Additional information
by Nancy L. Coleman (Author)
B-Day, as it came to be known, finally arrived. It was a Friday. A school day. I identified with Cinderella as I watched Dad get ready for work. Holster, check. Gun, check. Billy club, check. Handcuffs, check. . . . Saturday morning I got up early. Dad was already gone. Back to work. Ushering the Beatles out of town. On the table . . . there were two small bars of soap, slightly used, the words "Coach House Inn" still legible. One book of matches with four missing. And a note from Dad, "From their room." . . . No one else s dad comes home from work with something that might, just might, have been intimate with a Beatle.
Growing up, Mel Miskimen thought that a gun and handcuffs on the kitchen table were as normal as a gallon of milk and a loaf of Mrs. Karl s bread. Her father, a Milwaukee cop for almost forty years was part Super Hero (He simply held up his hand and three lanes of traffic came to a screeching halt) and part Supreme Being (He could be anywhere at anytime. I never knew when or where he would pop up.) Miskimen s memoir, told in humorous vignettes, tells what it was like for a girl growing up with a dad who packed a lunch and packed heat.
Author Biography
Nancy L. Coleman taught English, German, and Norwegian at a high school in Hamar, Norway, and is editor and translator of the English-Norwegian/Norwegian-English dictionary Password. Olav Veka is president of the Norwegian Name Association (Norsk namnelag) and the author of many reference works and textbooks on Norwegian language, literature, and names. He contributed the entries on Norwegian and Danish surnames to the Oxford Dictionary of American Family Names.
