Then and Now

Watching The Deer Hunter again, after all these years, was a god damn mistake. The savagery seems even more overwhelming than when I saw it back then. You know why?  When I revisit old movies, books, years after seeing them initially, I see them with the eyes I have now at 52. The experiences I have packed on now demand I see them through that filter. I'm surprised how I can have a completely different reaction to something vs. when I was a young man.

Well, I revisit things out of familiarity, if it's worth it. The Deer Hunter is worth it but fuck.  I probably won't watch this flick again for years. The three hour long dose of PTSD is like chemo. I'm done for a while.

So, enough of that miserable stuff. Here's a funny story of when I did see it the first time.

**

When the movie first came out, I had bugged my brother to take me to see it. I had no car, no money and if I pestered him enough, he'd give in. Well, that didn't work as he was getting sick and tired of my irritating him to no end. Finally, he burst out;

“Jesus FUCK! Get Maureen to take you!” Maureen being my Mom.

So, I slyly worked on her to take me to see it. It was rated R for the violence and I pitched the movie to her as about three steelworkers fighting and finally coming home from Vietnam. I heard about the violence but didn't bother to cue her into that. I was surprised that she said “Yes” and we went a week later.

Apple Valley Cinema was the only theater that was still running it after it had made the rounds in the main movie houses. We both went and as we watched it, my Mom wasn't too keen on the graphic violence. I was digging it because I had no real grasp of the reality of it, or the reality of what people can go through, so that couldn't resonate with me at fourteen. All war movies are fictional and cartoon-ish to kids. We kids, had no clue whatsoever just what it really means...or what even civilian life can really mean when it gets damned serious...fast. How can we get a clue? What skills did we acquire by the age of 14? Damn few. But we think we know it all. I certainly did.

What threw me for a loop in the movie. What got me emotional was in the second “deer hunting” scene where Axle goofs on Stosh's girlfriend for being a slut. I'm paraphrasing this but you'll get it.

“Stosh! Wanna know where your girlfriend is? She's suckin' on some forest ranger COCK!”

My mother was sitting in the next seat to me.

I swear, I conjured up some magical horse blinders on either side of my head. If I looked straight ahead, didn't move, didn't budge those horse blinders...I could hope my Mother didn't hear “suckin' cock” while I was seated next to her. I did give in though and shoot a sideways glance at her and..FUCK..she looked at me.

Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!

CONFIRMED: She heard it. She knows I heard it and knows we both HEARD it...together.

This little scene shrunk me like a spider on a hot BBQ gas grill.

Thank God for the scene after where Michael freaks out and tries a little Russian Roulette on Stosh.  Anything to move the film along...fast!

“So what did you think of it? Mom asks as we went to the car. I swear she was about to mention the cock sucking reference. I was still in a bit of a shock at having to be in the same room with her while that was blurted out.

“It was good.” I finally say.

“I thought it was very sad.” she finally tells me.

This was probably the ONLY time any swearing was said with my Mom and I. A son's revulsion at having to hear any mention of anything remotely sexual near my Mom was the highlight. That's what I got out of the Deer Hunter at 14.

Tonight however, it was a bit different. 38 years worth of difference.

Jealousy

Hot, ardent jealousy. I haven't felt that in a long while. It helps to be a very young man, in your teens or twenties. It also helps if you're up to your neck in semen all the time, which men of that age are. Find that reference objectionable? Ah so what...I say any goddamn thing I want on here. Hats off to nonconformity, the First Amendment and tossing political correctness into the gutter! Another thing about jealousy, it's been pasted with a bad rap. Yeah, true, you have wild-eyed stalkers with Bowie knives slashing up their wives and girlfriends, but that's taken to the extreme, like everything else in this country has. You take a few instances of weirdness and plaster that 24/7 on the news cycle and it seems like everyone's doing it. Jealousy...is real and a human emotion we all have experienced...you too!

What's funny now ? What I do feel now? I sometimes run into old flames with their new boyfriends and I do feel something, but it's not jealousy. It's more like pity. Upon meeting the new beau I can think: “God, You're with her now? Good luck....wait...you'll find out!” I swear, invariably, that after a month or so, I start to hear similar complaints from the new one that sounded a lot like I used to bitch about. “Well, she hasn't changed a bit.” I conclude.

