An Ode to Dad

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

My first blog post was published about two months ago. When I started sharing these entries, I mentioned that each post would be about work, life, or sometimes a combination of both. However, this one leans heavily toward the life side of things.

That first post, from January 19, spoke at length about a day trip to Maupin in Central Oregon, where I caught my first trout outside the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Before that Deschutes redband, the majority of fish I had caught belonged to the limestone waters of Central PA, and more than half were within earshot of my best friend—my dad. From catching bass and bluegill along the banks of Twin Lakes in Greensburg, PA, to netting a wild brown trout from a section of Yellow Creek in Bedford County, my dad was always there, grinning through crooked teeth behind a flapping cigarette, held in place by somehow always-chapped lips.

The phrase “There ya go, bud” always found its way upstream and into my ear whenever my rod bent. I’d hear the same words of encouragement after downing a buck with a rifle, folding a pheasant with a shotgun, or driving a nail into lumber with one swing. My dad was my biggest fan, and the feeling was mutual. In fact, he was the first person I called that day after taking off my waders and making my way back to Portland.

On February 8, 2025, he died. Gone, just like that.

Just days prior, we had talked on the phone about the weather, how he was feeling, and what he was looking forward to in the spring. Working in the yard and getting back to camp were always at the top of his list. Those two things alone gave him something to look forward to—they usually kept the winter blues at bay. We wrapped up our weekly chat with a “Talk to ya soon” and a “Love ya.” Little did I know, that would be the last time I ever heard his voice.

For 32 years, I had a dad. Not just a dad, but a friend. An incredible person who loved his family with conviction. A simple man who didn’t need much to have a good time. A somewhat quiet but secretly profound individual. My dad wondered about a lot of things, but I feel like he often kept those thoughts and questions to himself.

February 9 would be the first day I didn’t share this world with him. The loss left me gutted and angry, knowing he was only 65. When I was a kid, I might have thought of that age as “old,” but now, all I feel is that he was gone far too soon.

Getting a call from my mom around 5:00 PM isn’t out of the ordinary, but not hearing her say “Hi, honey” after I say hello is.

“I have terrible news — it’s your dad.”

The details that followed blurred my vision. I stared into the molecular patterns of the wood grain on the booth across from me, just to the left of my wife, Natalie. We had just wrapped up work for the day and ordered a couple of beers at a nearby brewery. Moments before they arrived, my phone rang.

“I have to go home. My dad is going to die.”

It’s probably the most surreal sentence I’ve ever spoken with sincerity. I don’t even remember how Natalie responded. How do you reply to something like that? We paid our bill and immediately headed back to our apartment. Thankfully, Natalie was there to drive—I had never been so unfocused in my life. I didn’t know what to say, where to look, how to stop shaking, or what I should even be feeling.

I booked a flight for the next morning. When I arrived in Pittsburgh, I drove straight to Greensburg and saw my dad in a coma. Over the next few days, I spent private moments with him, said my goodbyes, and prepared for the rest of my life without him. My dad was an organ donor, which meant the hospital cared for his body long enough for me to make it back in time. Even in death, he helped others in ways only he could.

Through this process and experience, I’ve learned many things—the first being that we should all take more family photos. Not just cell phone pictures, but real ones, with an actual camera. Throwaway cameras were always around the Baker household, and we’d often lose track of which ones still needed to be developed at our local Giant Eagle.

After my dad passed, we found a few albums filled with hundreds of captured moments—snapshots of life with his family and friends. Birthdays, hunting and fishing trips, even the occasional pig roast—all preserved on 4x6 pieces of Kodak paper, turning into core memories for everyone in his orbit. Old truck beds loaded with bucks, turkeys, and black bears spread across our dining room table. A grinning father, building a crib in the only house we ever lived in. A tiny Bobby sitting on his lap, gently holding a gifted rifle—my grandpap’s Marlin 30-30. My mom and dad on their wedding day, my dad in an all-white suit that probably embarrassed my mom. My dad and his friends, working on the deck at our camp. Union buddies standing beside an American flag atop the building they were constructing. A hilarious shot of him showing a deer he shot to my sister, who looks utterly mortified. My dad and his dad, sitting at the kitchen island, spent Stroh’s cans beside them.

So many fragments of life, scattered across the table—each one better than the last. Looking at these memories helped us heal, through both laughter and tears.

There are a couple of photos that stand out to me as favorites. One captures him in a cabin, with comically placed antlers behind his head, making him look like some kind of Viking warrior. He’s holding four trout by the gills—two of which almost certainly should have been put back—wearing a brown and gray flannel, amber-colored sunglasses, and a foam Stren trucker hat I’ve been scouring eBay for (let me know if you find one).

