(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Giants [1] ['Belinda Ridgewood', 'Chitown Kev', 'Bill In Portland Maine', 'Thom Hartmann'] Date: 2026-06-16 When I think about your father, I think about days like today still warm days, the smell of cut grass in the air Spring turning to summer. Time stands still sometimes We measure it with a clock, in turn parceling out moments, days and years. Lifetimes. But it isn't something to be measured when you are young boys like we were then a summer was an eternity that started with Willie's birthday and was bisected only by the county fair, and another eternity later P.J.'s and my own birthdays. even then it was only half over. Your father was an enormous man not fat. He would pull into the driveway in the state truck his face and neck a deep cherry red from days outside on Skyline Boulevard. He wore aviator shades and a white tee shirt, his work shirt would be hung on a hanger behind him in the cab. Was it green work pants? I had to look so far up to see him I think that they may never have entered my field of vision. He put up the doughboy pool every summer, right around this time You boys would trudge slowly around in a circle, carrying the water with you eventually running, bounding off the bottom like the astronauts walking on the moon. Come on in, you would holler We're making a Giant! a giant whirlpool, I would attempt to correct you No! A Giant! We're making a Giant! This is when I began to learn that things are what you make them and are named what you call them. I don't know where he got it, but your dad had the circus in his blood.. You boys were his private clowns, and he was the ringleader. He made you stilts, remember? Out of 2x4s. we would peg across the street and stalk up the concrete incline to the entrance to the playing field at Bernard Hoffman school. Daring one another on the return, we would straddle the handrail and stalk back down, one wooden leg on either side of the 3 foot metal rail. It’s a miracle either of you have children of your own today. He took the prize for smallest kite at the kite contest every year. He made them out of green bamboo garden stakes and colored cellophane and put a six foot tail on them, knotted just like an old school book drawing. They were no bigger than my hand is now, and looked a mile up when twenty feet aloft. Every other week he would stop in Chinatown on his way home and buy a brick of firecrackers for you both. we don't need to go into everything that got blown up we would'nt want Amnesty International to hear about G.I. Joes court martial But the best trick was his he would float a small tin can in a coffee can full of water drop a cracker in it, and then put a slightly larger can atop it. It sounded like a bell when it went off launching the can as high as the telephone pole out front. He liked to go on that Saturday morning drive We'd all pile into the big blue Mercury Monterey and check out the garage sales. You had the Sears Roebuck electric garage door opener and your father understood that there were only about 4 different frequencies they ran. He would drive sedately down the street, pointing the remote at doors and we would squeal with delight at each that opened. Oh, Bob, honestly, your mother would say mildly. The only time I ever saw her really put her foot down with him was when he wanted to buy a high school gymnasium trampoline for 25$. Do you think he ever would have jumped on it? It was for you, his clown princes. (I think what queered the deal was Mary Helen overhearing P.J. and I discussing how cool it would be to leap off the roof onto it.) When we were ten, I think, P.J. got a bow and arrow set for his birthday. Before anybody could say anything, he'd sprinted outside with an arrow nocked on a full pull and let fly straight up into the air just past the roof line of the house neatly skewering a robin that happened to be flying over at a particularly inauspicious time. Of course there was a big lecture but we could tell that dead bird tickled your dad no end. He set up hay bales in the garage, with targets. Later you boys got air rifles. He obligingly put a plaster cast of his face over the hay bales. It is chipped now, and still has pellets imbedded in it from almost 30 years ago. It is still recognizably Bob. Sunday afternoons, Fire Chief Walser would get drunk and start up his 67 Plymouth Chief's car bright yellow with the round red cherry on top and take a slow cruise around the perimeter of the Terra Linda valley with the light and siren going, touring his private fief. Your father, also half in the bag laying on the couch watching the wide world of sports on tee-vee would hear the siren and get a look of stunned recognition on his face. "Its that a**hole Walser!" he would exclaim and run out onto the front lawn so that he could flip him off as he went by. “F*ck you, Walser!” he would bellow and that is where I began to learn that the authorities are not always to be respected. Walser finally got voted out one year, and they took his car away. I think your Dad probably missed him. My father says that your father was the only other man he had ever met stupid enough to build a Heathkit television set and mount it in a wall. I get the impression it was an exercise in patience A bygone era, when american men not only could, but did. He liked to grow