My Father, Carl, An Interesting Man

It all began with a simple phone call one night after dinner, “Joe,” my father hollered up the stairs, “it’s for you. It’s Jackie, and she sounds upset.” As I came downstairs to pick up the phone, I was not happy. I was tired and had looked forward to a nice quiet evening at home, not another stupid adventure with Jackie.

The fresh morning air was cool against my face. Father had been gone for a while now, he had been called by his work for some “serious business.” As my sister Aliah, and I played in the pond by our 2 story house, we heard a faint muttering of Father’s pick-up.

The night air was heavy with silence. Clouds drifted across a calm sky, and a full moon shone in the distance. In a small hut on the outskirts of the valley, an old man lay in bed, awake in the peaceful slumber of the village. His breaths came in rattling gasps, his forehead burned, and his joints felt stiff with pain. He shifted on the blankets, his withered hands clenched in fists as he tried to suppress the wave of bitter memories coming to him. His life had been nothing more than work, loss, tragedy. He remembered all of his hope, his ambition, in his youth, and he smiled bitterly. No one would remember him as the man that he had once hoped he would become. Now, as his breathing became heavier and he felt himself fading on the brink of

It all began with a simple phone call one night after dinner. “John,” my father hollered up the stairs, “It’s for you. It’s Jackie, and she sounds distressed.” As I came down the stairs to pick up the phone, I was not happy. I was tired and had looked forward to a nice quiet evening at home, not another stupid adventure with Jackie.

An older boy remembered his father, a hardworking blue collar man. He remembered how his father would walk into the home each evening with scraped hands and perspiration stained shirts. His father was a tough man. He was the kind of man that refused to go to the doctor and rarely hugged his children. Yet, he was a good man. The boy remembered how his father provided for the family and often times his smallest actions proved his paternal love for them. One particular memory stood out among the rest. His father had returned home from work late one evening. He had been out celebrating his pay raise with some of his co-workers down at the local pub. He waltzed through the door bursting with

I vividly remember that chilly night in March as I walked out of Fifer, the building my father now calls home, for the first time. I had goosebumps, but they were not from the cold I felt hit my skin. Instead, they were from the sickness in my stomach. As I got in the car, I began to cry and had to stop myself from running back inside. My entire world had turned upside-down. How could I go home without my father? How could I leave him in a nursing home, a place where he was too young and mentally fit to be confined? I had to fight the feeling that he didn’t belong. I had to remind myself of why he chose to be there, and I hated it.

The summer rain of San Luis Potosí, México, made it almost impossible to go outside and enjoy the city without getting drenched, so Abuelito, Silence, and I together in one room, enjoying our second return to our hometown. He sat on his chair and I lay on the bed, calmly looking through the family albums. Bookshelves filled with books from my mother’s and uncles’ university courses and my Abuelita’s books from her teaching years covered one wall. It remained the same ever since we moved to the United States. The same TV. The same bed sheets. The only things that changed was my grandpa’s ability to walk and me. I gained height and weight and well, he has gotten older and weaker. I have lived my whole life with him by my side but do I really

In 1952 my grandfather, Albert S. Thanhauser, waited in line with the incoming class of Air Force soldiers in upstate New York as they prepared to enter the Korean War. Each quaking private presented their papers to the stone-faced officer at the front of the line, to receive their military assignment. As my grandfather approached with his documentation, something peculiar happened. “Hmm… Thanhauser,” muttered the gruff officer, “M.O.T.?” he asked quietly. A Brooklyn Jew, Al’s eyes lit up as he nodded and his papers were placed with the rest in the pile. M.O.T: Member of the Tribe, was an instantly recognizable code of camaraderie amongst Jews. Two weeks after this encounter, the night before being shipped off to Korea, Al received a memo: He was being pulled from the pack headed for Hell and instead was shipped to Japan to set up a flight school at an American base. The two years he spent on the airbase were some of the best of his life. Was this story was likely intended to instill me with a connection to Judaism? Was it just another of my Grandpa’s crazy stories? I had always focused on the result of this story - how it dramatically affected my grandfather’s life. But as I have grown older, the story has begun to resonate with me as beautiful demonstration of an act of kindness and virtue that I learn and grow from.

For two weeks, I didn’t see my father at all. I woke up, every day, hoping that he would be in the dining room helping Dusty out with the making of breakfast. Instead, for the past two weeks, I woke up to the usual: breakfast on the table, Dusty and Vinyl calling me down to join them with still no sign of my father. No longer, for those two weeks, did I wake up to the smell of water vapour from Jazzmere’s smoking pipe. No longer, for those two weeks, did I wake up to Jazzmere singing old Equestrian songs about the Princesses and how they formed the kingdom. No longer, for those two weeks, did I wake up to the hissing sound of the iron Jazzmere used to iron the clothes I wore to school.

“ YOU turned this on? YOU want to turn like your father? That little BRAT!!! YOUR father is a brat, that’s right he doesn’t care if HE hurts YOU, he only cares about himself!!!!” bellowed Grandpa scoffingly, I felt like I was about to cry, but I couldn’t, no I wouldn’t, grandpa doesn’t believe in crying, says it shows weakness (I think it show humanity, but that’s just my opinion),so holding back tears I walked back to the recliner and sat down, wishing that day would

Bill Mize, my great grandfather, watched in awe everyday as his father did the difficult job of being a railroad conductor in the 1940s. “I was completely fascinated by my father, he worked tirelessly to provide for the family, and was an incredible man,” Bill recalls. At the young age of fourteen Bill suffered the devastating loss of his father, the man he spent most of his childhood admiring. His father died abruptly of tuberculosis at the age of fifty-nine the family was completely shocked and devastated by this loss. Without his father Bill watched everything in his once normal life quickly fall away; the family’s finances were slim to nothing and his mother could no longer support Bill and his sisters. Throughout

The moment I emerged from the stairway I began to stare at the man sitting in the chair across the room. This man was not the man I remembered; this man was pale, weak, and lacked motivation. He was not my grandpa: outspoken, stubborn, and jolly. However, the house had not changed one bit. There was still a cluttered mess on the table and reminisce of my departed great-grandma all throughout the house.

I watched another man having a mid-life crisis, pull out of the Novak car dealership across the street in a silver convertible. My uncle ran that dealership. I scanned my dad’s car lot; the cars were much older with red numbers written on the windshields, and they were Hondas rather than BMWs. Dad was having an intense phone call in the dimly lit back office. From where I sat at the desk, I could hear snippets of the conversation that filtered through the gap through the door.

My Father took one last drag of his cigarette, then twisted it out into the puddle of ash on the coffee table. He glanced aggressively towards my Ma, glaring at her as she chopped vegetables. He grunted, then returned to his normal stare into nothingness.. He stood up and paused for a moment.

Someone Who Has Influenced My LifeI am writing an essay for my English class and keep getting an E what am i doin wrong?