This is a little longer than usual but for a special person

On this day (publishing or posting), December 1, 1929, my dad, Blaine Heinz was born. There is no one left to ask, but his birth was probably in the family home on Second Street in Michigan City, IN- right across the street from the Blue Chip Casino. That house was the last one there- I’ll BET you didn’t know that. He was the youngest of seven children and actually had a nephew, Gerry, who was born ten months before.

The stock market had crashed about a month before, so his timing was poor. His dad worked on the railroad (all the live long day), losing his life in 1937 by a train. His mom was busy with all those kids.

If your parents are still around– ASK THEM ALL THE QUESTIONS I CAN’T!

I have few mechanical skills, but a pretty good memory, and that’s where this is coming from. That part of MC was called Canada, I guess because it’s in the northern part of the city. He attended Central School, I presume Elston and never graduated. I do not recall his playing sports, although I know his brothers Chuck and Dick were on the basketball team. Stories say Dick was pretty good. I don’t know if my Dale was in sports either.

He caddied, as I presume the brothers did. That must have started the family’s love of golf. Later, he worked for many years in the landscaping business. Uncle Sam drafted him in 1951 and he was trained as a combat infantryman. He boarded a ship to Korea and told me he fed the fish all the way there. He didn’t say much about his time there except this:

When his ship arrived in Korea, the soldiers were taken to a large room. While awaiting instructions, he had a calling. This was not the type my good friend Father Robert Miller had, my dad had to go, sparing you the TMI. While he was ‘taking care of business,’ an officer came in and everyone over six feet went in a certain direction for Browning Automatic Rifle training. Blaine was six feet one inch, or as he loves saying five foot thirteen. I missed that by two inches. He shared that the average lifespan for a man with one of those weapons was not long, so my life was spared almost a decade before I was born.

He was the tallest man in the room after completing his business and went to training as a combat medic. I cannot imagine what he saw and experienced. When the show MASH came out in the early seventies, I had it on TV and distinctly recall him saying “That never happened!” “That’s bullshit!” so I never put that on again with him around. My mom reminded me he was there. Recall how MASH was three miles from the front. His ‘Battalion Aid Station’ was one mile from the front. He received a Bronze Star which I recounted here.

Dad married my mom Barbara in 1954, and I distinctly recall them, more her, that it took seven years for my arrival. One day, she told me how I was conceived. They were building our family home, one of the first houses in the subdivision, and when it began raining, they, um, well…ATTENTION- DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT do this to your kids. After several years of therapy, I can talk about it.

I came along in 1961, no one followed, and YES, I was spoiled. Later in life, I reminded people that being an only child is like the opening line of A Tale of Two Cities “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” I got more stuff as a kid at Christmas but after he passed, I alone did A LOT for my mom. Happily.

My dad led the neighborhood fathers undeniably being outside shooting baskets, hitting flyballs, and the like. He came home at exactly 4:40 every day, backed his company truck, and would walk into the house wearing those old school matching work shirt and pants, work boots, and if cooler, a tan Carhart work jacket. Who would have known he was a fashion icon decades before?

Around the time of my birth, he joined the electrical trade and union. He worked a lot at the steel mills, and on those big power towers, you dive past way up in the air. I am afraid of heights but he wasn’t. In the mid-sixties he joined Rooney Electric, and became what they call in the trade a “shop rat,” meaning he worked locally and no more working at the mills.

I thought business was my calling, and wavered my focus between work and college in my early twenties. One day, we sat down at his bar, where he held court and dispensed A LOT of advice to friends and family. People at that bar came as much for his wisdom and advice as the cold beer. The day it was my turn, he told me I had to have “something,” a degree, a skill, a trade, whatever. He was a son of the Great Depression, and his son inherited enough to not be much of a risk taker on many fronts.

He also put the hammer down on my less-than-stellar grades. If a class was in History or Political Science, A or B, the others, well, not so good. He told me if I got another D I would be on my own financially with school. I got that D, he wasn’t bluffing. On my thirtieth birthday, they paid off my student loans.

I treasure the memory of golfing with him off and on from the 1980s until the end. I got pretty serious and competitive in the 2000s, and I’ll never forget when I blasted a drive on the sixteenth hole at MC Municipal, the hole after our house. I killed it. when I hit my approach shot, I missed it and flew the green turning a possible birdie into a double bogey. In anger and frustration, I slammed the nine iron onto the ground. He drove over his cart, looked me in the eye, and said “If a club ever leaves your hand in anger again, I will never play golf with you.” He drove away. Pretty low-key effective discipline for your middle-aged child.

When he retired in the early nineties, he and my mom became snowbirds in North Fort Myers, Florida for three months every year. In 2004, for their fiftieth anniversary, I flew down for a few days and I will never forget the last night. He got in the scotch, and a half dozen times gave me a small wad of money for the flight home, random amounts, $17, then $22, mumbling “I’m so glad you came down.” Me too Dad.

The worst day of my life was April 26, 2016. When a teacher gets a phone call in his classroom, it’s NEVER good news. My mom was on the line, and said “You have to come home right now, your dad’s dead.” I said OK, and looked out at twenty-five kids and they had no idea what I just heard. I muttered “I’ll be right back” and ran to the office and the rest was a blur. I didn’t want a funeral with some minister who never met him, I saw that and didn’t like it. We had a “Party for Blaine” at the Elks Club (where they hung out A LOT) and I still know the phone number. I both eulogized and roasted him, and the following day was my last bereavement- needed for a hangover.

My favorite moment of all time (like Griffin in Men in Black 3) was when I made an unexpected visit on a summer day, sometime in the 1990s. He was sitting out by his pool, looking out at his pool and the golf course beyond. A cold beer sat on a table, and he was listening to, I swear, Bruce Springsteen! I grabbed us each another beverage from the pool house fridge, and we sat out there enjoying life and each other, father and son, and my best friend.

As Mr. Springsteen would later sing, I’ll See You in My Dreams old man.