Look Up!

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” ask Mrs. Glowicz, our first grade teacher.

Several answers spring up from the boys. Policeman! Cowboy! Fireman! The girls nearly said all the same thing, “a Mom!” Don't forget this is 1969, the women's movement hadn't really taken off yet. By sixth grade in five years time, most of those girls wanted something else.

I said, “Astronaut!” Mrs. Glowicz looked at me oddly. Of course being the kid I was, I wasn't going to go along with the crowd. I swear I had the gene for that and not from some conscious effort to be “different.” Again, it's 1969 and NASA were landing men on the moon and Apollo was always in the news. At six, you can't really understand Walter Cronkite but you see the blurry black and white film of men bouncing like balls on the moon, I thought that was magical. I'd go out in the yard at night with my brother and we'd stare at the moon and I'd wonder “how the hell did they do it?”

My brother had received a cheapy telescope for Christmas that may have had a 10x power setting. We finally used it in the summer when the weather was warm enough. He aimed it at a crescent moon and he finally let me take a look. It was then I saw something that stunned me, the surface was textured in detail. The slanting sun rays showed off the craters, mountains and plains. This was a place.

Pointing it at Vega, one of those bright stars in summer, nearly directly overhead now, it shone like a white/blue diamond. It looked beautiful, pristine and pure. He also found Herschel's Garnet Star which is red as a ruby. That shocked me at most stars in the sky around light polluted Pawtucket had a slight green cast to them. Again, more detail and these hidden facts were uncovered for me. There had to be more to know.

It's that red. 

I went from wanting to be an astronaut to being an astronomer. That brought shitloads of ridicule from some of the parents around this neighborhood. The life of blue collar men around here was spent on finding money and newer ways of getting it. Anything that wasn't focused on that was deemed foolish.

The closer you are to the “street,” the more practical your decisions become because of the very real threat of not making the mortgage or rent that month. You aren't rich enough to be wasting time on silly things like art, music...astronomy. I didn't get it at six but I understand that now. No matter, I found out there were things far more interesting things than the usual goings on in Pawtucket and I remained interested in space. To avoid the rolling eyes and derision, I kept my thoughts to myself.

The problem with astronomy is that it's ALL mathematical. The problem with mathematics in the Pawtucket school system was that it was taught by math teachers. I have a theory about them now. I found many math teachers to be short tempered, impatient and incapable at translating their knowledge with any flair. I wondered about the general personality of people who go into math. It has to be right-brained enigneer-get-it-excatly-right-or-the-world-comes-to-an-end mindset. I found them to be ugly people. Granted, you have to have that kind of mind in order to pull off mathematical and engineering feats but as teachers...not so good. The one math teacher I had who was talented at it was Earl Simpson, his real name and the guy deserves credit. He could explain fractal geometry to kindergarten kids. I will speak in his defense should we show up at Heaven's Gates. I won't speak so kindly of Richard Pascucci, real name also. Him? I'll demand he be sent to the 9^th circle of Hell. I probably won't be the only one voting this way.

A typical scene in a Pawtucket math class as some kid is called to the blackboard to figure out a problem drawn on it by your usual math teacher...

“You got it WRONG! How MANY times do I HAVE to explain it to YOU people! It stands to REASON that the AB angle is 70 degrees and NOT 200!!”

We knew these guys hated us and teaching. This ill-treatment did not help us to learn math any better nor to love it. I came to hate most of my math classes. I managed to squeak by with most of them in order to pass. I once wrote down all my math teachers in a list. Besides that I wrote down the grade I probably got and whether I liked the teacher or not? I found out that the more I liked the teacher (and hence probably the more patient they were and better at teaching) my grades shot up to an A-

Gee..I guess my skills at math were dependent on the psychological stability of the teacher.

So, armed with my “just getting by” mathematical skills, I get a higher degree in college, which wasn't astronomy. I knew that kid's dream wasn't coming true so why aim for that when you need to hit the ground running with any intro course in physics. It would be entering Olympic Field and Sport of Astronomy and if you weren't ready, eat dirt kiddo! Add to that I found out the need for astronomers in the US was paltry. There were only a few slots available to begin with and a Master's degree was needed. Today? You really need more of a computer processing skill to be an astronomer and when you're not doing that you can be relegated as an astronomy professor earning less than $40,000 a year. Oh joy! I think there are just a tiny smattering of astronomers who made any cash from their field, Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan come to mind. The rest of them work out of tiny offices at your universities and subsist on the same overcooked food their students eat in the same cafeteria

That doesn't mean I gave up my interest. I'm still fascinated by the absolutely weird stuff they keep discovering out there. It's more interesting than being stuck on 95 or cutting the lawn. To me, it's still entertainment. And the other day, they discovered a planet that's at the right distance from it's sun where liquid water can exist. Hello neighbors!

