Life With Father

I learned at an early age that being John Stoffa’s son would mean I would be different from everyone else. When I was a kid at Asa Packer Elementary School in the 70s, my teacher once asked, “Who here has a daddy who works for Bethlehem Steel?” Practically the entire class raised their hand. Damn! Why does my Dad have to be a social worker? What is a social worker anyway?

I gazed at all my friends and thought of their fancy aluminum sided homes situated on streets named after developers’ children like Ashley Lane and Bradley Court. Me? I lived in a dilapidated 19th century farmhouse called Melody Ranch - painted pink in the 50s - with poison ivy growing up to my second floor bedroom window. This is all because my Dad wanted to save an old farm and restore it himself.

My friends spent weekends at the pool of the Steel Club. Me? I helped Dad move manure piles, planted sweet corn, bought peacocks in Amish country, got thrown off my disagreeable pony Dixie into an electric fence and fed my pet beef steer, Sir Loin. It was like Little House on the Prairie minus the residuals.

“Jeffrey Stoffa, what does YOUR Daddy do?” I look at the Martin Towers mob surrounding me with their arched right eyebrows waiting to hear if I can top them. “My dad works in drugs and alcohol!” I announce defiantly. Heck, maybe if they think my Dad was a drug dealer at least I’ll add some excitement. But it was no use, they knew he was the Northampton County Drug and Alcohol Director. Everyone knew my Dad. Ever since I was born it seemed everyone knew my Dad. My gravestone will say, “Yes, I’m John Stoffa’s son.”

“Jeffrey, come on. We’re going to get some peacocks. Get in the station wagon.” Could I roll my eyes in the back of my head any farther? Upon arriving in Lancaster, Dad says, “Stay here. I’ll be back,” plopping my six-year-old body on the side bench of an enormous oak dining table with about 22 people dressed in 18th century neutral-colored clothing and speaking German. Just as quickly, these 22 people jump up and find some excuse to flee the strange 6-year-old Auslander from Northampton County.

“Don’t be afraid. These are Amish people. They’re neat. You’ll see,” Dad says as I watch him walk away in his tattered baseball cap, ripped shirt, stained jeans, and boots. Neat? Where’s the television? How do they watch Sonny and Cher? I wasn’t afraid of the Amish. They were afraid of me! I had my 1970s Garanimals multi-colored striped and crisscrossed shirt with the green pants and red sneakers. If that weren’t enough, my Donny & Marie lunch pail also made a major contrast to the huge Holy Bible in German sitting on the table next to me. I was all colors and metals and Donnie and Marie, an unsettling visitor from the 20th Century with singing Mormons on my lunch pail no less.

Where is Dad? Why are we here? No one is speaking English and they’re all staring at me. Out the window I could see my father choosing peacocks. They all look the same, Dad, just pick some. Let’s go. If I were smarter I would have run right then and there and given myself up for adoption to a nice Republican couple. But instead I waited patiently for my father to return and we drove home in a station wagon full of peacocks screeching their mating calls while he whistled, “Goodbye, My Coney Island Baby.”

Even my parents’ vacations weren’t like other parents.’ In 1976, the year of the Bicentennial, my parents went to the Soviet Union with another couple who were also fascinated by Russian architecture and history. My father took Hershey bars to Moscow and snuck them to little kids in Red Square when the soldiers weren’t looking. Mom slipped a Vogue magazine to her female tour guide when the trip was over, causing her to hug my mother, “You don’t know what this means to me and my sisters,” she gushed. When they got back to the States and presented me with nesting dolls, Russian lapel pins, and really nasty wrapped candy that resembled some kind of caramel, my mother remarked to my grandmother, “I’ll never complain about paying taxes in this country again.”

My school bordered our farm. So out of one whole side of the school you gazed out at our shabby grey Upper Barn with the fading words of “Melody Ranch” painted on the side in 1950s pink. One day in Creative Writing, the teacher had all the kids stare out the window at my barn and write what we felt. She then read our compositions. I got to spend a whole class hearing my friends pontificate on the beautiful and exotic wreck of a property that my Dad bought. Sigh. A little girl next to me leans over and whispers, “What happened? Did your parents get poor?”, turning her head toward the barn.

Just as the readings were wrapping up, my pet steer Sir Loin walked by the window. He had apparently gotten loose while grazing in the pasture by pulling his own stake out. He was wandering around dragging his huge chain and stake behind him. Since steer are as dumb as peacocks, he never realized he was free; he just kept grazing on the school lawn. (Run Sir Loin! Run!)

“Look at that big dog!” my friend Samantha Case said. I looked and groaned. “Isn’t that from your farm?” Nope. Not mine; must be someone else’s steer. Maybe if I look away no one else will see him. It was too late. Within minutes, Asa Packer Elementary School was experiencing something that would still be talked about at my 20th high school reunion. The male teachers surrounded him, the female teachers shielded the children in the playground, the children inside pressed up against the window screaming and chattering. Everyone’s faces, expressions, body English, and level of hysteria resembled Medieval depictions of the Sack of Rome. I just shrugged my shoulders like, “I don’t know. Never saw that dog before in my life.”