I wonder if this pity is anti-jealousy, if there is such a thing. That's another great thing about these blogs, I can make up new words and phrases at will. There once was an old therapist I knew who had to stop and define words he made up while working with clients. In the field it's called neologism and it ain't that rare...but I digress.

The first time I felt jealousy, I wasn't even awake. I was dreaming of Patty M. The dream had us talking in the school cafeteria and I was all sweet on, infatuated with this girl (in the dream and in waking life). I probably had a raging, night time erection as well. Hell I was 15. Fifthteen year old boys masturbate to the style and frequency of chimpanzees in a zoo. I know, I was a 15 year old boy once. The dream was going along fine when some guy came over and grabbed Patty's arm and tugged her away. I don't know who the guy was.

I woke up in an instant. I sat up and bed and was shocked. Who was he? Why did he do that? Does Patty really have a boyfriend I don't know about? Are my chances with her amount to zero? I was up for hours not quite understanding that feeling of jealousy. Welcome to sexual maturation, kiddo! It sucked! I don' wanna feel like this!

A few hours later, I got on my ten speed bike, peddled to her house and lurked around, wondering if I'd get a glimpse of that bastard I saw I the dream, or of any non-related guy near her house. My reconnaissance mission failed to turn up any other boys trying to compete with me. Though I did go to her house anyways to say “Hi” and she was perplexed as to why I was there so damn early in the morning. You gotta love teen puppy love, it' so hot,impetuous and rash!

I really didn't have any worries in the end though. I had eventually asked out Patty and was shot down. She shot down every boy that ever asked her I would later learn. She became what we all called, “Everybody's Little Sister,” and Patty was regarded as that. A non-sexually active girl who happened to hang around with us a lot. I head heard later, through the years, that she did eventually marry and the marriage turned to shit pretty quick. I suspect both parties were guilty.

In my 20's I was at times jealous but had learned to hide it and it wasn't quite so hot as teen jealousy. Even so, I felt like a wolf, pacing back and forth thirty yards away staring at another wolf, who was tearing a carcass apart, and wanting that carcass for myself. Hell of a metaphor huh? Well, it can feel like that. I want what HE has!

The trick to jealousy then was to bide my time. He'd leave the carcass alone for enough time then I'd swoop in. Sometimes it worked, others not. God...I know...I steal other's toys. I can smell relationship dissatisfaction a mile away. I know how to start a psychological affair (it's sooo easy!)...then wait...wait...wait for it...POUNCE!

“What?” the smug, morally cowardicial world can ask and mock me, “Can't you find a single girl and do it that way?”

“Sure,” I say, “but it's a hell of a high, a hell of a rollercoaster ride, an amusement park, to play like this! The competition is a thrill! The danger!”

Hell, I'm not alone, women are far better at this game than any male...I met enough of them to know.

Funny how I'm not married to this day. HA!

There was one time where it could've happened. A nice, stable decades-long association with the white picket fence, 2.2 children and the SUV in the driveway. I never consciously sought it though. I never did think nor imagine, as a fantasy, growing older and fuzzier in a relationship/marriage. Cue the Beatles “When I'm 64” now. To me, it was day to day. In the moment. Now. Wow, I'm quite Zen in my view on all of this. There, I can rationalize it that way. No...I won't, it's what I am.

I digress again...

Jealousy, today? Well, I really don't feel it. Hell, being in my 50's, there's a waaay different outlook on life now. That young man's blood for the hunt has waned as I was starting to realize many of the prey to be diseased. “Huh? What's this about your having $30,000 in credit card debt?” Call it improved discernment, wisdom or just plain growin' up.

Hell, I did have fun though at times. Got my jaw busted on one occasion and met some pretty interesting rollercoasters.

But I LIke Being Highfaluting!

He gives us all his love
He gives us all his love
He's smiling down on us from up above
And he's giving us all his love

He knows how hard we're trying
He hears the babies crying
He sees the old folks dying
And he gives us all his love
Now if you need someone to talk to
You can always talk to him
And if you need someone to lean on
You can lean him.