Today, if I wanted too, I could purchase one of those retail telescopes they have now vs. the shitty ones we had in 1969. Today's ones are giant CCD Cassegrain cameras that are connected to your desktop with all sorts of fun software. You can put the telescope in the backyard on a viciously cold January night, return to the warmth of your home and bring it all up on the computer...and scan the winter sky at your leisure, sipping Irish coffee. I'd probably be as stunned as that six year old I once was then too.

How I Became a Liberal, Commie Pinko

I saw an old intro to a kid's educational program we used to watch back in 1975 called Inside/Out. It had fairly left leaning stories that depicted kids in moral dilemmas. They always chose the liberal choice to solve them. It wasn't bad as I liked watching it and it was damned realistic about life in general. “Janey's Grandmom DIED” would be one show I remember. Heady stuff for 10 year olds for the time though. Seeing this intro opened up a flood gate of memories for me. It amazing how a song, a ditty of a song really, can do that.

***

“We're the kid brothers and sisters of hippies you know.” says M one night to me in a Mansfield sports bar. I never looked at it that way. I figured we were the last of the Boomers who were influenced by the generation that preceded us, but not by some direct relation. My older brother was in no way a hippy, ostensibly. Our right wing Dad would have none of that if he could prevent it...for a while.

My brother dabbled with hippy-ness on the sly though and I came along for the ride eventually. When I found my brother's stash of pot in the battery compartment of his Radio Shack cassette player, he finally admitted a lot to me and “brought me in.” I can see me there still at 10 yrs old, with a shocked look on my face, holding up a fat bag of pot, and figuring out my brother in a nanosecond. After that, I was introduced to Frank Zappa, National Lampoon, Hustler and Oui magazines and a host of other shit a 10 yr old was never to be introduced too. Thank God! It opened up a much more fun world than the one I knew up to that point.

Add to that this; my Dad gave up his a lot of his Goldwater/Republican views and I can nearly pinpoint the date, May 1974. That was when we stopped going to church regularly. I once was up early on a May Sunday, saw my parents as two lumps under the covers and was stupefied as to why they never got up to get ready for church that Sunday. Cool! I get to watch shitty Sunday morning TV and go out and play instead, figuring my good luck was based on their need to sleep in. The next Sunday proved it to be for good when we didn't go then either. Double Cool!

Why did Dad give up this right wing stance? I guess seeing Nixon admit he was this short of a convicted felon, resign and seeing Ford pardon him was the clincher. My Dad secretly, sheepishly and quiet oddly voted for Carter in that election. He said that day at work he was hoping to vote for Ford three times in a row. That was a public face to put on in front of other republican financial managers there. He turned coat though in his own little quiet way.

After all that, I grew my hair out w/o any remarks from him. I stopped wearing my “good” school clothes as I thought they made me look like Myron Poindexter. I bugged my Mom to get me a pair of gold rimmed Elton John/RayBan aviator style glasses instead of those black 50's glasses I had. I got them. I also could wear (horrors!) plain ol' jeans to school w/o a goddamned collared shirt. I fit in and was looking cooler by the day.

Fifth grade I had Miss McHale. Being ten I didn't know how hot she was but she had suitors show up to the class to visit and “drop by.” This was when anyone could walk into a school. I did see the other 10 year old girls in the class notice though, as they'd asked a ton of questions about “him,” who keeps showing up to drop off meaningless items. We young boys were far too stupid to figure that out...and actually, we didn't care what men came to her class, we were boys and girls have cooties.

McHale, loved to sing and when you're not teaching kids math and such, you get them to sing to folk music. Not just any folk music, but 30's Labor Strike-kick the scab in the knee and death to the rich kind of songs. Dylan, Pete Seeger, Joan Biaz and some of Lennon's stuff. We as kids didn't know the heavier meanings in those songs but like everything else, you soak it up in time with repetition. I knew the song, “Power to the People” from singing it before I heard it on the radio.

