Dad Did Right, Even When He Did Wrong

Dad Did Right Even When He Did Wrong
(Father's Day column published June 18, 2006)

Fortunately for us, my dad did most everything right by us kids. My brothers and I might disagree about what are his greatest contributions to our development, but we all three agree that he is a wonderful father. A short list of what he might have done differently illustrates that even when he made some mistakes, how he handled them taught us a lot.

Things Dad Did Wrong:

A TV, a Magnet and a Boy: Dad allowed one of my brothers to have a big magnet, which under normal circumstances should have been harmless enough. But what Dad didn’t consider is that the boy would apply his super magnetic field to everything. Including the new console television. My brother rendered our picture completely scrambled by depolarizing the picture tube or something like that. I never fully understood what happened. But Dad saved the day. He flipped the magnet over, swiped the screen, and voila! We could watch “The Brady Bunch” to our hearts’ content.

Home Brew in the Trunk: My dad made great homemade root beer. I can still smell the rich aroma of fermentation and recall its sweet refreshment when the frothy beverage reached the peak of flavor. My dad had the idea that the trunk of the car would make a great place to carry out the fermentation process. It was hot, dark and convenient. The only problem with making homemade root beer is that it has a tendency to explode as gases build inside the containers. Thanks to one sticky eruption, our car smelled like Barq’s for a year.

Five Bazillion French Fries: One of the many crops our dad grew on the back lot of our Long Beach property was potatoes. In an effort to fully utilize a particularly bountiful potato harvest, Dad decided we would cut them into French fries, bake them and freeze them for later consumption. Most of what I can remember of that experience is that we had a truckload of French fries in the deep freezer, but everybody was so sick of them, nobody wanted to eat them. It was a long lesson in the value and convenience of mass produced food.

Rhodie’s Babies: Another attempt at growing our own involved a brood of Rhode Island Red chickens. Rhodie the hen and Lester the rooster gave rise to a flock of baby chicks. We named every last one in the brood and played with them daily. We fed them, and they grew.
One day our family of five sat down to a very unsettling Sunday dinner. The look on my mom’s face could only be described as pure disgust and trepidation. Soon enough, we kids put two legs and two legs together and came to the horrific realization that Rhodie’s babies were perched on our plate in Southern fried perfection. I think that was the day Dad came to the conclusion, once and for all, that his kids would have starved in the Depression. We could no more eat anything that had sat on our lap than we could swallow the story that all those pullets simply ran away from home.

My dad knows he’s a special man, if for no other reason than he survived raising us. But he is the wisest, funniest and most endearing, forgiving man I know. Of all the things he might have done wrong, there are multitudes of those he did just right, like bone crushing hugs and heartfelt letters on your pillow and dancing like no one is looking to a rousing rendition of “It must be jelly ‘cause jam don’t shake like that.” He continues to do right by us, reminding us that it is those moments of joy found in music and laughter, friends and family, that strung together over time make for lasting pleasure when infirmity and discomfort seem intent on ruling the day.

Of all the things my dad does right, that he loves us unconditionally, openly and completely, is my favorite thing of all. Well, that and the fact that he didn’t make us eat Rhodie’s babies. We love him in more ways than there were French fries in our freezer. Happy Father’s Day to a man we are so glad to call Dad.