Field and Stream was among those putting together lists geared specifically toward the dad who is an outdoorsman. 

Some of the gift ideas from those lists included whiskey or coffee, lanterns, knives and shirts or an insulated “thermal cloak,” which Field and Stream described as “essentially a hooded camo bag — helps keep a hunter warm, comfortable and concealed while sitting on a stand on cold, wet days.” You really should see the picture.

Then there are fishing rods, coffee mugs and beer steins, chocolate-covered potato chips, beef jerky and other snacks, a compass or fingernail clippers.

Over the years, since its creation in the early 20th Century, Father’s Day has not always been the most popular day with dads.

“Many men, however, continued to disdain the day,” according to history.com. “As one historian writes, they ‘scoffed at the holiday’s sentimental attempts to domesticate manliness with flowers and gift-giving, or they derided the proliferation of such holidays as a commercial gimmick to sell more products – often paid for by the father himself.’”

Washington state celebrated the first statewide Father’s Day in June 1910, fashioned after the increasingly popular Mother’s Day observance developed in the years following the Civil War.

Father’s Day was eventually made a nationwide holiday during the Nixon administration in 1972.

One of the Cosmopolitan gift list ideas was a smart-looking men’s watch.

Admiring the attractive gold band, sharp hands and maker’s mark in the photograph, it occurred to me that truly the best gift you could give your dad for Father’s Day was not a watch, or any of these other things, but rather time itself.

In 1973, Harry Chapin recorded what Rolling Stone readers voted as fourth on the list of “All-time Saddest Songs.” “Cat’s in the Cradle,” released the following year, was a Billboard No. 1 hit single within two months.

Creation of the song began as a poem written by Chapin’s wife, Sandra. The couple had two children together and three from Sandy’s previous marriage adopted by Harry.

The song lyric detailed the shared time hoped for, but not realized, between a father and a son throughout their lives — from when the son is a boy looking up to his too-busy dad, until the father is retired and his son is a man, with kids of his own, now too busy himself.

“And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon, little boy blue and the man in the moon. When you coming home, dad? I don't know when, but we'll get together then,

You know we'll have a good time then,” Chapin wrote.

A seemingly widespread human failing seems to be the mistaken notion that there will always be more time beyond today to do the things we want to do.

We’ll take that trip, walk that road, climb that hill, fish that creek, hunt that valley, come back here next year and do the whole thing all over again.

Maybe. And, if life steps in with an illness or a new job in another state or some other interruption, maybe not. 

In the 1970s, Harry Chapin used to come to Marquette and perform at Northern Michigan University. He and his band members would play basketball with some of the NMU team before his Hedgecock Fieldhouse show.

In 1981, Chapin was killed in a car accident on the Long Island Expressway. He was 38 years old when he died. The singer of that hit song about kids and dads never lived long enough to see his own children grown.

Death loves irony.

Those of us who have lost a dad or other loved one have learned, often painfully and after the fact, that there isn’t necessarily going to be a next time.

My dad died 11 years ago. In some years, his birthday falls on Father’s Day. This year, he would have been 93.

I wish every day we still had even one more minute to spend together, but we don’t.

As a father of two boys myself, who have now become accomplished men living in other states, I think a father could imagine no greater gift for himself than spending time with his son or daughter on Father’s Day — no matter what we decided to do, even just a silent walk in the woods or to only sit and talk.

When you come right down to it, a simple opportunity like that is worth more than a mountain of mixed nuts, all the personalized golf balls in Scotland or a king’s ransom worth of expensive slacks — it’s worth the world.