tomatos and other vegetables. Around that time when P.J. got big enough to get that bow and arrows he determined we were big enough to run the roto-tiller in the planting boxes. In his fashion, he showed us how to start it, how to engage the tines and then left us to it. P.J. hanging onto the jumping tiller, Willie and I hanging onto P.J. down the box until it started chewing up the box at the end. Gaaaawwdammmit boys, wouldcha just watch what the hell you’re doing? he would yell, without ever coming out to check. Your dad thought about you a lot, it was obvious A Caterpillar would scatter a drive wheel out on the grade and your dad would take the time to collect some of the roller bearings knowing what kind of treasure that is for young boys. He was willing to try anything. He built a little plexiglass pyramid to keep his razor blades in. He taught us to consult a plumb-bob as our own personal I-Ching. A clockwise circle is an affirmative answer (is P.J. a dick? look at it go) a counterclockwise circle is no. (is Willie going to live another day? maybe not) While we were running around in that doughboy making "Giants" your father and mother were pushing you around the same way. We would get the Giant moving good and we could sit with our backs to the wall of the pool, circling each other caught in the momentum of the thing we had made the world turning around us. Your parents, and your dad especially you were boys, after all your parents made Giants out of you. So that when they could'nt be there to push you the momentum would carry you anyway. If you think that I have that wrong just look at how your own children view you and tell me that you are not Giants. Nobody should have to bury their parents as young as you boys did. But that is part of the world of your father, too Its called shit-house luck. he taught it to P.J. when he ran over his unicycle. we kept waiting for another one to show up and it never did. Don’t leave it in the driveway if you want to keep it. The world can be blindly unfair. I realize you boys quarreled over some stuff that belonged to your parents. You boys quarreled more often than not. But as one of your oldest friends I need to tell you that I have already buried three men that I counted as best friends, blood brothers. None of us may have as long as we think It is far easier to talk to living relatives than to dwell upon what should have been said when somebody’s gone. your stuff will not tell you that it loves you. Your folks are gone, and you ride the momentum they created The Giant they made out of their love for you. But from time to time, you need to bound along the bottom or else the Giant winds down and eventually stops. Nobody is going to help you push your Giant like your own brother. Pierre–5/4/01 My family nickname as a boy was Pierre. Willie and P.J. are the nicknames their parents gave to them. Just as they are the only outsiders that know me as Pierre, so I am the only outsider, actually, the only human left on earth that knows them as Willie and P.J. I called Matt up in Hawaii after not seeing him or talking to him for 12 years, I’d heard he was there so I looked in the phone book. When he answered the phone I asked for Willie. He didn’t say, who, or wrong number, his voice got very small and he said what? What did you say? Their father drank, and it aggravated a tendency for diabetes. Willie was never good in school, I think maybe he reads things backwards. Bob lost a leg to diabetes, and in his fashion, complained bitterly about the replacement. Willie looked at it, and in his fashion said, I could make a better one. And he did. When Bob lost his second leg, (you did'nt think he'd actually stop drinking, did you?) The orthotic technician looked at the one that Matt had made for him and asked, who did this? Matt got a job making prosthetic limbs. at 16 years old. He never graduated from high school. He and Pat put Bob in the ground after his liver shunt exploded when they were 20 and 18. Mary Helen died of Melanoma 2 years after that. Matt has his own business in Hawaii. He makes mostly custom leather stuff, seats and tank covers for Harley Davidsons, vests with hidden pockets to hide the drugs. Spendy stuff. But his favorite thing is still making artificial limbs that are comfortable for people. He sets aside two days every month where he meets people and fits them, and then goes home and makes the limbs. Gratis. Pat drove a garbage truck for awhile, then got a job at a local newspaper as a glorified gofer, and now is driving a forklift up in Chico. Both Pat and Matt have daughters, named (unbeknownst to either family) Ashley. Pat's is 10 and Matt's is 5. Both seem happily married. Matt hired a lawyer in an attempt to wrest the family craps table and poker chips from Pat twenty years ago, only giving up when he realized that the only winners were the lawyers. They have'nt spoken since. I made friends with Pat in kindergarten. He is a year and a half older than Matt. Talking with Matt in Hawaii, we both realized that we have very different memories of our mutual childhood, and especially that central figure, Bob. He asked me to write him some memories of Bob. It most likely was not what he expected. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/6/16/800056277/community/giants/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/