On our way home after a day at the beach, my mom drove us up the hill to see my dad, standing on the corner in his blue uniform with the shiny badge and the white police whistle made of ivory. Joey and I hung out the windows of Mom’s sand-filled green Volkswagen Squareback station wagon and yelled, “Hey mister, where’s the Kennedy Compound?” Even as the people walking by looked at us sideways, Dad laughed; he always laughed. I took that for granted.
Throughout my childhood, my dad worked as a summer cop at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, where many times a day, legions of tourists asked the question we thought was so funny. He enforced the sign that said, “Left Turn Only,” preventing tourists from driving past the Kennedy houses. I remember seeing Jackie O walking to the pier in a bathing suit and huge sunglasses, carrying flippers for an afternoon of water-skiing. We often saw Ted Kennedy, too; the aftermath of Chappaquiddick still lingered. After that 1968 incident, a photo appeared in the National Enquirer showing a crowd gathered near the compound, my dad in his uniform towering over the scene.
We lived year-round in Hyannis Port, at the bottom of the big hill, outside the bounds of the golf club and yacht club. Dad taught U.S. history at the local high school, but it was hard to live on a teacher’s salary, especially with a family, especially when he cared about our future. All summer long, he stood at that corner, in heat and in rain, fully dressed from navy hat to shiny black shoes, and then in his spare time, cut hedges, painted houses, and washed cars for rich elderly ladies in Hyannis Port. Several times a week, he drove up the hill in his used Ford LTD wagon, then drove some wealthy widow’s Lincoln or Cadillac back down the hill to our house, where he washed and polished it in our driveway until it shone.
As a child, I felt uncomfortable, even embarrassed, about my dad and his odd jobs, about his used car, which he washed just as tenderly as the Lincolns and Cadillacs, about his paint stains.
One late June afternoon when we stopped at Dad’s corner, sunburned and sticky, he said, “Drive down the street and stop in front of Brusso’s.” One of Dad’s few summer employers who was not an old lady, Mr. Brusso owned machine shops in Worcester and became wealthy making engine parts during World War II. In the summer, he lived in an enormous white pillared mansion right on the water in Hyannis Port. Tourists to this day mistake it for a Kennedy house.
Mom drove along the sand-edged road and paused where the tourists always paused, at the gate that sometimes stood open in between the giant hedges. We looked, and in the circular drive, we saw a car. Not just a car – a chariot. A beautiful metallic blue chariot trimmed in silver, shaped like an antique, but brand-new shiny.
When my dad got home that night, sweaty and tired, Joey and I wanted to know all about the magical convertible that looked like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Could it fly? Could it swim?
Dad told us that it was an Excalibur. What a perfect name for such a glorious automobile, gleaming with ancient magic. A replica of a 1928 Mercedes sportscar, Studebaker built the Excalibur in the 1960s but with 1920s style, complete with running boards, a narrow rectangle of windshield, two sets of round headlights mounted on the front, and the spare tire on the side, encased in a metal O. Envying the Brussos, we talked about what it would be like to own a splendid car like that. I wonder now if we made my father suffer with our jealousy and longing because he couldn’t offer us the things that we saw every day, things his employers and their families had.
On the Fourth of July, late in the afternoon, Dad drove down the hill, entered the kitchen, and casually told us, “Mr. Brusso said I could borrow the Excalibur and go for a spin.” My nervous mother wondered aloud, “Is this such a good idea?” but Joey and I were already out the door.
White pillars towering above us, we climbed into the back of the Excalibur, sinking into the leather while Dad adjusted the driver’s seat and folded himself behind the wheel. He carefully steered the long, wide convertible out of the Brusso driveway.
The people of Hyannis Port stared as we passed. Even though they saw him every day, the tall police officer in his blue uniform or the fellow in the dirty t-shirt carrying rags and a ladder, they didn’t recognize my dad behind the wheel of the Excalibur. He wasn’t a banker, or a lawyer, or an inheritor of great wealth. We didn’t have another home in a posh suburb or city neighborhood. This was our home.
I climbed up to perch on the high back seat. I wanted to see everything from this vantage point, and I wanted everyone to see me. Dad smiled in the rear-view mirror.
Looking back, I resent the people Dad worked for, even though he needed their money. I’m sure they weren’t aware that neither of his parents went to college, that he joined the Air Force and went to Korea so he could go to college on the G.I. Bill. I assume they didn’t know that he had two master’s degrees, one from Yale and one from Cornell; that the CIA recruited him in the ‘60s but he chose to become a teacher; that he chaired the high school’s social studies department. They had no way of knowing that he worked at these odd jobs, in his paint-stained white t-shirt and loose jeans hanging on his skinny frame, because he wanted his kids to go to good colleges and succeed, maybe build for ourselves the lives he could not afford.
I’m sure the wealthy summer residents who hired him appreciated his hard work. But they could not have fully appreciated him, and neither did I. Now I know how lucky I was to have a father who worked hard for us, without complaint, selfless. How proud I am today of the man he was, no matter what kind of car he drove.
That Independence Day in the Excalibur, we approached downtown Hyannis, passing people walking to and from the beach. We waved and they waved back, and some even cheered, flourishing little flags. Dad drove to the beginning of Main Street, glancing back to see our glowing faces. I saw his face light up, too. We swept elegantly up the road, growing accustomed to our fleeting celebrity. Gracious in triumph, we smiled at those not fortunate enough to ride in an Excalibur, a magic chariot, a blue and silver cloud. I wanted to ride in that car every day. I see now, of course, with my dad gone 20 years, that the magic was in him.
Ellen Cliggott is a freelance writer living on Cape Cod. Her essay, “Gold Medal Uterus,” was recently published by Jenny, and Book of Matches published her essay “Battleship.” Ellen is a member of Grub Street, where she has taken many classes, and of the London Writers’ Salon, where she participates in weekly Writers’ Hours. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College with a major in English, Ellen participated in her first writer’s conference workshop at age eleven.