I am not good at getting my feelings out, but I try.
I've been alive longer without my dad, than with him, he would have been 75 this year. I struggle to hold on to memories of him and a few more slip away every year. A few remain etched into my head, mainly goofy little moments like the feel of his chest hair when he would hug me, that look he would give me when he peered over his glasses to see me coming up the driveway after school and his laugh, which I remember clearly while hardly remembering his voice.
We didn't have many recording options, no video cameras, no cell phones capturing every moment, we have a few Polaroids and the lone holder of his voice is a Hallmark card that recorded a message you said into it. He always loved gadgets and passed that on to me. He paid $2,000 to get a Tandy 1,000 with the expanded 256k ram and handed it over to us so we could learn what he couldn't. He got us every latest video game system, from the atari to the super nintendo, with his personal favorite being the Gameboy with Dr Mario, Qix or Tetris.
He also had a habit of mishearing lyrics, I remember him singing "Flesh and Blood of what life used to be" to the opening of China Beach's "Reflections of what life used to be". No matter how many times my mom would correct him, he kept saying what he heard. A proud family tradition I uphold anytime I mishear a lyric.
I skipped his temper, but got his passion. He would get more excited about taking us to Disneyland than we did, he couldn't read since he dropped out of school at 13 and entered the army at about 15 when he lied about his age, which wasn't too hard since his parents told everyone they found him and totally didn't have him out of wedlock. He even had a different last name, Jones in a family of Russel. He always treated family as those around him, not just his blood and used this to make many friends.
My dad would have never survived in this politically correct world. He always said what he felt and told anyone off. Working in a bakery he would fully use his status as Union as he would call supervisors every name in the book and greet his friends with words and phrases that could at very least be considered "problematic", yet he never had an enemy. I have a bunch of stories about that, which I won't share.
I hate that the only memories of him I have are those of a child's. I wish I knew him better, but I will always know he held unconditional love for us. There were many times I would have rightly earned a "That boy ain't right", a weird little fat kid who spent most of his time playing video games, but he always believed in me and showed me what the value of life and family was. Here's to my Dad, too bad for heaven, too good for hell.
Sorry it is a little long.
I've been alive longer without my dad, than with him, he would have been 75 this year. I struggle to hold on to memories of him and a few more slip away every year. A few remain etched into my head, mainly goofy little moments like the feel of his chest hair when he would hug me, that look he would give me when he peered over his glasses to see me coming up the driveway after school and his laugh, which I remember clearly while hardly remembering his voice.
We didn't have many recording options, no video cameras, no cell phones capturing every moment, we have a few Polaroids and the lone holder of his voice is a Hallmark card that recorded a message you said into it. He always loved gadgets and passed that on to me. He paid $2,000 to get a Tandy 1,000 with the expanded 256k ram and handed it over to us so we could learn what he couldn't. He got us every latest video game system, from the atari to the super nintendo, with his personal favorite being the Gameboy with Dr Mario, Qix or Tetris.
He also had a habit of mishearing lyrics, I remember him singing "Flesh and Blood of what life used to be" to the opening of China Beach's "Reflections of what life used to be". No matter how many times my mom would correct him, he kept saying what he heard. A proud family tradition I uphold anytime I mishear a lyric.
I skipped his temper, but got his passion. He would get more excited about taking us to Disneyland than we did, he couldn't read since he dropped out of school at 13 and entered the army at about 15 when he lied about his age, which wasn't too hard since his parents told everyone they found him and totally didn't have him out of wedlock. He even had a different last name, Jones in a family of Russel. He always treated family as those around him, not just his blood and used this to make many friends.
My dad would have never survived in this politically correct world. He always said what he felt and told anyone off. Working in a bakery he would fully use his status as Union as he would call supervisors every name in the book and greet his friends with words and phrases that could at very least be considered "problematic", yet he never had an enemy. I have a bunch of stories about that, which I won't share.
I hate that the only memories of him I have are those of a child's. I wish I knew him better, but I will always know he held unconditional love for us. There were many times I would have rightly earned a "That boy ain't right", a weird little fat kid who spent most of his time playing video games, but he always believed in me and showed me what the value of life and family was. Here's to my Dad, too bad for heaven, too good for hell.
Sorry it is a little long.
