You know where you were.
You know what you were doing.
You know who you were with.
You know how you felt.
You can’t help but remember.
You may have had one other event that lives in your psyche as real today as when it happened.
Twenty-one years has done nothing to alter your sense of that day.
And that is a very good thing.
As we approach the last full week of summer, change is already in the air.
It’s been quite an eventful summer in which the world lost a beloved Queen ( I wonder what our so-called beloved Founding Fathers would say to America’s reaction to the death of Queen Elizabeth II?)
Then, of course, America has its own drama unfolding every few minutes on our HD televisions (Again, what would the Founding Fathers say to that?)
But I chose to ignore the drama of the day to dwell on the Last Of The Summer Ale.
The changing of the seasons is as much symbolized by the changing of the food that is available for which we are now ravenous to enjoy as the cooler weather and darker days.
The lure of the barbecue no longer appeals to us as the prospect of fall comfort foods admittedly too dense for our summer palates.
Of course, we can include our choice of beverages in this mix.
Light wines give way to hearty reds. Gin and tonics cannot compete with a whiskey on the rocks. So, too, is our taste regarding beer.
Lager and pilsners no longer intrigue us as much as a malty stout or hoppy IPA.
The summer ale that I so enjoy as early as Memorial Day (previously dubbed the official start of summer), I regrettably savor the coming of a cinnamony pumpkin ale at the expense of my beloved summer ale..
A delicious brew sipping right out of the bottle is even better in a glass rimmed with brown sugar and cinnamon.
Scrumptious.
Tale gating and pumpkin ale!
America’s favorite pastime, well, mine, even if the tale gating occurs in my den while watching the NFL Redzone.
Of course, the ebb of summer ale can only serve as a warning that the demise of the pumpkin ale is nigh.
Before I drain the first bottle of this fall libation, I will be thinking of Christmas and Winter Ales approach.
To think that people once drank the same beer all year long?
Interesting.
My siblings always referred to our Mother as Mamma. My father did, too, when he didn’t call her Bett.
Today Mamma would have been 115 years old.
She has been gone nearly forty years, but I can still hear her laugh and smell her peach pie and rice pudding.
But today, I will remember her 64th birthday.
September 3rd in, 1971, fell on a Friday. It was payday, so the guys from the mail room at Lorillard Corp gravitated to our Blarney Stone of choice for a roast beef sandwich and a cold draft…maybe more than one?
It also happened to be my last day working there as I would be entering my final year at St. John’s the day after Labor Day, which happened to be Monday.
So, the boys celebrated the upcoming three-day weekend and my forthcoming departure with a cherry-flavored Tiparillo. This was ironic because we worked for a tobacco company but elected to smoke another company’s brand.
It was a glorious September day in the City, which is often the case in the waning days of summer. On most Fridays, I took the express bus to The Bronx instead of the IRT. It was my weekly treat and well worth the buck it cost me to ride in air-conditioned splendor.
An overly packed and un-airconditioned subway car was no match to the cool comfort and luxury seating in a spanking new motor coach.
It was my Mother’s birthday, so I had to stop and pick her up something to mark the occasion. I opted for the traditional perfume and powder collection of one Estée Lauder. To be sure, it was my tradition and not necessarily my Mother’s.
When I arrived at 1261, dinner was ready to be served, as was a lovely birthday cake decorated with a politically correct number of candles. Just enough to offer a faint glow in our humble kitchen.
We sang Happy Birthday, but the real celebration would come tomorrow with my siblings and grandchildren to offer their congratulations.
(It’s hard to believe that I ever thought 64 was old!)
Knowing what was in store for tomorrow, I had no qualms about going out for the evening with my friends.
We met at Al’s Wine and Liquors which served as a pseudo clubhouse and a source of our desired beverages.
From there, a few of us decided to go to one of the local clubs along East Tremont Avenue. The Castle Keep was one of my favorites, but on this particular Friday night, the echo that its emptiness offered was deafening. We then moved down the avenue to The Hollow Leg. Previously known as the Bronx Irish Center, I was never a fan of the new rendition and thought seriously about giving up on the evening and going home.
It’s funny how life offers you a flashpoint that may decide your future, and you have no immediate sense that such a momentous decision awaits.
I decided to go in with the rest of the boys because I had already had a few and thought there was no point in going home so early.
Before I knew it, I was standing rather unsteadily by myself, perusing my surroundings.
I must have been quite the sight. Because as I bobbed when I wasn’t weaving, my eyes rested on a sight at the bar.
