My Father’s Downfall

I got to thinking about my father.  My father took a baseball line-drive to his face while just a boy and required false teeth for the rest of his life.  He never swore in front of me when I was a kid—not even when I became an adult.  Later in life, he met women (yes, more than one) in smalltown bars and married them. 

And that was his downfall.

Not the women.

My father’s downfall was rooted in his need to have at least three or four last drinks at the end (and eventually at the beginning) of each day.

--Mitchell Hegman