Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

HAPPY FATHERS DAY!

If I had any Deep Thoughts on fatherhood to impart this year, this space right here is where I woulda done it. Instead, I decided to go with a nice picture of my dad because he was a man who liked to golf.

He never said much, my dad. His people didn’t, there was nothing to say. They grew up during the Great Depression then WWII hit them right between the eyes. By the time they got around to having a family they’d pretty much seen all of the shit this world has to offer.

What part of that were they gonna tell their kids? Most of them didn’t say anything. My dad had one friend who loved to tell war stories. We have some faded, silent Super-8 footage of him in a barbeque apron in his suburban back yard, re-enacting some exciting battle or other using his meat tongs as a tommy gun. Rat-a-tat-tat!

Funny guy, but most of them weren’t like that. They also weren’t the navel-gazers and up-front head cases most of our country’s subsequent wars have produced, when we started to know enough to know better. My dad’s generation took their war-related mental illnesses and ate them in silence, then set about building the American Middle Class as we know it.

Were they the “greatest” generation as others have lucratively suggested? I dunno. The Founders were some pretty bad asses. And the Civil War guys killed each other and died in numbers that would make all following wars green with envy.

My dad’s people, I’d say they were the Silent Generation. If you didn’t ask, they usually didn’t tell. Given what they had to tell, in the end maybe that stoicism was their greatest gift to their kids. And thanks to the silent sacrifices of our parents’ youth, my generation has much more superficial anecdotes that we can’t share with our kids.

Here’s to the dads! God bless us, every one.