Phone Conversation with My Dad

Me: How's your morning going, Dad?
Dad: It's on and off.
Me: On and off? What's that mean?
Dad: Sometimes I'm on my feet and sometimes I'm off my feet. Just now, I'm off.

Dad was born in 1930, so he's 75 this year. I was born in 1960, so Dad was 30 when I was born. And it's real easy to remember how old we are, since the last digit of our age = the last digit of any given year. It's actually pretty handy. For example, something will come on TV and my son will ask how old I was in 1971. Just that quick, I can say 11.

So this morning, while sitting in his Lazy Boy, my Dad has a phone conversation with me. I tell him that my son's next baseball tournament is in Battle Creek. So then my Dad tells me he once had a girlfriend who lived in Battle Creek. This was before he knew Mom or that Mom even existed. He said this girl, Margaret, and her family would come up here where they had a small house on the river. It was their weekend cabin. Sometimes Margaret's dad didn't want to drive her back home. (He had a 193? Buick. Man, that was a nice car.) So anyway, Dad would drive Margaret home to Battle Creek. That was quite a distance back then. It was in the summer of 1948, so Dad was 18. Turns out Margaret was bugging my Dad to marry him, but Dad said he didn't even have a job and wasn't thinking that way, so he cooled it with her. Dad said within a couple of days or weeks, anyway a short time, Margaret got married. That's what she wanted to do, to get married. Dad said for a wedding present, Margaret's father gave them a new car and the down payment on a house. That was Big Time back then, especially in my Dad's circle. Margaret's husband died a while ago, maybe a few years back. She called my Dad recently, just to catch up and talk about old times. Dad said she still considers them friends. I told him she was probably calling to find out if Mom was still alive. Dad laughed at that, then he said maybe. Turns out, a few years after Dad and Mom were married, they probably had 3 or 4 of their 5 kids by then, they ran into Margaret and her husband, and they had kids, too. (This had to be at least 45 years ago, because I wasn't born yet.) Margaret pulled my Dad aside and managed to tell him that if anything ever happened to his wife or his marriage, to let her know, because she was still waiting for him. The nerve! I said, see, she's still waiting. Dad said, nah, I'm not rich. I told him sometimes it's not about money, Dad, it's probably your full head of hair. Dad said maybe, because her husband was totally bald before his was 30, maybe she likes hair.

My Daddy, the heartbreaker. Women still pine for him after almost 60 years.