*%$#* my dad said.
Yeah, William Shatner has a new show and he’s a pain in the *$% father who says messed up &!)* But I think we all have fathers with ridiculous ideas.
My dad, I Granger McDaniel, was a genius, a visionary, a war hero, but he said some *^@% up stuff.
I remember when I was a little girl, sitting at the table with my mom, dad and brothers. I started picking at my food, pushing the peas under the bread, because I was full and didn’t want to eat anymore. My mother told me I had to eat the rest of my dinner and Dad interrupted her , “Don’t make the girls clean their plates, the fat ones are hard to get married off”. Serisoulsy…he sadi that out loud.
When I was four, I sat on his lap, played with his massive mustache and told him an epic story about bears and trolls and the fairies who lived in my underwear drawer. He laughed, shook his head and said, “Little girls, as soon as they can open their eyes they can flirt, as soon as they can open their mouths they can lie”. This was during the sixties when sexism was pretty white bread.
I Granger said some other absurd and brilliant things too, but maybe the two most important were a lot easier to follow. My two favorites were, “On any given day, anything can happen”. Think about it. That one is as right as rain. Miricles do happen, unbeatable teams loose, sometimes losers and long shots win. Anything is possible on any given day.
And finally, he would sit on the edge of my bed every night and remind me, “When your imagination accepts it as reality, it will inevitably become the truth”. For crazy people and little girls that’s a power mantra. It makes you brave no matter how enormous the enemy it allows you to dream and believe the best can and will happen. That phrase allowed me to keep faith and hope alive, no matter how disasterous the situation. Obviously, those are re-phrased biblical ideas. My father wanted me to believe, to have faith and to see that everything is possible.
I hang on to my father’s words, all of them, the good and the bad, and too this day, 
I never ever clean my plate.
It’s a funny thing, my dad picked up only the first part of one of those lines… ““Little girls, as soon as they can open their eyes they can flirt.” I’ve never heard the second part before, but it does fill out the phrase.
Oh yeah, and my dad TOTALLY says, umm, *%$#, about fat girls.
Granger was no doubt from an individual mold. A likable one too. It seems that too many men now days are not really men, they are just male drones not willing to take a dare, say how they really feel, or cut their own path. They follow well worn trails. They are mired in a Wonderbread suburban world where everything is beige, traditions are fading, and children can’t look back and have remembrances like yours Dianna.
It is people like your Dad that I seek out and make time to be with. I remember a contractor building one of our shopping centers having to resolve a Granger design issue or two. He said he would go to Grager’s office and bring up the issue, whereupon Granger would grab a couple glasses, a bottle and in a couple hours the contractor said he would leave loving every minute of the visit but realizing they had never once broached the problem at hand. You have to hand it to him – that is SOME finesse! And for that very reason I have always had a bar in my office. As you walk in the entry the bar is the first thing you see with all the bottles of brown liquor, the cut crystal double old fashioned glasses with thick bottoms, and the big alligator serving tray with silver handles. I didn’t know him well, but I knew him well enough! And honestly Dianna, a few times a year when I see that bar I think of him and how he was his own man. Your stories of his courting days make him all the more real and his spirit more alive in my office bar.
I don’t recall my father with any originals but he always adapted things to fit his situation like, “You can lead a whore to Vassar but you can’t make her think.” and my favorite, “If there is a wallet there is a way.” He was a character too, wild man or what ever. He always “bought the ticket” but tried to avoid the limelight like when he was about the set fire to the Russian weapons warehouse in the Bahamas during the Bay of Pigs, the public scares he caused from the rooftop of our families place on 5th Ave in Manhattan, the taunting he did to the police chief in Boca in the 50’s, ad nauseum. At his funeral the pastor said he admired my Fathers “..character and deeply devoted appreciation and dedication to bad beer, fine art and truly fast cars.” God love our Fathers and hope our children will have stories to tell.
Hey, my mom went to Vassar.
The Vassar comment is conditional and not literal. Even if someone were to take it literally it only applies to a very narrow scope of girls, of which, your Mother was certainly not a member because of her rearing, intelligence and sophistication. She was cool too.
I’ll be in S. Dakota and Wyoming hunting for the next week – take care and take care of Sandor – poor guy!