I finally admitted it was my Sir Loin and my father was called by the Principal. Dad rushed from the Government Center in Easton, apologized, and led my steer home through the neighboring field in his three piece suit and wing tips.

My father spends nothing on himself. It’s a battle to get him to buy new clothes. I once threw away sweaters in high school and he fished them out of the garbage and still wears those sweaters. He’s probably the only grown man in the Lehigh Valley ever to wear teenage fashions from The Merry Go Round circa 1985 ... twenty years later.

Dad actually tithed when I was a kid, which amazed me. He was the one who taught me that you put money in the collection plate, not take it out…and I was 15 at the time.

Because my father loved being a weekend farmer and loves the “everyman,” we always had interesting visitors. It wasn’t unusual to have the doorbell ring many times a day. Sometimes it would be one of my mother’s friends popping over to have tea and discuss the latest episode of Masterpiece Theatre’s Upstairs Downstairs, or a big shot politician wanting Dad’s support or advice. But in line between the Upstairs Downstairs woman and the politician would be another character waiting to ring the bell, someone like Jake the Grinder who came to grind the corn that Dad grew. Or as he introduced himself, “Chake da Grinter who come ta grindt da corn.”

My favorite conversation with Jake was when I asked him directions to Emmaus and he referred to Emmaus Ave. as the “Road to Emmaus.” I said, “Oh, like in the Bible…”

“BIBLE? Whatcha mean Bible? E-moss iz namedt fer de Indians, da E-moss Indians.”

“Really? I thought it was named for the New Testament, the road to Emmaus, Jesus’ resurrection.” Jake the Grinder looked at me, his eyes squinting,

“Vot’s dat? Some kinda Catholic thing?” he barked. But whether it was Jake the Grinder or the Queen of England, my mother always treated everyone with the same respect, “Oh, Jake, what a pleasure to see you. John’s somewhere on the property. Would you like something to drink?” I think if my tombstone says, “Yes, he’s my father.” Then Mom’s tombstone should say, “John’s somewhere on the property” because that’s what she is always saying when he’s home. Being buried in the same graveyard gives it an ironic double meaning.

Sometimes my father’s eccentricities could make for a lot of fun. During the 80s and 90s, Dad had successfully redone most of the farmhouse and it was no longer pink and had no poison ivy growing up to my window, we had many parties, with tents outside, lots of family and friends and neighbors, kind of like a Hanover Township version of the Twelve Oaks barbecue. Mom even would walk around with a real antique white parasol.

There was always that point during the day when the quiet afternoon filled with laughing and the barking of dogs, and suddenly the chatter would be pierced with the sound of my father reving up one of his many tractors pulling a huge hay wagon that probably was older than the house. “Hay ride!” someone would yell. My mother would dart into the house grabbing whoever was closest to help her get the hats. She had started the tradition that on all Stoffa hayrides, you had to wear a hat. Because my parents don’t throw away anything and had inherited all kinds of goodies from Al Crawford, who had sold us the farm with contents included, we had a real Chinese coolie hat, a real PA State Troopers hat, a Russian colonel’s bear fur hat, all kinds of hats. Everyone’d pile in and drive away from the party. But where to go?

We couldn’t enjoy a tree-lined empty field. Hanover Township was all built up with a residential street plan based on 19th Century English garden mazes. We did the next best thing. Our hay ride would wind in and out of Hanover Farms, Stafore Estates, Macada Rd., down Bradley Lane, Ashley Court, Katharine Circle, and Billy Bob Terrace. But my father would deliberately drive to their friends’ houses, especially the ones that had perfectly manicured lawns, and instruct all the partygoers to throw hay all over their front lawns as we hooted and hollered with our best fake redneck accents. That was fun.

Even in their retirement, their unusual lifestyle patterned by Dad, hasn’t changed. A few years ago, I came home from South Beach, where I was living, to visit my parents. I had met Michelle Pfeiffer at the supermarket in the deli aisle and Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan had stopped their car in front of my apartment so Meg could brush crumbs off her lap. I was so excited to tell my mom this news, but when I arrived home she was busy helping him birth some goats. They were standing in the barn, knee deep in fluids and goats emitting moans and groans. I heard my father yelling, “Come on…push!” He thinks the goat mother speaks English? Meg Ryan and Michelle Pfeiffer went right out of my head.

But as exciting as it was to stand next to an emaciated Michelle Pfeiffer in a South Beach deli and be able to say, “Excuse me, are you going to take that corned beef?” I don’t think those are the memories I’ll remember when I’m on the third floor of Gracedale looking forward to jello night. Instead, I’m sure I’ll remember my steer, Sir Loin, my pink 19th century farmhouse where I grew up, the Amish family I frightened with my loud Garanimals rainbow colored outfit bought at a Hess’s Cleanup Sale on Hamilton St., the hayrides, and the many other great memories that were created thanks to life with Father.