Thinking today of my Dad...the guy who, among many other things, encouraged me to achieve academically by giving me a silver dollar for every "A" grade...and one too for every tooth I ever lost...at one time I had 454 of them, which caused one good friend to remark that I must have had a really big mouth...
Now there are less than fifty coins remaining...in part because my best friend Betty and I would snitch them from my savings bank...then we'd sneak off to the State Fair every day of every summer when we were growing up...we traded them to the carnies in exchange for dimes to pitch at the plates so we could win stuffed animals...we got pretty good because we could afford a lot of practice...
In the late 70s...several years after my dad died...my BMW 2002 needed a new engine...thanks to him and the Hunt brothers, I got a rebuilt one for a fistful of dollars...silver ones...Nelson Bunker Hunt could never have imagined then just how little a billion dollars would be worth today...
That was the same year I took a large party of friends to the now defunct Neptune's Table...then a Sacramento dining destination...where, for that short time in 1979, a single silver dollar bought an entire lobster dinner...it can't do that today...although, as we learned in the last five years, this too could change at any time...
It is so interesting to feel the thread of these experiences...how each one originated in my Dad...how every gift he ever gave me...my intellect, my ability to reason logically, my love of technology...has kept on giving...even though he moved on to his next plane of existence almost 40 years ago...
And what about those silver dollars I have left?...well, now I have a different...some would say wiser...perspective...I would not part with them so readily now...knowing I have them is one way I keep alive that connection to the first man I ever loved...
I miss you, Dad...wherever you are, know that I feel your love...and I am loving you up right now(then)...
Mom and Dad when they got married in Tennessee in 1943...their only wedding image because the photographer's camera died...