25 Random Things About My Father

I mentioned once before, just in passing, John Eldredge's claim, in Wild at Heart, that every man is wounded somehow by his father. I implied in that earlier post that such wasn't the case with me. Today, Father's Day, I want to state it outright.

I do not believe I suffered any psychic wounding at the hands of my father, ever.

Honestly, that's no small claim. I've watched other men and their dads. I've watched women and their father's too. I had acquaintances long ago that couldn't return home when they left the Air Force Academy they hated because their fathers told them not to come home if they quit. I had a so much more than friend, who will likely read this, who went there for a year, because her father told her if she would try it for that long, he would foot the bill for college elsewhere--she did; he did not. I've heard fathers say things to children in public that made my heart ache.

I had and have the best father I know. I know a couple more who are right up there with him (my new father-in-law among them), and I have friends who think or thought the same of their fathers. We are lucky people, those of us in this club, and today is a day we celebrate that luck.

Not all that long ago, I posted 25 Random Things About Me. Today, I'm going to take a shot at publishing another 25 about him. Wish me luck.

25 Random Things About My Father

1. He has taken up the drums. At least, he bought a drum set months ago, and for a while at least, he was playing them. This is especially interesting to me because a little less than four years ago, I took drum lessons for a short while. Neither I nor my father knew this about one another, which is a good segue to the next point:
   
2. My father's life has mirrored mine in so many ways that it's genuinely eerie, especially romantically. I could elaborate, but I'm going to leave it at that for now.
3. I suspect my father of being a closet adrenaline junkie. He owned a motorcycle from the time my parents split up until well into his second marriage. And he was, after all, a volunteer fire chief for over a decade.
4. When I left for the Air Force Academy, over three decades ago, the last thing I remember him saying to me as I walked out of Charlotte's Douglas Airport to climb the stairs to a waiting jet, other than, "I love you," is, "If you get there and you don't like it, son, you know you can always come home." It put staying there all on my shoulders. No expectation, no threats, no rebellion value in leaving (not that I ever felt any need to rebel). It made it possible to stay even during the months that I hated it most and seriously thought of leaving. Having options makes almost any task less onerous.
5. In all the years of my youth, he gave me only one spanking I hadn't genuinely earned. That one time, he was acting on misinformation from my Sunday school teacher. I didn't forget, but I didn't really hold it against him either. I just never liked that teacher much after that.
6. I've seen him pitch nearly perfect games of horseshoes. At Five Forks ball park in China Grove, NC, I watched him and Lee Smith, on their way to winning first place in a church league, throw ringer after ringer from one end to the other. It was awe inspiring.
7. He taught me gun safety at an early age, and how to shoot birds on the wing, to drain a rabbit's bladder before putting it in your hunting coat, how to build a rabbit trap, and how to enjoy the beauty of good bird dogs working a field.
8. He also taught me, by example, to think of all men as equals, at least equal in worth and rights, vehemently disdaining all the petty prejudices that so many fathers so sadly wean their children on. The stories in this regard are almost legend and fodder for longer posts at a later date. I'll simply say here that had Harper Lee known him, and if you knew him and her novel, you would think him her model for Atticus Finch.
9. He blames a long tour in Alaska, at Gambell Air Base, on St Lawrence Island, for the early loss of his hair. His seven brothers each kept theirs most of their lives.
10. His children have always come first in his life. Whatever other ambitions he may have had, I truly believe that being a good father was the ruling goal of his existence. God knows, he put up with more, and sacrificed more, for our sake than any other man I know would have.
11. Right behind Atticus Finch, the character from fiction that he is most like would be Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry. He was, for all practical purposes, the unspoken mayor of the small town in which I grew up. Smaller than Mayberry.
12. He can teach anyone to waterski and he was always good at it himself. For the most part, when anyone learned to waterski with us, they learned to slalom, right out of the gate.
13. He plays a wicked game of hopscotch. He always played with us on the shore during our annual vacations at Windy Hill Beach, SC, and I have since played more than a few times with my own daughters.
14. He loves tractors. He may think we haven't caught on to that, but he does. I'm not entirely certain there isn't a frustrated farmer trapped in him somewhere.
    
