Wanderlust

I was asked yesterday if I had the opportunity to travel abroad, and was that valuable for me personally. Absolutely.

Later I pondered my answer, and wished I had remembered my dad. He was an interesting individual, proud owner of an eighth grade education. Travel, he always said, was his greatest teacher. I know that he wanted for me to see America before seeing college, but his health and the course life takes didn't let that happen.

Understand, he was a natural businessman, and frankly minted money with his night clubs and discos. Even though his early career in mule trading -- I'm not making that up, literally, mule trading -- and his service in the Pacific gave him all the formal education he felt he needed. However, he never stopped reading -- books, newspapers, magazines -- and he constantly preached you need to take a year and see the world.

At one point, I had an offer in hand from ROTC that certainly would have allowed that, but he was violently opposed to my thoughts of a military career.

The English call it gap year. Smitty called it education.