Step Up to Dutch Masters and Smile, Brother, Smile

When I was a young’un, my dad smoked cigarettes for a time, but never once do I remember him smoking a cigar. Regardless, Dutch Masters cigar boxes were apparently the preferred household storage container. The one in the photo above is one of the few surviving examples. Circa 1974, it served as the bank vault for Japanese Giants, the daikaiju-themed fanzine of my creation (notice the “Mag Money” label scrawled at the top of the front panel). Later, as you may note from the sticker on the lid, my brother appropriated the box for his own use, probably nefarious (thankfully, after I had cleaned out the vault). Once I re-appropriated it, the box became a repository for letters from other daikaiju film fans, as well as selected love notes I wrote to prospective girlfriends (which were promptly returned either unanswered or with accompanying notes of refusal, in varying degrees of politeness). It is these latter items, which I have saved as souvenirs, that currently occupy the box.

Anyway, this particular musing stems from the somewhat belated revelation that, for all the cigar boxes in the house, my dad didn’t smoke cigars. Or did he? I know a number of his friends did, though it seems unlikely he would have acquired their empties for whatever reason. Now, Dad did have a massive postage stamp collection, and he even ran his own philatelic business through the 1970s into the 1980s. At one time, I recall there being dozens of cigar boxes full of stamps of every nationality and denomination stacked in every available household space. Perhaps it was a stamp collecting thing. Cigar boxes for stamps. Maybe there was a corresponding market for empty cigar boxes back when. Hell if I know, but if I’m going to lose sleep, which seems to be an inevitability these days, it’s a far better to lose it dwelling on this shit than, for example, the anti-vax idiocy I encountered earlier today, which nearly sent me over the edge.

On that note, I’ll leave you with this little jewel.

Some Week!

Today is Brugger’s birthday — which we celebrated at Fleming’s Steakhouse & Wine Bar this past week with friends Stephen and Samaire — and it kind of snuck up on me that it’s also Mother’s Day. Above, you see Mum holding Phred, guarded by a weird little cowpoke, circa 1964. Hard to believe that, of the family I grew up with, I am the last survivor. Never would I have believed such a thing. This week, I’ve reflected a lot on a sometimes tumultuous but essentially rich life. I miss my mom, my dad, and my brother more than words can ever express.

Although, overall, this week hardly seemed much out of the ordinary, it offered a number of unprecedented and/or unusual moments. We began the week with my birthday. Sixty-two great big ’uns, that’s how many of these particular days I have weathered. For my birthday, I bought myself a Godzilla figure — something I’ve done only once in the past four decades. It seemed the thing to do at the time. So, in the same spirit, for Brugger’s birthday, I bought myself a MechaGodzilla (Kiryu) figure. Lord knows, I can’t afford for this kind of thing to become a habit, but at least the MechaGodzilla was pretty much free, due to having all kinds of bonus points to spend at Amazon.com.

Early in the week, a young gray fox came around to visit. I have, on occasion, encountered foxes in the wild, but never one around these parts. It was a lovely critter to see, yet I fear it came over to my yard because the fuckers down the way are cutting down all the woods to make way for yet another goddamn superfluous subdivision. I’m so sick of these shitheads cutting down every inch of green space in this town I could fucking spit. It’s ugly, harmful, disgraceful. You might be forgiven for believing I hold strong opinions on this subject.

On a far more intriguing note, last night, Brugger and I spent a most enjoyable evening at the home of our friends (and geocaching buddies) Tom (a.k.a. Skyhawk63) and Linda (a.k.a. Punkins19). We did, believe it or not, partake of some wine, and our hosts provided a superb kabob dinner, followed by (fresh) strawberry shortcake and an intriguing dessert wine. We had kicked back to relax around their newly built firepit when Linda noticed an unknown phenomenon in the sky: a seemingly endless train of lights in the sky, moving at high speed directly above our heads. At first, we though perhaps it was the wreckage of the Chinese rocket that had been predicted to crash to earth last night; these objects, however, appeared far too uniform and perfectly spaced to be wreckage. And soon, we noticed a perpendicular stream of lights farther south. Brugger immediately took to Google, and we discovered this was almost certainly SpaceX’s StarLink satellite train. Now, I tend to keep up with most such technological developments, but I confess that this one had completely eluded my attention. None of us had any inkling about the existence of such a thing. I found it a bit disappointing that this was not the long-awaited Martian invasion, but then, the odds against anything coming from Mars are a million to one, as the quote goes. Unfortunately, the video I took provided only a black sky and a lot of slightly alcohol-slurred exclamations from the group of eyewitnesses. Similarly, my photos (example above) convey the spectacle only slightly. Regardless, it was an unexpected and, at the time, exciting experience for the lot of us.