15. His two greatest shots in golf may have been his hole-in-one and his blind eagle. The hole-in-one was so dead on that it bent the base of the pin going into the hole. In basketball lingo, he "stripped the net." His blind eagle I was there for--a par-four on which he'd hooked the ball into the adjacent fairway, hiding the green from him behind a set of pines dividing the two holes. He hit the ball over the pines on his second shot and into the hole. I found it there. He was still looking everywhere else.
    
16. His dedication to golf during my youth was such that my youngest sister once recited the days of the week as, "Sunday, Monday, Golfday, Wednesday, Thursday . . . " He worked all day on Saturdays until he retired, but only half a day on Tuesdays. He is as good a golf coach as he is a ski coach. I should have tried out for the golf team at the Academy instead of wasting my time with track.
17. He would still like to learn to fly. He says he's let that ambition go, but I think I know better.
18. He can fix or build just about anything.
19. So far as I know, he has never cultivated any of the vices that other men, including myself are prey to. He doesn't swear, drink, or smoke, and yet he doesn't begrudge other men those "pleasures." I think he is simply cautious of the genes he carries, having had a father, grandfather, and more than one brother for whom these things were problems.
20. He is fiercely and poignantly patriotic. I remember him once calling me to the window over our kitchen sink, pointing to the flag flying at the fire station he helped found about a quarter mile away, and saying, "Isn't that beautiful?"
21. In our family business, he was all about Total Quality Management and focusing on the customer long before TQM became a watchword for the rest of the world. I remember trying to figure out what the fuss was about when the Air Force tried to institute TQM because I had always thought those principals were common knowledge. I've learned better since.
22. He is a true gentleman--gentle and yet fiercely strong. He is always polite. He opens my stepmother's car door, holds her chair, helps her with her coat.
    
23. He's more or less ambidextrous. He plays sports left-handed, yet he writes right-handed. It makes him very handy to have around when your ball is up against a tree and you really need a left-handed club to swing.
24. What he lacks in distance these days, he more than makes up in accuracy. I've been able to outdrive him since college, but I've never outscored him on the links.
25. I love him. I admire him. And I still want to be like him when I grow up.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Snapshot: Marsh in Fog, Evening

Shem Creek. Short fishing pier, unfrequented. 6 p.m. The dark comes early now. Quiet but for the soft whrrr of heat pumps, the faraway sound of traffic, but all that muffled tonight by a light, warm fog. Someone's streetlamp visible half a mile away over pier or boathouse, but beyond that, the condos and hotel normally visible are shrouded. A tall crystal glass of some Aussie Cab/Merlot silhouetted against the grey. A conversation of canines across the creek. Mine rests silent at my feet. She likes the pier, I think--accustomed now to coming here, sometimes only to look out across the water and marsh grass and retreat, and sometimes, like tonight, to pause for a while. To listen to the occasional splash of something alive in the marsh. To allow the breeze, heavy with the weight of the fog to caress us. The crickets to stroke our ears.

I'm learning this place. Tides. So high this morning that I could almost reach down and touch the surface. So, to the chart: +6.9 feet, it says. Then +7.0 tomorrow, before a steady regression to more normal depths. Pull of the full moon.

Fog horn this morning on waking and again now. Took a while to believe it was what it sounded like. No idea where. Something else to learn. Less than three miles to the harbor from here.

Cigar tonight perhaps. Later. After dinner, some Addison, some Steele, a little Swift, and the ever pressing paperwork. Mentally recapping the day leading up to this quiet. Solitary office hours this morning. The afternoon at the Air Force base. Retiree ID card, finally. Register for TriCare Prime. Learn what it is to pay for my health care--a pittance really, compared to anyone else, but after so long at no cost, one more reality check. Ready to be done with that life, but not ready for this.

Walking back in, a conversation of fog horns in differing pitch, like a hearing test for the wide wet world. I press the button.

When You Think of It That Way . . .

Last night I was enjoying what will be one of the final evenings on my front porch with the friend who's really taught me the most about appreciating a good cigar. It was one of those windless nights after a sweltering day, but it was cool enough to be comfortable. He usually brings along whatever book he's enjoying at the moment. These days, one of the three books I'm reading (always at least that many at once) is The Art of Racing in the Rain, a recommendation I got from the same friend about a month ago when we met for breakfast.

