A key piece from my Dad's world

Jun 20, 2009

Special to the Star

For Father's Day, if the acres of cards in the Hallmark aisles are to be believed, you can only present your father with a gift that has something to do with golf, fishing, cars or beer.

This is totally stupid, because everyone knows that if a man actually enjoys any of those pursuits, he has already purchased himself every single thing he wants in order to pursue it.

Which is where ties and socks come in: men don't buy themselves those things – because they don't really want them.

My dad never played a game of golf in his life. He pretended to fish at the cottage using whatever tackle we could untangle each spring after it had fornicated in the dark of the shed over the long winter.

The beer thing he managed on his own quite efficiently, and cars were a means of transportation rather than a hobby.

But that didn't stop us. We bought jumper cables. We bought leather steering wheel covers (I found one in the basement the other day, still in the package). We bought auto club memberships, we bought seat covers, we bought miniature tool kits for the glove box.

He was always gracious, but he didn't care much. It was like buying him a tie. And he only wore a tie when one of us got married, and even then he only wore it for about 10 minutes.

Of course the go-to gift when you're standing in Canadian Tire the week before Father's Day is the key fob.

They have a whole rack of them, and you spin it around wondering if you should get Dad the one emblazoned with the badge of his very first car, the one he has now, or the one he aspires to. Would it look ridiculous for a man driving a bright orange AMC station wagon to hand over the keys to a mechanic with a Porsche key fob attached? Probably.

The upside is that my waste-not-want-not Dad would use the key fobs for other stuff. Our shed key proudly declares that its other car is a Ferrari. There's a set of cottage keys with a Dodge logo on the leather honouring a long-gone Ramcharger.

I have a drawer full of other random keys, each with its own car-themed tag. I have no clue as to what the locks that most of these keys belong to might be guarding.

The thing is, Dad only bought a new car every 10 years, so we'd all rush to replace the old with the new in a flurry of honouring-the-new-car activity.

We were idiots. My father only ever had one tag on his keychain for as long as I can remember.

He worked at Dofasco for more than 40 years, and his employee tag was on his key chain: employee No. 1788 was embossed on it, though it had long worn smooth. It was made of brass, though when I was small I thought it was gold. Kids are funny that way.

I remember the number decades later, because my mother made the mistake of telling me a secret one time. At Dofasco, they had gas pumps for employees. You just gave them the number and could fill up your car and drive away.

I thought this was pretty magical. Free gas. Of course it was deducted from my dad's paycheque, but ... details.

My dad's been gone more than 12 years, so why do I even remember that key tag?

Because it's been on my key ring ever since.

Lorraine Sommerfeld's column appears Saturday in Wheels and Mondays in

Living. www.lorraineonline.ca

Toronto Star