Randy says "It's time for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun"!

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1) It's Father's Day in the USA on Sunday, so let's talk about our fathers.  

2)  What did your father really like to do in his work or spare time?  Did he have hobbies, or a workshop, or did he like sports, or reading, or watching TV?

3)  Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook or Google+ post.

Dad had a workshop in the basement.  It wasn't fancy but it had all his tools in it!  It used to be the coal room in the basement.  I don't remember him being crafty but he did finish the basement of our circa 1900 house by creating a recreation room and laundry room.  I think he did that out of love for his family.

Dad wrote doggerel or poems commemorating family events.  A child's birth, an illness, an achievement.  I believe he did this out of a love of words and as a way of expressing his emotions.  One of these poems is how I learned that one of my brothers was born with red hair.  I learned this after I had two redheaded children of my own.

Dad loved sports.  He played basketball for the YMCA in Chicago when he was in High School.  One year the team went to the state level.  I think he was about 17 then.  I know he got a gold basketball as an award.  I saw it in mom's jewelry box and think it may have been on her charm bracelet.  

Dad was the tall one in the center

Later he also was a football fan and also enjoyed horseback riding.  Dad didn't go to college but during that era of his live he followed college football.  Notre Dame was one of the teams he supported, even traveling on at least one occasion to Iowa for a game.  
At some point in time Dad became a horseback rider and took mom on a date riding.  Evidently they rode often enough that they had their own boots and jodhpurs  I remember finding them in a closet upstairs that also held mom's old cocktail dresses.  

.I also remember that dad was an avid Bears football fan and every year we would watch the pre-season Chicago College All Star game which pitted the NFL Champions against the All Star College players.  Dad and I always made a $.25 bet.  Usually he was NFL and I was pro All Stars.
One year we were at the beach and dad joined in a pick-up game of baseball on the beach and while sliding into base inadvertently  broke another players leg.  He felt so bad.  I think that pretty much ended his sports participation.

Sadly dad died at the age of 49 when I was a senior in high school so who knows what loves or hobbies he may have developed.