Still, I loved him dearly
Daddy never went to jail. When the cops finally came for him, he was dying of lung cancer. Clearly terminal, they didn’t drag him to jail for embezzlement. He told me that he only kept money that was owed to him, but I’ll never know the truth. Daddy took his secrets to the grave.
As a child in the 1960s, we had two telephone lines in our home. One I was allowed to answer; the other phone in his office I was forbidden to touch. Daddy was a bookie. He worked as a sheet metal supervisor for Hughes Aircraft in Fullerton, California. They recruited him from Buffalo, New York. I remember the woman he reported to. She came to our house on occasion. I forget her name, but she had a son my age named Darrell, who was wildest child I had ever encountered. Looking back, I would guess he was hyperactive.
Daddy’s criminal activities preceded his taking bets from the employees at Hughes. Back in New York in the 1950s, he briefly owned a liquor store in Niagara Falls, where he befriended some mobsters. Daddy had a boating license. His mobster friends offered him a gig to ferry illegal immigrants from Canada across Lake Erie. Mother told me he turned down the opportunity, because the illegals would be in barrels, and if the Coast Guard approached, Daddy would be expected to dump the barrels overboard – killing the immigrants. Not long after, he got into some kind of trouble with the police and had to abandon the liquor store business.
When I was in elementary school, Daddy’s employment in the aircraft industry ended abruptly following a work injury. Unfortunately, Daddy did not get the settlement he was hoping for. However, he always ran an interior decorating business out of our home as a side hustle. Daddy had an arrangement with a local bank that was once owned by Jane Mansfield and her husband – Eastland Savings – that provided him with apartments that needed carpet and drapes. He also had a bevy of high-end clients with custom homes that required decorating. To be sure, our home was a showplace with marble terrazzo floors, high-end furniture, and of course top-of-the-line carpet and drapes.
As an adult, I realized that Daddy used the business as a front for laundering money. He often took me on business appointments with him. At times, it actually involved selling carpet and drapes or checking in with the various seamstresses that sewed the draperies. Other times, I waited in the car while he went into offices or warehouses or conversed with other men. I now wonder if he brought me along as insurance that nothing bad would befall him or if I was with him as a cover from the cops if he got pulled over. There were longer drives when Mother also went along with us to Simi Valley or Uplands, California. Daddy would briefly meet with someone while Mother and I waited in the car, we would later drive to Dairy Queen to get a chocolate-dipped cone before heading home. Was this a pickup or drop-off? Probably.
Daddy had another scam involving medical insurance. My brother had muscular dystrophy and in his later years spent part of the week in a rest-home with other disabled young people and a lot of elderly patients. Daddy had multiple insurance policies that he would duplicate bill for the same services. This scam continued after my brother passed away. When I got my tonsils out when I was 12, Daddy profited from it.
During the 1970s, the economy was in decline, and people were not replacing their carpet and drapes. Daddy had to get creative. He started working for a guy called Keith and claimed to be helping him install drapes in the desert. My mother and I never met Keith and never talked to him on the phone. To be honest, we never believed that Keith really existed. When Daddy went out of town a couple times a month for a day or two, we assumed he was gambling in Las Vegas. During that era, kids did not question their parents’ actions, and parents did not share their personal business – financial or otherwise – with their kids.
Daddy was a gambler. He played craps and taught me the game as a child. By age twelve, I was throwing dice in Lake Tahoe and at the Hacienda Hotel in Las Vegas. Daddy liked showing off his “little girl,” and I liked the attention of the cute, younger dealers. I always looked older than I my age. At twelve – with makeup – I could pass for 16 or 17. Daddy encouraged me to push the limits.
There was always money – until there wasn’t. I went to summer camp on Catalina Island. My parents drove Chryslers and Buicks – big boats of a car back in the day. We went out for steak and lobster – mother’s favorite – regularly. I shopped at Fashion Island and South Coast Plaza – upscale malls in Orange County. We took vacations in Lake Tahoe. When cash comes in under-the-table, you spend that cash.
During my freshman year in high school, my parents moved to the small community of El Toro, just inland from Laguna Beach, California. At our previous house in Anaheim, Daddy had a workbench in the garage to fashion drapery rods and such. In our new home, no such work area was set up. Still, Daddy continued to take his bi-monthly excursions with Keith. I thought about checking the odometer before and after one of these trips to confirm the Vegas theory, but I never did.
Before we moved to El Toro, Mother told me that my “uncle” who was a pharmacist by trade and had a drug manufacturing business in Mexico, wanted Daddy to distribute amphetamine pills. Mother told me that Daddy turned him down, but did he? Even after we moved, the trunk of Daddy’s 1972 Chrysler New Yorker was full of assorted drapery paraphernalia: small boxes of nuts and screws and drapery cord, power tools, and a step ladder. It was packed so full of random shit that a sizable amount of drugs could be hidden from sight if the cops pulled him over.
