All Plaidout

Someone once told me there’s no one better suited to do what he does than Jeff. Mr. Thrope is a kind of guru in the world of outdoor clothing. He doesn’t get super technical when talking about it, and that’s what makes his work so wonderfully good and approachable. But to hear him tell it, he wasn’t coaxed into a life in the wild in the way I was. My father often admits he might have been a park ranger in another life. I don’t know that Jeff’s dad would say the same.

The few times we’ve hung out Jeff’s been easy as pie to get along with, suuuuper chill, and just doin’ his thing. Sounds like a chip off the old block to me.

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 It would make sense that because I write about camping and work in the outdoor industry my father would have taught me all there is to know about the mountains and the woods. While he’s just about the smartest guy I know, the Great Outdoors was not something at which he excelled while growing up in New York City. Once, he did take me to Kettle Moraine in Wisconsin, where we made quesadillas on an old Coleman stove, then read in our tent for a few hours before falling asleep. It wasn’t exactly Survival 101, but in the years to follow, my parents sent me to three years of summer camp in Northern Minnesota, a month long NOLS trip in British Columbia, and eventually, four years of college in Colorado. So while David Myron Thrope (MYRON!) is not the guy who taught me the Latin names of native wildflowers, he was very much responsible for all my outdoor education. And for those opportunities, I will be forever grateful.

I suppose it’s not customary to start off a column called “Things My Father Taught Me” with an explanation of what he didn’t teach me, though knowing my father, I’m sure he spent the first paragraph laughing. I could spend hours-upon-hours writing about things that I’ve learned from him — Taking major life risks. He moved to Tokyo while in high school and spent most of his adult life living there. Working your ass off to provide for your family. There are few days that go by where I’m not reminded about how fortunate I was growing up. And how to fall asleep every time you sit down in a chair to read. I’m waiting to master this skill as I’m not sure it would be very useful on a New York City subway.

The most important thing he’s taught me couldn’t be simpler. He and my mom would do anything for their family and friends and really, what’s more important than that? Every time I’m with my dad – whether it’s watching him eat a big turkey leg on Thanksgiving, roaming the aisles of The Strand bookstore whenever he’s in New York (he has yet to fall asleep there) or treating my friends and I to cold beers, I’m constantly reminded of the person who inspires and challenges me to be my best self. His kindness, his generosity, his intelligence, his warmth all come naturally, without effort, without hesitation, without compromise. And there’s no better lesson than to sit back and watch that type of person just do their thing….

I guess it’s only fitting that the most important thing you learn from someone can be something that they didn’t set out to teach you.

Happy Father’s Day, Dude.

- Jeff Thrope

I’d just apologized for something. Again. I have a bad habit of using the word “sorry” when what I really mean to say is, “I let you down” or “that wasn’t my best” or “give me another shot. I can do it better.”

As Kiser’s pointing this out, I’m thinking about this guy, this man, this friend of mine, with a life, with passions similar to my own. We both enjoy elements of the game of baseball. We are both incredibly well-versed in our opinions of good design. Within each of us lives a poet and orator, begging to be let out every once in a while. And we are both students of history.

Then, I recall some off-handed remark he made about his mom, and another tale he once told me of his father, and I’m piecing it together. This is a guy who’s heard the words “I’m sorry” a time or two in his life. In his history there’s gotta be a well-worn path around those words. I wish I could snatch them back and hold them. But there they are. And he knows what I mean, probably better than I know what I mean.

If you’ve ever spoken with him, you know Michael Kiser is brilliant. He offers perspective on a myriad of subjects, and when he does, it feels polished, spot on, even factual. Where I’m uncouth, he’s Mr. Smooth. There’s that orator for you. An idea man if ever there was one, with his blog Good Beer Hunting and moreover with the design and innovation work he’s done for companies that make everything from beer to cell phones, Michael Kiser is unmatched in this world.

Imagine that. Now, imagine this. As friend, and as what I know him to be as a husband, he is even better.

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My father taught me about profound absence, mostly. And that has made all the difference.

My parents divorced before I turned one. I had no memories.

