The Newell Post

My wife and I were leaving our development here in Bradenton when we spotted a truck painted in a beautiful pastel purple. I thought it might be an ice cream truck making the lives of older people just a little bit brighter on a hot summer’s day.

It turned out to be a portable pet grooming service making a cocker spaniel’s day instead.

But it got me thinking of hot, August days many years ago when an ice cream truck was all you had to look forward to make your day playing curb ball or stickball just a little sweeter.

When I was a pre-teen, the ice cream was delivered to us by the Good Humor man who peddled a bicycle-powered cart while ringing bells announcing his arrival. It was the Leland Avenue equivalent of “Gentlemen Start Your Engines.”

Good Humor always had special ice cream bars. The Fourth Of July always had a red, white, and blue concoction to enhance your patriotic spirit. Then there was Strawberry Shortcake for no apparent reason, followed by Chocolate Eclair. My favorite was Coconut, or sometimes I would have a Toasted Almond just to shake it up a bit.

In the evening, the Bungalow Bar man would drive his truck down the street to pick up any of the stragglers who missed out on Good Humor earlier in the day. The truck was more interesting than the ice cream inside. The truck had the roof of a small house perched on top and a picket fence for the driver’s door. The ice cream? I forget. I know he had dixie cups and the like, but nothing truly memorable.

Then, of course, there was Mister Softee.

He was a newcomer complete with a head made out of an ice cream cone topped with soft serve vanilla. The ice cream was good and resembled Carvel Ice Cream, but Tom Carvel had no delivery vehicles, and the nearest Carvel was at least a mile away.

The only bad thing about Mister Softee was that damn jingle!

It was beautiful initially, but after the fifteenth time you heard it, you had enough, and you couldn’t wait for the truck and its ice cream to move on down the road.

Of course, our summers were filled with more than ice cream.

Despite the heat and the fact that baseball was still in season, playing football in the street took up most of our time. Just the smell of a good football was enough to forget about the heat for a while, realizing that fall and a nice cool down was on its way.

Perhaps the most unsettling thing about hot August afternoons was when you heard the Robert Hall commercial on the radio.

“School bells ringing, children singing, it’s back to Robert Hall again…”

Man, that was depressing!

But you couldn’t deny it. We would be going back to school before you knew it.

It was already getting darker earlier in the evening. I could smell the classroom and new books. They had that musty, haven’t been open in three months smell.

So, as I sit here longing for the sound of a bell or jingle announcing the coming of a summer treat, at least I won’t have to be going back to school in a couple of weeks.

But maybe I wouldn’t mind that either?

I was returning from a one-week stay-cation. Well, we didn’t call a vacation where you didn’t go anywhere a stay-cation back then but that’s what it was. Probably the most memorable part of that particular vacation was when my son Bryan and I went to a Yankee game. Down a run in the bottom of the ninth, the Oakland A’s brought in their closer.

He immediately blew the save on one pitch by giving up a game-tying home run to Bernie Williams. The closer followed this up with the next pitch which David Justice promptly delivered into the stands for the game-winner.

This game may have been the greatest game I ever witnessed at the stadium, including Game 1 of the World Series which would be played later that same season.

This was my frame of mind when I drove to work that Monday morning on my first day back from vacation.

Way back in my consciousness I might have remembered the physical I had the same day of that Yankee game. I know I wasn’t really thinking about it but that would soon change.

Having had my first cup of coffee and having caught up with my friends and staff, I started to delete the emails that had accumulated during my one-week hiatus. I didn’t get too far.

Shortly after 9:00 AM I received a telephone call. It was my doctor. This was highly unusual as he was normally so busy he barely had time to chat when I was in his office. From the moment I said hello my doctor ignoring pleasantries got right to the matter at hand.

He informed me that the results of the blood test that been performed indicated I had Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia or CLL.

I only heard leukemia.

Sensing my shock my doctor went on to explain that if I had to have cancer this was the type to have. He continued by saying that most CLL patients usually died of something other than leukemia.

I didn’t feel that much better.

