How the Other Half Lives

There are so many things that I never knew about.

Last night I was talking to some employees of the Gillette Stadium up in Foxboro. One was a manager for security and the other an event coordinator for the corporate boxes. Both had some great stories.

The event coordinator opened my eyes to the amount of money that's spent at Gillette. His job is to make sure the corporate box is fully stocked with anything, and I mean anything they want and need for the game. He told me that it's not just games they use them for. If the owner of the box wants to use it a three AM on a January night, they can.

“I'll get a list of what the sponsors want and I have to find it, get it or somehow procure it for the day's event. Whatever the client wants, we get it, but we charge them for it, even if it's a bag of popcorn.”

“One time, I had to find a case of Jean-Marc XO Vodka, which is distilled nine times and costs $50 a bottle, a case is $300. We charge them $1,000 for it, since we're getting it and setting it up. I tried it. There is no vodka smell and goes down like water. I kid you not.”

“They'll pay that much?” I ask.

“Oh sure, they have the bucks. We constantly have caviar set ups all the time. We'll whack them hard on that, but they are entertaining people, so caviar they get. The tips they leave behind at the end of the day for the waitstaff can easily run past $2,000, if they're good and drunk during the game. If some guy wants us to run down stairs to get him a six-pack of shit Budweiser beer, we'll hit him for $40, and they pay it.”

He tells me a corporate box costs $1 million and you have to lease it out for a term of eight years. That's not including everything you want for that box. Food, chefs, waitstaff, bar tenders and runners to find you a pack of Marlboros. So it easily runs past $8 million in the course of their lease.

“Any great stories?” I ask

“Well, I can't name the pharmaceutical company, but they're sort of based near 128. We had to let in some guy from the Latin Kings who was supplying them with cocaine and there were these three Russian girls, about 20 years old, if that, who we had to escort to the box. The box owners then kicked me out and the waitstaff for about an hour. You can guess what happened.”

“Rich frat boy party, huh?” I say.

He goes on. “Yeah, partying with the best-est and most-est. We're told by management to look the other way and keep quiet. To tell you the truth, most of the corporate parties are boring affairs. A lot of these guys are so uptight that loosening their tie during a game is as about as far as they go...Then there's the occasional crazy party, like the pharmaceutical one I managed.”

*****

The only time I saw a corporate box is looking up at one while at the stadium. I'm just another serf sitting in the cheap seats.

*****

The other guy was one of the heads of security at Gillette. He tells me you can't pick your nose without them recording that to a DVD. He says every inch of the property is covered by cameras and they record it all.

“One day, we got a complaint from a women who was at a concert and she had lost her diamond ring. We knew where she sat because the tickets have bar codes and are scanned as you enter. We know where you sat, who you are, where your from and which event you attended...alot of information. So I had them pull all the security DVDs from where she sat and we went through them. Our cameras can read the date on a dime in lousy lighting if they have to.”

“Anyways, we go through the recordings and my guy tells me he spotted the diamond ring being picked up by one of our own security staff and then pocketing it. I called this guy in and told him, 'You have one chance to keep your job, hand up the ring.' He did.”

I ask him what sucks about the job and he tells me the PC problems. PC, “protective custody” is where they drag all the drunks, kids ripped on booze and ecstasy to a holding area where they have EMT's watch you to see if your about to die or just need to dry out a bit. He hates it because alot of drunks are just belligerant children.

“It's the baby sitting part of the job, if they're on our property, they're our children and we have to keep them safe.”

He said he's done security for many venues across the US. I ask him which was the best and he surprised me with an answer that had nothing to do with security.

“Red Rocks outside of Denver.”

Now I've heard of Red Rocks. It's a natural ampitheater. Nature carved out this bowl in mountain rock and it lends itself to a stage and an audience.

“You could be on stage at Red Rocks, speak out some words, like your name...and without amplification, it'll naturally be heard in the cheap seats way up top.”

He tells me he's also a bit of a nature nut, hiker, camper and his time spent in Denver was his best. The mountains aren't that far and the whole area is just begging you to have fun outside.

“Not only is it beautiful, the Colorado crowd that usually attends the venues aren't assholes like we are on the East Coast. They just want to see the show and I didn't have a lot of problems with drunks, fights or the like compared to Gillette....and don't get me started on the security problems at Comcast/Great Woods either. You have no idea how lousy it is to control at crowd at Great Woods, it's not set up for security in the least, it's wide open and the kids do whatever the hell they want.”

He says he'd love to go back to Colorado but Red Rocks isn't large enough to provide the income from a job like at Gillette.

 

Red Rocks Ampitheater
 

48 Christmas's So Far

Let's see...I need some Christmas stories to write about, or snippets.

When I was six, I woke up long before anyone else in this house out of excitement to see what presents Santa had left. I quietly went down the stairs and was elated to find the living room floor packed with gifts! He was here!

I tried to walk through the gifts, seeing which ones were tagged with my name and in doing so, I unbalanced the Christmas tree and sent it falling on top of me. The fall was a slow motion collapse with the sound of the branches rustling and the glass blown ornaments clinking.

