Father's Day

I don’t think much about Father’s Day since my father passed away 11 years ago.  Rather I think about my father a lot, in fact it is a rare day when I don’t have some fleeting thought of him.  My father was an ebullient personality who really bubbled over with life and happiness.  As kids we looked forward to his homecoming every evening because he would always have some story to tell us about what happened at work.  He could make the worst disasters sound hilarious, such as the time his factory had a slight problem with their beef stew spilling over and running into the sewers.  They cleaned up the place but it all went into the sewer which ended up backing up into the Indian carpet store behind them, which they didn’t know about for a day or so.  When Dad discovered the problem he went over to the store owner to apologize (even though it really wasn’t their fault, it was the city sewer after all).  But when Dad offered to buy one of the carpets, cheap, the store manager practically ran him out of the store.  Only my dad would have the brass to do something like that!

       Another time my dad was strolling back from his lunch with one of his colleagues when they came across a hat shop.  There was a big sale going on so in they went to see what kind of deal they could make.  A particularly nice hat was lying in the pile of $5.00 hats.  Dad recognized it as a Borsalino and wondered if he would be able to get it for the $5.00.  he took it up to the counter and asked if it was $5.00 as it was in the bin.  The man said yes, Dad popped it on his head and even though it came down to his eyes he said “sold”.  His friend asked “what are you going to do with a hat two sizes too big?”  Dad said he didn’t know but he couldn’t leave a Borsalino in the bin! 

As chance would have it one of his partners showed up that afternoon and as he was a big fellow Dad handed him the hat and said “Happy Birthday”.  John said “How did you know it was my birthday?”  Well, Dad hadn’t known it was his birthday; it was just his way of handing him a present.  Tears rolled down his cheeks and then he got all upset as Dad took the hat away from him and began rolling it up, stamping on it and whacking it around.   Then the hat popped right back into shape.  Dad said “It’s a Borsalino, you can’t hurt it no matter what you do to it”.  Well, the poor old man was in heaven.  We laughed so hard at the story, picturing the poor man crying over his ruined hat.

Yes, I sure miss my dad, he was something else.