My father, who died in 1991, would have turned 94 this week. It's funny how, as the years mist by, the memories I have of my dad are, more and more, reduced to disconnected shards and "greatest hits" anecdotes. I wish I could close my eyes and recreate just one entire afternoon or evening spent together, even if we'd been doing something as mundane as driving two-lane roads in rural East Texas on routine errands.

Regarding those "memory shards." My father was always reading — from Cellini, Kipling, Longfellow and Churchill to his much-loved John D. McDonald and Robert B. Parker paperbacks. Dad would often strike a facetious pose and, in a full-throated, faux-thespian baritone, deliver a quick quote from ... well, who knew where? Over the course of the years, many became familiar and comforting. Here are a few, in no pattern or thematic context or for any particular reason other than, happily, they pop up in my brain from time to time.

1. "Ten thousand saw I at a glance / Tossing their heads in sprightly dance" — William Wordsworth, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud."

2. "You missed a spot" — Dad, sitting on the back patio with a cocktail, watching me mow the yard.

3. "When I ups with his heels, and smothers his squeals / In the scum of the boiling broth" — Sir William Schwenck Gilbert, "The Yarn of the 'Nancy Bell.'"

4. "Ontogeny tends to recapitulate phylogeny" — German biologist/philosopher Ernst Haeckel (and I still have no idea what that means.)

5. "Darlin', that lawn's not going to mow itself" — Dad, to my sister after I'd left home for college and she'd very reluctantly inherited the landscaping chores.

6. "If dogs have a heaven, there's one thing I know / Old Shep has a beautiful home" — Pet-enamored father singing Red Foley's "Old Shep."

7. "I've driven more miles backward than most men have forward" — Dad, to my mother any time she questioned his depth of knowledge on any subject or activity.

8. "You wouldn't believe it. I just had the most amazing Duck L'Orange!" — Dad, in a hospital bed, hallucinating a meal that didn't happen. It was the last thing he said to me.

9. "When the chill waters of the River Styx close about my ankles, let me say that I have lived the Good Life, I have fought the Good Fight." — So far as I know, this was of my father's own quote. Not sure he intended to write his own epitaph, but it works. Happy birthday, Dad. I miss you.