My next thought was of total fear. If my parents woke up to see that I have knocked the tree over, I'm doomed! So, using the best brains a six year old can muster in a dire situation, I quietly as possible lifted the tree back onto it's three legged stand. I then had to replace about 20 fallen ornaments that had jostled loose from the tree and clear gobs of tinsel off the gifts.

No one woke up! Another crime successfully carried out! I was however busted on eating the chocolate I found in my stocking. I forgot to wipe my face off. 

*****

When this family and the extended ones of Uncles, Grands and what have yous were alive, we'd all meet for a Christmas Eve party at Uncle Joe's house on Sterry St in Pawtucket. It was one of the few times I managed to see all my girl cousins and at first, it wasn't that much fun as the adults kept corralling us to the “kid's table” and watched us like hawks for the slightest misbehavior.

We kids were smart enough though. All we had to do is wait about 45 minutes. The adults, being Irish, would start getting gooned on the beer and special liquors they broke out for an occasion like this.

Two hours into their drinking, we kids didn't exist. We could run, flying through the house, during some game we invented and in the process, bash our foreheads on table corners and knock stuff over. Were we stopped? We just got a few verbal reprimands that we could tell carried NO weight whatsoever.  The grown ups were too spiced to deal with us long. My oldest cousin liked to wrestle so she and I made a great mess of her bedroom one year. No one stopped us as we crashed on the bed, bureau and side tables.

At the end of the night, and funny as shit, was watching my Dad trying to steer his fourteen foot long  '69 Chevy Impala home while buzzed. My Mom rarely drank and if she did, three beers to her was like slugging down a keg. She was straight as an arrow and acted as navigator in the passenger seat. I'd hear hear shout out, “Richard! For Christ's sake...THAT was the CURB!...YOU drove up on the CURB!”

He did too. I can tell you exactly where. Division Street by McCoy stadium.  

Don't forget..in 1970, driving drunk was LEGAL.

My Dad of course brushed off her objections. I can remember him saying, “Maureen..would you pipe down? I'm doing 15mph! How can I crash the car at this speed?!”

The truth is my Dad drove drunk like today's teens drive stoned; very, very slow. It's fun watching your own stalwart, business-minded Dad act like a clown at times.

*****

Not too long ago, my brother was employed as a writer at Providence Monthly. Also employed there were a fair amount of Jewish people who my brother had become friends with. They invited him to their yearly festival of going to a decent Chinese restaurant to eat and drink. I went along one year.

Not being Jewish and having no Jewish friends left me short of just what they do on the BIGGEST Catholic holiday of the year. They know Catholic Rhode Island shuts down and they have to find heathen, pagan businesses that are open.  Lucky for them the Chinese could care less about Christmas!   I finally made it to the China Inn in downtown Pawtucket to find it absolutely packed. I managed to find my brother's table and knew a few of his co-workers there and met a few I didn't know. As I sat there, eating noodles and drinking beer, I listened to their conversations.

They were gossiping about the others in the restaurant. I didn't know this but one finally clued me into one fact, the biggest movers of the Jewish community that lived on the East Side of Providence were in attendance that night. I looked around and just saw plain ol' public faces you'd see anywhere. I didn't see any movers and shakers whatsoever.  I suppose heads of banks, universities, rug/diamond importers were all in there. If so, I never recognized any.

I did find out just how monied some of them were when the restaurant finally closed and kicked everyone out, the cars that drove by were quite impressive!

We ended up at his friend's house (on the East side...imagine that!) and partied till about three AM. This is when I met Mike Fink for the first time. To be honest, I was a bit put off talking “art"to a long time art/engish professor. Just how on God's earth could I discuss art when all I can say is “I appreciate some of the art I see.” But he was a genuine nice guy and I got to know him well for a few years. Christmas morning dawned soon enough when we got home and I ate Lo Mein and real Crab Rangoon.  That fake crab meat is just pollock hauled into some Russian fishing trawler, dyed pinkish and frozed solid four months ago.

Trying to Throw My Arms Around a Girl

I spent some of the day listening to U2 like I've said in a post before. The thing is, I really haven't listened to it in years, till today. There are some songs on it that never did get airplay but were personal favorites of mine. One was “Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World” off of Achtung Baby.

That song I used to play all the time then and hearing it again today, I managed to see that younger self I once was. I've find now that with the intervening years, and I mean YEARS since I used to listen to that song, is the perspective I own now. That's no epiphany really. I was 27 then and I had the brain, blood and dearth of real life experience of a 20 something.

At that age, I was up to my neck in testosterone, hope and naivete. There were many girls I was trying to thrown my arms around. Many of whom outright rejected me for whatever reason and I too tossed aside those I wasn't the least bit sparked by. You throw away a lot of coal to find the diamond. A lot of coal. This applies to girls and the boys alike. We both are picky as hell. A basic egg-headed biologist calls this “mate selection.”

What a difference decades make! At 27, I was keenly aware of what I looked like, dressed, how I sounded and how I may come off as a possible prospect for a pretty girl I took an interest in. Now at my age, I couldn't care! Ha! That's what the piling up of experience upon experience can do for you. That's what getting older does too. I am no longer in the market of finding a mate to produce a family. There's no need to preen myself like a peacock. I have been freed! The song reminded me of all the efforts a guy will put into making himself a great “pick.” A climbing career, a late model car that works, the occasional expense of an Izod golf shirt and breath mints.

