Trees, a crowd

There are three Christmas trees in my house. One is your standard tall tree bedecked with lovely lights and ornaments. But, ah, consider the other two:

* One is a replica of Charlie Brown's pathetic little tree. I consider it the finest Christmas decoration in my home.

* The other is a three-foot tree decorated by me and me alone with nothing but Donald Duck lights and ornaments. Some say I am walking a frayed tightrope of sanity.

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Christmastime rekindles a lot of warm memories, such as the time my late friend Ralph popped open a can of beer during Midnight Mass.

A never-forgotten Christmas in Connecticut

For complex reasons, my brother  and I  found ourselves spending Christmastime 1946 with my Aunt May and Uncle John in Somers, Conn., more than 100 miles from our home in Massachusetts. Now my aunt was a sweetheart of a human being and my uncle fooled no one with his gruff exterior, so staying with them was a pleasure. But I was 6 and my brother was 7 and being well away from home, we worried  whether anything would be waiting under the tree for us on Christmas morning. Would Santa even be able to find us at our temporary location?  

Come Christmas morning,  we worriedly tiptoed down the stairs not knowing what, if anything, was waiting for us. We needn't have been concerned, though, for beneath the tree were two wooden wheelbarrows, both painted blue. On the side of one, the name "Richard" was emblazoned  in red, and  "Kenneth" was on the other. Both were fairly overflowing with presents -- toys and games and candy and all the little things that help make Christmas so merry for young boys. 

 

The years flew faster than Santa's sleigh. My uncle John (who, were learned long after, had built the wheelbarrows) passed away, and  several years later so did my Aunt May. Her children had the sad job of emptying out her house in preparation for selling it. They later told my brother and me that when they went to check what was in the attic, they spotted a couple of items tucked deep into a corner. 

 

 There they were, more than three decades later -- the two wheelbarrows, with the wood now split and the paint faded and flaking. Those wheelbarrows no longer held presents, of course, but they were filled with something perhaps even better: the memories of a Christmas made wondrous and joyous by the love of an aunt and uncle.

The above item was written for, and read on, the Sentimental Journey radio show, which originates in Nova Scotia, is heard on several Canadian stations and has a worldwide audience via the Internet. 

 

Usurious credit-card companies strike again

I never received my BJ's credit-card bill for $18. Consequently, they imposed a $39 late fee and refuse to waive it. Take heed, BJ's and Barclaycard customers.

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This is rapidly turning into The Gripe File.

Apple's iTunes strikes a sour note

For the second time since the dawn of the Computer Age, I have been defrauded online. And while neither episode has cost me money, I have paid a price in stress and wasted time.

A couple of nights ago, I was trying to download an App for my iPod touch when my password was rejected time after time, even though I knew I was writing it correctly. The following morning, on a hunch, I checked my online credit-card statement and found three new iTunes transactions, each totaling $40 and change. These certainly weren't mine, so I called my credit-card company, and a fraud squad rep told me the card would be canceled and all copies of it should be shredded. I will get a new card in about a week. Meanwhile, I am being kept busy cancelling all recurring payments with the shredded card, as well as other scheduled payments.

I suspected my password had been breached and  tried to call Apple, but got a recording telling me to e-mail the company. The response was relatively quick but awkward, since I had to keep e-mailing back as other questions arose. My iTunes account was temporarily suspended and the Apple rep informed me that someone had changed both my password and e-mail address. She wrote, "I urge you to contact your financial institution as soon as possible to inquire about canceling the card or account and removing the unauthorized transactions. You should also ask them to launch an investigation into the security of your account.  Your bank or credit card company's fraud department should then contact the iTunes Store to resolve this issue. The iTunes Store cannot reverse the charges." That sounded to me as though the credit-card company has to do most of the work, but what do I know.

Fortunately, the iTunes charges had never passed the temporary authorization stage in my credit-card account and in any event my account has fraud protection. But what a bleeping nuisance. I checked the Internet and found similar stories from other  iTunes customers. Apple, with all its sophisticated technology,  really has to come up with a way to prevent such scamming.

(My other defrauding incident took place on eBay a couple of years ago and involved an evil person who stole my password and had me buying and selling objects for thousands of dollars. I saw no way the defrauder could profit by this and concluded it was done out of sheer malice by someone I don't even know.)

*

As if this weren't enough, last night my iPod Shuffle went through the wash and shuffled off to iPod heaven.

*

The experts say that you should create passwords that are a combination of letters and numbers and even symbols, that you should have a different password for each site you are subscribed to, and that you should change those passwords frequently. I for one am going to take that advice.

