Alexx's Journal

I continue to curate and present my parents’ papers as a way of honoring and preserving their memories. And, in part, to assuage my own guilt at having been a less-than-perfect son. I find that, in that feeling, too, I am my father’s son.

Found in a printout of my father’s LJ entries, from the period immediately before mom’s death:

Private entry:
Daddy, daddy, don’t go! What did my biological father die of? I need to get a copy of his death certificate to find out for sure.
I’m a father-killer. When Harriet asked me, did I kill fathers, I said No, I didn't kill Bob, but she meant Ray.
Saturday, June 18,2005

A related document, found on his computer:

Saturday, June 18, 2005

Harriet and I discussed my father’s death again tonight. I’m writing this down so that I don’t “forget” it again.

In 1945, when I was two years old, my father Raymond A. Kay was sick and, as far as we know, spent some time at home – perhaps several months? -- preparing for an operation. He was 32 years old, 5 feet 9 inches tall, and weighed in excess of 270 pounds. I believe that he was being hospitalized for a hernia repair operation, but I’m not sure of that. He died in December 1945 (I have one reference to 12/11/45 and another to 12/7/45), shortly after my own third birthday on November 20. The cause of death, I have always assumed, was complications (primarily peritonitis) of the hernia operation. Harriet recalls that Mom said at one time that Ray had had a heart attack, but I have no recollection of that myself.

The scenario that Harriet imagines goes something like this:

I’m two years old. My daddy has been at home more than usual, and spending more time with me. Then he is worried about his upcoming operation and perhaps spends less time with me, or is in a bad mood, or snaps at me, or something like that. Then he goes to the hospital and never comes back.

At three years old, I was just getting language skills and was in a very self-absorbed stage of life – in other words, I would have been making life hell for my parents, just as two-year-olds do. It’s not unreasonable to suppose that my father, worried or upset at the upcoming surgery, might have chastised me and told me to behave or else.

And then the “or else” happened. He didn’t come home from the hospital. And thus it must have been my fault, because I misbehaved. Therefore, I killed my father. Yikes! And it’s likely that, given my age and the tenor of the times, nobody would have talked to me about it. My daddy’s death would have been spoken of in hushed tones. And I would have every reason to go on believing that somehow it was my fault. Because kids tend to think like that.

The only memory I have of my father is an image of his body laid out for viewing in a coffin in the living room of my grandparents’ house. This is like a single photograph without a caption. So far as I know, I don’t actually have such a photograph except in my mind’s eye.

Another of dad’s services, this one from early 1986.
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In the 1980s, my dad went to work at Computer Security Institute. My major memories of him during this time are of his absence. He worked long hours, and when he *was* home, he was often passed out on the sofa. His boss was a workaholic, and expected the same level of performance from his employees.

What this did to dad, and to our family, upset me a lot, and I swore to never do that. As it turns out, of course, in our late-capitalist society, pretty much anyone who gets to be a boss got that way by being a demanding workaholic, so it wasn’t really feasible to avoid them.

Going through dad’s papers of the period, I found out that dad’s relationship with his boss was even more creepy/abusive than I had thought. I’ve been posting scans of the docs on facebook, if you’re curious.

The boss tried to get dad to lose weight on a specific schedule, with monetary bonuses for meeting milestones. Naturally (or so it seems to me from my current perspective on Kay male behavior), dad failed utterly when presented with this sort of structure.

After dad had been at CSI for about 4 years, his boss went so far as to have a psychological profile drawn up for dad! What I find most fascinating about it is that it could easily have been written about *me*, word for word, if one of my workaholic bosses had ever had such a thing done. Not to say that I *agree* with it all. All the business about “untapped potential” is, IMAO, bullshit. The mind structures that give Kay men their intelligence are the exact same ones that continually distract us, and make it difficult for us to focus on things like ‘career’ and ‘job performance’. We’re package deals, not fixer-uppers.

And a Long, Strange Ride It Was …

A True Story by Russell Kay

It was a traveling week, and those are always kind of unpredictable. But it ended in a bus  encounter like nothing I’d ever dreamed of … or would want to repeat.
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Things started out normally enough. From home in Worcester, Mass., I made plans to attend a big computer industry trade show in New York City, then spend two days at the Annual Show of the Northeast Cutlery Collectors Association (of which I am a life member) in Stamford, Conn. Remember this final destination.

