Seeing as I'm not yet a parent with children coming home from school and no longer a college student with classes to take, I frequently find myself working those long lonely in-between hours. These are the times when people have everything in the world to do except eat. Lunch is hardly digested; dinner is still defrosting. I usually spend this time pushing a broom hoping on the off chance that a wrinkle in the daily grind sends a wayward diner my way. Those hoisted off their tracks always have a good story to tell, most of which involve the peculiar circumstances that led them to eat at an Irish themed sports bar at 3pm on a week day.
On this afternoon, I was wondering why the whole restaurant wasn't full of booth seating when a reflection of sunlight moved in an arc across the dimly lit dining room. I turned in a Pavlovian manner to greet those responsible for opening the door and breaking the monotonous stupor I had fallen into. Three men were walking in: an older gentleman and what appeared to be his two sons. The man was in his late 50's and the sons no older than 25. I made the joke that they could sit wherever they could find a place. They laughed and chose a table near the back. This is when I realized we have tables because its not masculine to sit in a booth with other men. After a short discussion on what we had on tap they settled for two beers and, to my surprise, a long island iced tea for the youngest son. As I walked away I heard them heckling him for not ordering a tall, dark mug of Dos Equis manliness.
When I returned with the drinks I started small talk with them to find out their story. It turns out the boys were on road trip from Houston to St. Louis when their transmission went out. The dad then came to the rescue. It wasn't long before I learned they had ridden the MS 150 bike race in Fort Worth, hiked a 26 mile four day trail through the Appalachian Mountains and gone deep sea fishing. They had done all of it together. I retired from their table wondering what it would have been like to have a father like that. Instead, my parents divorced when I was two and my dad had been come and go over the years. Mom remarried twice but the only thing I learned from these stand-ins was how not to be a father and husband. When I think about this concept it always reminds me of the poster of Thomas Edison in my high school science classroom. Edison stood holding a glowing ball of light over a quote that read, “We now know a thousand ways not to build a light bulb.” Thanks to my father and his successors, I feel like I could make a pretty damn good light bulb.
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