The second photo shows him, likely in the same cabin, standing in a flannel, hiked-up striped tube socks, and tighty-whitey underwear, making sure the scope on his Remington GameMaster was clear for the next morning’s hunt. Authentically and endearingly dorky.

Emotional Delay

There’s a latency period when you lose a parent. It takes time to set in. Even now, as I write this, I feel like I’m due to give my dad a call.

When we started going through his things, I began with his truck—a 2016 GMC Canyon with a dead battery. I asked my mom how many miles were on it. She wasn’t sure. Without thinking, I replied—

“I’ll just call Dad and ask him.”

Once I got a new battery in, the truck fired right up. The cab reeked of cigarette smoke, and Willie’s Roadhouse quickly blasted through dust-covered speaker registers, probably clearing them out. Willie’s Roadhouse, of course. I sat in the driver’s seat and laughed, patting the dashboard like I was comforting an old friend.

If you cleaned out my dad’s truck, you’d know exactly who he was.

Hunting jackets. 30-06 and 12-gauge shotgun shells rolling around the floor. Cigarette ashes everywhere. A laminated obituary of my grandpap. Binoculars. A spotlight. Tools. Dollar store receipts for Mountain Dew and Little Debbie snacks. An old turkey box call. The lore goes on.

My dad was the most “what you see is what you get” person I’ve ever met, and God damn, did I love that. He only paid in cash because he didn’t have bank cards. He used a flip phone. He didn’t know how to use a computer. He had no idea what Google was and more or less thought I worked in IT, not as a graphic designer. He only knew what he wanted and needed to know, and they don’t make people like that anymore. He couldn’t fake anything, and I mean anything. He didn’t do it to be coy or interesting, that’s just who he was. Detailing the Canyon reminds me of a memory from this past Fall–

“I fucking love this truck!”

My dad chuckled as he shared his thoughts on his recently purchased truck, a cracked grin stretching across a mouth made of half real teeth, half composite. Porcelain? Whatever dentures are made of. It wasn’t brand new, but it was new to him. He punctuated the expletive by slamming the door shut after dousing the dashboard and steering wheel with what had to be the world’s cheapest interior cleaner.

Late fall in Pennsylvania had somehow turned into the dead of July. He walked toward me, still laughing, shirtless and rocking the worst tan you’ve ever seen—a tan that could make a farmer feel like they belonged on the cover of GQ.

Since I was a kid, my dad wore suspenders—not for fashion, not out of irony, just because he liked the function. After years of laying block in the sun, working in the yard, and fishing along the banks of Pennsylvania’s lakes and creeks, he had an ‘X’ permanently etched on his back from the intersecting nylon straps that graced his galvanized skin day after day. Sometimes leather, if it was a formal event. But he was definitely more of a nylon guy.

There was also a perfect white stripe on his wrist—a pale story told by the watch he always wore. It was my grandpap’s watch. He wore it until his last days.

I spent a lot of time working on his truck, driving it, finding excuses to take it somewhere. It helped me heal—sometimes through laughter, sometimes through tears. I’d listen to “Dreaming My Dreams” by Waylon Jennings or top tracks by Johnny Paycheck and Alan Jackson. I can’t forget to mention Johnny Cash. My dad loved Johnny. I used to make fun of his taste in music, but over the last five years, it quietly became most of what I listen to. I’m no outlaw, but it’s fun to live vicariously through the music.

Picking Up the Pieces

I spent Saturdays at my parents’ house, picking up the yard, filling the truck bed with branches, root balls, and scrap metal. There’s something romantic about using a truck the way God intended. Splitting wood, breaking down logs too heavy for my dad to roll on his own. The first day of working on the yard, I parked the truck in a cleared out area for easy access. When I stepped out of the cab to pick up the first of many branches, something caught my eye–an antler shed. I have never found one before, and the timing of this find was special. It was also a two point antler, the same as the first buck I shot several years ago, which was a 2x2 4-point. As you can imagine, my dad was there that day, and we laughed and chatted about the hunt as we drug the buck back to his old Silverado. I set the antler aside, and got back to cleaning up. My father-in-law came along to give me a hand on a few of those days, and I’m sure my dad enjoyed seeing that, wherever he’s watching from.

My dad owned maybe a dozen guns that stood vertically in a gun cabinet that he built over 30 years ago. All of them were used for hunting. Everything from a Thompson Center Muzzleloader, to a 45 magnum revolver he received as a wedding gift. I would say half of his collection was heavily used, but rarely cleaned. His beloved 30-06 Remington GameMaster had laid claim to many deer and even a Pennsylvania black bear throughout its relationship with my dad. A rifle from 1976—certainly not a rare one, but it was his, and arguably his favorite.

