.

He's skeptical of the Clapper but agrees to give it a try. It turns out to be a waste of money. As soon as Dad snores, the t.v. surges to life again. Another snore, and it shuts off. And so it goes. On and off, on and off all night long. Terri stomps into his room, rips the device out of the wall, and stuffs it in the trash.

So much for the "Clapper".

It's not only the little kids' sleep life that disintegrates. The old order ceases to exist, and a new one is born. Without Mom's careful watch, things begin to slip on Capital Avenue.

My brothers and sisters divvy up the chores, but a spotless house is hardly a priority. One night, long after they're in bed asleep, Dad charges into their bedrooms, wakes them all up, and herds them into the hallway bathroom.

Scooping up one of several damp towels from the bathroom floor, he illustrates in exaggerated motions the proper way to fold it over the towel rack.

"VOILA!" he barks, gesturing toward the rack as if my siblings are mentally deficient.

The next Sunday after Mass, with everybody in the station wagon, Dad drives to a dilapidated old house some blocks away. A rusty refrigerator leans against the front porch and beside it an ancient, moth-eaten sofa. Dad pulls straight into the strange driveway as if he owns the place. Lounging on the dusty old sofa in the warm sunshine are the true owners of the hovel who glance with lazy curiosity at the vehicle idling in their driveway.

"Dad, what are you doing?" Mary gasps. My little brothers and sisters duck hurriedly beneath the car windows, horrified by Dad's audacity.

"Take a good look, kids," Dad ignores their dismay. "It starts with a few damp towels, and it ends like this. Brick by brick."

Dad talks a good game. All the years we grow up he chants his daily mantra - "Look around, see what needs to be done, and do it." But Dad's never lived up to his own credo. When the coffee table breaks, the cabinet doors come unhinged, or the doorknobs fall off, Dad seethes. He doesn't, however, put anything back together again. Maybe he's tired. Maybe he's overwhelmed. But the house really is falling apart brick by brick.

Jeff and Joe

When the channel turner from the television disappears, we fit the prongs of a fork across the stem and spin the handle of the fork. And since it's too much trouble to run constantly from the t.v. room to the kitchen, the fork becomes a permanent fixture on the t.v.

The entire t.v. room, in fact, is a death trap.The four legs of the coffee table have been broken for two years since Mom died. It never occurs to Dad to grab a hammer and reattach them. Instead, he instructs the little kids to prop the table up on four broken legs and never use it again. It's a battered, scratched old table, so it's not as if Dad's saving it for its aesthetic value. Not one of us ever questions why we balance that coffee table on four broken legs only to carefully skirt around it. We're used to it. It's the Dick Brown way.

Once, when Grandma comes to visit, she carefully reaches over to set her glass of iced tea on the old coffee table.

"DON'T TOUCH THE TABLE!" we all scream in unison.

Poor Grandma, badly shocked, jerks violently and accidentally kicks the table, whereupon the whole thing collapses anyway.

Then there's the door to the t.v. room itself. The latch is broken, and if you close the door from inside the room, you're locked in.

"Hurry up, Kids!" Dad calls for us from every part of the house. "It's World Premier Night!" I never understand what a World Premier is, but when one appears on television, Dad likes to be surrounded by all ten of us. Huddled together and staring with glazed eyes at the television set is what constitutes for us quality family bonding time. Inevitably, though, somebody accidentally knocks the door shut, and we're all trapped in the t.v. room.

"Dammit!" Dad swears. "Why can't you kids leave that door alone?"

Terri, Tommy and Jeff

The only way out is to remove the screen from the window, lower one of the little kids outside, and wait for him to run around the house to unlock the t.v. room door, which fortunately can be opened from the other side.

One summer evening, somebody shuts the t.v. room door, but all the outside doors are locked. We're not only locked in the t.v. room but out of our house. Resigned, we sing "I Had a Dream, Dear", Dad's old favorite, and practice in four part harmony until Rick comes home with his keys to free us.

Mary's boyfriend Kenny can't get over the t.v. room door.  "You realize you can get a new door knob, don't you?" he asks in bewilderment.

"Oh no," Mary's shocked. "Dad says that doorknob can never be fixed. It's the only one of its kind."

Kenny shakes his head.

The kitchen is almost as bad as the t.v. room. Almost every cabinet door has fallen off its hinges. But Dad never troubles himself to buy new hinges. Fitting the doors carefully back into their cabinet slots, he warns, "Be careful when you open those, Kids."

It's bad if you forget the kitchen cabinet over the sink. But after it falls on your head three or four times, you remember. Eventually, we become practiced at removing a cabinet door with one hand and grabbing a drinking glass with the other.

One day, after the little kids grow up and leave home, Dad will decide to move from the house on Capital Avenue. But by God, he hates to see the old homestead belong to anybody but a member of the family. When Dad convinces Mary's nice boyfriend Kenny, now her husband Kenny, to buy the house on Capital Avenue, we're all relieved. Everybody, that is, except Mary.

