Fathers Day

My dad is a tall, wiry guy...your typical old surveyor, he looks younger than he is. He wanders around his property in what has become his uniform: Billy and the Boingers t-shirt, faded old jeans, flannel jacket and boots, and like Steve Dallas in one of his favorite comics his cigarette is always dangling from his lip. He doesn't talk much and most of what he says leans toward the cynical or sarcastic. He is a master at cooking seafood, makes a killer barbecue sauce, habitually and rhythmically flicks the pages of the books he's always reading. When we were kids, he kept a garage full of snakes, listened to Pink Floyd at top volume through his top-of-the-line headphones, tooled around in his little yellow Honda Civic. I loved riding with him, despite the black vinyl interior and no air conditioning in the South Florida heat; it had a faulty exhaust so you couldn't breathe too deeply while you were cruising, but he kept the music loud and drove fast. He called me Sugarplum and Skunkfur and bought me an iguana when I was ten. He's not into all the mushy stuff, so I'll keep this short and simple:

Happy Fathers Day, you old goat. I love you.