Castleton freshman Will Buck's father Scott Buck hoists a fantasy football trophy in "The Cave," as his brother Avery looks on with disappointment.

My dad is one of those guys that you’d consider an “old guy” … or at least that’s what he considers himself. Scott E. Buck was born in 1958, and, from the stories that he’s told me, he was quite the stud back in the day.

He set records on the basketball court, the football field and the baseball field. In high school, I guess people knew him as the “jock” type of guy, so he auditioned for the school play just to piss everybody off.

He got the lead role.

He had to sing a few times during that play, and he had no problem doing it. My dad would go on to be in other plays, because apparently he had a killer voice.

This is just the beginning of my knowledge of his infatuation with music.

I was born in 2000. My parents got a divorce in 2001, so my parents have always lived separately. I’ve lived in two houses with my dad. When we moved out of our first house in 2008, and moved in to our new one, my dad added a lot of stuff to that house.

Scott Buck is an outdoors type of guy, which makes sense since he was a roofer his entire life. He built a fenced in area for our dogs, he built a porch with an overhang, and in 2010 he built our garage, a.k.a. “The Man Cave.”

When my dad was doing all these jobs, I would be around, either watching him do it, playing basketball or riding a bike. Occasionally I would hear a booming voice coming from around the corner, but then I’d continue doing whatever I was doing because it was just my dad singing the lyrics to whatever was blaring out of the radio.

This radio was around during all of this too, often sitting next to the ladder, tuned into 106.5, (PYX 106, Albany’s only Classic Rock Radio station). That same radio sits in the Cave today.

The Cave was built so my brothers could have their friends over and have somewhere to hang out. When my brothers moved out, the key to the Cave was passed down to me.

To me, the Cave represents nostalgia itself. It’s filled with New York Yankees merchandise, a New York Giants flag, a dart board, a woodstove, a lot of old photo albums, articles about my dad on the baseball field, a few posters of some classic rock legends, a poster of Kim Kardashian in a swimsuit, the radio, and stuffed in the corner of the Cave is a stack of over 200 records that he has collected throughout the years.

Every time I see my dad out there, I hear the music coming out of the radio, and I either hear him whistling or singing along to whatever he’s jamming to.

That radio has been in my life for as long as I remember. Every time I see it, I think of my dad. It’s been through hell, it’s been dropped, paint has been spilled on it, a knob broke off of it, and to this day it’s still being used. I guess radios were built to last.