A few years ago my sister, who is both straightforward and accurate, called me a curmudgeon. It smarted for a moment, until I realized the truth in the label.

Since then, whenever I careen in the direction of being another eccentric old fogie, I catch myself for a moment. Then I usually yield to whatever offbeat opinion or socially dubious behavior washes over me. I’m coming around to the reality that my take on most things is simply different from others. The world’s a mess and no one listens to the cornucopia of remedies I know would make it a better place. Still, I try to stay positive. But how did I get so out of step with my fellow humans? Where does this streak of alternative logic come from?

Recently, my same sister moved from her lifelong house; downsizing being all the rage among my set. She sent a group text to all the sibs, “Would anyone want dad’s book?” “Sure” I replied, as I embraced the opportunity to welcome our father’s archives into my still ample home.

Throughout much of our childhood, we heard about the book our dad was writing, The Irishman Who Discovered America. He would occasionally reveal snippets of his peculiar take on history, much of which takes place in Alaska, narrated by the lead Husky of a dogsled team. Dad was a guy who often left things unfinished; we never got to read the entire tale. The book, like so many aspects of my upbringing, just drifted away.

Apparently, when our father died, back in the ‘90’s, my sister got his book.

A week after our text exchange, a box appeared on my porch. Dad’s book! Actually, the box contained more than that: a five-inch stack of unbound, typewritten pages plus a Marble Composition Notebook. The kind we carried to school with in fourth grade.

First, I thumbed through the notebook: a novella disguised as a letter to the Manager of Johnson & Johnson’s North Brunswick, New Jersey plant. The plot centers on a large skein of geese near the J&J facility, and envisions them as an air force. The manuscript is rich in references to World War II, the pivotal experience of my father’s life of which he never spoke. The narrator encourages J&J to engage in aerial offense against their pharmaceutical competitors. I didn’t understand it, which I took to be confirmation of my sanity, but I appreciated Dad’s beautiful cursive hand, and his affection for the exclamation point. As a man who lost my ability to write cursive two broken wrists ago, I was mesmerized by the beautiful flow of my father’s fantasy.

On to the five-inch stack. Most of the paper is yellow (the actual color, not because it’s old), a few leaves are pink, hardly any boring old white. The heading on the top sheet reads, “PART II.” Here I am on Page 1 and already behind! The typed sheets, with manual corrections, are not as elegant as the composition book, but what they lack in grace they make up for in volume.

In the opening scene (of PART II) Charlie, Mr. Guanare, Vito, and Soria discuss going to Spain. Apparently they are in Columbia. Apparently I am in the wrong book, as no one seems remotely Irish, or interested in discovering America.

Next scene takes place in a gin mill in North Jersey. Aha! My father finally writes from what he knows. Still, nothing makes any sense. Chalk it up to the whiskey.

At that point, I realize that conveying logical meaning to my father’s meanderings is not the essence of this pile of papers. Rather, I let his bizarre imagination wash over me. Although by and large a functioning human being, my dad was often teetering on some precipice: lewdness, or madness, or drunkenness, or brilliance. The man’s diffuse borders seep onto every page.

I will not bother revealing the plot or characters of the remaining several hundred pages. Only reflect that somewhere in the pile is the woefully underreported history that an Irishman and his Husky sled across the Aleutians and discovered America. Take that in the chops, Mr. Columbus.

As the son who writes, it’s fitting that I am now the keeper of the manuscript. Like my father, my writing is incisive and important—in my head—even as it sometimes counters conventional logic and rarely aligns with our collective consciousness. My prose may be more lucid; my transitions more easily traced, but I can only hope to possess a kernel of my father’s eclectic genius.

I recall my father, buoyant and jovial, whenever he was engrossed in writing his book. I now possess the evidence that he wrote a whole lot more. Which makes me happy. I’m pretty sure every page of his weighty oeuvre provided great satisfaction as well as comprehensive meaning that, a generation on, eludes me. Or anyone else who might wade into his pile. Much in the same way that my own writing vitalizes me, and provides an elevated alternative to our humdrum world.

My father and I both write principally for ourselves, a pair of offbeat curmudgeons creating the world as we choose to see it.