McCartney, Cash, and Starr

I doubt than an iconic English musician needs a push from me. But here it is anyway.

Paul McCartney's latest single, Days We Left Behind, may be his best song in decades. Sentimental without being cloying, it's an intimate reflection on his personal history yet with feelings with which we can all relate. His weak, tired voice adds depth, giving the song a bit of an ethereal, other worldly sound. It's not unlike Johnny Cash's voice fatigue in Ain't No Grave. Wistful, yet powerful.

He and fellow Beatle Ringo Starr release a duet this Friday, Home to Us. Although they've sung and performed together frequently since the Fab Four split, it's their first full on duet. I'm looking forward to it.

Ringo by the way has had some good stuff lately too. Here's Look Up from 2025 if you're interested.

The Ladder

It wasn't just a ladder. It was The Ladder, the one we used every time extra upward steps were needed at the Shop. "Get the ladder, boy," me Grandpa Joe would say to me when a light burned out. 

The Ladder was a wooden, ten foot step ladder and a staple at the old barn. I'd love to know how old it was. Joe might have gotten it from his brother, me great Uncle Bill, in Illinois, just like he did the bench grinder which was bought in 1928 and we used until 1990. The Ladder could have been that old. It wouldn't surprise me.

I'll bet I was many miles up and down the steps of that thing. Replacing lights, whitewashing the old barn once a year, fixing windows; I even employed it a few times at my house for this or that.

It was rickety for as long as I remember. Someone had to hold it as a safety measure when in use, except when leaned against a wall unfolded. The old red ladder was out of alignment and warped something awful. Holding it up for others required your strength; it about had a mind of its own.

Me Pops left it up against a wall in a far corner of the Shop about fifteen years ago and we ain't used it since. On top of all else the wood was clearly rotten. Yet he couldn't throw it away. So it sat and stuff piled up around it. Until yesterday, that is, when I reluctantly tossed it into the dumpster I rented for an old barn clean up.

Tease me if you want, but I darn near shed tears as I carried it out. The choice felt callous, yet was the right one. It was just a tool and was no longer safe. It needed to go. That didn't stop me from setting it up one last time and climbing up, carefully, six steps. I even got out me phone and took a couple pictures of the view. Silliness.

The true issue is sentimentality, of course. Right before I grabbed it for the dumpster I heard Joe grumble plain as day, "Get the ladder, boy." Well, it's been got.

It's All Right to be Sentimental

I don't mean this to be at all melancholy, although it certainly is sentimental and perhaps a bit wistful.

When they were toddlers I can remember my kids rushing to the living room window to wave bye to me whenever I went somewhere. In my mind's eye I can actually see each of them in that front window, waving frantically as little tykes do.

Yesterday coming home from Newark Ohio as my oldest son was on his way to work, he slowed down on his exit from the local freeway to allow me to quickly catch up so that we might wave at each other as our trails separated. Last September as I turned out of the parking lot of the diner where my second son and I had had breakfast in Stamford, Connecticut, as I began my journey back to Detroit, I saw him watching my car as I left. We shared a wave.

Not quite the little blond and redheaded boys of 40 years ago. But still a treat for a Dad.

The Years Go By

I've long been told that the older we get, the faster time flies. I think it's true.

A year ago at this time I looked forward to a Hessel trip this past May. Now that and two other visits have come and gone. I've seen baseball games in two new stadiums. A long anticipated trip to New York City is three weeks in the rear view mirror. And now I'm back to pining for the next trip. Next trips.

I try to live in the moment anymore. That helps, but the moments still go. Even at that, I do believe I appreciate them more. 

I sound as though I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth. I suppose I am. I honestly don't feel melancholy as I think about the past four or five months. It's more a realization that, as I become an old timer myself, the old timers were right. Time does fly. Enjoy the minute.

I guess you just gotta get old to appreciate it, eh?

Nostalgia

All the kids were in town over the weekend for the first time in, well, a long time. 

We needed to be somewhere at Noon this past Sunday. A couple of hours before departure I went to remind them of that. Tapping on their bedroom doors, as they all slept in their childhood bedrooms, I informed each, "Let's go. We have to be there at 12."

I hadn't had to do that in ages. For one Sunday morning I was a Dad again. It felt good. How they felt, I don't know.

But I'm the Dad. They're the ones who have to adjust to that.

