Gold Tooth - Guest Blog

My step mother Sherry recently wrote this piece and as I have been very remiss in my own writing this month I decided to add her work as a guest blog post since I so thoroughly enjoyed it. Sherry and I always saw my father as a total character. We were very much aligned in our constant source of amusement from my father.

Gold Tooth

My Bill had one gold tooth. It was in a visible position though not a front tooth.

To me it was more than just old fashioned, it was a strange statement.

Bill loved the gold tooth. One might think he had gypsy leanings, after all, he did play the violin. More than a gypsy though, he was a pirate, a man with passion for weaponry and espionage. Not all of these interests were armchair interests: he was a hunter with guns, knives, slings, trident, slingshots, pea shooters, bows and arrows (the old fashioned kind, handmade), he reveled in making simple bombs, blasting off heavy duty fireworks. He hand-braided whips, collected bolas and the truly nasty, simple little caltrops. Bill respected, and perhaps admired or even secretly aspired, the underside of life.

I hated the gold tooth. It was so low brow, low-end, out of date, an homage to the wrong things, etc. I had too many thoughts about the gold tooth. Tacky. He’d smile.

The belt and suspenders look was another throw-back to something, some era. Was it his farm background? Was it the mob? He loved quoting Meyer Lansky or bringing our attention to the Jewish Bootlegging Purple Gang. His younger son and I would gang up on him and plead that he just try not wearing suspenders. Not happening.

Then there were the habitual outfits: tan or loden shirt from Sears, with tan or loden pants from Sears. People asked if he was our handyman. He was a handy man but .... not that kind. His idea of adding color to his wardrobe focused almost entirely on his collection of ties. Each special and adored. Early in our relationship as he was taking off for a visit to Harrisburg to see his mother he went along with my suggestion that a tie was

unnecessary for a visit with one’s mother. Not Vera. ‘Vicious Vera’, as Bill called her, upon seeing him remarked that he “looks good in a tie”. I’d not met her yet and wasn’t charmed.

An aside about Vera. My first meeting with my new mother-in-law and Bill’s third wife, was a visit to Harrisburg to take her out to dinner. Bill was driving, Vera in the front. I asked Vera, in perfect seriousness where Bill got his great sense of humor? She thought for a bit and replied: “Probably from me.” Well, not in this life. The woman had neither a funny bone, nor a knack for words. One might have called her uptight and sour, no fun. Forget humor. Truly, her considered suggestion was the funniest thing she ever said. We laughed about it for years.

Still, it was none of my business the gold tooth. NONE of my business the uniformly tan outfits, suspenders, et al. Nonetheless I persisted in suggestions for change/s. NONE of my business. I didn’t “get” the none of my business part. Now

Bill is gone, his gold tooth a distant thought. His smile the thing that comforts me.

I learned, that for Bill, the gold tooth carried a message to his public, that he was:

funny, old-fashioned, fearless of what other’s think, humble, unorthodox, etc.

I learned how lucky I was to fall into his orbit and be bound to him with all his quirks and singularity of style.