My Old Man

My Dad lives by the sea, but he hasn’t always lived by the water. He grew up in Milford, MA in the fifties. He has a younger brother and a younger sister. He said his mom was aways home to raise the kids. They lived in a duplex.       During the summer, his family would spend a week at Hampton Beach in New Hampshire. My dad got to play in the arcade, and drink root beer. He has fond memories of that time. Maybe that’s why he wanted to live by the beach.       My Dad makes a mean roast chicken. He always follows the same recipe, and it’s always moist because he takes out and bastes it every 30 minutes. During the pandemic, my dad taught me how to cook a Thanksgiving turkey by myself.   He eats the same kinds of meals for lunch and dinner every day: chicken sandwiches, bologna sandwiches, ham sandwiches, tuna sandwiches, cereal, crackers and cheese, pasta with marinara sauce, fried spam, pizza, or chicken wings, for example.       My Dad has a lot of stuff lying around the house, but it’s all stuff he needs. He lives alone, so it doesn’t have to be tidy. There are history books in the TV stand and stacked beneath the table he keeps his 2nd laptop on. One of the benefits of having 2 laptops on two separate tables is that he can get up during the day and physically move to the other table for some exercise. Upstairs, he keeps lots of spare towels and bedsheets in the closet.       My Dad likes to go for a walk every morning, if it doesn’t rain. He wakes up around 4 in the morning. Sometimes he sleeps in until 5 or 6. Then he drinks coffee and reads the news online. Around 10am, he has lunch and then takes a nap. Except on Sundays, which is church day. He spends much of the morning and afternoon taking surveys on Amazon mTurk or Cloud Research. He makes anywhere from .25c to a few dollars per survey, sometimes more.   Some days he goes to the store for more Lays chips or Oreo thins. In the Summer, if it’s not raining, he goes outside to stain the deck and to pull weeds in the backyard. He is a very cautious person, and he is comfortable staying at home most of the time.   My Dad has been married 3 times, but he’s currently single. He had two children with his first wife. He married her because they got pregnant with his first son, and 3 years later came his second son. He worked at Digital Equipment Corporation for 24 years. In his forties, he married my Mom. In his 60’s, he married his third wife. He will be turning 80 this year.       I call my Dad almost every day, sometimes multiple times per day. As a kid, I saw him every week or two. Nowadays, I see him every month or so. When I visit, we like to lay on the 2 couches that face each other in the living room and watch movies. He showed me all kinds of movies, like Rocky, Black Hawk Down, Behind Enemy Lines, The Deer Hunter, and more. He is very supportive of me, but he doesn’t like when I travel. He’s worried that it is too dangerous, and something bad will happen to me. He is also an Air Force veteran. I am very proud to call him my father.