1908

was the year my father was born. My father passed away today at around 4am. He was 100 years and 7 months old. He had said to my brother and sister a couple of weeks ago that he was ready. His passing was as far as we know without pain and simply going to asleep and passing to where ever we go. My Dad was a mechanical engineer and one smart dude. His idea of heaven and hell was based on the premise that all energy created is saved forever. Your thoughts are made up of electrical pulses, making them energy, being energy they are conserved forever. His theory was your dying thoughts, cumulative experiences, life actions are all created from thoughts and thus conserved someplace in this universe. That energy is your heaven or hell. I know Dad is in Heaven, because his energy was one of the best kind.

Here are some of the things that I remember about my dad. Making that Pinewood Derby car in the basement, watching him rebuild the screens on the front porch and how he carved the curvatures into the wood frames to match the hand hewed beams in front of the house, the Ballantine Ale can sliding across the glass table and him telling me it was magic, the time he shut my fingers in the green Chrysler and told me to stop fooling around (he didn't know my fingers were jammed in the door), the money he lent me for my laptop for TDS Systems, the money he lent me that enabled us to keep our house during my unemployment days, him trying to teach me how to balance my checkbook before going off to college, the meticulous preparation of bacon, eggs and dollar size pancakes on Sunday, grilling flank steak on that square grill that had the criss cross grate (I have never seen a grill like that since), putting the round Scotch cooler in the back of the car to go to St Cloud Swim Club on Sunday for a cook out, Black and White Scotch, the glasses from Daytona with his signature in gold, driving to Daytona Finishing to work during the summer, helping me to get the TR3 started, showing me how good trichlorethelyn is as a degreasing agent, him punching me over my long hair in high school, getting me that Fender Jazz Bass, picking me up at Marsha's before I could drive every Friday and Saturday night, the 63 Bonneville, never throwing away the dried up felt tip pins in his pocket protector, the pocket protector, trying to teach me to use a slide rule, drawing train set ups on paper, the New Years Eve parties at Winding Way, the fastidious placing of the lights on the Christmas tree, the pink and white portable TV on the gold stand, getting me a drink of water and having to climb all those stairs and walk all the way down the hall to that room that seemed like it was in a different part of the house (how the heck did he hear me), Parliament cigarettes, carving the turkey at Thanksgiving, cutting rye bread by hand with a knife making precisely thin sliced slices, making ice creams sodas after driving to South Orange to get Gruinings ice cream, chocolate cream soda, making toasted peanut and butter sandwiches with cheese bread, turning and replicating the spindles for the banister in the house, sleeping in his chair (their were multiple chairs over the years), going to his reunion at Carnegie Tech, driving me to Carnegie Tech for the college interview (that was the only school I didn't get accepted into), suggesting that I should become a dentist (should of listened to him), asking me for a cigarette then taking the whole pack of Luckies from me telling me I shouldn't smoke, mowing the lawn the correct way, trimming the hedges (I never figured out how he did them so level, but that goes along with the slicing rye bread), watching the landing on the moon (he was particularly attentive to this because there was a part he designed and made on board), spending the money to fly me home on Thanksgiving so I could see Rita, the white shoes and white belt, flying the Dauntless Diver gas powered airplane that I earned selling stationary for the Junior Achievement Club, making the guy deliver the plane, raking leaves into the gully along the front of the house and burning them, the green hat he wore and the brown one too, the loans he made so I could get into my houses, but most of all I knew he was always there if I needed to talk, get some advice or needed help.


Love ya, Dad, oh Mom you got there too...Hi to you too.