Thinking about dear old dad.

In A world where not many people, I've found, can or dare say such a thing (and often with good reason), I freely admit that I like my parents a whole bunch. It was through their example that I was able to become whatever it is I've become today. They're funny, they're sharp, they're reasonable, they never once tried to turn me into anything, letting me instead make my own decisions. Made fun of me a lot, maybe, but I've always been used to that.

There were rules around the house when I was growing up, and I was certainly spanked more than a few times?but my folks were never harsh or abusive. They were always around, but at the same time they always let me be. I got lucky in the parents department. I fully realize that most didn't, which is why I'm especially grateful, even now as I grow older. I love them very much. So there.

My dad, George James Knipfel, was born on Thurs., August 10, 1933. He was raised on a farm in a small town in northwestern Wisconsin. He had two brothers and three sisters. Together with running the family farm, his dad, Roscoe Knipfel, was an electrical engineer. Roscoe, from what I hear tell (he died shortly after I was born), also had a pretty twisted sense of humor, which my dad seems to have inherited.

Dad loved to scare the neighbor kids every Halloween by donning a mask and hiding behind the front door. When the trick-or-treaters rang the doorbell, he'd jump out and give them the ol' "boogaboogabooga!" Most of those kids never came back again. Way he saw it, it just meant more candy for us.

The rest of the year, he loved scaring the hell out of me. Up until I was 13 or 14, he had me fully believing that those really were giant ants attacking us in the drive-through car wash. And I remember quite vividly the shrieking terror I felt when he dangled me over the side of a friend's speedboat as we were tearing across a northern Wisconsin lake, my feet mere inches above the churning black water, while he screamed "You're goin' in! You're goin' in!"

He did all those more traditional, less psychologically damaging dad things, too. He taught me how to ride a bike (essentially by sitting me on the bike and giving it a hard shove, then repeating the process until there finally came a time when I didn't fall over). He played catch with me in the backyard and basketball in the driveway. He took me to zoos and movies and drove right up to the runway so I could watch the B-52s take off whenever we visited his old air base. He even tried to teach me how to mow the lawn once, but soon gave up on that.

He could make stoplights change color by blowing on them or pointing at them. He probably still does.

He used to wake me up in the middle of the night to watch electrical storms.

In short, he did something I see so few parents nowadays doing?he let me be a kid, which was easy, given that he was always pretty much a kid himself, albeit a really big one.

Funny thing is, I know very little about his childhood beyond what I mentioned above. I've always been curious about him, the way you're always curious about people you admire.

I've heard a few stories over the years?like what happened when Grandpa Roscoe caught him sneaking a plug of chewing tobacco behind the barn (Roscoe played it cool, right up until the time he told my dad to swallow it).

He would often proudly declare that he graduated in the top ten of his class (a class which, as it happened, consisted of ten students). He was on his high school basketball team (I've seen the pictures), along with a kid who had a wooden leg. The leg, he told me, was a great psych-out, because the kid could loosen the joint, and make it fall off whenever he liked?which was usually at the free-throw line.

I get snapshots of his life back then, but not much else. I've even asked him straight out to tell me about his younger days, but he plays his cards close to the chest. Interesting thing is, I know a few other people whose parents come from similar backgrounds?the rural Midwest of the 40s?who are equally quiet about those days. My mom is much the same way, though if I ask her something direct, she'll tell me?like about the time she was in Lincoln when Charlie Starkweather started making a name for himself.

I've heard lots of stories about his days in the Air Force?like the one about six-fingered Charlie, the peanut salesman and the one about how he got the dimple in his chin after being jabbed with a Japanese bayonet. Not much about the days before that, though.

Still, things come out. I know what his favorite movies were. And I know he loved the farm, because every time we were driving back toward that part of Wisconsin (where most of my relatives still live), he'd roll down the windows to let in the smell of cow dung and fresh-cut hay. If he saw a flock of sheep roaming in a field, he'd pull the car over, stick his head out the window, and scream "Lilly! Lil-leee!" at them (Lilly was his favorite when he was a kid). He stopped and yelled at a lot of sheep when I was young. My sister and I always thought it was the most embarrassing thing in the world, to have a dad who yelled at sheep?but I've since come to know better.

Like most dads, he knew damn well when he was embarrassing us. He always got the same look on his face. The eyebrows slowly crawled up his forehead, the nostrils flared and the tip of his tongue eked out from his mouth as he tried to keep himself from laughing. Oh, that look. He used the same look on me whenever I was having a pointless tantrum, or when he was telling me it was time to go out to the front porch so he could trim my crew-cut again.

It's that look, I guess, that started to teach me early on that most things in this world are much funnier than they might seem.

He was in the Air Force with the great Boxcar Willie. I have a videotape at home in which Boxcar invites my dad and the rest of their old flight crew up on stage with him in Branson. Not to sing (thank God), but to introduce them one by one to the audience. When he gets to my dad, Boxcar needles him for always being the straightlaced one of the bunch. I guess he never swore much back then.

(He does now, some?you should hear the jokes he makes about polka legend Whoopee John Wilfahrt).

He never smoked, especially after that chaw incident, and only drank in moderation, but never ragged on people who smoked or drank, unless they were stupid about it. He's always had strong opinions about things, though, the way you'd expect any 20-plus-year military vet would.

As a result, we had our expected "differences of opinion" during my teens, when my punk rock ways didn't mesh too well with his staunch Lutheran Republicanism?but he always seemed to find our arguments a little funnier than I did.

When it came time to register for the draft?do they still make you do that when you turn 18??I was, of course, dead set against the idea. Instead of fighting with me about it, though, he reasoned with me. He sat me down and said, "Look, I know you don't like the idea, but believe you me?if it comes down to a draft, they would never ever want you." He also explained that not registering would really mess up any student aid I was hoping to get. In the end, I registered quietly. I didn't like the idea, and considered that financial aid business to be nothing short of blackmail, but I didn't make a big deal out of it. Had he, like so many fathers you see and hear about, screamed and yelled and demanded that I fill out that draft card, I probably wouldn't have. He was perfectly capable of screaming and yelling about things, but he didn't. He treated me with respect, and so I did it for him. And he, also quietly and without fanfare, thanked me for it. That's the way we worked things. For all my insane, self-destructive ways, I never forgot what both my folks did for me, and in time, I came around.

You hear people talking, usually with some dismay, when they see themselves turning into their parents somehow?adopting their attitudes or whatever. In my case, a few years ago when I first started to notice my dad's voice coming out of my mouth, and my handwriting slowly evolving into his, I felt a kind of relief. It was like recognizing, finally, that things were actually going to be okay.

I still talk to my folks once or twice a week. Over the years, my dad's sort of become a combination of Walter Matthau, Oliver Hardy and Homer Simpson. Nothing wrong with that, I figure. He may be a little crankier these days (boy, he really hates that Hillary Clinton!), but however cranky he can get, he always seems happy to hear from me, and he still makes a point of sending me newsclippings from the local paper whenever anything really stupid happens in the greater Green Bay area.

And anyway, to my mind there's nothing wrong with being a little cranky. He's seen a lot in his time, and, in having seen a lot, can see how things today could be much better, but aren't.

The point of all this is just to say that my dad's 70th birthday is coming up, and even though I'll be flying back to Green Bay for the event, I couldn't think of a much better way to celebrate the man's birthday than to sit here at my desk for an afternoon, celebrating the man. That goofy old bear of a man.