Last night, he brought along Merle's Door, another book centered on dogs (The Art of Racing in the Rain is narrated by a dog). When I asked how he learned of Merle's Door, he replied that he'd read about it in Bark, "my dog magazine."

"Let me get this straight: You don't own a dog, but you subscribe to a dog magazine?"

Without even a blush, he nodded and said, "Yeah."

Then I thought about it for a second. I remembered that there were plenty of months in college and immediately after that I'd not had a girl friend, or even the prospect of a date. Yet, the entire time, my best friend and I made a birthday tradition of giving one another subscriptions to Hugh Hefner's monthly celebration of "the girl next door." I said as much to my friend, and then said, "So, when you think of it that way, I guess if you love dogs there's really nothing odd about subscribing to a dog magazine even when you can't claim the daily companionship of one."

That said though, as my friend is just beginning what promises to be a contentious divorce, I will worry about him if he subscribes to Modern Bride any time soon.

:-)

The horse, the cart, the good man

If you had asked me, I'd have told you that getting together with an old friend was always a good excuse to break out the good Scotch and good cigars--Laphroaig in his glass, Johnny Walker Black in mine, and a Fuente Hemingway Short Story for each of us.

What I realize now, after two and a half hours on my porch in the setting sun, is that, really, the Scotch or Bourbon or cigars are really just an excuse to spend time in the company of a good friend and a good man.

Memory Lane (Someone Else's)

I go away . . . . but I do come back. If there were a clinic or a 12-step program for what I had, I would have checked myself in. But some s*** you just have to live through. Collecting material for an autobiography titled, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, is never easy, and it had better be a hell of a lot more fun to read about than live through or it's gonna be a real short run.

Anyway, part of re-entering the real world is getting back in touch with the digital one. Hmmm. Actually, I've been distracted by a digital one, but this digital one was definitely on the other side of the looking glass. In catching up with those who live in this one, I found I was late noticing a pointer from one of the best friends I've never met to a story by another I can't even call friend, yet, but for whom "fellow traveler" doesn't seem a stretch.

Out here in the "blogosphere," you occasionally run into a post with value for what it says. You occasionally run into one with value for how it says what it says. Rarely, some kind soul points the way to one that has value on both levels. I owe Chap a debt of gratitude for pointing the way to this Nov 27th post over at Neptunus Lex. If you're from the South and over, say, 40, it's worth the read for what it has to say. If you're someone of any age moved by well-above-average skill with the language, it's worth the read for how it says it. If you're in both categories, pour yourself a cup of coffee, set aside five minutes, and read. Don't read the way you might normally skim one of several blogs you'll peruse during your day. Read slowly, the way you might savor a good single-malt scotch and a fine, easy-drawing, maduro cigar. Take your time. You won't regret it.

Live First, Then Write About It

Life has been busy!

Saturday night at a Loreena McKennitt concert as part of her Ancient Muse Tour. What a beautiful artist and person! And what an incredible group of musicians. If you're anywhere near one her upcoming perfomances, go!

Sunday at a friend's neighborhood Oktoberfest, where I spent an hour or so in a great conversation with one of the neighbors and learned near the end of that conversation that his brother is the bassist for Rage Against the Machine. I think he was genuinely surprised when I said, "No kidding! They have a great track on the soundtrack from The Matrix." (Hands down, btw, the best sci-fi film of the 20th century. Period. And yes, I've seen all the classics I'm probably going to hear about in comments. Bring it.) That event closed off with about five of us standing in a circle and smoking cigars.

Monday was devoted to a 208-mile ride through the mountains with eight squadron mates. I sold my KZ-900 years ago, but you can rent Harleys, and it was worth every penny. The weather was as perfect as the company.

All in all, I don't feel all that bad for not getting around to the blog over the weekend. You gotta have a life if you're gonna have anything to write about.

Life on the non-proverbial edge

I will have nightmares tonight.

There is nothing quite like taking your Jeep Grand Cherokee on its first no kidding 4-wheeling excursion along a road no wider than the Jeep itself and bordered on one side by rock and root and on the other by . . . air, and a long roll before the first tree might stop you, or might just cut the vehicle in half. "Oh, this is all pretty much just category 2," says my friend. "And they go to category what?" I ask. "Five." "[Deleted]! I don't ever want to see even a three."

