Inheritance

My father worked for Merrill Lynch in the 1960s.
That was after his job at the factory came to an end.
He always said that investing was like flying:
So many things could go wrong, but you were usually all right.
I would dream of him surrounded by tickertape,
numbers coming in from men in suits far away.

Whenever I couldn't figure a math problem, he would show me a way.
This was the era in which the sciences were important, the 1960s,
and to my father math problems were an extension of the tickertape:
a long stream of ciphers that he never wanted to end.
He was at work more than home with me, but that was all right.
When he was home it was like flying.

That makes me think of the time we really did go flying.
He got his pilot's license, rented a plane, said he wanted to get away.
At first he wouldn't let me go, said I was too young, but then he said all right,
so he and I flew to Ohio in one of those high-wing Cubs they made in the 1960s.
I wanted that flight never to end,
but after a week my father felt once again the call of the tickertape.

I couldn't see what he saw in that tickertape.
I was intoxicated with the power of flying.
When I told him I would be a bush pilot he said it was silliness that had to end.
He wanted me to be an engineer or chemist instead, so one night I ran away.
I decided to hitchhike to my aunt's house in Albany. Remember, this was the 1960s.
It took three cars and several hours of waiting in between but I got there all right.

I asked my aunt not to call my father, and she said all right,
but that night in her guest bed I dreamed again of my father in tickertape.
When he showed up the next day, I got the belt. Remember, this was the 1960s.
On the way back it was silent until he asked me if I was still thinking about flying.
I said yes, and that if he wouldn't help me, I would still find a way.
He turned and smiled, saying son, of course I'll help. I'm your father in the end.

Where the silence was uncomfortable in the car at the beginning, now it was intimate
         at the end,
and things between my father and me after that were pretty much all right.
After a few years it was time for college, so I moved away.
I left him alone with his tickertape,
but he came to see me, encourage me, when I started flying.
Remember, it was the 1960s.

Soon enough, the 1960s came to an end.
I stopped flying and got a job at Xerox, but that was all right.
We still talk on the telephone on weekends, for I know the last of the tickertape is
         not so far away.

Aug. 2003