On August 12, 1993, my father, Hal
W. McClain, had to step back from his usual role of the funeral director and
allow his friends to serve our family. He was the one that was used to caring
for other families, not being the family that was being cared for by others. August
12, 1993, was not a good day for our family. It was the day my mom took her
last breath on this earth. It was a day that the man who cared for others
needed his friends to care for him. It was also the day that my dad started to
show me his secret life. See, my dad was Super Man, and until that day, I had
never seen it.
Like an ostrich sticking its head
in the sand, my dad prepared for my mom’s death with a severe case of denial. He
stuck his head in the sand and pretended everything tomorrow would be the same
as yesterday. In my family, Mom took care of the house, and Dad took care of
the checkbook, making sure there was enough money in it for Mom to provide for
whatever our family needed. We ate dinner together every night and we went to
church together every Sunday, but when it was time for family excursions and
vacations, Dad stayed at home…he had others to take care of and they needed
him. I learned that at a young age that Dad wasn’t avoiding us; he was taking
care of others. We all knew my mom’s time on earth was limited and that cancer
would soon end her life. Nobody wanted to face that, so we carried on like
nothing had changed until the day it did.
I’m not sure I had ever spent the
night at home alone with my dad until the week after the funeral. Even several
days after the service, we had one of my dad’s best friends staying over with
us at the house. Two days after the funeral, my dad woke me up. Breakfast was
on the table in the kitchen: orange juice and biscuits and gravy. Dad drove me
to school that morning, and I began my sixth-grade year.
Life in our home wasn’t perfect. Dad
still had others to take care of... it was his job, and he had to take on the
role of a single father for the second time in his life on top of his career
responsibilities. It wasn’t perfect! At times, it was downright unpleasant for
both of us, but we managed. At some point over the next year, I think we
realized that spending time with each other was often miserable and we didn’t have
any common ground that we could share. That started to change in the spring of
1994.
I remember the first time my dad
got me up on a Saturday morning too early. He was excited to go to an auction
sale at the Miami County Fairgrounds. I was not excited to get out of bed, but the
concession stand always had good food. I went with my dad down to the
fairgrounds, and I sat there BORED OUT OF MY MIND! Over a hundred people had
gathered at the auction to buy a bunch of old, ugly, sometimes chipped and
broken glass. There wasn’t anything at that sale for me to be interested in. It
was just glass. HOW MUCH MORE BORING COULD IT GET? At some point during the
sale, I became fascinated with watching people bid, and I thought they were
crazy for spending ridiculous amounts of money on glass.
There were a lot of people at the
auction. We met a lady and her handicapped brother from Wisconsin. They sat
next to us, and she was nice. I spent most of the morning thinking about what
snack I would get next from the concession stand. Now, as I look back, if we
had owned a cellphone, I would have called someone to rescue me from the hell I
had found myself in that morning, but that was only the beginning of our
auction adventures together.
Over the next few years, we traveled to other
auctions, and I got less and less bored with our trips. At some point, my dad
bought a reference book and price guide for Greentown Glass, and I found myself
browsing the pages and the pictures as we traveled. I became fascinated by the
story of the glass factory in Greentown, Indiana, that had burned to the ground
nearly a hundred years prior, and I realized that I had a mind capable of
soaking up more information than I ever realized. I also learned that my dad
started to rely on the knowledge that I had soaked up and he would ask me
questions about the glass at the sales we were visiting. I’m not sure at what
point I realized I enjoyed the auctions or the fellowship, but it soon became
ritual for Dad and me to travel on quests for Greentown Glass and then share
the stories of our excursions and the treasures we collected.
A year or so into our collecting,
roughly 1996, my dad went to an auction by himself in Logansport, Indiana. He
brought home a small child’s size patterned glass creamer in cobalt blue. It
was his prize find. See, that Austrian pattern creamer is RARE! Dad was so
proud of his purchase, and he then joked for a couple years that it was the
only piece in the collection that was just his; everything else was ours! Dad
boasted at an annual Greentown Glass convention about his prize find, and he
turned down a lot of money for his creamer. To be honest, at the time, I wasn’t
as excited about his creamer. To me, it was the wrong pattern and the wrong
color for me to care.
The winter of 1998 was my dad’s
worst year in business. Business was slow at the funeral home, and the
checkbook suffered greatly. I don’t remember even being aware of the troubles
at the time. I guess secrecy was part of my dad’s superpowers. Christmas was
approaching, and I was expecting the usual haul of meaningless gifts that I only
thought were important at the time. I was also expecting a special piece of
glass. Dad always got me a special piece of Greentown for my birthday or Christmas.
Christmas didn’t disappoint. That
year under the tree, I found a box all wrapped up with a special bow over fancy
paper…that was always the signal of something special from Dad. Inside was a
chocolate glass Chrysanthemum leaf bowl. My FAVORITE Greentown pattern, and
until that day, I had never owned an entire piece in that pattern. My only
piece was a solitary, orphaned sugar bowl lid. I admit, I may have been a bit
of a dork, because at the age of seventeen, this treasure was something more
valuable than any video game, car accessory, article of clothing, or anything
else I could imagine. It was perfect, and my dad was an awesome dad for scoring
the best gift ever award!
The following summer we attended an
auction in Greentown, Indiana. There were two bidders that kept competing for
the same things, and the prices got a bit out of hand. The war was real! Several
times a very frustrated bidder, nicknamed “Tall Tex,” because he was from
Texas, lowered his card and gave up something he desired to someone else. Then,
in the middle of the sale, a cobalt blue Austrian creamer went up for sale. Nobody
had ever seen one sell at auction, and I had commented to Dad before we left
that this would be great so he could see what his was worth. The bidding
started and the previously frustrated man kept bidding until he secured his
treasure…for TWENTY-FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS! I was so excited because I finally
saw beauty in that piece that my dad had so long treasured. My dad didn’t look
overly excited that day, but he smiled and we went home.
