My dad was a drunk, a staggering lush who alienated every person he knew...

He had such promise. When he was blotto he was intolerable but on those rare occasions when he felt comfortable, he could be charming, funny and productive.

I remember him hitting my mother, having fist fights with his sister, who also was a drunk.

There were times when he was charming, engaging and smart, very smart.

He was a man of dreams but never had the ability to stay on task long enough to reap what he had sown.

There was this eight year period when he stopped drinking. He didn't go to AA. He stayed sober by working his ass off to pay my brothers way to John Carrol University.

He was a modern John Henry, trying to compete against the computers that were taking the skill out of the Tool and Di profession.

He finally got a shot at something big. He won a bid to make molds for aluminum casings for X-ray machines. He underbid and over promise but he worked like a man possessed. The tolerance was tight, less than .02 of a millimeter either way. He had to take the blueprints and then calculate by hand, no affordable calculators back then, what he was going to cut the next day.

He stopped drinking.

But when the company making these X-ray needed more molds to be made, they cut my dad out of the bidding process and so he was defeated.

Soon enough, he started to drink again. About three years later I was living with him. I was drinking hard then. I fooled myself that I wasn't an Alcoholic because I didn't drink to oblivion like my dad did night after night...

I got up one day to go to work and I saw my dad passed out on the floor. This was a crucial time in my life. When I came home that night I saw he was still on the floor. He had had a stroke. well, I drank that weekend and showed up to my job drunk. They sent me home and the next day I signed up for AA.

As soon as my dad recovered enough to go home, he started to drink again.

He died shortly after my wedding two years down the road.

I don't have many fond memories of my father but every now and then I am reminded of how he could be but chose not to be, if that makes any sense.

So happy fathers day to all of you dad's out there who take your role seriously but not too serious. Sometime it's just fine to enjoy being every sons first best friend.