Well, we've had Father's Day. Have fathers changed much since I
was, say, six? I'm not sure. More are middle class, I guess, though
mine kept his office job throughout the Depression and we rented an
apartment in a middle-class neighborhood full of people doing just
about the same thing. By the time I had kids, we and our neighbors
owned their houses but I doubt that that had any great effect on their
characters.
My father taught me to believe in honesty; my kids do too, as
far as I can tell. He believed in fighting when you had to and
believed in toughness. Well, he'd grown up in coal mining towns and
they're tough. He loved a story his father had probably told him
about a Scot on some battlefield who was sleeping with a rock as a
pillow until some superior made him stop; it was unmanly. When I was
a reporter covering the Vietnam War, there weren't many rocks. I
think we mostly slept on our packs. I don't know how he'd have felt
about that.
We disagreed about some very important things. But we agreed, I
think, about many more. I hope my now grown feel positively about
their pop too.
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