The Questions to Ask Your Dad Before the Stories Leave
You've heard maybe half his stories: the car he shouldn't have bought, the boss he'd still thank. The other half leave when he does, and everyone in the family knows it, and nobody does anything, because "we should record Grandpa sometime" is the most procrastinated sentence in America.
Good questions are specific
"Tell me about your childhood" produces a shrug. "Describe the bedroom you grew up in" produces the wallpaper, the window, and what he hid where. Specific questions do the remembering for him; his job is only to answer.
Let him write, alone, in his own hand
Interviews put men like him on the spot. A book of one question per page, filled out at the kitchen table over a winter, lets the stories come out in his voice with nobody watching. The handwriting itself becomes half the heirloom.
How to gift it so it actually gets filled
Give it with a deadline dressed as an occasion: "start anywhere, and let's read one at Christmas." Reluctant writers need permission to be brief; a sentence is a fine answer, and the margins are allowed.
Dad, Tell Me Your Story holds a hundred such questions across eight chapters, from boyhood to what he knows now. An heirloom, not a homework assignment.