When I was 12, my dad called for me to come downstairs, which I did, to find a piglet in a box. Someone was getting rid of it & he couldn't bear the thought of it being hurt. We were both pleased

My mother less so

We raised it with 2 litters of puppies & it thought it was a dog

It piled in with all the puppies are food time & came when you called it. When you scratched its back it would snort happily & then fall over.

Dad got such a kick out of it.

We had so many animals. He could never turn any away.

Dad hated cruelty. So much. He rescued bugs that were drowning in the water barrels. He loathed unfairness. He was a paradoxical revolutionary -- one who wanted to see the system collapse, but for no one to get hurt. He dreamed. He worked his gardens. He smiled.

When I was little, he would tell me stories and scratch my back as I fell asleep. Stories about his childhood. His dad's. Growing up at Camp Polk in WWII, then wartime Sidney, OH. Coming of age in North Carolina.

Shaping the importance of stories for me.

We watched Laurel and Hardy. The Andy Griffith Show. We had lines we'd quote to each other, for decades:
"Goober says hey"
"Hey to Goober"
We watched Gettysburg, Longest Day, Tora, Tora, Tora, Sands of Iwo Jima, Sergeant York, Ken Burns' Civil War

Over and over and over

He always quizzed me on geography. He would tell me how Ohio won the Civil War. He was born in Michigan, raised in North Carolina, but his true love were the rolling fields and blue skies of Ohio. A Wolverine Tarheel Buckeye. A paradox. Like most of his life.

Dad was an idealist. A romantic. He carried beans instead of money - because of the ROI on beans. He never found the community he truly sought - but he found joy in his family. "People should live closer together" he'd always say.

He was right.

He was a flawed man. A human man. A loving man

And he's being buried in the morning

With beans in his pocket

Please raise a glass with me to one of the kindest men I've ever known

I'll see you on up the road, buddy