RichardDaub.com, January 2024

At the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, The Spirit of St. Louis hovering above them—

“Can we go now?” Carl Jr., age fifteen, asked his father.

“Go? We haven’t been here fifteen minutes. Don’t you want to see the Batmobile?”

“No, we wanted to go to Great Adventure, not run around a bunch of free museums and stay at a motel with no pool and bullet holes in the wall and a broken ice machine.”

It was the one week every summer when Carl Sr. was mandated by the divorce court to spend a week with his three biological children, whom he’d spent years and tens of thousands of dollars attempting to legally disown.

“We can’t spend the whole week at Great Adventure,” Carl Sr. said.

“We can also go to Action Park and Hersheypark.”

“Do you know how expensive that would be? And you should really get a haircut. You look like a hoodlum.”

“I don’t think so, guy,” said Carl Jr., touching the long part of his mullet, shoulder-length in the back. “Maybe you should talk to Sy Sperling about joining the Hair Club for Men.”

“You don’t think it’s disrespectful to speak to your father that way? My father would have beaten me to a pulp if I ever spoke to him like that.”

“He must have been a lovely man. But you disrespected me first. And who are you to comment on my appearance, anyway?”

“I am your father.”

“Yeah, some father. I think I’d be better off with Darth Vader as my father, at least he wasn’t a cheapskate.”

Carl Sr.’s face reddened and he started breathing heavily.

Carl Jr. clenched his fists, then watched his father drop to his knees, crumple into a heap, bury his head in his arms, and sob repeatedly, “I miss my Daddy!”

People started backing away, including Carl Jr. and his siblings, who sidled themselves next to another family.

A security guard hurried over and said into his walkie-talkie, “We have a weeper under the Spirit of St. Louis.”

Moments later, a dozen armed security guards hurried over and escorted Carl Sr. out of the building, his children watching with their borrowed family, whom they then followed to several other exhibits, including the 1903 Wright Flyer, the Apollo 11 command module, the Batmobile, and Archie Bunker’s chair.

*     *     *

An hour later, on the National Mall—

“Fine,” Carl Sr. said. “We’ll go to Great Adventure. I only paid for one night at the hotel anyway. We can head up to the Jersey Shore, then zip over to Great Adventure in the morning. I was thinking it might be nice to take a dip in the ocean. I’ve always wanted to go swimming at the Jersey Shore.”

“Didn’t you grow up on Long Island?” Carl Jr. asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

“It’s the same ocean.”

“Yeah, but this is the world-famous Jersey Shore.”

“I could see, like, if you were in California and you wanted to take a dip in the Pacific, or if you were in Italy and wanted to take a dip in the Mediterranean, but, if you’ve been to Jones Beach or Coney Island, it’s, like, exactly the same thing all the way down to Florida.”

“Well,” said Carl Sr., lighting a Viceroy 100, “you’ll just have to see for yourself.”

*     *     *

An hour later, the mood in the Datsun cabin improved slightly upon exiting the Beltway and continuing north on I-95 into Maryland, leaving DC behind and heading towards the promise of a better time in the Garden State. There was talk of pizza for dinner as they turned east on I-195 towards Asbury Park, where they checked into another dumpy motel, this one half-mile from the beach but with a clean-looking pool, a Coca-Cola machine, and a functioning ice machine.

“So, who’s up for a dip in the Atlantic?” Carl Sr. asked.

“I’d rather just go in the pool,” said Carl Jr.

“Yeah, I’d rather go in the pool too,” said his sister.

“I don’t like the beach,” said their brother.

“We’re going to the beach,” their father responded.

They walked the half-mile past the vacant motels and swam in the Atlantic, then ate at one of the pizza joints on the boardwalk. On the way back to the motel, they stopped at a 7-Eleven, where Carl Sr. let the kids pick out one thing while he purchased two six-packs of Budweiser tallboys and three packs of Viceroy 100s. Back at the motel, he settled into a lounge chair beside the pool while the kids played in the water until dark, then, in the room, they watched the end of a Met game and a rerun of The Honeymooners before switching out the light for the night.

*     *     *

The next morning, without having to make the two-hour drive from Long Island, they arrived at Six Flags Great Adventure right when it opened and the park was still relatively empty, allowing them to go on all the good rides multiple times within two hours.

“Can we go now?” Carl Jr. asked his father.

“What?”

“We’ve been on all the good rides already, and now the lines are getting long.”

Carl Sr.’s face reddened and he started breathing heavily.

“Ungrateful little bastards,” he said under his breath.

“Excuse me?” Carl Jr. asked.

“You heard me. I work so hard to pay for all this shit, and all you goddamn kids ever do is complain. You’re all just like your whore of a mother.”

“Fuck you,” Carl Jr. said.

Carl Sr. looked his son in the eye, then backed away and started jogging towards a bank of phone booths, one of which he entered and slid the folding doors shut.

“I miss my Daddy!” he cried into the phone.

A recorded voice instructed him to insert coins and dial or hang up. The now-buzzing receiver fell from his grip and dangled by its metal cord as he slumped to the floor, where he remained sobbing for the next two hours while his kids did another round of rides until they got hungry and came back asking for money.

*     *     *

The following day, at the Rath Park public swimming pool in Franklin Square, Long Island—

“We’re bored,” Carl Jr. proclaimed.

“Well, we have four days left, and this is it.”

“Can we go to Hersheypark?”

Carl Sr. started to convulse. His kids backed away towards the pool. He’d barely gotten out “I miss my Daddy!” before the white-nosed lifeguards started blowing their whistles and hurried over to the sobbing man. Eventually, the head lifeguard and several of his largest male crew members escorted him to the turnstiles, still sobbing, wearing only his bathing suit, not yet realizing he’d left his clothes, wallet, car keys, and cigarettes behind. Just outside the facility, a Nassau County police cruiser pulled up, its uniformed driver watching through the open window.

After their father was gone, Carl Jr. retrieved his father’s wallet, then led his brother and sister to the snack bar, where they ordered all the Good Humor ice cream products they’d always wanted to try, several pounds of candy, French fries, pizza, Coca-Colas, and milkshakes. When there was only a dollar left, Carl Jr. exchanged it for quarters and called their mother from a pay phone.

“He’s doing the crying thing again and just got kicked out of Rath Park,” Carl Jr. reported. “He left his wallet behind, so we got some food at the snack bar, but now we just want to go home.”

After an exasperated sigh, she said, “Okay, I’ll be there in half-hour. Just stay inside the pool area.”

Beyond the iron bars they could see their father sitting under a tree smoking a cigarette he’d bummed from a passerby, but they ignored him and went back in the pool without waiting the full hour for the food to digest until their mother’s white Mercedes pulled up behind the police car.

“Mom’s here,” Carl Jr. announced.

They got out of the pool and quickly dried off, Carl Jr. dropping the wallet next to the keys and cigarettes, then they all headed for the exit, leaving the towels and the rest of their father’s possessions behind.

Their father looked up when they drove by his tree, but their mother kept going and told them not to worry about him or the clothes they had packed for the week, she would buy them new ones, then congratulated them on lasting a day longer than they had the year before. ▪