Father time

Alex Coolman

The ducks in the pond at TeWinkle Park were looking quite attractive

Sunday, and 18-month-old Ashley McNerney was doing her best to get her

hands on them.

Were it not for the attention of Robert and Stephanie, her parents, she

might have propelled her small body into the water in pursuit of that

goal.

“We want to keep her from trying to take a swim,” Robert McNerney

explained. “This kid has no fear.”

The McNerneys, like many of the families in the park Sunday, were out in

the sun in celebration of Father’s Day. They sprawled lazily on the grass

hillside before heading off to a barbecue at Robert’s McNerney’s father’s

house.

Fatherhood “definitely makes you do a 180,” Robert McNerney said, and he

didn’t mean that he had to run around a lot in pursuit of his daughter.

“You can’t picture not having a kid once you have one.”

Across the lake, the Richards, junior and senior, were having a Father’s

Day fish.

Richard the elder -- he declined to give his last name -- said throwing a

line in the water was a tradition he had followed with his son for the

past several years.

And though the water was a slightly troubling shade of turquoise, he

insisted it was possible to extract living fish -- sometimes rather large

fish -- from its murky depths.

“I hook them, he reels them in,” he explained.

Richard the younger, 6, had a fascinating tale to relate regarding a

turtle he had snared earlier in the day.

“I almost pulled the whole thing in,” he noted.

And at another spot on the small lake, Mike Cunningham was overseeing the

attempts of two young men to snare some wildlife of their own via rod and

reel.

“They’ve been trying to get me to come out here for a while now,” he

said. “Telling me all these fish stories.”

Were the young men his sons?

No, he said. They were friends of his sons, the only ones who wanted to

go outdoors.

“My kid’s at home playing Nintendo.”