My dad, the "guberif"....

I was thinking about my Dad yesterday--he and Mom (who has now figured out how to get into the blog, so I'd better watch my language) moved to Arizona last Spring and I haven't seen them since Christmas when I got over my "I must be at home" holiday feelings and adopted the "I must be able to wear shorts on Christmas day" state of mind.

I think what sparked thoughts on Dad was that I received a Nevada quarter. If you haven't seen it, it has wild mustangs on the back side. Well, horses are kind of like donkeys and on every road trip I took growing up that went through the desert, my father told me I had to keep my eye out for "wild donkeys." There were, he claimed, thousands of man-eating wild donkeys roaming the wilds of the southwest. I don't think I ever believed him. Well, maybe when I was about 3. But my dad is the kind of guy who you just sort of nod to when he goes off on his tangents. According to my mother, he's still concerned that he's going to be attacked by wild donkeys.

But donkeys were the only tall tales my father would tell! Here's a sampling of what I grew up with:
1) Snipe hunting. My father insisted that there were snipes in the backyard--I'm not sure what snipes were supposed to be. Insects maybe? Anyway, he said he had to run around the backyard with a gunny sack as soon as it was dark and yell, "Here snipey!" Now, I never fell for this. My niece, who is now at Rice University studying something that involves Arabic, and my nephew, who is now an aspiring film maker, both fell for it....hook, line and SINKER! Suckers!
2) When my mother and I went to Europe when I was 14, he made us each carry an economy sized jar of peanut butter with us because, he believed, it was still 1945.
3) There are 2 things my father is very fond of: bargains and his orange t-shirt. The picture posted here is proof that sometimes those 2 things come together--this time was during an, um, uncomfortable (for me) trip to Nogales. However, the worst is when these two loves come together...in Home Depot. He actually achieves invisibility!
4) While driving through Idaho on one of the many, many road trips we took, my father became convinced that somewhere was a rare animal called a "Guberif". We asked where he got this idea (thinking that a guberif might be somehow related to a snipe) and he said that there were signs everywhere that said, "Don't be a guberif." After 2 hours of trying to find these signs, that my father swore he saw at every other milemarker, we realized he was seeing signs that said "Don't be a firebug" but he was reading the last word of it in the rearview mirror as he passed by. Since then, the term "guberif" has become synonomous with "silly, silly person" in my family.

Or, at least for me, it also means "Dad."