TWO OF THE LARGEST WINDOW UNITS ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET EARTH

When people talk nostalgically about the importance of family, it is difficult to explain the set of conditions that I grew up with. Even when they hear stories of my early years they tend to insert the concept of their own father or the generic Gestalt of fatherhood. Even my closest friends have difficulty imaging how bizarre things were. My friend of 45 years, Kevin Madden, reveres my father to this day and speaks glowingly of him when the subject comes up. I loved my father in many ways but living with him was impossible. He was a lot of fun to be around under the right conditions, particularly when I got older and out from under his roof, but he was woefully remiss in his duties as a father and a husband, which made my life a lot more difficult than it might have been and robbed me of the luxury of naiveté and the irresponsibility of childhood. There comes a time at a very early age when saddled with an irresponsible father that you have to come to terms that your father is not a hero in the John Wayne mold or the wise Solomonic figure played by Robert Young in the television program Father Knows Best. It tends to distort ones vision of humanity at much too early of an age.

 

By the time I was eighteen years old, I had long been disabused of any notion that my father, Alexander Liddle Macfeat Jr., was operating within the normal standards of societal behavior or even within the law. He was impossible to pin down on any subject and what explanations he did give were deliberately vague with the obvious intent to deceive. Various vehicles and items would inexplicably appear at the house only to disappear soon afterwards. After a while it made no sense to question him about anything since getting a straight answer out of him was like trying to capture helium in a bucket.

 

He was on the other hand quite handsome, over six feet tall with gray hair that was combed straight back, slim but strong and he had a wonderful and spontaneous sense of humor that made him entertaining and charming. Although he was thoroughly irresponsible as a father he was generous in social settings. He was a particular favorite with women, often married, that kept him in a certain amount of trouble his entire life. As a very young boy I remember being told by a friend of his, Hal Robeson, that my father was a "man's man," which at the time made absolutely no sense to me. Despite Hal's analysis of the situation, Alexander would have to be considered a ladies man, perhaps a bit too successful with them considering his own marital status throughout much of his life.

 

At the beginning of the summer I was nineteen and out of work, which unusual for me because I had been working every summer since my early teens. My father's drinking, gambling and womanizing often took precedence over providing for the family. I worked at an early age to ensure that I wasn't adversely affected by his unrepentant hedonism beyond having the utilities shut off and the house occasionally being put up for Sheriff's Sale. The majority of time in my last few years of living in the family home I was living there on my own. My parents would stop by to check in on occasion and stay there from time to time. I moved out of New Jersey as soon as was possible and was living in an apartment near the school I was attending, Philadelphia College of Art.

 

I got a call from my father asking if I would be interested in helping him move a couple of air conditioners. He was generous as far as paying for a days work so I jumped at the chance. I didn't ask why he could possibly need two window units, since he was living in his girlfriend Doris' house which had central air conditioning and his answer would have inevitably been incomprehensible anyway.

 

I took the 8:00 train to New Jersey and my father picked me up in his Ford pick up truck at the High Speed Line station closest to his house. We drove a short way and pulled into the large gravel parking lot of the local police station. I began to suspect something was suspicious given my father's aversion to the police and the fact that I knew that he was having an affair with the young and attractive girlfriend of the chief of this town's police. The chief was my father's age but neither young nor attractive. He was at least 350 pounds and lived with his mother his whole life. I suppose his girlfriend loved a man in a uniform or with power or some other perk because it wasn't for his looks or personality, which was downright surly.

 

We pulled up to the back of the police station and knocked at the back door. It was answered by the man that used to do yard work for my father, Bobby Davis. Bobby was the maintenance man at the station and was a small guy but wiry, with forearms like Popeye the Sailor Man. He also had an enormous set of ears that stuck far off his head and was missing teeth. My father addressed Bobby because I couldn't understand a goddamn word that he said. He had a wicked speech impediment, but somehow Al understood him which used to astonish me. Despite all of his handicaps, Bobby was having an affair with my father's rather plump next door neighbor, he used to slip over there when her husband went to work. Bobby and my father had a brief conversation and then he led us to an office with Chief of Police painted on the wooden door. The building was old and large and had previously been used as an elementary school. On the other side of the room were two of the largest window unit air conditioners I had ever seen, before or after. The windows in this place were gigantic. It seemed highly unlikely that the chief was giving my father anything since he had plenty of reason not to like him let alone give him two enormous, brand new air conditioners but I was there already so I had little choice but to proceed with the project. We humped the air conditioners out of the windows and struggled to get them into my father's truck, they were incredibly heavy. Once the truck was loaded my dad said goodbye to Bobby and we started out of the parking lot. We got halfway across the lot when a police cruiser pulled in and started heading toward the building. I just happened to glance over at my father and saw a look of panic on his face, confirming my worst case scenario. It was now clearly apparent that we just stole the two new air conditioners from the police.

