It's Valentine's Day 2011. Dark clouds are scudding low across the Northern California sky. I can see my father in them. He died this morning. He's not sitting on one wearing a white robe and strumming a lyre. No, he's wearing his leather flight jacket. He's tearing through the clouds in his old P-51. He's doing barrel rolls, loop de loops, spins, dives, and stalls. He's having a blast.
He loved flying. It was war he didn't love. After the war he came home, joined the Quakers, and married a German-American girl. Sixty three years later death did them part on Valentine's day.
But what a ride it has been. They raised six kids. Most fathers take their kids out to play. Ours took his wife and kids out to play in the sky. That's right, in the sky. Sure, he built us a sandbox and swing set, but, come on... He showed us how the clouds and the terrain can give away the secrets of the wind. He could find where it rose and fell. He knew where the waves were. He palled around with hawks. Light planes and gliders took us around, over, under, and through the clouds.
"Look, there's our house." It was the one with the shiny roof. He coated it with something reflective to keep it from warming up too much in the summer. He also put up insulating tiles under it to keep us warm in the winter. The snow piled up on our roof showed that it worked. This was in the sixties while the rest of America was binging on energy. Later, in the nineties he built a super efficient house from prefabricated highly insulated panels.
In the seventies he put a computer in his car so he could get direct feedback on how his driving affected his mileage. Now days they call it hyper miling and some new cars have such computers built in. But, the car that I really liked was not at all efficient. In the late sixties he bought a cream colored Jaguar XK-150. It had red leather seats and rolling up to high school in that ride was bliss.