Stuff About My Dad

This morning I thought I'd just rattle off some things I remember about my dad.

He was quiet and didn't say much, but when he laughed out loud--which was way more than he talked--it was great.

He loved his country music 8-tracks.

He got up early and carpooled to work with his friends, and he napped for about an hour after dinner every night.

After work but before dinner (about 3PM to 6PM when he worked shifts) was the all-sports block. We did it all, man. Passed the football, threw/hit baseballs, shot baskets, hit wiffle golf balls, he used tennis balls and took shots at me as a hockey goalie. We were outside in the daylight.

He wore a hard hat & safety glasses to work at the mill. It was cool, but not special because all my friends had dads who did the very same thing.

He never head-coached my little league teams, but he always assisted and I don't know that he ever missed a practice or a game.

He loved to hunt and deep-sea fish, but curtailed most of that because his son didn't have the proclivity or the patience for either. Some of that may have been my age, but he's the one who kept buying all those tickets to sporting events, signing me up for whatever sport was in season (back when youth sports had "seasons") and having cable television installed in our home.

I was shielded from 95% of it--my Mom was good that way--but my dad wrestled with his demons, most notably, after his father-in-law died. In my adulthood, I discovered how much wrestling it actually was. I have no idea how, as a kid, I kept seeing so much light during such a dark time. He, and mom, kept it pretty far from me.

He had narcolepsy...or at least the medical community believed so in the mid-70's...my Mom had retrospective doubts about his diagnosis and treatment, but I can see why he got the diagnosis because his sleeping patterns were highly irregular. His hobby was lawnmower repair and he'd fire 'em up at 3:30AM on occasion because his vampire-like hours.

His idea of a vacation was to go to the beach and do nothing during the day, and go to the dog track at night. In every vacation picture he's got a hat over his face in a beach chair.

While my dad and I had kind of a buddy thing going on, I picked up pretty quickly that there was an extreme difference in how his love for my sister showed itself. He was knocked out by her, and while he could knock me on my butt during basketball, he couldn't even slap my sister's hand away from turning the television knob. The way he looked at her was the way I've come to understand since I have two daughters of my own.

I don't know that I ever remember him reading a book, but I can remember him letting me stay up to watch Monday Night Football after mom went to bed.

He was an exceptional athlete, which you could tell even 15 years removed from his high school glory days. His passes spiraled, his drop step fakes led to easy layups, his pitches curved for strikes, his golf balls landed in the general area he wanted them to, his worms got fish and his bullets hit birds. And it all came naturally to him because he couldn't really tell you how to do what he just did even though he'd try. He just did them.

He danced with my mom to the Everly Brothers and Sam Cooke. He kissed her a lot in front of me, too. He asked me one time who I thought the most beautiful girl in the world was and I went with the default "Farrah Fawcett." I asked him who he thought and he told me she was in the kitchen right now. I laughed out loud. He didn't.

He was at his happiest when we were at our family's cabin on the river (all my aunts & uncles went in on one together for just such occasions). He'd fish. He'd nap in the hammock. He'd drink beer with his brothers & brother-in-law while cooking all sorts of meat. Which was followed by them pulling us behind the ski boat in an inner tube at high speeds (I don't think drinking/boating was seen as all that bad when I was a kid...either that or all our moms were in SERIOUS denial because I think if they'd seen how fast we got pulled and how much entertainment they were getting from watching us skip across the water they'd have re-thought that little piece of bonding time). Which was followed by an early evening fishing session. They'd play cards at night and we'd sit on the dock and listen to Braves games with a transistor radio. He'd stay as late as possible on Sundays before he had to go back to work.

We shot tin cans off the back fence with pellet guns. He bet me $20 bucks once that I couldn't hit inside the ring handle of the aluminum trash can (about the size of your fist) from about 20 yards away. I pumped the pellet gun, aimed and fired, and about 2 seconds after I shot he said, "Well, I'll be damned." under his breath.

Once when I got to bring a trombone home for an afternoon (some sort of pre-summer recruitment before we went into middle school) he heard me goofing around with it, he just came into my room and asked me if I could "hit, throw, score a basket with it, put it in a goal or cross a goal line with it." When I said "no," he said to put it back in the case and that was the end of that. We played H-O-R-S-E the rest of the afternoon.

When it snowed once he had a friend that had a rail buggy and they took all us kids sledding on the biggest hills in our neighborhood. And our neighborhood had some pretty good hills...and then we went to a parking lot and did donuts which was about 10 times more fun than sledding.

About church, he didn't say much, and he had little use for organized religion. He loved reading me stories and telling me about what he thought about Jesus, though. He was very matter-of-fact about the reality that he believed, but I think he really struggled with the day-in and day-out of what that looked like. His dislike for the stereotypes in the Deep South regarding his church choices kept him away...but I wonder what he'd have thought about his day-to-day with Christ if he'd had the people I had in my life blow those stereotypes up and show him what they showed me.

He never talked politics, but he always voted. Every time he'd leave to vote he'd tell me that it was his job to "go and cancel your mother's vote." I don't know if he was serious about that or not.

Well, I could do this all day I guess, but those are the ones that hopped into my brain today about him. The reason I do this is more for record keeping than anything else...so thanks for putting up with that today.