Smart and Good Lookin’

Daily writing prompt

Tell us one thing you hope people say about you.

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If my dad was asked this question, he’d say that he hoped people would say he was a good provider. But what he really wanted to hear was that ‘he was smart and good lookin.’

Say hey, good lookin’ – what ya got cookin’?
How’s about cookin’ somethin’ up with me?
Hey, sweet baby – don’t you think maybe
We can find us a brand new recipe?
Hank Williams, 1951)

I must’ve heard my dad sing this to my mother in the kitchen a thousand times. She ignored him and kept stirring the soup or mashing the potatoes or whatever it was she was doing in her apron made from leftover curtain material complete with a ruffle around the edge and a tie long enough to make a big sweet bow.

When I was little, my dad would pick me up and put me on top of the refrigerator where I’d watch him do his crooning and little shuffle between the stove where my mom was standing and the sink where he could look out over the back yard. She liked all this sweet attention, but she was also irked a large part of the time, at least on the weeknights when my dad was just stopping by for dinner.

After dinner, he’d grab his horn in the black tattered case and head out to a roadhouse to play with whatever band it was that week. He’d drive home, later than I ever knew, in time to sleep a few hours and get up for work at Sears where, first, he sold tires, and then appliances. He was a terrific salesman, his routine in the kitchen the best evidence of that.

At his funeral, when I stood up to do my version of a eulogy, I right away told the assembled grandchildren – all adults then – that their grandfather would think they were smart and good lookin’. It was his best compliment. As he got older and stopped with the trumpet-playing at night, he was pretty spare in his compliments, but one or two fell on me. I don’t remember when, but I still see the fairy dust sometime.

So, if somebody was to say I was ‘smart and good lookin,’ I wouldn’t be offended. I’d put it in my pocket and save it for a long time.