July 4th Roundup-Aftermath

Mom looks like Katherine Hepburn, her best friend Betty looks like Donna Reed and her other best friend Margaret looks like Loretta Young. Movie stars, the three of them. Right now they are doing dishes, it's late at the lake. The men? They're sitting out in the yard, lying to each other, that's what the old man calls it anyway.

Ginny's mom, Betty is divorced, Ginny hates, with the power of a thousand burning suns, her mom's boyfriend Mike. I don't like him either. I get the feeling nobody likes him, except Betty. I've heard bachelor Bert mutter, "Jesus what an asshole" more than once.

We only have two bedrooms at the lake, 5th wheel Bert and the two couples are staying in Mentor at a drive up to the door motel. At the last minute, Ginny finds out she is staying with us. She storms out of the cabin yelling "I hate you, you are disgusting!" Ginny knows what's up.

Mom and dad are standing out in the driveway saying goodbye, they are loud and laughing. I join Ginny on the front porch steps, I start to say something and she says 'Just shut up." We sit and slap mosquitoes.

The old man comes out on the porch, he's got a shopping bag, Roman candles are sticking out of it. I perk up, he says, "Come on you two, let's have some fun. We head down the steps to the dock.

These aren't regular roman candles, they are mortars, military grade fireworks. The old man says,"Ralphie's dad ordered them special for us, not supposed to have them." Ginny is momentarily un-pissed, I'm so excited I feel like I have to.

"Ka-god damned-boom" a red ball of fire arcs out over the lake, it must be 200  hundred feet in the air, then another and another, red, green, yellow balls of fire. The old man hands me one of the candles. You could hold off a Panzer attack with one of these babies...the old man lights it with a Zippo. My arm recoils, Holy shit, a burning red glob of fire shoots across the lake. Ginny is jumping up and down. My eyes are as big as saucers, the old man is  laughing, "point up a little more, Jesus not that high, it'll come down on your head...blam, blam, blam. This great!

The old man lights the last two for us, Ginny has one and so do I. Boom, blam, ka-boom. This is so good, I think we both have our first orgasms!

Back up the steps from the dock to the cabin, we're laughing, mom isn't, she's on her hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor, she looks at the old man and says, "I'm glad you're having fun." The old man announces he's, 'going to bed". Ginny and I help mom clean up. Done, Mom smokes a cigarette out on the porch, she's tired and pissed. Ginny, pissed again, sits next to her on the porch swing, mom puts her arm around Ginny's shoulder, Ginny is sobbing, mom is patting her hair. No place for me, I stay away, lips zipped. Like Ginny, I know what's up.

Mom goes to bed, Ginny crawls in with my sister, my little brother is on the cot in the "kid's room". I'm on the sofa in the living room, wide awake under a Hudson Bay blanket, a red one with black stripes.

4th of July Round Up

First actual cook out at the new lake cabin, the old man lights the grill using boat gas...mmm good.

Same time, same place. The bottom paint on Gramp's fishing boat is peeling after 4 weeks in the water, fact is he used barn paint, pointed out by smart ass grandson who noticed it while swimming underwater near the dock and handed him a chunk of paint...

M40 goes off a foot or 2 from my hand, hand is numb, the old man's words cut through the ringing in my ears, "Be careful with those, you could blow your hand off"...

My grand parents on both sides are from the generation who dress up for cook outs and picnics, one grand father has a tie on and it's 90 degrees...they both wear hats too

A few years later...

Mom and dad have a bunch of friends at the lake for the 4th. I'm 12, Mom's best friend's daughter Ginny is 13, we ask, politely, a very drunk Bert if we can take his T-Bird for a ride, Bert says sure, we ask 5 more times...

Mom and a couple of her friends want to go for an evening boat ride, I don't check the fuel (I'm 12 for chrissakes) we run out of gas in the Flyer 3/4 of a mile from the cabin. Can't row a runabout. I go over the side grab the bowline and side stroke the boat back to the cabin while mom and her pals smoke and enjoy the evening breeze...when we get back smart ass Ginny says she's REALLY glad she did go along...Ginny's mom Betty says, "you're quite the swimmer"...