Next door to our class was Ms...and I mean Ms. Barbadoes. Do you remember that moniker...Ms? Your strident feminists began to demand you address them that way instead of “miss.” Ms. Barbadoes was a female Che Guevera. She had long ropey black hair she kept up in a red bandanna and eyes that could affix a trouble making boy to a wall. She at times wore those olive drab Army pants that had 49 pockets in them. Her efforts to turn us into little Maoists included watching movies about the evils of pollution, Vietnam and get this, making us watch the Church Committee hearings as they skewered the CIA. I thought it cool there was an actual electrically powered poison dart gun. I saw some Senator hold it up as evidence of the CIA's cache of assassination weapons. As for the actual testimony of others, I suppose most of it went over our 10 year old heads. The whole point Ms Guevera was turning us into commies.

Church Committee...holding up that pistol. All the boys in the class went, "oooh!"

By 1978, we had teachers openly talking about smoking pot. Our science teacher in Goff tried to explain to us, Zen Meditation and we kept trying to make him explain it in the only terms we knew, the television series, Kung Fu. Mr. O'Donnell, told us we could remain seated, talk quietly as they played the Star Spangled banner over the intercomm. For years before, we had to stand up and face the flag for it. O'Donnell didn't give a shit. We had another teacher who was a bookie for the local caporegime of Patriarca in Pawtucket. Kids would bring money in from Dad and placed bets through him.

Now that I think on it, a few of our male teachers had hair as long as Barry Gibb from the Bee Gees.

It wasn't till high school that we learned about teachers having relationships with students. Guess what? No one cared.

What a completely different time it was compared to today, where a school kid  can't point a banana at some one and say BANG BANG!

Nosey Little Shit...

From Hawthorne:

“To plant a family! This idea is at the bottom of most of the wrong and mischief which men do. The truth is, that, once in every half century, at longest, a family should be merged into the great, obscure mass of humanity, and forget all about its ancestors.”

I had a strange encounter the other day. I was sitting at a table at the Heritage Tap (on Grand Ave and has killer food for cheap!) when I started taking to a young man of about twenty-two. I'll pretty much talk to anyone if I'm curious enough about them. Anyways, I learned that this kid is the son of a girl I went to high school with a zillion years ago and haven't seen since, except for reunions. If we talked at all at that reunion, it was just pleasantries.

Eating shrimp scampi, drinking beer and hanging out with the kids of your peers. That's what happens when you're old enough and they're old enough to walk into a bar. What's especially interesting is if the kid has no clue you knew their parents at one time. Not alerting him to this fact was a bit unfair on my part. No matter, I ain't much different from anyone else who gains an unfair advantage. The darker angel on my shoulder won out.

The young man was in a corporate suit that he wasn't comfortable to be in. You've seen that awkwardness if you've been to any blue collar type weddings. All the guys stand around like statues, scared shitless to muss up their nice new clothing. They're stiff and their movements machine like. I swear that comes from a form of PTSD. Back then, their Mom's dressed them up and threatened DEATH if they wrinkle it or get it dirty. “Don't make me do you over again! You sit on that couch until we leave for your cousin's wedding!” So you obey and dare not pick your nose nor touch your combed hair. I know this happens, I was once ordered to sit on a couch before my first Communion in order not to wreck the lovely clean up job my Mom had done on me.

He had come back from an interview with Merck in Boston I come to find out. I asked what were his chances and he said he wasn't sure as Human Resources takes forever to go through the various interview levels. “They said they want to 'bring me in' but I know what that means...another three interviews and possibly being blown off with the standard rejection email of, 'after evaluating several candidates, we had to choose the best qualified...which WASN'T YOU...it was the VP's daughter who had an inside track to begin with!'” Hmmm...cynical kid.

“Fuck it.” he said as he sucked down the last of his beer. “If they don't hire me, Mom will just get on my ass more to email more resumes out...they'll be others.”

Mom, or Tashia as I knew her in Saint Raphael Academy, was the main driver behind this boy's seeming disgust. I knew her somewhat in high school and she was one of those social butterflies who was always on the make. If there was a way to wiggle into a higher social standing, she'd squirm, wrangle and schmooze as best as she could to rise another notch. She was born cute, vivacious and had a demon possessed drive to succeed. When I knew her then, she had a bit of that sex kitten look. At our reunion some 25 years later, that sex kitten became a bit of a ratty old cat. Her husband at the reunion resigned himself to an empty table where he stuffed his face. He knew no one there and why not stuff your face, there was little else to do while his wife flitted around like a butterfly once again.

Tashia came from a family that had new money. New money being from a business her Dad had created (home oil delivery) and had done appreciably well enough to have moved the family from Lonsdale to Countryside in Pawtucket.. Lonsdale is a near dump while Countryside is where the “nice” people lived. They were new money, which is disgusting. Those with “old' money tend not to associate with them. New money becomes respectable after a few generations and then and only then can you bray about “standing.” Be that as it may, Tashia knew where she stood and was seeking to rise even further, be it her high school career or her work career that came after. I was told she had become a prosperous sales/marketing guru for the Boston TV market. I then come to find out she was preening her son to carry that tradition on.

