Happy birthday to my father who is 90 years old today. He has been the best father who ever was or ever will be and he has been and always will be my bff. I think that means “best friend forever.”
My father was a child of the Great Depression and a Korean War veteran. He was tough but not too tough and always fair.
Like all men of his generation, the Greatest Generation, the 70s were a difficult time to navigate.
I think this story will illustrate my point.
It was the summer of 1973 and I had just graduated from high school. I came home late on a Saturday night to find my father sitting at the head of our white Formica kitchen table with the overhead fluorescent lights blazing. He had a cigarette in one hand, a beer in the other and a book on the table in front of him. He barked at me to sit down at the opposite end of the table. He then pushed the book across the table at me and, in a stern voice asked: “What in the hell is that and don’t you dare lie to me.”
I was in no shape for a bright lights and rubber hose interrogation, but I thought I had better come up with some kind of answer. “It’s Catcher in the Rye. It is a subversive communist influenced book that they made me read in English class. Let’s get out the barbecue grill and burn it.”
He didn’t think that was funny and told me to open the book. I did and inside the book I found a roach, a marijuana roach. My father: “I want you to tell me what that is and don’t even think about lying.” The truth has never been my first option but I decided to give it a go.
“Dad, it is a roach.” He threw his can of beer at my head, obviously not his first beer as he missed my head by three feet, and screamed: “Dammit, I told you not to lie to me. That is not a cockroach. The basement is full of cockroaches. I know a cockroach when I see one and that is not a cockroach. One more chance to stop the lying and tell me the truth.”
Now what do I do? I tried telling him the truth and that was a disaster. I decided to take a different approach.
“Dad, I am so sorry I lied to you. You are right. This is not a cockroach. It is a teeny tiny marijuana. I thought that because it was so small it would be harmless.”
My father then lectured me on the dangers of smoking marijuana, even teeny tiny marijuanas, and told me to go to bed.
The moral to this story.
Truth is always relative. But if you win the father lottery like I did, your father’s truth will be with you forever and leave an everlasting imprint on your soul.
Thanks for everything Dad.
Love Mark
AbeAndMarkontheCamino 