You may think you know where this
story is headed, but you’re wrong. No, dad hadn’t put his creamer up for
auction; however, he no longer owned his blue creamer, and I never even noticed
it was missing from our house. Dad had struggled with how he was going to pay
for Christmas that year. I learned later in life it was only because of a
personal loan from a relative and the fact that he had traded his blue creamer
for my “best gift ever” that there was anything under the tree that year. I
also learned that during the winter of that year, my dad had almost lost his
business due to not being able to pay his bills. He chose to share his love for
his family with gifts that year without anyone knowing for years that he feared
it would be our last Christmas together in that home if business hadn’t turned
around.
I learned the truth about Dad
trading his creamer by accident when the person who sold the creamer at that auction
recalled it in a conversation to me as the “best selling piece” he had ever
owned. The gentleman said, “It was the most money I ever made off of a piece of
glass” and he figured that it was the only one known to exist at the time. I
then corrected the man and said, “Well, my dad has one of those, too!” The
man’s simple reply told me everything I needed to know, “He found another one?”
It was at that moment that I realized the only way my dad could have afforded
my special chocolate Chrysanthemum leaf bowl that year was to have traded it or
sold it for my gift.
I never confronted my dad directly
about the deal that he traded his best piece for something for me, but he knew
I’d figure it out. We got very close working together over the years, and I
learned more about some of the financial struggles of his career. To this day,
I look back and feel guilty that my dad gave up something he prized so much out
of love for one of his children, but I can’t look back without feeling how much
my dad loved me!
When my dad died, I lost my best
friend. We had been together for almost twenty years, and we made it. We had
each other to lean on when there were troubles, and I was able to work each day
with my best friend. After my dad died, I ran across another cobalt blue
Austrian child’s creamer. It didn’t cost me near what the original one had sold
for, but I had a piece to think back on my dad and to serve as a special
sentimental trophy of our collecting accomplishments.
Over the years, I took that single
piece of chocolate Chrysanthemum leaf glass, and I turned it into the first
ever known completed collection in that pattern. I was able to finally purchase
a long-sought punch cup in that pattern that I had missed many years ago. While
it was a financial burden on my checkbook, the punch cup sat right next to that
creamer as a very special reminder of the end of a special collection started
by my awesome dad who gave me my first piece. I wish dad could have seen the
joy on my face the day that punch cup arrived in the mail.
When I look back on the struggles
my dad faced in his life, I see his overwhelming ability to survive and get
through whatever life had thrown at him. He survived the death of a spouse, the
challenge of single parenthood, the difficulty of owning a small business, and
he survived. He adopted both of my brothers, my oldest brother ten years before
my birth, and my younger brother as a teenager who moved in with us after I had
graduated from college. Due to the distance between our ages, we were all taken
care of by him as a single parent, and being our father was his greatest joy
and accomplishment in life. He gave us all that we needed, but more than
meeting our needs, he gave us love! The cobalt blue Austrian creamer wasn’t an
item of value for my dad. It was an ability for him to express his love for one
of his children at a time he didn’t have any other way. He willingly showed each
of us that amount of love each day. While we didn’t always have everything in
life we wanted, there wasn’t a day in our lives we could ever feel unloved!
Our collecting has led to some of
the most important relationships in my life. The lady from Wisconsin died in
1999 from cancer, but her sister, brother-in-law, and brother, remain some of
the most important relationships that I have. They have become more than family
to a degree that the sister was the one that drove down from Wisconsin to care
for me after surgery earlier this year. Our friends from the National Greentown
Glass Association remain some of my closest friends, and I can smile because I
am loved by some of these friends and treated like one of their own
children/grandchildren. The friendships I have made over the years from our
glass collecting are treasured more than the glass I collected, and now as
these people pass, I don’t buy possessions of theirs to add to my collection
because they are desired for monetary value: I buy and collect items that
belonged to people to serve as visual reminders of the amazing friendships that
were created from all the great times, trips, auctions, and conventions I
attended over the years.
Earlier this year, I was in contact
with a man who had a few pieces of glass to sell. I remembered from many years
ago that he was the one who had paid the ridiculous price for that dainty blue
creamer. While we were visiting, I
shared with him the story about my dad giving up his cobalt blue creamer in exchange
for my Christmas gift. I thanked him for selling me the items that he had for
sale, but I asked one final question, “Would you consider trading blue
creamers?” Several weeks later, my dad’s original creamer had arrived back home
again to Indiana. It sits in a china cabinet at the funeral home next to a
picture of my dad that I walk past every day. I collect my dad’s other favorite
pattern, Herringbone Buttress, to add to the shelves of that cabinet, and maybe
with my luck, I’ll complete that pattern in his honor as well.
Dad passed on June 28, 2013. I
don’t have the ability to tell my dad how much I love him every day, but I get
to remember every day how much he loved me. Happy Father’s Day to my dad, Super Man. He
may not have had the ability to move mountains, lift cars, or fly, but he had a
supernatural ability and willingness to share his amazing love for his children
every day of his life without ever putting himself first. He had the ability to
use his overwhelming compassion to serve his community in the ministering role
of a local funeral director, never turning down a family that couldn’t afford
his services and always taking care of them despite their ability to pay. It
wasn’t strength that set him apart or other common superpowers, it was love. Super
Man, he was my dad! - Brad McClain