“Ya gotta be out there! Ya gotta compete! If you don't, someone else will!” this kid says, aping his Mom's voice.

“Mom was always on me to do well and I did. I was on the football team in high school, got into Rutgers and now I have to do well on the job search. Part of me thinks I'll disappoint her if I don't get into the right organization...I've been hitting up all the biotech companies up and down 128.”

I could tell by the tone of his voice that he hated this. I finally ask him did he like biology (his degree was in it) and he said he was good at it but it wasn't his choice. I could sense he wanted that subject dropped and I stopped. I then realize the major was Mom's choice.

“Did she plan out your life?” I ask. Christ am I like this, I'll ask very personal questions of people I barely know. The kid acquiesced.

I get another look of “don't go there,” and I drop it again. Another confirmation of what I thought, his face betrayed that truth.

I finally let the whole thing go as I am making him feel uncomfortable. To my credit, I can find a way to the core of someone's hidden heart, which dicks some off to no end.

This isn't the only time I've come across the kids of people I know or knew. Even with all the meddling or outright oppression some of these kids undergo, their own personalities still survive, finding a chance to come out and run off on their own. Sometimes in a direction their parent's never envisioned.

Net!

In the past, I used to watch Wimbledon or at least have it on in the background because it was a summer thing. To me, it was much like having baseball on the tv in the background. These summer sounds go as far back as my childhood. I'd hear them drifting out of the windows from the homes on this street.

I can't play tennis. I can't even understand it's scoring system. 15-Love? Be that as it may, I still had it on TV like having the Bristol 4^th of July parade on TV. It was tradition. That until a friend managed to saturate me with more tennis than I could stand to learn about in years. I haven't watched Wimbledon in years.

The friend, in his own words, would've been a tennis bum had he not been forced to find a stable career in the Navy. A tennis bum I found out was a professional or semi-professional player who would go from tournament to tournament looking for backers who would put you up with home, food and spending money. He thought that would be the life of O'Reilly. A top seeded player makes too much money to need that, but the lower seeds, in order to go from there to there, not winning much at all, need their Sugar Daddies. It's a great life of doing basically nothing and be paid for it.

He had apparently enough talent in his teens to be considered for a high level tennis camp in New Hampshire. The problem was that it cost some money and his Dad was dead set against this as a career.

“If I pay another $1000 a year, I can get you into Holy Cross! What you gonna do with a tennis career? What if you don't win? You think I'm gonna waste money on that?!”

So off to Holy Cross he goes and ending up in the Navy touring the world.

“I figure out another way of being a tennis bum. When the ship was docked and I had time off, I'd go out, still in uniform with my rank showing and hit up the local tennis clubs. Nine times out of ten, I'd get into the more exclusive clubs due to my rank.”

“My tennis style is that of Monica Seles, two handed. I'd give them a run for their money or cream the shit out of the local talent at these clubs. They'd be amazed because a two handed player isn't seen that much. Of course, there were times I was used to wipe up the floor by a top seeded player.”

He tells me there were times when some local or regional rich prick would offer to have him at their villa, to stay for a while.

“That's how professional tennis bums make it. They get taken in as “pets” by the rich who show off the fact they have a top rated player living with them. It's all about being a leech. I leeched only a bit when I was invited back for a few days.”

One time, in Villefranche Sur Mer, a seaside resort on France's Gold Coast, I radio phoned up my ship that was sitting in the harbor and told the bridge to look over to me, waving from the villa's balcony.”

“Lookie here! Do you see me? The bedroom I'm sleeping in now is courtyard filled with olive trees and grapevines....what are you guys doing today?”

These tennis stories I like hearing about. But when someone who is sooo passionate about a hobby or whatever, gets into it in the minutest technical detail, scoffs at you for not knowing what a baseline is or just goes off the edge of the Earth on a subject...it gets tiring. You can't keep up. Now when Wimbledon is on, my phone can ring off the hook.

“Are you watching? Did you see the latest? She's only a fifth tier seed...she's walloping them all!”

“Noooo...I am not watching.” I say.

“Why NOT?”

I don't dare admit what I'm thinking which is: “I.don't.care.”

