Happy 60th birthday, Old Man.
For those who know my daddy, call him today and wish him a hearty congratulations for making it this long, what with the skiing 60 mph straight downhill, drag racing, paddling an inflatable raft past the horizon into the Atlantic, being kicked out of every go-kart track on the eastern coast (seriously, y'all. his picture was posted and everything), pulling his emergency brake on ice and sliding out, Dukes of Hazzard style (not once. every time there was ice. or even loose gravel), his enthusiasm for death trap carnival rides, and never, ever being able to turn down a good dare.
There are more, including his death-defying ability as a teenager to always win the daily country road race against a 1964 Corvette with his beater of a 1954 Plymouth (hint: it involved a lot of cheating and open doors while driving).
Here, he demonstrates his dancing skills at my sister Julia's wedding with my sister Marsha. I think Julia's in-laws thought he was drunk. Those who know him well knew he wasn't--that's just how he dances.
At my wedding, we didn't have a father-daughter dance, but we did clap and sing along to "Mountain Dew," a moonshining song I have known all the words to since I could talk thanks to my dad.That one, and the Battle of New Orleans, and the Beatles' Rocky Raccoon, and Bobbie Jo Gentry's Ode to Billie Joe, Johnny Cash's Cocaine Blues, and countless others that he just made up as he went along.
My dad can make anything fun, even taking trash to the dump on Saturdays in a beaten-up old truck (there was a song to the tune of the Lone Ranger theme--"to the dump, to the dump, to the dum-dum-DUMP").He's silly, yes, but he also always took care of us. He worked two jobs my entire life but still found time to coach our soccer teams (the fact that he knew little about soccer did not deter him). When I came home from college on a weekend, by Sunday afternoon my car was always washed, vacuumed out, and the oil had been changed. When we were upset, he always knew just how to hug us to make everything okay. Unlike the archetypal distant father figure, my dad never hid his emotions from us--we always know he loves us beyond measure, without saying anything.
Well, I could go on forever. Instead, cheers to Captain Jack--the best friend, father, and grandfather a kid could have.
4 comments:
hey, we did the Lone Ranger dump song too!
I second that emotion and add Jack's sports hysteria to the list of his many fine attributes. Weeping, hand-wringing and pacing in front of televised games, he should have been on stage. To quote his high school annual, "There are few like Our Jack."
Loved the post Ang. Marsh read it at the party and it was a big hit. I also thought you'd find it funny that we had multiple people who had attended other Moore birthday bashes comment that they were disappointed we didn't have any skits. Marsha and I had a plan for Ace and Glenn to do a reprisal of Juliana of the Euphrates but ya'll couldn't come and Glenn wouldn't go for it for some reason.
Juls--
I can assure you that Ace would've been on Glenn's side on that. I've told him the stories, and he's still incredulous...
Him: "Let me get this straight. Your FATHER dressed up as a belly dancer?"
Me: "Of course. A big, hairy, bearded belly dancer with a stone in his navel and everything.
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