the rix mix

We knew The Beatles were coming months before they arrived here.  I was suspicious. I liked rock & roll.   I liked many kinds of music. I didn't have a great cultural or emotional investment in rock & roll.  Those early Beatles singles & the LPs Meet the Beatles & Beatles Second were enjoyable, but they didn't bowl me over.   The Beatles' music seemed too slight to support the madness.  & then there was the marketing: authorized merchandise, Beatles wigs, lunchboxes, dolls, pinup magazines etc. etc. aimed at 10-12 year old girl demographic. Manager Brian Epstein wanted his band innocent enough that parents would buy the crap Beatles merchandise for  the little girls. What happened in high school was a bit different. I was 15, a sophomore.  The 14 & 15 & 16 year old girls I knew who fell in love with one or another of the Beatles did so with self-aware & barely disguised lust. All Epstein needed to sell them were the records & record jackets & some glossy photos of the boys. Their photos were in all the magazines.

My favorite single of 1963 was  Candy Girl b/w Marlena,  by The Four Seasons.  two sided hit bigger in Philly & Atlantic City than NYC.  I had been impressed by some of the songs, vocal harmonies,  on Surfer Girl album.  I thought the Beach Boys & Seasons could cover each other's songs. My favorite LP of '63 was either a movie soundtrack or Stan Kenton's Adventures in Jazz." I was fond of Martha & the Vandellas.

Some kids in my high school detested  The Beatles. There was a serious Fifties hangover   teen culture in my h.s.,  plus leftovers of the folkie hootnanny, which continued to move songs into the top 40, neither of which I much appreciated. The Fifties influence had become parody. The Beatles broke over those like a tidal wave.  That's why I liked The Beatles. As a little kid immersed in the malt shop world of Archie Comics &  Ozzie & Harriet, I had envied teen culture of the mid-Fifties because it had Elvis, plus doo wop & Buddy Holly.  Elvis was a transformer. I must confess to also liking Bob Denver's gentle teen beatnik Maynard G Krebs from Dobie Gillis.     But Elvis meant almost nothing to us in 1964, beatniks were disappearing, there were vestiges of doo wop in the top 40 but lacking the purity & ethereal qualities  of the music that had enchanted me in grammar school. Occasionally a decent song popped out an Elvis Movie. The Beatles were our Elvis. I recognized that much & embraced the change. Soon enough more  music flowed from England, like The Animals' great "House of the Rising Sun." Had to put up with Gerry & Pacemakers & Freddy & The Dreamers &  other forms of mindless profiteering inspired by The Beatles.  Bobby Vee compared to Buddy Holly. The first Beatles LP I bought was the soundtrack to A Hard day's Night with the George Martin instrumentals.

The Beatles in California smoking pot with with who?


At the end of 1964, The Beatles released Beatles '65,  an LP I loved,  initiating a period of about two years when The Beatles recorded & released the finest series of now classic records ever from a band or artist, from "No Reply" & "I Feel Fine"  to "Help!" & "Paperback Writer," "Drive My Car," "Rain,"  "And Your Bird Can Sing" all the way through Rubber Soul & Revolver.  Beatles 65 made me a real fan \of the band.  It was when rock & roll became rock.  Even the lp cover pix were cool, with the umbrellas. The speed of The Beatles' musical evolution, while under  the incredible pressure  of  needing to produce more "hits,"  touring,  & making two movies, was proof of their genius. Because of The Beatles,  The Four Seasons  made better records, The Beach Boys made wonderful records. The Beatles inspired the creation of The Byrds,  making folk music palatable & hip.   & The Beatles turned Bob Dylan from a rock dabbler into the greatest white American rocker since Elvis.  The Stones would be along as soon as they finished urinating on the gas station attendant, or so the story went.  The Stones or maybe their fan club passed out buttons that said, "Let's Lock Loins."  It became getting more & more difficult for the profiteers to keep a handle on the teenybopper market. Ultimately it lead to the The Monkees. & even they became too uppity. But that was a long way ahead.