On Wednesday morning, bright and early, I set out to drive the two and a half hours to Stamford. Everything was fine until the last 15 miles, which were stop-and-go gridlock on I-95 because of accidents and road construction. I got to Stamford with 15 minutes to spare before the bus left for New York, but the parking garage at the “Transportation Center” (i.e., the train/bus station) was full. I needed to leave my car there for three days and finally had to settle for a nearby lot where the tab was $18 a day. I agreed, having little choice, handed over $54 and set out to walk the quarter-mile or so to the bus station, dragging a large suitcase on wheels and a not-quite-so large computer backpack on my shoulders.

Got there, bought my ticket, and sat down at exactly the bus’s scheduled departure time. I waited. And waited some more. Turns out, the bus got caught in that same mess up on I-95. I got to New York, took a quick cab to the Javits Center, and got there in time to make my first appointment at the show by 10 minutes. The show, compared to previous such shows in New York, was a real bust, but I had enough appointments set up that my time was well spent.

Now let’s fast-forward to Friday. The first bus to Stamford that morning left at 10:15, and I wanted to catch it so I could spend the day poking around Stamford and maybe take in a movie. Got to the Port Authority Terminal at 42nd Street and 8th Avenue in plenty of time (having cleverly chosen a hotel just a block away), and stood in line at the gate. Then it happened.

I’ve been in and out of that terminal maybe a dozen times in the past few years, and I have never before seen a security check. But a uniformed rent-a-cop wheeled her little wagon up to the head of the line and announced that all carry-on bags were going to be searched.

When my turn came, the bag passed fine … but then she scanned me with one of those hand-held metal detectors. Beep! Coins come out. Beep! Same for the keys. Beep! And my little Spyderco Cricket joins the pile.

“What’s that?” she demanded.

“A pocket knife,” I answered with some trepidation in my mind. I mean, jeez, the blade on it is only two inches long. I could do more damage with a ballpoint pen.

“Can’t go on the bus,” she stated.

“OK,” I said, “I’ll just put it inside my bag that will ride underneath.”

“I said, Can’t Go On The Bus,” she insisted. “Can’t go on the bus at all, no way.” Then she let loose the real zinger: “In fact, I’m not going to let you on any bus until you go somewhere and get rid of that knife – maybe send it to someone – and come back and show me a receipt proving it.” A little more gently, she said, “There’s a Post Office one level up inside the terminal.”

I haven’t made it to age 60 without learning that I’m just never going to win some battles and sometimes it’s better not even to try. Especially with a cop, private or otherwise. Also, I really didn’t want her to take an interest in the rest of my luggage, and it certainly didn’t seem like the best time to mention that inside my big suitcase was a padded case with a full dozen knives in it. I was, after all, going to Stamford to attend a knife show!

I sighed, asked the guy standing next to me to watch my luggage, and set out to mail my knife to myself. Well, it turns out the Post Office is in fact two levels up and, while it’s technically in the same terminal, it is, in fact, located in another building. By the time I got there, at 10:09, I had a bad feeling.

I waited impatiently in line behind the one person being served. I asked for a Priority Mail cassette-sized box, wrapped the Cricket in an Express Mail envelope so it wouldn’t rattle around, sealed it up, put my home address on it, and put it on the scale.

“Can’t accept it without a return address,” the clerk informed me. So I hurriedly scribbled my name and address on the box a second time. I paid my $3.85 and, yes, I got a receipt. I raced back to the gate, arriving there at 10:23. The 10:15 bus, of course, had already left. The rent-a-cop was standing there with an annoyed look on her face.

“You left your luggage here,” she complained.

“Well sure,” I answered. “I didn’t have a hope in hell of making the bus if I’d taken them with me.”

“Guess what – you didn’t make it. I tried to hold the bus for a few minutes, but it had to leave,” she added.

“Ah well,” I muttered. “When’s the next bus to Stamford?”

“First, let’s see that receipt.” I handed it over, she studied it carefully for a few seconds, then returned it to me.

“Next bus is at 11:45,” she said.

I grabbed my bags and sat down to wait for the 11:45. After an hour, I got in line for the bus, which in fact arrived precisely at 11:45. After another 10 minutes they let us board. No security search at all. I got in, found a seat, turned on the overhead light, and began to read. After a while, it dawned on me that the bus was still parked in the terminal, and there was no driver in the appropriate seat.

