All right. This one is going to be rather atypical of my usual debaucherous, self-congratulatory or vitriol-laden commentary.

I want to talk a bit about my dad. If you’re looking for the, "My parents didn’t love me enough and that’s why I’m such a fuck-up page," head somewhere else. You’re about to be disappointed. If I’m a fuck-up (opinions vary) it’s in spite of the fact that I have great parents.

I got a note from Pop a few weeks ago. In it he mentioned that my favorite nephew was still having trouble with his mother (my evil sister ~ LONG story). He also said he wished the kid could come live with him and my mom, in part, he was certain, to assuage some of the guilt he felt about how he contributed to raising my brother and me.

I knew Pop had felt like this before, but I hadn’t realized until then that it was something of a character trait for him. You see, when I was growing up (and part of the time when my older brother was a kid) Dad was a travelling salesman. His job had him leave on Monday morning and come home on Thursday night, three weeks out of four.

Since it was that way my whole life, I never thought it was unusual. Other kids’ dad’s were home all the time, and they were no more happy than I was. Some kids didn’t have dads, and they seemed okay too. Maybe I learned early on that everybody’s lives are different.

Anyway, Dad would call home on Tuesday nights and talk to Mom and me. Thursday nights were always special to me as a kid, because Dad would come home, and there would always be a toy in his suitcase for me. Obviously, it wasn’t anything major, since travelling salesmen rarely make enough to shell out for a new major toy for their kids every week. Just the fact that there would be a cap gun, or a game or a baseball or something let me know that Dad missed and thought about me when he was on the road, just as I did him. He also threw his change into an old Sucrets tin (the nickels and pennies, at least). That went into my piggy bank, and ended up paying for part of my college education. I knew then that college was a long way off, but I also figured it was important if I had to set aside all this change for it, rather than spending it on 45s (which could be had for about $0.75 back then).

There’s an old saw that a father’s responsibilities to his son are to teach him to ride, shoot straight and tell the truth. To be honest, I learned to drive at a pretty young age without any help from Dad. Still, when I hit 16 and got my permit, he took me out and showed me the ropes just like he was supposed to. I know that couldn’t have been easy for him, since his own father was killed in a car wreck when Dad was 16 and driving the car. Still, he made it look like no big issue, and he was even more excited about it that I was.

Dad first took me shooting when I was around 6. We took along his old, six pound, single shot Remington .22, that he had bought at around age 12. Every summer we’d go to a friend of Dad’s place out in the sticks on a couple of Saturday afternoons, burn through a couple of boxes of ammo and then fish in the creek the rest of the day. It was really special to me because that was time I got spend with him just myself. There wasn’t a lot of it, but I think that made it even more special.

It wasn’t all that many years before I was out-shooting the old man, but never by any great margin. I also think he was kind of secretly proud the first day I put more holes than he did in the old Maxwell House can we were using as a target. After all, he was the one who taught me how to hold the rifle, line up the sights, control my breath and squeeze, rather than pull, the trigger. I still hear his simultaneously annoying and appreciated instruction from over my left shoulder every time I line up a rifle.

As to telling the truth, I learned this one by both catechism and example. Pop’s one of those people who would rather tell it to you straight, even if it’s hard for him to do so, than to have to look at a liar’s face in the mirror every morning. He never personally stated a code of honor to me. That’s because he showed such strong example that saying it out loud wasn’t necessary. If I had specific questions, he’d answer them. Otherwise, it was watch and learn. I don’t know if Pop did this on purpose because he understood that honor is something you do, rather than something you talk about doing, and everyone has to develop their own code, of if he thought I just naturally got it and didn’t need verbal coaching.

I do know that the worst punishment I ever got from the old man was hearing, "I’m disappointed in you, son," on those occasions I screwed up badly enough to warrant comment. I wished to beat hell that he would have just hit me or something. In all the years I lived at home, he never struck me once, even when I deserved it. Still, one cool thing about him is that if you made up for your screw up, rather than just apologizing for it, the slate was wiped clean. That set one hell of a strong example that I’ve always tried (albeit with varying degrees of success) to emulate. It’s not enough to repent; you have to make things right.

One other thing before I get off the Father’s Appreciation Day soapbox. When I was about 12 or so, Pop asked me if I wanted to go on the road with him in the summer. I was honored that he asked, and even more honored at the pride with which he introduced his fat, shy, son to his customers, many of whom were also his friends. I also saw the pride in his face as I dropped the weight and the lack of assurance. When customers would point out from summer to summer how much I’d grown or how much thinner I was or what a good job I was doing pitching or pulling products, the old man positively beamed.

It was hard work peddling florists’ supplies from the back of a 10 wheel Ford cargo truck, but we had a lot of fun talking on the road and figuring out who each other were. The old man and I always knew we loved each other, but those summers until I hit about 15 or so and developed "more pressing" plans during the week, gave us the chance to find out that we liked each other, too.

I know Pop feels guilty because he couldn’t be there as much as he wanted to be when I was a kid. Still, he was there as much as he needed to be. He taught me to ride, shoot straight and tell the truth. He also taught me that I come from proud people and that the way to judge if you’re living your life correctly isn’t by some abstract social guideline, but by whether or not you wince when you look in the shaving mirror each morning. So far, I’m ahead of the curve most days, and I thank him (and of course my mother and a whole lot of other people) for that. He may have had to defer a large part of my day-to-day instruction and upbringing to my mom (who did a hell of a job deserving its own write-up when I get to it), but he was the example I measured against as to what it meant to be a good man.

He still is, and he always will be. Yeah, he has his share of flaws, real and imagined by both him and me, but when the tally is done, he always stacks up heavily on the plus side. If he feels guilty, it’s because he didn’t measure up to his own standard in some way or another, but he has never failed to measure up to mine.

M_