Father Knew Best Where To Vacation

It took World War II to get my dad out of New Jersey.

By the time he was 18, he was a Red Sox fan who'd never been to Boston. A thoroughbred racing fan who'd never seen a horse race. Radio, it was a wonderful thing.

My father spent his entire life in one small town, where he was the star pitcher on his high school baseball team. He had dreams of playing in the big leagues, yet he'd never seen a major league game.

Dad's family never traveled. How could they? They were carless and chronically behind on the rent. His father was a janitor, his sister was brain-damaged and his older brother was in and out of East Coast jails, which made my grandmother warn against venturing far from home.

"Dougherty boys get in trouble when they leave the state," she told my dad.

But the war that sent him to Europe, Asia and the South Pacific took care of that curse.

When he had kids of his own, my father swore they'd get to see what he'd missed: the United States. So every summer, we set out in the family station wagon to a new destination. Some years we were joined by my crippled grandmother, my disabled aunt, our Irish setter and even the family cat. Sort of like the Clampetts, without the oil money.

Other times it was just the four of us, driving from campground to campground, eating at splintery picnic tables as we explored America.

Rather, Dad's version of America.

Our family trips were inevitably tailored to his curious interests - sports, gambling, history and nature. In that order. Thanks to him, my childhood scrapbooks held losing parimutuel tickets.

He was the reason I was the only kid in my class to visit the log cabin birthplace of Nancy Hanks or make a detour to South Bend, Ind., on a road trip to Yellowstone.

"I can't believe we're here," my father whispered reverently as we stood before the locked gates of the Notre Dame football stadium.

No matter how much my brother and I begged, frivolous places like Hershey Park and Disneyland never featured in our plans. Neither did New York's Thousand Islands, the destination my mother pleaded for every summer.

She almost got there. Once.

It was the summer my father announced that we were heading north, with no particular plan.

"We'll see where the road takes us," he said with a mysterious smile.

My mother was happy. She was sure the road would take us to the picturesque Canadian border. So imagine her surprise when she woke up and found the car parked in Cooperstown, N.Y.

"The Baseball Hall of Fame?" she groaned. "What happened to the Thousand Islands?"

"This will be a thousand times better," my father grinned.

For the next two days - yep, that's how long it took my old man to work his way through the Hall, they gave him a free ticket for Day Two - she made sandwiches and Kool-Aid in the parking lot. My mother had seen all she wanted after about an hour inside.

I lasted most of an afternoon, trailing my father past yellowed uniforms and unfamiliar names: Ty Cobb, Dizzy Dean, Lefty Grove.

"When we come back, Willie Mays will be in here," Dad predicted, although we never did go back.

By the time my father died, he and my mom had traveled to Mexico, Hong Kong and a half-dozen European countries. But never to the Thousand Islands.

On the first Father's Day without him I asked my mother whether she ever forgave him for tricking her into a trip to Cooperstown.

"Not for a long time," she said, laughing.

A version of this originally ran in The Virginian-Pilot on June 16, 2013.