I turned my attention to a conversation going on just outside the open door. The driver was talking to someone else who, it sounded like, was giving him directions. Finally, at 12:10, the driver climbed aboard and the trip started.

After a while, as the bus lumbered through Harlem and the Bronx and, for all I know, parts of  New Jersey, I got tired and dozed off. Had a very nice snooze, in fact. I woke up and glanced at my watch. It was 1:45, so I figured we should be pretty close to our destination. I was feeling good.

Until I looked out the window and realized that the sign we were just about to go under said this was the way to Manhattan. After a couple of turns and swoops, the bus pulled up at the side of the street and stopped. We were now at 42nd Street and 10th Avenue in downtown New York … approximately one block from the back of the Port Authority Terminal we had left nearly two hours before.

The driver, a man in his thirties or forties, pulled out a cell phone and began jabbering into it. “I got lost and couldn’t find my way out of New York,” he told the phone.

I didn’t mention this before, but there was a sign inside the terminal that said the first row of seats on the bus is not available to passengers. I’ve often seen supervisors sitting there up front, apparently training or evaluating drivers. Now I realized that in the front row of my bus was seated a young woman, not in uniform, clutching a sheaf of papers that, evidently, had printed, step-by-step directions on how to get from New York to Stamford. She had been reading them to the driver.

The driver kept talking to someone, explaining his problem, his voice rising in volume and intensity as he explained that since he’d gotten lost he decided to try and find his way back to where he started. Well, he sure got that one right.

He hung up the phone, engaged his left turn signal, and the bus set out. For Stamford. Again.

This time, he seemed to know where he was going, because before I knew it we were on an expressway. The driver did, however, seem to be arguing with his (dare I say) navigator, about where they were going.

“Yes, I have to stop at New Rochelle,” he told her. “That’s on the schedule and I gotta stop there.”

Time passed.

Suddenly, we were exiting the expressway at a ramp that was labeled “New Rochelle.” As we got to the bottom of the ramp, the only options were to turn left or right. The driver sang out, “Anybody know which way we go? Are there any regulars on the bus? Anyone here who knows where the stop is?” No one said anything.

It was the bus from hell, I just knew. We were lost again. I was never going to get to Stamford. I’d miss the knife show. How would I rescue my car? And would I have to pay another $18 a day in parking fees?

Surprise! The driver turned left, and that turned out to be right. After negotiating another couple of turns, he pulled up alongside the curb – New Rochelle doesn’t have a real bus terminal – got out and went into a nearby convenience store to check in. It was the same place the bus from Stamford to New York had stopped, which seemed promising. After all, we weren’t much more than two hours behind schedule.

Back in the bus, the driver got us back onto I-95 and we proceeded on to the next stop, Stamford.

Imagine my bewilderment when we actually arrived there. At the very same bus station I’d been at two days before. Amazing, simply amazing. I reminded the driver that I had luggage underneath (not mentioning that it contained weapons of mass destruction), and he got out and unloaded my stuff.

I had expected to take the 10:15 bus from Manhattan, arriving in Stamford at 12:05. I looked at my watch again. It was 4:15. I guessed I wasn’t going to take in a movie that afternoon after all. Well, at least I was here.

“Hope you find your way back,” I called cheerfully to the driver. I didn’t really listen to his answer; it wasn’t my problem any more. The folks going on to Vermont – well, silently I wished them luck.

I pulled my suitcase along through a parking lot, across a construction site, under a viaduct, and uphill the quarter mile to the parking lot. My car was still there.

Never has a Honda sedan seemed so much an expression of personal freedom and the ability to exert control over my own life. I had escaped the clutches of the lost Greyhound and would live to tell about it. I wasn’t going to be another Flying Dutchman after all.

I’ve heard it said that people making plans is God’s idea of a good joke. I sure hope she enjoyed it.

Copyright © 2003 by Russell Kay. All Rights Reserved.

About a year and a half ago, I realized that I had really become a knife collector. Nothing else would adequately explain my buying one (relatively) expensive factory folder after another. I tried not to admit this to myself for a long time (Why? Darned if I know.) but the truth will out.