Empathizing with Opie

This blog is going to be stupid. I knew before I even began writing it that it was going to be stupid. Quiet, Ron.

I had to turn off The Andy Griffith Show last night. Not for any bad reason, of course. It's the Andy Griffith Show, Mayberry and rural America from the early 1960s for cryin' out loud. Nothing really bad ever happened there. But I simply had to flip to another station. I felt too bad, terrible in fact, for Opie.

Young Opie brought in a report card which was all A's. He was proud, and his Paw Andy was proud, and Aunt Bee was proud. The it turned out that the teacher has made a mistake and transposed the wrong grades onto the boy's card. It was an honest enough mistake, but watching Opie slump his shoulders and become forlorn, standing next to his teacher's desk as she apologized for the error, well, I felt awful for him.

Then in the next scene Andy is showing Aunt Bee the bike he bought Opie as a reward for the good grades, and all I could think was how much worse the youngster was going to feel when he was given it. I had to change the channel. I could not watch it.

It probably didn't help that the show immediately before was one where Opie, completely accidentally, killed a mother bird. To make up for it, he raised the babies by himself, only to have to deal with letting them fly off on their own when they were old enough. I had a lump in my throat over that. 

Then comes the erroneous report card episode. I knew everything would be all right in the end. Like I say, it was Mayberry. Still, I couldn't keep watching. 

Not that long ago I didn't believe that I was becoming as sentimental as I long expected to be as I aged. Now it looks like I'm going off the cliff, dripping with cloying empathy.

Old Style Christmas Candy

Time, it changes a man. It surely does.

When I was a boy, you knew it was nearing Christmas when me Grandma Cosgriff brought out the Christmas candy. For the holidays, there would always be a bowl of these odd hard candies on the dining room table. There was ribbon candy, and these odd little triangular things in striped colors, and little round, rock hard buttons with color on the edges and images on the faces, flowers or fruit or pictures of Santa even. Some even had what was soft, apparently fruit fillings.

I never cared for those candies. They weren't terrible, and certainly not inedible. Yet they didn't exactly entice you like candy should. You would roll them around in your mouth and suck on them until they, well, I won't say melted away. They more like wasted away. The tastes weren't anything outstanding at all. I might, might pop one into my mouth the entire Christmas season. I never wanted a second.

Yesterday I found myself in a store searching for anything but that candy. Indeed, I hadn't thought of it in ages. Nonetheless, as my eyes roved over a shelf of holiday delights, I discovered bags of Old Fashion Mix Classic Christmas Candy. They were just like what me Grandma Cosgriff set out on Christmas. And I said, out loud in excitement despite being alone in an almost empty store, "Hey! It's Grandma's Christmas Candy!"

And I bought a package of that candy which I never particularly liked.

It's stupid as hell, but I've almost got tears in my eyes from finding bland old fashion Christmas candy from Christmases long past. I guess sentiment trumps taste somehow.

One more cut

Yesterday I cancelled the 800 number for my business. It simply wasn't worth the cost. As it was piggybacked somehow onto a local 313 number I went ahead and cancelled that too. The phones weren't costing a king's ransom: on average about 65 bucks a month. But why pay for something you don't need, that wasn't producing? Still, a part of me hated letting them go.

Back in the 1980s as me Pops was trying to expand the business into outstate Michigan he added a second line. With that one he bought advertising in outstate editions of the Yellow Pages (the what?) using it as the contact number; that way we could basically tell where an incoming call originated and know if the investment was paying off. Similarly with the addition of an 800 number sometime in the 90s he thought we might attract customers.

But now of course second lines for experimental reasons and toll free numbers simply don't mean what they once did. With cell phone plans being so cheap and extensive, having in most cases unlimited minutes at least within the US, toll free doesn't concern people. It's not the audience attractor it once may have been. 

Yet it was one of the few things left of Dad's business as Dad's business. They were ideas of his, very good ideas, which I've now put to bed. 

As we come up on eight years since his death, there is almost nothing, I'll say legally, left of it. Sure, we still have the same building, and I kept the primary business number of course, using it as my business and personal cell number.  But just that much more of what he created is gone.

Yes, time marches on. Too, it means more to me than it should, out of little more than sentiment. I know this. And yet, one more tie is cut.

The old Carhartt

Sentiment is all well and good, and Carhartts are great work coats. Still, they each have their limits.