 

By the time the officer got into the building we were long gone. My father drove away past his house and kept going until we got to a large forest of scrub pines called the Pine Barrens. After an initial period of fear induced quietude, we began arguing about why he would involve me in this stupid crime without telling me that we were stealing from the police and he was telling me to shut the fuck up. Advance notice would have queered the deal. He knew I would have never agreed to it so he didn't ask. After a long drive we eventually pulled into the parking lot of a bar way back in the woods and pulled the truck behind it. We entered by the front door and once my eyes acclimated to the unnatural dark I saw that the entire clientele of the establishment was black. It was a low rent bar in what must have been an all African-American rural community. The bar went dead quiet with the dozen or so patron's eyes focused entirely on us. Earlier I noticed my father going in the glove compartment for his pistol so I knew we were not completely defenseless should this situation go South on us. My father was a pretty big guy and could be imposing and I was in good shape and bearded in an approximation of Kris Kristofferson's biker character in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, one of my favorite Sam Peckinpah movies starring Warren Oates. My father was an inveterate alcoholic and in need of his morning drink so we ordered a couple of beers. The bartender was slow to serve us in an act of defiance to let us know that we weren't welcome. It was tense and I had been in panic mode for the better part of an hour and was beginning to be accustomed to feeling threatened. That coupled with my father's ability to charm a room and his willingness to buy the entire bar drinks began to defuse any animosity. In the course of an hour several of the patrons had taken to my father and we actually settled in to having a good time and getting drunk. It seemed inappropriate to continue arguing with my father under the circumstances, our solidarity was essential. There are no local police in much of the Pine Barrens so there was no danger of some cop with nothing to do all day poking his head in the place. The Pine Barrens were patrolled by the New Jersey State Police. In 1974 the force was almost entirely white. It was inconceivable that they would rush into this particular establishment if they got a call that it was being robbed let alone out of curiosity. Some of the earliest controversy over racial profiling began with the New Jersey State Police and at the time they had a reputation for being cold, intimidating and somewhat less than enlightened.

 

Since my father had not prepared for this caper by bringing a tarp to at least cover the gigantic swag in the open bed of his truck, we had both lunch and dinner in the joint while waiting for nightfall. As the sun started to set we said out goodbyes and began the long drive back to my father's house at the excruciating pace of obeying the speed limit to avoid giving any excuse to stop us for a moving violation. We finally arrived at Doris' house. Al drove across the immaculately manicured front lawn, much to Doris' chagrin, which was compounded by my father arriving home many hours late and the two of us stinking drunk. We had to unload the air conditioners, which seemed a lot heavier after a long day of fear and drunkenness, and we hauled them into the crawlspace underneath the house. The ceiling of the basement was much too cramped for either of us to stand up in it so the degree of difficulty of stashing the air conditioners down there was increased geometrically, as if our inebriated state wasn't enough of a challenge. Doris berated my father for a few minutes, which seemed reasonable all things considered and he proceeded to drunk-drive me back to the railroad station. I received $50 for the days work and he triumphantly called me the next day to let me know that the window units were already gone from the premises. I could hear Bobby Davis bitching in the background, which Al explained to me about what a pain in the ass extricating the air conditions from the shallow crawl space. At least they weren't drunk when they took them out of there. The only motive I could see for my father stealing the air conditioners from the chief's office other than a meager financial reward was to make the chief of police, his 350 pound rival for the affection of the chief's own girlfriend spend the summer drenched in sweat while at work. I can imagine that the local municipal government would be slow to replace two brand new air conditioners after the police suffered the indignity of being robbed on their own premises. Bobby Davis lost his job as the maintenance man since he never heard nor saw the thieves but my father increased the amount of yard work for Bobby to do, including fixing the tire tracks on the front lawn. I doubt that losing the job put Bobby out much since working for my father put him close to his paramour, the next door neighbor.

 

Done