Then again, I can bore the shit out of him when I start discussing room modes, reverb delay time and other aspects of sound reinforcement when it comes to stereos. The dead silence on the other end of the phone is a major tipoff but I don't notice it. Why? I'm engrossed in my own hobby as I talk about it.

“Hey, I found a new way to position the speakers using the Golden Ratio. It's simple! All you have to do is find the ratio from all dimensions of the room, crank it through, then get a tape measure and then mark off on the floor....”

Or...

“Whaddaya mean you don't know what a Clair Line Array is? Roger Waters used it in his Wall Tour! It hangs from the towers..it's fucking huge..you can't miss it!”

He's probably looking out his window by now...that's what I do when I hear about tennis.

Ok, I guess we're both equal in tormenting the other with our various hobbies we take too damn far.

Not Growing Up and Your Body Tells You Otherwise.

The other night, I attended a yearly party with old neighborhood friends. This has started to become a reunion type of thing where some of us haven't seen each other since the last party. Much food is eaten, too much liquor and beer is had and owing to the party's host, several thousand dollars of fireworks is set off. (Thanks to the fireworks shops below the Mason/Dixon Line for providing them!) The party, if the right people are in attendance, can devolve into romp. This is what I hope that happens each year. There's no problem watching a bunch of late 40 somethings turn into teens again. Hell, the teens in attendance at the same party look upon us with some shock as well, as old people aren't supposed to be irresponsible and shameless.

There was one interesting visual I had seen. A girl, about 10 years old, was wrapping her tee shirt as much as she could around her body. It was about 2 am and she was getting cold and tired. She glanced around to all the other respectable adults there, yawned and looked nonplussed while one of them was lifted upside down over a keg to have the the nozzle shoved into his mouth.

The old college chant started. “Chug! Chug! Chug!”

She just balled herself up into her chair and went to sleep.

Kids see everything. I kind of goof on the parents there, who quickly suck on a joint say, “My kids don't know I smoke.”

Your kids don't care. It's boring to them witnessing it now.

The party ends when the late 40 somethings either pass out or get so tired they have to go home. That was around 3 AM. I myself could feel it as well, as all I wanted then was my bed. I got to my car, fired it up and drove off. I made it about two blocks when I passed a cop car.

“FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK! The alarm in my head went off. What the hell is a cop car doing in the Pinecrest section? This is the second richest neighborhood in Pawtucket. If you hop the river, you're in Country Side, the richest, with it's golf course and homes that say Brahmin Back Bay Boston. There's no crime in Pinecrest, there's no reason for them to be patrolling, until I figure it was the block party that was going on...the one I attended...the one where we fired off four inch round firework shells. The one with the wine, beer, Honey Jack bottles on the front lawn.  

I knew I was fucked. I wasn't slolshy drunk but I was probably over the legal limit. My mind reeled fast.

“Uh...his number is 722-4003...if I have to wake up my lawyer...I'll do it!”

“If I'm arrested..I'm in the tank till Monday morning till I get bail!”

“Shit..this is about $6,000 if I fight it!”

He never pulled me over. I have to wonder why he finally took a right hand turn and ignored me completely. Not that I was going to find him and ask.

If cops profile, here's what he saw and thought, perhaps. A white haired guy in a Beach Boy's stripped shirt driving a convertible in a very nice section of Pawtucket. I hope he wrongly concluded I was a local resident and completely harmless. If so, good. I guess a pile of white hair says: “Too old to be of any consequence.” "Probably not a gang-banger." 

I rabbit warren-ed my car through the side streets all the way home, avoiding any of the main drags, and finally pulled into my driveway. Jesus..of all nights to be pulling me over....

I wake up the next morning, late. I swing my legs out of bed and I feel something I haven't felt in years, a hangover. I spent the whole Saturday moping about the house, drinking fluids and eating Ibuprophen. I forgot how a good hangover feels like the flu, there's no position you can put your body in to make you feel comfortable.

I then imagined all the other late 40 somethings doing about just the same thing about now. We ain't 19 anymore!

Around 4 in the afternoon Mike was out there honking his horn. I go out, in my summer shorts, a ratty tee shirt that mirrors my equally ratty hair.

“Shit..are you just getting up?” he asks me.

I tell him no, that I had gotten up hours before, found it very unprofitable and went straight back to bed. He goes onto say that I look like crap. I concur. We rap for about an hour, going over the last night's festivities and the various divorcees/about to be divorcees/wive's shamelessly looking elsewhere and we conclude NONE of them are worth it.

It wasn't till Sunday morning that I felt OK. This is what happens when you get older and really get out of practice of partying like your 20.