He was in the Air Force, stationed in Las Vegas. He met my mother when he was about twenty, and I was born shortly thereafter in a small Airstream trailer on the north side of Warren, Pennsylvania near the Allegheny National Forest. He was an alcoholic. My mother was a waitress. They split, and she moved back home to the east side of the state where she continued working as a waitress. For years, all I had was this photo of him in full uniform. I’m not sure my mother even saw him in full dress.

He returned home after an honorable discharge. He got drunk at a picnic in the desert and fell off a cliff. A metal plate was put in his head and pins in his knees. The first time he picked me up, sitting on my grandmother’s couch, I’m told I swung a baby rattle at his forehead and nearly killed him. He’s worked mostly odd jobs since then.

About the time I turned six, I would spend a couple weeks each summer at my grandmother’s house so that I could see my aunts, uncles, and cousins on my father’s side. It was a beautiful old house at the top of the hill in town. When it rains and it’s especially muggy, I can still smell this house. My grandfather was there, alive and well, but he was either sleeping on the couch with the TV blaring, or he was at the hardware store he owned at the bottom of the hill. For all intents and purposes, this was my grandmother’s house.

One of these summers, she sat across from me at the breakfast table smoking a Virginia Slim and told me “your dad’s coming by to see you today.” I had no concept of what this could mean. It would be the first time I’d see him in the flesh since I was an infant. I knew he existed as an idea. But that was the first time he existed as a person with an impending arrival. A cloud of smoke hung around us both, and I didn’t respond.

He came in the front door, backlit by the summer sun and entered the living room where I sat watching cartoons with Spanky, my grandmother’s beagle. I don’t remember looking him in the eye, not even once. A couple of ruffles to my hair, maybe a question about how my mother was doing, there wasn’t much to it. It went on like this each year after that. He’d visit me once or twice while at grandma’s, ask me about my mom, and then I’d go on playing with toys, watching TV, or playing with the dog out back.

But when I turned fifteen, an age of consent for children of divorce, he posed a serious question.

“Do you want to come live with me?” He pitched me on freedom, an entirely refurbished and furnished attic all to myself, a TV and video games, some lawns I could mow to make some “walking around money.”

“And I’ll teach you to drive,” he said. He almost got me with the driving.

It’s a strange thing to grow up without a father. Two weeks out of the year, a man tried to convince me otherwise. But for the rest of my life, I found no reflection of myself in the world. My mother gave me everything she could muster as a single parent. More than most can. But when a young man starts to look at his own hands and question his origins — when he looks in the mirror and wonders “Why is this the way I am?” — an incredible feeling of being alone in the world sets in. You don’t belong to anyone. No one is responsible for you. In the end, I walked away from freedom and prizes and stayed with my mother.

But genetics ignore domestic situations.

I was a pitcher in Little League. I was a monstrous pitcher in Little League. I once struck out 18 batters in a single six-inning game, and I don’t care how proud that sounds. But despite my dominance, teams would pick on me, taunting me with the chant of “Smiley Kiser.” See, every time I’d reach back and grip a fastball, my entire face would form into a grimace that looks as menacing as it did cartoonish. It was uncontrollable. It was a tic. But it was so much more than a tic. During one of my summers, spending time with my dad at his own home for the first time (a block away from my grandmother’s), we were crushing pop cans for recycling. He was a part-time janitor that summer, and he’d take bag after bag and trade them in for the cost of scrap metal by the pound. But first, he’d crush them. “Here’s how you do it,” he said, and he loaded the lever with an empty can of Orange Crush. As his hand gripped the lever and he prepared to crush the can, his face transformed into what had previously only been a fiction in my mind. He was Smiley Kiser. He was the original Smiley Kiser. A strange feeling of unending camaraderie came over me in that moment, and it lasted throughout the afternoon. I crushed four bags of cans and I can still smell the aluminum and syrupy sugar coating my hands.

From that moment on, I had no problem looking my father in the eye. Though increasingly he had trouble looking into mine. I was a teenager now, a good foot taller than him, and I had spent most of my life trying to understand my place in the world. Not my purpose like most everyone does, but my actual, and first place. I had learned that genetics are a powerful force in the world. But that they are also only that, a force. Where one directs what he is given will determine the man. And despite piecing together a thousand tiny composites of my friends’ fathers, my uncles, my teachers and my coaches, in the end, I belonged to no one, and no one belonged to me. Father or not, every man eventually learns that his life is up to him. I just had to learn it earlier than most.

