Father’s Day Tribute-Guest Column

June 8, 2026

Guest Column by Jennifer Fry

Dad.  For some, the word may strike fear in the heart.  For me, it strikes the funny bone.

While my brothers and I were growing up, Dad’s favorite band was Trout Fishing in America.  If you Google the name, a mix comes up of angling advice and lyrics to nursery rhymes, re-imagined for the kid at heart.  Their song “The Window,” for example, features Little Miss Muppet and the spider who sat down beside her and “threw her out the window!”  And don’t forget Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater, who who “put [his wife] in a pumpkin shell and threw her out the window!”  You get the idea.

I can remember the day Uncle Bill—near-spitting image of my dad, and even today, hard to tell apart from him at first glance—first introduced Trout Fishing to my family.  The year was 1991; my twin brother and I were seven years old.  The five of us were over at Uncle Bill and Aunt Liz’s house to let the kids play together, when all of a sudden Uncle Bill blurted out, “You gotta hear this new band, Jim!”

Soon, cassette-tape lyrics like “It’s mine!  I won’t share it!” whined into the room.  From then on, my dad was hooked.  He owns all the CD’s and more signed T-shirts than he can wear in a day.  He’s been to eight concerts, the last of which filled the room with all 81 eager listeners.  In their 60’s now, Mom and Dad might have been the youngest ones there, including the band members.

Formed in 1979, the two-member, Texas-based band is composed of acoustic-guitarist Ezra Idlet and upright-bassist Keith Grimwood.  Idlet stands tall at 6 feet 8 inches, while his band partner Grimwood only reaches 5 feet 5 on a good day—a difference of about 15 inches that only adds to the comedic element of their performance.  The pair depend heavily on word-of-mouth for their success.  As of 2020, they had released 25 albums and were nominated for four Grammy awards.

In the band members’ own words, it is “impossible to tell you what sort of music Trout plays.”  Their website lists inspiration from “rock and roll, blues, folk, country, bluegrass, funk, Latin, and reggea” to flavor their music.  In a word, it’s weird, which is all the more fitting for my dad.  Their music caters to children as well as adults.

Through the years, Trout Fishing’s lyrics have come in handy for me.  As a parent now, they seem all the more apropos.  If my child rubs his face with grimy fingers, my impulse is to belt out, “Don’t get it in your eye-o!”—a nod to a song they once wrote about pico de gallo.  Or, if two of my children are fighting over a toy, I might sing defiantly, “It’s mine!” and stomp my foot like a five-year-old.  Indeed, the apple falls not far from the tree.

I complained one day that my husband didn’t appreciate “Mine!” as a song.  My dad replied, “Your husband has never been a child.  And I have never grown up!”

Truer words have never been said.  I should have expected as much from my dad, knowing how my parents met.

In 1979, Jim had a roommate named Howard whose girlfriend Rita (affectionately called “Rita-babe” by my dad) had a best friend named Marie.  In the days when landlines put limits on telephone communication, Howard would call Rita from the shared apartment phone, sometimes while Jim was awake; Jim worked night shifts.  Ever the jokester, Jim wanted to make Rita-babe laugh, so he’d steal the receiver from Howard.  Unknown to Jim, sometimes Marie was over at Rita’s house and was privy to her end of the conversation.  Upon hearing Rita laugh, Marie wanted to laugh, too—so she stole the receiver from Rita.

What started out as Howard talking with Rita became Marie talking with Jim.  She married him two years later because he made her laugh.  Sadly, the very thing that drew her to him was a source of conflict throughout their marriage.  The conflict didn’t stop us kids from having fun with Dad, though.  Mom, we thought, was just a stick-in-the-mud.  As a wife myself now, I’ve come to see Mom in a more sympathetic light.

I remember sharing jokes with Dad that I had gleaned from the Reader’s Digest “Laughter, the Best Medicine” section.  Usually, he’d have read them already.  When the punchline didn’t come out right (it almost never did), he would say with an emphasis on each word, “Timing is everything.”

I did the same with the Peanuts comic strip from Dad’s collection of six volumes.  He would, of course, have already read those, too—many times over.  The set was the only thing he remembers ever asking from his dad.  It was a special set.  The jokes and comic strips, and later movie lines, became a sort of culture between us.  It was an echolalic habit—“movie-speak,” for those unfamiliar—that somehow encompassed life’s great variety.

We have all heard the adage, “God must have a sense of humor.”  If he does, I want it to be like my dad’s—off-beat, but not off-color; unexpected, but not out-of-character; child-like, but not childish.  And in the end, right as rain.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.  May I never grow up to be just like you.