When I was growing up, there were two kinds of dads – real dads and fun dads. Real dads were like mine. They wore suits and ties to work and on the rare occasions when we went out for dinner. They left the house for work right after breakfast and got home just before dinner time. On weekends, they worked in the garden and relaxed. They were interested in what we did, but seldom actually did things with us. We tried hard to make them proud of us.
Fun dads lived in Oysterville. They wore hip boots and sou’westers to work and their comings and goings were marked by the tides, not by the calendar or the clock. They sometimes came home for breakfast about the time we were thinking about lunch. When they weren’t “out on the beds,” they were working on their boats or sleeping or drinking coffee at the kitchen table. And, best of all, they had time to saddle a horse for us, or dredge out a swimming hole at the high tide line and once in a while even took us kids out on the boat with them and we would have a day on the bay while ‘they did some business.’
When my own father was in Oysterville, he was ‘on vacation’ and so were his suits and ties except for Sundays if there was a service at the church. He and my mother would take me (often with a friend or two) out to the beach where we would explore the wreck of the Solano or gather bark for burning in the fireplace or hunt for wild strawberries in the dunes. We’d go on picnics down near my grandfather’s boathouse or go up to Fort Canby and explore the bunkers. For those two or three vacation weeks, my dad was a ‘fun dad,’ too.
In retrospect, I think real versus fun in the dad department hinged on my mother’s often-heard admonition, “Don’t bother your father until after dinner.” Any problems, concerns, favors-to-ask or games to play always were to be put on hold until Daddy had had an opportunity to relax and shed the cares of his day.
The magic of Oysterville, from my childish perspective of course, was that none of the dads had worries or routines or anything to do that couldn’t include the kids now and again – not even my own dad when he was here! How I wish they were all still here so I could wish them all a Happy Father’s Day!
My father was a suit wearing areonautical engineer by day, but in Seaview he was fun taking me clam digging, horseback riding, walking to Sugarman’s Store to get comic books that we read and traded. Thanks for sharing your dad and your memories.