PROJECTS — [PART 3] Travels with Dad

Props by RANDY FERTEL

My Dad liked props when he traveled. I liked to become invisible when he employed them.

A golf club was one of his favorites. “You don’t want to lose your grip,” he would say as he stroked imaginary balls in airport concourses while waiting for intercontinental flights. “Or your swing.” I’m not sure golf clubs would make it through security checks these days. They might inspire one of those anal probes. I can’t remember where he stowed his club aloft. Isn’t a 7 iron a little long for one of those overhead bins? Yet somehow the club came along with us.

If a fellow traveler inquired after Dad’s club or his swing, he was certain to learn about all the things he was doing wrong in life. Of course the first was that, fool, you weren’t practicing your swing while traveling. But, worse, it was also true that your health was in jeopardy because you weren’t spending 6 weeks a year taking the mineral baths in Hot Springs, or, as Dad’s obsessions developed, you weren’t spending $5000 on six weeks of “cell shots” in Switzerland.

Props could vary depending on destination. On the way to the airport in 1966 to begin our trip around the world, suddenly Dad yelled, “pull into that gas station.” Startled and imagining something was deadly wrong, I complied. Was he having a heart attack? Did we have a flat? Had he forgotten his passport? No.

“You can’t go to the beach without a beach-ball.” Waikiki was our first stop. And he got out of the car, whipped a limp but colorful beach ball out of his bag, and inflated a it at the air hose. Or maybe I did, at his insistence. .

Our trips always ended abruptly because of some conflict that developed en route.

But the seeds of that conflict were sown at such moments. Or maybe it was when I declined to loft the beach-ball back and forth in the gate seating area.

“No, Dad. Please Dad. Not now.”