Column: Happy Father's Day

column-happy-father-s-day

Dear readers,

Today is Father’s Day. If you forgot, hurry up and make a quick trip to the store.

My advice is to just stick with the traditional Father’s Day gift of aftershave lotion or pipe tobacco. He is your dad, so he knows you well.  He will be surprised that you even remembered, so the gift itself isn’t all that important.

Take some time today to remember all those moments in your life when dad was there for you. I have wonderful memories of growing up in the 1960s. Dad was always there to smooth out the rough spots in a kid’s life. He had the ability to solve both small and big problems with ease. 

A bad report card or being rescued by the fire department after falling into a giant coffee cup on a billboard resulted in the same even-handed treatment by dad.

It seemed like every father-son talk began the same way. Mom would say, “Your father is waiting in the den, and he would like a word with you.” 

I can almost smell the smoke from dad’s pipe, just thinking about those talks. Dad, always wearing his favorite cardigan sweater, had the ability to straighten out any problem. Dad’s little talk never took more than two or three minutes, always ending right before the music started and the credits began rolling.

Wait a minute. Come to think of it, I never fell into a giant coffee cup, and we didn’t even have a den in our house. It was TV dad, Ward Cleaver, played by Hugh Beaumont, who solved all of Beaver’s kid problems with that talk in the den, not mine. 

I remember now. My dad’s advice to me when Ward Cleaver was dispensing advice to the Beaver was, “Don’t sit so close to the TV.”

Real dads didn’t have a chance in the 1960s. Ward Cleaver was perfect, and he wasn’t alone.

On “The Donna Reed Show,” Jeff had no problem too difficult for Dr. Stone (Carl Betz) to solve when he arrived home. 

Laura Petrie would sometimes get flustered by little Richie’s shenanigans.

When Rob (Dick Van Dyke) came home, after tripping over the ottoman, he would always find a bit of humor in the situation. 

Several of the TV dads in the 1960s didn’t even need a mom to help them with their children. 

“The Rifleman,” Lucas McCain (Chuck Conners), not only had all the answers for Mark, but in an emergency, he could shoot the guns out of the hands of several bad guys at the same time.

Steve Douglas (Fred MacMurray) on “My Three Sons” didn’t need a mom around the house to raise Mike, Rob, and Chip. Although, Uncle Charlie, with his hair in greasy bangs and wearing an apron, was somewhat of a mother substitute for the boys. 

Similarly, Ben Cartwright (Lorne Greene) was raising Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe out on the Ponderosa without any help from mom. He did have Hop Sing to boil the dirt out of their clothes.

Real dads like mine had a tough go of it in the 1960s competing with all those perfect TV dads.  Lucky for the real dads it got easier when Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor) became the most watched dad on TV in the 1970s.

By the time I became a dad, the bar had been lowered even further with TV dads Al Bundy and Homer Simpson. Even I looked good compared to those guys. 

On a personal note, I hope I get a bottle of aftershave lotion this year. The last few years my son, Trent, has given me pipe tobacco. I realize it is the thought that counts, but I’ve never smoked a pipe.

See you all next week, same Schwinn time, same Schwinn channel.

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