This is My Father

My father is called Hamilton Allen Tippins. He was born the year the airplane first flew, and he grew up in Savannah, Georgia. As a young man he learned to play the coronet, the accordion and the six-stringed guitar. He went on to woo a younger woman with all three of these instruments, and soon after that, married her.

Throughout his life he admired the complete works of Mark Twain as well as the stirring notes written by John Philips Sousa. He liked God Almighty, but disliked mankind in general, although I can not recall him ever saying a hateful word about any man, other than Hitler, or maybe his half-brother, Willy.

My father studied the game of chess, and many evenings he sat at a board, meddling with the troubles of two opposing armies, all the while puffing away on a favored tobacco-filled pipe. He kept several around at all times. He preferred using Prince Albert from the red can, but would shred a lone cigarette in a pinch, and then mildly complain to us all about the low-quality taste as he waved the hand that held a blackened match.

During the late 60’s, he purchased a hookah for his office, and then displayed the peculiar device in a prominent position in one corner. Sometimes, and with a twinkling eye, he would produce a package of a commercially-blended tobacco called Pot Porri. Insuring that a customer caught sight of the bag, he would then announce that he was about to smoke some good pot.

He liked saying that beer is full of vitamin P.

He was an adventurous man, my father, as well as a dreamer. I miss him deeply, especially today.