Comparatively, it may be far more prosaic, but the house renovation continues to progress slowly but surely. Early in the week, we had the downstairs rooms measured for new flooring and the deck stained, the latter courtesy of Carlos’ Paint Company (the same folks who did a bang-up job on our living room). I’ve put in several evenings on various interior projects, and Brugger and I worked most of the day yesterday, she prepping the downstairs bathroom for painting, I painting doors and trim and putting up new blinds.

Now, I can only hope my houseful of giant monsters don’t get loose and undo the labor and expense Brugger and I have put into all this.

I barely managed to touch Georgia: The Haunting of Tate’s Mill, my Ameri-Scares novel-in-progress, but I hope to get more time in on it this week. There’s still a mess of estate business to deal with too, so we shall see what we shall see. And that, I reckon, is that.

Freshly painted doors in the living room

Downstairs bathroom, walls stripped of wallpaper, ceiling blessedly bereft of popcorn,
mirror removed (so now it looks really tiny in there) 

A Sad Day in April

Dad coached my City Recreation League basketball team, circa 1970.

My dad passed away on this day in 2001 — somehow, that was 19 years ago. I've written about him here extensively over the years. On today, I'm thinking of him a lot. It was nice that I spent most of last evening in his den at the old homestead, writing, watching movies, and listening to music. A peaceful, warm evening of remembrance.

April is a bad month for mortality. I've lost a lot of friends and loved ones, including a couple of cats, in April. Such a beautiful yet sad month.

A few links to older blogs about Dad, collected in one place:

• "4/11/01, My Dear Dad," April 11, 2009
  
• "Ten Years After," April 11, 2011
• "Twelve Years Ago Today," April 11, 2013
• "Dad's Day," June 16, 2013
• "Father's Day Reflections," June 19, 2016

Soul Coaxing

If you didn't grow up in the years between 1950-something and 1970-something, this one isn't for you. This one is for the old farts.

Thanks mostly to my dad, the soundtrack to my childhood was mostly easy listening — what many people might call elevator music. Now, he listened to all kinds of different music, from classical to folk to country to Broadway hits (he never came around to rock & roll, alas), but what I remember most was Dad retiring to his den after dinner, putting on the radio to one of the then-ubiquitous easy-listening stations, and engaging in whichever hobby he preferred at that particular time (early in my childhood, he built plastic model kits of sailing ships, rockets, airplanes, and such; later, he renewed his lifelong interest in stamp collecting and eventually started a lucrative business buying and selling postage stamps from around the world, which he called The Virginia Stamp Exchange). Due strictly to proximity, I became familiar with the sounds of Bert Kempfaert, Andre Kostelanetz, Paul Mauriat, Francis Lai, Percy Faith, and many others of that musical persuasion. I actually enjoyed much of it, and nowadays — since I prefer to have mellow music playing when I'm writing — I will oftentimes put on some of these tunes to provide the soundtrack to whatever fictional world I happen to be constructing at the time.

The other day, on Sirius XM, I heard a tune that hit me right in the heartstrings. It's Raymond LeFevre's "Soul Coaxing" from 1968, which I can't say I actually recall from childhood, yet it struck such an intense nerve of familiarity that I decided to track it down on YouTube. It's a fine instrumental, distinctly reminiscent of the Lai/Mauriat/Kempfaert sound I knew so well as a youngster. So, I'm sharing it here. Enjoy it if you're of a mind to listen. And do mind your manners because there's plenty more where that came from.

Going up.

A Random Tale of Electrifying Terror

The two most terrifying experiences of my life both occurred in Myrtle Beach, SC, a couple of years apart. The first was when I got eaten by a shark (A Random Tale, Sept. 20, 2011). The second was when I got blowed up real good by lightning. You'd think I might have an aversion to Myrtle Beach, but really, these things only make the place somewhat more endearing.

