The Tower We Raised for Dad’s Sunday Net

Reinhold came out the back door wiping his hands on a dish towel. Dad turned to him.

“You climbed it,” Dad said. It was not a question.

“Me and two of the boys from the crew.”

Dad nodded. He looked back up at it. “Forty foot?”

“Forty on the nose. Four sections. Three-band beam on top, rotor works.”

“Where’d you get it?”

I told him about Alois. About his father who had put it up in 1994 and taken it down when he could not climb anymore. About the promise.

“Army,” Dad said, and the corner of his mouth went up. “Well. We’ll forgive him that.”

We ate dinner at the kitchen table. Pot roast and carrots and Florentine’s cherry pie. Dad ate everything on his plate, which he had not done since Christmas, Florentine told me later. He kept looking out the back window at the tower.

At a quarter past one, he could not stand it anymore. He got up and carried the box out to the porch.

Setting Up

Reinhold had the little table ready. Dad unwrapped the radio from the bath towel like it was a newborn. It is an old set, heavy, with a big tuning knob in the middle and a row of switches, the paint worn off the front where his fingers go.

He set the desk microphone beside it. He plugged in the power supply. Reinhold handed him the end of the cable from the tower, and Dad screwed it on by hand, slowly, and then gave it one more quarter turn.

He switched the radio on. The dial lit up. He turned the rotor control until the antenna pointed northeast, toward Maine. I could see it turning slowly up there, against the sky.

Then he put on his cap. It is a black cap, plain, the kind veterans wear. He has had it for years. He only wears it on Sundays and on the Fourth of July.

He checked the frequency. Fourteen point two nine zero. Then he checked it again. Then he checked it a third time.

“Dad, it’s right,” I said.

“I know it’s right,” he said. “I’m just making sure.”

Florentine and Reinhold had gone inside to do the dishes. I think they did it on purpose. I stayed on the porch and leaned against the rail behind him.

The afternoon was bright and warm, the first real warm day of April. The grass in the yard had come in green that week. A pair of robins were working the lawn by the picnic table.

At 1:58, Dad sat down in the chair, pulled it up to the table, and folded his hands in front of him.

“Hedwig,” he said, without turning around.

“Yes, Dad.”

“I thought I’d lost them. All week. I thought, well, that’s that. A man gets to a certain age, and things just get taken, and you let them go.”

I did not trust my voice. I put my hand on his shoulder.

“I wasn’t going to fight about it,” he said. “Florentine doesn’t need that. She’s been good to me.”

“I know, Dad.”

“But I sat out in that garage every day this week,” he said, “and I’d look at the clock, and I’d think, Sunday at two. Sunday at two. And Orrin’s going to call, and I won’t be there.”