Happy John Wilson Day

It’s the humor I remember most.

One of my favorite examples is from an Autumn day and the family raking leaves. Some sort of argument with my sister ensued and I called her a shit-head. As it was the first time I’d cursed her out she looked at me with a funny, screwed-up look and I just knew I was going to get some sort of revenge foisted on me. “Da-ad!” my sister called. “Jamie just called me a shit-head!”

My father looked up from his pruning. “He can’t do that,” he said. Then, with exquisite timing he went back to his work. “That’s my word!”

I remember the inflection to this day. Understated. Reflective. There was a hint of annoyance. It was beautiful. And just about the funniest thing I’d heard in my life. I don’t remember if I laughed, but I have ever since.

He liked to shock, to tweak the sensibilities, but gently. I remember sitting on the floor watching “Space Ghost” (I am certain of the show), and my father came in, took one look at the situation the dastardly villain had placed SG in, and he quietly snarled, “That bas-tard!” I had no idea what he was saying, but my Mother did. “John!” she’d admonish without a hint of humor. I think back on it, and it was a joke not meant for me…I had no idea what a “bastard” was…it was a joke for his own amusement, and I think he enjoyed shocking my mother.

We used to call him “Smilin’ Jack,” for the lopsided half-grin he perpetually sported. It’s there even in his baby pictures. You can see a hint of it in the promotional picture taken when he was working at Smith-Gandy Ford in Seattle. Quite the rake. And casual, while at it.

On Sundays to roust us out of bed, he’d play “The Star-Spangled Banner” on a mammoth stereo he’d won for selling the most number of fleet-trucks in a fiscal year. Again, it would be for his own amusement. We’d roll our eyes and grumble, but he’d enjoy his secret joke.

Any three year old who stopped by the house, would get a show from my Dad. He’d let his face go slack into some plasticized goon-face, and the children would shriek with horrified delight.

And he loved ritual. One thing he always laughed at was the end-credits of “Get Smart.” You know the one where Maxwell Smart walks towards the camera and turns and watches the many security doors close behind him one by one. Except for the last one. Pause. Then he approaches the door, just as it starts to close and it catches him in the nose. The timing of it is so exact, so assured that it would make my father guffaw every single time.

We had a ritual every time I went out on a date. He’d look up from his paper. “Have a good time, “ he’d say. “AND be sure to comport yourself in a way that will not bring shame to the family.” “Make up your mind!” I’d invariably say, and his chuckle would follow me out the door.

There's an audio clip of him posted in the Profile. You can hear him, but it’s not really how he sounded. In it, he is mock-seriously intoning common every day events. He knows he’s being recorded, so he’s speaking a bit too formally in the style of an announcer. His voice was not that low and his style of speech more relaxed. But if not for this one short piece of audio, the tone of his voice would have long ago left my memory. This odd distortion brings back the sound of him, and it’s the only sample I have of his voice…recorded, left unplayed and unerased in a cassette recorder, it’s batteries long corroded and useless, it was forgotten then discovered, like a treasure, years after his death. And he’s being funny in it.

Even on the day he died he did it with a joke. “I think I actually will retire,” he said in his hospital bed. And a couple hours later his heart stopped.

At Saturday get-togethers, with a couple scotch-and-waters in him he would speculate on his death. “Mary won’t come to my funeral,” he’d chortle. “She’ll be on her honeymoon with some new guy. But the Lord will say to me ‘John? You come sit here…at my right hand.”

In very sentimental moments, or when my Catholic upbringing rears its thorn-crowned head, I think that’s exactly where he is.