Father's Day Thoughts

Last Sunday was Father’s Day and I desperately wanted to pull out something from my younger days to share with everybody. However, I couldn’t find anything that I wrote as a kid for Father’s Day. I guess that when I was a kid we didn’t do stuff like that for our Dads. It was definitely a different time. Let’s face it, back then most of our fathers were not very engaged with us and our lives. It was mostly the mothers that raised the kids and Dad was only brought in when the heavy artillery was needed. Still, I was hoping to find something.

Then I thought about a poem I wrote for my Dad for Father’s Day a couple of years before he passed away. I looked high and low, and couldn’t find a printed copy. I looked on old 3.5 inch floppy disks (yeah, I still have a few of them) and came up empty. I looked in the attic in some storage boxes and it was not to be found. So, I have nothing to share with you about Father’s Day from when I was kid. However, I can share some things I always think of when I think of my Dad:

•  I always knew when Dad was coming home because I could hear him whistling as he came up the walkway. I don’t know the songs he was whistling, but I’m sure they were classics from his life. That is something that was not passed down to my kids; I can’t imagine going around whistling Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Queen, or even the Beatles.
• Whenever we sang “Let There Be Peace on Earth” at church, it brought tears to Dad’s eyes. When you’ve been in a war and seen things that you just don’t talk about, I guess singing about peace has a little more meaning to you. My son is in chorus at school and when they sang it for a show I, too, had tears in my eyes thinking of my Dad.
• On Sundays, Dad always made breakfast for us – bacon, eggs and toast. It was awesome to wake up after a nice, long, fun Saturday and smell the bacon cooking in the kitchen. Even if most times he overcooked it (unless you like it dry and rock hard), it was awesome to not have to make it myself.
• On Sunday afternoons, Dad always made hamburgers for lunch. He didn’t make little, scrawny, slider-like burgers; he made big, beefy burgers that took two hands to eat. The Burger King Whopper had nothing on Dad’s burgers!
• On Saturday afternoon, Dad would watch Candlepin Bowling, a local bowling show. He really got into it, and when a pin was wobbling he would yell “Get over!”  I tried that once when I was bowling and the people in the next lane did NOT appreciate it.
• Even though we weren’t very well off when I was a kid, my Dad was always willing to serve others and help wherever he could. When he tried to refuse a Thanksgiving turkey one year, we were all a little ticked off. However, now that I’m older I get it – there’s always someone who is in greater need than you and he thought someone else should have gotten it.
• When I wanted to learn how to play Cribbage, Dad patiently taught me, even when I made the same mistakes over and over. He took the time to explain what I could have done that would have been better. I, however, did not have that same patience when my kids were kicking my butt playing Trouble.

Maybe someday I will find a copy of that poem I wrote for my Dad. Even if I don’t, I still have a lot of great memories of him and the many things he taught us growing up. I hope that my kids have fond memories of me when I’m gone. I’m sure they’ll tell their kids how they kicked my butt playing…well, just about every game we played. I also hope they'll remember the good things I taught them.

Goofing Around in the Back of the Car

With the start of warm weather, Road Work season is in full swing here in the Northeast. Even though most of it is done overnight, the work can continue past the 6 AM stop time and cause traffic issues for those of us trying to get to work on already busy highways. One day last week that scenario played out for me and I was stuck in a traffic jam about 7 miles away from my exit. After a few minutes I was behind a school transportation van and couldn’t avoid noticing a little girl in the last seat because she was staring straight at me. Once she got my attention, she smiled and waved to me until I waved back.

As we inched up the highway I noticed she was doing the same thing to other cars that were passing the van, with mixed results. A few people waved back and she’d smile and go on to the next car, but most of the people didn’t even acknowledge her existence. When the traffic stopped, she would stare at the car next to her, concentration on her face, just waiting for someone to look at her so she could smile and wave to them. It appeared to me that some people gave their full effort to not look at her. Maybe they didn’t want to smile while sitting in a traffic jam, thinking that maintaining the angry face would make the cars in front of them go faster. In that little girl’s world, traffic jams are not a problem.

That incident reminded me of riding in the back of our station wagon as kids. When we all went somewhere in the car, us younger ones sat in the way back part of the station wagon. Did I mention there were no seats back there? Back in those days, seat belts were not required and no one used them, so for us to be sitting back there was no big deal. We could have a lot of fun in the back end of the car. There were many opportunities to annoy my older brothers sitting in the back seat: I could simulate a bug crawling on their neck; I could pull their hair and duck down behind the seat; I could tap their shoulder so they looked at the person sitting next to them and then laugh at them for falling for that old trick; I could sing really loud and/or off-key right behind their ear. Yes, there were lots of things I could do and they couldn’t do anything because we were in the car. As long as I didn’t hear Dad say “If I have to pull this car over...” I felt like it was anything goes.

When bugging my older brothers got boring we’d play games back there, like counting the number of cars of a certain color, or looking for cars from other states if we were on the highway. If we weren’t driving on the highway, we’d exaggerate the turns and roll into each other or amplify the bumps and bang the roof. Eventually, it would get out of hand and Dad would give us the old “If I have to pull this car over…” bit again and we’d calm down – at least for a while. At one point, we had a station wagon that had a third seat – that faced back instead of front. I don’t know whose brilliant marketing plan that was, but you could only fit two kids in it comfortably, it forced you stare at people behind you and it kind of made you feel nauseous going backwards all the time. Besides, it was no fun in the back if you couldn’t even roll around a little bit. I think we just folded the seat down and didn’t use it after a while.

One fond memory I have is riding in the back end of my oldest brother’s 1965 Barracuda. If you don’t know what they looked like, they had a big, sloped rear window. I remember my younger brother and I would lay back there and pretend we were in a military airplane. One of us would say, “Pilot to bombardier. We are over the target area.” The other would reply, “Bombs away!” and we’d whistle to simulate the bombs falling and then make the explosion noises as we made a direct hit.  That was one of the few times that the trip was too short and coming in for a landing was not welcome. 

I want to be more like that little girl in the back of the van, in whose world traffic jams are not a problem and can even be fun. Maybe I should start smiling at people and waving to them. If they don’t smile and wave back, I can always pretend I’m flying high above the traffic in my B-52. Bombs away!