At the end of August 1964 I missed my one chance to see The Beatles live. Wasn't a sure thing, but it was a chance.  Another story.
I don't paint a clearly enough picture of the the "Kairos" of the cultural moment, the "right time", a "coming together" (a German theology termI learned three years later in a college religion class), which included John Coltrane; movies A Fistful of Dollars, Pink Panther, Goldfinger, Dr. Strangelove, The Masque of the Red Death; Cassius Clay Vs. Sonny Liston; debut of Terry Riley's "in C" (not released on LP until 1968); the 1965 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City; plus my dad's only political campaign, won against the Johnson landslide.

Labels: culture, growing up, music, Roselle Park, TV

 One July long ago my girlfriend's large family (7 kids, she was the teenage oldest) went in with some other relatives (more kids) on a week rental around Lavalette. I wrangled a few days off from work later in the week & told Karen I'd be down late the night before. When I arrived, nearly all the kids were tucked away all over the house, grownups sitting outside in beach chairs, drinking beer & munching pretzels, quietly chatting. Karen & I went over to the Seaside boardwalk for awhile, then took a walk on the beach. I unrolled my sleeping bag on the vacant porch & went to sleep.

I was awakened at dawn by whispering, a little kid asking, "Who is he?" Another answering, "He's Karen's boyfriend, ssshhh." I opened up my eyes, five children standing around me in a circle staring down at me. I muttered, "Beat it," they went away & I went back to sleep.

Labels: boardwalks, growing up, jersey shore, Karen Battell

Thinking of my late cousin, Buddy Dorney, this morning, who died in strange circumstances in early December 1962, apparently swept off rocks while fishing with his son in Tierra del Fuego. Only Buddy's body washed ashore. He was down there working for an oil company. Buddy was my Catholic godfather (I think for my sister also), a job he knew had no responsibilities, fine with him, as we were not being raised Catholic & he was minimally observant.

He loved beautiful women & flashy cars, married a former & drove a latter. We rarely saw him. When he visited, usually unannounced, he draped himself in tire snow chains from the garage & banged on the windows as "Mr. Clanky Chains," which threw us four siblings into hysteria although we knew it was him. He knew parlor tricks. Nana, my dad & mom adored him. Nana had raised Buddy & his older brother Jim, her late sister's kids. So they were more like young uncles to us.

 Buddy was the one fellow in my family who looked totally Irish, with dark hair, bushy eyebrows  & piercing eyes. He was the only one in the family considered to have the gift of blarney. Most Irish love blarney, knowing it's mainly bullcrap wrapped in flattery & persuasiveness. You enjoy blarney by surrendering to it.

 When Buddy died, I noticed my parents were unable to grieve together. Their marriage was over. I walked around the corner & sat on the steps of the Methodist Church, looking up at the winter stars, wishing I was in Atlantic City with my grandmother, I believed I could be a comfort to her.
***
Next day, in boys health class, when the story had appeared on the front page of the Elizabeth Daily Journal, old Coach Herm Shaw devoted the entire class to his memories of the Dorney Brothers. Coach Shaw, a kind man, did that for me. I never forgot it. When Coach died many years later, I sent a note to his wife, Dorothy, also a teacher, remembering the day. She was pleased to receive the note.

Labels: growing up, Roselle Park

Labels: growing up, music, obituary, video

My parents' marriage began visibly collapsing after Nana, my paternal grandmother, retired, sold the house to my parents & moved to Atlantic City. I have never given much thought as to why Nana apparently served as a "glue" in the marriage. The arrangement was economically advantageous to Nana & my parents. Dad had done a lot to make the house more family-oriented. Made many renovations. But his interests were becoming more personal. He had put in his years with the Boy Scouts, Little League & Married Couples Club at the Methodist church. He was more into military history & local politics.

One night mom & dad were having an increasingly alcohol-fed argument downstairs as I was trying to fall asleep. I rarely fell asleep easily. I went downstairs & told them to stop, that I had school the next day. There was nothing I could have done to more righteously embarrass them.  They looked humiliated. To dad's credit, he eventually quit the heavy drinking.   But it got worse, Another night mom actually so lit into dad he wept. I heard this from my bed. I felt humiliated.

There was one person who saw, & heard & knew the history of this marriage. & was witness to traumatizing events happening to my siblings before I was born, when my one of my brothers was horribly burned on a hot radiator. My parents were not directly involved in this.

My week long visits to Nana in Atlantic City were sanctuaries. I subjected myself to her rules - few but firm, three good meals, regular bedtime hours. The only "favor" Nana asked of me was to learn chess from a lonely, elderly man in her building. I was a lousy student,  would've preferred checkers. But Nana supplied some ice cream for the occasions. He also had some interesting stories.

When I returned from a week in Atlantic City in the summer or over Easter vacation, I probably looked healthier, slept better, behaved less neurotically for a brief period. Being nurtured isn't the same as being spoiled.  Nana provided me with a emotional   "vacation". She knew what I was trying to escape. She gave me an amazing "playground," a fairly long leash within certain limits, & did not fill up my pockets with money. She was on  a fixed income.

Labels: Atlantic City, boardwalks, growing up

I don't recall The March on Washington having any effect on me one way or another. Puzzled me.  I was aware of it.  Knew it was happening, Read papers, heard news on radio if not always on TV.  Surely my family didn't like it. By that time I was becoming uncomfortable with the language of racism & turned off  by the violence. I was beginning to feel the civil rights cause was unstoppable. It  wasn't affecting me much where I lived.

Then I realized I was almost certainly with my Grandmother in Atlantic City on Wednesday August 28, 1963.  Rarely read newspapers there. Watched TV only for an hour or two in the evening if I wasn't on the boardwalk. I usually had a novel to read in bed, & listened to the local rock station my small transistor radio. I simply wasn't paying attention.

Recently read this book: The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights, a new book by William P. Jones. Not the most enjoyable prose I ever read. Crammed with facts. It begins before WWII, with A. Philip Randolph's plans for the first March on Washington in 1941, how the groundwork was laid then for the 1963 march, with many of the same leaders & organizers. About 80% of the history, involving labor unions, African-American organizations, African-American women's groups, many unfamiliar names, was new to me.

One of the demands of the 1963 March, stated at the end from the podium by Bayard Rustin, was for a higher minimum wage.

Labels: Atlantic City, growing up, human rights, in the news

When my band played a club on Staten Island in the late Sixties, a drunk customer went outside & threw cinder blocks through the windows of cars in the lot, including our band van. We made a report to the police.

A few days later, one of our fans, an Italian-American kid who barely cracked 5' came to my house. His '58 Caddy had taken a hit. He said he'd give me $50 if I got the name of the perp. I said if I got the name he could have it for free.

Labels: growing up, music, poem

Labels: boardwalks, growing up, jersey shore, Ocean City NJ, Somers Point NJ

1950 population: 2,480
1960 population: 4,504
On the mainland, across the bay from Ocean City, Somers Point is a peninsula surrounded on three sides by bay & marsh. This postcard is pretty much how I recall the town as a child in the Fifties. Outside of some motels & a honky tonk waterfront, it remained a sleepy, small town in the summer. I think my family began barging on Aunt Bella & cousin Cath in the Forties, for a week in early August. Cath, my godmother, has lived there on the same street her entire life; first in a bungalow, then moving across the street to a larger house after she got married & began having babies. In the Fifties there were cornfields on the edge of the town. & pine woods, & ferocious mosquitoes. Note the teenage girls in the lower right (click on postcard to enlarge).

Labels: growing up, jersey shore, Ocean City NJ, postcard, Somers Point NJ

My Dad's Jesuit high school teachers made him read great classic books to teach him to think for himself.

By the time he graduated he thought he didn't want Catholic priests telling him what to believe.

He walked out of the Church, never went back & never expressed a regret.

Labels: growing up, religion

Gold Star Mother, to you
the honor of a white Cadillac
at the front of the parade.

Your slow steps
escorting the wreath
up the gray slate path
to the war monument
by the public library.

Each clang of the fire engine bell
is the face of someone's son.

Four old soldiers aim
rifles at the blue sky,
a nervous boy plays "Taps."

They rest there for weeks,
your ribbons & fading flowers.


 

Labels: growing up, holidays, poem, war more war

It's an uncomplicated story. Takes bit of telling. In fall of 1966 I bought a cheap portable organ & got myself into a garage rock band. Garage rock bands needed organs. I hardly knew what I was doing, but I didn't need to know much. The band had two guitars, bass, drums, organ, & a jerk lead singer. "96 Tears" was my featured spot. We were really awful.

