Book of Days

My sister and I never knew Grandpa Cutrone, my dad’s father, but we knew how he felt about Father’s Day, because the greeting he devised for the day was carried on by all his children, by Dad and by all the aunts and uncles in our lives that were Dad’s brothers and sisters. You’d say, “Happy Father’s Day,” and they’d say, “Happy Jack Ass Day!” It was Grandpa Cutrone’s way of saying Mother’s Day was important; Father’s Day, not so much. His way, and Dad’s way, of deflecting attention: Honor your Mother, and don’t shine a spotlight on me.

And now it is Father’s Day again. I spent Saturday, yesterday, working with Paul Moxon and a small group of eager students taking apart a Vandercook 4 proof press at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts, cleaning it thoroughly, replacing worn parts, putting it all back together. Paul and I have done this before, to this very same press, and the last time we worked on it was six years ago, just a few weeks after I’d lost my dad. Metal, grease, WD-40, springs and moving parts, the weight of motor oil: these are the things I associate with Dad. He was an auto mechanic by trade, a Doctor of Motors, he’d sometimes say, and I was always in awe of his knowledge of the things of the mechanical world. I place Paul Moxon in the same camp. When I work with Paul, it reminds me of working side-by-side with my dad. He’s even got the same good shock of wavy salt & pepper hair on his head, just like Dad had.

Paul had us going from 8 in the morning until past 6 at night. He suggested we get a beer after, but I was beat. I took a raincheck, drove home and fell sound asleep. I thought I’d skip writing about Father’s Day this year, but when I woke up, I remembered about Jack Ass Day. I thought of Dad, I thought of the grandfather I never knew, I thought of Paul and that gleaming press, built in 1950, sitting in the printshop, raring to go. And then I found this story about Jack Ass Day that I wrote a couple of years after Dad died. It made me smile to read it, so I am sharing it with you again, just like Dad shared his stories with me again and again.

Dad loved to tell stories, and he’d tell them over and over, like you were hearing them for the very first time. That used to bug me a bit, when I had less patience, but eventually I came to love that about him, like he knew he wouldn’t be around to tell the stories forever, so I came to look at it as instruction: Remember this. You’ll have to tell this story for me one day. And so sometimes I repeat stories, too. And so this next part of today’s chapter of the Convivio Book of Days is a reprint of the Father’s Day post I wrote in 2018, the year after my dad died, because the fact is days like this are not easy for us all… sometimes we have to face loss and grief and a whole host of things, especially on a day like this, a day like Father’s Day. So… here’s my story, again, about my dad, who was a bit like a rock star to me, but perhaps most especially when he’d walk into a place and call himself by another name. It’s a good story. Ok, then. Here we go:

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I couldn’t tell you why, but my dad had a pseudonym that he used for things like dinner reservations or those occasions when you’d get to a restaurant and have to wait for a table. “It’ll be about 20 minutes. Name please?” “Monte,” he’d say, sometimes adding on, “John Monte.” Where the name came from I have no idea, and why he needed it is anyone’s guess, too. Speaking from experience, I can tell you that “Cutrone” is sometimes not an easy name for folks to say or spell here in the States, so that might be the reason, or it may have had something to do with a calculated disassociation from a more infamous John Cutrone, a Mafioso in Brooklyn who met his untimely end in 1976. Whatever the reason, like an actor or sports star attempting to throw off the paparazzi so he could just have a quiet meal, it was accepted fact that when we went to a restaurant, my dad, the auto mechanic from Valley Stream, was John Monte.

I think about that sometimes when I make dinner reservations or call in to order a pizza. I half expect the name “Monte” to come out of my mouth someday, as I become more and more like my dad as the years pass. A good example: telephones. I hate calling people on the phone and I greet incoming calls with suspicion. This was my dad, too. To this day, my mom calls people up, just to chat. Dad, on the other hand, would announce whenever the phone would ring, “I’m not home.” Back then phones had no caller ID; they just rang and you picked up the receiver and said hello and if it was you who picked up the phone and if the person at the other end of the phone line asked for Mr. Cutrone and if you caved, if you said, “Hold on a minute,” and motioned to him, Dad would glare at you and then after he got off the phone he’d give you hell. No one ever just called to chat with Dad; they called because they wanted him to help them do something, like fix a roof or move a wall, or because their car battery was dead. It’s no wonder he disliked the phone.

Dad worked up until he was almost 90. We worked at the same university, and sometimes I’d call his extension, usually because I needed something, and sometimes just to say hello. I’d dial 7-2295, and if he didn’t pick up in two rings, I knew he wasn’t at his desk. But when he did pick up, he’d answer with a somewhat singsongy hello, where the first syllable went up as the second syllable went lower. And then I’d say hello, and then he’d say what he always said when we were at work: “Hi guy.” He never said this at home, just at work. It’s what he said to all the guys who worked with him, and at work, I was just one of the guys, which I liked. The guys who worked with him thought he was in his 60s, maybe 70s. He certainly did not look like he was 89. It was probably a decade or two that Dad would tell his fellow workers, if they asked how old he was, that he was 65. Sometimes that’s just how Dad was. He’d tell you what he thought you wanted to hear. That he was 65. That he felt fine. That his name was John Monte.

It’s our second Father’s Day without him. Days like Father’s Day are never easy when your dad is no longer here to wish a happy Father’s Day to. But we’ll gather all the same, my mom and my sister and Seth and me, and we will eat together. At the table, I will sit in Dad’s seat, because this is what I do now. I’ve done it since the day he died, and it felt odd then, and sometimes still does, but I know I am meant to sit there, and that I am meant to remind everyone that whenever we wished Dad a happy Father’s Day he’d always reply, “You mean Jack Ass Day,” and we will laugh. His father, Grandpa Cutrone, taught him that, and all my uncles said it, too. This year will be not as bad as the year before. Each year, some measure of sadness is replaced by a greater measure of… not sadness.

In Italy, Father’s Day is celebrated on the 19th of March: St. Joseph’s Day, and there is something particularly beautiful about that, as we celebrate that day a saint who cared for his family, protected them, provided for them, taught his son good, practical things. It is a perfectly logical day to celebrate all fathers, those we were given and those we have chosen. It certainly was the model that my dad followed. Perhaps if we celebrated on that day, too, when we wished Dad a happy Father’s Day, he would have simply said, “Thank you.”

Top photo: Grandma & Grandpa Cutrone with their youngest, Francis, my Uncle Frank. Grandpa Cutrone was, as far as I know, the originator of the term Jack Ass Day (unless it came from one of his many brothers or uncles). Bottom photo: The Cutrone Kids, all of whom grew up saying, “Happy Jack Ass Day,” too. Clockwise from the tallest: Uncle Al, Aunt Mary, Dad with his hands on his hips, Uncle Frank in the arms of Uncle Dick. Both photos were taken at Bergen Beach in Brooklyn, circa 1932.