Happy Father's Day Dad!

I love my dad.

The older I get the more I appreciate, remember and understand how I grew up. Not so much specific events or details (although those are clearer now) but the context in which all the things happened.

On Saturday mornings my dad would make a tepee by draping the bed sheet over his raised knee. The opening would be between his calf and thigh. I would sit inside and be the Indian chief while dad brought goods to the Indian village to trade.

My dad was friends with the make believe character "Roscoe" I played when I was four or five and often initiated him by welcoming me with "Where have you been, Roscoe?" when I found him working outside or in his office.

When I was about five dad taught me to tie a hook to a fishing line, bait it with a worm and catch fish from a stream that ran next to a friend's house. The fish were tiny and catching them required a very small hook known as a hair hook. I remember distinctly going to a bait shop and hearing my dad's response to the clerk asking him what size hair hook he wanted. Dad said we wanted "the hairiest ones you've got".

My dad loved to catch mullet with a cast net. I can remember many nights following alongside him in shoulder deep water after dark secured to his belt with a fish stringer as he threw his net along Courtney Campbell Causeway in Tampa. He showed me how to shuffle my feet along the bottom so I wouldn't step on and suffer the sting of one of the numerous stingrays there every night.



My dad traveled often when I was small. I couldn't go with him when he flew out of town even though I always wanted to. He knew that so once he said we were flying to New York. We packed up my suitcase, he dressed me up, put my top hat on me and we headed to Tampa International Airport to catch a flight to New York. We spent the day at the airport looking for a plane going to New York. For some reason we just couldn't find one. It didn't matter at all. One of my fondest early childhood memories is that day almost fifty years ago with my dad and my suitcase and top hat at the airport trying to find an airplane going to New York.


When I put those few remembrances along with a thousand more in perspective their value becomes evident. I've learned more lessons from my dad than from any other single source. I've learned as much about my mother and brother and my dad's family because I've learned so much about him. I've come to understand more about who I am and about the lives of others who know and have been influenced by my dad.



One thing is for sure, we are much more like our parents than we think. Often we are very much like them but won't (can't see it) admit that because we don't like the similar traits. I'm certainly like my dad in many ways. The more I can identify with that and use it for good the better off I'll be.


You see, my dad raised me and influenced me the way he did because of who he was and is. Influenced by his father and life circumstances. I'm sure he would have changed many of those but couldn't. Perhaps the same is true for you and your dad.


So I've learned lessons; how to do some things and how not to do others, how to act and maybe sometimes how not to act, all the while understanding that the lessons I was taught came out of my dad's sincere desire to teach me and be an example to me the best way he knew. My dad has always tried to look out for my best interest. There is no doubt. I respect him for that and am thankful for it.

My dad often said, "Son, in life you should only do whatever you can afford". Over the years I've done a lot of things I certainly couldn't afford and received more than my moneys worth doing a few others. I know now what good advice that really is and that he wasn't just talking about dollars and cents.

I'm a lot like my dad. I wouldn't have it any other way.

I love my dad.