Father's Day

Everybody's posting Father's Day pix, and who am I to pretend I'm different?

That's Max Hochfeld, whom everybody called Peter. He was 32 when he fled Hitler's Germany and arrived in the USA, settled in Portland, and started his little family. I took this picture during a camping trip in late July, 1952.

I remember listening to the Democratic Convention on a battery-powered shortwave; they drafted Adlai Stevenson and rounded out the ticket with John Sparkman of Alabama. In addition to the radio, there would have been a tent, but Dad never quite caught onto the "roughing it" part of camping (note coffee, cigar, NYTimes, comfortable chair). He was not an outdoorsman, but I think he saw a camping trip as something that American dads did with their kids. He gamely gave it a try, but once was enough.