My father sold flashy shirts and haberdashery novelties along a three-state route. This made motels Clyde’s weeknight home. His name was Clyde Melvin Delman, Sr. He wore two different kinds of cufflinks he called “m’ demonstrators.” Dad, exactly as gentle as ugly, could make any chore go adventure for a boy. He let me reset the odometer, clocking exact distances between oncoming Guernsey cows. Clyde let me keep my best arrowheads in the glove box, just in case. I “drove” on his lap. I was salaried thirty cents per Sabbath. Dad encouraged me to spend it all on nonessentials.

We considered his brand-new 1954 Packard 165 HP Clipper Sedan our Third Musketeer. Father, Son, and Holy Coach. A really good car is a Godly benefit. Thirty cubic feet of usable trunk more than housed our weekly Bibles. Still in my possession, the hardbound Owner’s Manual. It remains an epic poem to that age, and to Clyde’s own sweet 8-cylinder faith:

Few homes are as tastefully and lavishly furnished, few private clubs so richly appointed as our colorful Packard interiors for 1954. Faultless tailoring … an almost unlimited selection of supple textured fabrics (from our new Nylon matelasse to traditional flannel broadcloth) … the gleam of chrome … the hush of sound-proofed bodies … all contribute to a feeling of luxury matched by no other car on the road.

For one of the last times in American public relations, all this was absolutely true. And my father was the kindest man alive.

Dad’s plainness seemed to release others toward cautionary pity then noisier good times. His funeral would prove Standing Room Only, almost as many black people as white. The chapel soon grew monkey-house loud with adult (Caucasian) sobs. “Never in my career …,” our town mortician told me later.

But turns out it’s a mixed blessing, sainthood. Goodness can make your daddy be too public, gullible. I spent a lot of my time guarding him, guarding for him—and with an overzealousness at which I have already somewhat hinted.

No one but this guy’s loving son can tell you simply enough: Clyde M. Delman, Sr., was truly nothing to look at. Some fellows’ ugliness renders them Untouchables, clock- and conversation-stoppers. Not Clyde’s. I still marvel how his rubber face seemed to limber up others, unleashing first their pity then their fondest wit. In the English language, no single noun describes this effect. German offers a near miss. There should really be a word!

At the PTA open house, Dad’s curdled buttermilky features, his “rust” houndstooth jacket, the racehorse tie-clasp with real chain bridles, made even my antique third-grade teacher (“Absolute Silence!”) smile then flirt. I sat amazed. With powdery half-vampish glamour, one broken-down flapper suddenly opened laterally, like some drying newborn moth. She batted lashes, touched one side of her calamined neck, she grinned four pointy yellowed teeth Dad’s way.

No one ever wanted Clyde M. Delman, Sr., to leave the room. (Except maybe Mom.) Me least of all.