She was sitting on a bar stool, sipping a drink and smiling, if not fully guffawing, as our eyes met.
Momentous decision 101.
I made my way over to her to see her more closely and learn what was so funny about me.
I was awestruck by her beauty, and where I am usually glib and charming in such situations (I may be exaggerating just a smidge here), I was lost as to what I should say.
“I’ve been admiring you all night.”
It wasn’t Shakespeare, Browning, or even Edgar Allan Poe, but it did the trick.
Because fifty-one years later, Eileen patiently awaits my return to the lanai so that I can clean the glass slider in preparation for our Labor Day party tomorrow.
This tale began on my Mother’s birthday. All of my tales began on my Mother’s birthday.
How nice it would be if she could only read it and smile while saying, “Very nice, Luv.”
Happy Birthday, Mamma.
Well, here we are on the last Friday of Summer. Of course, that’s not exactly true, but it will have to do for a nation that can’t tell the difference between truth and lies.
Labor Day has always been considered the end of the summer, much as Memorial Day is its’ beginning. Neither sentiment is supported by the Julian calendar or the Farmers Almanac, for that matter. But Labor Day unmistakably is the end of summer.
Of course, here in Florida, summer doesn’t end until Christmas Eve and arrives on St Patrick’s Day.
The days in between those sacred holidays are pure joy in Florida. We can wear jeans and socks and sometimes you even have to put the heat on.
One morning last year, I woke up, and the house temperature was 66 degrees! Oh, bliss!
Still, the end of summer awakens memories of past summers and Labor Days of yesteryear.
Traditionally, we would always go to Ponquogue Beach in the Hamptons, Hampton Bays to be precise, and enjoy one more day at the beach with family and friends. Eileen would make The Big Sandwich, and frisbees and footballs, as well as bubbles, would pierce the air under a bright blue sky.
The sky was so blue that it almost hurt your eyes to look at it.
Finally, the ocean water temperature reached a level of comfort, allowing extended boogie boarding for the kids. Unlike me, they were not filled with the angst of another summer coming to an end. They just enjoyed flying through the waves with no thought about the approaching first day of school.
We always did our best to extend the day and soak up the last of the summer rays that would be remembered on those approaching cold and rainy days of November.
We were sure to stay at least until 5 PM because that is when the lifeguards signaled the end of their watch for the year. At that moment, before the shrill of their whistles evaporated in the air, the entire party of beachgoers would stand and applaud their service provided all summer long.
Somehow that last gesture of ours was as much for our benefit as theirs.
Gratitude does have that effect on you.
It’s a bit ironic that a day devoted to labor and those that provide it delights more in the days free of work.
We may think that working is a noble experience that is good for the soul, but the truth is that one day at the beach, hands down, beats any day stuck in front of a computer.
Work, in fact, is the curse of the beach-going class.
Happy Days In Hampton Bays.
Today, my father would have been 115, just a few years older than Bilbo Baggins, but no less a joyful and inspirational man.
My father lived and worked for his family.
I always considered him a Man Of The Twentieth Century.
He was seven years old when World War I broke out.
He was 22 when the stock market crashed, and the Great Depression began.
He got his job with ConEd in 1930 and was soon going to be laid off. When told of this, he proceeded to the office of a Vice President and told him he couldn’t be laid off. My mother was pregnant with my sister Maureen, their first of five children.
The VP had a heart and called a supervisor and instructed him to put my father on the paint gang.
Pop painted everything in sight. He would paint these huge gas holders (you may remember the Elmhurst gas tanks) higher, hanging on a scaffold.
Pop saw Ruth and Gehrig, DiMaggio, Berra, Ford, and Mickey Mantle.
I even took him to his last game and the last season at the Babe Ruth Yankee Stadium before it was renovated.
I took him to see Joe Willie.
What a life!
But all of that meant nothing compared to the superstars that made up his family: his children, grandchildren, and most of all, our mother, Bett.
It was Mickey (or Mick) and Bett to all their adult friends and neighbors.
Pop loved to laugh and make other people laugh along with him. One Christmas, he put an inverted lampshade on his head, imitating a chef as he carried a huge platter of turkey to the dining table.
When I told him we were moving out to the Hamptons, he was visibly angry. I guess he thought I was abandoning him. He asked me what I would do for a job, and I told him I would commute on the Long Island Rail Road. He responded:
“Don’t think you’ll be staying with me!”
Little did he or I know that a short three years later, I would be doing just that as I started law school in 1986 and lived with him four days a week until I graduated in 1990.
