THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, June 5, 1996 TAG: 9606050365
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: 51 lines
Yet again, Father's Day is almost upon us.
And it has become my duty the past few years to sound the tocsin for those of us fathers who would just as soon that well-meant day be forgot.
And go hide.
We will not even whisper the dread date because that would stir mothers and offspring to begin plotting to honor DOD - Dear Old Dad or Dodderer.
If we DODs look up the date surreptitiously, we can keep it to ourselves and plan to be out of the house all that day - playing a far-flung golf course, fishing in the Chickahominy Swamp or skulking in a triple-feature movie, although, unfortunately, they no longer exist, do they?
One less place for Dad to hide!
Why do some of us have somewhat ambivalent feelings about Father's Day?
Perhaps because it's a fairly recent addition to the list of days to remember, an afterthought a century or so behind Mother's Day.
We just don't feel up to it, or deserving of it.
My first memory of Mother's Day is asking my father for 50 cents to go to the corner drug store and buy a Whitman's Sampler for Mother.
Fifty cents in those days looked as big around as a galvanized tin wash tub.
For many folks during the Depression, a half dollar was a half day's pay.
That's what fathers were for, to help celebrate Mother's Day. He had planted in your noggin the idea of getting her the box of candy.
The druggist wrapped the box in plain brown paper, lent you a red crayon with which to scrawl ``FOR MOTHER'' on the box, and you took it, red-faced, to her and said, ``Here!''
Whereupon she reeled back, threw up her hands as if in vast surprise - ``My favorite! How did you think of it?'' she cried upon opening it - and let you have first pick of chocolate-flavored creams.
The cherry cordial was wrapped in gold foil.
It was a kind of Family Day, really, involving everybody.
Father's Day definitely was anti-climactic.
(Note, by the way, that most of this column on Father's Day, to my amazement, has turned to Mother's Day.)
In its defense, Father's Day does stimulate a spike in the national economy. Perhaps it was born in the mind of some father trying to figure a way, one more stratagem, to meet a payroll.
So let's not be cynical.
It's just that some of us would just as soon not have to endure it.
Which is why I ain't about to tell you when it occurs. MEMO: EDITOR'S NOTE: But Guy's editor will _ it's Sunday, June 16. by CNB