- Michael Kiser

Kindness. Mr. Matt Springer has it in spades. A deep baritone. Soft-spoken. Well-spoken. Even-keeled.

Matt Springer is a good friend. Matt is one-fourth Made Right Here. He’s the one moving the meter on the little TV Pilot we put together with Joe Gannon and Rick Page. He’s father to two beautiful children and husband to an even more beautiful wife, Greta. They’re entirely responsible for turning Nashville into my home-away-from-home. As Joe would say, Matt’s my “homeboy.” He’s fast to make everybody feel comfortable and at home, which is great when things are good, even better when they aren’t, like when tensions arise in meetings.

It was so hot in the cramped corner of Architectural Antiques in Minneapolis, Minnesota that Bruce had removed his shoes. This was where Matt’s dad, Bruce Springer, hovered over an electric griddle flipping pancakes for unsuspecting passersby.

“Hot in here, isn’t Bruce?” I would ask him in roughly thirty minute intervals.

“Woo!” He’d reply every time.

He’d smile and laugh and flip a pancake.

A couple years ago, Joe and I teamed up with Matt’s parents, Bruce and Judy, for the debut of Buckshot Sonny’s at the menswear market known as Northern Grade. In their hometown of Cashton, Wisconsin, they run a pancake company called, appropriately The Great American Pancake Company. Someone, probably Joe, suggested they join us at the market, and I’m so glad they did. They killed it and made the debut of our little shop incredibly special. And it’s thanks to them that today we sell an exclusively made buckwheat pancake mix on the site.

Of this year’s crop of submissions, Bruce may be the only of my friends’ fathers I have met. I enjoy the opportunities I get on the phone with Mr. Springer. He’s an impassioned speaker, his son’s biggest supporter, and he has a businessman’s brain: quick with facts and figures on his beloved pancake products.

I’m so thankful for people like the Springers. And I’m happy Matt took time to share the story of his father, Bruce.

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My father was raised throughout the Midwest. He is the middle child of three boys born to a traveling pastor.

Once old enough, he hitchhiked to California. Not to answer the call of the Beach Boys, he was just getting far away.

He landed a job at Bullock’s department store in Southern California, where he worked in the men’s department. Naturally, he had to look his best. With heavy discounts on clothing, his wardrobe expanded. He still talks about Oleg Cassini and Hickey Freeman suiting to this day. “Hickey Freeman suits for $300. As good as you could get off the rack then.” He wore suits into his early forties. Business classics, nothing out of the ordinary for the times. On the weekends it was polo shirts, jeans and Nocona cowboy boots. He was never afraid of color. Lavenders, pinks and teals. My mother loved it. I’d often get harassed if I happened to wear something short of a Cosby sweater.

He got a perm in the late 70s. I’m talking Richard Simmons. He didn’t care what you think.

On family roadtrips, he’d talk to truckers on the CB trying the learn the whereabouts of “smokies.” His handle was “The Preacher’s Kid.”

He taught me about clean shaves and rubbers. To keep his Florsheim’s unharmed by the Minnesota winters, my father wore black stretchable rubber overshoes. Totes or galoshes to some, rubbers to him. “My dad wears rubbers to work,” I’d tell the rest of my classmates at Royal Oaks elementary. An upperclassman told me what rubbers were and even though I didn’t understand, I’m pretty sure that was the last time I called them rubbers in public. He took great care for his shoes even when it wasn’t cold and slushy. He loved a good shoe shine and his pairs were regularly buffed out. Whether it was his kit at home or airport stands during his travels, he kept them in tip top. “If you want your things to last, you have to take care of them,” I remember him telling me once.

I didn’t have blonde hair, but my peach fuzz was almost the same color as my face in junior high. I looked like Rik Smits, minus the mullet. So my father took his 7th grade son into the master bath and taught him how to shave. Nice and easy with a Gillette Atra and The Hot One shaving foam (it heated up as you applied it to your face.) I didn’t have single nick that first time.

My father has a great sense of humor, and he is a marvelous smart ass. He taught me how to cook with rooster sauce before the rest of America knew what sriracha was. And he taught me to never be afraid to take risks and that hard work always pays off.

If I can be half the father to my kids, I’ll count that as a win.

