Missing the "Jack" of All Trades

My dad died three years ago Tuesday (4th), killed instantly in an automobile collision on a dark country road in Mississippi. He was 76. I think about him all the time...not in a morbid way, but in a fond, grateful way for the imperfect picture of compassion and servanthood that he was. I got to spend a rare extended amount of time (almost a week) with my mom in Mississippi last week. She survived the accident, and is doing amazingly well living by herself in the woods...she is a tough little (about 4' 10") Cajun lady who grew up one of nine children in the swamps of South Louisiana. The road ended at her property and the bayou ran beside the tiny white-washed frame house where her family fished and trapped and raised sugar cane to make a living. We talked a lot about dad last week...about his impulsiveness and short fuse when it came to anger, especially when he was young...he got it all honestly from my Italian grandfather who was a ruthless taskmaster who demanded perfection from his children, and was not above verbally abusing those around him to get what he wanted. We talked about how God mellowed him (dad) down through the years and while it never took the twinkle and mischievousness out of his eye, it got channeled into one of the most selfless men I've ever met...period. My dad never finished high school, but quit to join the Air Force where he boxed, raced stock cars and worked on diesel engines and airplanes. They married when they were both 21 and looked like movie stars of the day...she like Loretta Young, and he like Joseph Cotton. One of the unique things about my dad was his name... Joseph Ferd Gentiles. Joseph was his dad's middle name (my middle name, Anthony, was my grandfather's first name... A.J. for Anthony Joseph...and they called him Tony). Ferd was for his great grandfather, Ferdinand, and also for his mom's nickname, Ferdie. But everybody called him Jack. And they called him alot. He could fix anything...I'm not exagerating...anything... especially if it was mechanical and had moving parts. Cars, washing machines, lawn mowers, toasters, radios, watches...you name it, Jack could fix it...so he literally became the neighborhood handyman...He worked shift work (usually 50 hours a week) at a chemical plant outside of Baton Rouge as a maintenance mechanic (what else?), but in his spare time he fixed whatever the neighbors brought over (and they brought over some strange crap occasionally...yeeesh!) and he never charged anyone a dime that I know of... We never had a maintenance crew or a grounds crew at the little neighborhood Baptist church I grew up in...Jack took care of the maintenance on everything from the tractor, to the school buses, and the air conditioning units and the pump on the baptismal pool. He loved working on cars... he really loved working on cars...and was a brilliant diagnostician. He seemed to be able to get to the bottom of a car problem in no time, and then he dove in to fix it and he didn't quit until he had solved the problem. He was very thorough and on the times when I would try to assist him he would say..."If you don't have time to do it right...then when are you going to have time to do it over?" Sadly then and now...I do not have his gift for doctoring machinery. I was the first person on both sides of my family to go to college... Dad wanted me to be a mechanical engineer...I wanted to coach and play baseball. He wrote on my high school graduation card, "Go on ahead to college son and see what you can do...if they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can make something out of you". I'm not sure he was kidding. He tried to help me be a mechanic, but I was destined for other things...and while he wanted me to love fixing cars as much as him, he accepted the fact that probably changing oil and points and plugs was going to be the extent of my talents.

The reason I bring this up is that tonight I was headed out of town to a men's retreat for our faith community. I drive his old 1993 Ford F-150 with 180,000 miles on it. it is the vehicle I drove the 22 hour round trip to Mississippi in last week. It runs like a champ (until tonight)...partly because he took such great care of it. Well, tonight before I got out of town it decided it was going to have some electrical issues, and so, I have spent the last 6 hours making trips to the auto parts store and working under the hood trying to get the old girl back up and running...I'll be back out early tomorrow morning to finish the job. I told my friend Cory, who called to check on me when I didn't show up at the retreat center, that one of the things that was frustrating was that I know that this is a problem that dad could probably have diagnosed and fixed in 30 minutes...an hour tops. But I'm hanging in there...and even though I'm not nearly as good at it as he was...I will get it done...that much I did get from him. Also, one of the cool things that happened between us in the years before he died was that when I was in the middle of working on something on one of my cars, if I ran into a hitch...which I always did...I would call him and ask his advice. He always seemed pleased that he was still "the man" when it came to those things...and he was. There were times when I would literally hold the phone up to the engine and he would listen to the engine over the phone and 9 times out of 10 could diagnose the problem. As I was working on the truck tonight, at one point I instinctively reached for the cell phone...

Influence is a funny thing. My dad was a man of few words. We have a culture that longs for the music of the profound lyricist, the political catchword of the statesman, the moving performance of the movie actor and actress, the brilliant hunch of the financial advisor, the word from God through the high profile preacher...but the kindest, most generous, most powerful man I've ever known was a shade tree mechanic named Jack. I still want to be like him...even if I can't fix his truck.

Pling...Pling...

dg