DAD

It seems I have inherited my father’s sense of humor. My mother enjoyed a good joke, both telling one and hearing one, but she found my father’s idea of what was funny annoying. His humor was based a good deal on whimsy. I called him one day while I was watching coverage of a Papal Election on TV. I asked how he was doing:

“I’m busier than a one-armed paper hanger.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.
“I’m answering the phone all the time.”
“Who keeps calling you?”
"The Vatican; they want me to run for Pope but I told them I won’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“Not enough money in it.”

I laughed and he said, “When I told that to your mother she got mad at me.”

After New Brunswick’s Provincial Liberal Party destroyed the Conservatives by winning every single seat on election night Dad called me bright and early the next morning doing his best Connie Francis imitation as he sung: “Who’s Tory now, who’s Tory now?” I noticed a similar sense of humor in Dad’s older brother, Tom. I well recall driving around the village where he lived while he pointed out various odd looking characters old enough to be Civil War veterans and told me that they were the ‘Mayor’, the ‘Fire Chief’, and ‘Members of the Town Council’. When we returned from that drive to his home where Aunt Jackie was preparing supper he announced out of the blue that he had decided to buy a mule. He cracked me up, and I’m sure that I was laughing, smiling, or eating any time I visited Uncle Tom and Aunt Jackie.

A good example of what made Dad laugh is a story he told about his younger brother, Ern.  One day Dad and Ern were driving on New Brunswick’s Route 126 from Moncton to Harcourt. Ern was behind the wheel. Somewhere near Coal Branch he suddenly pulled the car off to the side of the road, put it in reverse, and backed up until coming to a stop where he sat looking past my father through the passenger side window. Dad turned to see what Ern was looking at and saw a man standing perfectly still in the middle of a field of hay, all alone, his hands down by his side, staring off into the distance. Ern sat there for a moment then put the car in park, got out and walked around to the front, took a deep breath and yelled: “What are you looking at?!” The man, startled, simply stuck his hands in his pockets and walked away. Ern, his mission accomplished, got back in the car and drove on. Dad laughed while he told me about this all those years later. He still found it funny.

Fathers try to do the right things for their children and say the right things to them but we children tend to remember other things. We remember that they were there for us more than what they said to us. We recall their advice and their aphorisms but we recall their voices with greater clarity. We cherish the memories of their foibles and fumbles, their humanity, and their humor, and it’s all because we love them. Happy Father’s Day!