My Dad

This morning I rode over with my old high school baseball coach to see my grandparents. I was actually in my old hometown and my old coach said he had to do some work in the town that my grandparents lived in, and asked if I'd like to ride over with him. Once we got over there, he'd just drop me off, and then pick me up once he had finished. I agreed, since I had been meaning to stop over and see my grandfather after his recent surgery.

I dropped in and surprised both he and my grandmother, and immediately I was back in the routine of having to repeat myself every other sentence because of their lack of hearing. "How you been doing?" "What?" "I said how have you been doing.....since the surgery?" "Oh.....good." I'm just kidding it's not that bad, but sometimes it can be pretty close.

We caught up and talked mostly about sports. Well, I say sports, the conversation mostly consisted of my grandfather complaining about what a travesty it was that Craig Biggio was left off the National League All-Star Roster. "He hit 3,000 this year. I tell you what, Bud Selig has too much Milwaukee biased in him." "I know Pappaw. I know." I was a little shocked that 'the Beeg' was left off the roster, but that's for another blog.

The conversations then started to shift back to when I played, which I loved; and then they began to shift to when my dad and my uncle played college football together. I always loved these stories the best. I always took so much pride in the way people spoke of my dad's play. "Hunter, he was just that good. He was always so competitive."

I then began to ask him for his favorite moments of when my father played. I had probably heard these stories before, but I still craved to listen to them over and over again. Whether it was football, basketball, and baseball stories in high school, or him playing baseball and football in college. I loved hearing the war stories over and over and over.

My grandfather spent most of his time talking about football stories, but then he actually switched gears to talk about my dad's senior year in basketball and one game in particular. I never heard that much about my dad in basketball. I liked it; it was the one sport that I actually thought I was better at than he was, so it gave me a little bragging rights whenever I would come home.

Pappaw then began by talking about how integration had occurred during his high school years and that while the majority of my dad's friends stayed playing football and baseball, 'the blacks' took over basketball. My dad was the only white person on the team, and I almost got the feeling that my grandfather took more pride in the fact that he wasn't scared to compete against 'the blacks'. But then paused, and said, "Hunter, you're Dad was always the most popular kid on the team to be honest. Can you imagine that he actually served as the Team Captain. Bruce (my father) never saw color. I think that's what I always admired about him, because I was just raised so differently. Your daddy would play with whoever was out there; he just loved to play and he loved other people that loved to play. That's one of the biggest characteristics that I see in you. You never see color."

I love my dad. If this was a professional paper, I think I would close this differently; but I really don't think I have anything else to say about the matter. I just like my dad a lot.