The Doors released their first LP in January 1967. I probably had heard of the band- they had made some noise in L.A. that got their name into magazines,   but I can't recall hearing anything from them until "Light My Fire" was released as a single. It was an extraordinarily distinctive record in its full version. They sounded like a garage band, but not my band or any other local band I had  heard. & what was with that long organ solo? The organist clearly was not a virtuoso, but it was an interesting long solo. I bought the  LP & loved it, except for the silly, long  song conveniently  placed last on side 2.

I still don't think we learned "Light My Fire."  We changed jerk  lead singers.   The rhythm guitarist left - band was interfering with his night job pumping gas, & his car was expensively high maintenance.   We were still really awful.

That summer, The Doors were hastily booked into Convention Hall in Asbury Park, one show, not widely promoted, supplanting one of two Lou Rawls shows there. My girlfriend & I went to see them.  We were impressed. She, of course, loved Jim Morrison in his leather suit. He was one sexy guy.  What I noticed was the leanness of the band, that although Jimbo was the  "star" of the show,  the four band members  were working as   equals. There was no bass player - the organist played simple figures on a keyboard bass (something is lost without a bassist, as both they & The Rascals knew), The Doors were a true collective creative enterprise, & they sounded it. Jim Morrison was not the "leader" of the band.  As each member had  their musical moment in the spotlight, Jim got out of the way (usually. He rubbed up against Ray Manzarek during the "LMF" solo).

Below me (I was in the front row of the balcony, the venue about 1/3rd empty seats), were members of Lou Rawls' ace touring band looking on uncomprehendingly;   "We were  bumped for this?"

Asbury Park Convention Hall was probably the largest type of venue in which The Doors could be really effective as the kind of band they were,. a "chamber rock band" (a rock critic term) designed for the rock clubs that nurtured them. There had always been rock bands like this, back to rockabilly trios, or The Velvet Underground in NYC, of which I had only a passing awareness because I knew they  were "hip" in the city.

Ray Manzarek was inviting garage band organists like me to step up & play with intelligence even if we were largely self-taught, on the instruments we had. I felt liberated from the examples of Booker T & The Young Rascals' Felix Cavaliere (an almost god-like presence in Jersey rock), with their Hammond B3s, & from Matthew Fisher of Procol Harum, who would become a favorite as "A Whiter Shade of Pale" climbed up the charts that summer.

I determined at the Doors concert that my band had to change to better accommodate me. I must have done a pretty good selling job, as no one in the band was particularly creative or ambitious (the remaining guitarist began showing a good musical intelligence). We learned "Light My Fire." "Soul Kitchen" (the essence of their sound),  Twentieth Century Fox." "I Looked At You," "Take It as It Comes."  I upgraded to a Vox Continental (later added a Leslie speaker, I never did abandon a love of thick, Hammond textures).  The bass player was pushed out. He was my best friend, but he was worse than really awful. My weak left hand was better than him. I bought a Rheem key bass. We picked up four songs from the second LP, including the complete "When the Music's Over." We struggled on into 1968, a very bad year in America & in my own life.  The drummer eventually moved on.  He had graduated high school & his real love was accounting.  We somehow found a replacement,. & a new lead singer  was right in front of us, a guy we hung  out with, rather bookish-looking but who sang well & was completely transformed at the front of a band. Girls loved him.

We milked one good year out of this band, which didn't sound like The Doors or The Rascals; we didn't try. We raised our level from really awful to just awful (Joe Walsh considers this the natural transition, that the important part was getting out of the garage & before an audience).  Some of our music & arrangements were relatively adventurous.  We jammed too much & too tediously, but that was characteristic  of  most garage bands.

Ray, by some accounts, was not always a nice guy (a friend has direct experience of it).  In '67 he was somewhat older than the average rock musician with a first hit. This was to his advantage. He had a college degree (economics), was in film school.  He hadn't scuffled up through bar bands. Either consciously or intuitively (I haven't read his autobiography)  he had a vision of a band as a complete conceptual package, like the art school-influenced  bands of New York, London, & later New Wave. They covered a Kurt Weill / Bertolt Brecht song on their first LP (it wasn't "Mack the Knife").  This was very attractive to an 18 year-old garage band organist who read poetry. Jimbo wasn't a great poet but he certainly understood it as a concept.

One night in 1968 several of us from the band went to midtown New York just to hang out, a common pastime for bored Jersey kids.  We were walking on a side street by the Americana Hotel when a couple came around the corner ahead of us & walked toward us, an attractive woman & a familiar man. As they came closer, the man looked more & more like Ray Manzarek. "Are The Doors in town?" I asked my friends. One said he thought so. It was Ray Manzarek. As they passed (she was a very attractive woman) I said, "How yah doin', Ray"  He said, "Good" & they walked on.

Labels: Asbury Park, growing up, music, obituary

 For many years I had a strange, not especially pleasant memory of being in my Aunt Bella's kitchen in Somers Point NJ, watching her dump a basket of fresh live crabs into a cauldron of steaming water, slamming on the lid, & the lid bouncing as the poor crabs tried to escape. Now, Aunt Bella could be a fearsome person. She was one of my grandmother's younger sisters, & I hardly understood there were matriarchal tensions in that generation of Irish-American women, often angry ones, but these tensions did not preclude their strong sisterly bonds, which were nobody else's damned business. I was a grand-nephew. Yes, I was under her protection when in her home, she would have died for me, but she was under no obligation to show it openly, as my grandmother was.  

 I occasionally mulled over this memory, picturing it, panning it like a camera. Then one day it came to me: Aunt Bella must have barely cracked 5'. I was well below the stovetop looking up at her through a cloud of steam. I was three feet tall. The water was boiling, the crabs died instantly, & the roiling water made the lid rattle.

I recall trying to explain to one of my siblings that I don't write "history," I don't  even write "autobiography." What I do is simply a combination of the personal anecdote composer John Cage wrote for his books & used in some of his compositions, & the sort of conversations poets have in diners following readings. Writers from families with   strong ties & regular social occasions like holidays have a far greater number of childhood stories, more detailed, than I have.  One of these writers, who grew up in a tight Irish-Catholic family in Pittsburgh, abandoned her blog because the memories  poured out into long, funny tales, every post became a major writing project.  You can't do a regular blog that way.

Labels: growing up, Somers Point NJ

Frankie & Annette. No last names needed.

The first Beach Party movie was released in 1963, just as  I was entering full teenhood. There were plenty of good songs on the radio in 1963, but even I knew what passed for teen culture was generally bogus, product created by adults for teen consumption. The rock & roll Revolution of the mid-Fifties had been suppressed, the crazy rockers tamed or banished to country music & the Black radio stations. The Beach Party movies had little connection to the teen culture I was becoming  part of at the time, except that they happened to be part of teen culture merely by existing & being shown in local theaters.  They were staples of late night weekend TV for decades afterward. Frankie & Annette were hardly Southern California surfer types (they were "greasers," although we didn't use that term*),  were musically irrelevant (as was Elvis, for that matter), We laughed at Annette's frozen doos & obsession  with protecting her "virtue," but she was never an object of scorn. Everyone loved Annette. We'd all been fans of the Mickey Mouse Club. The movies themselves were harmless, funny - Harvey Lembeck's biker outlaw character Eric Von Zipper was great, & they were  filled with Hollywood's best jiggly go go dancers.

By the summer of '64 everything had changed, with the assassination of JFK & the arrival of The Beatles & the Brits.  The change was so great that something like a generation gap opened up between my sister & I, & she was only two years older, Class of '64.  But the beach party movies & the various spinoffs & imitations went on until 1967.

In 1987 Frankie & Annette reunited in a  funny parody of their old movies, Back to the Beach.   According to Frankie, Annette was showing early symptoms of multiple sclerosis, but he didn't know she had the disease & she may not have known it yet. She announced she had it in 1992, to counter rumors she was an alcoholic.

It might seem that Annette's immense talent  was underused. But she herself chose not to become an "adult" performer. She could have made sitcoms & dozens of made-for-TV movies  &  had a great Vegas & nightclub career for sure - definitely in tandem with Frankie Avalon, who still works Atlantic City. She just dabbled -  specials with Frankie, guest appearances on Love, American Style  & Fantasy Island. Apparently Annette really was Annette, not someone playing a character named Annette. I'm sure she ate Skippy Peanut Butter, & sold a lot of it.

Annette Funicello, died of complications from m.s., age 70.



*In my school the guys favored leather jackets, high roll collars, tight Italian cut pants & leather jackets, styled haircuts,  in contrast to the "collegiate" madras shirts & khaki  pants & "dry" look hair cuts that came in with the Beach Boys. They  were often called "hoods," an inaccurate, disparaging term, since most were just regular guys & we mixed quite freely in sports & socially, some of them were good  musicians I later played with in garage bands. 

Labels: culture, growing up, movies, music, obituary

If you come from a small town & you want to be a writer, one of the first things you have to grasp is that every small town has a corner store owned by a guy named Larry across the street from the grammar school. & you will be marked forever as hopelessly provincial if you insist your Larry was the only Larry or the greatest Larry.

 What saved me was that, as a teen, I spent nearly a month every year in Atlantic City, winter & summer, & stepping on the boardwalk at California Ave., looking north toward the great piers & The Traymore was always so awesome. I felt like other people feel when they go to a dark place & see the Milky Way. Next thing I'm back home sitting at the counter in Murray's drinking a cherry Coke & nobody understands that three or four times a year I'm having these religious experiences where I'm seeing disembodied psychic energy patterns left by Al Capone, Frank Sinatra, Dean & Jerry, & Freddie "Boom Boom" Cannon shouting "Wooo" as he flies by in front of Irene's Gift Shop.

Labels: about writing, Atlantic City, growing up

. It was obvious to others back then that I found her beautiful, smart & talented & loved her.

The rest is a pop song & I play with the  lyrics., my right as a poet.  

We were small town ambitious. We believed one or the other of us, or both, might become famous.  Although neither of us was a great social butterfly, we were sociable & enjoyed being seen together.

I've always been grateful for her family, her mom especially, how I was taken into that crowded, chaotic house on Hemlock Street during a turbulent period in my own family. I was  "Karen's boyfriend," & with that came meal privileges &  use of the old upright piano.

Karen, of course, always wanted to get out of the house if it wasn't a school night,  or if it was, at least go sit on the front porch or on the back seat of an old but functioning 1948 Desoto, a Battell heirloom called "The Turtle" kept in the garage.  She would be annoyed with  me If I settled on the couch, watching TV with three or four kids crawling over me.  But I felt  love in the chaos, & I sensed the love was emanating from the frazzled woman in the kitchen who welcomed me if I went in there, sat down  & chatted with her.  As long as mom liked  me, I'd be o.k. with her dad &  we'd get a longer leash. I liked talking with her mom.  I suspected  her dad secretly hoped we'd elope the day after Karen graduated high school just to get her out of a crowded house lacking in space &   privacy.

It was my job as a writer to fit Karen into my narrative.  Where I fit into her's was of small concern to me. I hoped only that she carried no hurtful memories, & in our  few conversations  later she never gave the impression she had.. You won't find her in my poems, except invisibly in  a group I wrote in 1990 which drew from every romance  & break up I'd gone through up to that point.

Karen passed at age 62, a tragic fact.  I have only two early years of those 62 & I wish she had lived until my small percentage was much  smaller. But they were two adolescent years filled with the kinds of days & nights everyone remembers as the  rest of our days & nights & years  speed by faster & faster.  My poetry mentor, Joel Oppenheimer, taught by example that there are memories a poet holds in trust.  He was passing down an old tradition.   One might never bring those memories to a poem or story, but they are held & treasured  all the same. It is a privilege.

Remembering how Karen,  the most beautiful teenage girl I every knew, entered   a party, a dance,  a brightly lit diner, a wedding reception (we went to at least two),  my dad's living room,  whatever  occasion called for it.  She always did this if she was wearing something new from Daffy Dan's. She would walk through the entry, quickly survey the occupants, tilt her regal nose up & slightly to one side just so, & pose for a moment.  Yes, people looked. Always.  I'd be standing behind her or off to one side, thinking, "Wow! I'm sure she   rehearses that." To me she was dancing.

