mark it on the ice

My dad like to tease his children.   My mom harangued my dad constantly, demanding that he stop teasing. Sometimes dad took his teasing too far, upsetting his kids needlessly, as if he could not quite gauge how his behavior affected us.

He also could tease happily, in a way that reminded us he was funny, charming, joyful and loving.

He was also a compulsive gambler who must have gotten started gambling at a very young age.  His first job, at age 14, while still in school*, was delivering milk from a horse drawn milk wagon, the milk covered in blocks of ice. That was when dad first learned the phrase 'mark it on the ice' so he must have been placing bets. Or overheard men placing bets with the milkman.

When someone in that long ago world of horse drawn milk wagons (gosh, remember home milk deliveries?  They stopped in our world in 1967, the year I graduated 8th grade.  I hated lugging glass gallon jugs of milk from from the grocery store. It hurt my hand to hold the milk and it was hard to carry milk and groceries and tend to babies.

Later, when he had kids, my dad did more than his share of gambling.  His gambling was the elephant in the living room, a big dark force that no one ever talked to us kids about. Not once. 

Sometimes, unrelated to gambling, if my dad owed someone some money, he might teasingly say "Mark it on the ice" with his blue eyes twinkling the signal that he was kidding and would pay up.

If you mark a debt on the ice, the debt melts, proof of the debt evaporates. Poof. Debt gone.

My dad probably never stiffed anyone, not even of as little as a nickel. He taught me to scrupulously repay debt.  Money gifts from family were not debts to be repaid but anything from non-family had to be repaid.  I was proud of this trait in my dad. I am proud of it in me, although I owe one friend $400 that she has been pretty gracious about. I originally owed her three grand, and repaid most.  I should still repay her but it's been eight years.  I know what my dad would say.

He would not tell me to mark this debt on the ice. He would pull out his roll of bills, for he always seemed to have one, and give me some money towards the debt.

I miss my dad. More all the time.