The first night I stayed with him, I put a few sofa cushions on the floor, wrapped a sheet around them, and went to sleep.
When he woke me up the following day, I saw him shake his head.
I came home that night after class, and he told me that he had taken the subway down to Macy’s at Herald Square and bought a $900 sofa bed.
He was 79 years old.
He begged the salesman to expedite the order because “My son is sleeping on the floor.”
It was clear to all of us that my staying with him provided much joy and purpose to Pop. He was proud to help put me through law school.
He taught all his children what it meant to be a parent, and we have all tried to emulate him.
There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about him and my mother.
I only wish he was here to have a slice of strawberry shortcake for his birthday.
I am listening to Sirius XM as I type this here amid the Dog Days Of August, which gets its notoriety from the astrological world.
We are, in fact, in the dog days, not because it’s hot or the summer is getting long, but because of the rising of the star system Sirius, AKA The Dog Star.
Hot, sultry weather accompanies the arrival of Sirius, so the image of a hot, panting dog creates the imagery we have come to love.
It’s also a reminder that dog days will soon be replaced by snow days…well, not in Florida.
Nevertheless, signs of autumn have arrived in the Sunshine State. In addition to politicians talking smack, Halloween regalia have appeared in department stores. We are a month away from Labor Day, which is a month away from Columbus Day, which is three weeks away from Halloween, yet, it’s not too early to think about Halloween.
Well, I am sorry to object, but it is a wee bit too early to think about Halloween.
But you know we will soon see Pumpkin Latte and all sorts of autumnal beverages, including my favorite, Pumpkin Ale, in our shops and supermarkets.
Time flies after the Fourth of July.
Classic Vinyl Saturday.
As I listen to classic rock on Sirius, I am planning to pull a few of the old vinyls out of the box and spin a few old songs of my own.
I am not much of a fan of current pop music, which doesn’t help the cause at Trivia. Fortunately, our game rarely includes current trends in music.
So, I have selected Led Zeppelin’s first album, Revolver by the Beatles, and A Question Of Balance by the Moody Blues.
It’s not just about the music, of course. No, it’s more about the era it represents and, more importantly, who I was in that era.
I like to think that I am the same person I was fifty years ago, pounds, wrinkles, and a few distorted memories to the contrary.
Anyway, time to get the old music out and the new Halloween candy in.
Enjoy your Saturday, everyone.
Peace and Love are all around us.
When we were moving to Florida in January 2017, we went on a minimalist purge of our possessions. Of course, it was a temporary phenomenon as we would soon be on a consumer orgy of re-acquiring different versions of what we had so recently discarded.
Now, to be sure. We did throw out quite a bit. I finally gave up holding on to my notebooks and textbooks from law school even though I was planning to re-read them all someday.
But we did re-purpose (I’m using a lot of hyphens today.) much of what we owned.
We gave furniture away as well as tools and Christmas decorations. Housewares too numerous to mention since I forgot what we had and gave away.
But my record albums were the most cherished items I let go of.
I let my children sift through my collection, and they sorted through my items, if not by drawing lots, at least by identifying the classics.
My son Bryan was very interested not only in the vinyl lp experience versus the CD, but he also liked the music contained in my collection.
Beatles, Stones, Byrds, Dylan, CSNY, and a plethora of classic late 60s and early 70s music. All of them classics in their own right.
I often thought that listening today to a Beatles album or Stones from 1968 was something I took for granted. But I then think back to 1968 and ask, would I be listening to music produced in 1914?
Naturally, I have practiced good old-fashioned American consumerism and re-purchased (damn another hyphen) all the music I previously owned on vinyl. The newest versions came from iTunes, which actually replaced a previous iteration on CD.
Nevertheless, the sound of vinyl on an old stereo with bookshelf speakers cannot be compared with listening to music on a Bose player or external speaker. It sounds ok, but there is no separation at all. It was fun hearing John on one speaker being backed up by Paul and George on the other.
Oh well, progress.
Bryan has relocated from Arizona (thanks be to God) to Florida (one) and spent a few weeks with us in Bradenton. He had a fair amount of his possessions, including all the vinyl records I gave him. When he left, he suggested that I buy a record player to play my old music, which I have done.
The first album I played was Blind Faith because it was such a great one, and it was the first I grabbed from my old record holder.
Now, the Victrola I bought could never be mistaken for my Sansui 100 Watt receiver with a BIC turntable hooked up to a couple of Advent speakers, but, Blind Faith sounded pretty damn good.
