My Dad

 (Two Sunday's ago my Dad's heart gave out, he was 94. It would be a lot easier to not write this, but if you can't write about losing your Dad, there really aren't many things you should be writing about.)

Over three years ago my wife and I had to make the decision to downsize and move to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  One of the most difficult things was moving away from my Dad who was 90 years old and living in Tinton Falls, New Jersey.  To keep in touch with him I decided to call him almost every night(usually six nights) and also I would write a blog so he and the rest of my family could keep track of our adventures.(Becoming A Southerner)

He was one of my most loyal readers and I would from time to time reference him with comments about people 90 and over.  I know he enjoyed many of my posts and I did make him laugh from to time.  He wouldn't enjoy this one, because he never liked people talking about him.  Modesty was something he definitely majored in.

A few quick stories:

THE CHAMPIONSHIP GAME: My Dad always took me to baseball games from an early age.  I used to love picking out double headers because we would spend the entire day at the ballpark.  However, it was a football game that I gave him a great memory.  It was January 11, 1987,  one of the best days of my life.  It was a bizarre set of circumstances that led me to call a referee on Saturday, January 10th. I had to give him a check I owed him for refereeing a basketball game that I coached before a Net game the night before.  As I was talking to him, he told me he bought tickets on Friday night to the Giant-Redskin Championship Game Sunday and then found out that he could not go.

I bought the tickets and then surprised my Dad who had been a football Giants fan for his whole life.  He and my Mom were at a wedding I think and I went to the house and left an envelope on his pillow.  I think we had to replace a Hannukah present and so I wrote Happy Hannukah on the envelope and put one ticket inside with a note, "will call you around 9 to go to the game." He came home and picked up the envelope and opened it and stood there completely speechless.  My Mom told me how stunned he was.  The next day was amazing.  The Giants won 17-0 and went on to win the Super Bowl.  We loved the game and with the wind blowing confetti and the crowd chanting all game it could not have been any better and I got to enjoy it with my Dad.

COFFEE ICE CREAM: My family used to go to Friendly's and most of us would order some kind of coffee ice cream.  Frequently the kids would get a coffee fribble and I would get a Jim Dandy Sundae with coffee ice cream.  We used to joke that the love of coffee ice cream went back generations and it may have.  My Dad loved it and so did his Mom.  Haagen-Dazs coffee ice cream is the best by far and from time to time my Dad would have some, but he regularly had coffee ice cream in his freezer and he got some from the cafeteria also.  When I got the call from my brother last Sunday that my Dad was gone, I was sitting in a parking lot taking an Uber break. I was finishing a pint of Haagen-Dazs coffee ice cream.  I looked at the remaining scoops and knew what my Dad would do-I ate them, but they didn't go down easily.  When I got to his apartment I found a half gallon of coffee ice cream with ice in it and I left that to be thrown out.  But from the cafeteria he had a few small cups of coffee ice cream and I ate all of them.  He would have wanted me to.

$2 BILLS: My Dad worked for The Federal Reserve Bank in New York and loved giving out $2 bills.  In 1976, the government re-designed the $2 bill and re-printed them and there are approximately 2 billion $2 bills in circulation today.  My Dad gave them out as tips for decades and he would get them from the bank to distribute them.  When he gave them as tips, sometimes people would think they were fake and sometimes they had never seen one.  I'm sure there are a few still in his apartment.

THE FLAG: About six years ago, our youngest child was graduating from high school and she helped put together a special program for veterans of all wars who were living in the area up in New Jersey.  We took my Dad who was in the Army towards the end of World War 11. My Dad enjoyed it and at the end of the event they gave each veteran an American flag.  I took my Dad's flag and eventually decided to put it in my car window to the far right so I could see it and remember the event and my Dad. It might have been a year later that my Dad got into my van and was looking straight at the flag.  He said, "what does that stand for?" Without any hesitation I said, "The United States of America." We both had a good laugh and I had to remind him where it came from.  I've given close to 5,000 Uber and Lyft rides, but it was last Saturday night that a passenger asked me why I had the flag in the window. I told him the story and the next day my Dad was gone.  The flag will always be in my car window because it represents our country, but it also stands for my Dad who was always a great example of what an American is.(hats of his two favorite teams are below also)

WHAT WAS HIDDEN IN THE BASEMENT: Working at The Federal Reserve Bank in New York my Dad gave many tours of the gold vault, including to my sister and I when we were kids.  Eight years ago when we were cleaning out our house in Edison to move my parents to Tinton Falls, I was amazed at the amount of wood in the house.  He had a workshop in the basement, but the wood was there and all over the garage.  I asked my Dad, "how did all the wood get in the house?" He didn't know. I asked, "Did they build the house around the wood?" He said, "no," but I even asked him if he made puppets out of wood like Pinocchio. He said no to that also. 

One day I was in the garage on my knees cleaning out an old cabinet and I found several large, old, fertilizer bags.  One of them had something in it and I opened it and I found....about ten bars of gold.  They were fake of course, but I asked him, "why are their fake bar golds hidden in your garage?" He belonged to The Financial Writers Association and each year they put on a dinner and a show to raise money for scholarships they gave out.  My Dad actually performed in some and helped with some writing and was in charge of props.  I asked him, "why did you keep all the bars of gold?" He had no answer.  I gave him one and I took one so I could prove that a guy who gave tours of the gold vault had fake bars of gold in his garage. Looking closely at the bars of gold, my wife recognized the gold wrapping paper as something my Mom had and we think she wrapped them.  Opening the bar of gold, we found they were made out of wood! There was more wood in the house-my Dad made gold out of wood! Last week I went to take his gold bar and found there were two gold bars! Did I really give him two or did he make a second one although there was no wood in the apartment?

AT THE CEMETERY: We had a short service and I read to my Dad the following poem which I gave him 15 years ago for Father's Day.  It was framed and decorated by my wife. It was on his bookshelf and it is now on my bookshelf.  I couldn't say anything better than these words: