Dear People with Fathers,
Here is a charming book, that I hope you already know and love: Life with Father, by Clarence Day, Jr. It makes a fine gift for Dads, if you have a good bookshop handy. If you are short on spondulicks, you might just read it aloud to dear old Pater, and you can do that right here. I offer you an excerpt from the first chapter:
I wanted to be a cowboy, I told Father on the way home. He chuckled and said no I didn't. He said I might as well be a tramp.
I wondered if I'd better tell him that this idea, too, had occurred to me, no further back than that very morning. I decided that upon the whole it mightn't be a good day to mention it, just after Father had taken me to lunch at Delmonico's. I did venture to ask him, however, what was the matter with cowboys.
Father briefly explained that their lives, their food, and their sleeping accommodations were outlandish and "slummy." They lived in the wilds, he informed me, and they had practically gone wild themselves. "Put your cap on straight," he added. "I am trying to bring you up to be a civilized man."
I adjusted my cap and walked on, thinking over this future. The more I thought about it, the less I wanted to be a civilized man. After all, I had had a very light lunch, and I was tired and hungry. What with fingernails and improving books and dancing school, and sermons on Sundays, the few chocolate éclairs that a civilized man got to eat were not worth it.
One reason I am convinced that your father will like this book is that your father had a father, too, and he will recognize and appreciate the experience of being a son, a condition he has probably had to endure along with his life as father.