I'm pretty sure it was the summer of 1977, and my parents, my brother, and I were on our annual pilgrimage to the beach, where we owned a time-share unit for a week in June. In those days, my dad and I were both avid golfers, and playing golf at the beach was a rare treat. I think we played at a different course each day of the week we were there. On our final outing for the week, as was customary, Dad and I teamed up with another twosome we met at the course to make a regulation foursome. We headed out under clear skies, with no indication that rain might interfere with our game.

We were about as far out on the course as one can get when we saw the first clouds. We had just been laughing about some fellow who was apparently having a bad day of it: he had hurled one of his golf clubs up in a tree and it had gotten stuck in the limbs. He was trying to knock it out of the tree by throwing more clubs at it. By the time we had finished putting on the nearby green and started out for the next tee, he had three more clubs stuck up there. That was when we noticed the sky had turned almost as black as night. At the beach, fierce squalls can often blow in without warning, and when that lightning starts popping, you really don't want to be out in it. Well, we saw that lightning — disconcertingly close — and then discovered, to our good fortune, there was a shelter not very far away. Dad drove our cart at express speed to the shelter, with our partners and several other golfers close behind. Once underneath the roof, the cart drivers all maneuvered so the rubber tires of each cart were touching the tires of another. There was a restroom in the shelter, and I needed to pee, so I stepped out of the cart and began making my way toward the restroom door.

B-B-B-OOOOO-M-M-M — CRACK! — B-B-B-OOOOO-M-M-M!

My God, I'd never heard anything like it. A brilliant light flashed in the corner of my eye, and when I looked around, a blue-white ribbon of electricity was corkscrewing around the trunk of a large tree about thirty feet from the shelter. With a sound like a 1,000-pound bomb going off, bark exploded in long, snakelike ribbons in all directions, some clattering down on the roof of the shelter.

I don't even know how I got inside the restroom. All I know was that, for the next several minutes, I was crouching on the concrete floor with my hands over my head, intoning "Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my OH MY GOD!" I only knew the storm had ended when my dad rapped on the door and called, "Son, are you ever coming out of there?"

Till that hole, which was probably 13 or 14 out of 18, I was playing some pretty respectable golf — a couple of strokes under par. At the end of the round, I came in something like ten over par. I'll blame the fact that the golf course was waterlogged after the storm; it had nothing to do with the fact that not all of the wetness on me was necessarily rainwater.

That was the day I got blowed up by lightning.

Father's Day Reflections

I have on occasion written about my dad here in ye old blog, but for Father's Day I am inclined to record a few more in-depth thoughts about him. Last week, he would have celebrated his 86th birthday. Fair warning — this will probably be long, and it is mainly for my own edification and perhaps for any readers who knew Dad. I might mention that it's a hot, muggy day, and I wish I was at the beach. From the time I was 18 until my mid 30s, we owned a time-share unit at Regency Towers in Myrtle Beach, SC, and our assigned period was the third week in June, which usually encompassed Dad's birthday and/or Father's Day. I always looked forward to going, particularly when I was in my 20s because, well, it was the beach, and there were lots of young women to chase after (though I can't say I was all that good at catching them). But it became a tradition of special family time, for relaxation and togetherness. The good old days, those were. And though cynics will always tell you there was never any such thing, it's all subjective. To me, the good old days were when the people I loved most were still alive. So many are gone now.

Dad came from a family of meager means, but he was smarter than a whip and dedicated to building a comfortable life for himself and his family. For 30 years, he worked for Dupont, mostly in Martinsville, VA, where I grew up. He had simple tastes and was pretty frugal, but he was sometimes known to splurge on the family, especially around Christmastime. For weeks before the holiday, right up through Christmas Eve, he'd often have to "run up the street" to pick up something he'd thought of for my brother and me. He did enjoy his shopping, and he was a bargain hunter. If he bought something but saw it cheaper somewhere else, he'd turn right around, return the item, get his money back, and go purchase it at the better price. (This could sometimes be frustrating for us young 'uns when we just wanted to go back home.) His main indulgence for himself came in the form of a couple of Ford Mustang convertibles, one a 67 model (pale yellow with a black top), the other a 72 (fire-engine red with a black top). I learned how to drive in that 72 Mustang, and Mom used to quip that Dad wanted to be buried in that car. It didn't last that long, but he did keep that car until sometime in the late 1980s.

His favorite avocation was stamp collecting. He had a massive collection of postage stamps from all over the world, and in the late 60s or early 70s, he started a stamp business called Virginia Stamp Exchange, which became quite lucrative for him. As an adolescent, I took a brief shine to the activity, but it wasn't one of those that lasted. Still, I knew enough about it that, in my late teens, he paid me some small wages to help him out with it when the business overwhelmed him.

Dad loved his golf. He wasn't exactly a great player, but for years he golfed with a regular bunch of gentlemen at Forest Park Country Club, and when I was a teenager, I took up the game and spent many weekends on the course with him and his cronies. Now, at home, he rarely uttered language stronger than "Dadgummit!" or "Friggit!" but on the course, he could sure let some words fly. Most of the epithets I currently use for bad drivers and other annoying assholes I learned from Dad on the golf course.

Now, Dad was generally a patient man — to a point. Once you passed that point, you needed to watch out. He probably swatted me a time or two when I was a kid, and lord knows I deserved it, but his main disciplinary power came from his voice. He could bend steel with a few words, sometimes low and growling, sometimes sharp and piercing, designed to paralyze his target with dread. Whenever Mum caught me doing something terribly wrong (a not infrequent occurrence), the worst thing I could possibly hear was "I'm going to have to tell your father about this." Chilling, horrifying words, those. Along those lines, back in the late 90s, his brother Gordon came for a visit, and we were all sitting around the sunroom table while the two of them reminisced about their sordid past (and my lord, did they have some stories). Deadpan, Gordon said, "Carl, you may not be able to relate to this, but our dad had a temper." I thought Dad was going to choke to death laughing. I have largely inherited my father's disposition, which came down from his father before him. Clearly, we came by it honestly.

Dad on his honeymoon, circa 1956

Like Mom, Dad was a Christian — his father was a Methodist minister, as a matter of fact — with simple faith; no fire and brimstone judgment, no biblical scholarship, just a heartfelt following of the Golden Rule and trusting that the lord would lead him where he needed to be in life. Perhaps the most telling example of Dad's faith was when several church members were gathered at our place for dinner. Dad knew that the choir was trying to raise money for a trip — I can't remember specifically where — and they had come up short on funds. Quietly, Dad called the choir director into his office, asked how much they needed, and then wrote a check for that amount. He gave it to the choir director on the condition that he not reveal where that money came from. He didn't want any attention drawn to himself, only that those folks get to go on their trip. That was largely how he lived his faith. No showmanship, no fanfare, just quiet sincerity and deep care for others.

Politically, Dad was conservative, of the Eisenhower persuasion; the current GOP would have revolted him. He instilled in me a deep sense of personal responsibility and compassion. But one of his strengths was seeing and understanding alternative viewpoints, and whenever we had discussions of any depth, he always presented me with thoughtful counters to my points, regardless of whether he believed in them himself. He wanted me to understand that personal decisions are not made in a vacuum, and to make sound ones, I needed to gather as much information as possible before committing to an idea or goal. Yet, almost paradoxically, he hated indecisiveness, and he always pressed me to not waffle at decision-making time. This has been a powerful motivator in my life, the downside being that, especially in my younger days, I made lots of quick decisions, either not understanding or ignoring the consequences of rash action. A difficult balancing act, to be sure, but it was one Dad mastered from an early age.

In the late 1960s, Dad was afflicted with a very severe case of diabetes, the complications of which eventually took his life. Despite dedicated effort on his part, and Mom's, he could never keep his blood sugar regulated, and he had terrible insulin reactions that one could have mistaken for epileptic fits. These were violent and painful, and they scared me to death when I was a kid. In later years, he lived with endless pain, eventually to the point that he could no longer work. Fortunately, Dupont offered him early retirement, with excellent benefits, at age 52, so he was able to still have a few quality years with Mom before he became completely physically debilitated. He died in 2001, at the too-young age of 70.

Dad and I had our conflicts, diverging opinions and philosophies, and outright personality clashes from time to time. But according to Mom, at no time did he ever stop being proud of me or respecting my views, even when he could not understand them (I was a bit weird). He supported me when I didn't deserve it more times than I could count. Yes, Dad had plenty of flaws, but as an increasingly self-aware individual, he never ceased struggling to overcome them. His life was testimony his success. He made me proud to be his son, and to this day, he is my hero. With my mom's health failing, and me having to take over more and more of her personal affairs, I feel I need him more than ever. And he is with me.

