Memories of my Father this Father's Day Eve. For some reason I remember a comfortable man sitting in one of those old canvas lounge chairs, where your butt was pretty close to the ground. We were in Michigan, on vacation, at Burt Lake, sitting in front of our cabin, relaxing, enjoying the view of the lake. My Brother was with us, had some rather large firecrackers, decided to light one and put in on the ground, directing under him.
My Dad had somewhat of a temper, his Dad had one also, an old family expression, "Keep cool, Caleb, keep cool." I guess I don't really remember exactly what all happened after the firecracker went off, Mom probably put her hands over my ears. As Hitchcock always stated, the anticipation of an event is greater than the event itself. I remember the anticipation of it going off, probably all I could print here.
Way back in the late 30's, Dad built a boat, basically a row boat, powered by a one and a half horsepower Neptune outboard motor, made at the Muncie gear works, in Muncie, Indiana. I loved that motor, had it for many years, it smoked a lot, but in the Spring I would take it out of the basement, get a big drum and a sawhorse, put a mixture of gas and oil in the motor, put the rope around the flywheel, a couple of pulls, and off she would go, smoke and all. Never let me down.
Anyway, Dad and Doctor Geiringer, a family friend, a Dentist, who had lived with as when he did his Residency at Miami Valley Hospital, and my Brother went out fishing at Indian Lake, in Ohio. It had many channels off of the main body of water. When Dad built a boat, he built a boat, this one was double planked, extremely heavy.
They entered the channel, Dad in the bow, brother on the motor, well, it was so bow heavy in would not steer straight, it would go to one side of the channel, he would turn the motor, and it would go to the other side. There were a lot of people fishing from the banks. Mom and I were standing at the dock, watching them go from one side to the other, collecting many, many fishing lines. We used to have film of the incident, all the people yelling at them, raising their fists, trying to get their lines untangled. Wish I had that film.
After he had some heart problems and was in a nursing home, we finally had some quiet time to spend together, just talking. As a GP a lot of my life, and then as a Obstetrician, he was always on his way to the office of the hospital. I had him write some of his memories, which are on this site somewhere.
I'm glad we had that time to talk. I used to take him a nice breakfast on Sunday mornings. I didn't really appreciate him till he was gone, I'm glad we did have that time together though ....
Happy Father's Day, The Good Doctor, as we called him, my Dad.