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Such is the power of Halloween in Salem that my Salem State College geezer classes will not be held all next week so that we will not have to deal with the mobs of zombies, ghosts, witches and a**holes descending upon the city.

It's a fat world after all

Many things amazed me during my recent visit to Walt Disney World but none more so than the girth of many of the visitors. I saw more obese people at Disney than even in Las Vegas. Some had rented motorized scooters for $65 a day because they were too bloated even to walk much. And all of this seems to have occurred since I last visited Disney World, about two years ago.

Obesity has become a national epidemic. According to the National Institutes of Health, about two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight (I myself could lose a few pounds) but almost one-third are obese, having an abnormally high proportion of body fat. Overweight and obesity are known risk factors for diabetes, coronary heart disease, high blood cholesterol, stroke, hypertension, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea and some forms of cancer. I could go on, but you get the idea. All of us who need to do so should strive to lose weight. The lives we save may be our own, and a thinner America will be a better America.

Shine on, shine on island sun

The sun has been shining almost all of my first week on Prince Edward Island, and all is right with the world.

*

Sunny days find me at the beach, where I wonder when pregnant women decided that bathing suits that expose their bulging bellies is the height of fashion.

*

The only way things could possibly be better would be if my SPF 30 sun lotion hadn't slid into my right eye, where it is currently burning a hole.

Seen my keys? My glasses? Or how about ...

This has been my week for losing things. I can see losing a set of keys. I can see losing a spare pair of glasses. But how could I have lost a 26-inch suitcase?

*

During last night's downpour, the air conditioner in my bedroom was apparently placed in such a way that the raindrops created a loud PING every few seconds. After an hour of that in the middle of the night, I fully understood the efficacy of Chinese water torture.

*

If President Obama had said the Cambridge, Mass., police acted rashly instead of saying they acted stupidly, I don't think such a hullabaloo would have ensued. And the president is usually so careful in choosing his words.

*

I'm off to Prince Edward Island for a two-week stay, after spending a night in Bangor, Maine, at the local casino/hotel. Here's hoping I have money left to spend on the island. Chances are I won't be doing much posting for a couple of weeks, so enjoy the summer and maybe find something that's actually worth reading..

When you're no longer the leader of the pack

“It happens to lots of leading men as they fade into supporting roles,” writes Larry Tye in a new biography of Satchel Paige. “Loneliness sets in, along with sadness. There is more time to remember all you have achieved and to wonder why others have forgotten.” Kind of makes me glad I was never a leading man.

*

I cannot believe that some of the most valuable video in history -- the moon-landing tape -- was accidentally erased by NASA. No wonder there are conspiracy theorists.

*

I finally saw the film version of "Mamma Mia!", then wondered why.

*

A new book says Jacqueline Kennedy had a romantic relationship with Bobby Kennedy.  RFK has also been linked to Marilyn Monroe. Gee, when did he find the time to be ruthless?

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I may be the only person in the world whose favorite Paul Simon song is "Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War." But that's because the song mentions the "deep forbidden music" of the Penguins, the Orioles, the Moonglows and the Five Satins. Oh, for the days of doo-wop.

A voice that evokes memories of The Voice

For decades, he lived and sang in the shadow of his famous father. While Frank Sinatra took the bows in packed stadiums around the world, Frank Sinatra Jr. sang for  sometimes sparse crowds in out-of-the way, no-name lounges. It wasn't that he didn't have a great voice -- he did and does -- but inevitably comparisons were made with a singer who defied comparison. And it didn't help that, early in his career,  Frank Jr.'s very real kidnapping was tagged a hoax by the lawyer for the guilty party. But after his father died, the younger Sinatra's fortunes improved. That was evident in an appearance at Rhode Island's Twin River Casino last Saturday when he packed a very big hall and won a well-deserved standing ovation. Unlike when his father was alive, Frank Jr. nowadays mainly sings numbers associated with Ol' Blue Eyes in a voice that is as close to his dad's as anyone is going to get. In a sense, that is too bad because the non-Sinatra songs he began the concert with were excellent, yet the audience response was tempered. The people, of course, comes for the songs and the memories of the greatest entertainer of the 20th century and that is why the place was jammed. As Frank Jr. replied when someone asked if he'd ever played in Rhode Island before, when he was young and seeking his own path, "I played in places you don't even know existed."

*

When I was driving to the concert, my text-to-speech GPS told me to "take the Lincoln Ree exit." I puzzled over that until I realized that Gina the GPS was translating "RI" as "Ree." She must not be from these parts.

*

Finally getting a sunny day and spending it at the zoo with my grandson -- it doesn't get a whole lot better than that.

