Sports

I have to admit that one thing I never did understand about father was his complete disregard for anything related to sports.  I am not sure he actually ever played a sport, even as a child!  He was a terrible runner and though he boasted of having been a skier - he actually couldn't even do the basics.  So, I think he must have watched skiers, not actually ever skied himself.

When I was 8 years old, I was growing at the rate of just over one inch a month!  My parents hauled me into the doctor's since I was getting really tall for my age - his advice: buy the kid a basketball.  Of course, had I any coordination that might have been really good advice but I was an utter klutz and more than once was beaten up by the ball.

Sports never did play an important role in my life, but I did play for all of the schools I attended.  Soccer teams in France and Germany, baseball in Germany, basketball and tennis here in America.  And for all of those games, across all of those years, want to guess whom never came to a single one?  Yeah, father.

I know in his mind it revolved around work being first, wife second, then friends, then children.  But you would think that in 8 years he could have made one game!  Especially true for the ones on Saturdays.

So, I think you are getting a picture of the man I really did not know very well.

Fishing

My grandfather, mother's strep-father, loved fishing.  If he was not working, then he was fishing.  I never caught anything but it was a fun activity.  Somewhere, father got the idea to take me fishing.

Now we lived on top of the bluff, on the northwest side of the Willamette River valley, overlooking Swan Island.  So, off we marched to the little road which wound its way down to the water.  Father of course was in shirt and tie, his most basic of all leisure dress.  His shoes were inappropriate for hiking on a muddy road with a steep incline.  Yes, you guessed it, he went a tumbling sliding down the length of that road!

Oh was he ever so angry over that mud bath!  I think I picked up swear words in five languages during that one!

So he ordered me back home and I had to wait at the top while he slipped and cursed his way back up to the top of the bluff.  That was to be the end of all fishing trips for him.

Luckily, two of my friends were old enough to walk with me and so we would go together.  No we never caught anything but then I am not sure that is the point of male adventures or bonding.....

Camping

Usually, when we went hiking, we were also camping.  Through the years, father bought some very nice tents and we really got our money back out of them!  During the time in Oregon we camped often along the coast  - particularly in fall when the storms could bring Japanese floats to shore, in the California redwoods, Crater Lake, the woods around Mt. Hood and the Warm Springs Indian Reservation!  And often mother's mother and step-father would come with us and camp as well.  It was good times for this little camper when my grandparents were there!

These were times of much fun for me - father and I got along hiking and I would try and help father set up camp or tear down.  But, father unfortunately was a perfectionist, and perfectionists are not pleasant people to be around!  Especially when you are camping and it is supposed to be an enjoyable time!

Yeah, well, you can only try for so long - even a kid will eventually learn to give up when abused enough.  I rapidly learned to do as little around camp as I could and to avoid him as much as was possible at all times.  I took to fishing.

Apparently, he never even noticed.

Hiking

Outside of work and mathematics, father really did not have any interests.  But, he did love the out of doors.

When I was really young, we would go hiking as a family.  My earliest of the hikes being a drive up Sandia Mountain and then walking around.  I can remember father loving the view, mother fussing over my toddler sister and my thinking the dirt/sand/whatever it was, was most interesting.

Through the years in Portland, we did go on a great many hikes: on beaches, along the river, to parks, on the glacier at Mt. Hood, Mt. Bachelor area, etc.

My favorite hike was in a place we called "Mosquito Lakes", no idea what the real name was but those mosquitoes were sure memorable!  I had taught myself how to whistle and so father would be singing some opera and I would be whistling along. It was a great few days with him.

Sometimes he would see something which reminded him of hiking in the Bernese Oberland - a beautiful mountainous area of Switzerland, and then he would talk about his sister and hiking with her.  Things he thought I would never remember and yet those were the things which were the most important about him to me.  It was our one point of communication.  And to beour great point of dispute later in life.

Spooky Story

Being as we just had Halloween, it is the perfect time to tell something spooky and of course about father.

Now, something had gone terribly wrong with my sister and she was rushed off to California for surgery accompanied by my mother, so that left father and I as bachelors, and yes, we were a bit bored.  So we planned to take a Saturday and building something fun with my father's Erector Set.

The day started out normally enough: father made Rosti - a Swiss potato dish he made for us kids on Saturday mornings.  We cleaned up and set up to build something with the cool erector Set!

Only, there was this HUGE explosion which rocked the house and we ran outside.  All of the neighbors were also coming out as well.  The blast was still echoing around the Willamette River valley below us.  Dad called the police but there were no explosions they knew of.  Next he called the Portland Air Base and reported the sound.  They had heard it too and had already identified it as a super-sonic blast.  Only problem - there were no aircraft anywhere over the area on radar.....

Everyone went back to their homes scratching their heads over that one.

So, father and I returned to our construction and built an elevator which would lift a marble, drop it onto a rail, where it would run around for a while and then hit the elevator at the bottom just in time for a ride back up.  Mesmerizing.

Father took a bathroom break and I went and got some water for us.  We both walked back in just about the same time, I just a few feet ahead of him.

In the center of the room, in the corner of my eye I saw something, to this day I have no idea what it was but it went from hanging in the air to a blur of acceleration in  a fraction of a second!  I yelled at father to duck and threw myself backwards.  Father did the same and the what ever it was streaked within inches of his face was he was falling.  It then buried itself into the hallway wall.

Father was naturally quite shaken.  We both just stood and looked at the hole in the wall and eventually father reached in with a pair of pliers and pulled out a little car build out of Erector Set Parts.  We looked at each other and ran to the table where our marble carrier stood.  It was still completely assembled - only the marble carrier was missing from the elevator shaft!

A hoist engine and wheel sat directly over the elevator shaft.  There was no way the little car could have been removed - and yet IT WAS!

No question something para-normal had occurred, no question there was no natural explanation, no question it had happened, no question it could have killed father, no question about that hole in the wall either.....

On base, the police had a good laugh until they came out to the house and saw the evidence.  Of course, everyone thought I had thrown the item, but I had two cups of water and was a might small as it was.  The hole in the all looked like a bazooka had hit it.  One of the guardsmen even tried to punch a hole in the hallway wall with his gloved fist - but it was a lath-wood wall and all he did was break a bunch of fingers.  Literally!

We left the house for a few days and I think went camping.  Father was to never mention this again to anyone, even me - aside from one comment one time - "It must have been done with magnets....".  And I think we are at the point where what existed of father's religious faith had died ...