Did it work? Nope.

For a zillion reasons, many I couldn't control, I never married and created a baby. For many of my friends, they wished they hadn't married at all...or had that little rug rat!

I sat here and calculated the percentage of “successful, happy” marriages of the people I grew up with. Here's the data. 20%. That's it. Out of everyone I know, those who divorced and those who I know are who actively cheating on one another, 80% of their marriages fell apart or are secretly just shams. Yikes!

But, success rates aren't what I was tuned into today.

How different I am now and how the same I am too. It's amazing with the reams of maturity and sophistication how one can, in a fairly short time, size someone up. People wear their true personalities on their sleeves most of the time and if they don't, that just sets off alarm bells in me that conclude “professional liar!”  Now, it's no longer, “I hope she likes me,” but “I am who I am and take it or leave it.” I sure as shit didn't think this when I was much younger! In 1991, I'd badly size up a girl and ignore the SCREAMING sirens that she may be a ton of trouble. Now? I can smell low self esteem from a mile away.

Confidence scares others who don't possess it. In fact, you can see them fall into an insecurity spiral the longer they stay around someone who is sure of themselves. I'm not saying I'm sure all the time, hell, I'm not. I panicked limping my car home on just battery power from Mansfield once, slapping the steering wheel like a pilot slapping the yoke of a shot to shit B-17 flying home from Germany. “C'mon baby! C'mon!”

What I mean is that at my age, when talking to someone much younger, the confidence you attain from just plain living life naturally shimmers from you. If it spooks them, so be it. I am what I am now. You can't help it.

Well, that was my lesson for today, listening to U2 and realizing I have matured, matured and matured some more. So, time to grow my hair long like a grizzled ol' sea captain with the Civil War sideburns...where I can look like I have some experience under my belt?

Music is the Best!

Billboards Number One Hits is fun to look up on Google. I realized that some of the songs I thought I knew, I knew at a younger age. Rod Stewart's “Maggie May” was on the hit list just before Halloween when I was seven! For some reason I thought that came out later...guess not.

So this got me started to popping CD's into my player, the one's I haven't played in a long time. As I was doing this, I had forgotten that I have nearly every single CD produced by U2 as they were issued back then. I don't order my CD's, they lie in stacks on top of my speakers, the amp, the floor, the..wherever there is room.

Zooropa, Actung Baby and Unforgettable Fire I haven't really played in a while. I then started playing The Joshua Tree and the memories flooded back. 1987 wasn't a bad year for me memory-wise. This might be a boring snippet from then, but I was wall papering and painting the interior of this house while The Joshua Tree set to “shuffle” for about four hours. I didn't get bored of it. Ah, I miss my then Sony CD player, it was a great machine. It can't compare to the quality of the NAD one I have now, but for some reason the Sony seemed more fun.

The first time I ever heard of U2 was from, ready? MTV. I was wasting time with my friend J. when I saw concert footage of these young Irish punks on a stage. The crawl under the footage said “Sunday, Bloody Sunday.” “Bloody Sunday” I knew of well. Hell, I should. My then alive pro-IRA Irish grandmother told me about that incident. “The damn-ned Brit Prots shot 26 people that day!” You see, even at a young age my grandmother was trying to pollute my mind against the British. I was interested who this band was. Were they a pro IRA band? The song was being played in some Irish soccer stadium so I figured, perhaps they are?

No, they weren't eventually. They were just another group of young men hoping to hit it big with music they enjoyed.

I'm no musician, that job was my brother's. He once said this of music. “If it's still being played decades from when it was released, it has durability...it was well crafted.” You don't hear Tone Loc's “Funky Cold Medina” being played much but you still hear U2, the Beatles, Springsteen and the Who to this day. As I write this, I am listening to the live version of “Sweet Jane” by the Velvet Underground, and that's old.

So this morning was filled with U2.

The Past Creeps Back

I've spoken before about “degrees of separation” and how you can be connected to famous or infamous people. I again today did some Googling of the past and came across people my Dad knew, if just by association.

J Howard McGrath, was a onetime governor of Rhode Island, Solicitor General, US Attorney General and the founder of First Federal Savings and Loan that was located on Westminster St in Providence, where my Dad started his banking career.

Growing up, I heard the McGrath name mentioned but it was more about J Howard's brother, Russell who was the President of that bank. Even so, McGrath this and McGrath that would come up around the dinner table. I being a young kid then, paid about as much attention to it as kids pay attention to the boring discussions adults have.

Apparently J. Howard had to resign his position as Attorney General of the US after a corruption investigation in the Justice Department. J Edgar Hoover had engineered this ouster along with President Truman. It was more of political wrangling to avoid the appearance of corruption so I've read. The Justice Department's IRS tax division was handing out favors to various people. They were squashing audits and hampering the IRS in tax evasion investigations. I guess they had to hang someone and J Howard McGrath was the obvious choice. This led to the Kefauver Senate Committee to investigate organized crime. 

