A Father’s Day tribute

Each Father’s Day reminds me of my wonderful childhood memories of my dad.

He spent time showing and teaching me some of the things he enjoyed. When I was a little girl growing up in the Bronx, he taught me how to play stickball and how to hit a Spalding clear up the street. Dad had some sayings that were always evoked at the proper time.  “Go to school, get a good education, so you can get a good job”, “If you can’t say something nice about anyone, then don’t say anything at all”, and his gentle reprimand, “and your neck belongs to you, too”, when I was little and did a quick wash up before dinner. Dad loved westerns and we watched Roy Rodgers and Dale Evans, The Cisco Kid, Lone Ranger and any western, starring John Wayne.  On weekends I could stay up later, to catch Dad’s other favorite, old horror movies. We watched Boris Karloff as the Mummy, Frankenstein or any of the Lon Chaney werewolf movies. My Dad loved music and I learned to love the same songs and performers he did.  Al Jolson, Judy Garland, and Johnny Ray were some of his favorite records.  As a young child I listened to these singers and watched the old 1940’s song and dance musicals with him so often that people always thought I was older than I was because I could name the performers, movies and songs so easily.  I loved Gene Kelly’s tap and Fred and Ginger’s ballroom dancing just as much as dad.  

He had many other talents.  Dad was a good cook and when he came home from work an hour before mom did, he started dinner, cooking from scratch. He made a delicious tomato sauce and said, “The secret was in cooking it at least three hours”.  I can’t talk about my dad without mentioning his sweet tooth.  I give him full credit, or should I say “blame” for passing this trait along to me. Any dessert, from cakes, cookies, pies, puddings and ice cream, he enjoyed them all.  But his all-time favorites were donuts… any kind of donut. In his early years Dad even tackled and mastered making donuts and pumped them full of jelly just to his liking because he said, “The bakery never puts enough jelly in them”.

Now I come to his real passion, saltwater fishing. Dad showed me how to bait a hook, what sinker to use and how to fillet a fish.  Many of our family’s vacations were typically by ocean beach areas, so dad could fish and we could enjoy swimming in the waves. When my parents retired, they moved to their beach house close to the ocean where dad could walk each day down to the surf and fish. As I think back to the many years we had my father, I feel truly blessed. When he passed away peacefully at age 88 we found this poem in his wallet, on a worn, folded piece of paper.

 It is called The Fisherman’s Prayer: 

I pray that I may live to fish

Until my dying day,

And when it comes to my last cast,

I then most humbly pray

When in the Lord’s great landing net

And peacefully asleep

That in HIS mercy I be judged

Big enough to keep!

Our family knows that my dad was absolutely a “keeper”. I hope all dads out there have families that truly appreciate them, too!  Happy Father’s Day!