Lots of dads think football is important. And cars. And showing off your money. But my dad didn’t care about any of those things. What he did care about was nature. And learning. And for some reason in 1983 he cared very much about the four-plank lapstrake dory. So he started building one.
In autumn of my freshman year, my parents went crazy and moved to Alaska, leaving the unfinished dory in my granddad’s garage. For sixteen years it waited there, next to the tomato patch, while Granddad took up tango dancing and cut down the oak tree that was planted the day I was born.
But in conversations with my own father, the dream of finishing the dory was always looming. At some point Dad started calling it my dory, and that’s when he got me hooked.
In autumn of my freshman year, my parents went crazy and moved to Alaska, leaving the unfinished dory in my granddad’s garage. For sixteen years it waited there, next to the tomato patch, while Granddad took up tango dancing and cut down the oak tree that was planted the day I was born.
But in conversations with my own father, the dream of finishing the dory was always looming. At some point Dad started calling it my dory, and that’s when he got me hooked.
