My Dad

His family

          During my turmoil over the Vietnam War my father told me he just puts his blinders on and does what is best for his family. He tried not to get involved in things he had no control over. He had to work nights and sleep days which was in conflict with the rest of us who were on a day schedule. Saturday night being his only day off and vacations being the last two weeks in July when the bakery was closed. Sunday's would sometimes find the family at Sacandaga and Saturday nights a drive in theater now and then. Often my parents would go dancing on Saturday nights. I remember spending some Sunday's at the German Club off Wolf Road with my Grandparents and the rest of us.

His house

            My father loved his house. He had purchased the land as a teen with his paper route money. A 50 foot by 250 foot wooded lot on Harrison Avenue in Elsmere. I had a morning Times Union route while Dave across the street had an afternoon Knickerbocker News route. I'm not sure what paper my father delivered. After his brief stint in the Navy he used his GI Bill to finance the mortgage on the house. He had a lot of sand brought in to build up the land where the house was built off the swampy terrain and the total cost of construction was about $9,000. The house and property sold in 2014 for about $140,000. The front lawn was off limits and was his show place. The large backyard was ours although he maintained it only in slightly lower condition than the front yard. My mother once tried to help him in his gardening and accidentally pulled flowers instead of weeds. That was the end of her gardening career.

Job

            Henry Engel owned the bakery at the 4 corners in Delmar. (there are actually five corners but the people in Delmar can't count) Dad worked for him. Using the sugar ration my father got for being in the Navy his father Ludwig started the Ace Pastry Shop on New Scotland Avenue between Ontario and Quail and the family worked there. His sister Inge quit her phone company job to work there and latter his youngest sister Mary Lou worked there also. My father baked nights with Grandpa while Grandma and the girls ran the sales during the day. While working there he met my mother who was nursing up the road at St Peter's Hospital. The Ace Pastry was selling a daily pastry for the staff. Eventually my father went out on his own. He bought Walter Wheeler's Bakery at xxx Ontario Street and ran it for about a year. I remember the St Peter's business went with him to the new shop. The Ace ran until my Grandfather retired. I remember them counting change at the end of the day and that their bread slicer eventually broke a blade  so  there was a thick slice in every loaf. Mary Lou and Grandma were working there and Grandpa was baking. Mary Lou was fifteen years younger  than her only brother Joe.

            My father didn't like running everything at his new bakery. The ordering, the books the taxes as well as the baking. I don't remember who worked the counter in the days but I know it wasn't my mother. She continued nursing a couple of days a week. He sold the business after about a year. When he looked back on it he was actually making money but it was too much work he didn't enjoy. He then took a job at Phil's Pastry Shop at the corner of Central Avenue and Northern Boulevard for Phil Riffencougal.

             Phil & Lena had a camp on Thomson's Lake in the Heldeburgs that we went to a  few times  on the fourth of July. Unlike ours at Sacandaga you had to drive or long walk down to the boathouse. My father got two weeks of vacation the last two weeks of July when the bakery was closed  and rarely took a sick day because he wouldn't have been paid for it. I don't remember him staying home sick ever. Even after a Memorial Day week end at Sacandaga  water skiing and swimming when he was sun burned to shit.      Camp Edelweiss reached from the road down to the lake, the county line between Saratoga and Fulton bi sects the property and there are power poles running down the property that feed the camp and some of the neighbors. Grandpa worked for Phil for about a year after the closed the Ace and they both bought trailers in Florida at the same park. Near the end they had a falling out and wouldn't speak to each other.

            After working at Phil's for many years the business was sold to Bob who was a co worker. We say him again many years latter at my mother's funeral. He continued to work until the business was sold again. When he didn't show up for work with the new owner he was contacted and asked why. His answer was he wasn't sold with the business and never was negotiated with about working for them. He retired.

            He told me he helped set up a bakery department at store in one of the local super market chains. He didn't like the fact that most the items came frozen or required little preparation before hitting the oven. After that he got a pre opening early morning job at Philenes at the Cross Gate Mall vacuuming rugs. After his open heart operation in Florida in January of 1993 he quit the job at Philenes. He had started Social Security at 62  in 1988 and was supplementing it with a low enough paying job as not to be penalized. After true open heart surgery where they install metal valves in his heart due to a congenital heart defect he lives another 20 years to the age of  86

Friends
        When I was young I thought I had two uncles that weren't. I once argued with my best friend across the street who claimed Bill was his uncle while I claimed he was mine. Dave was right it was his uncle Bill, just a good buddy of my fathers. Bill and my father went way back. Once when my father was in his 20s they got into a car accident while out drinking and at least one of them had to go the hospital. My mother was not happy. Bill was a few years younger than my father and Dave's father George across the street was a few years older. Bill worked as a mechanic at Dell's Garage on Delaware Avenue in Albany.

            Uncle Emil Meister may have been on the soccer team my father played on in an Albany League in their late tens or early twenties. There used to be a picture of the team on the wall behind our bar in the basement. The Meisters had a meat market while the Lenzenhubers were bakers. The butcher the baker and...