Nevertheless, after hearing such alarming news so early in the morning, I did what most American Men would do under the circumstances. I called my mommy! No, sorry, I called my wife.

For those of you who are fans of Seinfeld, there was a scene where George is missing and Steinbrenner goes over to the Costanzas to tell them George is dead. Then Frank Costanza leaves a message in his famous staccato voice, “Jerry this is Frank Costanza. George is dead, call me back.”

I am not certain but my call to Eileen to let her know I had CLL may have resembled this.

Not realizing the impact this was having on her as she started her first day back from vacation, I lamely reassured her that this is no big deal. So, while she got on the phone to an oncologist to set up the rest of the week for me, I turned to the internet and confirmed what CLL was and whether it was treatable, etc etc etc. The things you would want to know when greeted with such news.

That was twenty years ago today.

I have endured chemotherapy on two separate occasions. Once in 2000 shortly after my diagnosis. Then, after a resurgence, I once again was treated in 2007. Then, starting in 2016, I began taking a daily regimen of a pill that has kept my blood work looking good.

I have been really fortunate. Had that phone call been received in 1970 or 1980 or even in 1990 my outcome may have not been so positive. While a vaccine has not yet been developed to eliminate CLL or any cancer, new drugs and treatments have enabled patients to live a relatively normal life.

That is why I have great faith that a vaccine or treatment for COVID 19 will be developed.

I didn’t think about a long term survival twenty years ago. I really didn’t think about anything at all. I felt ok and probably thought there was some kind of mistake.

Plausible deniability I think they call it.

I posted this in early a while back but I find myself in need of another visit to the Park. Hoping you are all having a marvelous Saturday and a nice walk in your special park.

Starting in the summer of 1969, I often spent Saturday afternoons exploring Central Park. In those days walking through The Park was a little like visiting Woodstock every week.

There were people wherever you went, no social distancing required. We didn’t use the term diversity to apply to people back then, but New York City diversity was on full display wherever my walk took me.

One of my favorite spots to linger was the Bethesda Fountain and Terrace.

It was typical for what seemed like hundreds of frisbees to be flying from one side of the terrace to the other with an equal number of very capable frisbee enthusiasts winging their discs to and fro. My son Bryan, an avid Ultimate Frisbee participant, would have felt quite at home.

But back in the late 60s early 70s, it was one of many sites to visit at least for a little while on your journey through the park.

My favorite spot, however, was Literary Way. Not only was it a beautiful walk adorned with statues of many of history’s greatest authors, but it was sheltered by a canopy of branches from stately trees offering a well-appreciated relief from the summer sun.

It was also a gathering of several folk artists who were only too happy to sing and play our songs for free. They didn’t even seem to mind when you sang along.

Further down the road, I always stopped by the Band Shell on the off chance that a performer might be playing there as well. I was spoiled one Saturday afternoon by coming upon a free concert given by Pete Seeger, so from then on, I always made sure to check. Usually, I just sat down on a bench to read for a few minutes.

Of course, I went to the Park on other occasions to attend concerts at the Wollman Skating Rink. Tickets were ridiculously cheap even for those days. I was able to see The Byrds, Melanie, and Harry Chapin, among others, for one dollar or, if I splurged for the best seats, I was set back for two bucks.

There were times, however, when tickets were sold out, so you merely sat on the rock hill outside the entrance, and I heard great music for free.

Living in Florida now, I am missing these days in New York City and perhaps my youth along with it. This heinous virus has to be eliminated so that New Yorkers cand return to Central Par and all the places that make New York what it is.

Central Park and Yankee Stadium are my favorites right now, aside from the living rooms of my children.

Be well, stay safe, be tough, New York.

Chill is such a wonderful word, especially if you live in Florida. You soon get to appreciate a good chill, you know, like when the temperature in your pool is 84 degrees?

I guess chills are relative after all.

I am sure we have all emailed something we wish we could have taken back but we hit that send button just a little too quickly, I certainly have. Better to write the email to get whatever snit you’re in off your chest, count to ten or longer, and delete the better-off-not-sent missive from your computer. It probably will result in less grief for you in the long run.

