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" Father&amp;#039;s Day is nearly upon us, and the time for the customary gift-buying, trip-booking, and barbecue-planning is nearly at an end. There isn&amp;#039;t much we can do now for dear-old Dads other than clap our hands on their back, give them a bear hug that you know they&amp;#039;ll return, and bid them put their feet up this Sunday. Still, that&amp;#039;s not always enough, so we decided to add a few lionizing tales to the conversation. Because they raised us, dammit, and without them we wouldn&amp;#039;t be here. Thanks, Dad.  Polish Spaghetti By Mike Nizza It was getting late, and Dad dispatched me to the deli counter to run down one last ingredient while he waited on line. A shadowy man in a white coat hovered over me, replying to my meek request under his breath. &amp;quot;You eat that sht?&amp;quot; In fact, I had not so far in my 12 years. But he grabbed a spoon and started filling a container with farmer&amp;#039;s cheese. This was one of four ingredients in the best thing that my father made when it was his turn to cook for our family. He called it Polish Spaghetti, because that&amp;#039;s what the mother of his Polish friend in East New York called it when he was a kid. Decades after eating the dish for the last time, he&amp;#039;d woken up in the middle of the night, the memory of glorious satiation as strong as when he was living on Milford Street.  By then, though, East New York was far behind him. There was no recipe, no one to call to get one, and no Google (not that I found anything helpful when I just tried). So he started experimenting. On his kids. And yes, we came to eat the sht out of that sht. The keys to Thursday night happiness became, for my brother and sister and me: spaghetti, bacon, farmer&amp;#039;s cheese, black pepper. If only that combination were approved by Mom, the nurse. So his masterpiece entered the Family Dinner Hall of Fame anyway, even though its run was limited for health reasons. These days, we merely talk about Polish Spaghetti, though the remembrances build and build until its nearly as good as the real thing. We talk about the stout old lady who made it for him. Then the eureka. And finally, the damn cholesterol. But mostly we are talking about the man who found inspiration from his childhood, and only needed a little bit of his unlimited ingenuity to bring it to ours. The Best Thing Sweety Makes By Lydia Woolever Don&amp;#039;t get me wrong \u2014 my mother&amp;#039;s a damn good cook \u2014 but sometimes she cooks a steak to hell, or makes a tasteless b\u00E9arnaise, or her chicken&amp;#039;s too dry. But every time, because she made it, my father calls it &amp;quot;the best&amp;quot; thing he ever ate. That&amp;#039;s how she showed she loved him, which is why, from day one, he never had to cook. She showered him in roast chicken and apple pie, and he was hers. Year after year, he ate suppers in sublime silence and occasional ovation: &amp;quot;Oh, man,&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Lib, this!&amp;quot; or my \u2014 personal favorite \u2014 the telling &amp;quot;Sweety...&amp;quot; It was his way, however ineloquent, of showing he loved her, too. But then something changed. Maybe it was his age, or nostalgia, but one day he started going online. He started buying groceries, started making eggs. He started dog-earring cookbooks and eyeing the crock-pot. He started making brine, then gravy. His eggs became perfect. And now, when he hands out his perfect-pink steak, he beams with pride. &amp;quot;Look at those grill marks, Lib!&amp;quot; he says. Because he finally found a way to pay it back: by cooking, finally, for her. And even if he forgets the garlic or overdoes the salt, she still sits back and smiles, &amp;quot;Sweety....&amp;quot; Because it&amp;#039;s the best thing she ever ate. A Tip from a Heineken Lover By Eric Vilas-Boas Whenever I visit the home I grew up in, my dad sits down to lunch holding not one, but two beers in hand \u2014 one for him, and one for me. They&amp;#039;re always Heinekens.  It&amp;#039;s his beer, so much so that, when I went to Europe for five months, his souvenir gift was an engraved Heiny glass from the factory in Amsterdam. He refuses to drink IPAs, microbrews, or anything else I buy. So I thought there had to be some moving story behind the obsession. Was it the first beer he&amp;#039;d ever drunk? Was it his first beer in America after emigrating? I had to ask. &amp;quot;Why? Is this some kind of interview or something?&amp;quot; he shot back on the phone. &amp;quot;Little bit, yeah.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Am I gonna get some kind of Heineken freebies for this?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Probably not, Dad.&amp;quot; After a few minutes and my most pressing questions, I didn&amp;#039;t get any fun tales. He had seen an ad about twelve years ago and decided he liked the taste. He did offer one piece of fatherly wisdom, though: &amp;quot;You should always have two kinds of beer in your refrigerator: a real beer \u2014 Heineken; and one of the cheap ones \u2014 Budweiser or Coors, you name it. Because those taste like water.&amp;quot; So I suppose that&amp;#039;s how you know what to offer your guests. And I like it even better that there isn&amp;#039;t any blockbuster glamor to his Heinekens. I&amp;#039;m just happy to still be in his higher bracket. Even if microbrews aren&amp;#039;t his thing. My Dad and Our Daddy Pancakes By Nate Hopper Daddy Pancakes. That&amp;#039;s what they&amp;#039;re called. Not Father&amp;#039;s Flapjacks. Not Man of the House Griddle Cakes. Honestly, not even Hopper Pancakes. Nope. Daddy Pancakes. Because these are his concoction, made by him for himself and his three boys. And so if you are one of his boys, and you call and ask him for the recipe, say, mid-Friday before Father&amp;#039;s Day, from a couple hundred miles away, you get this laugh that&amp;#039;s all half-aw&amp;#039;s and -oh-ho&amp;#039;s that draw his smirk in your head. Had I not called him on his cell phone, stealing his right hand, there would&amp;#039;ve been a good chance at him drumming a few sixteenth notes on his thighs. Dahdahdahdahdah. Because Daddy Pancakes are his, and he&amp;#039;s completely proud. This is how he describes them: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a contrivance of two or three different recipes that I married together to a wonderful&amp;quot; \u2014 three parts pride, one part humble Hopper-sarcasm on that word \u2014 &amp;quot;concoction of breakfast goodness.&amp;quot; Then he stifles a laugh. He has the base down, but he experiments with the fruits. He makes classics (bananas: my favorite). But others don&amp;#039;t always quite work (the strawberries just can&amp;#039;t hold the thing together). But hey, that&amp;#039;s life and the work of pleasing your kids. If we were late to the table, they&amp;#039;d be nestling warm under tin foil. Then he&amp;#039;d come over whenever the last big one was sizzling. And he&amp;#039;d be with us. And us with him. And his lion mane of a haircut. And we&amp;#039;d eat ourselves full. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/a23082/fathers-day-stories-15589446/?click=news>