WWMGD?

If Pappo was alive in the 1920s and 30s and Columbia Pictures found out about him, they might have put The Three Stooges out to pasture. Simple economics. Why pay Larry, Moe, and Curly when you can pay one man who does the work of all three? Pappo has been the perpetrator of more hilarious chaos than anyone you’re likely to know.

It took three of these guys to do what Pappo could accomplish solo.

When I was a kid, he built us a clubhouse. He’s a tin knocker (if you’re a civilian, then just know that he’s a sheet metal worker) so he knows his way around a set of tools. He erected one side of the clubhouse, then the other—a nine-foot wooden frame on either side—and as he stood to admire his progress, one end tipped and thumped him in the back of the head. He pitched forward, keeping himself from landing flat on his mush by catching and steadying himself with the still erect other side.

He shook it off and started to re-erect what had fallen, which cued Murphy’s Law—the still erect side fell and knocked him in the back of the head a second time. No good deed goes without incurring head trauma.

Another time, when I had just started dating my wife, we went camping and he drove out with his boat to take us water skiing. Of course, he left the boat keys in the ignition to listen to Grateful Dead tunes, so the battery was dead, and he left the jumper cables in his work truck. But he’s a man of action, and he did have an extension cord.

He whipped out a switch blade (yeah, yeah, he knows they’re illegal) and he stripped the cord and did this and that and MacGyvered a makeshift set of jumper cables. When he used them to jump the battery, the boat engine fired right up, but enough sparks shot from the cables to compel some lookie-loos to run for cover. These lookie-loos were soft people who knew nothing of living on the edge of their wits. We pity them.

If you don’t look like this when you jump a car battery, you’re probably not very good at life.

Another time I drove my kids up to the river to go fishing with Pappo. My son was two, my daughter four, and the drive was a long one, so I started the drive at bedtime, got there at midnight, put the kids to bed, and passed out. I woke the next morning to the sound of Pappo asking Sam—again just two years old—if he wanted some hot chocolate. Adorable in theory, sure, but I knew that it wasn’t hot chocolate that was brewing; it was trouble.

I sprung out of bed like a ninja and walked in on what was about to be a trip to pediatric intensive care. Pappo had given Sam a mug. A regular ceramic mug. Not a sippy cup. Pappo’s faith in Sam’s toddler coordination was both charming and horrifying. He had poured a packet of instant cocoa into Sam’s cup and was a second or two away from filling the mug with lava-hot water from a kettle that had just whistled. Very few people on this planet can perform an act of unconditional love and an act of terror at the same time.

On that same trip, Pappo and the kids pulled a couple of trout from the river, and because he’s a consummate fisherman, he insisted on teaching them to clean the fish. He started, as you do, by gutting them and chopping off their heads. For a two-year-old and a four-year-old, this was a little unnerving. They didn’t cry, but the looks on their faces suggested a mild form of psychological trauma.

Pappo sensed the impending dread and did a quick pivot. He put the fish heads on his pointer fingers and became a macabre, ghoulish version of Jim Henson. It was a puppet show you’d expect to see on Tales from the Crypt, and the kids absolutely howled. I recently asked my daughter if she remembered this fish head puppet show, and she said she did and added, “I laughed my balls off.”

A candid clip from Pappo’s Puppet Show Extravaganza.

But my most favorite Pappo story happened in the mid-nineties in an industrial area of Watts. Yes, that Watts. It was winter. The sun set and he’d just finished a job and was heading home. In his rearview mirror, he noticed a lowrider car tailgating him. This soon escalated. They flashed their brights, honked their horn, and bass thumped from their speakers.

The Watts Riots, Rodney King, gang violence—I’m sure all of these thoughts were going through Pappo’s head. At a stop sign, he shifted into park, grabbed a long screwdriver from his tool bucket, and threw open the driver’s side door. Then he rushed their car, jumped on the hood—no hyperbole, you read that correctly—and screamed obscenities and threats in way that elevated the language to high art. I’m not sure what he said, so imagine Mr. Rogers speaking with his most gentle voice and using the most comforting words. Now imagine the exact opposite of that. That’s what he said.

I’d argue that a Pappo cameo would have done Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood some good.

Pappo stopped his screaming when he got a glimpse through the windshield and realized that he was being harassed by a car full of kids. Baby-faced teens who, in the common parlance of our times, fucked around and found out. Pappo slid off their hood, got back in his truck, and drove home.

The next morning he got to the shop and was greeted by a pair of police officers. The kids had called 911 to report the barbarian who assaulted their windshield with a Phillips Head. The conversation went something like this:

Cop: Are you Mr. So-and-So?

Pappo: Yeah.

Cop: Were you driving in Watts last night?

Pappo: Yeah.

Cop: Did you happen to jump on a car and stab their windshield with a Phillips Head screwdriver?

Pappo: Yeah.

Cop: Uh, why the hell would you do that?

Pappo: Well, it was late, it felt like a dangerous neighborhood, they were flashing their brights and tailgating me, I was scared, and I just asked myself, ‘What would Mel Gibson do?’

At this point, the cops fell down laughing, told Pappo to have a good day, and suggested he resist the urge to reenact Braveheart on public roads.

Pappo’s muse, circa 1995.

We celebrated Pappo’s 70th birthday this week with a party and a Grateful Dead tribute band. Pappo is on par with Bill Walton in terms of Deadhead enthusiasm. I’ve only scratched the surface of Pappo’s shenanigans here (we may or may not be waiting on the statute of limitations to run out for some of the others) and I’m nothing but grateful to have been invited to his lifelong party of loving chaos and mischievous joy. Happy birthday and Happy Father’s Day to one of the greats! (Note: Happy Father’s Day to my father-in-law too! I could only have done worse on the father-in-law front. Also, his shenanigans are forthcoming, and they involve a prison stretch in Mexico)

---

Thanks for reading! If you want to read some more funny stories on the fatherhood tip, consider one of these :

• Bloody Towels: thoughts on gratitude by a father for his ungrateful little brats.

• Parenting, Pranks, and Pappo: more Pappo crazymaking.

• Manslaughter, Santa Claus, and a Hatchet: a failed attempt at up-leveling my parenting.

• Are you there, Judy Blume? It's me, Norm.: the birds-and-the-bees talk goes sideways

• Or if you need a last-minute Father’s Day gift, you can get the old man Dig, my dark crime comedy novella, a story that will make your father aware that you could have been a much worse son or daughter.