Fathers, Part 12

My father and I manage to see each other once or twice a year now. We’ve discussed that adventure in Biscayne Bay several times over the years, but I think my dad would rather forget about it; it was too embarrassing for him. But it will always remain a fond memory for me.

A few years after that, I began writing a column for the Observer-Reporter in which I frequently shared my experiences in raising our children. For 15 years, my kids had their personal lives exposed in the newspaper. Some of those columns were reproduced on this blog in the story, “Dreams of My Children,” which can be accessed in this blog’s archives.

Neither of my children chose to follow me into journalism. When they were young, I worked nights and long hours and saw them not nearly enough. When they saw me, I was often weighed down with the frustrations of my job, harried by angry readers, and they wanted no part of that. They chose, instead, to emulate their mother, an artist of considerable talent. (My children share deep roots in this area with their mother, whose family – pioneer Scots-Irish and Dutch – arrived her in the late 1ate 18th century.) They would develop their own talent and become artists themselves. Like all the other Burroughs children before them going back to the 18th century, they chose a different path than their father.

Fatherhood was a frequent theme of those old columns in the 1980s and 1990s. I’ll share a couple of them with you this week. Tomorrow’s installment first ran in 1990 under the headline, “It took 25 years, but Dad’s finally getting his revenge.”