I Miss My Dad

To My Readers: Sunday is Father’s Day.  This tribute to my dad is based on the eulogy I wrote for him.

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Mark Twain once said: "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around.  But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."

Well, that was my father and me.  We bumped heads plenty until I grew up.  But in my case instead of 21 it was more like age 30.

In the last half of my life, I’ve grown to appreciate my dad much more than I did the first half.  He was truly a friend who I could tell anything.  That didn’t mean that he always agreed with me but he listened and that was part of the friendship.

When I was in my 40s, I realized that I could tell him secrets that I’d kept for many years.  Like when I was 16 and learned that I could disconnect the speedometer cable in our VW Beetle.  This also disabled the odometer.  After unhooking the cable, I would drive all over creation on Saturday nights with my friends and then put a dollar’s worth of gas (at 30₵ per gallon) in the tank and, who knew?  When I told my dad he laughed and said that the car did seem to have a lot more miles on it than he thought it did.

My dad loved cars (I guess that’s where I got it).  And, although I was too young to remember his many MGs, Fiats, Triumphs and Jaguars, my dad loved to reminisce about them.  I do remember his Austin Healy, a British two-seat convertible, and I can’t see one in a car show without remembering him flying down a country road with me beside him.

My dad was a “fun guy.”  There were so many good times at our house, many of which involved booze and Nancy and Walter, my aunt and uncle.  I remember one time my dad decided to cook a turkey on the barbeque.  All was going fine until it started to rain and “somebody” (Walter?) decided to back my mom’s station wagon out of the garage so the barbeque would be sheltered there and the turkey wouldn’t be ruined.  But “somebody” also neglected to move the barbeque from behind the car in the driveway and guess what happens when the bumper of a Plymouth Fury meets a barbeque: turkeys can fly!

There were so many good things we did together or he did for me:

• He built me a clubhouse where my friends and I would have sleep overs and he would sneak out and scare us in the middle of the night.

• When I was 11, I took a paper route and he would help with the Sunday newspaper deliveries.  These concluded with the two of us taking a “ride” in the country that always seemed to delay our return home until just after it was too late to make it to church.

• He helped me with just about every home construction project.

• He freely gave me his advice, his time and his help when I needed it and gave me space when I didn’t.

He taught me many things like:

• How to bowl

• Carpentry

• How to fish

• How to drive a stick shift

• To love reading

My dad was a veteran of the Second World War, serving in the Army Air Corps and stationed in England.  Like so many others of his generation he was reluctant to discuss his war experiences and it wasn’t until late in his life that he told me that one time his B-17 was forced down behind enemy lines.  Fortunately for him and his crew mates they were liberated shortly thereafter.

Before we ever knew of his war experiences my dad was a hero to us all.  When he was 40 years old he was disabled by cancer and lost his larynx and his voice.  He not only survived the cancer but he had to teach himself to speak.  He did this by a technique called esophageal speech where he belched and formed words.  He mastered this ability to such a degree that he became a salesman; a profession where personal communication is so very important.

My dad left us in February 2011.  I’ll miss him until I see him again.