When I was a boy, my father continually feed me a diet of one or two line sayings that have stayed with me all my life. Many of these sayings, we have all heard at one time or another.
- "Never be afraid to make a mistake, just never make the same one twice." - I 've made the same one more than twice but never more than 10 or so.
- "If you are going to drink at lunch, drink beer or scotch, not gin or vodka. You want people to know you're drunk, not stupid." - Not sure this one applies today, but this came from a era when you were offered a drink whenever you visited an executive office. No DIU laws then either.
- "Don't try, just do." - Yoda had nothing on him. He maintained if you always did your best, it would get better.
- "Treat people with respect, and you will earn theirs." - What can I say.
One summer day when I was 12, he asked me if I wanted to go on an overnight road trip while he checked on a project. He was in road construction and the project was 350 miles away. I thought it would be fun, so I said yes.
We left the next morning and as we entered the job site, we came across a man up on a ladder loading dynamite into a blasting hole. A young fellow on the ground was tossing sticks of dynamite up and the old blaster would catch them and stuff them into the hole (although he sometimes missed a stick or two which would fall back to earth - I ducked). Anyway my dad stopped the car and called the man down off the latter. I had never heard my dad swear until that moment and every second word was f*** this, f*** that.
When he finished the conversation, he got back into the car and without looking at me, he said, "There is a time and a place for everything. Do you think he would have listened to me if I had said 'golly, gee, darn'."
He's been gone these past 25 years and I just wanted to say "miss ya dad".
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