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Let me tell you about my Dad


Shoxthemonkey

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4 minutes ago, dcbc said:

They set up a table and a phone at a trade fair and landed their first contract. That little project grew into a large petroleum engineering firm that built all sorts of oil and gas infrastructure all over Texas and parts of South America.  Among those was a pipeline in Buenos Aires. 

If that was the main gas line from Tierra del Fuego all the way up to Buenos Aires....my dad ended up running that company and pipeline.  Because this world is smaller than we often think.

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18 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

If that was the main gas line from Tierra del Fuego all the way up to Buenos Aires....my dad ended up running that company and pipeline.  Because this world is smaller than we often think.

Well, I know what I'm going to try to figure out this weekend.

 

 

 

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1 minute ago, InkaUtexas said:

Dad is still alive. How I have no idea. I will sit back, enjoy this thread and dread the day I join.

Thank you all for posting this.

The fathers don't need to be gone. Writing about him while he is still with you could spark lots of good conversations now. Do it anyway because I don't know how much time I have left and I want to read about it.

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7 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

Dad is still alive. How I have no idea. I will sit back, enjoy this thread and dread the day I join.

Thank you all for posting this.

Yep.  My kids spent time with my dad, even recording him telling them stories about his life.  Obviously....they did that before he died (our Ouija board is broken).  We shouldn't wait till people are gone to tell their stories.

Just like we shouldn't wait to tell the people we love that we love them.

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3 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Yep.  My kids spent time with my dad, even recording him telling them stories about his life.  Obviously....they did that before he died (our Ouija board is broken).  We shouldn't wait till people are gone to tell their stories.

Just like we shouldn't wait to tell the people we love that we love them.

it is always interesting to ask those older people the very first thing in their memory.  Or in my case, I would ask them if their parents or grandparents ever told them their first memories.  When I asked my mother that, she told me her grandmother‘s first memory was being a young child in a sleigh in Sweden with her father being terrified and using his whip against wolves, who were chasing the sleigh - probably wanting to eat some horses.   Her other memory was playing at serving tea to her doll, using acorns as teacups.     I never met my Swedish great-grandmother, but weirdly I have information about what she was doing in the 1860s

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29 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Here's what I found.  It doesn't appear to be the same ones in that link.

 

"In 1957, the [company] went international by constructing an 1100-mile natural gas pipeline in South America from the Bolivian border to Buenos Aires, Argentina.  The Argentina pipeline led to another . . . project, which was the engineering and construction of an Argentine petrochemical complex.  This complex used the new raw materials brought by the pipeline for the first synthetic rubber plant in South America in a cooperative undertaking called PASA."

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27 minutes ago, Shoxthemonkey said:

The fathers don't need to be gone. Writing about him while he is still with you could spark lots of good conversations now. Do it anyway because I don't know how much time I have left and I want to read about it.

We talk a few times a week, long talks when we can.

I get on my sons ass. "Look Inka Junior, you live 30 minutes away. Go see him a few times a month. Shut up, listen, and enjoy that bad ass lunch he will buy you. Another round at Top Golf can wait."

 

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14 minutes ago, dcbc said:

Here's what I found.  It doesn't appear to be the same ones in that link.

 

"In 1957, the [company] went international by constructing an 1100-mile natural gas pipeline in South America from the Bolivian border to Buenos Aires, Argentina.  The Argentina pipeline led to another . . . project, which was the engineering and construction of an Argentine petrochemical complex.  This complex used the new raw materials brought by the pipeline for the first synthetic rubber plant in South America in a cooperative undertaking called PASA."

Looks like no.  But...they surely shared experiences of great bife de chorizo, many glasses of Malbec, and sharing endless cups of mate with strangers and friends alike.  Also, sent you a DM.

Edited by Brisketexan
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16 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Yep.  My kids spent time with my dad, even recording him telling them stories about his life.  Obviously....they did that before he died (our Ouija board is broken).  We shouldn't wait till people are gone to tell their stories.

