Imagining your father on Father’s Day

Here is my Father’s Day thought. I wonder what my Dad would have thought about the World had he lived to be 96 next week instead of passing way too early just about this time 26 years ago? Would he have been on the Internet? God help us! What would he have said about a black president? Well, he was of old school East Texas cracker stock, but Pops would be the first one to shoot the barber the finger if that pencil-necked, hair-trimmer asked incredulously why I (my Dad’s son) would dare grow my hair long. My father told the barber, by the way, “(he grows his hair) because he f***ing wants to.”

For all I know, my Dad might have thought like me that Sarah Palin and most of the present Republican Party — he was an old-time FDR Democrat who hopped freights during the summer to civilian military training and a make-work program like the Tree Army to get the economy going — a bunch of silly SOBs. But my Dad wasn’t too supportive of the peaceful Martin Luther King or the less than peaceful Black Panthers. He was from a different time, after all.

It’s hard to say how my father would have survived this day and age socially even though he might have done so physically. As someone who is 55 and in pain a good deal of my time, though, it’s hard for me to imagine what it would be like having to live on and on when pain wracks your life like it does mine. That is no matter how much you love your wife, your kids, and grandkids as my Dad did, while watching the tall pine trees go by on an East Texas country-road drive.

My Dad’s Day message is simple: Appreciate your fathers while they are here and that they were here. Appreciate being a father. And have a happy Father’s Day this weekend. Stay cool.