Setting off fireworks later in the evening, my little brother is running around with a sparkler, trips and burns his hand, starts wailing, shuts up when he gets a Popsicle shoved in his mouth...my young sister changes her clothes for the 10th time that day (encouraged by Ginny) gets her ass chewed by mom after she sees all the clothes on the floor of the "kid's room"...my sister weeps for a minute, promises to be good, changes her clothes again and comes out for the fireworks wearing lip stick and rouge applied by Ginny...mom gives up...

The old man likes fireworks as much as I do, I notice  he seems a little unsteady as he bends over to light them off, probably something to do with all all the Canadian Club he's been drinking since noon...our adult supervision doesn't notice that Ginny and I steal a couple of cold beers out of the cooler...we drink them under the birch trees along the driveway...

We have the old original outhouse out back in service and it's being put to good use by the men, Bert is sitting in there and my dad's best friend Bobby lights an entire pack of Black Cats, opens the door and tosses them in the privy and holds the door closed, Bert comes out more dazed than when he went in....Bert called Bobby multiple bad names, as a ex navy man he knew a lot of them....Ginny and I decide it's not a good time to ask him if we can take the T-Bird for a ride again.

Happy 4th...

A Dissertaion on Life from Rusty in Winnipeg

I'm a member of a group, it's a loose group , but still a group of sorts. We're tied together from being or having been North American broadcasters...Rusty Smith posted his story the other day....

WINNIPEG MANITOBA—The best years in the life of Rusty Smith—veteran, husband, and father of five—are never going to happen, the 43-year-old broken man realized Monday.

"Well, I guess that's that," said Smith, sitting in his pickup waiting for the light to change on Talbot, the realization finally smacking him full in the face. "This is it—it's not going to get any better. In fact, it's probably just going to be a gradual but steady decline from here on."

Rusty, who for years had waited for something to bring him satisfaction, then pulled over to the side of the road on Regent and watched cars pass by for an hour and a half. By the time he returned to the split-level ranch home on Horton he purchased at a high mortgage rate in 1999 and has yet to pay off, his wife was angry with him, his favorite TV show was over, and his cold dinner had been given to the family dog.

"I guess I always just figured the really good years were right around the corner," Smith said. "What a pantload. I remember in high school, thinking that as soon as I got a car, the best years were really gonna kick in. I'd be able to go anywhere, get girls, maybe get laid, and people would think I was cool. Then, when I finally got a car, it was such a shitheap, I figured that once I got a better car, then everything would be fine. Well, you know what? I've owned 11 cars in my life, and I thought the same exact thing about each one of the fuckers. Not one in the succession of cars I've bought since I was 16 has ever done anything for me but drag my sorry ass to and from work every goddamn day of my life. That's it."

Shortly after returning home, Rusty, feeling himself inexorably drawn into a vortex of despair, made his way to the upstairs bathroom, where, despite having no need to use the facilities, he sat on the toilet for approximately 20 minutes to avoid all human contact. The last seven of those 20 minutes were spent trying to ignore the pounding and whining of his teenage daughter Robyn, who pleaded with him to unlock the door so she could "get [her] face on."

Rusty eventually relocated to the garage, where he stood next to his workbench and made patterns in the floor dust with his foot. While doing so, he pondered the fact that achieving his goal of getting laid merely resulted in the birth of another human being who wanted to get laid, too.
"I know Robyn thinks that if she gets one of the boys at school interested in her, she'll be popular, and that the best years of her life will begin," Smith said. "Little does she know she's just perpetuating an endless string of DNA replication that isn't going anywhere."
After nearly an hour in the garage, Rusty Smith walked to his driveway and stared at a rake lying on its side on the front lawn.

"After I graduated high school in '90, I joined the Navy. I thought the best years of my life would finally arrive because I'd get out of this boring hellhole of a Province," Smith said. "I now see that the feeling was oddly similar to the one I had in '92, right before I finished my first tour in the Navy, and all I wanted to do was get back to Transcona where things were so much better. Why couldn't I see it at the time?"

Over the course of Rusty's life, each time he reached a milestone, he believed that his best years were about to begin. Among these life events were losing his virginity, getting married, fathering his first through fifth child, having his children move out, buying a better house, and getting his overbite fixed. None of these events, however, made the slightest impact on his overall happiness.