Just like we shouldn't wait to tell the people we love that we love them.

My dad had a favorite joke.  He used to tell it with some regularity.  My mom always rolled her eyes, but he loved it and kind of liked that she was sick of hearing it.  When I was a kid, I asked him to tell it and recorded him on an old Panasonic tape recorder.  I wish like hell I still had that tape.  I've got one old video where you can hear his voice.  I swear, the man gargled with gravel. 

 

Fast forward (no pun intended).  My mom remarried in the early 2000s.  During their marriage, her then-husband finished and self-published his autobiography for his family and loved ones.  It was so interesting and helped me get to know him better.  A few years later, my mom wrote and published her own, and it is priceless, not only for her story, but for part of my dad's as well.  I've only read it once---I read it once to my older son a little each night at bedtime.  I barely made it through the part about my dad's passing.  I tried to get her to make an audiobook so I could have a recording of her voice.  But the voicemails I saved will have to do as her health started to deteriorate around that time.

 

Anyway, I really came to appreciate that joke over the years.  I'm of the mind that everyone should know two jokes, a dirty one, and a clean one.  I don't know if he had a dirty one, thought he used to have a bunch of inappropriate diddies he'd sing from time to time.  I've adopted his joke as my clean one.  It goes

 

There's this fellow.  He's on a business trip.  He checks into the hotel.  As he's checking in, he asks, where can a man get a drink around here.  The maître d' tells him, "Oh, the hotel has a beautiful rooftop bar.  Just take the elevator to the top floor.  So the man goes to his room, unpacks, and heads up to the roof to see this bar.  He gets off the elevator and this bar is really something; you can see the whole city.  He goes up to the bar, pulls up next to the only other guy there, and orders a drink. 

As he sips his drink, he looks around and asks the bartender, "Say, anybody ever have a few too many and stumble over the side. 

The other guy at the bar pipes up, "It's really something, there's and air-vent system that can sense when someone falls over the side, and if that happens, it'll kick on and pop 'em right back on the roof."

"Get out of here," the businessman replies.

"No, really, I'll show you," the man says as he walks toward the edge of the rooftop.  Then, he steps off the side, and a second later, like magic, he pops right back up onto the rooftop, and ambles back over to the bar.

"I've got to try this!" the businessman explains as he hurries over to the edge.  He steps off the roof, and plummets to his death.

The bartender takes his drink and begins wiping off the bar with a towel.  He looks at the man sitting at the bar, shaking his head, and says, "Superman, what do you do those kinds of things?"

 

And that, is my dad's "Superman Joke."

 

 

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20 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Looks like no.  But...they surely shared experiences of great bife de chorizo, many glasses of Malbec, and sharing endless cups of mate with strangers and friends alike.  Also, sent you a DM.

It's on my bucket list.  He loved Buenos Aires.  Here's a picture on one of his stops on the way down.  The kids in town were all in for the photo-op.

curt-with-plane-in-argentina.jpg

Edited by dcbc
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Awesome thread about a bunch of awesome Dads.

My Dad is still living and making memories with us.  One thing about my Dad is that he is big joker, and nearly every joke starts off as a serious story that eventually goes off the rails.  He's polished this type of delivery into a fine art.  It's such a common schtick though, that he can no longer pull it off with family members, as they immediately sense that there is a punchline coming.  It's no surprise that my Dad is very outgoing and gregarious.  In my opinion, he is continually on a search for an unsuspecting audience.

Growing up, I though my Dad was the funniest person on the planet.  He had a funny song for nearly any situation.  It wasn't until I was in my 20's and actually heard a Smothers Brothers album that I realized my Dad had stolen every single bit from them.

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Well, it slowed down a little bit, so I'll add something. 

