Gabby_ A Story of Courage and Hope - Alison Hanson [24]
Gif filmed his commercials while standing in front of a banner for El Campo Tire, with a giant tire displayed behind his head. “My father never mentioned tires or why anyone should buy them from him,” says Spencer, who found the commercials embarrassing. “It was excruciating for me to be the son of a TV preacher.”
The commercials, however, were very effective. Gif wasn’t just selling tires, he was selling fulfillment, and everyone in town knew him. Years later, people would tell Gabby that they appreciated the wisdom in those commercials. Some even said, “Your grandfather changed my life.”
Spencer took charge of the company in 1959 and, with savvy business sense, expanded the operation to twelve locations. Meanwhile, Gif eased into retirement. For years, people would stop him on the street to ask him about his philosophy—or their tire pressure. He liked being a mini-celebrity.
To passersby, Gif radiated friendliness and optimism. “It’s a good, good evening,” he’d tell them. It was too bad that he was a remote and often uninterested grandfather to Melissa and Gabby. He could be jovial with them, but mostly he paid little attention to their lives. As they got older, they learned to have no expectations of a meaningful relationship with him or their paternal grandmother, though they were lucky to be close to their maternal grandmother. (Spencer’s parents remained aloof in part because they disapproved of his marriage to a non-Jewish woman.)
And yet, whether it was genetics or coincidence, Gif’s positive outlook seemed present in Gabby. From the time she was a kid, she liked thinking it would be a good, good evening, and that tomorrow morning might be even better.
Spencer and Gloria raised Gabby and Melissa in the Tanque Verde Valley, east of Tucson. The site of the Native-American Hohokom culture dating back to the tenth century, it’s a landscape far different from the one I knew growing up in New Jersey. Tanque Verde is bordered by the Rincon Mountains to the east and the Santa Catalina Mountains to the north, and it’s the very definition of a desert. Its riverbeds are dry much of the year, and its average high temperature on summer days is 99 degrees. The Giffords would become fixtures in the community there, like the cacti. For eleven years, Spencer served on the Tanque Verde school board. Gloria was busy helping to preserve historic art and missions, and supporting local galleries in Tucson.
Spencer was overwhelmed at work, and he didn’t always have a lot of time for Gabby and Melissa. But there was one parenting rule that was important to him, and he stuck to it: He made sure to be home for dinner every night, to join Gloria and the girls in discussions about schoolwork, current events, politics, art, music, whatever was on their minds. Gabby enjoyed listening to her father, who could be a lovable curmudgeon. He spoke without much of a filter; what he thought was what he said. Though he resisted the impulse to star in El Campo’s TV commercials—he left the hawking of tires to others—if he had become the face of the operation, he may have been more memorable than Gif in spouting his views of the world.
Spencer and Gloria were not your usual suburban couple. When I saw the movie Meet the Fockers, the characters played by Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman reminded me a little of my in-laws. They could be exuberant eccentrics. Conformity never mattered to them.
When Gloria would pick Gabby up from school, she’d sometimes show up wearing a costume—a vampire’s cape or some goofy outfit she had found around the house. For Gabby, it was horrifying to see her mother stepping out of the car-pool line in a turn-of-the-century bandleader’s uniform, complete with an old, dented black top hat made of beaver hair. All the other kids’ eyes widened at the sight of her, and they all had the same thought: “That’s one weird mother.” But in Gloria’s mind, she was doing Gabby a favor. “Let this be the most embarrassing thing you ever have to endure in life,” she’d say.