My Dad

My Dad is a good guy. We have always gotten along, except for the brief periods of my "wild" teenage years. I've always appreciated this quote, attributed to Mark Twain:

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

Lucky for me, the period where I thought he was "ignorant" was much shorter than seven years:-) We had our quarrels, but he was always fair. He worked hard and helped to bring up four pretty responsible adults. If I can do as well with my two wild childs, I'll feel like I will have done a good job.

He was also a lover of the outdoors, which is amazing for one brought up in the urban wilderness of Hartford, Connecticut. He met my mom there, and lucky for him, she was a Maine backwoods girl, with plenty of connections with the deep dark wilderness up there. So he would often take off to go hunting with the in-laws. Some of my fondest memories of growing up are of going deer hunting with him, as I would take a few days off from school and spend it with my cousins, who I just adored. They had a huge family, and with three boys older than me, I found it exhilarating to have "brothers" to play with. Not that I minded my three younger sisters, but it was nice to have some fun with the boys. I'd get dressed warm and trundled along behind my dad, as we crept around the snowy woods. We've spent many a day since then, hunting together, although it has been a couple of years since the last time we did it. Time to do it again, I think.

I also spent many a day up in the "back 40", going trout fishing with him. We had a wonderful little trout stream up behind our NH farm and we would douse ourselves with bug spray and even spray Raid on our hats and cuffs to keep the clouds of black flies at bay. After catching a pail full of nightcrawlers the night before (just pluck them off the grass as they come up at night), we'd head back into the woods. It was great fun, and we'd almost invariably catch our limit of 10 - 12 inch "brookies". The limit was eight, if I remember correctly. And then we'd have ourselves a nice fish fry for dinner.

He also has an incredibly sharp mind. Very incisive, making for a tough opponent at board games. We grew up playing Jeopardy around the dinner table; me, Dad, Mom and my oldest sister, who is a little less than a year younger than me. The "click click" of the clickers to say you have the answer is an indelible childhood memory. As is remembering him squirm as he strained to remember a particular actor - "ooo, I can picture her, rolling in the sand with Burt Lancaster... Oh, what was her name????" (Deborah Kerr in From Here To Eternity). He is a great card player. I've always wanted to teach him how to play bridge, although I've never been confident enough of my own game to do that. I'm sure he would be a world class bridge player. Instead, he's practically unbeatable at Sixty Three, which is, strangely enough, a game I've never really played. We used to play Thirty-One all the time, though. Everyone would start with 3 quarters and the ante would be a quarter. Once you lost your three quarters, you'd get one play "on your honor" but if you lost that one, you were out; winner takes all! Great fun with 10 people or so playing.

We've also been on the same page politically too. He's always been a real "New Deal" Democrat, always voting against the Republicans. That political world view hasn't always been a good idea, as he lived in the South for a bit, but it is one we've always shared.

So, all in all, I've been pretty lucky. If I can grow up to be anything like my Dad, I'll be very pleased. Happy Father's Day, Pabs.

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