Bear Jerky

Sometimes people forget how grand it is to have parents that are great people. My mother and father are headed up to the wild and wooly Boston coast line to visit Judy, me and the girls. I am excited about seeing both of them but it put me into a mood of thinking about why I adore them. I know, the simply way to answer this is to say that they are my parents so I have to honor them and love them but there has to be more to my feelings then that.

The thing I am most thankful for with my mother is that she did not kill me when I was just a lad. Letting birds loose in the house, putting a HUGE snapping turtle in the tub (we only had one bathroom by the way), letting 100+ crawfish loose in the garage to crawl into little spaces, die and then stink up the whole house, digging up our backyard and stocking a small pond with catfish, bringing home a 5 foot snake I caught..... I think you get the type of kid I was... yet she never killed me. As an adult I am pretty sure she must have thought about it for a split second several times but thankfully she is an even tempered Christian woman.

My father was the toughest man around, at least to my eyes as a child. I never saw him in a fight, I never saw him scream at people, I simply knew that he could whip anyone and anything if he had to. I was positive that when he and I were out climbing mountains that if we ran into a bear that he would not only fight to protect me from the varmint but when it was all over we would be walking back to the camp site eating bear jerky.

This brings me to the value as an adult that I have found with my father. He taught me that you can be tough, a REAL man and not have to go around fighting every fight. I never saw my parents in one of those screaming arguments with each calling the other names. He simply showed me how to be a man, how to treat my wife and how to love my kids...... thanks Dad!!!

By the way Dad, when you get here lets go hiking and try to bring some bear jerky home with us.