“This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine.”

The GameMaster is a pump action rifle. The slide felt fairly smooth, but you could feel the grit in the tube as the stalk slid from trigger to muzzle. Through the power of YouTube, I was able to take the rifle completely apart. The pieces were stubborn, and required more use of a nylon mallet than I anticipated. Looking into the chamber made me smile. It was loaded with blaze orange fibres. Decades of swinging from a camo sling like a pendulum from my dad’s right shoulder, rubbing ever so slightly against his hunting coats and vests as he stalked for deer in and around south-central PA. It’s the type of sentimental thing that almost made me want to avoid wiping the fibers away, but I knew my dad would tell me those orange bits wouldn’t make the rifle shoot any straighter, so away they went.

Holding the barrel to a light and looking through it like a telescope always feels incredibly foolish, but it’s the best way to examine the bore of a rifle without using a scope. After 50 years of rounds, it looked pretty good. I still ran a brass brush through it plenty of times just to feel good about myself, but it proved to be a good move, as the cotton-white dry patches came out looking like pieces of electrical tape. After spending two evenings with all the pieces, cleaning them, and oiling them up, the rifle was back together. The trigger pulled with less pressure, the safety clicked better, and the pump and action moved seamlessly. I put the GameMater into my father in-laws’ gun safe with a smile, knowing damn well that’s the cleanest that rifle has been since it was sent from Ilion, New York in 1976. Another level of healing.

Keep, Donate, Dispose

Going through clothes is tough, really tough. They shape so much of one’s identity. My dad was a man composed of Levi jeans and flannels–the majority of which had tiny holes from fire embers, where he got a little too during chilly Bedford nights. Many of them also had paint splatters and mystery material cemented into the very fibre that made up the shirts. Deep in the back corner of his closet hung unworn Carhartt jackets courtesy of his Union, embroidered with “Bob” in script, along with other utility jackets which now belong to me. My dad considered those to be his “good” clothes. We all knew what that meant—he never planned to wear them. It wasn’t because he didn’t like them, it was because he knew he’d find a way for them to suffer the same fate as the majority of his flannels, full of holes and mystery stains. The back corner of the closet is where most of the new clothes he got as gifts ended up, only to be rediscovered years down the road, usually by the person who gifted the clothes in the first place. I kept anything that fit me, and donated the rest. It didn’t feel great to give those clothes away, but it was one less thing my mom had to deal with.

Continuing with my dad’s workbench, I found all kinds of knickknacks—old keychains, a stack of Zippo lighters (some plated in gold, some silver), old Oreo tins full of miscellaneous nuts and bolts, turkey and deer calls, and plenty of classic workbench clichés.

Hanging behind me was my dad’s Cabela’s Arcticreel—a canvas tote bag designed to keep trout on your person while you kept fishing. My dad used that creel my entire life. If it wasn’t holding trout, it was packed with boxes of spinners, hemostats, jars of minnows, bug spray—anything he might need for a day on the water.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of trout found their way into that creel, and later into a skillet. It’s stained, but still in great shape.

And even though I’m a catch-and-release angler, I can’t help but claim the creel as my own.

Back to Life

Before I knew it, a month had passed by. My family was healing, and a few tasks were completed. It was a month home that felt like the blink of an eye. However, it was time for me to get back to life, and get back to Portland. While I was home, I did what I could around my parent’s house, assisted with funeral arrangements, and supported my family and friends during one of the most unfortunate and unexpected times of our lives. No matter how much I could’ve done in that month at home, it could never feel like enough. It hurt like hell to leave, but life doesn’t wait for people during their most challenging times. Onward, progress. There’s still work to be done, but it’s not going anywhere. I’ll take on more tasks in the upcoming months.

I’m extremely fortunate to say that I haven’t dealt with this type of thing too often. The day my dad died was the worst day of my life, and now I know what the bottom looks like. I can’t imagine what it would have looked like if I didn’t have incredible friends and family. Every day I went to the house, there was food outside the door, letters in the mailbox, and I would wake to my phone full of messages from the people I love. I can’t thank them enough for helping us all get through this. My dad was one of a kind. He did things his own way, and rightfully so. He busted his ass every day of his life to provide for us and to give us a better life than the one he grew up with, even when that life was pretty good. With a kind soul and a loving heart, he was a devoted husband, father, brother, and friend. He is the reason I am who I am, and his passing is the reason I’ll never be the same. We shared countless memories and endless laughter, and I will think of him every day until we meet again. Thanks for everything, dad. I love you with all my heart. Gone too soon, buddy.