 He give us all his love

   He gives us all his love
    He's smiling down on us
   From up above

   He gives us all his love

There's a movie no one remembers called “Cold Turkey.” It starred Dick van Dyke and it's premise was that a economically depressed town trying to win a challenge posed by a cigarette company. If all the inhabitants would give up smoking for a month and if they succeeded, the US gov't would establish a defense plant in the town, revitalizing the economic base. Of course, the cigarette company does all it can, in secret, to sabotage the town's attempts. They especially pursue the one guy who you would think would've quit smoking years earlier, the town's doctor, Dr. Procter, who chain smokes and sounds like he has last stage COPD.

In the end, the town suppresses the temptations from the evil cigarette company and wins the right to have the plant built there. The last shot of the film is a slow close up of the now plant on the horizon, with about five smokestacks belching the blackest smoke you've seen. In the end, the town really lost.

The music playing over the shot is Randy Newman's “He Gives Us All His Love.”

From the lyrics alone, you'd think this is reinforcement of the Christian belief that God has your back at all times. It ain't, if you know Randy Newman. Newman is saying, “Yeah, God sees all the misery and He's doing NOTHING.”

There's a reason why Norman Lear put that song over the last shot of the movie.

The moral of the movie goes back to it's opening, the town limps along w/o many jobs but, the townsfolk were doing ok anyway. They had each other. They could depend on each other. That's all they had, was each other. That was enough without reaching out towards some savior, be it God, the free market or gov't.

**

Before you go an paint me an atheist, don't. I have no problem with someone who's facing a really shitty life's choice and has no answers anywhere but turn to religion. What answer does pancreatic cancer have but one very ugly one? I've seen it too many times where some event happens to someone and there is really no good answer, or if there is one, it's an answer that does little to assuage the trouble. People will claw, grasp and scrape for anything to get relief. I'm going to stand in their way?

If nothing else, you turn to your friends who probably cannot excise the problem you face. They're there to listen, carry you along somewhat if they can. We've all faced situations like this. I myself can remember one where I found out just who I could depend upon. I was surprised at how few they were.

Without going into the whole story again, because I wrote it here once, I needed the support of some friends and when I told them what kind of support, which wasn't money, a place to live or anything tangible, but only their voice, 90% of them melted away. Wow...

Two people stayed and stood up and those two I didn't figure would have either but their moral sense of indignation was enough for them to cry “FOUL!” about what I was going through.

Once that situation I went through was completed, for several months after I'd chew over how so many of these so called friends abandoned me so easily. It was probably the first time I went through it so that's why I ruminated on the whole thing. It was new to me.

Do I fault them? Not particularly, because there were times I was called on to stand up and doing a real quick mental calculation of what it might cost me, I ditched them. I was no better. It's a dog eat dog world out there my Dad used to say and loyalty is a rare commodity. He went through his trials alone sometimes and told me to “don't worry about it, people are people and guess what? I'm one of them too. I'm human, so are they” So stop holding yourself or they to such a lofty height when all people can do, at best, is stumble and trip their way through life.

Still, there are a precious few that you can rely upon when things turn to shit, or you'll find out just who will stick around, quickly enough to help you in a pinch. Those ones you hang onto with a death grip.

In the day to day schlepping we all do, all we have is each other. The real trick is though is to learn that you have yourself to rely on. Only through struggling do you learn that lesson.

**

Yeah, I think too much and been accused of this years ago...Christ, I hear Newman's song last night and I chew it over like cud and spit out this crap, just to get it out of me. God, do I love to hear myself talk.

Ok, to lighten this pastoral sermon up, I'll tell a perfectly tasteless joke:

Two women are standing by a bin of loose potatoes in a supermarket when the first women picks up two potatoes and remarks: “These potatoes remind me of my husband's balls.”

The second women asks surprisingly: “Are they that big?”

“No,” says the first woman, “they're that dirty.”

There, that joke should balance out this pretentious piece of crap.

He gives us all his love He's smiling down on us from up above And he's giving us all his love He knows how hard we're trying He hears the babies crying He sees the old folks dying And he gives us all his love Now if you need someone to talk to You can always talk to him And if you need someone to lean on You can lean on him

Micro-Scope-ing

There was a time when I thought I'd get a CAGS degree in psychology, it's a Master's degree on steroids. With this, I could hang out a sign and get third party payment in counseling. In order to do this, you have to take a battery of tests, come up with recommendations...the filing fees (money..always the money) in order to be even considered for a graduate program. Good luck!

I took three separate tests, the Miller's Analogies, the GRE's and it's subset in psych. All three are well designed in validity and reliability. This basically means it's truly discerning just how smart you are. Don't like the test results and want to sue? Good luck. They can prove the tests are doing what they are supposed to. Go ahead and argue with mathematics...you'll lose.

Miller's Analogies are the worst. It starts off simple: “Dog is to cat as day is to.....” You pick from a choice of four answers. Do I have to tell you the correct answer is “night?” God, I hope not. The questions get progressively difficult to the point of insanity. WHIRLY : HIRSUTE :: ALWAYS : (a. woven, b. suitable, c. altered, d. wayward). The answer would surprise you has it has NOTHING to do with the definitions, but there is a logical relationship there. The “hir” in the first two words is a clue, the “way” is the clue in the choices given. I scored dead even with Millers. I was smart enough but no Einstein. Ok, fine.

The GRE's surprised me somewhat, I managed to get a swelled head and have my self esteem kicked in the balls at the same time. The GRE's, when I took them, were divided into three subtests, language, mathematical and analytical. I scored a standard deviation plus a few points above everyone in language. That makes sense. I could real Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in the original middle English w/o the translation to Modern.

Whan that aprill with his shoures soote

The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

That's what English used to look like...things change, evolve. Anyways, I could read it. Smart cookie I was at times.

The mathematical part I scored on the median. Half of the people did worse than me, the other half did better. Ok, I hit the dead center. That was enough.

What surprised and insulted me, was that I scored a standard deviation below on the analytical part. Ouch. The analytical part had tons of spatial relationship tests that I completely suck at. 

These test are just plain evil...

I managed to get a few Graduate Schools interested in my and I applied. Two said yes and another told me to learn how to tie my shoes again. But, as time went by, I noticed something happening in the counseling field, insurance was pushing like hell to give pills instead of paying for talk therapy. Pills were cheaper and provided a greater profit margin to insurance. Guess what happened to talk therapy over the years?

Today, to have a practice, you have to stuff your daily calendar from 9AM to 9PM with clients. You see them once per week only due to the nature of therapy. This means you have 60 paying clients in a five day week, 72 if you are open Saturdays. Shit...trying to keep 72 life stories in your head ,with varying levels of client instability...all for about $43,000 a year. If I fucked up, then I'd enjoy the inside of a courtroom in a civil lawsuit circus.

Yuk!

I never did it.

Add to that, from my own experience with people, 95% don't bother to follow recommendations anyway. I can point the way, show you how...but the client has to DO it. Very few do. One time, the state funded a “job coach” position where I would place clients into “real” jobs. They were sick of living on SDI and all the welfare connotations that meant. The program sounded great and positive. That was until the clients found out what working for a living meant. They hated it. Each client I placed into job bugged out in less than a month. So much for the motivation behind personal growth.

**

I have a silly, almost annoying habit of being able to focus like a laser on whatever it is I'm dealing with. It's a powerful tool for getting things done the right time the first time. What will piss me off is when something interferes with that. There are things in life you have to pay attention to like you're cutting a diamond.

I have to thank Dad for this.

In second grade, I was sucking at math to the point of failing with a 69. In my family at the time, that was a sin. You are supposed to do well. 69 might as well be a total zero.

I give Dad credit for this. He sat me down, night after night and worked with me on how to deal with the homework. I can remember complaining to him, with my seven year old boy's worry and fear at the amount of work I was given would drown me.

“But look at it all! There's twenty problems I have to do! It'll take all night.” This was just my looking at the Mt Everest of math problems and believing there was just no way to surmount all that in one taking. Then Dad showed me something I never would of thought of. Hell, how many seven year olds are creative enough to figure this one out.

“Don't look at it all...just look at problem #1, there are no other problems. Focus ONLY on what I show you.” He then covered up the rest of the paper I was working on and left only problem #1 showing. I cranked the problem through and hey presto! Correct answer!

“Good!” He moved the paper to cover up everything but problem #2. I worked that through and again, correct answer!

#3 nailed it.

#4 correct too

#5 success!

All the way through problem 20.

