This creative nonfiction thesis is the story of the wisdom, humor and dread of my father, Paul Harry Beardslee, who died twenty years ago when I was only beginning to learn what it meant to be a man, told through a series of "lines" that he often used. Each chapter is titled with one of those lines and is thematically similar to scenes from a novel, the difference being that these stories are true. It is narrated by a man in his forties who is looking back at his father's role in his juvenile development. The child, Mark, observes the events; but it is the more knowledgeable voice of the grown son, standing on his younger self's shoulder, who conveys to the audience the utter perplexity felt by the child while simultaneously explaining the nugget of wisdom or the humorous anecdote or the horrifying scene presented in the given chapter.