 Hobbies

            I remember finding some of his old photography equipment in the attic when I was around ten. He had an enlarger, a paper cutter as well as a roller and tubes of colored paint. I'm not sure what the technology was but he had been into colored prints at one time. I have pictures of when he used to go to stock car races up north. They used to camp at Lake George before my grandfather got the camp on Sacandaga Reservoir. He didn't like cleaning fish so he wasn't a big fisherman like his father was.

            Dad used to be fairly handy with a hammer and saw. The house was Cape Cod design and had a high pitched roof. He built out the attic into two bedrooms. He always had a band saw in the basement. He made Adirondack chairs for the backyard patio. He made me a desk for my room in the attic. In his latter years he made ducks which had wings that spun in the wind. I remember his hands shaking as he painted them.

            When I was about ten I started following him around at Albany Muni and playing out of his bag. I went with my Uncle Junnie to Baltimore and Washington DC and with the money I brought home with me I bought a golf bag. A plaid one that was still hanging in the cellar when he died 50 years latter. I remember my 8 iron was a woman's club  Aunt Goog, my great aunt Helen. We mostly played Albany Muni in the beginning but latter used to golf Western Turnpike with one of his co workers Joe Schultz. After I moved to California we would golf when I was around Albany or Grandmas in Florida when they were down that way. Later in life he would golf in a semi league with the neighbor Russ Parker and his son Doug and brother in law Bob Richie. Bob Richie died in his sleep one night without prior notice of bad health and that really bothered him that you could go so fast.

            He belonged to a bowling league which bowled one night a week. It was on a weeknight so he had to do a major modification to his sleeping hours to accommodate the event. I want to say it was Thursday night. He only had one night a week off and that was Saturday night. I believe Phil's Pastry Shop was closed on Sunday as were most things during that time frame.

            When his bowling began to go down with age it bothered him more than his golf game deteriorating. Bowling had been more important, he had been better at it. He had a trophy from bowling a 275 game. I want to think he was about a 185 average bowler at one time. I was about 155 when I was watching his power go down. It used to upset him that he could hit  the pocket but not carry the strike because of ball speed even though he had gone down from a 16 pound ball. He never threw a hook, he was like me with a straight ball  or a back up. He tried a suitcase grip at one time to try and develop a hook but abandoned his attempt after a short experiment. I never joined a league with him but we would open bowl at Sport Haven or Dell's Lanes now and then. His league was at Sport Haven.

            When I joined the Navy my sister MaryAnn took up the sports to keep him company. A popular place for the three of us to go bowling when I'd get back that way was the Palladium in Albany.

Religion

            We went to mass every Sunday when I was young. Our church was St Thomas the doubter. My mother was the driving force behind this religious attendance. This was driven by her being raised by nuns, going to nursing school ran by the Sisters of Mercy and her devout Aunt Helen. Dad had been raised a catholic of the St Thomas parish. He had been an altar boy and boy scout through the church. He used to tell how he had stepped on the priests cassock and almost tripped him during a mass. When we were going to church as a family of four I don't think his heart was really in it. He latter abandoned his faith and believed as I do that there is no after life. He would say that "if there is a hell it's going to be crowded". We had envelopes printed with our family name  for weekly donations which the church had sent to our home and we faithfully made sure that  they were filled and put in the collection basket each Sunday. I think he gave five dollars a week. As I went into my teens I found one thing that the church was good for was for movie ratings. They had a posted list  on a board inside the main doors and I always made note of which ones were condemned. This was before the motion picture industry came out with a rating system. By today's standards it didn't take much for the church to condemn a movie. Nudity was often involved and was the reason I was monitoring their picks.

Drinking and Swearing

       I never saw my father drunk or have more than a few drinks. At one time he would have a beer and a half with his lunch, capping the half bottle to have a beer and a half with his dinner. After his metal heart valves he could only have a drink or two a day and went to drinking near beer. My parents would have a cocktail in the afternoon about 4 and would look forward to it. Dad's parents also used to have a one cocktail in the evening ritual. He never could understand why I couldn't stop after one or two beers. When he was younger he and his friend Bill Stutsrim were out drinking, got in a car accident and ended up at the hospital. It was the only time I ever heard about him drinking to excess.  
   
          When I was young I rarely heard swearing around my house. My mother would blush if she were to use damn instead of darn and the release of a aw shit was almost non existent. In my early teens I once wrote Fire trUCK on the blackboard at the base of the cellar stairs. the ire tr were very small so from the top of the stairs it looked like FUCK. I got yelled at and had to erase it. That's when I found out my parents knew the word, until then I thought they didn't. I did hear a string of expletives from my father once when I accidentally ignited some homemade gun powder in my bedroom. It shattered the glass jar it was in and burnt the rug and the quilt on the bed. After my mother died my father suffered from dementia and he would curse up a storm according to my sisters. I never experienced it and it still seems very much out of character.