“This is how life is Ronnie, you break the big things down into little pieces then work on the little pieces ONLY. Ignore the rest, focus strictly on the ONE thing. Eventually, it all comes together.”

It worked every time I came to find out. It took me from second grade math to wrestling with the Miller's analogies when I was 24 years old. Hell, I still use it.

“You must be easily distracted.” some people tell me when I recount this story to them. Perhaps. I think it more so that acute, fine attention is easily ruined when you have some god damn phone going off in the background, someone knocking at the door or like me, you use this tactic as a default state of awareness, meaning nearly 24/7. To develop this kind of focus and make it work, it has to be finespun. It is by nature delicate and works like a charm, but it can be easily wrecked too. I'll tell you this, it's almost close to meditation I think. There's a reason why you find signs in libraries that say “QUIET...asshole!”

Don't worry, I'm not fully in this 24/7. I can shut off my brain till I'm nearly drooling and forget how to breathe. I enjoy those times as well. Flipping the switch to “stupid” is necessary at times. But when I am up for bat, time to activate the lasers!

Thanks Dad! I was trained by an Certified Public Accountant who eventually got the MBA and wrote in trade journals waaaay back then. I guess other Dad's show their kids how to swing a bat..mine showed me something else.

200 Amps

There are songs that just cue into the male psyche. Last night, I heard Nazareth's “Hair of the Dog” come on and I just naturally started to head bang to it. It's an OK song, nothing spectacular about the arrangement or such. What is great about it is it's raw amperage. Plain power. You can say that about Led Zeppelin's “Whole Lotta Love” or Ozzie's “Flying High Again.” Or try Bad Company's “Ready For Love” which sounds menacing with it's subdued threat. These songs all are just pure current ripping through the wire. It's what testosterone sounds like.

I heard an interview with Eddie van Halen describe his style and he called it “brown sound.” It's a phrase idiosyncratic to him but I get it. Pure amperage, confidence and full of ready fight.

You've seen regular guys when they get ramped up, pure tough guys threatening the world, usually after a six pack on a hot, humid night. In many cases it's comical because what they're complaining about is trivial. They get ticked off by the slightest thing. “You sat in my seat! Or “What are you looking at?!!” But, you don't have to get to that silly point to feel the Alpha Male come out. I'll tell you girls this, it's a great high to feel when it does. In a single word, confidence. You know things will go well, what ever it is. If not, you'll make it go well.

It's one of the reasons why the kids in the US Army, who fought in Iraq, made playing lists of hardcore rock on their MP3's to play when they rolled out of camp into the hell of Baghdad's streets. It builds you up.

**

Silly buffoon guys who rip their shirt off threatening to beat up the whole world are jerks,but, to be able to control that Alpha gorilla and hone it, be art-like with it...that's a true display of maleness, in my estimation anyway. The trick to posturing like a gorilla, is to use it sparingly. I swear, I can hear that in some songs and resonate with it.

No, there will be no Alan Alda feminism here, which has a place sure, but I'm talking the enjoyment of raspy, grating sounds coming from a distorted guitar. The Alan Alda Masculine movement is for another time to discuss. I don't think Alda would like the opening guitar riff to “Stranglehold” by Nugent...wait! No more talk of Alda! (Who I actually do like, for other reasons)

Shit, now I have to bring this up since I'm on it. Camille Paglia, a feminist who also critiques the same movement as well, once told of a story of what it feels like to be male. She had learned of a study where a group of women were placed on testosterone injections for a month. By then, they had the same amount of that hormone that was pulsing through most 18 year old boys. One of the participants said she understood men far better when she was cut off in traffic once.

“I yelled through the windshield at the guy...I chucked my finger at him and wanted to chase him down. The civilized part of me took control again though...but what a wake up call! I knew what it felt like now.”

Alan Alda would be the “gentleman” version of masculinity I guess. Don't go all Viking on people every time you feel like it.

**

Do you remember Boom Boxes? Those oversized radio/cassette deck players that took 8 sized D batteries that ran down quick if you played too many cassettes? I do.