*

Speaking of the zoo, the people who run it recently made a bogus claim that budget cuts would lead to closing the zoo and euthanizing animals. That reminded me of that wonderful National Lampoon magazine cover picturing a dog with a gun to his head. The accompanying words were, "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog."

Some use a fist and some use a smile

I was a fifth grader walking home from school when suddenly an older boy grabbed my cap and began flipping it in the air, taunting me all the while. "Hey," said his companion, "don't bother the kid. Let's give him back his hat." He took the cap from his friend and held it in front of me. But when I reached out to get it, he slammed his other hand into my stomach, making me double over. The twosome, it turned out,  was a well-practiced tag team of bullies, who had pulled that cruel trick perhaps dozens of times. After that incident, it took a while before I was again able to trust my fellow man, or at least my fellow boy.

*

When we grow up and have jobs and relationships, all but the fortunate few experience a lot more pain than the above-mentioned punch in the solar plexus. The inflicter of that pain doesn't even have to make a fist and, in fact, may be smiling as he or she delivers the figurative wallop. When that happens, think of the lyrics of "The Mary Ellen Carter," a song that on the surface is about saving a sunken boat:

And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling b**tards lying to you everywhere you go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

*

Now that Robert McNamara is dead, it will be extremely hard to find an American male with his hair parted in the middle.

*

"Hawaii Five-0" had the greatest TV theme music ever.

*

Aretha Franklin has grown quite big, but her voice remains even bigger.

*

Grover has always been my favorite "Sesame Street" character. In fact, I do a pretty fair imitation of him.

Sparkling memories of the Fourth of July

In my memory at least, the Independence Days of my late childhood were always sunny and hot and wonderful. Wonderful because many of them were spent at my aunt and uncle's big, old house in Connecticut, where fireworks were still legal. After a seemingly endless ride in those pre-superhighway days, we would arrive in Somers, a town so small that every resident's birthday was printed on the calendar. My brother and I would quickly renew acquaintances with our cousin, Jackie Brennan, who was my age, and off we would go to the corner store, named Flossie's. We would spend our life savings on firecrackers and for the rest of the day devise daring, creative and, in retrospect, dangerous ways to set them off -- under bottles and on the hoods of passing cars, for example. Sometimes we would ignite a whole package, and, as the day waned, an entire brick. At night, the grownups would put on a show with fountains and rockets, a show that in many ways was more marvelous than the professional, big-buck spectacles of today. Then came the Fourth when we arrived to find that fireworks had been declared illegal, a move that undoubtedly prevented injuries and saved lives, maybe even our own. But in all the years that followed, I have never had an Independence Day that could hold a roman candle to the firecracker-flinging Fourths of my late childhood.

*

Yesterday my wife took me to see the movie "My Sister's Keeper." Watching children suffer is not my idea of a good time. If it hadn't been pouring, I would have walked the quarter-mile to BJ's warehouse and spent the remainder of the movie time roaming the aisles.

*

I can't remember who wrote it, but my favorite description of the Rat Pack (Sinatra, Martin, Davis and Bishop) labels them "baggy-eyed, boozed-up, middle-aged men trying to make it New Year's Eve forever."

*

Everyone has a cellphone. My 5-year-old grandson has a cellphone.

*

When I was dating my wife, one day I said, "Linda, if I were a Carpenter and you were a lady, would you marry me anyway, would you have my baby?" She married me anyway.

*

For someone who can't carry a tune and whose singing voice sounds like the squawk of an angry penguin, I spend a lot of time thinking about songs and singers.

*

In days of old, I would hve several drinks and go wild. Now I have one drink and go beddy-bye.

Nothing new under the sun, or on the air

Long before Conan O'Brien's nightly zaniness, another comedian of Irish descent from the Boston area also made audiences howl with laughter. His name was Fred Allen and his medium was radio. Like O'Brien, Allen (1894-1956) had a variety show that over the years took on  different names but kept the same wackiness. As with O'Brien's show, news stories were fodder for jokes and routines, there was a sidekick (his wife, Portland Hoffa, who would greet him with a hearty "Misssss-ter Allll-llennnn!") and characters galore, not all of whom were politically correct (Mrs. Nussbaum, for example). But while O'Brien thrives on TV, Allen never made a successful transition from radio. Under the bright lights, he looked old and tired and baggy-eyed, and he seemed to lack the verve he brought to radio. But where would O'Brien's show -- and those of his predecessors -- be without the pioneering absurdity of a very funny man named Fred Allen.

*

A couple years back, I nodded off during the movie version of "The Da Vinci Code," so it was only fitting that the other day I nodded off during the sequel, "Angels & Demons."

