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Health & Fitness

Old School Dad

About once a month, my dad sends me an envelope full of clippings from the local newspapers in Hawaii. This month he also sent me a VHS tape with a sticky note attached that said, “We think you will enjoy this movie.” It just so happens that I had bought a VHS player couple of months ago to convert ancient videos of the kids and the family to digital format. My dad did not know this but assumed I still owned a VCR. You might think he’s just stuck in the eighties, but the fact is, I really like that he sends me handwritten letters via the postal service and still records things on VHS.

In the age of high-speed electronic everything, opening up the mailbox and finding a personal letter is truly gratifying. My dad never writes long letters. Ironically, I think he would have mastered Twitter with his brief notes, “Hi Kos, Not much happening around here. All’s well. Hope you guys are too. Dad.” The clippings are typically opinion pieces about local politics or what’s happening in Hawaii, and sometimes they might be a little gem like the one from the Honolulu Star Bulletin, December 28, 2003:

Wild pig swims ashore and is killed by police

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A police officer shot and killed a wild boar Saturday after it rampaged through an Ewa Beach neighborhood, chasing children and other residents.

Pupu Street resident Joe Gaynor said he saw the animal swimming about 100 yards offshore about 9 a.m. and thought at first that it was a monk seal. He said he and neighbors went into the water with their surfboards and rope to try to catch the pig. 

"He was swimming fast," Gaynor said. "He was pretty aggressive. He did go after one of the surfers." 

Gaynor said the boar came up on the rocks and ran through the neighborhood before running under a home on Papipi Street. Two men who chased the boar under the house claimed the 200-pound animal, saying they planned to cook it for dinner.

A Hawaiian Humane Society official said at the scene that the boar was treated humanely because it didn't suffer.

Just where was the pig swimming from? I'd like to know. I was unable to locate the the follow-up piece where the police were called to an Ewa Beach address to mediate a dispute over who actually owned the dead pig.

Whenever my dad and I talk on the phone, I always have the clippings nearby. For two guys who are apt to say less than more and are awkward at stoking up conversation, the clippings always prove good tinder.

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My dad is old school in almost every way. When he told me last year that he finally had cable TV installed, I about fell off my chair. This is the guy who had to be convinced some years ago that the push button telephone I was giving him was just as good as the rotary dial phone he had for the previous twenty years. He’s not a complete Luddite, though. He was an early consumer of the Amana microwave oven, and the first on the block to get a Sony Betamax recorder. The microwave defrosted just about everything that came out of the freezer for ten years until my mom took a course on microwave cooking. Of course, it took some years to convince Dad that the Betamax format was essentially dead and that if he wanted to keep recording TV programs, he might consider a VHS machine. Yup, that was quite some time ago.

I think because of him I love to read newspapers--in paper form--newsprint smudges and all. I also have a hard time giving up on something that’s in good working order for something marginally better. I’m not a neo-Luddite. I admire new technology and gadgetry, but I don’t think most of it is worth all the hype. I mean, shouldn't we have flying cars like the Jetsons by now? I admire old cars too, not antiques necessarily, but older cars that are still working and on the road as they were designed to do. My dad typically keeps his cars running until the salty Hawaiian air and gravity force him to go shopping. Part of it is getting his money’s worth. He’s a frugal guy and never been rich, but the greater satisfaction is keeping things working even if they are “obsolete” by current standards. I remember the first time I cleaned and repacked the wheel bearings of my Chevelle under his tutelage. I wish I could have showed everybody what I had learned to do, but we sat in the shade and drank a couple of beers instead.    

My dad turns 85 next month, and I look forward to the news clips and the note of reassurance that all is well.  

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