Ladder racks and chess

It’s not every day you’d find a blog that claims the lack of a ladder rack was what lost the writer his father.
It’s a bit of a confusing post, but somehow in it there’s something deep – as its sole commentator notes. Apparently the blogger had tracked down his long-lost father after some time only to discover that he carried all his work gear in the back of his red pickemup (an interesting word I haven’t come across before, although when you break it down into its component parts – pick em up – it makes perfect sense) and this caused scratching and damage to the truck bed.
Quite how he got from there to losing his father again, I’m not clear. But it seems it all hinges on the ladder rack.
My loss of my father hinged on the game called chess. (Bit of a far cry from ladder racks, but there you go; each to his own.) If chess hadn’t been his master, instead of him being its master, he and I might have had a number of good years together. But some obsessions take hold of you, and chess came before family, in my father’s case. I haven’t seen him for sixty years – admittedly he died back in the early sixties, so I wouldn’t have seen him for all those years anyway, but that’s not the point.
Ladder racks and chess. Life is always made up of little choices.