OK, having acknowledged the seriousness of my interest, I started to think about where this interest had come from, and where I thought I might want to go with it. Well, there are lots of things I’d like to do, knives I’d like to acquire, but that’s for the future. What was even more interesting, to me, was the past, where this interest came from.

I finally made a connection with my grandfather, certainly the most important, influential, and revered man in my childhood, my father having died when I was two.


Grandpa had three big, wonderful knives that he kept in his dresser drawer. One was a stag-handled bowie, one was a Case sheath knife, and the third was a Finnish puukko. As a kid, it the early 1950s, I used to take them out of the drawer, remove them from their sheaths, and admire them and fantasize about them, but that’s as much as I could ever do. Use them?! Not likely.

Fast forward 20 years or so. My grandfather died. Eventually, I inherited the knives. I think I did, anyway. I have the puukko, but no one seems to know now what happened to the other two. Conceivably I could have had them in my possession at that time, but I don’t believe so. In any case, they are now long gone. The bowie stands out clearly in my memory, but I can’t picture the Case at all.

Fast forward another 20 years to the present. Having acknowledged myself as a knife collector, I decided that I had to have Grandpa’s knives, somehow. The puukko was easy. At a time when it hadn’t meant very much to me, I had given it to my son Alex, who used to take it on SCA encampments. Unfortunately, he never gave it any maintenance, and it was not stainless. Alex gladly gave it back to me, but it’s in a bad way. I polished off the rust, but there’s nothing to be done about the severe pitting.

The Case I couldn’t remember anything about – not handle shape, material, or size. I’ve looked through old catalogs--heck, I’ve looked at lots of old Case sheath knives--and nothing rings a bell. This one will have to wait, maybe forever.


But the bowie ... that I could visualize so clearly, so tantalizingly. I went to knife shows, looking at old bowies, but I never found one that had quite the same size or shape, or that was good enough. So I finally decided to commission a replica. Last April, I sat down with knifemaker Jim Siska and explained my situation. I had found an old drawing of a blade that matched my memory, and I had copied it and blown it up. I gave Jim the drawing, we agreed on a price, ($375), specs (carbon steel, full tang, amber stag handle, brass guard), and delivery (by Christmas 1997).


Well, Christmas just arrived a little early! I went to the Northeast Cutlery Collectors’ Association show in Marlboro today. Jim Siska’s table, as usual, was at the far end of the room from the entrance. I found that I was dragging out the wait, stopping to talk to people along the way, trying to delay the encounter. But I finally got to the end of the aisle, I couldn’t stall any longer, and there it was. Jim only had four knives on his table, and one of them was mine. MINE! It is gorgeous, just gorgeous. Oh, I wasn’t excited, not a bit.

I had picked Jim Siska to make this knife because I have admired his work, both the art and the craft of it, and I liked the feeling I get when I look at or handle one of his knives. The knife he’s made for me is a period piece, not typical of his normal work, but it’s clearly related to the knives he’s known for, and he admitted that he enjoys making bowies. The grind lines and finish on the 3/16-inch thick O-1 blade are flawless, the point is a work of art, the wonderful stag handle fits my hand like it was made for me (Duh, it was!), and even the plain sheath is elegantly handsome.



Now, some truths. This is undoubtedly a far better knife than Grandpa had, maybe even than he ever thought of having. And if I did suddenly have his knife to put next to this, I’d probably find that my recollection of it was faulty, and the new knife looks significantly different.

This isn’t Grandpa’s knife, it’s mine, made in memory of his. I cherish it, and when I look at it, as I’m doing now while I write this, I think of that wonderful man and all the strength I once drew from him ... and still continue to.

Thanks, Jim, for helping make a dream come true. And thank you, Grandpa, for everything you gave me and for who you were. I’m sorry I lost your knife, but I think you’ll be proud of the new one we’ve got, you and I.

Another document from dad's hard drive, musing on the death of his own father.
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Also in dad's papers was a yearbook from a sort of summer school he went to in between HS and college. The 1960 National Science Foundation Institute for Secondary School Summer Science Training at Cornell University. There isn't really anything in there specific to dad, but I did find one thing that I think will be of interest to my Boston friends -- a student filk of "Charlie on the M.T.A."

Lyrics by "The N.S.F." To the tune of
Craig Smith and Howie Ellis the "M.T.A."

