Farewell

At my Mom's request, I moderated my Dad's memorial yesterday morning. Drank his bloody Mary recipe and saw all the old salts from his long life. Many, nay most of these old salts have lost other old friends, so they knew the routine, a lot better than I. I wasn't going to post another blog, but I forgot to sing this one last song, yesterday, so here it is.

Dad used to sing this, as well as other songs to us when we were kids. I've written it as I remember it, and sang it to my own young kids.

My father was the keeper of the Eddystone light,
He slept with a mermaid one fine night
And from this union there came three,
A porpoise and a porgy and the other was me.
With a Yo ho ho, and a Yo heave heave,
Such is the life on the rolling sea.

One night, while I was a-trimmin on the glim
Singin a tune from the veper's hymn
A voice from a starboard shouted "Ahoy!"
And there was me mother, she was sittin on a buoy.
The kind what guides the ships that sail,
Not the kind of a buoy what's a juvenile male.

"Now, what has become of my children three?"
My mother then she asked of me.
One was exhibited as a talking fish
The other served up in a chafing dish.
With a Yo ho ho, and a Yo heave heave,
Such is the life on the rolling sea.

Well the moonlight flashed in her seaweed hair.
When I looked again, my mother wasn't there
A voice came echoing out of the night,
"To Hell with the keeper of the Eddystone Light!"
With a Yo ho ho, and a Yo heave heave,
Such is the life on the rolling sea.

Lot's of good photos of my dad's life, gleaned from the myriad albums. Here's him and Mom after winning Transpac in 1955.



Here's the Psyche crew too. Note the similarity in the grins of father and son (I'm the second from left).