The Strong, Silent Type Will Not Shut Up

My dad's chair, of all things, might be the secret to our culture-wide freak-out about men

MY DAD HAD ONE OF THOSE BIG CHAIRS.

Oxblood leatherette, brass-tack trim, an ottoman for the feet, and a wingback for the head. A piece a decorator would call masculine. A chair for reading three paragraphs of a book and then immediately napping. A Dad Chair. It was the one thing I wanted from Mom and Dad's place in St. Louis when we cleared it out last Christmas. I found a guy who was moving cross-country and paid him $400 to drive it from St. Louis to L. A.

Dad was part of the Silent Generation, born between the world wars. He was a Marine, a devout Catholic, a man who wore a necktie to a serious office full of serious chairs. He got himself a proper office job in the '50s and then started his own business. That business was successful enough for us to move into bigger and bigger houses, eventually one large enough for his own office and his own chair.

Dad and my brothers-boomers, both of them had an ease with one another, a fluency in the language of sports and the stock market, and because I am so out of my depth in this department I cannot think of a third guy thing; let's say escrow. In the context of my family, the boys still means the three of them. My brothers took over the family business, and because they are smart and hardworking and know what things like escrow are, they've grown it into something bigger. That's how they've supported their families and built their own houses with their own Dad Chairs.