(¼) “He’d knock in the rain. He’d knock in the snow. He’d...

(¼) “He’d knock in the rain. He’d knock in the snow. He’d come home late on these dreadful winter nights, and my mother would have his slippers under the radiator and his bathrobe on top. In the 1960’s Fuller Brush was the dominant name in door-to-door sales. It was the milkman, the newspaperman, and the Fuller Brush Man. And my father was a Fuller Brush Man. It was a tough job. Many nights he’d come home empty-handed. There were weeks we’d have less meat and more potatoes, but he never complained. That’s one thing he always taught me: ‘Don’t go too crazy on the material things.’ Maybe knocking on doors wasn’t the best job, but the job did its job. It helped him raise a family. On Fridays he’d take me with him while he made deliveries. Those were my favorite days. I’d spend the whole afternoon with Dad. And Friday night was the sabbath, so we both knew there’d be an amazing German-Jewish dinner waiting for us at home. Dad hadn’t gotten married until after the war, so there was a literal generation gap between us. But he encouraged me the best he could. He bought me my first trumpet when I was thirteen. Every time I played a solo, he’d take me out for ice cream. In high school I started a little rock band with my friends. It wasn’t Dad’s type of music. But he’d let us practice in our tiny apartment. He’d help us load equipment. By then he was 65, but he’d be carrying drum sets and amplifiers in and out of social halls and sweet sixteen parties. Dad died suddenly of a heart attack when I was a freshman in college. Mom’s lungs were already filling up with cancer, and two years later she’d be gone too. At the age of twenty-one I was on my own. I never really had time to mourn. I did what my dad would have done. I tried to stay positive. I put one foot in front of the other: I went to college, I went to grad school, I got a job. Then one afternoon I came home from work, and I got a call from my cousin Linda. She said: ‘Are you sitting down? Because your father is in today’s New York Times.’ Dad had been gone for ten years. It didn’t make any sense. But I ran out to the newspaper stand, and opened up a copy of the Times. And there he was. Staring back at me.”