My Dad

If I call my Dad's house and the answering machine picks up, this is the greeting:

"You've reached Mike at ***-****. This is not the CVS pharmacy in West Corners! You dialed an eight instead of a zero. That's okay, we all make mistakes. But, don't do it again! For the 75% of you who can dial correctly, please leave a message."

Happy Father's Day, Dad. This is your blog. My father; chemist, engineer, thinker...weirdo.

But you're an original, always cooking up a new angle on things. And, I appreciate that. Thanks to you, I've got some very...unique memories.

Here's some of those memories you provided me, my Mom and my brothers:

• The "Ice Buggy"; a go-cart you built with spiked wheels in the back and skis in the front you used to ride around the frozen pond up the road.
• The time you put nitrogen triiodide contact explosive all over the place at my birthday party and terrorized the kids.
• When you made your own dynamite and used it to remove tree stumps.
• When you lost a tooth and kept gluing it back in with super glue.
• The air-pressure powered snowball bazooka.
• The time the well pump broke and you felt you had to fix it yourself. So, we didn't have running water for several days.
• The PVC gravity roller coaster you made for my kids, which they could ride down the hill in my back yard along pulley wheels and PVC rails.
• The pole barn you built almost single handedly and put a basketball hoop in the upstairs for us kids to play with.
• All the shit (including three treadmills) you bought at garage sales that has now filled that space in the barn where we once played basketball.
• When you packed all five of us into a van and took us on a tour out west for six weeks.
• The time we went camping and there were loud people partying all night next to us. So, to retaliate, you rigged a sprinkler with a timer in the form of a piece of ice that would melt. Once it did, the sprinkler shifted direction and soaked all their stuff as we were long gone.
• The time you took us to the airport for an economy vacation, because you knew we liked planes.
• Equipping my first car with an "Ooooga" horn you purchased at a garage sale for 25 cents.
• All the knee jerk conservative rant letters to the editor that were printed in the local newspaper. This is where I really appreciate having the same name as you.
• The times you went to our wrestling matches and yelled for us to do your favorite move, where you pry the guy to his back using your arm between his legs. It wasn't embarrassing at all for us to hear you yell "In the crotch!" at the top of your lungs.

I could go on. But I won't.

Happy Father's Day!