On July 29th it will be three years since he passed way. Seems like he's still here. This is from 2003...
So I was walking down Hollywood Boulevard...and I felt the presence of my father. Actually it was only my imagination as I made my way down the boulevard on a warm, almost summerlike evening. Throngs of people were out this night taking advantage of the unseasonable weather, taking a breath of summer before the reality of winter once again enveloped us.
We never did explore Hollywood in the 1960's when I was little and I don't really know why. We lived fairly close, only about fifty miles away in Oxnard so being able to get there wasn't the problem. I think it's because it was in our own backyard and sometimes it's hard to recognize something as being important when you're that close to it everyday. The 60's gave way to the 70's and the 80's. We moved many times in those years, I went to school, traveled and just got on with life. And somehow along the way Pop got old. That wasn't supposed to happen as I always thought he would be there forever. Our parents are immortal or at least that's what I always thought. Nevertheless, here was this major tourist attraction drawing people from all over the world and we somehow missed it.
I imagined him as he was when he was much younger, perhaps in his mid-forties. Back to a time when he could walk around with ease without having to worry about resting. I'd love to show him the sights and sounds of Hollywood and Highland on a busy night. We'd hit Graumman's Chinese Theatre and then head down the street to the Kodak Theatre. He'd see the Elvis and Marilyn impersonators and shake his head as there wasn't any way this old Navy guy would see them other than freaks of nature. We'd pass Ripley's Believe It Or Not and The Odditorium. "Pop, want to have a burger at Mel's Diner?" Talking him into having a good hamburger was easy and along the way he'd get to see one of my favorite places to hang out. It was lucky he was young in my little flight of fancy as he couldn't take all the walking if he was past fifty years old. All those years on the decks of those Navy destroyers affected his legs and made long walks difficult for him. At the end of his life he was fascinated by his service during World War II after years of ignoring it and putting it out of his mind. I really don't know why he did that, he would even be reticent about making contact with his old shipmates for reasons I couldn't understand. But in the final six months of his life he became aware that he was a piece of living history and getting rarer every day. He became a devotee' of The History Channel, devouring every WWII documentary he could get his hands on. He'd go on and on about where he was when some such event or battle was happening and what was going through his head. It delighted me to see him absorbed in all this, rediscovering his past and learning something in the process. He even ordered a set of tapes from The History Channel documenting the War In Color and was busy going through those tapes when he suddenly passed away. I'll go through those tapes eventually myself and remember him and all those old fellows I see walking amidst the new war memorial in Washington. They all have his look, his walk, his manner.
In his later years he would be satisfied with sitting in front of the TV at night. He always stayed up late so he could catch Johnny Carson's monologue on The Tonight Show, eventually missing the monologue entirely by falling asleep in his chair. Goodnight Pop.
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