I was probably 19, we were walking from the One Way in Slater Park, on our way to McCoy stadium to watch the annual fireworks display on July 3^rd night. It was hot, humid and we were especially buzzed more so because summer drinking does that to you. On our way down Columbus ave we came across another crew, perhaps a Columbus ave crew and of course, a bunch of late teen guys in their ape mode, we postured with one another. The looks, pithy comments and face to face, eye to eye looks were all there. They were all on some porch, we on the sidewalk passing by, each looking directly at one another.

As we passed, we had a Boom Box blaring out Black Sabbath's “Heaven and Hell” and I was in a great mood. Tonight was going to be epic, parties all over, fireworks and hell, I'm 19 and “Heaven and Hell” jazzes you up easily.

I don't recall the comment the other group of guys made. But, because I felt so confident and the music was shoring that up, I turned, walked up the front path, climbed the stairs to the porch and pointed my finger at them and said...

“YOU'RE...not going to do anything...ARE YOU?”

I scanned each and every one of them and their eyes fell to the porch floor. That's all I wanted to do and see happen. I then climbed back down to join my droogs. By that time, “Heaven and Hell's” second main verse came up (which just races along faster) and we boys were all high five-ing one another and I felt like I was Emperor of the World.

What's funny, I usually wasn't like that at all. I mostly am never on DEFCON 1, but the right music, the right night, brimming with confidence and full of life...I felt no fear whatsoever.

Talk about endorphin rushes...perhaps even heroin doesn't feel like that when it first flows into your brain.

So, last night at the red light, “Hair of the Dog” had me whomping my head back and forth...but at 52 I wasn't about to act on that feeling I had once again, but it' still there and it felt good, even though this confidence gets me called “asshole” at times. Time to send me to an Alan Alda Re-Education Camp? 

Last Day of School

I was stopped at a red light where a crossing guard herded the kids across Newport Ave yesterday. This would be the two schools of Potter-Burns and Goff Jr High which are next to one another. It then clicked in me that the kids are almost out for the summer. Lucky bastards, I remember that feeling.

Actually, the last week of school was great. That last week nothing was accomplished except turning in books, cleaning lockers out or just sitting in the classroom listening to teachers tell their life's story, some of it racy as hell too. I remember on locker clean out day in Goff. The janitors placed 55 gallon garbage cans strategically in the halls and the principal would call out wings, one by one, to fill the halls with us dumping everything we had in our lockers into the cans. The trash pile must've been immense. John S. had his balls busted for having rotting food in his locker. Cindy K. took down all the mini-posters of every boyband/heart-throb of the late 70's in hers. My locker? I wasn't a pig though I carefully took down a National Lampoon picture of hang gliding. The pic showed a guy actually hanging by his neck as the glider slid off into the sunset. You could put these stuff in your locker back then w/o having the school social worker press secret buttons to alert authorities.

In elementary school, I can remember how we kids would list out all the great things we'd be doing on a summer vacation. I swear on our first day off though, we just lazed around the house or yard, not doing any of those things we thought we'd be doing. Broken promises...but still, the first day being spent being unproductive as hell was nice as well. Boredom of that would eventually motivate us towards “doing something.” As a kid then, I spent hours in the park woods, or a mini-mall near our neighborhood. I didn't realize it then but I and our group, were mall rats. It wasn't the Galleria in Sherman Oaks, California though, but it had a Micky D's and other places we could waste our youthful hours at.

Leaving sixth grade to go onto the seventh in a new school was a biggie. I knew I'd never see some of the kids I had known for over seven years, that made me feel bad. Also provoking a melancholy was leaving the school itself. It was a home. Though the good thing was I left the school in the top 10% so...Score!!! What I didn't expect was that Goff would be even more liberal and loosey-goosey than the grammar school I was leaving. The height of 70's hadn't happened yet and I was about to experience that in spades.

The last day of Jr High school was similar to leaving grammar school but with less feeling of loss. I was headed to a Catholic school vs. the rest of my classmates who were headed to Tolman. I knew I wouldn't see many of them ever again. Oh well, that's life. I did eventually run into some of them for a few minutes and realized no one ever really changes, personalities remain the same. My hope for that summer was more adult, to sleep late as many days as I could. That was the summer too of kissing Gail for the first time. Several years prior to that, we were punching the hell out of one another on the street. She bloodied my lip and I had gut punched her and took her breath away. The kiss provided more satisfaction and a few other discoveries I never knew about until then.

