To my swashbuckling Dad -- Happy Father's Day!

For the most part, it’s an asterisk sort of day. It’s wedged tightly in between the end of Mother’s and Memorial days and the Fourth of July celebration.  It seems as if the Hallmark and the bad necktie industry long have conceded that fathers need their day of acknowledgement, too. Besides, why pass up a chance to make a few extra bucks?

Father’s Day must have been a real drag for Adam and his Dad, in the post-Eden age. Sibling rivalry affects more than its actors.

Let me tell you about my Dad. George “Buck” Stuteville grew up hard during that Great Depression. Served his country, saw buddies die and had the tattoos on his arms to prove he had seen the elephant show and was not eager to see the sequels. When it was time to go home, he did. Dropped most of his GI vices, got married and then got about the business of becoming a father, a process played out three times between 1953 and 1964.

He worked hard as a mechanic for Cummins Diesel and earned a heady reputation for being the foremost at his trade and garnering trust from those he served. Not bad for a boy born on a houseboat near Yankeetown, Ind., who didn’t know a socket wrench from a ball peen hammer when he got into that gig back in the early 1950s. That career move was a damn sight better and healthier than digging out wells, cleaning coal furnaces and the electroplating jobs he had after leaving the Navy.

Here are a few things I want you to know about my Dad. Although he didn’t always offer it freely, if you wanted Buck’s opinion or advice, be warned you wouldn’t always get the answer you desired. He sang wobbly, baritone Ernest Tubb tunes while taking a bath; drank his coffee strong and hot; savored deep-fried brain sandwiches at family taverns; and plunked out Red River Valley on a guitar my Mom got him after collecting enough True Value stamps.

He devoured Old West magazines before nodding off to sleep and drank Stroh’s beer from a can with other neighborhood dads. And early every morning, he woke up to kiss my Mom, urge his kids to be good and then headed out to see what the world would throw at him that

Buck also was also scientific. 


One time, he demonstrated how he could grip a lit firecracker tightly in his hand and avoid injury. I assume the tears streaming down his face after the explosion were an expression of his success. This coming from a guy who blew kamikazes out of the Pacific sky in the waning months of World War II. 

And did I mention he had a way of making youngsters laugh at the most inopportune times?
 

Most importantly, he loved his wife and his children unconditionally. Without any shackles. We mattered to him.

In time, Buck found it acceptable to call Cassius Clay Muhammad Ali and acknowledge that he might be just one of the best boxers to put on gloves. He conceded that Nixon was, in fact, a crook, and was sorry he voted for him in 1960. He even started drinking decaffeinated coffee with cream.

As the calendar pages continued to flip, so did his views on many other things. The world, after all, is not a black-and-white version of Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best and Ward giving the Beaver gentle advice. But real life is a gritty, 3-D Technicolor imperfect experience.

That’s what happened in the spring of 1988, when my Dad was diagnosed with cancer. He fought it, won some skirmishes here and there, and endeavored to spend more quality time with his family, though at that time his kids were scattered from Indianapolis and South Carolina.

We said goodbye to Buck on a late day in November 1990. And as the organist at the funeral home began her final selection before the parson stood up to deliver his remarks I laughed out loud. She was playing the Navy hymn, Anchors Aweigh.

A pretty decent send-off tune for a former swabbie who was born on southern Indiana houseboat and named George Stuteville, though he preferred to be called “Buck.”

He was my Dad. And I wish him a happy Father’s Day.