{"id":69760,"date":"2018-06-17T01:00:07","date_gmt":"2018-06-17T07:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whisnews21.com\/?p=69760"},"modified":"2020-07-31T15:12:43","modified_gmt":"2020-07-31T15:12:43","slug":"jack-blanchard-for-my-dad-on-fathers-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/2018\/06\/17\/jack-blanchard-for-my-dad-on-fathers-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Blanchard: For My Dad On Fathers Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Thousands of intelligent good-looking readers.<\/i><\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n

PICTURE AT A RAILROAD STATION. <\/strong>
\n(For my dad on Fathers Day.)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The cavernous old railroad station was dimly lit,\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>or seems that way in my memory. <\/strong>
\nMy parents, my sisters, and I headed toward the big doors\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>that led to the platform where the trains chugged and waited. <\/strong>
\nIt was the end of an era.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>One of us wasn’t coming back… ever.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We had never been your average family.\u00a0<\/strong>My mother had been an artist and a model.<\/strong>
\nMy father was a flamboyant jack-of-all-trades:\u00a0<\/strong>A stock broker at times, head of an oil company,<\/strong>
\nowner of a gambling ship that never sailed, a mortgage broker,\u00a0<\/strong>an aviator, and author of a course on aeronautics.<\/strong><\/p>\n

He was a party thrower and the life of every one,\u00a0<\/strong>and made every holiday a festival.<\/strong>
\nHe was rich one year and broke the next.\u00a0<\/strong>As a young man he was a boxer and a daredevil.<\/strong><\/p>\n

During World War Two he was drafted\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>to be General Manager of the Bell Aircraft plant,<\/strong>
\nat the same time there were rumors\u00a0<\/strong>of his involvement with the black market.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I came home from school one afternoon\u00a0<\/strong>and couldn’t get the front door open.<\/strong>
\nIt was stuck against silver fox furs.\u00a0<\/strong>The whole house was knee deep in them.<\/strong>
\nI don’t know where he got them, but I wasn’t too surprised.<\/strong>
\nWe all knew him and were ready for anything.<\/strong>
\nThere was a distinguished couple in the living room,\u00a0<\/strong>browsing through the pelts, <\/strong>
\na New York State Supreme Court justice and his wife.<\/strong><\/p>\n

He was brilliant in an off-beat way,\u00a0<\/strong>and an adventure as a father.<\/strong>
\nThen he got sick.\u00a0<\/strong>His disease had symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s,<\/strong>
\nand the smart, witty man of the world became like a child.<\/strong>
\nHe couldn’t work. He tried.<\/strong><\/p>\n

My mother submitted a resume for him,\u00a0<\/strong>and got him a job on his track record as a mechanical engineer.<\/strong>
\nShe dressed him in a suit and tie and took him to the job.<\/strong>
\nHe called a few hours later to be picked up.<\/strong>
\nHe had ordered his crew to put way too much pressure\u00a0<\/strong>on a ship’s drive shaft they were working on,<\/strong>
\nand blew it through the factory roof.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The family was broke and had to split up.<\/strong>
\nMy father was to live with his sister in Ohio,\u00a0<\/strong>“just until things get better”.<\/strong>
\nThe rest of us were to sell all the furniture and belongings,\u00a0<\/strong>and move in with my mother’s parents in Florida.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Certain memories stick in my mind like clear snapshots\u00a0<\/strong>and never go away.<\/strong>
\nOne of those is the night at the railroad station\u00a0<\/strong>when we kissed my father goodbye,<\/strong>
\nand lied to each other that it was just temporary.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I remember pushing through giant swinging doors\u00a0<\/strong>that led to the train platform.<\/strong>
\nThe steam from the idling engine puffed out across my knees.<\/strong>
\nThe ceiling was dark and high with sooty light bulbs in it.<\/strong>
\nAnd that’s all I remember!\u00a0<\/strong>The rest is gone.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I do recall seeing him one more time several years later.<\/strong>
\nI was hitchhiking from Florida or somewhere\u00a0<\/strong>and I stopped in Miamisburg to see how he was.<\/strong>
\nHe opened the door, and after a minute he recognized me.\u00a0<\/strong>I didn’t think he would.<\/strong><\/p>\n

He grabbed me in his strong arms and hugged tight.<\/strong>
\nOne moment in time again… like a photo…\u00a0<\/strong>and everything after is blank.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don’t have any memory of hearing of his death, or a funeral.<\/strong>
\nI have a thing about funerals:\u00a0<\/strong>People tell me I was there, but I have no memories of them.<\/strong><\/p>\n

All in all, he was the tailor made father for me.<\/strong>
\nWe had so many good times,\u00a0<\/strong>it’s funny that this railroad station picture surfaces so often.<\/strong><\/p>\n

After he died\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>I kept seeing men who looked like him for several years. <\/strong>
\nA car would be ahead of me in traffic\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>and I’d see the back of the driver’s head. It was him! <\/strong>
\nI’d hurry to catch up and it was just a stranger.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Or was it, I wondered? <\/strong>
\nMaybe it was my dad for the minute before I caught up.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jack Blanchard<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"\"<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan\u2026\u00a0<\/strong>
\nHome Page:\u00a0http:\/\/www.jackandmisty.net<\/strong>
\nFacebook:\u00a0https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jackandmisty<\/strong>
\nBillboard Duet of the Year, Grammy and CMA Finalists.<\/strong>
\n\u00a9 Jack Blanchard, 2018.<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thousands of intelligent good-looking readers. PICTURE AT A RAILROAD STATION. (For my dad on Fathers Day.) The cavernous old railroad station was dimly lit,\u00a0\u00a0or seems that way in my memory. My parents, my sisters, and I headed toward the big doors\u00a0\u00a0that led to the platform where the trains chugged and waited. It was the end of an era.\u00a0\u00a0One of us wasn’t coming back… ever. We had never been your average family.\u00a0My mother had been an artist and a model. My father was a flamboyant jack-of-all-trades:\u00a0A stock broker at times, head<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69760"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69760"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73624,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69760\/revisions\/73624"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}