Odd Moments

I had forgotten how funny The Odd Couple could be. I remember watching it on prime time TV fifty years ago, and have recently been watching it regularly on the Decades channel. Interestingly, I have yet to see the movie or stage show on which it was based. Such as that is, was, or evermore shall be, I like the show, then and now, although perhaps I didn't get all the jokes as a pre-teen.

But that's not really why I bring it up. What strikes me most is the revelation that maybe I'm living what old people lived, well, fifty years ago. I'm seeing what was once new to me but is now aged. Quite aged. Very significantly aged.

To offer a frame of reference, I became a Beatles fan after I bought Nowhere Man off the oldies rack at the downtown Detroit Kresge's in 1973 That on its own should age me. It had been released as a single in 1966.  So in my 13 year old mind, seven years was old. Very old. Now, I watch something seven times that age, a show I watched when I was 13, and think, that's not so old.

So I suppose in watching Tony Randall and Jack Klugman I find myself feeling what I think my grandparents may have felt, say, in 1972 listening to music from 1925. There's only problem.

I don't feel that old.

The ineffective pep talk

Me Pops, you need to know (as many of you do) was the oldest of eight in his family. Me Uncle John whom we call Zeke was the youngest, and there were twelve years between them. Just in front of Uncle John at positions 6 and 7 in the family order were two other sons. The four of them at one time or another worked for me Grandpa Joe in his welding shop. Now you have all the information you need in order to understand my tale today.

Zeke was a young teenager and work simply wasn't going well for him one day. Try as he might, whatever he touched did not turn to gold. All turned to dust, maybe, and he'd even have to sweep that up. It was, according to me Pops, a rough day for the kid.

So Pops decided to do what a good elder brother should. When there was a break in the action, he sat down with his youngest sibling to offer encouragement. Ah, give it time, things will go better, stiff upper lip and all that sort of thing. Pops decided to finish the speech with a flourish. Waving an arm across the inside of the Shop he said, "And remember, Zeke, one day all this will be yours."

Uninspired by the sage words of me Pops Uncle John sat, dropping his shoulders a bit and becoming even more glum. "When you and Mike and Jim (two brothers between Dad and Zeke) get done with it, I don't know if I want it." he said.

Until the last time he told that story, me Pops laughed loudly over it. Honesty can hurt. But it can be darn funny too.

Dad at 85

Me Pops would have been 85 today. Seeing as his Pops, me Grandpa Joe, barely took care of himself while taking a lot of silly risks, made 86, I sure didn't expect the old man to go home at 77. But such is life, eh?

I can only rarely hear Dad's voice anymore yet I hear his laugh regularly and readily. When I think of it, I hear it, simple as that. I might hear single words. I can hear him rap on my bedroom door and say, "Marty" when it was time to get up for school or work from when I was growing up. Underlying parental authority sticks with us, perhaps.

The only time I can actually hear his voice for more than a word is when I think of him chanting in Latin. About twenty five years ago my wife and I took the kids to participate in a novena, nine days of prayer, at old St. Dominic's one summer. We wanted to instill in them the idea of prayer as a habit. The services as such began at 7 each evening. Everyone present participated in the prayers, which ended with the hymn O Salutaris Hostia. It was written by St. Thomas Aquinas, whose feast day is also today. 

Unexpectedly but unsurprisingly Dad was participating in the novena as well. I always rather believed that he did it to help his grandkids appreciate prayer too, through leading by example. I still hear him plainly at the end of each night, chanting: O Salutaris Hostia! Quae caeli pandis ostium! Bella premunt Hostilia; Da robur, fer auxilium! I especially hear his voice raise at Da robur, with an honest lilt while singing fer auxilium! 

He had a good voice. And ain't it something that I hear me Pops the clearest chanting an 800 year old Latin anthem?

Happy 85th birthday Pops.

For those interested an English translation of the hymn is:

O SAVING Victim opening wide
The gate of heaven to all below.
Our foes press on from every side;
Thine aid supply, Thy strength bestow.

Twenty One Dollars and Thirty Seven Cents

There was a line yesterday at UPS as I went to ship a package. It was a little slow, nothing terrible, but it led to me killing time by reading the various posters about what can and cannot be shipped via UPS.

Radioactive materials, for one, UPS will not accept. It made me wonder if someone had actually tried to do that.

Another chart listed that you cannot ship dead animals. I guess that means you can ship live ones, right?

On a longer list of what they won't ship was, 'Objects of Unusual Value'. My immediate thought was, so, something that costs $21.37? 

That strikes me as an unusual value. Have you ever seen something priced for $21.37? Do stores ever advertise: "Buy now at the special discount price of $21.37?" I know that in all my years in sales I have never sold or bought anything for Twenty One Dollars and Thirty Seven Cents. Not. Once.

So I guess that counts, doesn't it?

The snow fairies

I got out the door early and shoveled the sidewalks this morning. Then I brushed off the cars. I knew it had to happen sometime. It's difficult to escape from some form of winter in the D. But it makes me pine for the days of yore.

There was a time in my life when someone else would do the walks for me. I would politely ask them, with no underlying threats involved whatsoever, and they would take shovels and clear the walk. I would gratefully watch them through the windows with a hot cup of coffee. Or hot chocolate. Or something...warmer. And they would clear the snow.

Our kids are supposed to grow up and go on their own, right? But isn't there a law somewhere that they're still supposed to come home after winter storms and clear our walks? 

Asking for a friend.

NC Chicken

Mom likes cheeseburgers. That's fine. She also likes for you to have what she's having. I can live with that. But I have to admit eating cheeseburgers every Sunday gets old. So yesterday as we were out and about I suggested, "Hey, what about chicken for lunch?"

She brightened up and responded, much to my delight, "That sounds great!"

Quickly enough a KFC appeared. "Is Kentucky Fried Chicken okay?" I asked Mom. She said yes. Then as a joke I added, "Unless you want Tennessee friend chicken."

She grimaced at that and said sternly, "North Carolina fried chicken."

I have to agree that is the best, though we settled for KFC.

For those of you who don't know, Mom is North Carolina borned and raised.

Whither Unity?

President Biden is calling for unity. Well, all right. I'm for unity too. Yet that is in fact where the trouble begins: unity for what purpose or to what degree is he asking of me?

If you wish me to unite with you for abortion rights the answer is a hard no. There is no unity on that issue: either you get your way or I get mine, simple as that. I will do what I can to fight the Biden Administration there. I will not unify with the President or anyone else in favor of abortion.

If you mean unite in the sense that we do not go to war on the question, I'm down with that. I'm okay with such basic unity. We agree to refrain from physically slapping one another around when we disagree, even emphatically. Cool beans.

Perhaps that is what the President meant in his inaugural address. Yet I don't believe so. I think all it was to him was a baseless platitude, a throwaway sentiment, a gushy pandering which serves little purpose but to appear, on the surface, good. "Did you hear that?" he hopes people will say. "Biden wants unity."

That is as empty of meaning as wanting diversity or education or tolerance. Diversity only means A isn't B. This fails to address the underlying and potentially critical questions of the real differences between A and B. 

Education towards what purpose? Tolerance of what and why? Those questions ask, properly, for the contexts in which those words might have useful meaning. The same with unity. The Soviet Union had unity. But would you really want to have lived there?

As it is, without consideration of the what abouts and whys surrounding it, pleas for unity belong on the trash heap of overused, overhyped, and little understood words such as diversity and tolerance. Biden wanted nothing but a sound bite. I'm sure he got it.