Dad Liked His Beer

The stories about Dad and his beer usually start by mentioning that after his service in the Navy he spent a lot of time in the Idaho bars.  A favorite hangout was a place called The Schooner.  Although he didn’t have much of a belly at the time, a joke he used often: he would walk up to the bar, stick out his stomach as far as he could and tell the bartender “fill it up!”

My favorite Dad and beer story happened many years later.  When Dad was sick, he had trouble sleeping.  When I came for a visit, I bought a six pack of LaBatts beer to drink.  Dad had stopped drinking beer, at least twenty years earlier.  He claimed he no longer liked the taste of it.  Well Dad was at the table in his wheelchair, and I was standing next to him, slowly nursing a beer.  It seems like the entire family was standing around joking when my sister across the table noticed Dad drinking my beer.  Before she could say anything, he chugged the entire bottle!  It is good thing he didn’t like the taste of it!

That night, for the first time in a number of months, Mom said he slept like a baby.  After that night we kept a supply of beer in the refrigerator to help Dad sleep.  I don’t think he ever drank one of them.  But, for a brief time, he was back in The Schooner, “filling it up.”

Free Association Thoughts about Dad, Dogs, and Cartoons

Something recently came to mind, I was folding some towels when I came across a towel with Snoopy, the character from Peanuts comics.  I remembered how much Dad enjoyed cartoons.  He loved to just contemplate about Snoopy and all of the challenges faced by this one beagle.  Every year we were watching The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and It’s a Charlie Brown Christmas.  Every year Dad would laugh at the very idea of Snoopy climbing into his sopwith camel and flying off to face the Red Baron and finally landing in Linus’ pumpkin patch. 

We once got a small dog, she was supposed to be hunting dog but that never really completely developed.  Dad, I think, wanted to desperately name the dog Snoopy.  He kept suggesting, “Let’s name her Snoopy.”  Us kids kept insisting, no there has to be a better name than that.  Being young teenagers we were oblivious to his wants.  We wound up naming the dog Penny.  

Another cartoon Dad loved was the roadrunner series.  He would really laugh, I mean out load, belly laugh type of laughter, at the road runner and the coyote.  Mom used to tell the story, when her and Dad went to a movie, a road runner cartoon was showing before the feature.  Dad was laughing and waving his arms.  Mom had to move over one seat so the Dad would stop bumping her every time he laughed.

Just some more random thoughts about Dad: he loved his dogs and his cartoons