She can hardly believe Kenny wants anything to do with our old wreck of a home. Unlike Dad, however, Kenny is handy. He fixes the hinges on all the kitchen cabinets and even, to Mary's astonishment, replaces the doorknob on the t.v. room door. But Mary will not agree to sign a contract until Dad calls a plumber for the toilet.

"There's nothing wrong with that toilet!" Dad is indignant.

"Dad,", Mary sighs, "it never stops running."

He sputters. "It's a little temperamental, that's all!"

He explains in careful detail that Mary needs only to hold the handle down after she flushes, count to ten, and jiggle it three times.  "Wait until the tank fills halfway. If that doesn't work, reach into the tank, grab the chain, and yank. You could just take the lid off the tank and leave it open," Dad rubs his chin thoughtfully. "Might make it easier in the long run."

Mary rolls her eyes and stalks out of the room.

But the rest of us are glad that Ken and Mary will live there. Our memories of Mom are all wrapped up in the old house on Capital Avenue. We'll bring our own children there, barbecue in the big back yard, and celebrate family birthdays.

And nobody will get locked in the t.v. room or have to crawl out the window ever again.

Omaha

Tommy, my ten-year-old brother, has a girlfriend.

He's far too young, of course, and I would heartily disapprove of such a thing except the rest of my siblings neglect to tell me. In fact, I'm in the dark about quite a lot now that my younger brothers and sisters have all moved to Omaha. Dad, working ten hours a day at the dairy, is oblivious as well and only relieved that Tommy's made a friend. What Dad doesn't know, my younger sisters figure, can't hurt him. And anyway, Tommy's girlfriend Stacy is hardly a real girlfriend. More than anything, my sisters agree, she's a little girl who enjoys her power.

Carry and Deb

"Somebody needs to boss Tommy around," Carry shrugs.

Stacy is the tall, beautiful daughter of the African American couple down the street. Growing up in Grand Island, my siblings have never been acquainted with anyone who's African American. In the new Omaha neighborhood, however, their friends include not only Stacy but also several kids who are Jewish, one girl who is disabled and held upright with a sturdy back brace, and a pleasant 12-year-old boy named Jeff who wears makeup and loves fashion trends. Our huge Catholic family - the kids without a mother - only serve to add a little more diversity to the already eclectic neighborhood.

Jeff and Carry hit it off right away, and soon Carry, nearly 12, confides all her secrets - mostly because she thinks her new friend is a girl.

"His name is Jeff," my sister Terri breaks the news. "You DO know he's a boy, right?"

Shocked to the core, Carry takes time to digest this information. Soon, though, she resumes her friendship with Jeff taking particular care to call him by his correct name and listening closely to his instructions for applying a tricky eye liner. He becomes her best friend in the new neighborhood.

Meanwhile, my shy and innocent little brother Tommy meets Stacy at school. Loud and exuberant, Stacy dominates St. Robert's fifth grade class and, recognizing Tommy from the neighborhood, immediately claims him as her own.

"This year," she looks him up and down appraisingly, "you're gonna be my man."

Tommy blinks. He is both fascinated and afraid of this beautiful girl.

"Okay," he agrees uncertainly.

Stacy invites herself to dinner to see if she approves of her new man's family. Taking charge of the table conversation, she orders Tommy around and offers her blunt critique of the spaghetti dinner. She pauses, however, in mid diatribe to stare at Terri who's relishing with particular fervor the large helping of spaghetti in her mouth.

"Damn!" Stacy crows. "Look at those jaws move!"

Even Dad is a little frightened. "Who is this girl?" he whispers to Mary behind his hand.

Tommy, however, gazes adoringly at his beautiful new girlfriend and believes himself to be the luckiest boy in the world. But in the coming weeks, Stacy's orchestration of his every move wears thin. One night at the skating rink, he politely informs Stacy that he wants to break up.

"Break up!" She shrieks the words over the laughter and chatter of other skaters and lets loose with a string of expletives. Tommy's face burns with embarrassment. "You're my man," she pokes a finger painfully into his chest, "for as long as I say you're my man."

She skates off in a huff.

The truth is, Tommy has too many worries to juggle a bossy girlfriend. The move to Omaha has been traumatic for him and all my siblings.

Debbie, who's only just graduated from high school, accompanies the family to Omaha to help out. Dad purchases a much used Chevy Nova which Debbie uses to deliver Mary, Terri, Carry, Tommy and Jeff to school. Deb has never driven in Omaha, and the harrowing morning traffic intimidates her. She and Mary, however, attempt a dry run the day before school starts until Deb feels confident.

The next morning after Dad leaves for work and wishes all my brothers and sisters good luck, Deb herds everybody out to the Nova only to discover she's locked the keys in the house.

"Debbie!" my panic stricken sisters wail. In the end, it seems there's nothing to do but camp out on the front lawn all day until Dad returns home from work that evening.  But missing the first day at their new schools unnerves my siblings, especially Mary and Terri.

"Why did we have to move here?" Terri agonizes. Mom would have known what to do. They ache for her and Grand Island and their old schools and for all that is comfortingly familiar.