- Matt Springer

I first became aware of his writing in 2008, when he was blogging from the campaign trail on something called Stumper for Newsweek. Then, I learned he runs this incredibly involved and well-honed design and music tumblr, Covenger + Kester. Though we’ve only run into one another a handful of times, and each encounter has been incredibly brief, Andrew Romano has always taken time to “catch up.” Though he’s made his living as a professional journalist, and I’m just a hack blogger, he treats me as his equal. Perhaps, it’s behavior he picked from his father.

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I can’t say I ever received much in the way of fatherly advice. Certainly not from my father.

No immortal words of wisdom. No rules for his firstborn son. No sartorial lessons, no shaving tutorials, no manly how-to’s of any kind, really, as far as I can recall.

And yet somehow he’s made me who I am.

John Romano was born in North Brunswick, N.J. in 1948. His childhood skirted the edges of Sopranoland. His grandparents emigrated from Sicily and Calabria; his grandfather Antonio labored in construction, then started his own lumber yard, allegedly because the guys with “connections” were crowding him out and getting all the contracts.

Later, my dad’s dad Vincent took over the family business and ran it with his two brothers. He was a major in the Army Air Forces during World War II. He was a good father but he was also distant. Instead of attending his sons’ track meets he would rebuild Model Ts or breed guppies in the basement. That sort of thing. He was not particularly in touch with his feelings, except maybe his temper.

In some ways my dad turned out like his dad. They share a short fuse and a basic estrangement from their own emotions. But long ago my dad decided—consciously or unconsciously—not to be a detached authority figure, and he never has been. Quite the opposite. We’ve always behaved more like brothers than like father and son.

For as long as I can remember my dad has treated me like a person, an equal—his junior, maybe, but only slightly. His enthusiasms became mine. We took guitar lessons from the same guy, one after the other. We’d pass issues of Road & Track back and forth. Down the Jersey shore, he would go longboarding. I would go bodyboarding.

Over time, our roles reversed somewhat. Most days I wear Alden Indy boots and Brooks Brothers oxford shirts. Now my dad does too. Before my sister’s wedding he asked me—obliquely but unmistakably—to pick out his outfit, and I obliged.

We bicker, of course. My dad usually has a pristine Leica film camera stashed away somewhere. I always ask to use it; he always refuses. He once gave me a 1960s Seiko wristwatch, then forgot it was a gift and started demanding it back. (Eventually he just bought another on eBay. And another.) I “borrow” his books and prints—an Edward Curtis photogravure, a Bill Brandt monograph—and hope he won’t notice. He always does.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way. Because even though I may not have gotten a lot of advice growing up, I think I got something better in the bargain. I got my father’s respect, and in turn I learned to respect myself. I saw my dad doing something cool—playing a Fender, riding a motorcycle—and I never doubted that I could do the same. I saw my dad being a good man—working in special education for 30 years, attending every single one of my soccer games—and I knew that I could be a good man too.

I didn’t need a tutorial. I just had to be like him.

I’m still trying.

Sean and I work together. I sit in a division of the office lovingly referred to as “Callahan’s Corner.” I can’t tell you just how happy it makes me to come into work every morning knowing I’m a member of Callahan’s Corner. Sean does that to people. I no sooner started, and Sean made me feel like family.

We are both from Saint Louis. Sean went to my rival high school, the same high school as my younger brother. If you’re unfamiliar with Saint Louis, know one thing: the cliché is true. Where you went to high school is truly, unbelievably important. Almost instantly, it was as though I was sharing a room with my brother again: I could feel Sean rolling his eyes behind me, and occasionally, I could hear a grumble of heckling from behind Sean’s glass door. I loved it. Reminded me of home. It felt like I was back in the Steak ‘n Shake parking lot after a game, listening to The Urge’s “It’s Gettin’ Hectic.”

As the redbirds made a playoff run last fall, Sean and I first bonded over Cardinals baseball. On the couches in front of the flat screen in the office’s main entrance, while shoveling burritos and sucking back an ice cold Budweiser, I came to know this guy, this funny, loud, passionate guy.

And boy, is he passionate. Whether it’s the jam fest of Phish, The Black Crowes, and AC/DC which will start to emanate from his office like clockwork one hour before quittin’ time, or a lengthy discussion on the color of a beer bottle, he’ll let his passions be known, and you can’t help it if you appreciate it.