 

Here's a Wikipedia link to Howard McGrath:

 

J. Howard McGrath 

I never knew my Dad worked with such people. It does explain a small fact my brother told me though. In 1974, my brother tells me the FBI approached my Dad to be a forensic accountant. That is, his job would be to dig into the money of suspected criminals in order to attain convictions. That's how they got Al Capone, on tax evasion. My Dad declined the offer my brother had told me. Or so he declined it? We'll never know. I'm struck at the connections that bank has had to the FBI and the US Dept of Justice...and God Knows What Else? I have to add, my Dad did make a few trips down to DC a few times, though he never explained it other than “banking business.” There was also a strange trip to Seattle, WA. My Mom and Dad spoke about in hushed tones. I guess he took all his secrets to the grave back in 1977.

J. Howard McGrath had a son, David, who took the reins of the bank over when my Dad died. I knew precious little about him until I read his obituary a couple of months ago. I never knew this guy was FBI, an executive at MGM movie studios and had shot some of “Francis the Talking Mule” at his farm in Narragansett. This struck me as I had been to that farm/family compound in Narragansett as a boy.

*****

David McGrath, Former Top Marketing Exec at MGM, Dies at 74

12:25 PM PDT 3/13/2012 by Mike Barnes , Variety Magazine.

The former FBI agent spearheaded campaigns for such films as “Doctor Zhivago” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

David McGrath, a senior marketing executive at MGM in the 1960s, died Feb. 29 in San Diego after a lengthy illness. He was 74.

McGrath handled the marketing campaigns for such films as Doctor Zhivago (1965), The Dirty Dozen (1967), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Ryan’s Daughter (1970) and scores of others.

 

McGrath came to the studio after serving in the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, who reported to his father, J. Howard McGrath, attorney general for Harry Truman from 1949-52. His FBI service was primarily protecting the family of Robert Kennedy.

At MGM from 1962-72, McGrath worked his way through the ranks of the studio, achieving success at the box office with his campaigns on numerous films. He was responsible for organizing the migration of the marketing department from its New York headquarters to the studio in Culver City, California.

 

Following the move to California, McGrath left the business to return to his Rhode Island farm in Narragansett, where the 1950s film “Francis the Talking Mule” had been filmed. He headed up First Federal Savings and Loan, where his marketing skills grew the S&L to the biggest in the state, then left banking to do charitable work and professional cooking.

 

Survivors include his son, Brian. Donations in his memory can be made to the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation.

*****

I say it again, I never knew my Dad knew people from the Truman Administration, Hollywood or that many from the FBI and Justice Dept.

My only real memory of those people was the time I spent at a BBQ at the Narragansett farm. It was my first time seeing “real” money. Real money in that I never saw swimming pools that big or that homes can contain numerous, very large rooms. I felt a bit out of place there as our home was a complete dump compared to the McGrath compound. I had a good time there however.

I have a puzzle to put together now. Just what in the hell did my Dad really do? Or perhaps it's nothing at all? I doubt I can get much information as the actors in this story are dead or are quickly headed that way. Still, there's in itch in my head about certain people and things I noticed around this house and what I found out from an obituary of a man who I visited a long time ago.

No Answers

We keep producing them, psychos. It's a bit early in the investigation about Adam Lanza but the early reports state that he was “weird” to being with. The problem is that no one will know why he did it and I'm betting he didn't have the insight either.

 

I used to work in a field where I came across some of Rhode Island's damaged people. The majority were born with disabilities and grew up in rotten circumstances that further aggravated their conditions. None I knew took up a gun to take it out on the world though. It wasn't because of “personal choice” not to. They weren't that aggressive enough to try or weren't of that nature. The others I knew just turned inward and developed depression.

 

They'll be more. There always is. We treat each other like dirt at times. On occasion, some one kid gets a childhood filled with persecution and you wonder why they grew up screwed in the head? I knew many like that who were singled out over some condition or foible and were crucified socially for it. No, none of them shot up a school, they just limped along with their broken lives as best as they could, trying to squeeze some fun out of it.

 

I used to tell them this, and it's a hard truth. There's no justice for you. Whatever conditions you were born under, what life offered you, as undeserved and as cruel as they were, there will be no reprieve. You cannot petition any court to go back and get a “new life.” You cannot sue for a re-do. You were unfairly convicted by it and now live with it.

 

Instead, “Make your own justice” I'd say. I don't mean they should become Rambo and take it out on the world. I meant that they should forget retribution, sulking, the past and any other hindrance that silly fortune trips their lives up with. Go after what makes you happy instead. In doing so, don't forget that your damage is incorporated into you and you'll have to deal with that as you stumble towards the goals you seek.

 

There is no option but to go forward.

 

Unfortunately, for those twenty kids in Connecticut, that no longer is an option.

 

And I have no answer for that.

 

I'm not particularly religious. But, if the parents and relatives find some way to assuage this grief via Lutheranism, Catholicism, Judaism or what have you. Then so be it. Whatever works.

*****

I'm going to be 49 soon and I still can't figure out why the innocent are slammed by life. It happens every day. Most times you never hear about the smaller, personal struggles. There are billions of them occurring each day. Then we get this whopper that focuses everyone's attention.

 

Why?

 

No answer to that question either.

