June 21st, 2009 at 9:57AM
Happy Father’s Day, Dad. Most of you probably don’t know that my dad (Lionel) passed away when I was 11, after some complications from a kidney transplant. Hard stuff, sure, yeah. It’s meant that, for me, I’ve known my dad partly through memories and partly through stories from family, family friends, and even strangers. He was, if I can honor him here, revered. Everyone loved him because he was, I’m told, the Best Man on the Planet. I’ll never be able to acheive that status, but it’s a damn fine beacon to try and make my way towards, in the dark. Here’s one of my favorite stories about the kind of person he was: My dad was a contractor; he oversaw the building of tons and tons of houses and other buildings in my hometown. Evidently, the mayor and the city council adored my dad, and they had an agreement that my dad could just leave his many large bits of machinery (backhoes, dumptrucks, etc.) on empty lots around town, since he was basically building the damn place from scratch. One morning bright and early, the cops called my dad and told him to come on down to one of these lots. When he arrived, the cops had caught a guy who’d been siphoning out gasoline from these huge machines. The cops were all ready to arrest him and chuck him in jail. The man was clearly down-on-his-luck, ashamed of stealing, staring at the ground and not saying a word. My dad asked him why he’d been stealing from him, and the man replied, simply, that he just needed gasoline and couldn’t afford it. The cops asked my dad if he wanted to press charges, so what does dad do? He shakes his head no, waves them away, pulls out enough cash to fill a car’s tank from his pocket, hands it to the man, and says ‘Well then go get yourself some gas.’ Then he smiled, said “Alrighty, have a nice day, y’all” and jumped back in his truck to start building more houses. (That’s the very truck, in fact, up in the photo of him and me.) So: Happy Father’s Day, Dad. (I love him so much.)

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

Most of you probably don’t know that my dad (Lionel) passed away when I was 11, after some complications from a kidney transplant. Hard stuff, sure, yeah. It’s meant that, for me, I’ve known my dad partly through memories and partly through stories from family, family friends, and even strangers. He was, if I can honor him here, revered. Everyone loved him because he was, I’m told, the Best Man on the Planet. I’ll never be able to acheive that status, but it’s a damn fine beacon to try and make my way towards, in the dark.

Here’s one of my favorite stories about the kind of person he was:

My dad was a contractor; he oversaw the building of tons and tons of houses and other buildings in my hometown. Evidently, the mayor and the city council adored my dad, and they had an agreement that my dad could just leave his many large bits of machinery (backhoes, dumptrucks, etc.) on empty lots around town, since he was basically building the damn place from scratch.

One morning bright and early, the cops called my dad and told him to come on down to one of these lots. When he arrived, the cops had caught a guy who’d been siphoning out gasoline from these huge machines. The cops were all ready to arrest him and chuck him in jail. The man was clearly down-on-his-luck, ashamed of stealing, staring at the ground and not saying a word.

My dad asked him why he’d been stealing from him, and the man replied, simply, that he just needed gasoline and couldn’t afford it. The cops asked my dad if he wanted to press charges, so what does dad do? He shakes his head no, waves them away, pulls out enough cash to fill a car’s tank from his pocket, hands it to the man, and says ‘Well then go get yourself some gas.’ Then he smiled, said “Alrighty, have a nice day, y’all” and jumped back in his truck to start building more houses. (That’s the very truck, in fact, up in the photo of him and me.)

So: Happy Father’s Day, Dad. (I love him so much.)

  1. jasonpermenter posted this
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