Yesterday and Today

Yesterday I got up early to revisit the rock-climbing area in Mission Trails. I didn't have any new luck finding a way up, and I had a touch of, shall we say, tummy-trouble, so deciding discretion was the better part, blah blah, I went home.

Today, I was reading on Reddit a thread about the coolest thing you've done with your dad. And I can't remember much of anything, except going to a nudie bar when I was 21. Which was actually a little more creepy than cool.

It's not that we didn't do stuff together, it is that I often didn't really want to be there. Golf? No, thanks, I'd rather read a book. Or build model cars. I always seemed to be on a different road than him. And in the slow lane, at that!

I always felt I didn't meet his expectations. He was a "Type A" person, very motivated, ambitious, and a real people-person. A salesman, if you will. I seem to be the complete opposite of him. We never did seem to connect, although he tried, when I was a kid. After I got married I didn't see him very often, and he never met my kids. At his memorial service, I was pressed into action to speak, and I really had nothing to say. Which may say more about me, than him!

I was much closer to my grandfather, who had a myriad of hobbies and interests. He would take me to the hobby shops, the union hall, the stock exchange, that liquor store with the pink elephant hanging in the window. Not always the most interesting places to a little kid, but it was great being with him.  The coolest thing I remember doing with him is the time he took me and my grandmother on an off-road excursion  through the sand dunes near their home. In his Jeep Forward Control. I got to sit on the engine cover, between the two of them, with the motor warming-up my behind. We got stuck a few times, but he got us out!

Oh, I just thought of another! Now, this was back in the 60s, I must preface, after they retired and moved to the Needles area. We were driving down the dirt river road in his pickup, when he stopped and yanked the rifle off the rack behind our heads, and fired out the window at a coyote. The passenger window. He being on the driver's position, you see.  He missed, though. It was a little scary, but it was cool.