He is everything a stereotypical Irish grandfather should be. He's the perfect balance of quietly witty, and frighteningly stern. He watches college football, and listens to baseball on the radio. One of my fondest memories of him was when I was 15, and he told me while at a family party that I'd really filled out, then followed the comment immediately with, "Like, in your face.".
The Silver Fox is a beer drinker, but it seems like every time we go to visit him, we bring him a bottle of wine. Because that's what an 85-year-old man needs, a bottle of wine to go with his Sam Adams. Not being much of a wine drinker, he has developed his own way of determining how good a bottle of gift-wine is. A few minutes after we arrive, TSF takes the wine upstairs where I can only imagine he has a giant wine-related reference book, because there is no way he uses the internet (its a fad), and looks up the MSRP of that particular bottle of wine. How much he will enjoy his glass of wine is determined by the results of this research. Its an art.
And so with that, let us raise our glasses of $1.33 beers to our fathers. May they remain in our lives so long that they achieve awkward cult-like followings.
*I would have written a post about my own father, but he knows how to use the internet, and therefore, may someday read this -- I love you, daddy!
