Only in retrospect do the great dads seem like works of art. My unconventional Dad taught me countless important life lessons: Prejudice is synonymous with ignorance. Worrying is pointless. If you have to judge people, do it by how much they tip. These three decades after his passing, I still hold his truths to be self-evident gems.
James Horsman was a third-generation San Franciscan—a huge trump card among native San Franciscans. At the end of WWII, he joined the Merchant Marines, but my dad’s “service” mostly involved running a lucrative bookmaking operation, which, when discovered by his superior officers, cut short his military career. This did not in any way discourage my dad. While he kept a real job as a dispatcher for The San Francisco Chronicle, he mostly played the ponies and ran a number of bookmaking operations. One of his arrests landed him in the wonderful, once famous Herb Caen column: Horsman arrested for bookmaking. Ours was not a rich family by any stretch; we were rather comfortably lower-middle-class, but my dad was always flush with cash—and lots of it.
Here was a man’s man of strong opinions, which were emphatically stated as fact: “Prejudice belongs only to the ignorant, darling. All people are very much the same: white, Black, Indian, Japanese, Koreans, Spanish, we are all the same. Except for Jews and Chinese,” he nodded at this truth as he saw it. “They are generally better than the rest of us.” I never understood the contradiction here until years later.
He was always either buried in a history book, reading the newspapers, playing chess, or working on his new “system”—complicated mathematical formulas designed to beat the odds of this game or that.
Like most serious gamblers, he was surprisingly uninterested in material things.
All this left me with an unusual grasp of money. “Darlin’,” he’d say to me, his eight-year-old daughter, as he peeled one, sometimes two, hundred-dollar bills from his winnings and suggested I treat my legion of friends to the movies and popcorn, “Always remember–worrying about money never got anyone more of it.” In general, he disapproved of any kind of worrying. “If there’s a problem, fix it. Otherwise, decide it’s not a problem after all.” He was unpredictably wise in this way.
My dad also seemed to have an unusual interest in death, but perhaps I am only imagining this. “No one knows if there is some kind of transcendence and heaven after we die or if we just cease to be, but there’s one thing we know with certainty: Billions upon billions of people have done it, so it can’t be all that bad.” Once, when driving past a cemetery, he pulled over and we spend the next several minutes staring at the uniform rows of tombstones. “Look at all this space taken up by people who are no longer here. This,” his arm swept the cemetery, “could have been a playground for kids.”
He imparted a rigorous ethical compass. “The truth is you can do anything you want, as long as you’re willing to accept the consequences of your actions.” Thankfully, I’ve largely escaped this curious bit of sociopathic sagacity, while at the same time I still remember my dad lifting me onto his lap and, with a solemnity and tears I had never witnessed in him, imparting the meaning and profundity of the Holocaust.
My dad enjoyed James Bond-style martinis until my twenty-first birthday. He took me to Joe’s in San Francisco for my first legal drink. Finishing my one drink, I got up to go. He was disappointed his daughter only wanted one drink, and he understood this disappointment as a wake-up call. It was the last drink he ever had.
My inconoclastic dad’s best advice served as a giant, blinking neon sign above my husband, John. The specific counsel he offered concerned how women should pick a husband: “Watch how the man tips,” he instructed. “For heaven’s sake, steer clear of men with short reaches.” A long reach is the opposite—the person, like my dad, who is first to pick up the check in every situation. To not get the check was a serious injury to a man’s honor. A surprisingly good bit of advice, the guidance, if employed, has the remarkable ability to prevent most unhappy marriages. People who are stingy with money are inevitably miserly with their emotions. Generosity is connected to our ability to love; it is a characteristic attached to all parts of a life. It is everywhere in it.
“Promise me,” he said solemnly, “you’ll marry the best tipper you meet.”
I still remember the first time my future husband, John, took me to dinner. I had never been with anyone like John. I felt a powerful attraction to this philosopher and scientist, his height (6’5”) and gorgeous blue eyes—but… would he pass my dad’s test?
I glanced at the bill. It was just under eighty dollars. Before I could even ask if we could share it, he threw down six twenties. A very long reach after all. In fact, John tipped like a gambler after a huge score on the very last day of his life.
This began thirty-five very happy years of marriage.
So please take my dad’s good advice: Experience no fear about death. Stop worrying already. Teach children the lessons of the Holocaust. View ethnicity and religions as a type of coat we are wearing for this life.
And for heaven’s sake, tip big.
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