Father's day, summer and stories told to a daughter

The most memorable images that I have of my father include summer days, good food, and hearty laughter. Yet, not all my memories of my Dad are happy. There are always unpleasant memories that want to mix themselves up with the good ones. That is just the way minds work. You are enjoying a great memory, and the next thing you know, an unpleasant memory comes slithering in the backdoor, trying to take over your mind. Just like the serpent does in the Adam and Eve story in the bible.  In the garden, everything was rolling along great. Then suddenly in slithered the serpent, and with him, chaos and evil.  Like the best memories that recycle back through your mind,  
God recycled His goodness, love, and triumph over evil again into this world. 

Like all of us, my Dad was human. 

Dad lost his temper. Dad was the one who passed out the whippings with his belt when he thought we deserved it. Although there was always a lot of discussion between us on whether I really deserved the whooping and I would desperately try to convince Dad that one of my two brothers committed the belt worthy infraction. 
In the end, love and goodness always recycled back in. Truth prevailed, and justice was served with the compassionate heart of a loving father.

 In the summer, when we returned home from a full day at the beach, we would have an outside dinner. Most people would call this a cookout. Our meal would consist of corn on the cob, California hamburgers, and my mother's famous potato salad. There are two things that I didn't understand at these meals. The first thing was that I didn't know if my mother's Potato salad was genuinely famous, but my father talked about it as if it was the best, world-renowned potato salad and why did we eat California Hamburgers if we lived in New Jersey? Those were my mysteries of life at that time.

My father talked about a lot of things. Dad talked about his family, his work, the Vietnam War, and lots of other things that didn't mean much to me because I was young. I would sit at the table with my two brothers and my mother as we listened to my father tell stories about a magical dog named Longfellow.  In my mind, I pictured Longfellow as a little black and brown dachshund with a wagging tail.  That pup that sprung up from my father's imagination loved to eat the cobs from the corn that was left over after my family had nibbled all of the kernels of sweet Jersey corn off of the cobs.      Even at the age of 18, I was still fascinated with my father's silly stories.   Finally, in the last story, my father told me about sweet Longfellow, the long brown and black dog that ate corn cobs died.  The little dog tragically Choked on a corncob.  At some point, my father's stories ended, and so did the laughter at the table. Maybe my father thought that at eighteen years old, I had outgrown his stories about Longfellow.  Sitting at my desk this father's day, I wish I could hear just one more Longfellow story. So love could recycle back. I would listen carefully to everything my father talked about if I could. Miss you, Dad.