Fathers, spend time with your kids — while they’re still kids

Dear Dad,

It’s almost Father’s Day, so today I’d like to thank you for doing five things.

First, thanks for the time when there was nothing to do outside and you took a piece of cardboard and a ski rope and you pulled us around the yard for several hours. I was 4 years old, and I still remember it. So does my little brother and most of the kids in the neighborhood.

Thanks for the time when we were living in Oregon and you went on a camping trip with some buddies and took me along. I was 5 years old. The plan was to catch our own dinner, but none of you guys had a fishing license, which wasn’t required for children, so I did all the fishing.

I don’t remember actually catching any fish, but there’s a photo of me holding a string of six beautiful rainbow trout and grinning like I was the greatest fisherman in the world, so it must be true. For the record, I do remember eating the trout after we’d cooked it over the fire.

Thanks for taking me to every automobile dealership in the Southeastern United States. That was when I was 9 or 10 and was interested in cars. I could point to any car on the road and tell you its make, model, year and optional luxury package.

We’d collect the big colorful brochures from each showroom, even for cars like the Ford Grenada. My prize possession was a giant Corvette poster that tracked the history of the iconic roadster from 1953 to the present, which back then was 1978.

You even took me to the Rolls Royce dealership in Tampa. None of the prices were listed on the windows, so you asked the salesman how much they cost. He said, “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.”

He was right, and we got a kick out of that.

Thanks for taking me to a cartoonist workshop in south Alabama. That was when I was 11 and interested in becoming the next Charles M. Schulz.

How you found out about a cartoonist workshop in south Alabama I’ll never know. You had a knack for picking up on my interests and helping encourage them, even if it was just a phase.

Thanks for taking me to all those sporting events, something that we still do today. I’ll never forget the time we were in Jordan-Hare Stadium and Auburn was playing Southern Miss. The Golden Eagles had a guy named Reggie Collier, the first college quarterback to rush and pass for more than a 1,000 yards.

Collier was exciting to watch from the time he sprinted out on the field to the Gap Band’s “You Dropped a Bomb on Me.”

But the best part of the game was when the drunk, 20-something Southern Miss fan sitting behind us dropped maybe his 50^th F-bomb of the night and you turned around and asked him what his mother would think of the way he was talking.

The guy pointed to the gray-haired woman next to him and said, “Why don’t you ask her?”

We still laugh about that.

Really, thanks for everything.

Oh, and thanks for not making a lot of speeches. I remember only one of them – the garbage man speech – in which you entreated me to be the very best at whatever I pursued in life, even if that meant being a garbage man.

I was 6 years old. Back then I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I’d taken out the trash enough times to know what I didn’t want to do.

Most of the time, though, you didn’t tell me what to do. Instead, you spent time with me and showed me the right way, and I’m a better person because of it.

Thanks, Dad.

And Happy Fathers Day to all you fathers out there.

This story was originally published June 16, 2017 at 9:27 PM with the headline "Fathers, spend time with your kids — while they’re still kids."