Today is my dad’s 90th birthday. He died 33 years ago at the age of 57. Emphysema and cirrhosis of the liver. He was a heavy smoker and drinker for most of his life. He didn’t live to see me married and have children of my own. I think I’ve been a better father to my children than he was to me, though I don’t hold it against him.
His name was Robert Donald Tanguay, but he went by Pete. He was born in Salem, MA, and his parents died shortly thereafter. My mother says he was practically an orphan. He had an older brother, Donald, and a sister, Carmen. They were raised by relatives, aunts and uncles. My mother and father met in high school in Salem. My father joined the Army in 1952 or 53 and was sent to Germany. My mother wrote to my father several times a week, and when he was discharged they married.
My mother was the youngest child, the lone girl. Her side of the family emigrated to the US from Quebec in the late 19th century, part of a small wave of French-Canadians who settled in Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Working-class, they labored in mills and factories, linen and leather. My mother was sheltered, as many girls were then, and my father was my mom’s first love. In 1955 or 56, they loaded what they owned in a red and white Chevrolet coupe and started across the country, headed, as so many were at the time, to the Golden State, California.
Santa Barbara felt right, so they stopped here and tried to put down roots. By trade my father was a butcher, a skilled one, who never cut himself and rarely got blood or fat on his apron, under which he always wore a dress shirt. He liked clothes. Born with nothing, lucky to have learned a trade in the Army, he was attracted to luxury and flash. He taught himself to play golf and became a respectable amateur. He was adroit with cards. His drink of choice was a vodka-tonic, his card game of choice was gin rummy. He played with a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth.
I didn’t get to know my dad because my parents split when I was ten. They spent two years living apart but somewhat committed to a reconciliation, though it didn’t happen because my dad couldn’t give up drinking or gambling. I think Pete needed the rush of gambling, of having money on the line with the possibility of winning big; he needed to feel the edge, the risk. He ran with men who peeled c-notes from a roll they kept in their pocket. Money-clip men, with heavy pinky rings. When my dad was flush he’d buy the house a round. He tipped waiters and waitresses as if money were no object. Often he’d slip me a twenty.
I was 18 when I left Santa Barbara for the Air Force, and ten years would pass before I returned. I saw my dad a little more often, but not enough to really get to know him. He was involved in a local bookmaking scheme by then, and would get arrested for it. The lure of easy money was always irresistible.
There was more to my dad then I ever knew, layers, stories. I wish I could have talked to him more, got to know him better.
August 4, 1933. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president and the nation was mired in the Great Depression.
When Pete’s lungs and liver gave out, George H.W. Bush was in the White House.
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