 

So I've mentioned that my dad was an accomplished, private pilot.  He did not serve in the military.  He wanted to enlist after Pearl Harbor, but his business partners convinced him he could do more good building pipelines and refineries in the US than he could getting shot down over the Pacific.  So he stayed stateside and spent a lot of weekends flying officers from base to base.  When he finally hung it up, he had over 10,000 hours.  His last flight was in the early 80s.  He was flying back from Eagle, CO.  One of my half-brothers and the rest of the hunting buddies were in the cabin getting loaded.  Toward the end of the flight, my brother yells toward the cockpit, "C.B., when are you gonna start riding back here and enjoying the good life with the rest of us?"  As my dad told the rest of the story, "So after that, I greased the runway at Andrau one last time, and I hung it up."  Just as well, probably.  The O&G market went to crap a few years later, and the company sold the plane. 

But I got curious a couple of years ago about that plane.  Turns out, its last recorded flight (with a repower and a new livery over the years) departed from Switzerland in 2002).  I eventually found it mothballed in Egypt.  The apparent lesson is don't break down in Cairo. It was a cool plane.

 

in the late 70s.  Pueblo, CO.  We look like a Wes Anderson movie.  I have his parka still.  It's the best.

1602256883851-dc4a6c32-febf-490d-8019-0b

 

Switzerland 2002

AP1-Gcz-Ptq-Lj-Bu-BC0-MFi-Yq-BAv-VJGEIj-

Cairo

AP1-Gcz-N6-EWJs-Vl-YQpcsnk-ASHz3l6e-LYn-

 

Edited by dcbc
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Seeing these kinds of threads are always weird for me as I have no memories of my dad. He was diagnosed with a rare cancer after he collapsed about a month after I was born when he was sorting hogs with my Grandpa and Uncle. Didn’t have a lot of treatment options for it in 1982, and he passed away when I was 6 months old. There are only a couple pictures of us together where he isn’t visibly ill. My family was great about telling stories about him, and I have some great pictures but it’s always very hollow. I also very much resembled him and reminded folks of him which was always very tough for me when people would tell me that. A few years ago I ran into our families longtime neighbor to the south who was slipping into dementia and I had a whole conversation with him about farming and basketball where he thought I was my dad the whole time which was a very trippy experience. 

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Fabulous thread that I suspect will become one of the hallmarks of Surly going forward. This will give me the opportunity to do something I've been forbidden from doing: eulogize my dad.

My father is very much alive and will be 80 in a few months. But my dad's been dead and gone for all intents and purposes for about 30 years or so. Dad knocked up the birthing device to my two sisters and me when he was 20 and she was 18. They were high school sweethearts. It was '66, and he was about to fail out of the University of Minnesota. Growing up, we all heard repeatedly how my oldest sis was an accident, our middle sis was planned, and me--the only boy--was also an 'oops.' Great way to start things off. But being the lone bread winner and supporter of 3 kids in the late '60s probably kept him from being drafted. Maybe those "accidents" weren't really left up to chance.

Dad worked hard, got his associated degree at night school while working several jobs (including at a grocery store and as a clown at kids' birthday parties) to make ends meet. He got a job as a lab tech at one of the biggest R&D companies in MN. Meanwhile, his first wife's descent into alcoholism was dramatically hastened in '76 when her father reappeared after 20 years. He'd faked his own death for an insurance scam decades ago. By '77 she'd filed for divorce and he had to move out. I was 8 then, old enough to respect his heroism in continuing to work & provide while fighting the MN courts to gain custody of his 3 kids. Not an easy thing to do in the era where the mother was almost always considered to be the better option for rearing children. Thankfully for us kids, she eventually decided she wanted to run off w/ an alcoholic contractor and see the world. Or at least New Jersey for 9 months. She abandoned us, he moved back home, and tried to adjust to life as a single dad.

