Dave's Fiction Warehouse

I never get too maudlin around Father’s Day. My own dad died when I was 9 years old and I have only a few memories of him. Mom later married a rancher named Glenn P. Wood. We all knew him as him Pat. He died yesterday at the age of 88. I do have a lot of memories of Pat, so maybe this year I’ll make an exception.  I never called him Dad. Neither he nor I would have been comfortable with it. But looking back, the way you do when somebody you’ve known all your life passes on, I guess he was pretty close to that. For a few years there, he was the guy who made the rules, the one who taught me things, some of which I didn’t care to learn. Mostly how to work, the importance of getting the difficult chores done whether you felt like it or not.  I remember when I first met him. Mom was a real estate agent then, and she’d brought me with her to this ranch she had listed up near Thompson River. When we got there a thunderstorm had just knocked the power out. My first glimpse of Pat’s fa...