The Year of My Dad

I’m sitting on the patio of one of my favorite coffee shops in Volcán. It’s a very pleasant morning, and I thought I’d write about my dad over coffee and an English muffin.

My dad died in the year he turned 73. I am now in the year when I will turn 73. Both of us have August birthdays. If I were to follow in my dad’s footsteps, I would die in approximately five months. I’m sitting at a wooden table and knockin’ the hell out of it right now.

My dad and I were completely different people. He would drink lots of beer and have Kentucky bourbon with his Army buddies on the back patio. I occasionally will have a beer or a glass of wine at home with my wife. He smoked unfiltered Camels one after another. I never smoked. He loved red meat and potatoes. I love kale and cauliflower. 

He frequented the NCO club and often came home unable to find the bathroom and cussed at my mom while stumbling around the hallway. I don’t even know what the inside of an NCO club looks like. And I will never cuss at my wife.

He was not an educated man; however, he left the hills of Kentucky before graduating from high school and later earned his GED. He always encouraged my brother and me to do well in school. He offered to try to pay for my college. I tried one semester at the University of Kentucky, but felt bad that he had to work his ass off for me, so I dropped out and joined the military. The military got stuck with the bill for my BS, and the company I worked for paid for my MA.

My brother took the same path I did, joining the military and paying his own way through college for his degrees. He eventually retired as a well-respected high school teacher in the Kentucky school system. He is much smarter than I will ever be, and I always wondered why he didn’t become a doctor or a scientist. I always looked up to him and tried my hardest to keep up. I would never have tried for a graduate degree if it weren’t for him showing me the way.

My dad’s first tour of duty in the Army was the Korean War. He was severely wounded, and the MASH unit there sent him to Tokyo, Japan, to rehabilitate. I don’t know the whole story, but he met a gorgeous Japanese woman in Tokyo, and they married. That’s how my brother and I came into being, at Fort Knox, Kentucky, of all places.

Being born to a career military man makes me a brat. I grew up thinking that moving every other year or so was the way of life. I have lots of stories to share, being a military brat, but I’ll save those for my memoir—no need to bore you to death right now.

My dad was stationed in Pusan, Korea, in the mid-1960s. When we left Pusan for our next base in the States, we stopped in Tokyo, Japan, for a quick visit to the grandparents’ home. When we left their home for the airport, Mom did not come with us. I remember asking my father, “Why isn’t Mom coming with us? Will she come later?” I remember crying for her. I hated my dad for doing that to us. That was the last I saw of my mom until I got older.

My father also served in the Vietnam War. We didn’t have a mother when he left for the war. He made arrangements to live at my one-eyed uncle and aunt’s (dad’s sister) dairy farm in Kentucky, where we got a lesson in milking cows, eating bologna, and shoveling cow shit into wheelbarrows. I can remember to this day how my aunt would fry ground beef burgers in lard. If the burgers sat out on a plate for too long, a sticky white layer of fat would form all around them. Yuck! No wonder the number one killer in the U.S. is heart disease.

I loved my dad. It took many years after he died for me to learn to forgive him. He did his best at raising us. We were always poor (I didn’t know it at the time), but he always provided food and a clean roof over our heads. He worked many part-time jobs while in the military to support us. We had our differences over the years. I forgive you, Dad.

So this is the year I turn the age at which my father died. I’m hoping like hell I can write a blog post in November to say I’ve lived longer than my dad. You may not have been a scholar, Dad, but I learned so, so much from you.

Let’s see what October brings! Until then, I’m having another cup of Panamanian coffee! Cheers!