I miss you and love you, Dad.

Dad coached my City Recreation League basketball team, circa 1970.

Dad's Day

Pa on his honeymoon, August 1956; that stance sure looks familiar.

It's Father's Day, and yesterday actually would have been my dad's 83rd birthday. It's been over 12 years since he passed away. There's not a day I don't miss him. After his long decline due to complications from diabetes, it took quite a while for me to be able to look back without the accompanying sadness. Nowadays, though, it's easier to remember all those wonderful times from days past.

In my teenage years, I always enjoyed the time around his birthday and Father's Day because it meant we were going to Myrtle Beach, where we had a time-share apartment at Regency Towers in south Myrtle. I had some of the best times of my life there, and I think those are among the days I'd most like to re-live. (Though I can't say it was quite the happiest thing ever to discover that just this morning a young girl was attacked by a shark at Myrtle Beach!)

At the other end of the whole fatherhood thing, I can't say as I ever had much in the way of paternal instincts. I was kind of thrust into the role of parent when I got married way back when, and it was one hell of an adjustment... not to mention a rigorous, ongoing learning experience. There were lots of trials with the young 'un way back in the day, but even since my divorce, my daughter, Allison, has remained very close and has proven herself a remarkable, wonderful young critter. I'm very proud to be her dad.

Happy happy day to all the fathers. Be a good one.

A rough-looking bunch! 1973, I believe.

Twelve Years Ago Today...

Mom and Dad before I was even a glimmer

...My dad passed away. Complications from severe diabetes, which he'd had for most of his adult life. If he'd been able to avail himself to the refined medications and general expertise we have about the disease today, he'd likely still be with us. He simply could never control his blood sugar, no matter how precise his regimen. His dosage of insulin and  diet might be exactly the same every day for a week, but his blood sugar still fluctuated madly day after day. I remember some of the violent insulin reactions he had; they were terrifying. Worse than epileptic seizures. Violent. Horrifying. Frequent. Thank ye gods, Dad was able to retire from a 30-year career with Dupont at age 52 — younger than I am now — and have some quality of life before the disease destroyed his body.

If he were alive today, Dad would be 82 years old, and I confess I find it difficult to imagine him at that age. He was relatively young when he died — just shy of 71 — but those last few years barely counted as living. He suffered a rapidly progressive debilitation that by all appearances rivaled AIDS. I've always believed diabetes has been an "under-rated" disease. It doesn't get the attention that cancer, HIV, and heart disease command with the media, but I saw up close and personal how devastating it can be. Fortunately, medical advances in the past few years have reduced, if not eradicated, the kind of suffering my dad went through. Till the end, his mind remained sharp, and while in hindsight there are so many things I wish we could have shared during those last days, at least from my view, we parted without words left unspoken. For that, I feel blessed.

If there's any lesson Dad left me, it's to treasure the moments... the people... the experiences... that life offers us. My mom is still alive and doing fairly well. I talked to her just a while ago, and though it was all about nothing earth-shaking, it was a memorable and, yes, precious exchange. Life is short. A blip. You know, at the end of the day, what I really want is to make my little blip count for something. The way my dad did.

Father's Day 2011

Dad died just over ten years ago—April 11, 2001. A great man he was. Seen here with a strange little dude, sometime in 1959.

Time Passages

Mercy; today would have been my dad's 80th birthday. He passed away in 2001, which sometimes seems ages and ages ago...and other times so recent that I can recall every detail of that very difficult time. For many years, our family would go to the beach around the time of Dad's birthday, so most of my memories for this week in June are of sun and sand. Good times indeed. And suddenly, I have a hankering to go to the beach.

Today is also my great-uncle's 94th birthday. He's still getting along; hope I do so well if I ever manage to make it to some ripe old age. Of course, I was never sure I'd make it to 50, and now I'm past that, the future seems closer but less predictable than it used to. Of course, I've never been any good at predicting, and not being much of an optimist, that's probably a good thing. Well...I suppose you could call me a glass-half-empty kind of optimist. Yeah.