Put A Chain On It

An essay by Stephen Geez
www.StephenGeez.com
Art by D.R. Wagner

Father story,

Fatherhood story,

Father tribute,
Word Count:794

Sometimes whenever my father is perplexed by a repair problem, people good-naturedly tease him by suggesting he “put a chain on it.”

This dates way back to my high-school days in what they call one of those eras gone by. I’d purchased my first car which, owing to industry and parsimony, happened also to be a brand-new compact fresh off the assembly line. Soon I discovered that the vent lever, which normally shifts the fan-blower between heater and windshield defogger, had managed to lock up, thereafter refusing to budge.

Keep in mind, my father has always been able to fix anything. He’s licensed in various skilled trades and, back in his career days, managed to keep entire factories running, even sometimes in the face of daunting odds. Nearly everybody he knows has called him at one time or another with a problem only he could solve.

His concept of “fully functional” fits with the neat and orderly world he tries to sustain. He makes everything work, adapting whatever needs improvement, discarding what’s no longer useful, even on occasion building something new if that’s what will best do the trick. He’s organized, with a place for everything and everything in its . . . Well, let’s just say that we didn’t accumulate much junk while growing up, since letting possessions slip below the radar of our attentions for too long risked later discovery that they’d been purged during one of my father’s sweeps.

But more than a repair challenge, the vent lever clearly raised a bigger issue: safety. It threatened to endanger me on a dark road some cold night, leaving me unable to see where I drove.

My siblings and I always considered Dad a bit of a safety nut, a man infatuated with smoke detectors and motion sensors long before they came into fashion. If we stopped by for a visit, he’d invariably wander out to examine our tires, and having him over to our houses usually included an impromptu check of the furnace, or a “When’s the last time you changed your . . .?”

We thought he tended to worry too much, but in retrospect it seems healthy doses of caution don’t make for such a bad way to live. It’s a dangerous world out there, one where sometimes just enough vigilance might prevent catastrophe or help avoid tragedy.

So after three trips to the dealership failed to increase the lever’s reliability, my father decided to put a small chain on it. He attached it to the back of the mechanism, leaving it hanging from under the dash, then showed me how a simple pull on the chain whenever the lever froze up would solve the problem.

Everybody thought this was quite funny—but it worked. And though he’s been teased about it ever since, his creative problem-solving has helped and protected a lot of people, if by no other means than devising some form of “chain” to do the job.

We all attach figurative chains to whatever we know will impact the lives of those we love, but we can’t fix everything wrong with the world, nor can we squander our time trying too hard, and sometimes nothing we do can ever be enough. That’s when in our grief we must find comfort in knowing we did the best we could.

Sometimes at dusk my father can be found on the porch, scanning the lake where he plans to catch a wily old bass, and he’s content knowing the grass is mowed and the pilot lights are lit and the widgets all run smooth. His thoughts might wander to considering some new solution for an old problem, but there’s no way he’ll ever know how many ways he’s truly helped so many people, the tragedies he’s prevented, or at least the better nights of sleep he’s given to those who know he’s out there when they need him.

And though his own joys have been tempered by the most heart-rending of reasons to grieve, he always presses on, as do we all, a little wiser, always vigilant.

That vent-lever chain did wind up outlasting my first car, as I’m sure many of my father’s “chains” inevitably will someday outlast him.

I’ve not met many people who would’ve been so determined to fix that nuisance device, nor who would consider it so important.

And my father’s the only person I know who ever would have thought to put a chain on it.

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