My father has been an inspiration and a gift of untold value. He started when I was young by reading to me the many books he voraciously read. I did as well but none were as inspirational to me as the children’s bible he often read as a bed time story. He told these tales as great treasures of history that were stone tablets etched with his voice as the word of GOD from his son JESUS. He instilled in me the teachings of right and wrong and though I ended up with my own interpretation from time to time I never once caused him any harm or malice. He has given me the morals and ethics that resides deep within me today. I will always be enamored by his spirit and friendly disposition of which now as I get older seem to sound more like him than me but is me therefore I am him! I remember as we would on Friday nights sit around and listen to 102.7 KNEW FM out of New York as the FOLK Show would feature Pete Seager who has also recently passed and the first time he turned me onto Bob Dylan. I was taken by this poet laureate! My father taught me deep understanding of why song, melody and voice were so poignant and beautiful with each listen and seemed to evolve into something else as if it were a flower that would never die. He often would bring me home a dump truck or some toy of gargantuan deep value as it seemed in my nature to always end up in the dirt. I loved the dirt and the dirt loved me and Dad did not mind that I was always dirty. Mom on the other hand knew that getting me out of the dirt was not going to happen in the foreseeable future! I am sure the patches that her and grandma used to mend my clothes back together most likely stretched longer than a football field. I moved Dirt all Day! Not much has changed as paperwork has taken the place of dirt but dirt got me to where I am today. I will always love my Dad cause he let me live in the dirt! Often We would talk baseball and I would play baseball in the dirt! Football was even dirtier and he got me all the stuff to play that too. Sometimes he would even come to my games but I don’t know if he ever liked my play or not. When I started to play basketball he was even good enough to let me go to camp for it where I won awards for my play. I wanted to learn to play the drums in the fife and drum corps, my sister Jean was a fife player in the Morris County Militia. He built me a wooden board with two shoe heels on it for practice. I never had real drums but I would bang on those things all day. I wore out those soles and ended up playing with the big boys at the musters and marched in the Fourth of July parade in Chatham. He would equate this music to the symphonic revolutionary songs that he often hummed and or sang at exceptional volume in the wrong key. He loved his classical music and the Opera! I took him to see Der Flater Maus at the MET and bought him his first cd at the show as I had secretly purchased him his very first cd player for Christmas. It was one of the most magnificent shows I had ever been to but even more stupendous was that I went with the conductor. I mean Dad. You see he could conduct to almost anything but I never knew exactly what it was he was doing. Neither did he but it looked really good. He often would tell me stories of his childhood which often sounded like great adventures of mischievous endeavors that amounted to great humiliation for his father and the rest of the family who lost their mother at a young age. One story was how his brother David and him crawled out the window into a tree and escaped. Another was how they were both in a tree and David was sawing off the limb my father was standing on. I don’t know how all this materialized. He told me of games of stick ball and his crazy dog named Buckaroo who loved spaghetti and meatballs more than life. To me it sounded like a mishap adventure of grave misfortune that somehow got him to where he realized he needed an education to get out of the Scottish Irish town of Kearny, NJ. My father was one for standing and picking himself up by his bootstraps and getting where he wanted to go! This is a trait that I think I have gotten from him and will never let go of ever! My father was notorious for telling me I don’t think you can work for anybody. I said I know. I have been in the insurance business now for 30 years and think back like it was just yesterday that he told me this. I remember one time coming home from college for the summer. His name had gotten me jobs on framing carpenter crews in the town in which he was the engineer for. Often we would build houses in Parsippany, Dover and I had acquired great skills building custom built homes of massive proportions. I ended up on a crew one summer building tract homes in a subdivision in Parsippany NJ. I could throw nails into a roof and nail it down in two strikes. After one Fourth Of July I was sent up to nail off a roof in 90 degree heat at 7am when I came back down at 11:30 I was done. My boss said I was slow and I said well than why didn’t you do it if you think your faster. He gave me my paycheck. I never gave anybody the opportunity to fire me ever again. Thanks Dad! As the years wore on and he began to slow into a retirement for himself I began to realize the energy and enthusiasm he once had for life began to dwindle into idle more mellow relaxation. I was glad I was able to help him get to HOOD River and enjoy the slow down as he loved this place and its surroundings. He spoke of a peacefulness he had never known and he was glad to be out of the rat race of NJ life. It is with deep sorrow that he no longer is the ring leader and the circus has long packed up and left him behind. He will always be what he is to me Danny Boy! He never did grow up! He was still the rambunctious youth of his childhood in his mind. I know he spoke of being old but I never really saw him that way. When the life went out of him I know he was completely at peace with all and one self. I know that he was earthly together ready to enter into the kingdom he often spoke of for the youth lives on through minds. I will always be a part of his universe whether here or in the kingdom of Christ. He is happy! He is here and I am he who is him. Danny Boy! I love that Danny Boy! David J. Biondo Signal Butte Financial Corp. - President Bank On Yourself Authorized Advisor Certified Senior Advisor Business Unconventional Radio on 710 KNUS Denver Sundays 8am www.businessunconventional.com Smoke Tone Records LLC – President www.smoketonerecords.com