I then went to eBay to shop for new old vinyl.
They must be laced with gold.
Whereas I used to get three albums at EJ Korvette’s for ten dollars, Dark Side of The Moon was going for $29.
It just goes to show you, Everything Old Costs a Hell of A Lot More Today.
Happy Saturday Everybody!
(I wrote the following eleven years ago this weekend. Eileen had just finished radiation therapy and spending Friday and Saturday night with Sir Paul was her coming out party as she liked saying.)
Late one night, a night that would soon change to early one morning, in the middle of November, 1963, I heard a song on my Dick Tracy transistor radio (a story for another time) that would change my life for ever. I heard it once around midnight and I couldn’t go to sleep until I heard it again. The song was I Want To Hold Your Hand by a group from England of all places.
Well, I wasn’t the only one who heard that song as the Beatles came roaring into our lives. You might say they saved our lives. I always thought that their first hit, my all time favorite song that I heard back on that November night in 1963 was exactly what the country needed just a few weeks after I first heard it.
In the Dark Days that followed when we were sucker punched by Lee Harvey Oswald we needed someone to hold our collective hands and the Beatles showed up just in the nick of time. The trouble was not everyone got the Beatles. Some ridiculed their look; others denied their harmony and musical talent. This was when I was introduced to the world that would become the 60’s and while it took a few years for it all to sink in, my worldview was altered forever.
All these emotions presented themselves to me last night as I sat in the upper deck of Yankee Stadium with my family. It was Eileen’s coming out party, as she liked to describe it. There I was, in the Bronx, where 48 years ago I heard I Want To Hold Your Hand back in my bed at 1261 Leland Avenue, waiting for Paul McCartney to take the stage. When he finally did I was overwhelmed. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Fortunately I did neither but I must have had a quizzical look on my face because Eileen kept asking me if I was alright.
So Paul or as I like to refer to him Sir Paul, just started singing around 8:30 and didn’t leave till around 11:20. Hello Goodbye; Eleanor Rigby; Jet; and perhaps the shocker of them all, A Day In A Life. I tried to take snippets of all the songs but every time he went to the piano I just knew he was going to sing Hey Jude. But, as luck would have it, that did not come till the end of the show and as I started my video that sick little twirling spiral indicating that my iPhone was shutting down appeared on my screen. Oh well, I’ll get it tonight at my second night with a Knight.
An Anglophile’s Delight
This has been some weekend. It began, as the best weekends often do, on Thursday night. Bryan and I went to see Deathly Hallows Part 2 and it was spectacular. It may not have included all of the back-stories we would have liked but it was terrific all the same. We certainly will be going back for another viewing.
I guess this desire for redundant experiences in English culture was again exhibited the following two nights as we set off to Yankee Stadium, not to see Derek Jeter add to his 3000 hits, but to hear the hits of another icon of Brit lit, Sir Paul, He’s still a Beatle, McCartney. Now some of you may not recognize the producer of self proclaimed silly love songs as nothing more than a rock icon. But Billy Shakespeare himself would have chucked his sonnets for the opportunity to hear Sir Paul sing A Day In A Life and Give Peace A Chance. Nor would you ever hear a Yankee Stadium crowd serenade the Bard as we did Sir Paul, recognizing him in the traditional Yankee Stadium Bleacher Creature Roll Call.
The show Friday evening was so spectacular and was matched by an equally spectacular show on Saturday that it will take several weeks for me to stop thinking about being 13 and listening to the Beatles on our Hi Fi back on Leland Avenue. Of course facing myself in the mirror while shaving should put an end to those time travels but only for a moment.
There was a time in America when you could really believe in E Pluribus Unum.
Of course, most Americans in the days when I was a kid in The Bronx may not have shared the same experiences in growing up, and most believed in another form of religion than I.
Nevertheless, it was safe to assume that my American counterpart living in Boise was very much like myself.
He most certainly aspired to the American Dream even though he may have defined it differently than I.
I know back then, I didn’t focus on the differences between Americans. I understood there were Protestants and Jews as well as Catholics.
There were Irish, Italians, and Germans, and many of the older Jewish people were Holocaust Victims, but we were all living together on Leland Avenue. We may have gone to different schools and houses of worship, but E Pluribus Unum described us sufficiently as we were all true Americans.
In 1960, I didn’t focus on differences in nationality, religion, or even race. My Catholic school was racially diverse and integrated long before I knew what these words meant.