 

I used to be an avid reader of Kurt Vonnegut. He wrote this silly little ditty in his book Cat's Cradle that sums up life.

 

We do, doodley do, doodley do, doodley do,
What we must, muddily must, muddily must, muddily must;
Muddily do, muddily do, muddily do, muddily do,
Until we bust, bodily bust, bodily bust, bodily bust.

 

Slip, trip and fall through life. We bounce off it's walls. Some of us do better than others. Others minding their own business, being careful, get hit with life's meteors out of the sky. 

 

And Christ, do we judge one another on that!

“Did you hear what he/she did? How could they be that stupid?” The unsaid judgment here is that people deserve what happens to them. Some of us learn, some don't. Some of us can throw off self-damaging behaviors, others can't. I've come to believe, that the more you judge others, the more you judge yourself too. Leave others alone, and you'll possibly leave yourself alone too.

After today, life proves once again it's can be very hard. Why add to it?

I'll stop. I could ramble on and on.

3200 Phaethon

A Geminid Fireball Streaking Down to Earth.

I'm going to turn dork tonight. The Geminid meteor shower is expected to peak tonight and I hope to catch at glimpse of it. The trick is either to stay awake long enough or set the alarm, and convince myself to abandon the warmth of my bed for the cold, night air at 2 AM. We'll see how my pledge works out.

So, why lose sleep over this? I used to have a hell of a fascination with astronomy since I was about six. My Dad bought my brother the coolest toy back then, a telescope, and it was the first time I saw the mountains on the Moon through it. During some of the nights of July in 1971, my brother and I tried to find Apollo 15 on the surface of the Moon. We thought we spotted them at times. My six year old excitement was easily pricked by the thought of actually seeing the tracks of the Lunar Rover up there. In truth we had no idea where to look and a crappy 10x telescope won't make out any object smaller than fifty miles across.

The Moon, space travel and space itself got me to bug my Dad and Mom with questions neither of those two could fully answer. My curiosity was fired up. Perhaps that's when it all started really, my silly desire to know things hidden from me. My curiosity to this day is insatiable.  The occasional explanation I did get from Dad then was so odd that it really boggled my mind.

“The Moon, Sun and Earth, altogether, controls the tide.” My Dad would say

“But whhyyy?” was this kid's annoying response. I had to know the details. My Dad must've rolled his eyes at times. He was a hell of an accountant but not trained in orbital mechanics at all.

So, I was left on my own really. But luckily I liked to read as a kid and Apollo, Soyuz and the first Space Lab made it safe, even cool to talk about science then. I found books on it all.

I'd had an amateur's astronomy book that helped you pinpoint where to aim a telescope and with some searching, you'd find some star, planet or whatever that was out there. I was surprised to find out that stars were different colors, not that same pollution-colored green light they have when you look at them through the naked eye. There was one find I thought was very cool in that one I found it, and two that the star is red as a ruby, no joke. The star Sirius, which is out tonight, looks like a scintillating diamond through a pair of binoculars. It's that bright and colorful.

This little hobby of mine died off when I was a teen but I remembered how to find your usual targets in the sky still. I once pointed out the Andromeda galaxy to my friend M then and his response was typical of your blue collar/D-D-Davies types that lived in Pawtucket. (D-D-Davies is a local joke, say it fast like a stutter and you'll get the humor).

M says to me as I point out the tiny patch of light in the sky:

“Huh? Who give's a fuck? What's that got to do with life down here? Is it going to make you money?”

No, it wouldn't make me a dime. And to him, it was a waste of mindfulness that could be spent on day to day problems here...on Earth. Andromeda has no effect on his life whatsoever. But to me, to know something bizarre as that existed beyond Pawtucket's borders, was worth thinking about time to time. There was more to this town and its mundane life than scrounging for a used tire to avoid paying Sears full price for one. Again, if you just have $200 total in your bank account, scrounging takes up a good part of your efforts and attention anyway, and wasting time thinking of anything other than survival is going to drag you down.

M had his points and they were good ones. Pay attention to what's right in front of you. Though if taken too far that prevents you from looking beyond any horizon really and screws you out of chances in life. It''ll screw your chances at knowing anything more than “Pawtucket” too.

So, if I can stop yawning and can tolerate lying on the cold December ground in my backyard, I'll be looking up. Looking for strange, off-wordly things that seem a bit more entertaining and uncommon vs. the humdrum of repetitive, Pawtucket life.

Owning

 

“A Thirty-Something movie in which a group of old college friends who are now all grown up and hardened by the big wide world come together for the funeral of Alex, a barely glimpsed corpse, who was at one time the brightest and the best of them, and yet who never managed to achieve half as much as any of the others. The friends use the occasion to reacquaint themselves with each other and to speculate as to what happened to their idealism which had been abundant when they were younger.”

 

*****

 

No one died. A few of my college buddies met up for a happier reason. A few of us had schedules that coincided for some free time and with a little phone work, we set a time and place.

 

After all these years, I easily recognized them. No one's voice had really changed over the years and it was K & M who I could recall as clearly as I did 25 years ago. In fact, it was hard not to see us all when we were 22 years old then. I was certainly animated as a young 20 something. The excitement of seeing people from a part of my life I consider to be incredibly fun electrified me. The evidence of it was that I barely shut up during the night.