High school graduation is always a big event, even it you graduate from the bottom of the class. You've finally did it. After the ceremony and home, I was sitting on my couch, with the realization of 13 years worth of schooling was over and done with. It felt weird to tell the truth. I was now marginally an “adult” but didn't feel like one. The graduation and ceremony of it all soon felt anti-climatic as the days wore on. I spent that summer working my summer job (and another 'other' summer job) and getting gooned in the park with our crew at the One Way, a parking lot situated near the pond. I believe that was the summer I first went to Block Island as well..yes, it was, because I got the worst sunburn of my life on the beaches there. College loomed on the horizon but it didn't worry me in the least, nor was I hoping for anything great either. I had been to RIC many times as a young teen in it's Rathskellar as a roadie for my brother's band, so I knew a few things about it already.

The last day of college...there really isn't one. College's last days sort of peter out as there is no real set date where all of you leave. Final exams are scheduled according to your particular classes, graduation formalities and information is handled by mail and the graduation itself comprises a small city of hundreds of other people you've never met. You end up hanging with the few people you do know. After that graduation, I didn't feel as if “something” ended because I was fully involved in an adult life that included a job in my field and a continuation of keeping in touch with college friends and watching my blue collar Pawtucket ones grow into their fields as well. I felt then, I was an adult. Things were moving along nicely.

There was another “last day of school” for me and I was grateful for it. After spending year upon year of working like every other adult schlep, I was laid off on a May 1^st and found myself looking at a full summer off. That was in 2012 and I spent that summer recreating some of my youth and one hell of a health kick where I lost 40lbs. I reconnected to old friends due to having the free time and found that the beach still exists. That first week I was laid off...I felt like I was 10 again. The freedom! The lazy days of getting just barely anything done! The decompression took a whole month but I enjoyed every bit of it. By the end of the summer, a girl I knew complained, “You're turning into a hippy, you know!” I was and liked it. Longer hair and I de-evolved back to that 14 year old self I once was. I loved that 14 year old kid and met him again! As I remember it too, my clothing style had changed to fit the times, Classic Beach Bum and barefoot wherever I could. Add to that barely combed, wind tousled hair and a forever 4 day old beard. If I thought of it, I'd wear white again. There was a time when I did.

This was only possible because I knew how to count. I had squirreled enough money away and thanks to a sort of lavish severance package, I could get away with it. Adult summer vacations now require the time off...and the money to keep the ship sailing forward.

Another summer is here and the other night, I was on my front steps around 9 PM, just lazing when I noticed the northwest sky, it was glowing in a turquoise color. 9 PM and it's still light out...cool! Yes, I'm working and the bills still need to be paid, but hell, it's summer.

**

To give you a great representation of what most kids do during summer, I give you Sister Mary Elephant. Click and isten to the duller sounding kid explaining how he spent his summer. 

 Sister Mary Elephant

45 Ben Tre Street Pawtucket, Rhode Island. 1968

Perhaps it's a talent of growing older, but I can remember, clearly, events of the long past vs. short term memory. The other day my brain released an All Points Bulletin when I couldn't find my car keys. “Warning! Red Alert! Priority ONE! Find those Car Keys!” Of course, they were where I had left them in the first place,where I always leave them

Here's a story of Dear Ol' Dad Vs. The Yellow Jacket Nest that I remember well.

I was four in 1968 and my Dad has his own little police action against guerrilla bees that had infiltrated our yard by the white picket fence that separated the driveway from the backyard. My Dad succeeded in neutralizing the opposing force by finally using a bit of adopted Vietnam War strategy. Those of you old enough can remember this cute quote picked up by reporter Peter Arnett in his writing about Bến Tre city on 7 February 1968.

'It became necessary to destroy the town to save it', a United States major said today. He was talking about the decision by allied commanders to bomb and shell the town regardless of civilian casualties, to rout the Vietcong, as they had repelled every US ground force attack prior.”

**

At four, the entire world is your friend, or at least you still think so, the majority of it anyway. I was playing around with the garden hose when I saw a slow moving, flying bee come near me. I said, and I still remember this, “Hello, Mr. Bee” when the thing landed on my bare leg and stung me. You could have heard me on Mars from the way I was screaming.

