25 years

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Shag, Dad, me, Sebastian and Plato

The knock on the door was around 4 a.m. The first though that ripped through my mind was “Damn. They’ve caught me.” and I instantly thought about the potential contraband in my dorm room.

Aside - No drugs (never did them), but enough other stuff to put me in a position of having to do some SERIOUS explaining. In today’s political climate the stuff I had would either brand me as a patriot or a terrorist, depending on the views the college had regarding the Second Amendment. Probably a terrorist as having a 3-pounder cannon, a deer rifle, a loaded pistol, ammo, can of black powder and a bow with arrows in the room is stretching anyone’s interpretation of patriot especially when the person lives in a college dorm.

Then reality caught up.

Campus Security was not knocking on my door to use me as a fashion model for the latest in chromed-steel wrist wear.

Dad was dead.

The officer knocking at my dorm door was there to tell me. In fact he told me to call my mother, who in turn told me Dad had died not long before.

I woke up the Old Man even as I went to the door, telling him the call we’d been waiting for was here and it was time to roll out to Ellenton.

At the phone I called Mom and asked why she couldn’t have waited until I’d normally be up. Some of you are aghast at that statement. You don’t know my family. Such a comment is di rigueur for us.

We call it being practical. Another example - When he found out he was dying, he called. Said “Don’t come home.” As it happened I’d planned to come home anyway, so I did.

April 1, 1986. Dad was dead. We knew it was coming. He’d suffered for two years with Pancreatic Cancer. I’d seen him not long before and he told me he wasn’t long for this existence.

25 years.

He was younger than me when he died. Not only have I lived longer than him, his own mother, Grandma, had me around longer than she had him around.

Harsh.

I don’t think of him every day. He does regularly cross my mind. I frequently have dreams which he is a part of. Not entirely sure what that means.

What would you like to know about my Dad? What would I like to tell you about him?

Ah. What I’d like to tell you is both reality and fiction, an imagined set of characteristics and traits I wish he had, but did not. Perfection. He missed the mark, but I’d like to tell you he was perfect.

He took delight in the small things. He tended to ignore the large things, that lack of common sense I mentioned.

He’d help anyone. Anyone. Once he helped, if they screwed things up he might not help again, but that first time, he was there.

He was generous. You’ll find few people moreso.

He played as hard as he worked.

He was a terrible poker player.

He was better’n average at chess, but never could beat Weeks.

He had a few deep set convictions and no amount of empirical evidence to the contrary would change his mind.

I remember seeing him cry twice. I remember seeing him panic once. I saw him drunk countless times, mad a few times and grin so much it’s just short of infinity.

He made decisions. Some I liked, some I didn’t care about and some, well, he made his decisions and walked his path as I turned into an adult and walked my path.

I will pass along a few of the things he said to me and let you infer from them what you will.

Upon reaching the time when I needed to apply to college he said go to a liberal arts school. I considered going to his Alma Mater, Georgia Tech. He said it would be the last time in my life I’d be able to have as much fun and I didn’t need the crushing courses that Georgia Tech would laden me with.

“Sometimes the thinking is the hardest part,” he said. On this day I was trying to rig a HVAC blower unit on a wheeled contraption and allow the vent to raise and lower as needed. I spent more time trying to figure out how to do it than I did with the torch and welder.

He wrote in my high school annual that I could program a computer, skin a hog, plow a field and many other things which he summed up as saying I do whatever I wanted to do. He knew I’d make it. As I recall, I was the only student in PHS ’85 whose parents listed their abilities as evidence of future success. The other parents wrote of the lives lived. Practical, as I said.

“If one of my sons doesn’t become a writer, I’m going to,” he said. This was years before Rachel, his daughter came along. Rachel was born after Dad died.

“Don’t wait. Give it now, while you can,” he said.

For 18 years of my life he was.

25 years ago today, he wasn’t.

For 43 years, he is my Dad. Provided I make it to mid-May, for 44 years, he’ll be my Dad.