Autumn and Insulators. Part 3.

Hello everyone on this beautiful autumn day in October! It was nice and sunny all day and the temperature climbed all the way to 61F, or 16C. Okay, it’s not that warm, but for this time of year it’s quite nice for us. Just a reminder before continuing with my story today. I have mentioned this before but some of you may have missed that post. My Dad passed away a number of years ago and these stories are mostly from when I was a teen.

We had a lot of adventures together and things always seemed to happen to Dad on these adventures. Things happened to me at times too, just not very often. Dad was the one who was accident prone. I am now though which is a bit odd. But let’s continue with out story. Poor Dad, he had to sit there in wet clothes. But at least it was warm in the sun. He sat on a rock far from me. “Hard to talk when you’re so far away,” I said. “It’s just fine,” he replied. Strange. “Do you think you could bring me my thermos of coffee without hitting me with it?,” he asked.

“Sure,” I said, “no problem at all.” “That’s what you said last time,” Dad reminded me. I gave it to him along with his sandwiches. “Amazing,” he said. Not sure what he meant by that. Dad yelled, almost choking on his coffee. “Don’t do that,” I said, “I almost spilled my coffee.” What a look on Dad’s face. Priceless. “You didn’t put any milk and sugar in my coffee,” he finally managed to say. “Naturally,” I said, “you told me not to because I didn’t do it right last time.”

Dad just looked. He used to do that a lot. Then dad said quietly, “oh, right, I forgot. I can’t drink this coffee,” he said, “it’s absolutely terrible.” “Why not fill your cup half full and I will top it off with some of mine,” I said, “at least it will have some milk and sugar.” Dad thought for a moment then agreed to try it. “Ugh, this is still terrible,” he said, “not sweet enough.” I didn’t use as much sugar as Dad. But at least he had no problems with his sandwiches. And he did drink some of the coffee.

I offered to give him a full cup. He accepted. So I went over and filled his cup, which he held out quite far. “Don’t trust me, do you,” I said. “Not a bit,” he replied. “Thanks. Here, you can have the rest of my coffee,” he offered. “Sure,” I said. He bent over to pick it up. I bent down to get it too. I got it first and lifted it up. Unfortunately because Dad was bent over I hit him on the forehead with the thermos. Oddly, that knocked his hat off and his glasses and caused him to spill his cup of coffee on himself. I looked and said, “did you think you were getting too dry?”

That did it. I started to laugh again. Just couldn’t help myself. Dad just looked. Then he came over and said he wanted his thermos of coffee back. “Okay,” I said, and handed it to him. Now, I just could not believe what followed. He opened the thermos and poured it on my head!! Most of it went down my back because I was wearing a hat. “AAAAAAAA!,” I said, “What was that for?”

“I thought you were looking too dry,” he said. Then he broke out with this kind of hysterical laughter. That was just so hard to believe that he would do such a thing. I thought I could get this finished today, guess not. There will have to be one more part. I hope you are enjoying this little adventure, one of our more “exciting” trips looking for insulators. Well, a lot happened anyway. Have a great week everyone and God bless!

Steve. ©2026 Steve McLeod.