Today would have been my father’s 100th birthday. While many people would have been happy to have reached that milestone, my father would have been miserable. He was a very active man.

My early memories of him were brutal. He could not tolerate weakness.  Illness was a weakness. Bad vision was a weakness. Even breaking a bone was some kind of a weakness. And you never admitted you were in pain, or sick, or depressed. To do so was weakness.

He was a hunter who expected his family to eat the animals he’d shot and hung to bleed out in the garage. 

I went to bed hungry many nights.

When we went backpacking in the wilderness we always pitched camp near a stream where we were expected to fish for our dinner.

To this day, I hate fish.

But, because of his refusal to buy a boob tube when I was a child, I know a decent amount about classical music and, if given the title of a show tune, I can tell you which Broadway musical it’s from. And I adore books. I probably own over a thousand.

I wouldn’t want to relive my childhood but he raised us the way he was raised.  In fact, I suspect his life was far tougher.  Anyway, I’ll miss calling him today.