High Praise From My Father

My father never gave me much in the way of direct praise for anything I did. He didn’t criticize much, either, but I got the feeling that if I did anything well, I was simply doing what he expected me to do, and extravagant praise wasn’t necessary. When I did something right, his response was usually a sardonic “Good work, man! You’ll make PFC for this!” I also remember him saying, “Son, sometimes you display almost human intelligence!” That was his style of humor, and he would not spare himself as its target. After he'd finish a project, I might hear him say, “Well, I think I've done enough damage for one day.”

He was never the demonstrative type. Maybe that had something to with the fact that he was essentially a very private person, never letting anybody know how he felt about anything. This trait was, of course, a job requirement for his career, which was as an intelligence analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency. His job was to absorb and interpret information, not to offer it. For example, he would interview people who had just escaped from eastern Europe and glean whatever information he could. If the refugee had been a butcher and had been supplying meat to a nearby military base, my father might ask him questions like “Did you sell more meat at some times of the year than others?” or “Did the types of meat that were requested vary from one year to the next?” The answers to these questions might indicate possible military build-ups, or soldiers being drawn from different ethnic groups as time passed. It is of such seemingly insignificant bits of information that the fabric of intelligence is woven.

I learned all this only after he retired. I knew that he worked for the CIA since I was in high school, of course, and that we weren't supposed to tell anybody what he did. That was fine with us. I remember Dad asking me at one point in my early college days if I had given any thought to applying to the Agency for a job. If I wanted one, he could have probably pulled some strings for me, since the Agency preferred to recruit from within the families of their employees wherever possible. But I didn't have any interest in that sort of thing, and he let the matter drop.

I remember one time, though, that he complimented me for something. The occasion was my brother’s wedding in the summer of 1984. My father and I were in Santa Rosa, California, looking for a music store that stocked some sheet music that my future sister-in-law wanted for the ceremony.

Carole had given us the address of the music store -- 741 Fourth Street -- but not its name. But that didn’t do us much good, since at that time, none of the businesses displayed their street numbers on their storefronts. Even when we found the street, we didn’t know where the store was, or even in which direction it was. We must have spent a good half hour driving up and down Fourth Street, looking for the place.

While we were stuck in traffic, I noticed a Santa Rosa telephone book on the back seat of our borrowed car. It wasn’t the Yellow Pages, which may have been more useful, but the White Pages. I picked it and studied it for a minute. As the light changed, I said to my father, “The music store is in the next block, about halfway up the street, on the left side.”

“How did you know that?” my father asked.

“Well, I saw that the business we’re in front of is named Mac’s Deli. I looked it up in the phone book and it listed the address as 630 Fourth Street. The business next to it is the Farmers’ Empire Drug Company. The book says that its address is 640, which means that the numbers get bigger as we travel down the street. So the music store must be in the next block. And 630 and 640 are on our right, and they’re even numbers. So since the music store’s street number is odd, it must be on the left.”

My father gave me a long look, the kind of look that a parent gives a child who has just demonstrated some completely unexpected talent, and said, “You know, you would have done well in the Agency.”

High praise!