Dad's Porch

When I was 16 I moved out of my mom's house and in with my absentee father the next town over. He didn't really know me so we got along well without any of the baggage that would have come from him still thinking of me as a kid. He'd basically just met me as a teenager.  He was a drinker, usually passed out around 6:30 and then up again at 4:00 for work, and he spent most of his weekends either at the VFW where he taught me how to play pool, or sitting on his back porch listening to the local AM radio channel. Dad was also a nudist, so he would be sitting naked on the steps up to the kitchen door, facing the alley behind the house. I often sat with him, just smoking and listening to livestock prices, watching the weather in the back yard.
I sit on my own front stoop now, on the steps up to the door, listening to the radio on my phone and watching the weather in the front yard. I don't smoke and I'm not naked, but I feel a little closer to Dad sitting in the quiet, drinking a beer or a cup of black coffee, doing nothing but thinking. I miss that drunken, naked, old bastard. He was a decent guy when you met him as a teenager without the baggage that would have come with thinking of him as the daddy who ran out on his family. Not much more than decent, though. He was a great guy to know and hang out with, but a terrible person to count on for anything.