Robert Eugene Hinich, younger son of Edna and Nikola, was born September 15, 1921. My grandparents immigrated from Croatia and were Socialists to the core. That they settled in Milwaukee, WI was probably no accident. Older brother Daniel was named for Daniel Hoan, the second Socialist mayor of Milwaukee. Milwaukee's had three, Daniel preceded by Emil Seidel and followed later by Frank Zeidler (3 terms 1948-1960). They gave Robert his middle name out of respect for Eugene Debs, an American union leader, anti-war activist, and five times
the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the
United States. My grandparents had their own grocery store. I recall grandpa standing in his living room reading the Serbo-Croat newspapers, and knew he regularly attended political meetings. Robert and siblings got the message: work hard not only for your dreams but the right for all to have a decent life. When I think of my grandmother and her work ethic compared to mine - well I look like a candy ass. Edna was not a sugar and spice sort of grandma and did not spend time or money on frivolities. She was tough, known to spit out a German curse word (her country by birth) if you opened the door when the strudel dough was rising. My mother as a newlywed learned this the hard way. I usually got "eat, eat, you are too skinny", and a bowl of steaming hot chicken and rice or dumplings would appear from nowhere. Everything was made at home. I have her foot pedal sewing machine.
The apple didn't fall far in my father's case and he learned from these two people how to embrace your family and by further extension the world-family. Money was useful, but it was not a god. He in turn gifted his own children by his actions not just talk. The man lived in a small aluminum trailer for the last years of his too short life, partly by necessity, but he also seemed to enjoy it. He knew it was right and fair to provide my mother and their younger child with maximum support. Dad took an interest early on in the environment, when many were asleep. Rachel Carson was on his list of heroes. I remember him showing me the amount of garbage he actually threw away in one month, it was the size of a very small grocery bag. He read abundantly and so of course we did too. He took us to plays and lectures, coffee houses and piano bars. Road trips along the California coastline from San Francisco to San Diego. We looked up and identified the constellations, before light pollution extinguished all but the brightest. He tutored me in math - my worst subject. To him, math was beauty and symmetry, hence his love for Pi.
Dad came to visit me every week at my first apartment in Huntington Beach, whistling a tune as he walked up the alley. To be in the moment was easy for him. What we got: look deeply, use your words well, question authority, don't waste your breath on small talk, or your time on closed minds, learn, enjoy life. He did have a temper, but it was never physical. Although he did punch a hole in my closed bedroom door
after I smarted off brattily to my mom one too many times. I was probably 16,
he was visiting and witnessed how I had become a bit of a handful, a child
of divorce disrespecting her mother where she heaped all the blame. Complicated feelings for all in that incident, looking back.
I found the cards I gave him, birthday gift drawings, a cross-stitch coaster, in his small collection of personal belongings.
"What do you want for your birthday dad?"
"Make me something; that's what I'd like."
I've been working on this post, thinking about him lately - conjuring some of his "be here now" attitude.
Is it strange to wish your father a happy birthday after he's no longer really "here"? Maybe so. He's not advanced a year, is no longer a slave to linear time.
1. Family portrait, approx. 1923: Edna, Olga, Nick, Robert, Daniel, great-grandma Elizabeth
2. Dad, outside son Jeff's dome, Achigan Lake - Algoma, Ontario (circa mid-70's)
