The big, green and white CTA bus shaped like a pill ground to a hissy stop. We must have looked like some Sanford and Son re-run with junk spilling out everywhere as we got on the bus. We carried chicken dinners, three fishing poles, newish blue angler hats stuck full of lures, a big bucket flopping around for the catch of the day, and the butt-hugging, skin chafing plaid shorts, which rode too close to the nest, that made walking a challenge. Tramping up the stairs of the bus, all I could think of for some reason was Fred Sanford saying, "Oh Lord, this is the big one. I'm coming to join you, honey." My father, who we saw about every six months or so, was taking us fishing in the lagoon at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry.

Skeptical of the whole deal, my brother Michael ran ahead to the back of the bus; the white bucket-supposedly for all the fish we were going to catch--and his pole flapping, hitting an old lady in the back of her head, tilting her Sunday crown askew.

"'Scuse me."

We got on at 79th and Jeffery, preparing ourselves for the twenty or so odd blocks to the museum's mall. My dad and I lolled up front because he knew I liked hearing the dimes go down the gullet of the change machine.

"Hey, Rudy," a weathered old timer spoke to the two of us from across the river-wide aisle. He was eating peanuts from a white paper bag. "I see you got them boys with you today."

"Yeah, Mr. Wendell. This here is the baby boy, Brian."

"Howdy-doo, Brine," the man's Mississippi inflected tone mused, slightly changing my name.

But I didn't care. Not today at least. My father seemed to know every single solitary person in Chicago. They all seemed to know him (and us) by name and could recall something about us both.

My father went by a lot of names. Rudolph. Rudy. Li'l Man. "The mayor of Bronzeville," is what one of the CTA mother's called him.

Black Chicago dressed in their casual Sunday best, coming from church or going to the lake. I watched as we passed storefront after storefront, red, black, and green signs festooning some of the windows, as we road noisily on. Mr. Wendell sported a vest filled with every kind of button, including one that said, "Put a Trib in Your Crib." Even the Chicago Tribune was trying to get on the "Black is Beautiful" bandwagon, giving out buttons and free papers at the previous year's Black Expo.

Michael took it all in too, wary of any of my father's attempts to make our day special. He had reached the surly age, thirteen, where the slightest provocation would have caused his lip to poke out to a pout five times its usual size. His pout took up half of the bus.

"Hey, Mike, you wanna join us up here?" My dad seemed to offer just the right words at just the right time. He was better than Julia or Coach Kincaid from The Bill Cosby Show when it came to drawing recalcitrant little boys out of their shell. "I brought ya'll some wine candy." I could see Michael's eyebrows rise slightly and his lip recede to their normal banks. Wine candy, as we affectionately called Jolly Rancher's apple, cinnamon, and (especially) cherry rock candy, could thaw even the most hardened pre-adolescent sneer. I could see my brother waver.

"Um...ummm. No thanks."

Since my dad only saw us a couple of times a year, he needed to work on establishing new lines of communication with Michael and me. Looking back, I now understand it must have been powerfully hard for him to lose the woman he loved: my mother. The wedding cake couple whose perfect airbrushed pictures still adorned their relative's living rooms broke like a frayed rope, one piece desperately trying to hold onto the other. Mama cauterized her end to start again.

I knew what to do to break the 79th Street freeze out that was my brother. "Oo-wee. I got some can-dee. Yeah, it's so taste-tee. And you ain't got none. I got some..."

"Shhh... Bri-bri, don't tease your brother." My father always knew what to say.

But I could see my brother wavering. He started to fake falling asleep in the back seat of the half crowded bus, even though we had slept well through the cool June night and awakened to a big breakfast cooked by my dad's new girlfriend, Ola. Southern style with everything we liked; bacon and eggs, pancakes and French toast, sausage and biscuits and more fat to grease an engine or stop a heart.

Michael cracked, "Can I have a piece of that?"

"I got plenty. Plenty for all my boys," Dad said as Michael took a seat next to him on the bus.

Riding the rest of those blocks to the lagoon, poles, chicken, lures, and melting anger, my brother and father made a truce predicated on an astute political act. I realize that it wasn't the candy enticement that drew us closer to my dad. Nor was it the genuine respect given by others around him. Ultimately, my father rode a huge distance to stay in our lives, wading through a lake of our indifference, anger, and love to preside over the municipalities that surrounded our hearts.

A writer, actor, and high school educator, Brian Thomas lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and children. He is also the founder of A Child's Book.com

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