I have written several blog posts only to do the same. Rather than share my wrath with the universe, I thought the better of it and deleted it.

It seems I am writing more about delete than chill but in a way that’s exactly what taking a chill is all about. Delete the moment you are in when you need to chill.

I took a chill just as I started typing this blog.

The Yankees lost last night and I was mad at baseball. I started thinking (unintentionally) of all the things that upset me relative to watching major league baseball.

You see? Taking a chill works. After I typed that last sentence I had a sip of coffee and decided not to tell you what irritates me about baseball. Why should I ruin your day by encouraging you to get angry at baseball?

My daughter helps me take a chill or rather she has taught me the value of taking a chill.

At her suggestion, I took an online course on Mindfulness.

I know that sounds like a lot of New Age hokum but I happen to like New Age music and the like and I have always been a big fan of hokum.

In a crude way, I describe Mindfulness as being in the moment, of stepping out of yourself for a second and seeing and feeling who you are. Simply put, Mindfulness is taking a chill.

I used to be able to realize when I was dreaming. In my dream, I saw myself becoming aware that I was in a dream. Sometimes, I got out of my dream and woke up. They weren’t necessarily nightmares just dreams.

This year of COVID has at times seemed like a dream I would like to escape but it hasn’t worked for me as yet.

Taking a chill is the next best remedy I have come upon.

Step out, observe, delete the negativity, move on.

Today marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.

I had to specify “Japan” because so many Americans have a desparingly lack of historical knowledge and appreciation. Just for additional clarification, we dropped the bomb on Japan during World War II. (In another post I recounted the experience of a WW ll veteran who was introduced by a teacher to her grammar school class as a “Veteran of World War ELEVEN!)

As a kid growing up the dropping of the bomb was a curiosity as much as a source of dread. Everyone loves fireworks and the atomic bomb represented the ultimate magnificence of pyrotechnics.

Through the window of the Enola Gay shortly after the bomb was released from its bay, we witnessed a flash and a glorious cloud that rose ever higher. Of course, the view from the ground was much different. It was not until I read, Hiroshima by John Hersey that I understood just how destructive the bomb had been.

I remember reading that for some of its victims all that remained was a shadow etched into the ground by the ferocious light emanating from the core of the blast. It is no wonder that no sooner had the war ended that America feared the bomb.

As children hid under their desks during drills in school and as Air Raid Shelter signs were put on buildings in our neighborhood, nuclear energy was being promoted as a cheap, efficient, and clean source of electricity.

The Nuclear Age was upon us.

A source of controversy in its own right, nuclear energy pales in the utter destruction housed in one nuclear warhead. But, here we are seventy-five years later, and more Americans have been killed by a virus than Japanese killed in Hiroshima. A total ranging from 129,000 to 226,000 people, were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the second city to suffer a nuclear attack days after Hiroshima.

Sadly we are still in the throes of the pandemic and no end in sight.

Harry S. Truman was the wartime American President who gave the order to drop both bombs. The decision has been defended on the basis that the bomb ended the war where a protracted battle would have cost over a million lives. It’s easy to criticize when your 2020 vision is blurred by seventy-five years.

Still, maybe we can better understand the logic of that day as we shelter in place and wear masks and live in our own dread.

The Mercy Rule should be invoked.

You know when a baseball game is getting out of hand with one team holding an 11-0 lead? I mean, there is no mystery as to whom will win the game so, let’s call it a day and move on.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.

I think it’s time that we start applying the Mercy Rule to 2020.

From its inception, 2020 has been disappointing. I am not even considering politics at this point. It seems that from the very moment the ball fell in Times Square, upon the last note of Auld Lang Syne, 2020 was just a techno-enhanced version of 1968.

COVID, the collapse of the US economy, George Floyd, and the other African Americans who fell victim to racism all have derailed the country as we approach the third decade of the twenty-first century.

It’s time to reboot the system.

I propose that at the stroke of midnight, September 1st, we fast forward to 2021.
I realize it’s more psychological than astronomical, but pretending to put an early end to 2020 is called for under our present conditions.

