Always, it was my dad who refused to travel. My mom would say, "Bob, let's go to Europe so I can see Germany and then we can go to Sweden.

My old man was half Irish, a quarter Swede and a quarter Norwegian.

Oh, he was having nothing to do with getting out of his comfort zone no matter how much she pleaded at a time when he was in his early sixties.

"No," he said, "they only give you one ice cube in your drink."

When he ordered his booze on the rocks, he wanted a small iceberg cooling his Hudson Bay Scotch Whisky.

The old man never left the continental United States except during the Prohibitio...