Within 6 months of the divorce being finalized in '78, he was dating the woman who would become his 2nd wife, a CSR at the same company he worked for he'd met through a bowling league. She made Laverne Defazio look like a beauty queen, was also a drunk (but in the funny, life of the party way), but she could cook, had a decent job, and shoot, who else was going to teach his young teenage daughters what to do when they started menstruating? They married in '79. The best thing about wife #2 is that she believed in maintaining family bonds. She helped dad improve his relationship w/ his parents. These were the brief fun years for my sisters & me. Our paternal grandparents--who lived a whole six miles away in Saint Paul--were over frequently for weekend dinners & cookouts. Dad was climbing the corporate ladder, there were two incomes, and suddenly we were considered to be one of the "haves" in our small, very blue collar town.

In '84, dad's job relocated to Austin. He was thrilled for the opportunity. Wife #2 almost put the kebash on it because she  didn't want to leave her family behind. But she knew he was going to see a significant raise which would allow her to do one of her favorite things which was to run up his credit cards. By '86, a month after my oldest sister's wedding, wife #2 moved out to continue the affair she was having with a fellow colleague of theirs. She did her best to take him to the cleaners in that divorce. I was 17 and now saw my father as a hurt man who didn't have the strength to fight back for what was his. He would rather just write the big check and hope it would be over soon. I harangued him until he finally went to see a therapist to deal with his burgeoning depression. He made a game effort of it for almost 6 months, but ever the co-dependent, he was soon dating the younger sister of our next door neighbor who was visiting from Ohio. Six months after divorce #2 was finalized, I was his attendant at the Travis County courthouse on the Friday after Thanksgiving-the day before my 19th birthday-when he married wife #3, who may be the worst of all of his wives.

Wife #3 looks like Yoko Ono's uglier sister. She's eight years younger than dad, had never been married and had a really good job as a QA manager at Abbot Labs in Ohio. She left that career behind at 35 and never reentered the workforce, "offended" by the low salary offers in Austin in the late '80s. My sisters were both married and beginning their families. I was a sophomore at UT, commuting to school and working part-time. Wife #3's spent her days doing her favorite thing--bargain hunting--and her evenings making it clear I needed to move out ASAP. She was taking control of every aspect of my dad's life, and it was clear that their world would consist of the two of them exclusively. By my junior year I was sharing a shitty apartment with a couple of friends and watching my dad become a recluse, all of his bonds with his former friends & golfing buddies having been severed.

In '01, dad was bought out into early retirement with the kind of handsome packages career company men dream about. They moved to Fort Collins. My wife and I have visited them a half dozen times over the years, never for more than 2 nights. Wife #3 has a plaque hanging in their guest room which reads "Guests are like fish: after 48 hours they begin to smell." Point taken. Her redeeming quality is that, unlike his first two wives, #3 is excellent at managing finances. Even though she never worked during their marriage, she brought her own funds to their union and did a first-rate job with his salary to allow them to retire in a very comfortable arrangement. My sisters and I will never be burdened by them as they age. In spite of all of the turmoil & pain #3 has created, we tip our hat to her fiscal acumen.

W#3 has spent the entirety of their marriage sowing family discord & undoing whatever goodwill W#2 created between dad & my grandparents. She was open about her hatred of her own mother and sister, and is fond of saying "you're not required to love your family." When grampa died in '13 he was non-supportive of his mother and the rest of the family at the funeral. After gramma passed in '16 he went through a brief moment of attempting to reconcile w/ my sisters and me. W#3 shot that down, and he crawled back into his hole. The last time I saw him was in '17 when he told me he was going to make changes to his will that would add to my responsibilities. I took that opportunity to visit him and try to understand those requirements better, but also to learn more about him and what he'd learned about life over the previous 5 years. During that span he'd lost both his parents and almost w#3 due to complications after a complex cancer surgery. She flatlined and was dead for over 3 minutes. As the adage goes, she's proven too mean to die and made a full recovery over 9 months. Remarkable, really, considering she's been living w/ MS for over 30 years. "What have you learned, dad" was answered by him giving a list of grievances and naming names of people who did him wrong over his work career. Colleagues who got credit or names on patents instead of him. Golfing buddies who used a questionable ball mark on a green to beat him in a two dollar Nassau. Cursing his dad not being there to see him set the Saint Paul HS record in the 100 meter dash at a meet in '62 (Gramps worked swing shifts at the power plant as a maintenance supervisor).  I tried to steer the conversation back to what he was thankful for, hoping to find a glimmer of the hero from the '70s who busted his ass to keep his young family together. His response was to take me out to his garage and show me his new E-class. 

