Mood:
luckyTopic: "Ten Cent Coke" (3)
Frodo is going to try this one more time. He has now lost four postings because this "server" receives all the data, then posts the full body of the posting as "Null." At the same time, Frodo is receiving complaints, dear reader, that you are having difficulty posting comments because of some sort of numeralology which the "server" has used to verify your identity. This means that Frodo will probably soon be insulting the intelligence and or competence of someone in Bangalore or Manila. Every day Lou Dobbs makes more sense.
Frodo notes the importance of Father's Day, simply because he has often thought of the changes between the fathers borne just prior to the Great Depression, the sons that they sired just after the Great War, and those soon to be fathers. The first were thrifty, and stubborn, and basically uncommunicative. The next were determined to have nice things, more open-minded, and although willing, poor at communication. The latter of three are spendthrift, intolerant of other opinions, and communicative only through a cathode ray tube. Frodo's tale of this day, perhaps, makes some sense of the lessons each brings to the other.
Frodo was subjected to very frequent Sunday-drives in the family motorcar to visit relatives, relatives who hardly ever came to visit Frodo. Increasingly, these forced marches, certainly no worse than the Bataan Death March to a hemi-Hobbit, were the source of growing rebellion. Frodo became convinced that his father dictated these trips more for the opportunity it provided him to visit his favorite retail establishment, Dairy Queen, than to listen to Uncle Alvin procrastinate. Frodo notes that Dairy Queen did produce the outstanding milkshake of the automobile age.
On one such outing, Frodo's father, as was customary, handed out change to the Hobbit and his sibling for them to purchase what that allotment would allow. Frodo announced, upon receipt of the shiny Roosevelt dime, that he had no interest in ice cream, but that a flavored bottle of pop would meet his needs, and he was thinking exotic, like a Nehi Orange, a Grapette, or a Dr. Pepper. Frodo's father announced that he could have anything he wanted, EXCEPT for a flavored bottle of pop. It had, it seems, been recently announced that a 100% increase in the retail cost of said items had been enacted, and that instead of a nickel, said item now cost a whole dime. Frodo's father knew but one way to deal with such corporate corruption.
Frodo thought this to be but one more example of parental intransigence and arbitrary policy solely designed to make him miserable. He decided, therefore, to take matters into his own hands, and to purchase the flavored bottle of pop after all. He decided upon the Nehi Orange, for the record.
When Frodo removed the cold bottle of flavored pop from the machine, his father was standing behind him. His father took the bottle from Frodo's hand and returned it into the rack of the machine. Frodo went treatless, and he still had to go and visit relatives.
Time passed and there were no opportunities for either Frodo or his father to discuss the incident. When next Frodo was again forced to endure the dreaded Sunday visit, he indicated no interest when the motorcar pulled into the parking lot of the Dairy Queen. Nothing was said, bur Frodo felt that the length of the visit was stretched to the maximum, perhaps to prove a point. Frodo did not care. Soon, Frodo was able to build convincing cases to avoid the multitude of the visits, and not too much time passed before Frodo won his complete freedom.
Frodo and his father never discussed many things, and this incident was just one. Frodo was a pretty dumb little Hobbit. It is too bad that the lessons one remembers the longest, are the ones that hurt the most.
As for the next generation of fathers, how can one take anyone seriously when they go for walks in the woods with an iPod?