People of America - Students of Cornell!
Throughout the course of this nation's history, we have been known to have the finest educational standards in the world.
In these trying times, these same superior standards are being questioned.
The National Science Foundation, better known as the N.S.F., is trying to remedy this situation by giving the young adults of America the chance to pursue their studies at an institute of higher learning. This is the story of such a boy.
Comrades...er...citizens, hear me out. This could happen to you---

1. Let me tell you the story of a boy named Charlie
Who liked his Math and Chemistry
He thought that he would spend his whole dam summer up at
Cornell University.
verse
Oh, the poor boy learned, oh, the poor boy learned,
He learned the hard way, too,
He learned that college ain't all peaches and cream,
1st ending: It’s physics, math, and zo -- no!
2nd ending: It’s physics, math, and zoo. (As in animals)

2. College life seemed swell those first few hours
Charlie thought he'd have lots of fun
But the damn professor gave him so much homework
He was up till half past one.
verse with first ending

3. This is only the beginning of a very sad story
Charlie still thought he would have some fun
He dreamed of capturing some pretty little girl
But there were three boys to every one.
verse with 3rd ending: There ain't enough girls for you

4. Every morning he would rise up at half past seven
And crawl up the hill to Straight
Then he'd down a breakfast of donuts and coffee
The coffee to keep him awake,
verse with first ending

5. In his morning class he would struggle sleepily
And soon be left behind
If he went to sleep, little visions of ions
Would run around through his mind,
verse with 4th ending: It's electron orbits, too

6. At noon he would rush to Sage for dinner,
But his hunger would soon abate
With tuna fish hot dogs and ginger ale jello
He would soon be off to Straight.
Verse:
0h, the poor boy learned, oh, the poor boy learned,
That the food up here is hell
After two or three meals at the Sage Hall diner
He didn't feel so well,

7. If he met up with a girl and was extremely lucky
And her boyfriend didn't mind,
He would get some culture at the local movie
Of a new and different kind,
verse with 3rd ending

8. Now we bring to a close this very sad story,
And we hope you'll heedd us too,
Just remember this isn’t 'bout a boy named Charlie,
It’s about every one of you.
verse, with first ending plus:
(slowly) and math with Professor Agnew,

Spent the bulk of Memorial Day working on The Dad Project. About a month ago, I went to the storage unit containing all his worldly goods, and salvaged things that I thought might have some sentimental value. Since then, I've been slowly but steadily going through them. I've mostly been trying not to get too obsessive about it, but Memorial Day seemed like a reasonable exception. So I took a deep dive into the photo archives.

Ye gods, dad took a lot of pictures. And seems to have kept most of them. If you thought I posted a lot of his work before, that's only the tip of the iceberg. Of course, the iceberg is too huge to fully deal with, and now largely stripped of its original context. So phase 1 of the project is, sadly, doing a cursory check through, and throwing out about 3/4 of it. Yes, those are pretty (trees | birds | waves | flowers | landscapes | sunsets | boats | mountains) -- but how many such pictures does anyone need? He even kept all his negatives from the 1960s.

Once I finish the first cull pass (itself a big sub-project), I'm going to see which formats of stuff I can scan myself. Other stuff will need to be sent to someone like ScanCafe. I'll definitely need to outsource the few reels of 8mm film I found in one box!

My plan is to spend an hour or two on the Estate every Monday. Indefinitely. At that rate, it's going to take many months to get through Dad's stuff. But that is, itself, only a sub-project. Once that's done, the focus will move to my *own* estate. Seeing the remains of someone else's life in such detail has brought some things into sharp focus that I had already sort-of known, but am becoming more serious about. I had already internalized that I should be evaluating my own possessions in terms of "Will I ever use this item again?" But now I add to that "Will *anyone* ever use this item again? If I get hit by a bus, will the existence of this item just annoy or confuse my inheritors?" So a lot of my own stuff is going to be getting thrown out, given away, or sold.

Other bits of wisdom:
* If you can't find it, you don't really own it. (Lots more organizing in my future.)
* If you're young, poor, and setting up a household, find an estate sale. People die with an amazing amount of basic household stuff that the heirs don't need and would happily sell to you cheap.

Appendix: Script for a slide show dad put together about Brazil. I have a few photos he took in Brazil (link), but the bulk of this slideshow is missing, as far as I know.

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Episode 6: The conference in Campo Grande, and a final decision.

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