As an only child, my dad & I had a special relationship. My first clear memory is of the two of us standing in my "playroom" (really a gigantic walk-in closet in our apartment). Technically, he was the one standing, holding me up to the window. This must have been some time around 1955 or '56, because shortly after that we moved to Alameda.
Anyway, we were looking out the window at the moon. He was telling me about how the moon was going to start changing colors, how it would soon be the color of a new penny. He explained that this was called an "eclipse of the moon", and it didn't happen often, but it was much more common than an eclipse of the sun. I remember being fascinated as we watched the slow progression, as the earth's shadow covered the moon and turned it to a dark coppery red.
What didn't occur to 5-year-old me was that my dad had a 9th-grade education. He had to drop out and get a full-time job to help support his 9 brothers and sisters. He never stopped learning, though. We would watch science and nature shows together. I remember watching a local science show hosted by the director (I think) of the California Academy of Sciences. We were particularly fond of space exploration (this was even before Sputnik was launched!).
A brief digression: Back then, there weren't very many channels on TV, but what they had was excellent. The TV stations were all across the Bay, in San Francisco: 4 (NBC), 5 (CBS), and 7 (ABC). Channel 9 (PBS) came on in the late '50s or early '60s, and I could watch lots of classroom TV programs. Also in the early '60s came Channel 2, an independent station based in Oakland. (If we got any Dumont network programs, they may have been shown on Channel 7. I know I saw a lot of programs that originated there, but I don't recall if they were originals or reruns.)
Anyway, I can recall watching TV with my dad all my life. He would watch the cartoons with me on weekends, and the westerns. He loved westerns. He liked "Gunsmoke" in particular. In the mid-'50s there were a lot of documentaries shown about World War II, and we would watch those. I can recall watching one show, probably "Victory at Sea", about a big naval battle in the Soiuth Pacific, and during a break, he quietly told me that he had been on one of the islands near the battle. I asked if it was loud, and he just gave me a sad smile and said, "Yup, very loud" in that softened East Texas drawl that he never completely lost.
We always watched "Wild Kingdom" together, too. He loved shows about animals and nature. We would visit the Academy of Sciences at least twice a year (no more because he disliked driving in the City). I remember the first time we went to the Morrison Planetarium: what an absolute blast that was! It might have been their traditional "Christmas Star" program, or it might have been about the latest space program advances. Then we would prowl the halls of exhibits, and he would tell me how much he would really like to visit one of the big natural history museums back East. I always said, "Me, too, Daddy. Let's go." And he would smile down at me, knowing that it probably would never happen.
Well, I think I owe it to him to go visit one of those museums. I'm tentatively planning to go to Chicago next summer, so maybe I will be able to get to the Field Museum for him.