During that visit he told me that I was second in line behind his wife for medical POA. We went over his end of life wishes and scenarios. He told me they'd be updating their will in the near future to make some changes, most notably to write out entirely my oldest sister. My sis stood up to the two of them at her oldest daughter's college graduation. After ten plus years of dad & the evil one attempting to control the life of my sister, her husband and their two daughters, Sis told them "enough." They've now been excommunicated. Dad has never met any of the 5 great grandchildren he now has between 3 of his grandkids. He knows of them, but he knows he can't dare cross the will of his wife. Worse, he doesn't show any interest in them. The man who was exceptional at managing complex work dynamics and multi-million dollar product lines is powerless in his personal relationships.

It was at the end of the visit he told me his final demands after his death: no memorial service of any kind. No obituary. Absolutely no mention of his passing on social media. "When the time comes, either you or your (middle) sister will be tasked w/ taking our cremains and spreading them in Hawaii. You'll learn the destination at that time and not before. We don't want anyone else knowing where our final resting place is."

Dad & W#3 are in Hawaii right now, in fact. It's their annual 6-week getaway. I've selfishly thought for several years that it would be easier for me if they just peacefully passed there. As I stated long ago at the start of this diatribe, my dad stopped being many, many years ago. He's an 80 year old man, following some antiquated playbook of what he believes a parent should be. He's not a bad man. His emotional shortcomings and co-dependency issues have resulted in him being a sad, lonely man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. He won't be missed.

Edited by GhostOfTomJoad
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I think it’s really cool that we have this thread now. Hell, I’ve got a lot of stories - both about and from my old man. He worked in the oil patch all over the world, including stints as one of the govt safety engineers in the Alaska pipeline. I’ll drop em in here later.
And shit, not all of the stories are great or flattering. We’re all human, and our fathers are/were too. Even the good ones. But if we’re doing it right, we learn from both the good and bad. And maybe we even learn to forgive ourselves when we fail. I’m definitely on the bottom of the grade curve on that particular lesson.

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Y'all are fucking killing me in here. Ken burns could make a documentary called Our Fathers just from this thread and it would be the best thing he ever did. 

This group of assholes is the best corner of the internet and it isn't close.

I'm not ready to write my dad's story just yet. I wish I knew enough to write my grandpa's story.  He was a fucking G. 

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4 hours ago, Helobious said:

Always had a complex relationship with my dad. My parents divorced young, and he was in and out growing up, was not really affectionate much, had problems keeping jobs, and he suffered and still struggles with some mental health issues. He still would do things with us and for us sometimes, and my mom always told us he was a good man but he just didn’t know how to love. He was definitely very reclusive and would isolate himself a lot. He was a child of Mexican immigrants, grew up a migrant farm worker, and was a standout athlete in HS in the RGV. I got my love of UT and sports in general from him, especially baseball. He definitely instilled a pride in our heritage that I appreciate now as an adult. 
 

One thing I will never ever forget is my sophomore year of college. He happened to be living not too far from me in a pretty shitty apartment. No one I knew liked college football much, so every Saturday morning I would drive over to his place and watch college football with him. Literally all day long. Didn’t matter if it was Northeast Vermont State vs Cleveland Tech. We would watch it. If UT was playing a night game I would usually leave after. I can vividly remember getting ready to go once and him saying “there’s some good PAC 12 games about to start I think”. So I stayed and watched. I think he just didn’t want me to go. He lives far from me now and I don’t see him a lot, but when I remember those saturdays I just want to cry. 

God damnit Helo.... Don't make me like you!  Fucker. 

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Nobody say a damned, untoward word about South Austin's HOT mom on this thread. 

