About Your Father and Other Celebrities I Have Known Read online

  DEDICATION

  To our three sons: Mike, Scott, and Phil, who continue to be my inspiration. You will undoubtedly recognize and appreciate this man I have portrayed with love and humor. Thanks for being such an integral part of our lives and for making the occasional cameo appearance in this book.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THANKS TO FRIEND, EDITOR, AND writer Michele “Wojo” Wojciechowski who was the first to read these stories. When you laughed out loud, I knew they were good enough to share. I appreciate your great suggestions.

  Thanks to Lisa Stilwell who edited my manuscript with a fine-tooth comb and with kindness. You made it look like a real book, Lisa. You really are great at what you do!

  Where would I be without the loyal staff at MRW Productions who are there for me every day of the week? I so appreciate your help, Mary, Jade, Chuck, Shari, Lara, Libby, and Melanie. You are like family!

  Thank you, Forefront Books and Jonathan Merkh—publisher, friend, taskmaster, and hand holder-in-chief. Let’s do this again someday.

  To son Mike Rowe who clearly doesn’t understand the concept of old age and retirement. Thanks for always being there, Mike. You make work seem like fun.

  FOREWORD

  SEVERAL YEARS AGO, MY PARENTS began receiving checks in the mail for seemingly random amounts of money. The checks arrived every week and prompted dozens of concerned phone calls from my father.

  “Hello?”

  “Michael. It happened again.”

  “Hi Dad. What happened again?”

  “The checks. We got two more today. One for me. One for your mother.”

  “Hey, that’s great!” I said. “Money for nothing, chicks for free!”

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “It’s a line from a song.”

  “What’s going on here, Michael? Why do these people keep sending us money?”

  “Because you earned it, Dad. Welcome to the world of advertising.”

  “But we already did the work. We’ve already been paid. I didn’t agree to any of this … extra money.”

  “It’s not ‘extra money.’ It’s a residual check. Enjoy it!”

  My father sighed. He and my mother had filmed some commercials with me for Viva paper towels several months before. Neither had expected to be paid. They looked at the whole experience as a field trip—a chance to hang out in Hollywood with their oldest son and maybe run into some celebrities. Now these unexpected paychecks were generating questions.

  “Why are they always for different amounts? This is the third week in a row, and the amounts are never the same. Something’s wrong here.”

  “Nothing’s wrong, Dad. Some weeks the commercials air more than others. The more they air, the more you make.”

  “Well … how long do these Viva people plan on airing these commercials?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a year? Maybe more?”

  “Maybe? What do you mean, maybe? How am I supposed to plan for the future if these Viva people keep sending me money whenever they feel like it? And what about all these withholdings? What does ‘R-SAG CONTR’ mean? Or ‘CASDI?’ Do you have any idea how much tax California takes? Good grief, Michael, what have you gotten me into?”

  Reread that last paragraph, and you’ll begin to understand the essence of John Rowe. Only a man like my father can refuse to cash a paycheck he doesn’t believe he’s earned, while agonizing over deductions he doesn’t believe he owes. This is the man my mother has lived with for sixty years. A man she still calls her “Prince Charming” (with varying degrees of irony). A meticulous man who provided for a family of five on a schoolteacher’s salary. A passionate man who worked in community theater for fifty years, purely for the joy of it. A frugal man who, to this day, will spend an hour online taking a McDonald’s survey in order to get a code that gets him a free Quarter Pounder when he buys one at the regular price. This is the man you’re about to meet. This is my father.

  I remember the day we filmed that Viva commercial in Los Angeles. The goal was to demonstrate that Viva paper towels—in spite of their festive name—were tougher than the competition. “Tough, even when wet!” That was the message the agency wanted to impart, so I proposed a very personal approach, with a campaign called “Pigpen Comes Home.” In the spot, I would arrive at my parent’s house—fresh from a Dirty Jobs shoot—covered in grime. From their living room, Mom and Dad would see me walking up their driveway and arm themselves with rolls of Viva paper towels. Then they’d follow me around their house, wiping off everything I touched while engaging in witty banter. Clever, right?

  My mother writes about this day in great detail, because the Viva commercial shoot was the beginning of her great Hollywood adventure. But Mom left out a few details. She neglected, for instance, to mention that the photo on the cover of this book was taken that very same day. In between takes, I had asked the photographer to get a shot of my parents posing as the stoic farmers in Grant Wood’s iconic painting, “American Gothic.”

  “Why?” said my father. “What does ‘American Gothic’ have to do with selling paper towels?”

  “Nothing, Dad. But we have a professional photographer on hand and a pitchfork. Besides, you never know when a photograph like this might come in handy.” My father frowned, the way he always does he finds my explanations lacking.

  “What’s my motivation?” he asked.

  “Your what?”

  “You know, my motivation. What’s driving my character? What sort of expression should I have on my face?”

  “The look on your face right now is perfect,” I said.

  My father sighed some more and shook his head, as my mother assumed an equally dour expression. “Who knows, John, maybe this will be the cover of a book one day?”

  My father snorted. “A book? Who’s going to buy a book with us on the cover?”