I'm pretty sure my knuckles were white on the wheel, but I was just hoping my friend wouldn't notice and wasn't about to take my eyes off the road long enough to check. I kept going for two reasons. First, pride. Second, there was no where to turn around anyway. We gained a little over 2000 feet in three miles at just slightly more than a walking pace. It's the first, no kidding four-wheeling I've done in my Grand Cherokee. I had an Isuzu Trooper out on a similarly rough road that no two-wheel drive vehicle could have navigated, but that was up through a forest, not along the side of a fripping mountain.

I admitted to my friend later that I would never have even tried it without him along. He's got a couple decades of four-wheeling experience, so, I knew I could always just stop and put him behind the wheel. His presence gave me the courage to try something I'd never done before. All in all, the drive up to the radio towers at 11,200' on Mt Princeton is probably the thing I'll have flashbacks to for years.

There was so much more to this weekend--dinner at a Cantina on the way up, building a fire in the dark, shivering around it drinking 12-yr-old Dewars Special Reserve and smoking Fuente cigars, a full day on the Taylor River failing to outsmart the trout, but not caring too much thanks to the beauty of the scenery, and another day making a run at Mt Princeton before dark clouds over the summit made us turn back short (as the proverb goes in aviation, "It is always better to be down here wishing you were up there, than up there wishing you were down here").
But for now, I'm off to those old archetypal dreams of falling off a mountain. And because I skydive, people don't believe me when I tell them I'm afraid of heights.

Like Minds?

I am so not a believer in coincidence.

All the way back across the country, I looked forward to penning a post about the superb new humidor I received during our visit to Wilmington, NC. In the last six months or more, I can think of not a single blog post, among the few I read with regularity, with cigars as a topic. Yet on my return, I find with some delight that the Mountain Philosopher is awake again, and among his recent posts, one about cigars. Coincidence?

I might have been willing to think so, but then . . . Two days ago, I finished Walter Isaacson's new biography of Einstein, having listened to it, from the Colorado/Kansas border to Tennessee before setting it aside to listen to The Road from Nashville to Wilmington (more on this in a later post), and then picking up Einstein again from Calabash through New Orleans and Dallas all the way back to Colorado. I highly recommend it, btw.

Because I'll be returning to Wilmington in less than two weeks, I decided to finish off my summer reading with a Southern author I've been way too long in coming to. Thus it was that, yesterday, I began The Lords of Discipline. Why is that remarkable? Because today's post on The Archer Pelican is about none other than, you guessed it, Pat Conroy. Coincidence? Give me a break.

Bad time to pick up a new vice?

Ten years ago, I couldn't explain what a single-malt Scotch was, let alone name a favorite. But I can now.

Cigars, though, I'm still learning about. I've added a cigar blog to my list of occasional reads, and for father's day this year, my daughters gave me a beautiful Don Salvatore Cuban Wheel humidor that I'm working on stocking with some good smokes as I discover them. That is, if I can afford to. A recent post over at Mountain Philosopher has me a little concerned:

The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) Bill, co-sponsored by Senators Hatch and Kennedy, and which passed the Senate last week by a veto-proof majority but which has yet to pass the House, would extend health insurance to millions of uninsured American children. The bulk of the program's costs would be financed by an additional 61 cent tax on a pack of cigarettes. Doesn't sound unreasonable to me.

The bill also calls for HUGE increases on premium cigars which yours truly does relish upon occasion. How much of an increase? The current stoogie federal tax is a 5 cents. The House version of the bill calls for about a one dollar tax. Again, I can live with that 2000% increase.

But the Senate version goes crazy, setting up to a TEN DOLLAR TAX per stick! The formula calls for an approximately 53% tax on the wholesale cost. I typically smoke four to seven dollar cigars. A seven dollar cigar runs about $3.50 wholesale, making it $5.25 before markup, and about ten bucks to me if the retailer is going to maintain his margin and stay in business. The fifteen dollar sticks, and believe me, these are more popular than you might think, will start to go for 24 bucks.

I now understand why the humidor came with a little flyer urging me to visit the Legislative Action Center of the Retail Tobacco Dealers of America and get involved.