No Ad for Dad

The perfect father awaiting the perfect kids to jump into the perfect pool. This week's objet d'eBay may make for a lovely advertisement, but it doesn't really tell much of a story about the relationship between father and their offspring.

A much more interesting story, although painting a much less pretty picture is the story of Rhode Island good guy (or thug) Harold L. Tillinghast Jr. He is either unable to escape the shadow cast by his felon pop, a do-gooder who is tarred by the reputation of his father, a mob enforcer; or he's a con artist who got caught with his hand in the public's cookie jar and is working the sympathy angle of the misunderstood child trying to overcome his upbringing to distract attention from his transgressions.

A much sadder tale is the one told by Mary Lee Coe Fowler in "Full Fathom Five," the story of how she came to know her father, a WWII seaman. His death at sea put him beyond conversation in her mother's home as she remarried and created a different life for herself and children.

And a much more intriguing and still-to-be-written tale is the one to be told into the future by the twins of the infertile Taiwanese man. Cancer took away, but science gave him back a relationship with children of his own.

Not one of these stories or others will be as pretty as this ad to sell the Humble company. But each story of a real dad and his sons and daughters cannot help but be more interesting.