My Father's Brass

My home is a brass menagerie.

For recorded version click here. Carol has an MA in theater arts and is available in Central Iowa for reading performances of her work.

My home is a brass menagerie. Rabbits, cats, and squirrels perch on the bedroom dresser. A buffalo, a crane, a camel, and a deer march in a row below the fireplace. Seventeen owls peer from the shelving in the great room. Flanking the entry are some larger pieces, just below the vaulted ceiling. A bull, lion, roadrunner and pair of dolphins stand guard on one side. An assortment of vases adorns the other. Each these items, sparkling throughout my home like glitter, is brass. Nearly all of them were purchased from my late father — after considerable friendly haggling about an appropriate price.

During Dad’s first decade or so of retirement from selling Snap-On Tools, he crisscrossed the country as a short-haul trucker and as a Red Cross volunteer. Somewhere around age 75, he switched gears and began rescuing brass — both in his hometown of Orange City and wherever he traveled to see one of his adult children, scattered across the country in five different states. He scrounged through garage sales, browsed Goodwill stores, and bid at auctions. No piece was too far gone for rescue, if the price was right.

He loved the hunt — and the thrill of bargaining for a rock-bottom price. “It keeps him young,” my sister-in-law once said. I nodded. Indeed, it did.

Dad repaired and polished each brass purchase till it gleamed like gold. Brass is, after all, known as a poor person’s gold. After a few enthusiastic months, however, Dad’s basement workshop began overflowing with his rescues. He found an outlet: his three daughters. On our trips to Orange City, a few minutes after arrival, he issued the invitation, “Come down and see the brass!” That, too, was in a voice that brooked no argument.

In the basement, retired salesman that he was, he extolled the virtues of his favorite pieces. If my eye lingered on a piece, he immediately placed it in my hands.

Some pieces had stories.

The bull, for example, came from a Texas Red Cross trip. He had admired it on a client’s mantel after he helped repair her flooded home. “You like it?” she asked. “It’s yours. It’s my thank-you for all you’ve done.”

His price for me? $15 seemed reasonable to him.

“That’s highway robbery considering you got it free!” I said. “I’m thinking more in the $5 range.”

“But look at the quality!” he insisted. “It is one of the best pieces in this entire room — a bargain at $15.”

He was right. It was the most carefully crafted piece in the room. But, of course I couldn’t admit that.

He sensed my wavering and leapt in with more justification. “I have lots of labor invested in it. And think of the mileage transporting it back from Texas!”

“It’s been a tough month,” I said. “Could I pay in installments?”

“Sure, but I would have to charge interest,” he retorted. “I think about $5 interest per month.”

I pretended shock. “Isn’t that illegal?”

“A man has to eat . . . and there is no state law about interest rates.”

“But isn’t there a Bible verse about the evils of extortion and usury?”

And so it went for each and every purchase, until we eventually reached a meeting of the minds on pricing.

Eventually, I specialized in brass owls. If Dad spotted an owl, he snapped it up. He knew he had a sure sale. My sister Kathy collected swans and tiny farm animals. Jan especially liked apples and bells.

The collection of brass, gleaming gold throughout my home, is a memorial. However, the owls remind me not of loss but of gift — the gift of my father’s life — brimming with zest and energy, with laughter and love.

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