A holiday in flux

Current Mood: distant

Today is Father's Day, so here's two memories about my dad:

STORY THE FIRST

My dad had some strange friends when I growing up- a motley crew from his hellraising days as a youth.  One guy I don't ever remember actually meeting was a guy my parents referred to as "The Colonel".  If it was at all connected to military service, I certainly never heard a word about it.  Anyway, I always thought that was the coolest nickname and they wouldn't have given it to anybody that wasn't a super badass.  That's all.

SECOND STORY

It's not really hard to figure out where I got my music tastes.  Just about all of my favorite bands - Queen, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Tom Petty, David Bowie, Foreigner, Sweet (to name a few) were the soundtrack of my youth courtesy of my Dad.  He had milk crates full of classic vinyl albums, and I borrowed most of his cassettes to blast from my R2-D2 Walkman and later my car stereo all the way through high school.

Some of my favorite memories are riding around in the car with him and my brother and sister, singing all the harmonies and air-guitaring/drumming/other applicable instruments-ing all the parts to Bohemian Rhapsody or Ballroom Blitz (like that car commercial, but we were like, a million times better).  Or how he'd make a big breakfast almost every Sunday, and crank some tunes to go along with (something I've started doing now that I'm living on my own).

At any rate, at one point I asked him how cool it must have been for him growing up, going to record stores and concerts and playing 8-tracks from his first car... and he told me very somberly that most of his peers thought Queen was really strange and how "gay" it was to like them.  How he had to hide his favorite band from his friends to not be made fun of.

Make no mistake, Freddie Mercury was a very strange man - I won't deny that for a second.  But I suppose there was quite a shift in attitudes by the time I was his age, and I have never worried or cared for a moment what my friends thought of my favorite music.  For that I am grateful, but also a little sad for him having to deal with that growing up.

Anyway, I still listen to those bands a ton, and a lot of times I think of him when I hear certain songs.