Alt-Father's Day: Saying goodbye to the father he never knew is an adequate headline for Jonathan Comey's Father's Day piece at South Coast Today.

It begins with a long unnecessary riff on a medical scare before the birth of his own son, Benjamin, seen at right, but Jonathan starts getting into it here:

This story is about my father, who I never met and I never will.

So where should we start? At the beginning, when a 20-year-old hippie girl hears live music coming from the apartment upstairs and decides to go outside on the landing and sing along? Or should we fast forward four decades, to see where that decision would ultimately lead?...

Eventually, he warms up to great stuff like this:

Sad as it seems, fatherlessness wasn't so rough on little Jonathan Comey. In my little mind, I had three parents — Mom, Grandma, Granddaddy — and everyone else just had two. I was ahead!

On Father's Day, I'd make my grandfather cards: "To Captain Clam, from Lieutenant Lobster," and it never even really occurred to me that I might be missing something. I even added a stepfather when I was 8, a kind man named Jim who taught me to shave and play Pitch, watched sports with me, did his best.

I had a lot of worries as a youth (it's not as rosy as we all remember), but not knowing my dad wasn't one of them. In an age of rampant divorce, no one really found it strange that I never talked about my dad, and I wouldn't have cared if they did. I loved my grandparents so fiercely that I couldn't imagine he could have made much difference in my life...

Footnote: My own father, Francis A. Lennon, died on Father's Day, June 19, 1983. My grandson was born June 19, 1997.

Video: Unicorn in the Garden - classic UPA cartoon 1953 by James Thurber. (UPA's 1954 animation of Poe's The Tell Tale Heart is really good, too, but it's dark for a holiday.)

Seymour M. Hersh: The General’s Report: How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties

The report itself: The "Taguba Report" On Treatment Of Abu Ghraib Prisoners In Iraq

No brainer: YouThink.com - Quiz: What American accent do you have?