In addition to all of these items we have been dealing with all year, a tropical storm wreaks havoc on the NYC metropolitan area…but don’t mention global warming to the buffoons who mock science.

Now, zooming ( if I may use the word in a non-video sharing sense) right to 2021 is an excellent idea, but it might also be of value to zoom directly to December.

They keep promising a vaccine by the end of the year, so maybe skipping ahead a few months might be just the trick to get us out of our houses so that we could be eating a pizza in a pizza parlor with no fear of anything except maybe a little agita?

Avoiding September, October, and November would also put an end to the whole back to school thing. Let’s just pass GO and straight to Free Parking for a Christmas Vacation.

The parallels of this year to 1968 evoke stark memories and a divided country that remained that way except for a brief time in September 2001.

I was eighteen in 1968, and I stayed home on New Year’s Eve.

There was nothing to celebrate.

Watching TV with my mother as Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadiens usher in 1969, I remember saying to my mother, “Thank God this year’s over!” I have a feeling we all might be saying that this year.

I wonder if you can download Guy Lombardo on iTunes?

I was watching “Opening Day” at Yankee Stadium the other night when the oddity of opening day in late July and the fact that there were no fans in the stadium was obscured by a revelation.

For the first time in my memory, the Bleacher Creature Roll Call was not greeting the Yankees and their fans at the opening of a home game, much less opening day. Instead, a group of health care workers and first responders were called to “take their position” as if they were the ballplayers we idolized.

I was amused to see players from both squads salute these workers by banging the equivalent of pots and pans,  the tradition honor bestowed on these heroes every evening at 7 PM. (Of course, I presumed the “pots and pans” to be replicas of trash cans thereby mocking the Houston Astros and their methodology of cheating)

The only thing that made this moment less meaningful was the absence of fans to show their appreciation of our essential champions.

Nevertheless, those represented at Yankee Stadium as well as other essential workers have persevered to provide on a daily basis what users of Facebook and Twitter often fail to illustrate in their posts and tweets.

Making the world a better place is not as hard as you may think.

It only takes one less negative post or hateful tweet.

The power of scrolling enables us to ignore those items that offend us and, as the nuns of Blessed Sacrament and the Baltimore Catechism advised, avoid the near occasion of sin by showing our disdain to the offending poster/tweeter.

Make an effort in your own use of social media to avoid the near occasion of sin.

I am not always successful as I frequently “heart” the items that offend others and put my own two cents in to comment on somebody else’s post. I have to stop doing that.

Of course, I endeavor to be funny or at least ironic and don’t often spout hatred but being sarcastic never made the world a better place.

“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”

I often try to write with the thought in mind that my mother will be reading this.

If you had as loving a mother as I had, maybe keep her in mind when you put something out there on social media.

I am sure she would want you to make the world a better place.

It would always seem to me that, once August had arrived, summer was on a fast track to autumn. Getting off the train at Speonk at 8:05, I would be greeted by an ever sinking sun so that by the time I arrived at home, darkness had enveloped East Quogue.

Although I loved the change of seasons, this loss of daylight would bring with it a fair amount of despondency.

Now, living in Florida, and no train to chronicle the shortening of the day, I find my self as despondent as ever on this first day of August.

My mood is not in the least affected by the approach of autumn, as, if truth be told, I cannot wait for its arrival and the chill in the air that will accompany it. Undoubtedly, the days of ninety-degree temperatures will give way to the balmy breezes of the high eighties.

No, it is not the realization that summer is on the wane but rather that, for me, and I am sure you as well, this has been the summer of our discontent.

No matter how I persevered in listening to my Summertime Playlist, the songs never were enough to make me smile. Instead, they served only to remind me of days that are no more. While it is often a pleasant exercise to remember past days of carefree bliss, during a summer such as this, it is only a slap in the face and a hideous reminder of the summer that we have lost.

Ironically, like the entire year, the summer of 2020 has flown by. Not even the sweltering heat of Florida has protracted its effect on viewing the calendar. August will seem to end as quickly as July has and, hoping no hurricanes hit our shores, September, no doubt, will turn into October long before our senses tell us it should.