  It was a reasonable question. Back in 2012, my eighty-year-old father had no way of knowing his seventy-five-year-old wife was destined to become a bestselling author. In those days, she was just another aspiring writer, sending her oldest son an ever-growing collection of stories, letters, emails, and texts. During the Viva shoot, I recall her scribbling feverishly on yellow legal pads. She scribbled in her trailer, she scribbled during lunch, she scribbled on the set. Little did I know, her scribblings would turn into two books. And little did my father know, he’d wind up on the cover of this one, holding a pitchfork and staring solemnly into the camera, looking very much like the man he is. A man with questions.

  It makes little sense to talk too much about my father here, since my mother has devoted the next 225 pages to doing that very thing, but I want to share another moment she neglected to include from that fateful day. It was a small moment, but one that I treasure. We were shooting the first setup—a scene in the backyard—and the Viva people were nervous. They had approved the concept for “Pigpen Comes Home,” but they hadn’t realized that I would insist on casting my real parents.

  “Do your parents have any experience?” the director asked me.

  “Oh yes,” I told him. “They’ve been playing my parents for over fifty years.”

  “No, I mean do they have an experience acting in commercials?”

  “Nope. None whatsoever.”

  “Well, then, with respect,” he said, “how do I know they can act?”

  “With respect,” I replied, “you don’t. But my Dad’s done local theater for decades, and my mother has a wicked sense of humor. Trust me; they’ll be fine.”

  Anyway, the scene in the backyard involves me eating spare-ribs at a picnic table while my father cleans off a greasy grill in the background. Three cameras cover the action as my mother swoops in, says something charming, and then wipes some BBQ sauce off my face with a Viva towel. My mother is subtle in real life, so her demeanor and mannerisms are perfect for television. She nails it in one take, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Then my father lifts up the towel he’s been using to clean the grill with and casually says, “These Viva towels really are tough—even when wet.”

  Except, that’s not what happened.

  Unlike my mother, my father is not known for subtlety; he is known for clarity. And though his work on the stage has been well-received, fifty years of community theater had not prepared him for the kind of understated nuance the director was expecting. This was made apparent when my father whirled around from the grill with great gusto, face aflame with wonder and excitement. In his hands, he gripped a greasy Viva paper towel, which he held aloft in much the same way Hamlet might present the skull of poor Yorick. Then, like a Shakespearean actor addressing the back row of a sold-out theater, my dad looked directly into the camera and boldly delivered his one and only line, while tugging on the wet towel:

  “HOLY SMOKES! THESE VIVA PAPER TOWELS REALLY ARE TOUGH … EVEN WHEN WET!!!

  Unfortunately, the Viva tore in half the second he tugged on it, just as any wet paper towel would under such an enthusiastic assault. Of greater concern, however, were the eardrums of those huddled around a giant monitor twenty feet away watching the scene unfold. The director, the producer, and the clients were all wearing headsets when my father’s booming voice sent them flying up and out of their chairs. Some screamed in alarm and threw their headsets across the room, while others gripped their chests and fell to the floor. In the stunned silence that followed, my Dad tossed the shredded towel onto
the grill and said, “Cut! Nice job, everyone. That’s a wrap!”

  By the fourth take, my dad reeled things in a bit, and delivered a highly nuanced, beautifully understated performance. Consequently, my parents and I were invited to film a number of additional spots for Viva, which triggered more of those pesky residual checks, which my father ultimately justified cashing by dramatically increasing his year-end charitable giving. He still has questions about all those mysterious withholdings and abbreviations, but, by and large, he’s let it go. As for my mother, she can still be spotted in her local grocery store autographing rolls of Viva paper towels for her many fans. Even though the residuals have dried up, she continues to sing their praises, as does my father, who takes great pleasure in wringing them out, letting them dry, and then using them again. Old habits die hard, I suppose.

  Anyway, that’s a long way of telling you that my mother has done it again. About Your Father is a terrific collection of funny stories about a devoted husband, written by a woman uniquely qualified to tackle the task at hand. Like her first book, this one is really a love letter to the man she refers to as her “Prince Charming.” A man who, after reading the book you’ve just begun, called me from Baltimore to say that the stories in this collection are among the finest he’s ever read. In fact, his exact words to me were, “You know, Michael, I do believe this is the kind of book that could be enjoyed by just about anyone … EVEN WHEN WET!!!”

  I’m pretty sure they heard him in Hollywood.

  Mike

  ANY DAY NOW

  IN NOVEMBER OF 1960, I said, “I do,” and moved out of my parents’ comfortable home. I was twenty-two, and I’d never written a check—unless you count the one I gave the man at the college bookstore where all I had to do was fill in the amount. I’d never shopped or cooked or ironed. I grew up with parents who simply indulged my obsession with horses. Mom was queen of her domestic domain and happy not to have me underfoot. On my wedding day, she warned my husband to be patient. “I’m afraid Peggy doesn’t know much about housekeeping,” she told him.

  John, on the other hand, was twenty-eight and had been on his own since his late teens—including a stint in the US Army, a job with the US Postal Service, and four years at college. He had purchased automobiles, arranged for housing, managed a bank account, and taken care of his everyday needs. Oh yeah, John Rowe knew a thing or two about survival and economy. My husband was a minimalist. His life was about thrift and getting by on a shoestring with no frills—just the bare necessities.

