Funny Dad Stories

My father recently passed, and I've been trying to keep it light hearted by remembering some of the funny things he did. 

My favorite story about my dad is from when I was 17. 

I worked at a fast food place, and the asst. store manager was 21, and would buy me liquor if I asked him to.  Prom was coming up, and all my high school buddies knew I could get alcohol, and gave me their order.  The order ranged form Jack Daniels and Meister Brau, to Seagram's Wild Berry Wine Coolers and Miller Lite.  I took their money, gave the order to my buddy, and put all the booze in the trunk of my car to give to my buddies the following week. 

When Prom night rolled around, we all agreed to meet in the McDonalds Parking lot in Burlington so I could give them their booze.  Everyone was in their tux with their date.  I opened my trunk, and was surprised to see that all the alcohol was gone - it had simply vanished.  My buddies who had already paid me were asking for their money back and telling me that I ripped them off. 

I told them all that if I didn't intend on giving them their booze, I wouldn't have shown up.  I told them I was as surprised as they were that the trunk was empty. It was quite the mystery where the liquor had gone - I had no idea where it went.  I didn't have to wonder for very long. 

The next night at the dinner table my father was drinking a Meister Brau, and my Step Mom a wild berry wine cooler.  My dad never said a word to me.  For 24 straight days, I had to watch my father drink a case Meister Brau one beer at a time.  After the Meister Brau was gone, my father drank a Miller Lite for 24 more days.  He kept a straight face too!  My father did not drink hard liquor, so he put the Jack Daniels in the cupboard above the stove, and offered his friends a Jack and Coke when they came over.  My Dad never grounded me, or even said a word, but he drank one beer each night at dinner until  my prom stash was gone. 

When I got older, I asked him how he knew to look in the trunk of my car.  He said "It was Prom and you were 17"

Anyone else have any stories of their dad that stick with you 30 years later?

Finally got a chance to go back a few pages and read the stories...very interesting. Mine is on the humorous side. My dad worked  for a Milwaukee brewery..wont name  cause dont want to have issues with advertising  on this site  .....anyway. was back in the '60s an fishing on Beaver Dam in Dodge Co.  Dad liked to bring along a few cold beverages on hot days, and he had enjoyed quite a few. Rented a boat on the north side near the tressel an out we went...well someone forgot to visit the rest room before heading out  and his back teeth were floating,  we were way out from shore ,many boats in the area, with ladies aboard, an no pail to use.  You guessed it he just sat there an pee'd  his britches..... my brother an I were laughing so hard we cried..even dad joined in. Fortunately it was a warm an windy day an his pants dried  before we hit shore. Both dad and my bro have both passed away, but that memory will be with me till I go to the big fishin hole in the sky.

My great grandparents came to the US straight from Czechoslovakia just a few year’s prior to my paternal grandfather’s birth (so, my name sake).  All of his siblings spoke fluent polish but I’m uncertain if he did.  His name was less unique= Paul.    

Good story FS!

I have a story about my father and a pier too LOL!  It ended badly!!!  

Dude, my grandparents came to the USA straight from Germany, my dad was 100% German.  His name was Hillerian, as was my grandfathers. 

When my father passed, we tore down the oldest cabin (it was in rough shape), and built a new one. In memory of my Dad we named the new cabin Hillery II. 

It is hard to make it out in the picture, but right above the door is a wood carving of a musky, and engraved in the fish is the name of the cabin (Hillery II)

The new cabin is in the exact same place the old cabin was, and the name of the old cabin was Hillery. 

When we tore down the old cabin, I had yet to find any time capsules from my dad. Fast forward to present day, and I often think about how many time capsules I’ll never see, I really had no idea (at the time) that he was hiding messages all over the resort. If I would’ve known, I would’ve taken a much closer look behind every nook and cranny. 

I certainly hope I can find a few more, they always make me smile, and I’m grateful for the ones that I have found. 

So when I was about 10, my dad was between careers and was back in school to finish up a degree. During that summer he was doing all kinds of odd jobs to keep the income flowing. He was really mechanical and was an excellent fabricator. We lived on a lake so he got the idea that he would weld up roll-a-docks one day and went to town on it, selling several right away with a few orders in the queue. One day that summer we got hit with a tremendous wind storm that knocked down a bunch of trees, one of which was a ~100 year old oak next to our garage that snapped off pretty clean about 50 feet up. Now we burned wood for heat and times were tighter than usual with him being somewhat unemployed so we had to fell that sucker and break it down to firewood sized pieces right away to get it dry enough for winter. Now in the only safe direction to fell the rest of the tree lay a stack of 4 dock sections stacked on top of one another. I remember vividly him and our neighbor eye balling the trigonometry calculations saying “there’s plenty of room.” Turns out there wasn’t. Four dock sections had to be cut up to salvage one. I try to make fun of him about that at least couple times a year. 

Brent, what was your pa's name?  Hillerian?  

Thanks for sharing.  So cool that he thought to do stuff like that!

Another time capsule from my Dad - he was such a goof!

My BIL was replacing the vanity mirror in the bathroom, and when he took the old one off the wall this note was behind it.

My dad had worse penmanship than a doctor lol

This note totally cracked me up!

In part It says “when you read this, I will be in heaven”

Wonder how many more time capsules he has around the cabins, he certainly left a bunch of them. 

I really love finding theses - keeps his spirit alive!

See you again some day Dad! 

Excellent story Brent sure enjoyed that...thanks 

Funny, my father died three years ago, and I’m still finding time capsules!

Shortly after my father passed, We were cleaning out his cabin. 

My wife and I were taking the pictures off the wall, and placing them in storage bins. 