Again, I hear my mother saying, “Don’t be wishing your life away.”

But, Mom, that is the point. I am seventy years old now, and time is precious to me, and despite not spending time according to my desire, time has, nonetheless, wished away on its own.

No poet, not even Mr. William Shakespeare, should dare to ask, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”?

Don’t dare compare anyone you love to a day of fear, loneliness, and exhaustion.

Maybe we will return to a bucolic summer’s day next year?

I have tried to ignore these sentiments, but to deny their existence would seem dishonest. It would seem to say that I do not need other people in my life. I do not miss seeing my children. I do not miss Scout and Rudy. I do not miss our trip to London. I do not miss baseball and all the things that made for a happy life.

Ignoring these is shameful.

Still, we have hope, and we have all had a dramatic lesson in love and what it means to have love and what it means to give love.

Despite my flirtation with the magical world of gloom, I have realized that in many ways, I have been closer to people than in other pandemic-lacking times. Trough the wonders of our technology, we can visit remotely with our family and friends. It has served as a lifeline for all of us.

I even feel my Saturday morning riffs on the iMac keyboard has helped to raise a giggle or two (you know when I don’t depress the bejesus out of you like today).

We all just want this to be over.

Let’s hope that when I write on September 1st that the approach of fall will be a time of optimism and joy.

I am discontented today, but I won’t be tomorrow.

It’s a song, not a meeting. The Collegians sang it in the days when Doo Wop was king and ruled the airways of our transistor radios.

To be honest, my brother Michael had a copy of the record, and he used to play it quite frequently.

I only remembered the song as I am preparing to have a Zoom meeting with the boys from the Bronx.

Like most old songs, it evokes memories of happier times, less complicated times.

Here it is courtesy of YouTube:

Enjoy everyone.

It seems like yesterday, or maybe, twenty years ago. In early March, there were reports that the President was going to close down the country due to the Carona virus.

Many people panicked.

Some went on panic shopping sprees.

I didn’t.

To be sure, I did do some Carona shopping. However, unlike many of the paranoid co-shoppers who joined me in Publix that day, I skipped the toilet paper aisle, the hand sanitizer aisle, and the antibacterial soap aisle.

Instead, I headed straight for the pot roast.

Having selected an appropriate side of beef, I then went through the supermarket to obtain food items that you could either store or freeze. We have all been through this before.

Whether anticipating a hurricane or a blizzard, Americans, the greatest consumers, you might say, perfect consumers, are always at the ready to buy and hoard whenever the hint of armageddon is predicted.

Well, the president never did shut down the country, and by the time Florida put us on lockdown, supermarkets and pharmacies were excluded.

Toilet paper and water were the big sellers during the early days of the crisis. Having scoffed at the notion of buying toilet paper that first corona shopping day, I got a little nervous when we got down to eighteen rolls in our vault. So, I did what every sane person would do in my situation; I bought twenty rolls from China. I didn’t necessarily know I was buying Chinese toilet paper until Amazon informed me that my order was on a slow boat from China.

I got the delivery in June.

Fortunately, we never ran out, and that’s what’s great about America.

I bet Putin had a hard time dealing with the TP crisis of 2020.

It seems that, in addition to toilet paper and hand sanitizer, stores had a hard time keeping guns on their shelves.

Gun sales rose throughout the pandemic. Approximately two million guns have been sold.

I could see why hydroxychloroquine, flashlight-suppositories, and bleach syringes might be big sellers, but what did people think when they bought that gun? Are you going to shoot the little buggers invading your body?

Of course, we all go a little mental during a pandemic.

Some people buy toilet paper.

I bought a pot roast.

I am making a big deal about this pot roast only because today is the big day. Yes, the pot roast is out of the freezer, soon to be deposited in a worthy pot for roasting.

You might think that it may be a little hot for comfort food of this variety. However, there appears to be a cold front heading to Bradenton, and the temperature for 6PM is predicted to be 86 degrees with a 40% chance of rain.

Now, I have to Google a suitable wine that pairs with pot roast.

Have a great weekend, everybody!