It wasn’t until earlier this year that I received a more well-rounded understanding of the guy. For a couple months, as much as he tried to leave the personal strife at home, Callahan’s Corner became a more somber place, as Sean’s dad was losing his battle with cancer. Unbeknownst to Sean, my uncle wasn’t doing well either. He was the first of my parents’ ten siblings to die. He passed at just about the same time as Sean’s dad. I didn’t say anything, at least not at first, but following Sean’s lead, I was made more comfortable in dealing with my loss — however differently as it was my uncle and not my father. When we finally commiserated, Sean shared the eulogy for his father with me, and he gave me permission to share a portion of it with you here.

It’s a time I won’t soon forget, and Sean’s a guy I’ll never forget. A great guy, a passionate guy, and zip code be damned, make no mistake that nasally accent and that bright red ball cap are two solid indications, he’s a Saint Louisan, through and through.

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John Callahan. John Joseph. Johnny. Son. Brother. Uncle. Cadet. Teammate. Coach. JC. Jumpin. Marathoner. Paw-paw. Dad. Husband. I write this on behalf of my mother Joanne, his wife of thirty-six years; my siblings Tim, Megan, and Courtney; his children-in-law Catherine, Cheryl, and Chris; his four grandchildren Ellie, Johnny, Patrick, Keegan; and his siblings Jimmy, Carol, and Kathy.

In the two weeks prior to his passing, my dad began dictating various points about his funeral, including a list of those whom he wanted to invite. We’d say, “Dad, I’m not sure that’s really how it works,” but he’d continue on, outlining the VIPs he wanted to make sure were aware of the day’s events.

“I just want to make sure they know I want them there.” As he was an extremely humble man, I’m not sure he could have envisioned the turnout. Thank you to everyone for the overwhelming showing of support. It reminds me of Yogi Berra’s infamous statement, “Always go to other people’s funerals. Otherwise, they won’t come to yours.”

In the search for the right words, I watched the eulogies of notable men for inspiration. Three that I watched were Frank Oz, speaking about his creative partner Jim Henson, Edward Kennedy, speaking about his brother Robert, and more recently, Bob Costas, speaking on behalf St. Louis’ beloved hero Stan Musial. While listening to their words, I was struck by how each man remembered in his own way represented part of the same imprint my father left on the earth.

Jim Henson by his need to make people laugh and feel better about themselves and their lives.

With my dad, it was always about how the other person felt. He never made it about himself. His intelligence, sense of humor, warmth and excitability are some of the things we loved most about him.

Robert Kennedy by his strong Irish Catholic faith and by how the words of Jesus inspired him to live his life.

My dad truly lived his religion every day. His spirituality and faith in God are two reasons we loved him.

Stan Musial by the mark he left on St. Louis, making it a better place to live for so many.

My dad was a true St. Louisan starting at St. Roch’s and onto CBC; as a Hinder Club handball player, Forest Park runner, and as a SLU, Mizzou & Cardinals fan. He led an exceptional life here as a brother, friend, husband, dad, and grandpa. It’s another reason we loved him.

And as when each of these great men left the world, my dad left a community who will miss his contributions every single day.

My dad was born in 1947, the youngest of 7 children. He spent most of his life in St. Louis, having moved to LA for a few years after his father died for what I can only assume was to take a crack at being a child actor. Recently, he pointed to two very important events in his life that changed it for the better. One was marrying my mother, and the other was moving back from LA into St. Roch’s parish. After having lost his father at the age of 5, St. Roch’s gave him a sense of stability and a group of friends that remained a fixture in his life right up until the end. My dad would often say that he didn’t know what he did to deserve friends like his. These men from St. Roch’s and then later CBC have been there for him his entire life. They were there to laugh with him during the good times, and support him during the bad ones. And it is only fitting that some of these men continue to carry my dad onto his final resting place today.

My dad’s battle with cancer lasted almost exactly three years, having been diagnosed in March of 2010. And while we knew the statistics, we did not focus on the negative of these stats. The last three years have been exceptionally eventful and blessed for our family outside of this challenge. In spite of all of the pain my dad went through over this time, the ups and downs of the news, there was a lot of laughter, happiness, and love for our family. He was so excited about every aspect of what was happening around him, never wanting to focus on all of the pain he was going through. In this time, beyond his kids and grandkids, the two constant sources of joy and support guiding him through all of this were his faith and his wife.

