Hello
everyone. It's good to be back after a 2 month hiatus. Lots of things have happened since we last talked, and I hope we covered it all within the previous pages for this month.
If you have a chance, before you leave today, please visit our
Guest Map
and place a pin on the map with your location, and maybe a short comment.
I am looking forward to returning to Gull Lake with my
brothers and friends. It has been a few years since a McCarty attended
the event, and it will be fun to see all the guys again. I
am also looking forward to a couple of planned trips to Ohio
and Oregon with Margaret to visit our kids and grandkids. It
will be great getting a chance to hug and visit everyone as
we do not get to see them as much as we would like. I am
also looking forward to a trip to Mackinac Island with
m'lady coming up.
In May, we
celebrate Mother's Day. I would like to wish my beautiful
mother a
wonderful day. In June, there are 2 notable dates... June
1, 1991 was the day my dad passed away, and June 21st this
year is Father's Day. I would feel guilty in not
acknowledging both my Mom and Dad who have had such a big
impact on my life, and remiss if I didn't share with
you one of my Dad's favorite jokes of all time.
Now, as a
setup, when my Dad would tell this joke, he usually would get the setup wrong,
or get the
punch line wrong, but one thing you could count on was
that he couldn't stop laughing all the way through
the telling of the joke. I miss my Dad. Happy Father's
Day, Pop!
A
homeowner wakes up one morning to find a gorilla
in his tree that is in his back yard. So he
looks in the yellow pages and sure enough,
there's an ad for "Gorilla Removers."
He calls the number, and the gorilla remover
says he'll be over in 30 minutes. The man
arrives, and gets out of his van. He's got a
ladder, a baseball bat, a shotgun and a mean old
pit bull. "What are you going to do,"
the homeowner asks? "I'm going to put this
ladder up against the tree, then I'm going to go
up there and knock the gorilla off the branch
with this baseball bat. When the gorilla falls
out, the pit bull is trained to grab his
testicles and not let go. The gorilla will then
be subdued enough for me to put him in the cage
in the back of the van." He hands the
shotgun to the homeowner. "What's the
shotgun for?" asks the homeowner. "If
the gorilla knocks me off the ladder, shoot the
damn dog!!"
My final
thought I leave you this month is a story which answers
the age-old question... What is a father?
A father is
a person who is forced to endure childbirth without an
anesthetic. He growls when he feels good and laughs very
loud when he is scared half-to-death. A father never feels
entirely worthy of the worship in a child's eyes. He is
never quite the hero his daughter thinks. Never quite the
man his son believes him to be. And this worries him
sometimes. (So he works too hard to try to smooth the
rough places in the road of those of his own who will
follow him.)
A father is
a person who goes to war sometimes... and would run the
other way except that war is part of an important job in
his life (which is making the world better for his child
than it has been for him). Fathers grow older faster than
other people, because they, in other wars, have to stand
at the train station and wave goodbye to the uniform that
climbs on board. And, while mothers cry where it shows,
fathers stand and beam... outside... and die inside.
Fathers are
men who give daughters away to other men who aren't nearly
good enough, so that they can have children that are
smarter than anybody's. Fathers fight dragons almost
daily. They hurry away from the breakfast table off to the
arena, which is sometimes called an office or a workshop.
There they tackle the dragon with three heads: Weariness,
Works, and Monotony. And they never quite win the fight,
but they never give up.
Knights in
shining armor; fathers in shiny trousers. There's little
difference as they march away each workday.
.
Here's to all the Mom's and
Dad's past and present, and the children who consider them their heroes. Cheers!