 

K then surprised me with a pile of old photographs taken from one of our trips to Montreal. I sat there, going through them and passing them one by one to M. I kept repeating, “Oh my God.” as I flipped through them. I couldn't believe I was that young then; or that they were as well. The motel room, the sights and the people I knew back then all came flooding back. I had forgotten again of all the little details of my life I did live back then.

 

“I wore white pants? I wore white pants? When was the last time I wore white?” I shamelessly asked out loud as I saw my younger self wearing white khakis. “Look how skinny he was!” I added on later.

 

There I was in one picture. Un-dyed auburn, wavy hair, aviator glasses, thin with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth, hitting hard on this blonde girl I can refer to as Bockes-able.

 

Ah well, we got old.

 

Now we all sported gray hair, though I hide mine but admitted to. We were somewhat careworn too by careers, kids and the usual shit life throws at us all. But I was glad to see that no one really changed too much. The same personalities and dynamics were there as they were when we were all at RIC. It's funny how people, who haven't met in a long time, take up exactly where they left off.

 

We played “catch-up.” We compressed in a few hours each story of our lives since then. Old stories, new stories and “Whatever happened to this one or that one” came up. What was different now in our conversations is that some of the subjects revolved around impending retirement strategies and complaining of the forthcoming problems of advanced aging. No more talk of what we were going to do with our lives when we were graduating.

 

Do you even remember that? The hope and dreams of your youth? The brimming optimism you owned as you built your future? I was reminded last night. I admit it saddened me somewhat but reconciled that quickly with this, I did, at one time, own everything that the youth own. I lived it. I was there. I can tell you about it.

 

I forget who said it, but we “borrow” everything in life and never own it. The money, homes, people, time and all else is just loaned to us. We return some if it as we age and acquire newer things to hold, only to pass those along as well. Yet, I'd love to borrow some of my 20-something years again for a while. Hell, I can fantasize, can't I?

 

K made an interesting observation, no one from our group ended up in the careers we studied for. We all aimed to do so but, of course, life's events that none of us control forced us to steer a different course. We've all made these course corrections that placed us in lives we never imagined we'd be when we were twenty-two.

 

That's a bit of forewarning about all of our impending futures. You can never know just what it's going to be. You can steadily aim, but never can trust the shot will hit the mark.

 

The conversation steered toward the future in one part. What will we speak of then? All agreed we'd be bitching about aging, as every one else who went before us did the same. Though, the added wisdom that comes from that makes life somewhat easier to live. There were younger times when we were grappling in the dark about “what to do.” Now, since we've been through it before we have an idea about how to “deal.”

 

That's the trade off for youth I suppose. Is it a equitable bargain? The jury is still out or; I forget to take a long, long perspective on it all. I should remind myself more often.

 

On top of it all, this impromptu reunion was fun and it reminded me of the gallons of fun I had in youth too.

Dickensian

“Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”

The very first sentences of Dickens' “A Christmas Carol.”

 

I've always liked “A Christmas Carol.” In fact it was the only Dickens book I've ever read. I tried reading “Bleak House” but if you ever read Dickens, it's a tough chew. “Bleak House” was a novel about the grinding slow nature of the English court system back in the 1850's. The novel is a grind too.

 

Dickens is heralded as one of England's greatest writers and that may be. However, I could never get past his laborious style. Dickens will set a scene in a room, with say two characters who may have one minute's worth of conversation, but before he says “action,” he'll describe the room, the temperature, weather and what the characters are wearing in minute detail. As I read it I found myself screaming in my head, “Would you get to the point!!”

 

That would be my only criticism of him. That is due to the fact there was no TV and internet back then to brush away the need to describe the surroundings in words. I am a child of the 20^th century.

 

This rendition of “A Christmas Carol” was done in 1984 with George C. Scott playing the role as Scrooge. It's weird, because I can't get past his portrayal as Patton and then as a Scrooge. Every time I heard Scrooge (Scott) yell, I time warp back to his movie Patton.

 

“Crachitt! There will be no more coal for today!!” 

I hear that as Scott's Patton boasting,

“Rommel, You magnificent bastard...I READ YOUR BOOK!!”

 

Also, the best portrayal of Marley's ghost is in this flick. Click below to watch Marley clang his chains about.

But, I come FIRST!

My friend Barry has a saying about younger women. “They're living in their own world, their own bubble. Nothing else is real outside of that. If it doesn't pertain to them in some way, then it doesn't matter.” He's gone on to say that we're all guilty of this as well from time to time.

This morning, I'm looking in the mirror at the white beard stubble I need to shave off and the ever deepening crow's feet I have around my eyes. “Sigh...There's no stopping it is there?” I tell myself. Woe is me. Me, me, me.

I then hear my dog explode in a fit of deep barking. I go out into the living room to see him yelling at two fire trucks and one ambulance parked outside my neighbor's house. It's Gladys once again. She very old and has had one stroke and I suspect she's in danger once again as the firemen dashed into the house this time around.

Who here has the greater claim on want and desire?