*

My favorite Michael Jackson song is the poignant "She's Out of My Life." And you can't even moonwalk to it.

*

Homer Simpson is my role model.

*

I love the Heineken TV ad featuring a bunch of drunks singing in a taxi.

Exhaustion, thy name is Maxwell

Whew. My wife and I have just spent three days taking care of our 5-year-old grandson, Maxwell. Or maybe he was taking care of us. In any event, here's what he did:

* Built a Lego city in about an hour. That same task would have taken me a month. That is, a month before I gave up and threw the pieces against a wall.

* Went to Canobie Lake Park in Salem, N.H., where he rode the bumper cars (the Dodgem) six times in a row, often ignoring the traffic because he was busy looking up at the mechanism that causes a spark and propels the cars.

* Announced a career change. Instead of being a train engineer, with his grandparents as his assistants (presumably shoveling in the coal), he wants to join the State Police and operate the command center that is located within a police truck.

* Slept fitfully for a couple of hours, sending the bedsheets and pillows flying, then slept like a motionless angel for a couple of hours, then repeated the process.

* Instructed the plumber on how to tame the disaster that occurred when our outside faucet wouldn't shut off and our yard was being flooded. The plumber appreciated Maxwell's  instructions, acknowledging them with an angry grunt.

It was a marvelous three days, and I think I will recover nicely after an uninterrupted week of sleep.

*

A couple of decades ago, when my daughter (a.k.a. Maxwell's mother) was about 13, I was practicing Michael Jackson's moonwalk in our kitchen when she looked up and said, "Why don't you be like other fathers and play chess or something."

*

Now that the 40th anniversary of Woodstock is coming up, expect to hear from many great pretenders claiming that they were there. If all the people who say they attended the music festival were really there, the ground would have caved in, sending the attendees to the center of the earth.

*

I never see anyone smoking a pipe anymore. I abhor smoking in any form, but I always thought pipe smokers looked kind of cool.

*

My wife prefers to bring junk into the house by going to yard sales. I prefer to bring junk into the house by ordering on eBay and elsewhere. We heartily disapprove of each other's methods.

It was once filled with magic

I remember the dawn of television. I remember chairs lined up in an appliance store so people could sit and gawk at the pictures coming from this new wonder. I remember black-and-white pictures so small that some sets had a magnifying glass in front of the screen. I remember Tuesday night trips with my family to the local social club, where I could be in paradise watching Uncle Miltie while chomping on a nickel’s worth of pistachio nuts. I remember a friend named Bobby Kaminski, whose family was the first in the neighborhood with a TV, inviting me over to watch “Howdy Doody” and me wondering how he could ever leave the house with this magic box in residence. I remember when only three channels were available, and those channels showed a test pattern, or nothing, for much of the day.

I remember tri-colored transparent plastic sheets that people taped over their screens to give the illusion of color TV. I remember announcements that "the following program will be broadcast in compatible color."

I remember watching TV for almost three days straight when John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald were shot to death. I remember watching hours of 9/11 coverage, then turning off the TV with a sigh and playing some soft music instead. I remember the tears in the eyes of many audience members when on election night Barack Obama proclaimed to a Chicago crowd, “Change has come to America.” The TV screen was now giant and wide, the picture was in incredible-looking high definition, and the number of channels to watch was almost uncountable.

Yes, I remember the dawn, and fruition, of television. I also remember life before TV, but that’s a story for another day.

Speaking of TV, one of the dumbest shows ever was certainly “Superman” starring George Reeves. To this day, I cannot understand why Lois Lane, Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, etc., never made the connection between Clark Kent disappearing and Superman arriving. I mean, those people worked for a great metropolitan newspaper, didn’t they? Oh ... maybe that’s why they never figured it out.

And speaking of newspapers, the Boston Globe appears on the brink of taking away lifetime job guarantees. I guess a lifetime just ain’t what it used to be.

When I was maybe 4 years old, I was gathering flowers (most likely dandelions) in a field when a couple of old ladies walked by. “Oh, isn’t that sweet," said one. “He’s making a bouquet for his mommy.” But she was wrong: I hadn’t even thought about what I was going to do with the flowers. I was just collecting them because collecting things for no reason is what I did, and do.

Fathers and sons -- and grandsons, too

I never will forget him

For he made me what I am 

Though he may be gone

Memories linger on

And I miss him, the old man

  --"The Old Man," sung best by John McDermott

Happy Father's Day to all you fine fellows out there. To commemorate the occasion, here are a fatherly item and a grandfatherly one.

*

My older son drives a truck for a living, and is behind the wheel up to 10 hours a day. So what does he decide to do for his vacation? Drive to Virginia. I don't get it, but then there are many things about my kids that I don't get. (And I'm sure they could say the same about me.)

