I didn’t know my dad very well, and most of the things I did know were almost mythical in nature. Some things were his own Big Fish stories. Some were other people's recollections of him. My father has mostly been fiction to me, the guy who convinced all of south Florida that he, and only he, could detail Rolls Royces, and the dealers in South Florida believed him. He ran them from Palm Beach to Miami and back for years with a gun on the seat next to him. He drank whiskey at the Blue Boar. He was a misfit songwriter who won a contest for writing a song about my mom kicking him out. And he claimed to have written music with Gordon Lightfoot.
My dad was dead by age 45. Over the years, there were times when I wondered if there was even 1 true thing I knew about my dad. It seemed easy enough that I could simply ask Gordon Lightfoot (or his people) if he had known him. Who can forget a last name like mine? Or a wiry maverick who went by Roscoe? I've written and rewritten the letter a few times but could not send it. I decided to let my dad have that one. I would simply believe it. Now it's completely carried to the grave, and I will never get to know. There's a strange comfort in the not knowing.
