Fathers Day

Hey Dad wish you were here. I remember a few things mostly good, I know I seem to dwell on the not so good but most things were good. A few weeks ago the bathroom plumbing sprung a leak and I fixed it with some things called gator bites. Cost less than twenty dollars, you would have loved this. I didn’t have to try and sweat pipes with water running down my arm or shove any bread up in there. Just cut the pipe take out the leaking parts and slide these things on.

Remember when we went on vacation to Florida the one year. That was some trip, we made it to Pennsylvania before the money ran out. We visited Gettysburg, and on the way back home we stopped in Durham to ride the water slide. We had lunch in the car all six of us no A/C windows rolled up and rain outside in ninety degree weather. There were some pretty good times in there.
Remember when we lived down outside of Valatie on Silvernail Road in that big old house. It had a coal furnace that was converted to oil with a single four foot by four foot grate in the entranceway. You converted that to wood and we cut down half the trees in the front yard for firewood. We also burned the old addition that had been torn off the back of the house, one piece at a time in that old furnace. I never think it got really warm there. You worked like a dog cutting that wood and I helped. Later on when I got to be about the same age your were then I wondered how you ever did it.
Remember the drives on Saturday or Sunday afternoons? We’d all pile in the car and you would drive us up on Greenbush or some other back roads. We’d just wander through there, I wondered if you knew where we were going. Chris was afraid we were lost and in Vietnam or some other equally scary place. There are a lot of houses up there now and most of the roads are paved over. Not much gravel road any more but some days you can still get sort of lost.
Some days we would go over by the fire tower and have a picnic. Us kids would wander around up there and enjoy ourselves. Those were pretty good times and I’ll bet they cost almost nothing.
You’ve only been gone a few years but it does seem like a long time now.