Chip on Your Shoulder

Before work today, I took a walk. Along my route, I passed a sign outside a church:

"A Father Is A Big Man Who Remembers What It Was Like To Be Little."

Further Resources

Journalists and their Fathers:  A 2003 collection of essays

I took a few moments to commit it to memory. "Am I that kind of father?" I wondered. It's a question left to my three children, but I certainly would like to be.

Its message fed another stream of thought as Father's Day approaches this Sunday. How are fathers depicted in literature and popular culture? Are there role models out there, between covers on the screen, that a flesh-and-blood father could learn from?

I'm not talking about the pipe-smoking, parable-spouting Pops of the TV sit-com -- Jim Anderson and Ward Cleaver -- those fathers of another age when real-world problems rarely surfaced. 

And obviously, I'm not talking about bad Dads. Long before Tony Soprano, we had:

Bull Meacham, the alcoholic and abusive Marine unforgettably portrayed by Robert Duvall in "The Great Santini."

Noah Cross, the incestuous father in "Chinatown."

Larry Cook, another incestuous father, in Jane Smiley's "A Thousand Acres," the story of Shakespeare's tragedy, "King Lear," transported to an Iowa cornfield.

Cautionary tales, these don't offer much help other than, "Don't be like that!"

The same holds true for the inept and/or inebriated fathers sprawled all over the television landscape.

Ray Barone in "Everybody Loves Raymond"
Al Bundy in "Married with Children"
Homer and Abe Simpson in "The Simpsons"

I'm not looking for perfection. If that's the standard, my well-meaning but often-flawed parenting put that out of reach. But I think there must be fathers in print or on screen who are more than stick-figure stereotypes.

I'm just looking for a few good men.

Courageous Dads like Atticus Finch, the small-town Southern lawyer who stood up to racism in "To Kill a Mockingbird."

Eccentric ones like efficiency expert Frank Bunker Gilbreth, who presided over a large family in the original "Cheaper by the Dozen."  Even hapless Hal, of "Malcolm in the Middle."

I'm betting that some of you reading this have a Father's Day story to share, or one to recommend.

We Dads of today can use all the help we can get.

And to all of you out there, Happy Father's Day, Dads and kids alike!