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Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2009 > June > 01 > Entry

Early Dad’s Day 2

By Michael Barnes | Monday, June 1, 2009, 09:43 AM

For Part 1, see earlier post below …

During the 1960s, my father worked in advertising. It wasn’t all “Mad Men,” but it was close enough for Houston. Cocktail parties and barbecues were staged on preternaturally smooth, San Augustine lawns. My father’s laugh grew heartier, but I sensed, even at that age, office politics injected its poison through the mid-century modern family rooms. Dad held his own, but this was not his crowd. He preferred a slower, sweeter pace to socializing.

During the 1970s, my parents owned and ran, first one, then another mom-and-pop supermarket. Seven days a week, Dad stationed himself next to the “courtesy booth” to greet the suburban Houston customers. He liked fielding the complaints and requests, chortling at the bad jokes and practicing his signature phrases (like shouting “Capitalism in action!” every time a customer wasted a coin on an egg-prize game near the exit door). Until the neighborhoods — and the supermarket business model — changed radically, I think my Dad was happiest as the apron-wearing shopkeeper with the big handshake who remembered everyone’s names and personal histories.

During the 1980s, Mom and Dad retreated to the country. This repeated a previous pattern of working in small towns, having already ranged from Kilgore and Jacksonville in East Texas to La Grange, Columbus, Caldwell and Schulenburg nearer to Austin. Their new home, Mexia, represented a major, longer-lasting shift. They stayed on the shores of Lake Mexia for many years, and through jobs, church and volunteering, they got to know just about everyone for miles and miles around. Although, oddly, not Mexia’s most notorious ex-patriots, Anna Nicole Smith and Sir Robert Allen Stanford.