What I didn't know was that was no honey bee but a yellow jacket, nature's gang banger bees who hate to be dissed or see anything infringe upon their turf.

Later that day, my Mom had told our Dad that she had found an underground nest over by the fence. The bees were coming in and out of a hole they had dug, by one of the fence posts, behind one of our garbage cans. He thought it no big deal and advised us to “Leaven them alone and they'll leave YOU alone.” I protested that I had left them alone and was stung anyway. Like any self assured adult, he blew off my four year old claim as worthless.

A day or two later, my Dad stumbles into the house, yelling, “Maureen!” He was holding his head with both hands. My Mom comes running to see what happened when Dad says, “I got stung! Twice! My scalp and my face!” He pulled his hand away from his cheek and there was this large, red golf ball sized lump on it.”

My Mom, who could be snarky as hell said,”What did you do? Antagonize those bees?” My Dad quickly denied anything like that and claimed he was just trying to put a bag into the garbage can and he was WHOLLY innocent of molestation of any bees.

“Uh-huh.” my Mom says.

Of course, now something will be done about those bees. Never mind it had to take him being nailed twice in the head to do it.

He tried flooding them out. My brother and I watched as he sprayed the area with the hose for a good 20 minutes. The area had turned into a mud puddle and my Dad thought, “Well that takes care of that.”

A day or two later the bees emerged from underground. They had survived Noah's Flood and rebuilt their nest at good as new.

My Dad then thought of this: He'll burn them out.

My brother and I were in the backyard with Dad, watching him put his weapons together and of course, we were excited to watch the bombing run he was about to do. He had an old paint stirrer can that held about one quart which he filled with gasoline. He going to toss this at the nest and hopefully that would do the trick.

“Both of you, get in the house!” my Dad orders.

“Awwww...can't we watch? We'll stay over by the shed!”

My Dad wasn't going for that. He wasn't about to sling gasoline around while his two boys were freely roaming the yard. So off into the house we go but we find great front row seats by the kitchen window.

Dad's idea worked, but too well...

We watched as he ran over to the nest, pound on the ground around it with his feet to vibrate it. He ran away in time to watch the flood of bees coming out to fuck up just whoever did that. At about seven feet away, my Dad lights an entire pack of matches, tosses that towards the bee nest and then slings the quart of gasoline at the nest as well..

“FOOOOM!

Did you know, that a gasoline fireball can cast it's own shadows in the full summer sunlight. It's that bright. My brother and I watched in awe as this miniature Hiroshima mushroom cloud engulfed the nest, the fence and tree above it.

“How's THAT you little bastards!” My Dad yelled. He apparently was getting a little revenge on them for stinging his face.

So we watched as the fire burned out the nest. But as that occurred, we noticed the fence caught on fire as well. My Dad took note of that too as we saw him running to the side of the house to grab the hose.

Your parents teach you things. How to live life, how to ride a bike and how to tie your shoes. You also can learn much by their silly mistakes.

Dad tried something that never works, putting out a gasoline fire with water. He fired the hose at the ground, fence and in doing so, my brother and I got to see a flamethrower in action. The water pressure sprayed the gas, along the ground, into a large flame that set fire now to the yew bushes.

“Wow, that didn't work.” I hear my brother say to himself.

Dad was great at panicking at times, though it was a rare occurrence in truth. If spraying the fire with the hose won't work, just run to the spigot and turn it ALL the way UP and try it again .

“FOOOOOM! The fire said as it created newer fireballs. 

“Richard! Richard! STOP THAT! Let the gas just burn itself OUT! My Mom yells out the window.

Dad finally took her advice and lo and behold the fire did die out. Mom goes out the door and we follow her to get a great close up look.

It looked like a napalm drop. The fence was blackened and smoking, the yew bush had lost about half of it's needles and the area where the nest was, there were about 40 dead, crispy yellow jackets.

“Jesus, Richard...What if you had aimed that at the house? Mom admonishes.

“But, but the fire's out” Dad says.

Mom mumbles something about having to replace the fence panel and trimming the yew of it's dead branches.

To Ken and I, this was a GREAT Saturday afternoon. Nothing is more fun that watching Dad create fireballs. 

 Perhaps a simple can of Raid would've worked?