Also available at Fictionwise
DAD is the first science fiction sale after I decided to return to writing SF and was written as a father's day gift for my son. In this I recalled the white-water canoe camping trips we had taken on the Shennandoa River, near Luray, VA and Harper's Ferry, WV.
This is really a story about coming of age, when every boy realizes that he has become his father. I often think that this would make a wonderful story for The Outer Limits or The Twilight Zone, were they still around. My mental image of the protagonist was a black boy, not the white one that illustrates this story.
Jeff Kooistra, who has become a good friend as a result, was given credit for this story in the Table of Contents. A very large box containing an apology for the mix-up appeared in ANALOG two months later.