I wish I had known my father better.
We did not call him The Quiet Man for nothing.
I thought about him again yesterday, on Father's Day.
About how he had imparted that trait to his youngest son.
Yes, I am a man of words, one who revels in his ability to regale a crowd, but who one-on-one who very often struggles for the words.
Don't take my word for it. Ask my wife.
The photo that accompanies this blog item shows my dad in his element.
He is sitting at one of his favorite haunts, the bar at the old Oxford Hotel in the little town where I grew up.
Behind the bar is my 'Uncle Pete,' Pete Watterson.
In addition to being a man of very few words, my father was a man of habit, another trait he passed along to his son.
Every night, without fail, after closing up the store he ran in North East, Md., he would stop at the Oxford Hotel on his way home for a bit of a respite, and his cold beverage of choice.
The bar at the Oxford Hotel, run back in those days by the Vergos family, was a thing of beauty. Dark, handsome wood, inhabited by men who worked hard, and who arrived looking for a little escape from their workday world.
I can remember occasionally during the annual end-of-summer fireman's carnival held in town each year meekly entering the bar and pestering dad for a few coins for a few more rides or spins on the wheels of fortune.
Dad would always light in the same spot, at the end of the bar, perhaps from where he could keep tabs on what was going on around him.
I thought about that place yesterday, on the day reserved for fathers, and thought about the man who meant so much to me, but about whom I really knew so little.
I lost my father when I was just 21 years old, a lifetime ago really. He was a man who loved his family, his work, and, of course, his beloved ponies.
The first time I arrived at his store in North East, I for the life of me could not figure out why a store in the middle of nowhere sold all the major New York newspapers. It did not take long for me to find out. One after another, men would come into my father's store, pick up the paper and immediately turn to that day's horse racing entries.
Then, of course, they would contemplate that day's bets with my father, a first-rate handicapper.
That much I knew about my father. Maybe that little lesson with the newspaper was an omen of things to come for his son.
I wish I had known my father better. I wish I had more time with him.
He is a man who looks happy with his fate in the world, a man in his element. A man comfortable in his own skin, and in a most comfortable place.
It seems today that there aren't as many places like the Oxford Hotel. It seems to be me could use more places like that. Us dads, that is.
Today I have to strain to remember my father.
But every time I look at this picture, I think I get to know him a little bit better.
Happy Father's Day, dad.
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