How Am I Supposed to Know?' 10 Things About My Dad (#5)

Here's the 'When We Last Saw Our Hero' catch-up: During a TV show set in Kentucky, I asked daughter #2 who was born in Kentucky, and she just shrugged. When I exasperatedly told her that my dad was born in Kentucky, she just as exasperatedly questioned, 'How am I supposed to know anything about him?' So I'm scribbling down 10 things for her to know about my dad. I posted Numbers 1-4 earlier.

Number 5

My dad was so trusting, and his friends and family (okay, me) knew it. I played that trust for a few minutes; a friend of his took him for a 'ride' for 18 years. If MTV practical joker Ashton Kutcher knew him, my dad would've easily been 'Punk'd.'

PUNK'D BY ME
Some time around 1993-94, my parents, my wife, daughter #1 and my son spent Thanksgiving with other families at Sid Richardson Scout Ranch near Bridgeport, Texas. I was working for the Boy Scouts, and a tradition had started a few years earlier that those staff members and their immediate families who couldn't be with their extended families for Thanksgiving would meet at Sid for a huge, community meal. Sid has a large dining hall with cabins and dorms to accommodate the more civilized camper.

After dinner, I was talking with my dad on the porch of the dining hall. Jim Gidley, who was responsible for the local camping programs, was building a fire down near the lake for . . . you guessed it, s'mores.

Knowing how trusting my dad was (and thinking that he would appreciate a good practical joke), I tested an old Tenderfoot Scout trick on him. I told him that I couldn't find the tool that we needed to help build the fire, so I instructed him, 'Go ask Mr. Gidley where I can find a left-handed smoke-shifter (for you non-campers, there is no such thing as a left-handed smoke-shifter).'

My 70+ year old dad walked the 150 yards down to the lake, which was too far for me to hear the conversation, talked with Mr. Gidley, then trudged back up the hill. As he got closer to the porch, I asked him what Mr. Gidley said.

My dad replied, 'He told me to tell you to go to hell,' and gave me that 'smart ass' look and laugh.

PUNK'D FOR 18-YEARS
My son's mom and I were born two days apart in Port Arthur's St. Mary's Hospital. Both of us are the youngest in our families; she has two older sisters, and I have one older sister. Our dads had worked together at Texaco since the '40s, and like any group of co-workers, everybody knew their wives were pregnant.

I was born first, and my dad was so proud. In a world of blue-collar working men, most of them World War II veterans, having a son must've been like winning the title fight or hitting a home run to win the World Series. My dad followed a long-lost custom and passed out cigars to friends at work while he bragged about his new son. When the phone rang and the caller asked for George, he'd ask, 'Do you want to talk to George Senior or George Junior.'

My son's mom and I grew up in the same town and both attended St. James Catholic Church, but we didn't meet until the summer after high school, when we were 18 years old. When I told my dad who I was dating, he said, 'I work with her daddy. She has a brother about your age.'

I'd just met this girl, but I knew enough about her to correct him, 'Daddy, she doesn't have a brother. She has two older sisters.'

For more than 18 years, my outgoing, very trusting dad would ask my future father-in-law, 'How's your son?' And, for more than 18 years, my tight-lipped FFIL responded in his typically Cajun mutter, 'He's fine,' never admitting that he'd had a third daughter instead of a son.

Punk'd for 18 years, but one of my dad's best traits was that he loved to be around people, and he trusted them, maybe the most important gifts he passed on to my sister and me (and I see it in both daughter #1 and daughter #2).

My dad died in 1999, and the visitation at the funeral home became a real celebration of his life, as his former co-workers and friends approached me with 'George' stories: 'good man,' 'always smiling,' 'always happy,' 'always playing a joke on somebody' . . . WHAT!?