Compounding Smith's misery were depressing thoughts about the many things he has never gotten around to doing, including playing harmonica in a blues-rock band, breaking a 250 score in bowling, traveling to the ancient pyramids of Egypt, and learning to play harmonica in the first place.

"It's like you're thinking, 'The world's my oyster and anything is possible,'" Rusty said. "'As soon as this next immediate obstacle to happiness is cleared, I'll be able to do anything I want.' Then the goals become less and less realistic as you pass 35, and you start to set more modest goals for the best years of your life, like making shift supervisor at the goddamn shipping company where you work. Eventually, even these pathetically scaled-down fantasies prove unworkable, since some asshole named Ron Stanke has seniority at the plant and obviously isn't going anywhere. Suddenly, you're 41, and at long last, you figure out that whatever it is you're hypothetically still waiting for, it's pretty much irrelevant. Then you go to bed and have to work at the shipping company for another nine hours the next day, and that's pretty much that."

"I guess I should stop thinking about life as something that even involves the term 'best years of my life,'" Smith told the rearview mirror of his car while parked behind a local Wendy's, eating a burger, Biggie fries, and Biggie Frosty. "I guess a more appropriate term would be something like 'least intolerable meals at fast-food drive-thrus of my life,' or something along those lines."

Still in relatively good health for a man his age, Rusty Smith then girded himself for the remaining 30 to 40 years before he dies.

I sent Rusty this note,,,

And I thought Americans were the only people who worried about shit like "best years of my life".

If you're ever in SoCal Rusty, stop by, I'll pour you a nice glass of Scotch or make you one of my "Geo Special Martinis" and we can discuss just how fucked up we all are, were and will be.

Mom's Day

I was fortunate to have had strong women in my life, both my grandmothers, fraternal and maternal and my crabby old greatgrandma. Nanny lost her husband as a child-bride and raised her daughters on her own at a time when women didn't do that, she did and it's no wonder she was kind of crabby!

My Mom graduated from high school in 1942 and married my Dad. She was a good student, athlete and actress. Oh god, was Mom dramatic when she wanted to be! She could have and wanted to go to college, but it was WW2, she loved my Dad and wanted to marry him, so she did. It was the first of many, many acts of sacrifice she would perform during her life. Mom was a good looking woman, I always thought she was a Katherine Hepburn type, tall, thin and (again) dramatic and had classic good taste and style. Like so many young women during the war, she and two of my dad's fellow pilot trainees wives followed their young husbands from training base to training base. Mom lived close to Dad in Texas and North Carolina. The girls became life- long friends and when they got together they had an incredible amount of fun.

When Dad had his first heart attack at 37, it scared the hell out of her, but she carried him and all of us until he recovered. Dad was frustrated, angry and in pain for the next 20 years. Mom bore the brunt of it and I never knew until years later how hard it was for her and how many issues she had with Dad. My Mother was widowed at 54 and never remarried. She was, until she died, madly in love with Dad. I can only guess when they met again in the great cosmos, he got a big hug, kiss, a kick in the ass and a piece of her mind. And then many, many kisses.

Mom was a reader and she made sure I was. In later years I'd read a book, send it to her and we'd discuss it over the phone. A two person book club.

When I was single and living in Boston I'd fly Mom out for a week and she would immerse herself in the culture and energy of the city. My friends all thought she was great and it was fun to have the old girl around. During one visit, I woke up at 3am and found my mother sitting in the living room wide awake. I asked if anything was wrong, she said "no, I just can't sleep." She had spent the afternoon at Caffe Royale, sitting outside reading and had consumed 9 cups of "that wonderful coffee that comes in the little cups." Her eyes looked like pinwheels! Later Jan and I took her sailing and for a woman who always said "I don't like boats" she sure seemed happy. We'd sail for an hour or so and then Mom would go below and take a nap on the "low side". Sailing agreed with her.

Mom was an alcoholic and the thing I may proudest of is that she whipped it.

Mom died 5 years ago surrounded by her sons, daughters, sister, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

A day doesn't go by that I don't miss her.