adventures of dad

well, i don't have a good drawing of dad with a push mower yet, but i did dig up this one from the time he got a summer job mowing at the golf course. dad will mow in the heat of the day, ignoring things like thirst, sweat, heat stroke, hallucinations and any attempts to reason with him. this makes him an ideal candidate for mowing at the golf course. he will put a sandwich slathered with mayo in his back pocket and drive around until the mayo has seeped into the bread. then he'll eat it, out there on a green, no shade around, 105 degrees. i am pretty sure i drew this to show dad my concerns over his reckless teenage attitude. as a recall, he called me the next day to let me know he's mowed the golf course in 200 degree heat with no water. at least he's wearing clothing.

because dad lives so far away, i get some news late, secondhand or filtered. you know, things like surgeries, arrests, emergency room visits. at some point, dad captured the attention of g-men. i don't know how or why, but i drew a cartoon of it, so it must be true. it's certainly possible someone else was concerned with dad's mysterious ways and worried the g-men would catch up with him. a nephew might have expressed some concern. they never did whisk him away so i'm sure everything is fine now. i certainly would have heard if things were otherwise.

quite some years ago while i still lived in michigan i started a lime tree from a seed. i dragged the thing with me here to brooklyn where it flourished for years, until it was felled by some sort of awful parasites. somewhere during this time, my dad developed an interest in lemon trees and got himself a potted one with a pretty good shot at bearing fruit. he sent me a lemon tree as well, a replacement for my lime, but dad has had better luck with his lemon tree, living in a sunny place, retired as he is and able to spend a lot of free time babying a plant. he also has a tendency to gloat about the blooms on the tree. the glossy leaves. the fruit. but it's not all sweetness and light. there's a sinister side that's slipped into his horticulture. sinister and suspect, i tell you. perhaps it's what those g-men were looking for.

recently dad sold a boat he'd been keeping out at a friend's lake. a pond, i guess, but a good place to fish. he's used the thing quite a bit at first, but it was more cumbersome than he'd planned and he wanted something maybe smaller, maybe newer, maybe less labor intensive. but before that, dad spent some time out on the lake/pond fishing and i guess that's where it comes from, this last drawing. it is a birthday card, but i can't for anything remember dad actually being lost out there on the lake. maybe it was something someone worried about, dad being out there with no cell service, out of gas and water. because dad won't take a bottle of water with him anywhere for anything. not to the grand canyon, even with a small child. even on a hot day. not at all. so that's probably where that comes from. dad's teenage behavior. and i have to say that when i was a child dad was not reckless. there were no g-men looking for him then and he had no summer job. he certainly wasn't threatening fruit trees. he was being a dad. but this new dad, new to me for the last ten years or so, is pretty interesting with all his wildness. i think it may be the grandpa personality. my own grandpas, all three of them, were wild and reckless, with no regard for the rules, for the man, for anything but bowling and smoking cigars and driving motor homes all over the place. so i suspect dad is trying out several grandpa personae. i will be happy to continue chronicling his wild grandpa behavior here.