My dad had an old oil furnace in his basement that we would go work on now and then when I was a little kid.
He also had a weight room down in the basement and I can still remember hearing The Doors playing Light My Fire on his eight track when I was four or five years old.
He would be working out with his friend Danny, and I would sneak down there to watch them, at which point my dad would hand me a small 2 pound dumbbell to curl. They would drink Hoffman’s protein drinks as the oil furnace churned the heat out in the really cold winters up north where we used to live. I used to love the taste of those Hoffman shakes and would like to try it once again and see how it tastes. Dad ran an HVAC company for a few years with Danny, who was a heating and cooling representative, and they did a lot of HVAC repairs around the town. They also got into fixing up old houses and that is what my dad ended up doing for the next fifty years of his life till he passed away at 73. I still like to work on electric and gas furnaces nowadays and reminisce about my dad and all of the times we had together. I used to think dad and I would both live to see our 90’s, but now I am starting to second guess it all, which makes me appreciate life more now that I am pushing 60.