*

I am thrice blessed! In addition to going to two preschool plays within a few weeks, I went to my grandson's preschool graduation. That's right: graduation ceremonies for preschoolers, with T-shirts and visors in lieu of caps and gowns. What next: graduation ceremonies for the babies in a hospital nursery? Anyhow, when called to receive his diploma, Maxwell decided to play the clown, staggering up to the teacher while making monkey faces. Not overly amusing.

A kiddie book with a moral for grownups

How lucky can one man be? Thanks to my grandson, I've been privileged to see two preschool plays within a month! Today's offering was "The Rainbow Fish," a story of a beautiful but selfish fishie who soon found himself isolated because of his selfishness. But when he began to share his beautiful scales, he was surrounded by friends. We should all pay heed. (By the way, my grandson, Maxwell, admirably portrayed an orange fish. But when the rainbow fish shared a scale with him, Max kind of lost interest in the play because he was quite busy playing with the scale.)

*

The other day, I re-watched "Taxi Driver," released in 1976.Robert DeNiro was never that young and cab fares were never that low.

*

Being born. Growing up. Going to school. Graduating. Working. Marrying. Raising children. Burying your parents. Retiring. Dying. Nine down and one to go.

A tummy-tossing trip to the old ball game

When I was in the third grade, I was named a last-minute substitute to go to a Red Sox game with the third-grade patrol boys. I was so excited that I threw up my milk at lunchtime. I don't get that excited about many things anymore.

*

At that age, I really didn't understand how baseball was played, but I did see my father's hero Ted Williams get a hit. I think that later today I will buy a Ted Williams T-shirt, sporting number 9, to commemorate the event.

*

In those days, third-graders were entrusted to stop traffic with red flags on long poles and let pupils cross the street. That would be unthinkable today, yet I suspect the patrol boys of yore were often more alert than some of the people I see doing the job now. And they certainly earn more than  a once-a-year Red Sox trip to Fenway Park was worth ... in those days, anyway.

*

Did you know that the letters in "ELEVEN PLUS TWO" can be rearranged to read "TWELVE PLUS ONE"? Amazing.

The unkindest cuts of all

I guess you could call yesterday Bloody Tuesday. In the morning my wife cut her finger badly in the kitchen, so we roared off to our HMO ... where we waited and waited. By the time they got to her, it's a wonder there was any blood left. Then in the afternoon, we heard the person who handles our savings alibi about why the account has been bleeding red ink.

*

Speaking of money, I am learning that most bloggers make virtually none. I guess that's why the call the Internet a virtual world.

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You know how you sometimes mishear song lyrics? For a half century, when the chorus in Jimmy Dorsey's "So Rare" sang about "Angels singing the Ave Maria," I thought the lyrics were, "Angels singing way off in the rear."

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I don't mean to make a career out of writing about John Updike, but his final short-story collection contains a great quote: "It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you."

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Years ago, I worked at a newspaper that had a photographer named Pete Zaharis. It didn't take long for our summer interns to name him Pizza Harris. (One of those interns went on to win a Pulitzer Prize.)

You've gotta love that shrieking duck!

Those insurance ads featuring a duck yelling 'AFLAC!" just get better and better. My father-in-law loved those ads so much that he would shout "AFLAC!" at random, and one time greeted a bride and groom as they walked down the church aisle after the cremony with "AFLAC!"  When he died, we buried him with a stuffed Aflac duck.

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I always thought there was something smarmy about Arthur Godfrey.

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I knew I shouldn't have stepped on the scales. I knew there was a reason I was avoiding weighing myself.

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Rachel Maddow is an American original.

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I can actually date when I gave up on popular music. It was after I heard Strawberry Alarm Clock singing "Incense and Peppermints."

 

Freddy is on the loose, or soon will be

Freddy the kitten may be little but he is devilishly clever. When I arrived at my daughter's house, Freddy was on the inside but not for long. He was cleverly moving a window screen that he had attached himself to, and soon half of him had found freedom. I was very sorry to do so but called attention to his escape plans.

*

Many retired journalists write books or teach classes. I have never wanted to do either. So proud.

*

Everybody has a Web page these days. My 82-year-old aunt has a Web page.

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I know this is out of season, but the other day I found myself thinking about how when I was 8 or so, I would go on a Great Chestnut Hun, scouring yards and streets for the fallen nuts and collecting them by the hundreds. I would admire their glossy coats and smooth bodies but after a few days it would dawn on me that the chestnuts served no useful purpose. Into the rubbish they would go. I repeated this practice for three or four years, I think.