Could the contrast in personality be greater between a father and a son than the one I observed with the boy I loved when we were both fourteen years of age and his father whose character I immediately identified as coarse and egotistical presented that question to me? I used to hate it when I saw that boy do everything he could think of to ingratiate himself with his father, only to be rebuffed with total indifference. Every boy wants to have his father's approval; in this case it was entirely lacking through lack of interest.

There are times when even at a young age you immediately sense something essential missing in another human being. In the case of this boy's father it was a social, humane conscience, augmented by a sense of arrogant entitlement. Sixty-five years later that boy's father is long dead. And the boy and I occasionally muse about the characters of our parents, the redeeming qualities they had, and the dysfunctional familial relationships that resulted from their behaviours with their offspring.

Try as I might, I can think of no redeeming traits that this man was in possession of. He condemned what he did not like and controlled whom he could. I believe he disliked me as instantly as I did him, because it soon became quite clear to him that I would not be among those who deferred to him. I had the unmitigated temerity to voice my personal disagreement with many of his statements. Our lack of comity became evident on our first meeting when he casually asked if my mother was the 'cross-eyed one' he vaguely knew of.

He was the kind of man who would steer his truck deliberately on the highway to gain a score, killing any wildlife unfortunate enough to cross his path.

Not surprising that as a devoted recreational fisherman he treated the fish communities he targeted as prey whose number and size corresponded with 'scoring a hit' as evidence of his canny conceit in his ability to trump their attempts at survival as opposed to his dedication to destroy their lives. When on the rare occasion he allowed his son to accompany him and his son caught a fish, it would be his father who would pose for it, the very picture of the conquering hero.

He was the kind of man who had no sense of decency, someone who when his brother-in-law whose wealth as a result of hard work he envied, died and this kind man who had been a source of comfort to his own son, my beloved, this brute of a man described as a "son-of-a-bitch". That was because he had been unable to coerce money from him. Unlike his constant demands from his own elderly parents whom the boy overheard being manipulated by his father in harshly demanding threats.

This was a man whose voice, dripping with sarcasm, would intimidate our children when they were young and vulnerable to the point where they hated being in his presence. He was a man who enforced the discipline of his word by violence against his own children had they dared on occasion to challenge his dictates. His circle of friends reflected his own values; alcohol-swilling, card-playing men most of whom were, however, capable of genuine jocularity unlike his own grim display of misanthropic schadenfreude.

I may be giving the impression in this little display of ancient pique that I heartily disliked this man. It is an entirely correct impression.