Pauly Anghinetti, an old English professor I once had, use to opine daily in his classes about people in general. “People are the worst!” he'd say. We're all greedy, selfish and forever grabbing at what we desire and want it NOW. Here is a poem he once wrote:

Gimme, gimme, gimme

I,I,I

Now, now, now

Me, me, me

Mine, mine mine.

But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I Sleep

 

You can't waste a cold, November night. Especially if the moon is full.

I finally went shopping for food. I make sure the dog always has something to eat but do I make sure I do? Nope. So it was past time to stock up my shelves. As I was driving home through Seekonk, the moon was appearing on the horizon and was already casting shadows. It was then I thought I needed a little walk in the woods.

You'd think I'd have all the peace and quiet I want living alone. I do, but I also want to remove myself from the noise in this world. The TV, internet, phone, stereo...other people. I want a to be by myself for an hour.

I knew a pretty girl who once sported this tee-shirt when she was twenty. It said, “Leave.Me.Alone.” I loved it. I want one of those when I have that craving to escape.

Cold air can enshroud you, as can the night but that's obvious. The cold muffles the noise of the city that can drone on and on. All I can hear as I walk the trails is the shuffle of leaves around my feet and the quick activity of unknown creatures scampering away. At times I'll stop, turn my head so the good ear is up, to hear what I can hear. I can count on one hand the number of things that make any noise. I might, might hear the rippling of the river. If there is slight breeze and I'm by the fields, I can hear the rustling of the dry grass. If I'm lucky, I might startle a duck or goose and I'll hear that splat, splat, splat of their wings smacking the water as they try to gain height as they fly away. It can be that quiet.

It won't take long, but there's that point when I feel relaxed..blissfully ALONE. Not only alone from other people, but alone from myself. I'll explain.

You can successfully get away from the noise of other people and the world at large. But can you get away from the noise you generate in yourself? You can. It takes some doing, but you can achieve it.

Perhaps you are like me. My mind can toss and turn and ruminate and think things over for the umpteenth time. I have schedules to remember, car repairs I promise to deal with but blow off again, short and long term concerns and memories. This constant self-chat goes on all day with me at times. Busy, busy, busy.

But, if I put myself in a place that's conducive for quiet, even my damn brain can take a break for a while.

Once my mind takes that break, I can finally notice what's around me.

Tonight, I was reminded again of how blue-white everything is with a full moon. This surprises me each and every time I see it. There's no mystery as to why I don't remember it. I always forget about it when the day to day world is always entreating my attention. You forget about a lot of things when your focus is “elsewhere.”

But not tonight.

As the moon lights everything up with that surreal light, it also casts shadows. The tree branches now are pretty much bare and the shadows thrown by them are the blackest you'll ever see. On the ground before me as I walk under the trees, I see a tangled, haphazard weave of sharply defined black bands. My own shadow is there too, moving along ink black as well. On the side of the trail, I cannot see at all into the larger scrub oaks and bushes. It's all obscured. It's worrisome. What foxes and coyotes are watching me pass by? I know they are in the woods somewhere, I've seen them at dusk and dawn.

I'll make a wandering circle through these woods. I know where I am. I've tromped through them since I was a child. Eventually I aim back to my car, get in and join the world once more.

But, while I sit at the intersection of Armistice and Newport avenue red light, I don't acknowledge the traffic, the teens gathered in front of the Quickie Mart nor myself. My brain is still quiet.

This will last till I go to bed. Excellent!


I've been doing this sort of thing since I was a kid. Old habits never die. I'll probably do it again and continue to write about it.
 

 

 

 

Wild Child

I'm working on something incredibly heavy, damned serious and dark. Gee, that's out of line for me huh? Anyway, here is a lighter memory before, and if I decide, to drop a bomb on here.

I was watching Nick Gelder's “Hot Child in the City” video a few hours ago. I like to trip down memory lane via YouTube. You too will do this one day, if you're not already doing it.

We knew of one “loose child” back in 1979. Kathy, was a 16 year old runaway from Zanesville Ohio. She dropped into our orbit for a few weeks before she rocketed off to God Knows Where. Needless to say, all of us boys tried to get her as she needed a place to sleep, finally wash her greasy clothing and shower. I think she was passed around between three of us before she just up and left one July morning. I never got a crack at her because I couldn't keep strays at my house.

She wasn't a druggie from what I could tell. She didn't need drugs, she was screwed up quite organically. If her story was to be trusted, she bolted home after Mom married a new Dad who didn't quite like her and was beaten up like a rag doll. So she split. Now why she landed in Slater Park one night was probably due to being dumped by whoever had her before.

She was expert though at getting what she needed though. She kept requesting if anyone had a washing machine because she had no money whatsoever for a laundromat. Her entire wardrobe was on her back. She found a washing machine, for the price of doing Todd for the night.

That was her currency. I guess it's the currency of all teen girl runaways. She created one hell of a sensation as word about her spread. At the park, she'd ply the boys with her very experienced ways and blow off most till she found one who had money or place to stay. All I got off her was her sitting in my lap in my old Nova while she “interviewed” me about how many people were living in my home. After a shower and nicer clothing, she did clean up nicely. I can't vouch for any medical issues she may have had, though none of the boys admitted to anything afterwards.

Perhaps she's a Senator's wife by now?

I Can See You! Sort Of...

