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Dad: The Man Who Lied to Save the Planet

Before DAD and After

This book title came to me out of the process of pondering upon concepts for my fourth novel Paradise Bay. I was seeking insights, probing mentally about what I wanted for the novel's father and son relationship, in harmony with notes I had received from my New York editor, the talented Jennifer Enderlin.

The title "DAD, The Man Who Lied To Save The Planet" struck suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere and with such force, I had to chuckle.

"No," I replied to the writer's muse from that ethereal zone, the invisible instructor who sometimes interrupts my fiction making meditations. "No, you can't side-track me from what I am doing," I thought back. "Get up and write it down," the sometimes challenging inner voice charged in return.

I fought the notion to get out of my easy chair where I sat with pen and paper in hand, and go to my computer to type this title into a folder I keep for possible future work. The voice just got stronger and more insistent, and as was the case with my first published novel, The Last Valentine, I knew I had to get up, write the basics of the idea down or I would never get any rest. Four hours later I had an outline and two years later you are reading this.

I wondered as I wrote how and why simple stories from a very ordinary father and son relationship could ever be compelling reading. I knew I had to get it out on paper, but "...for whom and why?" I continued to mentally pose the question as I wrote. Some background may be helpful before you launch into the first chapter, and certainly helps me answer those questions to my satisfaction.

My father was a poor man from the day he was born until the day he died, at least as the way the world looks at wealth and things. He grew up in a generation much venerated now as it slips from us daily. Their parents were born n the 1800's. Their grandparents were born before the steam locomotive and telegraph.

My folks and their peers were given a chance to hold hands with the old generations of America and yet live most of the twentieth century witnessing the development of technologies that boggle the mind when considering where the world was a mere ten decades before. My parent's generation was literally linked to a Victorian age, a bygone era uniquely qualified to pass along fundamental American values to our time.

But they were ordinary. None of them would think they had done or lived extraordinary lives. Almost cookie-cutter in every way, with their simple neighbors and friends who knew the hardness of a world-wide economic disaster so encompassing that history books still refer to it as the "Great Depression," they thought of themselves as anything but remarkable. From their modest way of life, from the age of frontier wisdom that my grandparent's knew, from the simple slowness of life that they began their journeys on, comes a discernment meant for our day of frenetic schedules, and communications at the speed of light. What yesterday may have seemed as ordinary to them, becomes extraordinary to us as we stop, take a deep breath, and go back to a simpler way of looking at life and the world.

I do not suppose that my father, mother, or their generation were the last with moral fiber. I do not suppose that, what Tom Brokaw called "the greatest generation," was the only one to live the simple truths I will pass along to you in this book. Nor do I suppose that parents of my generation, the "baby boomers," or our children who now are becoming parents, do not possess equivalent values, insights, or moral strengths.

But the greatest generation was the last generation holding hands with the age before light, sound, speed of travel, and ease of life became available to every American household. They were taught things in a quintessential American way that mirrors values of the founding families, the great immigrants with a dream, the religious seeking freedom, those who came to the eastern shores and moved west to build this land of ours.

A common wisdom pervaded the culture of the early 20th century that I hope you the reader will recall, enjoy, and find refreshing. I may seem to eulogize my father and his peers, but that is simply a way to draw conclusions from their lifestyle and thought process as we speed along in a more hectic way of life.

What you are about to read comes from the life of my hero father, a simple everyday blue-collar working man, who was never important to the world at large, whose hands moved dirt for a living for most of his adult life; a uncomplicated man who would be embarrassed by all the fuss I am making over him.

To some, the 12 values and virtues I share as handed down to me, may seem new. There are those who may not have had the advantages of a father in the home, a stable family life, a solid love between parents as I experienced. My uncomplicated father would be uneasy by all this, but he also would have put his arms around those needing a Dad, listened, and then shared a pearl or two of common experience from his times in hopes of helping them along somehow on life's tenuous journey. To those I would especially like to share my DAD...The Man Who Lied To Save The Planet.

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