 

@South Austin Did you fish with your kids?  I grew up fishing with my dad, but I wasn't very good at it.  My wife's dad instilled a love of fishing in my kids, and I've fished with them occasionally, but even though I kept my dad's rods and his tackle box, I really don't do it anymore and I think my father-in-law was a perfectly suitable fishing-mentor for them.  And despite the fact that I grew up hunting with my dad, and it was a great way to bond with him, I don't hunt anymore.  My wife remarked yesterday that our kids have never been hunting, which was so different than both she and I, who grew up doing it.  My kids' high school has a bass-fishing team, and my son is losing his tennis doubles partner to it next year.  I guess that one inherited a love of tennis, and the other one got my love of music.

I may have had a point when I started writing that, but I lost my way. 

 

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7 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

I think it’s really cool that we have this thread now. Hell, I’ve got a lot of stories - both about and from my old man. He worked in the oil patch all over the world, including stints as one of the govt safety engineers in the Alaska pipeline. I’ll drop em in here later.
And shit, not all of the stories are great or flattering. We’re all human, and our fathers are/were too. Even the good ones. But if we’re doing it right, we learn from both the good and bad. And maybe we even learn to forgive ourselves when we fail. I’m definitely on the bottom of the grade curve on that particular lesson.

I try to do all the things that my dad did right, and not do the things he did wrong. Some days are better than others. 

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My dad grew up poor in Nacogdoches but was #4 in his class.  Started at SFA but transferred to UH (instead of UT due to job opportunities in Houston at chemical plants so he could afford to go to college dammit).

Somehow he ended up at Harvard business school.  Only other Texan in his class was W.  They didn't have much in common.

My dad did the heavy lifting and for that I am forever grateful.  

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My parents divorced when I was three years old. My father is a rancher and so was my maternal grandfather. My maternal grandmother insisted that my grandfather sell his land, cattle and everything else and move to the city. Apparently, my mother attempted the same with my father who unlike my grandfather refused. Divorce followed shortly after.

We moved to San Antonio shortly after the divorce. I spent summers and winter breaks at my dad's place growing up. As a kid going from an actual city to BFE south east Texas was a beating. In the Summer's, I was assigned to work with my dad's dad so we would hop into his Ford F100 from the 1950s and work. Horrible.

My mom married my step-dad when I was eight years old. He was an engineer and a colonel in the USAF. After retirement from the USAF he became a professor at St. Mary's University as an engineering professor.

I feel like I am a combination of my step-dad and father. I pursued STEM and other intellectual pursuits because of my step-dad. My eldest son is an officer in the USAF and I wish my step-dad was alive to have seen his commission. There are a lot of things my dad has also imprinted on me too.

I'd say I am definitely the product of two dads. Looking back on how my kids were raised, academics, sports and competition were heavily emphasized. That was my step-dad. But my kids all had their own horses and were expected to work our land and service tractors, trucks, etc... that was my dad.

 

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On 1/31/2025 at 9:22 AM, jdhorn92 said:

Dad was a United States Secret Service agent and was on protective duty for the last year of Ford and 1st year of Carter. 

No doubt he knew my uncle, who had that duty for Nixon and then started moving up into management roles after Nixon resigned.

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On 2/1/2025 at 8:54 AM, Dendox said:

My dad is a recovering addict and drunk. 
My dad was a stand out high school football player who played for Texas as a freshman and went on the obtain a degree from UT and MD from Southwestern. 

My mom left him when I was very young because he wasn’t a great role model. I have zero memories of living in a house with them together. I honestly have very few memories of my dad when I was young. 

My dad taught me love for UT football/baseball/basketball. He took me to as many games as he could starting around age 6. It was great. 

He moved from his town to my town to be closer to me (or run away from hospital administration that was on to him and his addictions). He was around until I was age 13 - and poof - he was gone again. 

I saw him very sporadically until age 20 when we coincidentally lived in the same town.  Prior to living in the same town - every time I saw him he was drunk or looking for drugs.  Quite an impression that left.  After living in the same town - the memories are similar. 

