.
.
August 12, 2011,
MISSING SOMEONE I HARDLY KNEW
_____________________________
Aug 12, 2011 would have been my father’s 95th birthday.
We weren’t especially close in the way people think of as close.
There weren’t chats and sharing, a pat on the back, or hugs, kisses.
That wasn’t him.
But over the years I’d get a glimpse of who he was as Karl,
not my father.
What he was like as a person,
not the quiet, nondemonstrative, man of few words at home.
When I remember him talking
it was about teaching.
Driving was one thing.
He’d talk sometimes as he drove,
giving hints of things we needed to know…
“Read every sign,
you never know when it might be important.”
“When you leave the highway,
it will seem like you are standing still going
the slower speed…
that’s why the small towns are called
“speed traps”…the cops know that people
will go too fast.”
We went to ball games, he taught me how to keep score.
And, fishing, he taught me how to cast, and troll,
and keep quiet so not to disturb the fish…
or him.
He taught me about the business world,
in only a few words…
speaking an observation
of what worked or didn’t work for displays
or psychology of pricing.
He loved to dance,
I think he probably had a wicked sense of humor.
He drank “after five pm”…
but often declared, “It’s five somewhere in the world.”
We didn’t see much of each other thru the years,
and he disappointed me
when I was in rehab in January, 1992…
it was the month before he died,
and he, my mother, and brother, decided they wouldn’t come
to family week,…it wouldn’t be a vacation, he said,
it would be a waste of money.
But I learned a lot from him,
by osmosis or the little things he did.
Children learn from the example their parents set
by how they live their lives.
And so it is. Missing someone I hardly knew.
.
.PS> while I’m thinking of it, one of the things he liked to
do was show how he could type the alphabet backwards on
a standard typewriter…I say standard typewriter, because,
he could type FAST…and that was a feat in its self.
And tho we didn’t find it,
it is told he used to write and that somewhere was a folder with
his writings in it…Dad, I hardly knew you.
.
MISSING SOMEONE I HARDLY KNEW
_____________________________
Today would have been my father’s 95th birthday.
We weren’t especially close in the way people think of as close.
There weren’t chats and sharing, a pat on the back, or hugs, kisses.
That wasn’t him.
But over the years I’d get a glimpse of who he was as Karl,
not my father.
What he was like as a person,
not the quiet, nondemonstrative, man of few words at home.
When I remember him talking
it was about teaching.
Driving was one thing.
He’d talk sometimes as he drove,
giving hints of things we needed to know…
“Read every sign,
you never know when it might be important.”
“When you leave the highway,
it will seem like you are standing still going
the slower speed…
that’s why the small towns are called
“speed traps”…the cops know that people
will go too fast.”
We went to ball games, he taught me how to keep score.
And, fishing, he taught me how to cast, and troll,
and keep quiet so not to disturb the fish…
or him.
He taught me about the business world,
in only a few words…
speaking an observation
of what worked or didn’t work for displays
or psychology of pricing.
He loved to dance,
I think he probably had a wicked sense of humor.
He drank “after five pm”…
but often declared, “It’s five somewhere in the world.”
We didn’t see much of each other thru the years,
and he disappointed me
when I was in rehab in January, 1992…
it was the month before he died,
and he, my mother, and brother, decided they wouldn’t come
to family week,…it wouldn’t be a vacation, he said,
it would be a waste of money.
But I learned a lot from him,
by osmosis or the little things he did.
Children learn from the example their parents set
by how they live their lives.
And so it is. Missing someone I hardly knew.
.
.PS> while I’m thinking of it, one of the things he liked to
do was show how he could type the alphabet backwards on
a standard typewriter…I say standard typewriter, because,
he could type FAST…and that was a feat in its self.
And tho we didn’t find it,
it is told he used to write and that somewhere was a folder with
his writings in it…Dad, I hardly knew you.
.
My father, date of photo not known.
.
.
siggiofmaine 