My mom, Joanne. There are not enough appropriate words to give about all she had done for my father and my family. In the middle of being a full time nurse for premature infants at Mercy Hospital, she has been a full time nurse to my dad at home, always there for him, making sure the medications were right, talking to doctors, insurance companies, and also comforting her children, running around taking every single toy out of the bin for the grandkids to play with. She did things for my father in the last 3 years, and even more specifically in the last 2 weeks of his life, that are just beyond words. Mom, I know how hard this has been, how hard you’ve cried, and how hard you’ve worked, but you were the reason that he had the quality of life he did for as long as he did, and you were the reason he was able to spend the last two weeks of his life with all of his family, at his home, in his bed.

I will hold dear to so many memories of him: watching how hard he would laugh at the James Brown gospel church scene in The Blues Brothers, running alongside him in the St. Patrick’s Day races as a kid, listening to him sing Paul’s part in The Beatles “A Day in the Life” in order to get us “up, outta bed, drag the comb across your head,” having some part in helping him fulfill a lifelong goal of running a marathon nine years ago, which turned into a seven-year passion that completely changed his life, running nine marathons in St. Louis and Chicago.

But my most important memory of him doesn’t point to a specific time. The memory of my dad that I will always carry with me was his passion. As my brother and sister-in-law Cheryl said, my dad was one of the more excitable people ever put on earth. He always got excited and passionate about what interesting things his family and friends were up to, and about so many different things that excited him in his own life. His passion for a joke, running, his grandkids, history, handball, music, conversation, Catholicism, mundane things like a new episode of Law and Order, Criminal Intent, that passion was infectious. My dad did not need any “thing” in his life, only to care for people and ideas. This made him the hardest person in the world to buy a gift for, but the easiest person to share the way more important things in life with. Thank you dad for your passion for people, life, laughter, stories and ideas. It is the gift you have given me and all of us here that we will always carry with us.

The last 2 weeks of my dad’s life were extremely difficult and heartbreaking, but also life affirming and beautiful. My dad was able to end his physical life on earth surrounded by all his family and had the chance to say goodbye to us and so many of his friends. And we were able to do the same to him. How great is that? To have your friends and family tell you how much you meant to their lives and for him to do the same? The pictures, the stories, the sentiments, the crying, the laughing, slide shows, inside jokes were a wonderful celebration of my dad and a beautiful way to leave this world.

They will write stories and songs about this man. My father is this other Irish Catholic man who died on March 17th. He is a man who breathed his last breath on the feast day of the patron saint of all Irishmen around the world. St. Patrick’s Day will never be the same in St. Louis or in my adopted hometown of Chicago again.

My dad was an unbelievably decent and caring man, he was, as the Jesuits’ say, “a man for others.” He strived so hard over the course of his life to be his best for his family and friends, thinking only of them and because of that, the love others had for him was endless. He lived a happy but entirely too short a life, and I will miss him every single day of my own life, as I know so many of you will as well. Remember that he has not fully died. His spirit lives on in us. So take whatever it was that you loved about my dad and pass it on. Take it with you, and in that, John Callahan will live forever.

- Sean Callahan

Tyler Thoreson. Today, he’s the VP of Men’s Editorial, Creative & Customer Experience for GiltMan. At the time I learned of him, he was co-hosting a web series called “In the Closet” for MenDotStyle. And around that time, I recalled a photo of him showing up on The Sartorialist. There he was, this guy at a runway presentation wearing garish, yellow socks, staring dead-eyed into the camera. Since then, I’ve come to know Tyler through his writing and the segments he does on television. I appreciate his ability to explain the world of men’s dress with a few simple sentences. I have to assume it comes from the lessons in mechanics handed down from his father.

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My father, Wayne Thoreson, grew up on a farm in Southeastern Minnesota. After college, he enlisted in the Navy, where he flew A4s (the single-engine dive bombers flown by the instructors in Top Gun), and after the navy he spent nearly 40 years as a corporate pilot at 3M. He still owns the Corvette convertible he bought new in 1965, has owned several tractors over the years, and in the winter he likes to go out ATVing (ATV–that’s a verb, right?) in the Arizona desert with his retiree pals. Growing up, I remember regularly coming home from school to find my dad finishing up a brake job on the family Oldsmobile, or mowing the lawn on a massive, rear-steering lawn tractor that would’ve been more at home on a fairway.

