I spent a lot of time hanging out with my father when I was a kid. He always did things that I found interesting, and he said he loved it when I tagged around with him to talk to him and learn from him. I think it made him feel really good to have a kid who cared about what he was doing. He was an electrician in Passaic County NJ and he liked to show me how he worked while he was doing it sometimes. There were even times that I went to work with him because my mom needed to go on an errand, and dad would “babysit” me while he was working.

Hanging out with dad when he was working was a lot of fun. Sometimes he would show me what he was doing, and I would learn a lot from that. Other times, the woman of the house would be happy that I was tagging along with my dad and would pull me away to offer me home-baked cookies or ask if I wanted to play with their kids. I always said yes to both of these things. It is really interesting just how many moms back then had a lot of homemade treats around in the house! I was always happy to help them out by sampling the goods and letting them know how good their baking skills are!

When I got older, I loved that I was able to work on some of the electrical things in my own home that needed to be worked on. As much as I spent time with my father when I was young, I certainly wasn’t as experienced as he was. I was not an electrician by any means, but I could do all the basic things that he taught me. Dad was proud of that when he was alive.