Reminiscing About my father by Joe Farace
One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters. —George Herbert
Some time around the turn of the 20th century, my grandfather Salvatore along with his brother Giuseppe emigrated from Sicily to the United States seeking their fame and fortune. Once here, they became Joe and Sam Farace, as well as entrepreneurs. My grandfather starting Sam Farace & Sons Produce. He named his first son Joseph after his brother who had during this time became a noted Baltimore funeral director and every day, while on the bus heading to high school, I rode past his place of business.
Because of WW II, I don’t have many memories of my father from when I was really young. Not long after I was born Dad was drafted into the army to fight in WWII, even though he was working at the Bethlehem Steel shipyard building ships for the war effort. He went off to war serving with Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr.’s Third U.S. Army. At the Battle of the Bulge, Patton turned his army to the north to counterattack the German flank. But the story of the Battle of the Bulge is really one of American Soldiers, like my father, who was wounded during the fighting by a Nazi mortar round that took him out of the action, ultimately coming home to my Mom, sisters and me.
How this photo was made:This casual portrait of my young father was made in the backyard of his parent’s—my grandparents—home on Montford Avenue in Baltimore sometime around 1940. I don’t know if it was my Mom who made this shot but since he’s smiling it could have been and I like to think that it was.
After the war, Dad went to work at Bethlehem Steel’s Sparrows Point steel factory, at that time the largest tidewater steel mill in the world. He worked an unusual shift pattern that changed every other day. He would have two days off, followed by two days on one shift, and then two days on yet another, different shift. That meant he was coming and going from our Hoffman Street home at many different hours of the day. When I was a little bigger he was able to make time to take me fishing in Middle River. I really didn’t like fishing but enjoyed the time spent with my father. Because of his work schedule, over time, a Cat’s Cradle kind of situation developed, and if you’re familiar with the Harry Chapin song, you know how it goes.
But to this day one memory of my Dad sticks out above all others. When I was a Junior in high school. Long before anybody thought of “Take Your Kid to School Day,” my Dad took me to work with him when he was picking up his paycheck. I can’t imagine OSHA or anybody allowing a 17-year old to walk around an open hearth furnace these days. You can read more about that day on my car blog, because part of this experience includes meeting some of his coworkers and talking about a Jaguar automobile that one of them drove, which may explain my fascination with that marque and British cars in general.
But the part I remember most about that day is when we were walking along a gangway at the top of the furnace that was the hottest place I had ever experienced and that includes visiting my sister Kate in Tampa, Florida in July. At one point, my Dad who was a man of few words, put his right arm around my shoulder and with his left hand he gestured across the hellish scene in front of us that said, “some day all this will be yours” but instead he looked me in the eyes and said, simply “Don’t work here.” And that, as far as I can tell, is the one and only time in the history of father-son relationships that a son actually took his father’s advice. I never got to tell him what that moment meant to me but I am who I am today because of my Dad.