This morning when my partner messaged his eponymous nephew Denis Secundus to invite him chez nous for an afternoon tea, he replied that he was about to leave to join his two sons in bouldering.

This is but one of many reasons we don’t have children: that is, to avoid the frivolous execution of manifestly dangerous amusement. I readily acknowledge nonetheless that the uncommon ambition of bouldering is a huge credit to the boys’ father. By comparison of that invention to the parental involvement of my own family, there is a decided lack of strenuousness.

Of the few times I recollect being with my father, he distinguished himself by inviting me to join him in outings to the Arctic Circle and to a secluded military base in northern Finland at the Russian border. During both these memorable adventures my clearest memory is speaking by telephone with my mother from the boudoir of our suite in Oslo, Norway. She insightfully remarked, “There’s a reason I don’t travel with your father!”  In response to what may appear to be an unfair accusation by my mother, I can relate, for example, that when approaching the Arctic Circle I invited my father to consider booking a hotel room for the night.  He said we’d wait until the sun goes down.  The sun doesn’t go down in the Arctic Circle in the middle of the summer. We ended sleeping in a fjord in Norway; and were awakened the next morning in the wavering field by a farmer with a scythe.

And that indignity doesn’t include the complication of having lost the facility of our windshield wipers (a corruption which, during the endless downpour, I overcame by attaching one of my father’s fishing lines to each side of his wiper, then pulling the lines left and right through the driver’s and passenger’s windows. It was a positively dulling way to drive into Oslo in a large black American car.

In the drive to northern Finland, we had at least the benefit of a driver who might have usefully addressed similar obstructions more critically.  My father – at least when out of uniform – was not a restrained socialite.

He had long ago learned to be satisfied with the narrow comfort of a fine automobile.  If my memory serves, my father’s first car (when he was in his early twenties) was a Studebaker convertible. It had electric windows, power brakes and many other contraptions which were uncommon even in my twenties. Coincidentally Studebaker mergered with Packard (the Studebaker-Packard Corporation).  My father’s father formerly drove a Packard limousine with a chandelier hung in the back seat.

Studebaker was an American wagon and automobile manufacturer based in South Bend, Indiana. The company held a location at 1600 Broadway in Times Square, Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The company was founded in 1852 and incorporated in 1868 as the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company. The firm was originally a coachbuilder, manufacturing wagons, buggies, carriages and harnesses.

Today in an effort to maintain our custom of Sunday morning drives, we opted out of bouldering, choosing instead to wander the map while orbiting the town. Thankfully there wasn’t any traffic along the quiet country roads. We quickly agreed that it was impossible to recall whether we had traveled the same road before. Depending on the season, the look of the road is entirely altered. Eventually – as more urban landmarks arose – it was easy to recognize the territory.

We stopped into Neat Café in Burnstown for coffee and cookies. Later I opined that we could give 2 of the cookies to Denis Secundus to celebrate his upcoming birthday (56). Notwithstanding his earlier advice that he would be bouldering with his two sons, I speculated he’d call late in the afternoon to enquire whether any tea remained.  And he did call. And, yes, we ended offering him two cookies, both of which he proceeded to consume with vigour.