My Dad ... A Story And A Song

Here's A Video I Made Five Years Ago

Hey All,

Here’s hoping that you still have a dad to call. Or if not, that somebody has you to call. I spoke in my last post about my ‘politics’ really only being an attempt to vote for leadership that would carry forth my parents’ values.

That holds me steady as algorithms aid profiteers in their quest to mine our divisions for their own fortune. Hatred buys them beach houses.

Yesterday we saw politically motivated assassinations in Minnesota. We saw a poorly attended $40,000,000 military-flex parade in DC. But we also saw millions of people all over the country peacefully demanding that we turn the focus away from the reality-show we elected, and back to the people who work hard every day to make our actual reality a little bit more pleasant. Our neighbors. Whoever they are. However they vote.

People like your dad and mine.

As for me, I worked all day constructing anew the stage-risers we use for our events, as our old ones were lost to the Eaton Fire. It was a great day. The kind of guys-with-tools project that my dad enlisted his sons for long ago, and that he would absolutely have helped me with if he were still around. I miss ‘The Old Man’.

Here’s the video tribute that Jason Siler and I made 5 years ago. A story. And then the song mentioned in the video, recorded live on the spot. The lyrics are posted below. I hope you enjoy it.

Pretty Strong For Now

Well it can’t be more than ten years ago,
he was out there climbing trees.
Chainsaw in his hand,
tied off with a rope around his waist.
Knockin’ limbs into the yard,
yellin’ “put those dogs away!”
Sweat and laughter, rolling off his face.

And it can’t be ten years before that,
I made my girl my wife.
He drove up for the wedding
and we built a fence around the yard.
To the ragged jagged rhythms of hammers comin’ down.
Never so at ease, as when we were workin’ hard.

I don’t know, why I thought he’d be different.
Time takes even the great ones out,
one by one … I don’t know,
this could be his last go-round.
But The Old Man’s come back pretty strong
… for now.

You know the flu killed fifty million
in the year that he was born.
Europe lay in tatters
at the waning of the war.
But in the fall an armistice
brought every doughboy home.
And ‘Babe’ and the Red Sox
showed The Cubs the door.

It was an ‘everything and then some’
kind of century.
In a young and cocky nation,
so confident and proud.
Armstrong kicked up moon-dust
thirty years after my dad,
spun barrel-rolls in a bi-plane through the clouds.

I don’t know, why I thought he’d be different.
Time takes even the great ones out,
one by one … I don’t know,
this could be his last go-round.
But The Old Man’s come back pretty strong
… for now.

I haven’t come here to sanctify him,
to make him out a saint.
To gloss him up or dress him up
in the images of myth.
We all hit golden straightaways,
firing on all eight.
And we all have demons that we travel with.

He’s smaller in his clothes now,
and he stands on shaky legs.
That old pump in his chest
just can’t keep up with the demand.
It’s good we take the long view,
the noble and the small.
The good and bad, when adding up a man.

I don’t know, why I thought he’d be different,
But I did.
Time takes even the great ones out,
one by one … I don’t know,
this could be his last go-round.
But The Old Man’s come back pretty strong
… for now.