Recently, I was going through some of the pictures, as he had a number of outdoor type paintings, and we were looking for something from my Dad that we could hang in our cabin as a good memory.

I pulled out a painting of a fish from storage, and when I turned the picture around to see what kind of mounting hardware it had, there was a $100 bill taped to the back of the painting with a yellow post-it note that read “it’s about time you cleaned up around here son” I wonder when he did that lol

It really made me smile! I hadn’t noticed it in 2017, as I took the picture off the wall with the front facing me, and placed the back of the painting face down into the storage bin – so I missed it the first time around.

Earlier this summer I needed a soldering iron, and I was pretty confident my father had one. I went searching through his tool chest, and found an old black and decker soldering iron, the exact one I had remembered. It was sitting on top of a note that said put this back where you found it please, this means you son. 

My dad grew up during the depression, fourteen brothers and sisters dirt poor. His favorite activities were perch and smelt fishing in Lake Michigan. 

He was a grunt in the army in WWII Europe, along with two of his brothers, one of which was killed in action. (Attached photo is my dad after rolling his jeep during the Battle of the Bulge) 

As a result of his background my dad was "frugal". He never threw out anything until it was totally devoid of function. He was always the last one to convert to any type of new technology. i.e., I shoveled coal and tended clinkers in our old coal furnace until the fuel company finally stopped coal delivery to residential customers in our town.

He wore the same cap for at least twenty years. His galoshes had more patches than the Goodyear blimp, the buckles were spot welded over and over again.

Of all the tricks my dad used to extend anything and everything, he saved the best for his vehicle. (When he finally broke down and got one) And I think the best trick of all was his use of hand signals for turning, even in the dead of winter. He did this to extend the life of the light bulbs.

I remember the first time I dropped the F-Bomb in front of my Dad.  1975 County Stadium All-Star game; I was 13.  We were in the upper deck and as I leaned over the railing with my glove and remember saying....They are going to have to hit a F*** high foul ball for me to catch it!  In shock I turned around to see my Dad cheering and saying "That's my boy !"   Someone gave him a bottle to take a swig - HA 

For my dad's 60th birthday, I put together a number of short stories from over the years and titled it Barneyisms (his name is Barney if that wasn't clear lol). I'm not going to say he's ever been necessarily accident prone, but he has managed some doosies over the years that we can look back on now and laugh. The fact he was also Chicago PD  certainly provided for a wide ranging list of stories as well. Here are a couple more memorable ones.

Remember how I said he wasn't necessarily accident prone? Well, sometimes he invited disaster. Like the day he was supposed to leave for his MN trip and the painter was coming while he would be gone. At 6 am he just had to finish scraping something on the wall of the stairway. Aggravated my brother and me and we let him know. Didn't stop him, though. Now, the spot he needed to get to was up higher, so rather than getting a ladder, he decided he'd just use a plastic milk crate on the stairs that currently didn't have any carpet. As you can probably imagine, it wasn't long before he fell and wound up taking an ambulance ride to the hospital. Thankfully nothing broken, but it was apparently a very uncomfortable ride. It's a running joke when someone can't reach something and we'll say just use a milk crate.

And I can't remember if it was his 50th birthday or his promotional party when he made detective, but my dad was feeling pretty good.  My parents' old cordless phone had been giving them issues for a while, and when he tried to answer a call while we were sitting around the fire and it gave him issues, he just tossed it in the fire lol! Everybody was laughing (except my mom). He walked off and a minute later I looked inside and saw him then wrestling to pull the base/answering machine unit off the wall! He won and came out with it over his head like some trophy and proceeded to toss that in the fire too lol. My mom tried to block him, but he made the shot but in doing so lost his balance and fell backwards into the arbor vitaes. For YEARS there was a hollowed out spot from where that happened lol.

Or the time he chased a dude who was in the middle of trying to steal our station wagon from in front of our house while wearing nothing but his tighty whities. Did I mention he's 6'2" about 240 and hairy lol?

My dad was a station wagon guy.  He always pointed out when people had trucks that he could do the same with his wagon. Drive by a truck with a load of lumber he’d say “I can do that with my wagon and get better mileage”. He sure treated his wagons like trucks though! Once we were removing and old fence in our yard and we couldn’t get the metal posts out by had so... u guessed it, we’ll use the wagon. On the third post he pretty much ripped the bumper off! Lol.  When we first got a small pc of land up north he was looking for a camper to put on it. He found and bought a 17ft Frolic camper and of course we towed it home from across town with the ol Chevy Celebrity wagon. That thing was squatting bad I’m surprised we made it. Lol. Funny memories!

Another story from my stepfather. During WW II, he did two years from January 45' to January 47' at Kilauea Military Camp (KMC) on the Big Island of Hawaii. I never knew that fact until my wife and I coincidentally moved to the Big Island and we lived walking distance from KMC (now a park). During a phone call back home, my stepfather casually mentioned his KMC service and that he and my mother will be arriving shortly. Sure, fine, right ?Well, he was quite the ladies man back then and he looked up one of his old Hawaiian gal hookups. The (now) old lady welcomed him (they had not seen each other in 45+ years) and she still lived in Waimea, but was a bit worried... Sure enough, her jealous husband shows up brandishing a shotgun !!! My stepfather left immediately. 

Anyways, he never admitted being afraid of anything, but he did let it slip before he died that he and his war buddies wanted nothing to do with "island hopping" and invading Japan... After the A-Bombs were dropped in August, the party started ! He entered a private in 45' and after multiple beer thefts, stolen jeeps etc. he left a private in 47'  !

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