My Daddy-O

Sixty nine years ago my dad was born (a year after pearl harbor). On Thanksgiving I was riding with my dad when he called another driver on the road "old man", I had to remind him he is no spring chicken. I don't see him as an old man, even if he is getting a little grumpier :). Growing up it is hard to see your parents other than anything as parents but looking back I see now how their tastes influenced me.

For most of our youth Debbie & I we shared a room, which we had a hard time keeping clean to my mothers dismay. On Saturdays she would often try and banish us to our room till it was clean. Some of my favorite memories are from those Saturdays, I will just say that Debbie and I have always been creative and could find lots of ways to not clean. I remember one of those rare Saturdays that we were actually cleaning we had brought our dad's record collection into our room and would play them and sing along, at the tops of our lungs I am sure.

My dad, Mike (in the chair) with his brothers Tim, Danny, Pat (we are not Irish or anything)

One summer as a pre-teen the video rental store was doing some sort of special, I don't remember what exactly. But I remember my dad taking me probably every week and over the summer I think I rented every "classic" movie they had. I would ask my dad about a movie and he would tell me about when he saw it and could usually tell me where he saw it as well.

A few years ago I put together that all my dad's favorite movies were done by the Cohen brothers and just this year while my brother said a movie that sounded like Bottle Rocket my dad asked "does that have Owen Wilson in it?" Apparently after my dad retired he started to watch Wes Anderson films as well. It is sure fun finding more reasons to love my dad, the original hipster.