You might say that my dad is a mechanically-inclined guy.

And while he was never all that big on teaching or advice-giving, he taught me plenty about the importance of knowing how things work, and instilled in me a mechanical dexterity that’s a welcome counterpoint to my digital/creative day job, not to mention quite handy now that I have my own home and family. That said, I still haven’t yet gone so far as to do my own brake job. I have my wife and kids’ safety to think about.

When my dad and I bond, we bond over machines.

Design Director at IDEO and co-founder of central standard timing, a watch company which was successfully launched on Kickstarter earlier this year, Jerry O’Leary is keen to wear many hats, figuratively speaking. Earlier this year, my girlfriend attended a talk referred to as “IDEO Stories: An Evening of Storytelling at the Intersection of Design, Creativity and Everyday Life (Minus the Boring Bits).” It was an opportunity for employees of the design firm to share their origin stories or to provide a bit of background on how they became designers.

Afterwards, she raced home to tell me about this unbelievable, moving, and sometimes hilarious talk our friend Jerry gave. “You would love it. It would fit right in with the Things My Father Taught Me.” As so many times before, my girlfriend was right. Please set aside fifteen minutes to watch and listen to “Fake It ’til You Make It,” the story of a boy and his father, growing up in London, learning how to get by and becoming a world-class designer in the process.

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Sean Hotchkiss is a handsome devil. He is fearless. I admire the way he is always putting himself out there in new and different ways. I first learned of him while he was crafting posts for the Khaki Crusader, and later the GQ Eye and J. Crew, and it’s been great to follow along as he’s advanced in his career as a writer and a photographer.

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As many who’ve known my father can attest, he was often the life of the party. But as I sit here, early on a Sunday morning, I am positive that the lesson he instilled so poignantly in me is the value of being alone.

The time (this time) before everyone else had risen was a sacred time for my dad. Anyone who happened to catch him in the driveway, sun beaming on the hood of his truck, fresh off his morning coffee run, would have seen him at his best. Our dog Casey would have been in tow, and a stack of morning papers might’ve been tucked under his arm as he entered the house, singing. He was always singing something if you caught him solo.

If you asked him about recent successes, he might have told you about delivering a boat from Maine to South Carolina earlier that year, riding only with his thoughts – each one skipping off into the breeze. Or one of the many Outward Bound adventures he’d embarked on where he’d spent time in the woods, pondering, relaxing, planning his next move.

As I got older, my dad invited me into these moments, and I saw the value in them first hand – the coffee run, the early morning boat ride when the ocean was like plate glass and the light careened in every which way, the short drive to the liquor store to stock the house for a dinner party – a small respite, a welcome pause before you’d have to face the crowds again. And I got a chance to invite him into mine – the lazy 9 holes before sunset, after which we’d stroll side by side through the woods, recapping the round as twigs crunched beneath our feet.

One of the beautiful things, I can imagine, about having a son is that time spent with them becomes almost like that time spent alone. Entire conversations take place without the exchange of words. You can relax in that same truly deep and unapologetic way. Miles melt under you as you cruise along, the radio turned up.

My dad was snatched rather abruptly from my life 8 years ago. There was little time to ask questions. There was little time to prepare.

The spring before he passed we spent an entire week at my childhood home on Nantucket together, just us – drinking, eating, telling stories. We were alone in that way only fathers and sons can be. Sometimes, I try desperately to recall individual moments from that trip, but all I can hear is his laughter.

So, as an adult, I never hesitate to indulge myself in these moments: the solo hike, the spontaneous road trip, the elevator to the rooftop as the sun is just creeping up over the city. I love the company of others (much like him), but my time alone recharges me, it gives me perspective, it allows me to reenter my universe with a renewed sense of purpose, and with a plan for what to do next. And today, in this world, in this city, that time is becoming increasingly scarce.

But know this: you can step away, you can power down. You can get away from it all – if only for a moment. (And you should.) I learned this from my father.

- Sean Hotchkiss