My Dad, Living the American Dream

I watch as he dozes off in his La-Z-Boy chair, swollen feet elevated. With each crescendo, his belly shakes and he sinks deeper into the cushions. 

I recognize my face in his—billowy cheeks, rounded cherub nose and thick bottom lip.  His large hand twitches next to the steamed cup of Yuban coffee, as he awaits his next wakeful moment. 

Sparse hair, sprinkled with more salt than pepper, reveals peach-tinted spots on a pale scalp map, which records glorious sun-filled days racing a convertible '57 T-bird and the Caribbean cruise, a family treat from a good business year.

My dad told everyone at the shop where he worked, Tom Eplin's Automotive Center, that I had him wrapped around my little finger.

"I got him right here," I said to Chad, a Hell's Angel, as I waved my tiny pinkie finger in the air.

Chad was a big and burly, but harmless, auto body mechanic who worked with my dad and always asked, "where ya got your daddy?"

My dad would roar with laughter and I could feel the ground shake beneath my Mary Janes.

There's no better cliché than "they broke the mold" to describe Thomas Eplin, Sr., born in a West Virginia "holler," three months after his daddy died on Christmas Day.

Soon after, he and his older brother, Jim, were sent to live with different relatives, including their grandma, until their mother could get back on her feet again, which later meant marrying Chester, or my Papa Selbe, the only dad he ever knew. 

Dad retrieved Chester several nights a week from the local drinking spot.

In Charleston, West Virginia, there were frogs to catch, rocks to throw, curfews to break and the resulting switch branch to keep kids in-line.

Rather than toe the line, Dad played tug-of-war, as evidenced by his rear-end. 

Daddy loved his grandmother despite the discipline of the switch, because he knew, deep down in his soul, that she really loved him.  She showed him, too.With warm biscuits and gravy, bacon from pigs on the farm, home-grown potatoes with fresh whipped butter, and cobblers that left the house smelling of sweet-picked blueberries.

In overalls with dirty bare feet fetchin' creek water to boil on the stove, he dreamed of a Hollywood life.

"When I get old enough, I'm movin' to California with fast cars and pretty women," he said to his mom, often in front of laughing relatives. But the laughter was fuel on fire he was hell-bent to blaze.

My dad secretly married his high-school sweetheart, Sue, the summer before her senior year and they lived apart until one day after graduation—they were together until my mother died this past January. 

With $200, they drove a '52 Ford to California and arrived with forty dollars. He started Tommy's Auto Body in Hayward with my mom who helped with the paperwork.  In Hayward, they started a family, beginning with my two older brothers, Tommy and Danny, and then me. 

Dad and my brother Dan still run Tom Eplin's Automotive, in San Leandro now, and his business is doing well. But dad still grieves, as we all do, the woman who he says made him a better man. Mom was his "right hand."

In the poem "The Dash" written by Linda Ellis, she writes about the dash—time spent alive on earth.

"For it matters not, how much we own, the cars… the house… the cash.  What matters is how we live and love and how we spend our dash."  I read this poem at my mother's funeral and we focused on how she spent "her" dash.

In my dad's dash, he has been an amazing father to my two older brothers and me and I feel so fortunate to be able to call him dad.  Our house was the one where kids wanted to hang out. Recently, a high-school friend told my dad that he and my mom were parents to model their lives after. 

My dad's life is an iconic tale of living the "American Dream." 

He created a home where none of us lacked for much, love was in abundance and family was central. 

I am so grateful my mom saw what she did in my dad, the perseverance, the determination, and the need to create the kind of love within a family that would endure it all. 

In "House That Built Me," Miranda Lambert sings, "Daddy gave life to mama's dream." That's just how it was growing up in my house.

I am grateful for the dream we lived that so many people long for.

This is for all those dads who strive to make life better for their families and create magic in the everyday things.  We are forever grateful for your love.