Every bit of twenty five years ago me Pops gave me a great Carhartt winter work coat. It was given to him but didn't fit, so he re-gifted it to me.

I've worn that thing every winter for, well, twenty five years. And the fact is that the coat itself is worn, as in out. It's quite ratty and the pockets have holes large enough that you can't keep stuff in them. I almost lost my keys one day over the winter because they fell through such a hole. Luckily it was at the old barn so I heard them hit the cement floor. But if I were anywhere else, who knows?

I should have tossed the coat several years ago really. But psychologically for me it had become Dad's coat, so I just kept on wearing it.

Tomorrow however it goes into the trash. I've resolved to that; enough is enough, and it's had its day. And if it stays in my closet until November I know I'll talk myself into using it for just one more winter.

So, out with the old. Even if it's Dad's coat. I'm sure he'll understand.

Sentimental old guys

I think yesterday I had my first wistful old guy moment.

A call came in from a fellow I hadn't seen in better than thirty years; I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name. Back then he worked for Smith Plumbing yet had long since left for a different job.

These days he's the plumber for a nearby school district. For years he hated the drain snake they had. But then through Dame Fortune he stumbled onto one of ours, a genuine Electric Eel Model C exactly like he used at Smith's. It was buried in storage, where Cloyce discovered it looking for something else. Needing a few cutting tools he went to Electric Eel's website and found us. "Marty, it's a voice from the past. I'm Cloyce. I worked at Smith's, remember?"

"In fact I do," I answered. Indeed I remembered his voice quite clearly. "How are you?"

"Good." He explained the situation and when I said I had what he wanted in stock, he came on down.

An hour later he was in the old barn and we were talking old times. "Mr. Smith died awhile back. Drank himself to death unfortunately," Cloyce explained.

"That's sad," I responded sadly. You do hate to hear things like that.

Cloyce's face then noticeably lit up. "Hey, how's your Dad?" he asked expectantly.

"We lost him six years ago last month. June 25th."

"I'm really sorry Marty. I always liked listening to his jokes and stories."

"Thanks. I, I like hearing that," I stammered.

We spent an hour talking about old plumbers, telling each other tales neither of us (I think) had heard before. We talked about old Tiger Stadium and how we both missed it, that we both had good times taking our kids there. He showed me pictures of an old Corvette Stingray he'd bought off Smith's widow. He restored it and was going to sell it. "Too much car for me, but the guy who was first trying to buy it was ripping her off."

It was odd hearing Cloyce's voice coming from the face of a much older man. He maybe thought the same about me. I guess that's how it is when you don't see someone in three decades.

It was a nice visit. "I'm glad you guys are still in it. It was good to see you man," Cloyce was saying as he left.

"Good seeing you too," I said, and I meant it truly.

"I'll be back when I need more stuff."

"Great, thanks." He got into his work truck and was on his way.

I made myself a cup of coffee on my new used Keurig and sat quietly at my desk for a few minutes. After taking a sip when the coffee had cooled a bit I thought, 'Well, the old barn ain't gonna clean itself'. I went back to work.

Memories in the rubble

Yesterday afternoon I felt all kinds of emotions, running the gamut from, well, the sublime to the ridiculous.

I watched like a giddy child as a demolition crew tore down an abandoned house in the neighborhood. It's interesting how destruction enthralls us. Maybe we wish we were handling the levers of that scoop shovel ourselves as it ravenously engulfed and tore down walls. It's easy to be impressed by such power over otherwise strong materials such as wood and brick. I even filmed through my camera phone four minutes of the work. The once magnificent house of the middle class was a pile of debris in less than an hour.

Yet there was a sadness in the air too. Most houses in my neighborhood have stood since the 1890's, so that old girl was in the range of 120 years old. Workmen, professionals like brick masons, carpenters, plasterers (everything was wet plastered back then), electricians, roofers and more had pried their skills over several months to create a tidy Victorian home which had served as refuge for who knew how many for over a century. It had all fell down in a matter of minutes.

And there was a piquancy as well. The folks I knew who had lived there were a sister and a brother. Miss Jeter always had a laugh, smile, or honestly pleasant how are you. She had a big blue Buick she loved. I still see her and that car rolling across the hood. Her brother, Mr. Wilson A. Watson, was about as unassuming an old gentleman as you could know. He lost a leg in World War II and hobbled around as best he could with his cane. He would laugh and joke with you quickly, and wore a grin which was all sunshine despite his obvious challenges. He never in my presence complained over them. I don't remember when they died, and I'm ashamed that I don't know.

