Ralph Gardner Jr.

My father used to describe himself as a “fun dad." He probably cribbed the expression from some Sixties TV commercial involving a father doing stereotypical things with his child like playing catch or frolicking in their backyard pool.

Christmas Eve means it’s time to start holiday shopping. I jest. I’ve been shopping for days. At least one day. Last Saturday I made my annual pilgrimage to Great Barrington and Fluff Alpaca. I’m not very good at coming up with gift ideas. What I’ve learned is that you can give the same gift, or category of gift, year after year. People come to rely on your lack of creativity; I mean predictability.

Imagine if the division roiling the country -- that blue states/red states thing, MSNBC vs. Fox News, the heated rhetoric and conspiracy theories metastasizing on social media – is grossly exaggerated, a manipulation, simulated reality.

I can’t recall what my pitch was that persuaded Henry Kissinger to give me an interview. Kissinger, who died at the age of 100 on November 29th, was friendly with the press and adept at using it to bend the political narrative to his will. Still, I doubt he would have agreed to get together with me if he’d known my agenda. I was looking for an excuse to write about my long, reluctant years as a dancing school student and then bouncer.

I realize Thanksgiving is right around the corner. And I’m very much looking forward to Thanksgiving dinner. This year, as we usually do, we’re celebrating at my sister-in-law’s house on Long Island. She’s making a turkey with all the fixings. I’m supplying, as I always do, the tinfoil wrapped chocolate turkeys.

Lighthouses serve various purposes. They warn ships away from dangerous shores. They’re romantic and evocative and double as tourist attractions. And the one in the Hudson River, just south of the city of Hudson, cautions me that the train will soon be arriving at the station and it’s time to head for the exit.

I love the Eiffel Tower. That’s not an especially radical statement. What’s not to like about the fanciful reddish-brown latticework structure that looms over Paris? But that’s separate and distinct from saying that I love Paris, though the two are almost synonymous in my mind.

Our living room plays host to an inherited Steinway baby grand piano. No one in the family plays it. Hardly anybody played it when the instrument resided at my parents’ apartment for six decades. And when they did play it – typically my brothers and me when we were taking piano lessons -- you wished they hadn’t.

My wife and I recently fulfilled a long-delayed dream. We held a garage sale. If ever there was a home begging to have large quantities of its stuff decommissioned through the agency of folding tables filled with junk it was ours. But we could never seem to do so. Mostly because our house is so far off the road that weekend bargain hunters probably wouldn’t be able to find the place; and also because we don’t really want strangers invading our privacy.