Yesterday was Father’s Day in Australia … a time to appreciate a person who has played such an important role in our lives. So it got me to thinking about my long-departed father.

I’ve had two dads. My natural father, Norman Adam, and my step-father, Ralph Major. Ralph was one of those dads who was admired and respected by all. I couldn’t have been more fortunate to have him as a step-dad. But today I want to tell you about my lesser known father, my natural father – Norman Walker Adam – and my ill-fated quest to bond with him.

Norman, the son of a Methodist minister of German descent and a novelist/playwright of Scotch Irish descent, grew up in Ohio. He shifted schools every couple of years as his father was assigned to a new church. He and his older brother, Carl, led a pampered and comfortable childhood while much of the United States suffered during the Great Depression. Grandpa was away tending his flock most of the time … he always had time for members of the congregation but his own family rarely saw him. Grandma was there for the two boys though and always had hugs and cuddles.

Dad made a start at the University of Wisconsin-Madison but he didn’t seem too interested in sitting in lectures. He enrolled for one semester but never bothered to sit for his finals and never got any grades. He was a legend on the UW campus … yet seldom seen. Dad discovered the underground heating tunnels at the U and instead of climbing Bascom Hill during winter he took to the tunnels. According to campus legend he was guided through the tunnels with a muskrat which he would carry in his pocket while in class. He was also into explosives and would occasionally detonate a bomb on campus just for kicks.

Dad never got far at university because he felt he could learn more in the University of Life. He was quite literally a genius and had no time for the Ivory Tower. The UW campus newspaper, The Daily Cardinal, wrote an article about dad in the 1940s: ‘Norman’s strong point was his versatility. He had more information stored in his brain than most scientists believe possible. Early in life he turned his attention to music, and quickly learned to play the tuba, the accordion, the cornet and the drums simultaneously. From music he passed to medicine, and then began picking locks. After becoming a locksmith he became a goldsmith, a tinsmith and a blacksmith. He studied bookbinding, carpentry and optometry, then navigation, diving and physical culture…He learned his cookery behind Toddle House counter and geography from hitchhiking around the country.’

When World War II broke out dad and his brother Carl joined the American Field Service. Dad was attached to the British Army and served in Burma. He was a dispatch driver and was absolutely enamoured with his BSA M20 motorcycle. But military life bored him. He quickly grew tired of life in the barracks and took his motorcycle and went AWOL. But he didn’t run away from the front … he ran towards it! He drove his motorcycle into China looking for Japs and looking for action. In a letter to grandma, dad’s commanding officer said dad did so because he wanted to ‘test his reactions in dangerous situations.’ The AFS wasn’t impressed and dishonourably discharged him. Dad boasted that Burma just wasn’t tough enough for him. He eventually made it back Stateside with a year left in the war and joined the Navy as a Naval Air Gunner.

Grandpa moved to Port Angeles, Washington and had a new congregation and dad would visit while on leave from teaching deep sea diving in Southern California. The handsome minister’s son fell for a first grade teacher from Wisconsin and in 1954 dad and mom married. But it was never meant to be. Norman Adam was never cut out to be a husband nor a father and failed at both.

By the time I was seven, mom and dad divorced. Custody was determined by possession. Dad was returning to Alaska where he ran a welding school and had just received a contract to salvage a sunken ship in the Juneau harbour. So one night he snatched me and the next day we were travelling to Alaska. I lived with Dad in the Juneau harbour on the Coho, a dilapidated wooden boat. My chore each day was to pump the bilge so the boat didn’t sink. I’d spend my days on the boat while Dad was away and fish for flounder and cod and then cook up something for him when he returned. I wasn’t even nine years old but I was living a dream life just hanging out with my dad.

Dad got a contract in Anchorage and couldn’t bring me. Across the harbour lived a family who once belonged to my grandfather’s congregation in Seattle. They kindly offered to be my foster family. Dad didn’t come back and school was starting so I ended up staying with the family for the entire school year … I didn’t see my father nor my mother nor my two sisters that year.

Dad returned to Southern California and in the summer of 1968 I left Alaska and joined him. I split my time living with him and his new wife in North Hollywood and in a shack on his property in Carson. I loved the shack as it meant time hanging out with dad and watching him weld diving helmets. He taught me to weld and set up a little welding table for me where I could practice on scrap iron. The shop was littered with diving helmets. ‘I’m going to custom make a helmet for you,’ he would tell me. ‘You’re going to be the youngest deep sea diver in the world. You’ll get your picture in LIFE magazine.’ I couldn’t wait! But like most of Dad’s dreams, it never happened.

I resumed my cooking tasks while living in the shack and would make tuna salads for dad at night and eggs in the morning. The shack didn’t have plumbing and or a toilet. I’d just squat in the bushes but in the morning dad would go next door to the strip tease club for a good sh*t and a coffee. On one of those mornings I was cooking some eggs and the shack door opened. It was a woman I hadn’t seen in over a year. My mother. I was thrilled to see her and started doubling the number of eggs to cook but she snatched me before I could even turn off the hot plate. The next day I was in Wisconsin, reunited with my sisters and forever grateful to my mother for doing what was best for me.