This world just keeps on turning. Yet every once'n awhile it does seem to stop to let us reflect.

The sentimentality bug

Hessel, Day Two, July 2017

This morning I put on my ‘Green Monster’ T-shirt which I bought at Fenway Park, to realize it has been almost a year since I bought it. It will be a year next Tuesday that my son and I were there. Wow.

I saw too that my other son had tied together and labelled four small US flags, ‘2017’. These are the flags which he, my daughter-in-law, my granddaughter and myself had been given which watching the Fourth of July parade in Cedarville barely 18 days ago. And I thought something more like, double wow.

I thought I had sentimentality licked. I was afraid for years that I’d be too sentimental as I got older. For the longest time I was okay with things moving on. Life happens. You move on. You handle it.

But in the last three or four years I find it ain’t so easy. Oh, I’m not living in permanent melancholy. So long as I’m occupied, so long as I’m not face to face with some stark reminder, things are okay. Yet when those reminders jump out at you, well, they remind you.

Still, I’m happy at that. Fenway Park and that recent parade do indeed tell me that all is well. Sure, the moments are past. But they were great moments, and sentiment reminds me of that. It reminds me too that the day will come when we will remember, and sentiment won’t tinge our memories at all.

Sentimentality

The little blond boy waving from the living room window as I walked back to the Shop. The redhead who wanted to play 'guys' (role play with his action figures) at lunch. The preteen who played softball because her dad liked bat and ball games. I miss them.

Maybe I am more sentimental than I care to think.

For years I thought it was all behind me. I thought I was beyond sentimental. Then days come when I find out they're still here.

I watch movies about vampires, with Rifftrax commentary (and only because of that) with one. I go to venerable Major League ballparks with the next. I eat marvelous soups designed on the fly by the third.

And it's all good.

So you may as well be sentimental about it. Because it's all good.

A Bolt from the Blue

Last night we sat down, my wife, daughter, and I, and watched the Disney cartoon movie Bolt. It had arrived yesterday (it should have arrived sooner, no thanks to the United States Postal Service, and it made for a neat Monday evening treat to watch a family friendly movie as a family.

I liked it. It was classic and sentimental, with no real crudeness that I can remember. You know, crudeness, which seems to appear even in children's films these days? Why a show or movie aimed at seven year olds has to have bathroom humor even of the weakest strain is beyond me; it certainly can't make our kids more cosmopolitan or mature.

Yet that too is a rant for another day. What I want to talk about now is how we should never allow ourselves to get away from enjoying things aimed at the young. The Wind in the Willows may have been aimed at a younger audience, but I still find passages in it almost magical. Dumbo can bring a tear to the eye, and there are chills for me to this day when Aslan is resurrected and the stone table cracks. In short, we know, as C. S. Lewis points out so correctly, that youth is sentimental. And the proper amount of sentimentality is exactly what we should strive for in our own consideration of the people and things around us.

It is a quality which, it seems to me anyway, is most often found in our children's tales. I see it occasionally in stories aimed at general audiences: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books, and In Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara. The movie Rudy evokes the right spirit quite well too. Tim Burton's Big Fish is also quaint in a delightful way. Almost anything by Frank Capra should delight the truly open mind.

An interesting contrast can be illustrated in the fact that Silence of the Lambs, a revolting film on several levels and most of those levels cinematic rather than moral (I know the conclusions that some of my readers will jump towards but I assure you that, seen objectively, the movie fails in more ways than simple crudity) won best picture of 1991 over the truly marvelous and well spun Disney cartoon film Beauty and the Beast. If you would kindly set aside any shallow qualms about the folks at Disney adapting the story to its own purposes, I have to believe that part of reason for that travesty is that too many adults feel they can't possibly appear to like a kid's fairy tale ahead of something more 'stark' and 'gritty' and, that awful and arrogant word, 'modern'. We adults have risen above that level of sappiness.

If we have, that is truly sad. Sadder still, only the sentimental among us will recognize that.

Yet rather than end on that note, I will offer you the highest advice that I believe I can: read good children's books and watch good children's movies without shame. You will be a better adult for it. You might (horror of horrors!) find them better than even the best adult stories.