Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

He had no parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, or other relatives; he had no friends; he had no relationships— he was just the father in our family. Maybe people who are close to you – such as your own father – aren't supposed to maintain a mystique, but Dad did.

Dad was always immune to poison ivy, but he said he was pulling it out with his bare hands one day, and a guy said "I used to be able to do that, and then one day..."

Dad wore gloves from then on.

Dad said he was one of the nicest members of the club, and was upset that he'd offended this four-year-old child:

"I don't celebrate Christmas! Why is everyone always wishing me a Merry Christmas?!"

Jakob: Chickens are stupid.
Mom: Your father had a pet chicken. He was fond of that chicken. He said they're not as stupid as you think they are.

[Now I remember Dad talking about this also-- come when it was called, follow him around and all.]

Mom told us this story.

Mom and Dad, young, camping the first time with a new tent (a big frame canvas one that Jakob, Dan, and I remember well from when we were young and the tent was old).

Mom eventually figured out how to get the tent set up.

Not long after, three attractive young women came into the next campsite. They could only see Dad, and came over and asked:

"Can you help us with our tent?"

Dad replied:

"No, but she can."

Pointing his thumb toward Mom in the tent.

They were very disappointed.

Dad said there were Indians he was with out West – and I'm totally blanking on where, but I want to say Washington State – who were the funniest people he ever knew.

He also said they asked if he was an Indian, because he sure was dark enough and there was a tribe with blue eyes somewhere around.

They would parody, well, white culture so well it left my Dad in stitches:

Dad always said he thought that human beings split from apes way back, farther back in time than scientists reported it when such estimates first made it into the public.

And indeed, every few years in my memory while Dad was alive, new evidence pushed the evolutionary divergence farther back.

Here we go again.

A professor I knew, I was walking with him on campus. He told me that I was very lucky.

I didn't know what he was talking about. He was surrounded by learning, knowledge, teaching.

You are free, he said. You can say what you want.

Dad told me he had a great respect for educated people, not having an education himself.

It took me a long time to realize, to understand, that those with a college education are not smarter than me, usually did not know more than me.

He still said it as if he hoped I would tell him that he was right in the first place, that there was a there there.

He usually followed this by talking about how lucky he was to have had so many intelligent people in his life to educate him, frequently women.