Father's Day

Two-thirds of the HoG rolls dad-free. It's just how we do.

But you know, boys and dads and everything. It's nice to grab a moment here, on this June day that some old lesbian dreamed up, Richard Nixon acknowledged and Hallmark coronated, to remember the important things our Dads taught us as kids.

Baseball, for instance. Or how to (not) shoot a 30-foot hook shot while holding a full can of beer. The value of the eternal sweater. Being a good sport, shaking the other kids' hands even though it was the savage era pre-Little League mercy rules and they beat your asses 42-7. Donuts, coffee, fishing lures.

Today, my wife, my sister, her husband, their two boys and I took a jaunt to Centennial Airport to see the Aluminum Overcast, one of the few flying B-17 bombers extant. We climbed in, like my dad did in World War II before another bombing run over Germany, through a tiny door and onto a tiny landing that I'd never squeeze through after a few Pabst and a can of wax beans.

We tiptoed along the catwalk. Seven feet from the tarmac, 30,000 in my imagination, thinking about how they'd have to literally kick stuck bombs loose in mid-air. It was like touring the inside of a watch. All mechanics, no room for humanity.

I won't use this occasion to mount my partisan soapbox, lecture about how subsequent generations lost that important sense of shared misery. Not today. I just hunched in that ancient weapon of war, worn silver with the dust of a thousand fly-ins, parked and breathing hot in the prairie sun, and wished I could buy my old dad a cheap beer at some bowling alley bar.

(Bowling alley bars: yet another valuable lesson.)