Terri's already taken great pains to study the St. Robert's catalog to make sure she's wearing the school uniform exactly the way every other girl wears it. At 13, she's particularly nervous about fitting in at her new school. But the next morning, after Dad decides to escort the little kids to their second first day of school himself, Terri bursts into tears. Wearing her knee length uniform skirt and long socks, she's horrified to discover every other girl in her new school boasts a mid-thigh skirt and bobby socks.

"Dad!" she bursts into tears. "I look all wrong!"

As far as Dad can see, Terri's dressed exactly the same as all the other hundreds of other little girls chatting self-consciously at their lockers. But Terri's desperation is heartbreaking.

"Hey, hey!" he grabs her close. "I promise - after school we'll go to Target and get it right!"

Terri has another major concern entering her eighth grade year. She's started her period. Mom isn't here any more, and she's desperate to tell Dad. But she doesn't know how.

"Dad," she hesitates before concluding at a gallop. "I guess I've become a woman!"

Terri, Tommy and Jeff

It takes a moment for Dad to understand. "Terri," he hugs her. Mom's always handled the girl stuff. "Congratulations," he awkwardly pats her back. "We'll get whatever you need for that at the store, too," he reddens.

The move to Omaha is a struggle for everybody. My sister Mary's sole passion is athletics. To discover she's too late to try out for the Marian volleyball team is a terrible blow. On top of that, she's gone from her intimate Grand Island Central Catholic class of 50 kids to 300 in this all girls' school without any outlet or activity to help her make friends.

Jeff, in the third grade, struggles more than anybody. Dad believes it's critical right now that Jeff be as close as possible to his brother and sisters at St. Robert's. Jeff, however, has always received help for his disability and misses his gifted special ed teachers back at Grand Island Public. He falls further and further behind, but he's hardly the only one. Tommy and Carry are baffled as well. The terrible combination of Mom's death, leaving their home, and starting at a brand new school is too much.

As their school work suffers, teachers send their failing papers home with them. Dad's required to look at their school work, sign his name, and send it back. My brothers and sisters, however, make sure Dad never sees anything. Carefully, they forge his signature on every paper. It'll be weeks before teachers figure it out and inform Dad with a phone call.

In the meantime, Carry gets into trouble in the school cafeteria when she inserts a drinking straw through the middle of a hot dog wiener from one end to the other. Then she pours milk through the straw.

"Look!" she giggles at her lunch table. "The wiener's peeing!" The kids laugh so raucously that the teacher is alerted and immediately yanks Carry to the office.

Dad's shocked to discover his kids are forging his name, and he grounds Carry for the cafeteria incident. One afternoon at the kitchen table he sighs heavily and drops his face into his hands. Dad's lost his wife, he's raising ten kids alone, and his business has transferred him to another city with the order to resurrect a sinking dairy. My sister Mary sits across from my exhausted father and realizes not only that he's enormously overwhelmed but that my little brothers and sisters are in trouble.

Dad snoozes after a long day at work.

Every night she prays and cries in her bed. "Dear God," she whispers earnestly in the dark, "you've got to get us back to Grand Island! Please help us, Mom."

Help comes, but not in the way Mary hopes.

One evening as Debbie and Mary prepare dinner, they hear Dad drive into the garage. Strangely, he doesn't stride through the door grinning and sniffing the good smells of food in the air like he usually does.

Puzzled, they glance through the window and are shocked to see our giant of a father sitting on the steps by the door, hands hanging between his knees, crying his eyes out. By this time, all my brothers and sisters are rooted at the window staring at Dad. Never in their lives have they seen him weep like this. Even when Mom died, he wept softly and silently. Now, unaware of all of them watching from the window, Dad's big, broad shoulders heave in great, helpless sobs.

Frightened, Deb, Mary, Terri, Carry, Tommy and Jeff turn away and wait for him to pull himself together. It would horrify him to know they've seen him like this.

After a long time, he finally enters the house composed and dignified.

"Hi Dad," they try to greet him naturally.

"Kids," he says wearily. "Sit down. I need to talk to you."

The dairy, he tells them at last, has been bought out by another company who's decided to clean house. He and all his employees can no longer work there. He's out of a job.

"Don't worry," he tries to reassure them. "We'll figure this out."

Mary's heart breaks for Dad, but my 16-year-old sister understands her prayers have been answered. There is no doubt in her mind they will all return to Grand Island.

And they do.

After weeks of job searching and terrible worry, Dad buys into a Grand Island travel agency - First Holiday Tour and Travel - which my brother Mick still owns and operates today. They all move back into the house on West Capital Avenue, and my brothers and sisters return to their old schools.

My brothers Joe, Mick and Rick, in college or working in Grand Island, are overjoyed to have our youngest siblings back. I'm overjoyed to teach my little sisters at Central Catholic again. Dad's overjoyed to manage his own business and to see his children thriving and happy again.

And Tommy's overjoyed to be turning 11-years-old as a free man. Had Dad not lost his job, Tommy knows with cold certainty, he might very well be picking out China patterns with the indomitable Stacy.