The day I got my driver’s license, my best friend’s boyfriend asked me to drive him to Laguna Beach to pick up an ounce of Thai sticks; the large ziplock bag was easily hidden in Daddy’s trunk amidst the various boxes of drapery stuff. Transporting my friend’s weed became a regular thing, and the next year, my best friend took her boyfriend’s place as the main supplier of quality weed at our high school. Years after Daddy’s death, I visited my “uncle” who randomly shared that he was now manufacturing anabolic steroids at his Mexican factory.
Everyone loved my Daddy. He was outgoing and charismatic. A family friend said he looked like Charlton Heston. As a young child, I would snuggle with Daddy on the couch when we watched TV. Later, he enjoyed playing board games with me and my girlfriends in the neighborhood. We regularly went miniature golfing, and sometimes he would take me golfing with him and his friends at the Green River Golf Club in Corona and let me drive the golf cart. Afterwards, I would get a tuna sandwich at the clubhouse restaurant. In high school, he lied about my best friend working for him so she could receive credit for “work experience” after she quit her real job to sell weed.
Daddy and I were very close. After my brother died from muscular dystrophy when I was nine, Mother isolated herself for years. She spent most days in her bedroom – reading. She suffered from profound depression and barely ate. I now suspect she may have also been bipolar as there were frequent manic episodes where she verbally attacked Daddy for his wide variety of sins and later attacked me for assorted transgressions – real or imagined. Daddy cooked all the meals, and together we did all the housework. When Daddy went out of town, I ate TV dinners until I learned to cook for myself. Daddy loved to bake and there was always cake or pie or cookies to go with his coffee.
When I was 17, Daddy was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He died a few weeks after my 19th birthday. When he got sick, the money was gone. Daddy was dead broke. He moved with Mother to a shitty apartment in Las Vegas, where he enjoyed his last few gambling adventures. As a WWII veteran, he received cancer treatment at the VA hospital in San Diego. When he flew home from treatment, he would have the cab drop him off at the Maxim Hotel (now called the Westin) so he could have a roll of the dice. Once, he got lucky, winning a couple grand. It was enough money to get the 1972 Chrysler briefly up and running again.
A few months before he died, before the cops came to arrest him for embezzling from his previous employer – Drapery King – he called the cops to come to our apartment and handed them a gun. I had never seen it before. It was the size of my hand and solid black; I was not even sure it was a real gun, but the cops gladly took it away. When asked where he got the gun, Daddy told the cops that he found it in the desert. What the hell? Not believing that Daddy found the gun, I asked Mother about it; she casually said he probably got it from my “uncle” so he could kill himself if the cancer pain got too bad.
Growing up, my life didn’t seem that abnormal. I knew that shady things were going on and that family issues were not to be discussed with friends and neighbors. It was only as an older adult that I realized how truly dysfunctional my family was.
Always in poor health, Mother passed away from a stroke eleven years after Daddy died. During her remaining years, we rarely talked about Daddy’s shenanigans. Now, I wish we had. I would love to know the truth. Until quite recently, I believed Mother was oblivious to Daddy’s criminal activities. Now, I suspect that she was just playing dumb so she could have plausible deniability.
While I was definitely a “daddy’s girl” growing up, I did not follow Daddy’s criminal example.
When I was younger, I was close friends with an assortment of drug dealers. While I never actually sold drugs, I could have been busted for trafficking when I had someone else’s ounce of Thai sticks or pound of weed in the trunk of our family car or stashed in the back of my closet for temporary safekeeping. I never sought out these friendships, they just evolved. I was merely comfortable in the world of illegal activities.
Daddy’s gambling habit never caught on with me. Although I live in Las Vegas, I rarely gamble and I have never spent more than $100 in a single year gambling. Although I have sympathy for those with a gambling habit, I have little patience for people who destroy their families over this destructive habit.
Daddy did teach me to be a strong woman and to stand up for myself. Few things intimidate me, and most people consider me fearless. I am an experience junkie who loves to travel and seek new adventures. I am comfortable around a diversity of people: from the homeless, drug dealers, and former mobsters to elected politicians.
Going from an upper middle-class life to destitute at age 17, I am cautious with my earnings. In my younger days, I was fearful of ending up like my parents. So, by age 55, I had paid off my house, secured a pension, and accumulated a decent savings. Unlike my parents, I am honest with my children and openly discuss finances in order to set a good example.
(C) Joyce O’Day 2023. All Rights Reserved.
AI was NOT used in the creation of this article.
Joyce O’Day 