Life didn’t treat Dad well … or maybe he just didn’t treat life well. His intellectual prowess probably didn’t help him much. He was always inventing things, always coming up with brilliant ideas, always on the verge of success … but then life would cheat on him and he’d end up broke and miserable. He had a knack for picking the wrong business partners and always accused them of swindling him. But in his mind he was always one step away from a fortune … if only.

As a young man I wanted to re-connect with my dad. I had six weeks off from university so in 1978 at the age of 21, I hitchhiked from Wisconsin to Southern California to spend Christmas with my dad and grandparents. I was all grown up and successful and figured he’d be keen to catch up with his only son and now hear of my adventures in life, which were already plentiful. I had to make mountains move in order to hitch to Southern Cal in four days but I arrived in the afternoon on Christmas Eve and went to Grandpa’s home. Grandpa called dad to say I had arrived and how eager I was to see him. I only heard one side of the conversation but I knew it wasn’t going to be a joyous Christmas Eve. Grandpa pleaded and pleaded and eventually hung up. ‘Your dad can’t come tonight,’ Grandpa said. ‘He has to change a lightbulb.’ And with that I realised that I meant nothing to him. Grandpa tried to explain what Dad was going through and why he rejected me, but it was complicated. Grandpa did convince Dad to come around the next day for Christmas lunch. I waited by the door and when he came I jumped up to greet him. Dad did in fact shake my hand but then turned his attention to Grandpa and pretty much ignored me.

The last time I saw my father was in 1998. In fact, it was on my 40th birthday – 8 October 1998. Dad didn’t wish me a happy birthday … he probably had no idea it was my special day. Padma, Joseph and I were returning home to Australia and had a layover in Los Angeles. Dad agreed to meet us at our airport hotel. He tried to look his best and made an attempt to dress up for us but he looked like a haggard man who had been cheated by life. We went across the street to a sad and deserted Mexican restaurant for lunch. It was my birthday lunch so Padma and I had Margaritas while Dad had an iced tea. We ate tacos and enchiladas while Dad spoke of his misadventures and big schemes and blamed his failures on ‘the bends’ which he suffered from as a result of a deep sea diving accident. He never asked about our lives in Australia. We went back to the hotel room and took some photos and then watched Dad drive off in his clunker car. It never occurred to me then that I would never see him again.

I called Dad every now and then from Australia. He’d always answer the phone in a foul mood. ‘Hi Dad,’ I’d say. ‘It’s Mike, calling from Australia.’ ‘Oh.’ He’d say. ‘What do you want?’ After a while he’d warm up and tell me about his failed projects or about some nutrition kick he was on or his theory on where Amelia Earhart ditched her plane or how the valve replacement in his heart would keep him alive another 25 years. I told him that I was building websites and he got all excited and wanted to do business with me. He wanted to create prints of the paintings that my great uncle Wilbur Adam painted and sell them on the Internet. I thought it would be a nice project for the two of us.

A month or so later I called again and got the dreaded ‘The number you have called has been disconnected…’ I had no idea where my father was. I called Uncle Carl and he did not know where his brother was. Dad had vanished.

Those were the early days of the Internet but already for a fee you could do background checks on people. I paid a couple of bucks and found a property deed in Tulare, California for a Norman Walker Adam. I paid a few more bucks and got a phone number. I don’t think I ever called him but gave the number to Uncle Carl and my sister, Cindy, who called him and left her number.

In late October 2001, I was sitting in my office at work and the phone rang. ‘Dad’s dead.’ It was Cindy. Dad hadn’t died that day, he died a few weeks earlier … all alone in a middle-of-nowhere town called Tulare. I put the phone down and stared at the wall. Dad was dead. I didn’t know what to feel. I went outside and took a walk around the block and then went back to work without telling any of my colleagues. I didn’t know how to react and didn’t know if I had lost something which I never had in the first place.

The tears didn’t flow till that evening. I told Padma and with that flowed a life’s worth of pent up emotions. My hopes of one day bonding with my father had all suddenly vanished.

Dad’s neighbours came in and cleared out everything from his house and threw it in a dumpster. No one imagined the lonely old man would have had any next of kin or anyone who would be interested in his death. Eventually the legalities of a death began to play out and the executor of Dad’s estate, John, drove up to Tulare to inspect. He found a Post-It note on the fridge with Cindy’s number on it. Although John had been Dad’s friend for years he had no idea dad had children. He called the number on the fridge and discovered it was Dad’s daughter and told her of dad’s passing. John then saw the full dumpster and made several trips between LA and Tulare to safeguard endless boxes of our family heirlooms – countless photo albums, a 150-year-old family Bible, original paintings by my Uncle Wilbur, Grandpa’s lifelong work of sermons, Grandma’s unpublished works, every letter I had ever written to my dad, etc., etc. … all that is so precious to a family thrown into a dumpster. Like Dad’s life in his latter years, it was all rubbish.

We eventually found Dad’s will and I was happy to see he acknowledged my two sisters and me. He left us each one dollar.

I’m still waiting to receive that dollar.

On this Father’s Day, I reflect back on all of those things my father taught me. Because of him, I believe I am a better father and a better husband. But not by following his footsteps, but by learning from his mistakes in life.