In Memory of Karen Battell Silva, 1950-2012

Labels: growing up, Karen Battell, love, Mahalo, obituary, Roselle Park

Labels: growing up, New Jersey, photograph, postcard

Night.  Fifties. Long ride back from South Jersey shore or Lake Mohawk. Squeezed between Dad & Mom in the front seat or, when we had a modest station wagon, in the back seat or cargo space. Three older siblings & a small, panting, carsick dog. Dad twiddling with the radio dial. What is he looking for? Operetta? Music from the TV show Victory at Sea?  I catch intriguing snippets of doo wop, R&B, distant baseball games, religious blabbermouths. As often as not Dad turns off the radio in frustration. If he lands on the lovely, evocative "Old Cape Cod" & stays there, I know that's the best we're gonna get. Who wouldn't rather be on Cape Cod instead of riding in this car?

Fifties pop was not generally good. One realizes how exceptional Sinatra's Capitol recordings were, & why Peggy Lee worked so stubbornly to control her career. One appreciates that Count Basie held a band together, changed to the magnificent "atomic" lineup & style. One may even appreciate the pernicious influence of record label executive Mitch Miller & his ilk, wasting the talents of great singers but driving millions of teenagers to embrace rock & roll,

Labels: growing up, music, obituary, video

A Christmas Day tradition in my family involved a large family gathering & Christmas dinner rotating between our house, & my mom's brother & sister. This was not  a tradition I liked.  In two of every three years it meant traveling up to Sparta in far north Jersey. my uncle's place,  or down to my aunt's in New Brunswick (fine house, I admit) & being trapped for hours  in unfamiliar homes with cousins I didn't like. The payoff: The usual turkey dinner, a few meager gifts of the aunt & uncle variety, & hours of tedium culminating in The Group Photograph, which seemed like the main reason for the thing. I despised having our own house invaded by these people every third year. Normally messy & cluttered, everything, including our bedrooms, had to be straightened up before these relatives arrived. Mom was under extra stress; she was not a good stress person to begin with. I forget what my paternal grandmother did those years; hide in her room, probably. These were the protestants. They could remind her only of her biggest failures: not keeping dad in the Faith & her grandchildren raised Methodist, which undermined her  matriarchal position vis her own younger sisters.

One of my cousins was an outrageously insulting brat. True, I was also brat, my three older siblings certainly capable of calculated brattiness, & together we were, on occasion, conspiratorially bratty. But we also had good manners when required (the lost courtesy of standing up when an adult entered the room for the first time & stepping aside from your seat until the adult chose where to sit), & speaking rudely  to grownups was a grievous act  even I rarely transgressed. My cousin R was eye-poppingly rude, the popping eyes being my dad's with his then undiagnosed thyroid condition. R had, in his own home, a wonderful collection of toys, but we doubted he had any friends.

Two my uncle's three kids were legendary (to us) wallflowers. They shrunk into invisibility upon contact with us. Trying to engage them in conversation, or any shared activity, was pointless. You were lucky to get four word sentences out of them. Our grandfather adored them, which was infuriating. My sister, a small girl accustomed to dealing with  three brothers & our friends, could have easily grabbed each by the hair, cracked their heads together & thrust them into the coat closet by the front entrance,  kicking the door shut with her heel, & chosen the exact moment when no adult would see her doing it. But they were harmless, defenseless creatures, really, friendly actually, & my sister could play the good girl well. My aunt's dapper husband (the boy brat's father), whose sports coats  I coveted when I was old enough to appreciate such things, recognized early on that my sister was a spirited, male-savvy  female worthy of his compliments. Our two ultra-shy girl cousins weren't even in the game.

So it was, on the occasion of these Christmas gatherings, that my three siblings & I found a rare solidarity. We had to band together just to keep from being bored to tears. In our own home, we had to protect our turf.

Labels: Christmas, growing up

The older I get, the more annoying nostalgia becomes. People express nostalgia for every freakin' thing that isn't around anymore. Crappy songs. Ugly hairstyles. Uncomfortable clothing.  They're feeling sentiment for an era when they were younger. What's nostalgic about a rotary dial phone? Not for the era, but for the machine itself? Sure, they're cool-looking. It's a classic, functional design.  I thought the introduction of touch tone was great. I remember the hassle of dialing long distance. If you dialed too fast your finger slipped out. If you dialed too aggressively you pulled the phone off the desk & it fell on the floor. The phone company was a monopoly. You rented phones from your division of Bell Telephone  or a small regional company that somehow escaped Ma Bell's  grasping tentacles.  Every extension phone was counted & charged for. I don't miss dial tone phones.

Labels: culture, growing up