Analog SFF, June 2006 by Dell Magazine Authors

Author:Dell Magazine Authors
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Dell Magazines
Published: 2010-12-15T07:07:24.704000+00:00

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The Alternate View: My Mysterious Father

by Jeffery D. Kooistra

It is not unusual for Analog to feature a seasonally-flavored story or article appropriate to the date on the cover (even though said issue might hit the stands a month or two before that cover date). Hence, the July/August issue might feature something suitable for Independence Day. The October issue almost always has a story appropriate for Halloween. I myself once wrote a story for Christmas ("Easter Egg Hunt: A Christmas Story") that appeared in the December issue of 1997. But I can't remember Analog specifically including a piece for Father's Day in the June issue, though no doubt some such pieces have appeared through the years even if only by coincidence.

I'm going to write one this time because, though my dad died in 1989, these past few months I've been walking down a path he once walked, literally following him step by step. There is a nostalgia factor involved too, what with writing this between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And something about Dad has long mystified me, but I think I've finally figured it out.

I'll get to the mystery, but first let me tell you about my dad.

Franklin Kooistra (he had no middle name), born in 1924, came to the U.S. at the age of four, just in time for the onset of the Great Depression. His parents and his four brothers and five sisters (he was the youngest) settled in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which was already home to more Hollanders than almost anywhere else in the United States.

Like many boys of that era, he grew up poor but didn't know it. He went to school through the 8th grade and then, this being the depths of the Depression, to work, helping the family make money any way he could.

Despite his lack of much formal education, Frank liked to read, and he was becoming quite the jack-of-all-trades by the time Pearl Harbor rolled around. The then 17-year-old lad cried when his brothers got to enlist but his father wouldn't sign for him so he could go, too. Nevertheless, once he turned 18 the following May, he signed up with the Navy and became a gunner's mate, manning the weapons on assorted merchant ships and seeing the entire planet.

After the war Dad met my mom, Trudy. He fell in love with her instantly, and on that very first date he told her he was going to marry her, which he did.

Their first few years together Frank and Trudy lived in the second floor apartment of his sister's house. This was while he was building, by himself, the house in which I would grow up. I don't know when it was Dad learned to be an architect, because he also designed the house. He also laid the blocks for the foundation alone, and did the plumbing, and the electrical work, and the septic system, and all the concrete for the driveway. Apparently, an 8th grade education went a long way in those days.

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