There were many more Hispanic kids in our class than African Americans, but that was more a function of religion than racism. More Hispanics seemed to be Catholic than African Americans.
Notwithstanding, we did have a significant African American enrolment.
Again, whatever the nationality or color, E Pluribus Unum applied and was understood to be a shared American Experience.
I know nostalgia is a deceitful mistress that pretends that the past was better than the present. Indeed, not everyone shares my experience of E Pluribus Unum. Perhaps for many, it was only a false truth that hid the same hate that divided a nation in 1860 and still permeated Main Street USA even if to a ten-year-old in 1960, America was in a Golden Age.
Have A Happy And Safe Fourth of July America!
E Pluribus Unum is a concept we should all hope to guide us through turbulent times. It applies to all of us, not just those who would use patriotism to divide.
We say that Memorial Day is the unofficial start of summer.
We had already gotten into the summer spirit when I was a kid. Our baseball gloves were well oiled; our baseball bats were taped and ready for swinging for the fences in PS 125, where we played softball.
Sometimes we would sneak in a catch between lunch and returning to class at Blessed Sacrament School. It was always hot by the afternoon regardless of whether the windows were wide opened and the shades fully drawn to permit the modest breezes’ entry.
I remember always being thirsty at these times and staring at the vase on the bookcase next to my seat filled with flowers and water wondering if it would be ok to drink that water. Such was my thirst.
But then our teacher, Sister Margaret sensing our condition, would allow us to get a drink of water from the fountain outside our classroom. Ah, relief at last.
We had the summer spirit and eagerly scratched off the days in our mental calendar, marking our progress to summer vacation. Was there anything better than summer vacation?
Finally, the last day of school arrived, and then summer began.
It didn’t begin on Memorial Day.
It didn’t begin on the Summer Solstice.
It began on the last day of school.
Sadly, the children of Uvalde, Texas, will not experience the joy of the last day of school.
Far too many will never return to school again.
Far too many families will be reminded of their terrible loss every day of their lives, especially every time the last day of school approaches.
I have tried to be non-political on my blog for quite a while. I sought to be entertaining rather than confrontational. But yet another mass murder of our innocents has provoked my silence to be eschewed, and I will write what I feel.
I advise you to quit reading this and delete it from your browser if my attack on the WRONG will offend you.
Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, is the leader of the WRONG.
His solution to ending school violence is to eliminate doors. And put guns on campus.
As I type, it appears that the guns on campus that this school had apparently waited for others to show before they confronted the assassin. But all the facts have not been learned or revealed.
Back in 2017, on the day after the Parkland massacre of our innocents, I was volunteering at a cancer organization. It was my first day doing so, and I was stuffing envelopes with another senior citizen, a woman.
In the course of completing our task, I merely observed that what happened yesterday in Parkland was a tragedy.
Her reply, I’ll never forget it because it sent shivers up my spine. “I just worry about the Second Amendment.”
The WRONG has been telling us for years that the Second Amendment guarantees that every American has the right to own automatic weapons with no restrictions. So, an 18-year-old can purchase two guns that each are 40 percent more deadly than the rifles carried by our soldiers in Viet Nam.
40 percent more lethal!
I get that the WRONG didn’t like that a black family inhabited the White House.
I know they couldn’t tolerate a woman living there as anything other than First Lady.
I get they don’t support any social programs that bailout individuals over banks and automakers.
But can the WRONG be so wrong about guns?
I guess we know they can.
It’s despicable that a PAC and its donors have that much control over Senators so that they ignore the cries of children and parents. We don’t want to politicize this tragic event, the WRONG proclaims even as they attack others for voicing their pleas for common-sense gun control and show up at the NRA convention three hundred miles away from the blood-stained classrooms of Uvalde.
Memorial Day used to be called Decoration Day and was initiated by several states that encouraged the decorating of cemeteries where our fallen heroes were laid to rest.
It then became Memorial Day, and we now celebrate and remember the sacrifice that our veterans have made for our freedom and way of life.
I don’t think their children should be put in harm’s way to protect the right of gun owners to own their guns.
The Democrats don’t have the stones to demand a ban on all guns. They are willing to compromise on banning some guns or at least restricting their ready availability. Sure, we’ll let you have your weapons of mass destruction, but you will have to submit to a background check.
But the WRONG won’t even accept that.
It’s a bit ironic that only last week, W made a gaff about illegally invading a country. He meant to say Ukraine but said Iraq.
W was looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction in Baghdad when they were in Texas all along.
When will the WRONG get it right?
The Newell Post 