  Marriage was culture shock for both of us, and 1961 was a killer. Moving out of my parents’ home and into a second-floor apartment that didn’t have a television, radio, telephone, or washing machine (not that I had ever used one) was like moving to a Third World country. There was a new word in my vocabulary that year: budget.

  For John, a wife who expected to purchase a new outfit just because it was Easter—when there were clothes already hanging in her closet—and then had the nerve to make the unreasonable request of “Let’s get a telephone”—when there was a perfectly good telephone downstairs in the landlord’s living room—well, let’s just say that the new word in John’s vocabulary was extravagant.

  I had taught school for a whole year, but my husband insisted that we save my salary. “After all,” he said, “we’ll have to live on one salary when we have a family. We may as well get used to it.”

  That we survived our first year is testament to the fact that I loved this weird man I had married, despite his extreme frugality. And he was devoted to the indulged young woman who had grown up in the “lap of luxury.”

  Thanks to intimacy—which came more naturally than cooking and cleaning and was more or less free—our marriage not only survived, it prospered and increased.

  I was five months pregnant on our first anniversary and looked forward to a modest celebration at the Double T Diner, where we ate most Friday evenings after work. It was our only luxury and preceded the weekly grocery shopping, which cost us a whopping $15.

  But on November 19, my frugal husband said something that caused me to pass out right there on the floor. “Put your new dress on, hon. We’re having dinner at the Candlelight Lodge!”

  Now, the Candlelight Lodge was absurdly expensive, and as I’ve said, the concept of splurging was as commonplace in our home as pole dancing in our church sanctuary.

  “We’re what? You know they’re expensive, right? And it’s Saturday. They’ll probably be crowded.”

  “I made reservations. Come on! We’re going out on the town!”

  If my husband was feeling celebratory, who was I to argue? There was a lot to celebrate, after all. Our careers were progressing nicely, our first child was due in the spring, and I had finally gotten past the horrendous morning sickness, which was a cruel misnomer as it had lasted all day long—for four months.

  So I put on my beautiful new maternity outfit—an early Christmas gift. The expensive aqua satin sheen material had been purchased by my sister and sewn by my mother on her old Singer treadle sewing machine.

  I felt like Cinderella as we were escorted to our candlelit table by a man in a tuxedo, who, thanks to his exaggerated posture, resembled the figure atop a fancy bottle stopper my father had received as a gift. There was tasteful piano music in the background—a Strauss waltz, I believe—that made me think of my mother. I would be sure to include that detail when I called her tomorrow (on the telephone in the landlord’s living room).

  “Is everything okay?” I asked minutes later after John picked up the menu and every bit of color drained from his face. Even in the flickering candlelight he was the color of our new percale sheets.

  “It’s fine! We’re celebrating!” he said, forcing a smile. We both ordered the surf and turf and exclaimed over every morsel. One of us might have observed that, considering the cost, the portions seemed modest—in comparison to the Double T, where we always left carrying a doggie bag. We had even ordered one small glass of white wine. It was a time before the world had been enlightened about the effects of alcohol on pregnancy, and I had a few sips with dinner. We discussed baby names over our crème brûlée and coffee. If it was a boy, it would be Michael, which was John’s middle name. The evening was definitely picture worthy, and in current times, I would have snapped selfies with my cell phone.

  We left holding hands and headed for our car. I probably looked up at the moon and said, “I will remember this magical evening forever, hon,” because it’s the sort of thing I say.

  It was in the parking lot just before we reached our car that the magic gave way to that old feeling—nausea. I heaved—and lost my crème brûlée. I heaved some more and lost my surf and turf. I didn’t actually lose it, as there were globs on my new aqua maternity outfit, as well as on my husband’s freshly shined shoes … and the front bumper of his beloved old Dodge. Again, it might have been a perfect cell phone moment.

  John was no stranger to hurling. It had been part of our daily routine for the past four months. Sometimes I even awoke in the middle of the night to run to the bathroom and gag. Early on, John had shown great compassion, standing beside me, holding my hair away from my face, or gently stroking my back, then getting me a drink. In more recent months, he was more about getting out of my way—and out of earshot.

  Now, on a lovely Saturday evening in the restaurant parking lot, my husband appeared to be in a state of shock, rallying just enough to run back inside for some paper towels. This was one detail that would not make it into my call to Mother the next day. To his credit, not once did John complain that I had just thrown up a meal that cost more than our weekly food budget. And he waited until we were almost home before marveling aloud that the same person who could keep down a Double T greasy burger, fries, and crab dip, should have trouble with tenderloin and crab imperial.

  Not that my husband would ever hold a grudge. But it was a long time before he would splurge on a five-star meal again.

  It could happen any day now.

  HOME SWEET STABLE

  BEFORE WE WERE MARRIED, JOHN told me right up front: “I have never cared for horses, and I doubt that I ever will.” He said this knowing of my lifelong passion for horses—preferring them to people, in some cases. So, naturally, I told him that I thought history was boring—a subject for which he had equal passion.