re: Tell Me About your Dad

Lost mine back in June of '18. He made me and my sister the people we are today. He raised us by himself for 5 years until our stepmum came along.

I am certain that he is now my little girl's guardian angel.

We are going back home to Pittsburgh in March; my sister hasn't been back since the funeral and she asked me to come along.

Hug your dad if you still have him.

My Dad was a great man. Don't really know what to say. This thread has kind of opened the can of thoughts I was keeping buried. February 10 will be one year since I lost him. I am the person I am because of him.

Nice thread, thanks folks.

Mine was a good man, he died in 1989 of Cancer.

I still think of him and miss him every day over three decades later.

I’m sad he wasn’t around my kids (and vice versa).

Grew up on Roman St. 2 blocks off of Canal St. Football star at Warren Easton from 49-52. Had scholarship offers from Tulane, Texas A&M, and Alabama. Signed with Tulane, had to go to Korea. Returned to N.O. twice on leave to visit mom and produced children on both leaves.He returned from service and had mouths to feed so he got a job as a Plant Operator with American Cyanamide (sp?) and never played college ball.

My dad is 71 years old and a modern day Archie Bunker. I'm dead serious.

He is from Long Island, has the same mannerisms as Archie and most of the time, the same accent on certain words. He is the most stubborn human being on the planet. We moved to Florida and it took me getting stationed in New Jersey in 2001 for him to leave the state to visit. He has a strained relationship with his side of the family. He couldn't care less about any of them.

He gradually became obese over the years. He never listened to doctors about his health, now he has tons of health issues, mostly diabetes and kidney issues.

Diehard conservative. Somewhat of a biggot in his views, for example he said only black NFL players kneeled, Obama is why I didn't get promoted faster in the Air Force, and he flipped out when I deployed to UAE 7 years ago because I would go off base with my buddies to shop in Dubai and he kept saying I'm supporting terrorism by buying merchandise in the malls there.

He would only listen to 50s/60s oldies, Polka, and Country Music and he would force my sister and I to listen to it when we were growing up. We weren't allowed to change the station no matter what! According to him any classic rock is "pothead music", any 80s music is "gay music", and any music made after 1990 is considered "rap". When I got my own car at 16, I had to play catch up with popular music. I spent years despising Country Music because of it.

He would mostly watch police, military dramas, and classic sitcoms. Nowadays, all he watches is RFD TV, Fox News, Bay News 9 (24 hour local news), and some Discovery Channel shows. We bought him a smart TV for Christmas so he could watch his shows and movies anytime he wants on many of the apps that I subscribe to. He won't give up the DVR from the cable company, I have yet to see him use any of the apps.

He always wore loose 3 or 4 XL t-shirts with sweat shorts or jeans with wide width sneakers from the edema in his feet. He didn't give a crap what other people thought about him when he would go out ot the store. I would come to dinner in nice shirt, khaki shorts, or jeans and he would pull me aside and say "could you give me a hand with this?" and it would be something that would be sure to get me dirty.

He has every tool known to man and tries to pass them all down to me even though I don't want to use my garage like Sanford and Son!

And lastly blame all of the injuries of my kids and younger college and pro athletes on being too weak because they "play too much Nintendo".

My sister and I don't know how my Mom has stuck with him for 45 years!

The best damn golfer I've ever seen.

I’ve posted this before, but it’s emblematic of my father’s approach to Dad things. WWII infantry company commander in ETO. A great man and forever my hero.

Third grade. Late May. We’d just moved back from to Metairie from Charlotte, NC where I’d spent Second grade.

Dad decided-and told me he had decided-to pass lawn mowing duty to me. He would edge, trim…”do the fine tuning, so to speak” as he put it.

So he turned me loose with an ancient, heavy, unwieldy iron reel push mower whose handle was too high for me to leverage to push and keep blades on the grass simultaneously.
[For all I know, this might be the actual beast.]

I tried everything, even tying a short rope to it and pulling it like a plow horse.

After two hours or so and nothing to show but a varied patchwork of cuts, gouges, and mostly unmowed lawn-I summoned the courage to admit I was having troubles.

“Troubles?”
“What kind of troubles?”
“Have you broken my lawnmower?” “Be clear, what is the exact problem?”

I showed him. I wasn’t tall or strong enough.

“Well, I see your problem.”
“We can fix that!”

So he cut the heavy wooden riser and remounted the handle so that, with Herculean effort, I could manage a nearly straight path and put enough pressure to cut a swath with marginally less noticeable gapping and gouging.

“I’m sorry you didn’t tell me sooner. If you had, you wouldn’t have had to cut so much over again.”

“Carry on Trooper.” A favorite nom de guerre given me when he’d finished issuing instructions and orders.

I struggled throughout that Summer though early Fall into October and I know now during that Summer and that Fall Dad sacrificed pride in being able to show off a more neatly cut lawn in order to mold his son into a champion lawn man.

That Christmas Santa mysteriously put a Western Auto power mower with Dad’s name on it under the tree. A mower he never used except to instruct me the following Spring in its proper use and maintenance.

Dad was true to his word. He never mowed his lawn after passing the duty to me that Summer.

As I’ve grown older, maybe not surprisingly, mowing my lawn has turned out to be the most difficult task I’ve been asked to relinquish to my sons.

A thread I started a while back

Delete.

Too personal.