You may not know this but this blog has some data mining involved with it. I'll say now that I DO NOT KNOW just who specifically reads this. All the metrics that I can know is that how many people come, what blogs are read, on which days and which blogs are read and re-read again. This data is used by people who put advertising on their blogs and Google apparently pays you one-billionth of a penny each time someone clicks on. I don't have any advertising so I get the minimal metrics.

 

I say again, I do not know who you are! All I can know is what country, state and area you may be from. For all of you from Rhode Island, the closest it'll pin you down is to “the Providence area.” If I wanted to know who you were I'd have to pay Google a generous fee to cough up that information and I'm too cheap to do that.

 

What's surprising is that I have a following in Germany and Russia. There's a smattering of people from Denmark too. Go figure? But the greatest following is USA.

 

The most read blog I have is the “Jack Straw” one. The others that get many hits are where I speak of very personal stories. Those that involve self-discolure seem to be a bit hit with you out there.

 

So, I'll have to work on something juicy one day.

Spencer, MA

 

 

 

 

Ever try Trappist jams? They're absolutely killah! The problem is that they charge you an arm and a leg for a 12 ounce jar. So, on occasion, if Stop and Shop is willing to drop the price, I'll pick one up.

 

My last bit of heaven was their Blueberry jam. It was thick as tar, full of blueberries and sticky as hell. If you're not careful, it sticks to everything. Beautiful!

 

So, who the hell are these Trappists? Where do they come from? Since I read constantly I learned they're up the road in Spencer, MA, where they make all this jam.

 

There are some hard core Catholics that live there, but in the most quiet of ways. Silence. Solitude. A strict observance of the time of day and prayer. Repetitiveness in daily activities that supposedly brings calm is practiced.

 

In my search for Trappist Jam I came across a blog by one of the monks who lives there. Reading it was sort of boring as most entries were tied tightly with passages from the Bible. I do however give this guy a pass as he's made this his life's vocation. My initial distaste for it is due to being harangued by Jesus freaks who use passages like a light saber. I've come across too many of them in my life.

 

What was interesting, were his comments on the fields, the season and the weather around him. He claims once you quiet your life down, you cannot help but notice the slow and small changes that occur day to day.

 

He was walking along a path with another monk when this friend points out a new, small sprig of ivy growing out of a stone wall and remarks, “Ah, a small poem!” You have to have removed all that damned clutter in your mind in order to see just what is around you.

 

Other sections speak of the scent of July meadows or fields of snow that glow at night from a full moon. It's those times, he says, that he feels closest to God. It occurs when he's alone too.

 

“Hmm...this guy isn't a shallow, Bible spouting jerk. “ I think.

 

 

*****

 

I'm not religious. Nor am I “spiritual.” Spirituality as it's kicked around today encompasses far too much New Age crap to be meaningful to me. But, there have been those moments when I came “close.” It had nothing to do with Jesus, Buddha or Whoever.

 

I was reminded of the times I had come close when I read about Frank Beazley, a paralyzed man who lived at Burrillville's Zambarano Hospital. Burrillville is where most of us call “out there.” Beazley's life was portrayed by the ProJo back in 2006. In it they tell his story of being sent to a Halifax orphanage, finally getting on his own, married and during some stupid luck mistake, fell down a flight of stairs where he snapped his neck for good.

 

There was one passage in the article where he wrote down a few lines he wrote as a teen while living at the orphanage. He was walking across a snowy field late at night, in those bitch winters Canada is known for, watching the aurora flit about and he was completely alone with his thoughts. He said a calmness overcame him out of nowhere. It wasn't contrived nor sought for. It evolved on it's own. He wrote a small poem about it and it stayed in a notebook for decades till he ended up in Rhode Island.

 

I knew this feeling. I have had it.

 

It's happened when I was alone. I wasn't looking for it either. It's happened while I sat on a rock escarpment overlooking a lake near Thompson, CT. There was another time while I sat next to a meandering river here, the Ten Mile. The leafless trees were being whipped around by a passing cold front that had quickly dropped the temperatures into the upper thirties and I didn't mind it at all. I thought of nothing but what was happening around me. My life at the time concerned itself with book reports, homework and the “career” I had trying to maintain an A- average. That all fell away. My mind then became concerned with the empty woods, the clacking of the tree branches and how wildly blue the sky gets when the sun sets in late autumn.

 

I'll tell you where I can sense it too sometimes. Right here in my own house. If it's very late at night, preferably winter and a passenger jet is starting it's turn over Seekonk on it's way to TF Green, there is a strange whooshing sound that it'll make in the freezing air. At times, I'll get that “calm” from it. You know why? Because this is a constant, common event that I can rely upon. I can count on it. It's been happening since I was a child. There are a few things in my life I have always been able to count on. Even if it's damned flight path.

 

You and I know many people, who are harried by life. Bills, the kids, old childhood wounds that still need care and all the pressures daily life throws at us. Hurry! HURRY! Get this done! Get THAT done! Rush! We're running out of time!

 

No wonder people seek the beach, the woods, a Trappist Abbey or a snowy field. Or even perhaps a single plane cutting the air on it's return over Seekonk.

 

“You're home now” those all say.