The Magician: Stories of My Dad

THE NEUROTIC TIGER: IT’S GONNA TAKE A LONG TIME…

October 26, 2011, by No comments yet

Tiger Stadium then (c. 1994)...

Eleven days ago, as I watched the Detroit Tigers throw away game six of the ALCS, and with it the American League pennant which once they flew, I couldn’t help but reflect on the strange irony of the Tigers’ success. So much had been made of the “return” of Detroit, of its startling comeback from desolation. From Chrysler 300 ads to NBC nightly news talking about how Detroiters are getting used to success (read: Lions and Tigers winning) the city, pundits claimed, was crawling up off the mat.

That should make me happy. But it doesn’t. It makes me confused and melancholy.

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HOW DID WE MISS THIS ONE?

April 26, 2010, by No comments yet

Flash Gordon, 1980. Directed by Mike Hodges, written by Lorenzo Semple Jr. and Michael Allin. Starring the perfectly coiffed Sam J. Jones, Melody Anderson, Max von Sydow, Topol, Ornella Muti, Timothy Dalton, and one of the great bellowers of all time, Brian Blessed.

I remember a moment back in 1980, standing in my Grandma’s kitchen, when Dad and Pam came back from the movies (Grandma was watching us.) They were ecstatic, or at least he was. “Flash Gordon!” he said. “Well, that was fun!”

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THERE ARE NO GHOSTS NOR ANGELS, HEAVEN IS IMAGINATION, AND ONLY MEMORY, BLESSED MEMORY, IS OUR SALVATION

October 10, 2008, by No comments yet

But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me. Second book of Samuel, 12:23

We can talk all we want about the afterlife. We can guess and ponder, speculate and believe with an assurance so strong it convinces others to join our faith. But what do we really know? Nothing. OK, I know nothing. You might be convinced.

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THE BEAUTIFUL SOUTH

July 20, 2008, by No comments yet

And so we drove away. Early Wednesday morning, this house of his empty, scrubbed of almost every scrap and trinket that would let you know that a man named Peter Schilling once lived here. Except for his customized chopping blocks he made to fit perfectly on top of the washer and dryer in the kitchen. Or the strange two inch wide, handpainted pieces of wood with one inch holes, fitted with little screens to allow fresh air to circulate with the air conditioning on. We left those behind. Otherwise, there is nothing left. No one will remember him at this particular house.

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LOAFING AROUND THE HOUSE

July 17, 2008, by No comments yet

There’s a wake tonight, from 6 to 8, for Dad at the Hibernian Pub in Raleigh. I’m hoping for a night of wonderful, crazy, strange memories with good people. While toodling around on Dad’s computer, John found the above photo which sums up the man pretty well. Somehow, he took three pictures of himself and then Photoshopped them together to make this panorama of his house in Benson, NC. This is the same place he used to hold his Mule Days party every year.

CURSE, BLESS ME NOW WITH YOUR FIERCE TEARS, I PRAY

July 17, 2008, by No comments yet

 And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears,
I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.
–Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” 

Here’s the obituary I wrote for my Dad, who passed away just a few days ago:

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THE BIRDS OF RADIOGRAFIA Y FLOROSCOPIA 10

July 6, 2008, by No comments yet

Swallowing and eating. Doing a crossword puzzle. Moving, talking, pissing, writing. These are the little things we now mark as larger achievements, but they lack the shiny feeling of a toddler’s first steps or inaugural word.

Some days he wants to play cribbage, and I ask him to count the score off, out loud, in order to work his mouth and his tongue, and try to get that brain of his squared away for talking. I don’t know cribbage so well, and sometimes the scoring gets a bit touchy–for instance, when he says “eighteen” over and over when he means “eight”. I’m confused, trying to figure out if I’ve scored incorrectly, which is certainly possible. The funny thing is, after repeating the former number, he’ll shake his head and say “I don’t mean ‘eighteen’, I mean ‘eight’,” and then he can say the correct score. So we laugh and continue the game.

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FATHERS WATCHING MOVIES WITH SONS

July 1, 2008, by No comments yet

Allow me to delve into the deeply personal for a moment: my Dad, Peter Schilling Sr., was diagnosed last March with stage III lung cancer.

This was an incredible blow for him, obviously, and it devastated me for a few days before I righted myself and sought to help him fight this damn thing. Well, on a visit to North Carolina to see him last month, on the Saturday morning before Father’s Day, he suffered a massive stroke due to the tumor in his lung, which had thickened his blood. Were my brother, John, and I not visiting, he would probably not have survived, or have lost completely the power to speak, perhaps even been confined, forever, in a wheelchair. Read more →

GOD BLESS YOU, MR. VONNEGUT, OR, FATHERS READING VONNEGUT WITH SONS

November 5, 2005, by No comments yet

I want to write about Kurt Vonnegut and what his work means to me and my father, a man I call Dad, Pop, or Duff (but only on the phone). Except that I barely know what to say. Except that I read Vonnegut because my Dad reads him. And because he’s wonderful.

Kurt, that is, though my Dad, too. For his 61st birthday, I bought Dad a copy of Vonnegut’s newest book, A Man Without A Country. Dad was thrilled: he repeated Kurt’s quip that he was going to sue the Brown & Williamson tobacco company, maker of his unfiltered Pall Mall’s, because right there on the package they promised to kill him.

Of course, Vonnegut’s not dead. “The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick, and Colon,” Kurt wrote. Dad laughed and laughed. “I love him,” he said. “Me, too,” I said.

That is more than we’ve said about each other in a very long time.

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