When I had my son 18 years ago dad and I  were on speaking terms. He was around and part of my life. I told him he had 1 chance. I don’t have a choice to have him around as a kid - but I had a choice to have him around my kids. For the first time in his life - sobriety really mattered. He got his 17 year chip last month.  He earned it. 
 

My dad is the kindest human I know. He has nothing. Literally. But would give you half if you need it. He finds a way to help provide medical care to the indigent in the interior of Mexico several times a year. He works food banks. He donates his time. He is present. He is patient. He is a great listener with good advice. The kind that can likely only come from fucking up for 30 years in your prime. 
 

He is hokey. Too hokey for his own good. Makes my wife and kids embarrassed around non-family, which is painful because he craves our love and attention. 
 

there isn’t a person that I run into that knew my dad before he went off the rails that doesn’t think he is the best doctor and person they ever met. It’s hard to reconcile those stories with the man I knew for a significant part of my childhood. 
 

The takeaway - he taught me how to be a fucking great dad. How to be caring and compassionate with those you love and those you don’t know. He also taught me how to fuck up the dad/kid relationship- which has created the drive for me to be the best, most present, helpful, loving, sober (not to be read as never drinking) dad I can be. 
 

I love him dearly. I despise many of his decisions. I will miss him when he’s gone. 
 

PS - my mom is a freaking saint that deserves a statue. 

Very glad he recovered and you could rekindle your relationship on a positive basis.  A whole lot of drunks and addicts are at their core great people if recovery can just unleash them.

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10 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

My Dad was a civil engineering professor; specifically, steel and concrete structures.  He was born in 1922 and raised in the Depression-era slums of St. Louis.  His mom was an angel and his dad was an alcoholic bum -- they divorced when my Dad was 2 years old.  Dad only saw him one more time.  He (wisely) included the guy in his will, leaving him $1.

Dad was a good athlete who sprinted for his HS track team and actually made it through the Olympic weightlifiting trials to land a spot on the team.  He turned that spot down to continue working towards his doctorate at Washington University.  When he finished his Bachelor's degree he interrupted his studies to enlist in the Navy (WW2), and was sent to Annapolis for officer training.  He suffered a near fatal asthma attack and was bounced 4F.  Rather than going back to school, he took a job at Curtis Wright in St. Louis designing military wing structures.  After the war, he finished his doctorate and started teaching.  He also consulted on the design and construction of the St. Louis Arch, one of the locks on the Mississippi River, and the post mortem of the Hyatt Regency structural collapse in Kansas City.

He was exceptionally kind with an impish sense of humor.  Everyone loved him.  He won "best professor" awards anually, and was a lay leader and teacher in the Presbyterian Church.  He was incredibly organized and hard-working.  My sister and I benefitted greatly from his and Mom's absolute devotion to us.  We would sponsor foreign students at the university every year -- I grew up around people from India, Viet Nam, Iran, parts of Africa, you name it.  It was an incredibly eye-opening and valuable experience for a WASPy white kid from a small town in rural Missouri.

He was a lousy fisherman, a trait he passed on to me.  He was an OK bowler, but I got better.  He had no musical training but could peck out a melody on a piano and had a nice natural voice.  He adored the St. Louis Cardinals, as did Mom.  My Dad's mother did the books for Stan Musial's restaurant.  (Mom grew up in a duplex next door to Dizzy Dean.)

He developed glioblastoma multiforme (brain cancer) at 86 years old and passed within 6 months.  I miss him every day.

Now I know that you and @dcbc are around my age yet have fathers old enough to have served in WWII.

 

 

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33 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Now I know that you and @dcbc are around my age yet have fathers old enough to have served in WWII.

 

 

He was 63 when I was born.  My sister and I talk about how we (11 years apart) got different versions of both of our parents.  He was definitely around more when I was a kid than with any of my siblings who got him while in full career mode.

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