The Pecan Park Eagle

Dad & Me.

Dear Dad,

Thank you for playing catch with me, teaching me the game of baseball, and then getting out-of-the-way so that I could work out my own destiny with the game on my own with friends and foes upon the sand lots of Houston’s East End.

Thank you for being there (period) when I was growing up in the East End Houston neighborhood of Pecan Park. Our little war with the kids from Kernel Street, via pipe guns, might have had a really life-changing bad ending had you not arrived to suddenly butt in and force us into settling our differences through a sandlot baseball game. Thanks even for the whipping I received after the game was won and done.

Thank you for being the dad on the front porch with the loudest suppertime whistle. It’s shrill call home reached every part of the sand lot and all the way down the street the other way.

Thank you for teaching me to be respectful of girls, pets, and most living creatures smaller than me. I also appreciate the fact that you also taught me that rats and roaches were two big exceptions to that general rule of respect for wildlife – and “live and let live.”

Thank you for going shopping with me back in 1954 for something to wear on my first date with a girl. I had never been to a real men’s wear store prior to that time. The black slacks with the pink stripes down the external sides of each pant leg and the string bola tie were both a nice touch.

Thank you for being there with your consoling words of wisdom when my big plans for happiness sometimes fell apart at the seams in reality. Because of you, I came to see that old Frank Sinatra song, “It Was Just One of Those Things,” as the likely title of any book of explanations you might someday choose to write to help others sort out life’s disappointments.

Thank you for teaching me that anything worth having is worth working for. My first carry-out job at the grocery store was totally about working all day to earn enough money to buy a new Rawlings Playmaker baseball glove. I did it at age 14, and it took the entire eight dollars and change that I earned in salary and tips that Saturday to buy my new glove.

Thanks for teaching me the larger lesson that pours automatically from the last one. Because of you, I grew up with no sense of entitlement to anything I didn’t work for.

Thanks for teaching me that a father’s love for his kids is not always measured by his words, but by his actions. In fact, it was from you I learned that a father’s love is probably best measured by the act of being there in your kids’ lives when they need you to be there.

Thank you for hanging around for the first 56 years of my life. I was very lucky to have you present that long, but I still wish it could have lasted even longer.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

Tags: Happy Father's Day

This entry was posted on June 19, 2011 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.