Wednesday, August 25, 2010

The places we went back then...

(that sounds a lot like the title of a Raymond Carver story, dunnit?)

The post immediately below, with its coda about Benson's in Hudson, brought to mind some of the trips in the days when gas was 15 cents a gallon. Sometimes there were "gas wars" going on and on Sunday afternoon Dad would put us all in the '41 Mercury and drive south on US 5, along the river, down into Connecticut, (usually no further than Windsor Locks) and fill up the tank at eight gallons for a buck. Then we'd get ice cream, and it was a recreational experience. We lived in what's known as The Forest Park neighborhood, "Forest Park" for short. This is (or was, I've no idea what it's like now that Springfield is on its uppers) a lovely, huge park, mostly built on land donated by Everett Hosmer Barney, an industrialist who made a fortune in clamp on ice skates (who'd a thunk it). His family Mausoleum is still in place on the grounds of the park, and is a well-known Springfield landmark. His house, alas, was sacrificed to Interstate 91. We lived within walking distance of the park, and it was a frequent destination for the family when I was very little, and when I got a bit older, a destination for pals & self though under the tutelage of older brother. There was a zoo (still is, I think) and gardens and miles of trails. Dr. Seuss's father was in fact in charge of this zoo once upon a time, I think.

Just up the street (Sumner Ave.) from the Main Entrance of the Park was a shopping district known as "The X" which sounds weird until you look at a map and see that Sumner Ave and Dickinson Street cross there at an acute angle (though I guess it's an obtuse angle if you look at it differently) and form, ayuh, an X. There were Mom & Pop stores there as well as some national outlets, back in the day when a national chain didn't require that the market population be in the millions and the stores take up city blocks. There was, at the X, the Phillips Theater, a "nabe" and many a Saturday afternoon we spent ensconced in its gum-encrusted, popcorn-scented womb. The Phillips had a balcony, whence I learned how to wing an empty popcorn box such that it sailed straight up the middle of the path to the screen, then banked 90 degrees just before it made contact.
Further up Sumner Ave, away from the Park entrance and out of the X, was another nabe, of later construction and smaller capacity, called The Bing, named after the crooner (so legend has it anyway). The Bing was slightly closer to home and didn't require crossing as many major streets, so it was our venue of choice on our 50-cent Saturday expeditions (a quarter for admission - two features, three cartoons, previews, newsreels, usually a sports short, a good full afternoon out of the Parents' hair - plus a dime for a coke, a dime for popcorn, and a nickel for a candy bar - Three Musketeers for me) - but after 1953 the Bing became problematic for mass outings to the movies.

They ran a movie called "The Moon is Blue" in spite of said flicker being denounced by the RC church, which was a major social and political force in the neighborhood (Holy Name). It wasn't a problem for us (we didn't go to ANY church much less the RC flavor) but some of our pals did, and some of their parents were more involved in paying attention to Monsignor's pronouncements than others. So when Monsignor said "Don't go to the Bing" a number of our cronies' parents acquiesced and denied permission to their offspring to frequent said cinema. So we either went to The Phillips at The X, or we went without Smitty and Choochie and Whatzisname with the runny nose. The offense of "The Moon is Blue" by the way was its use of the word "virgin."

Honest to god. Apparently the RCC figured they owned it.

More places later.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Once a week or so, ("or so" meaning more often when I can arrange it)

I stop into a little store in Hudson, New Hampshire, on Route 111 just outside of Nashua* called "The Drink Shoppe" and wander through their collection of microbrews from all over the place, and select something to bring home for spouse & self to try out, ostensibly over pizza, but most of the stuff is good enough to sip on through the rest of the week. Once upon a time there was a micro out in Milford called The Pennichuck Brewing Company, that put out a brew called Bagpiper Scottish Ale that was amazing. And then of course they went out of business.

So last week I grabbed a six of something called Storm King Stout, from Victory Brewing Company in Downington Pennsylvania. It was tasty, lots of body, etc. but the next morning (I had exactly one bottle) my head was fuzzy and uncomfortable. I thought it might have been something else, but the next time I had some of this stuff - a day or two later - the same thing happened.

Now I don't mind having a wee hangover if I've had a dram too many (not that it's happened all that often... lately) but it doesn't seem right that one beer should do that kind of thing to one. Especially at a sawbuck a sixpack. Bluefin Stout, from Shipyard Brewery in Portland, btw, is quite excellent. Almost everything from Shipyard is. Smuttynose puts out some terrific stuff too, especially Old Brown Dog.

* For folks of a certain age and a certain familiarity with this particular part of the world, The Drink Shoppe is diagonally across Route 111 from a large chunk of derelict blacktop that was, in days of yore, the entrance to Benson's Wild Animal Farm. Somewhere, I have a very old photo of self atop an elephant at Benson's. When my grandmother lived in Lowell, it was a special treat for us, as kids, to be driven up into what seemed to be the backwoods at the time (and I reckon it was pretty backwoodsy back then) and visit Benson's. Apparently a GREAT many other folk remember Benson's fondly - http://www.bensonsanimalfarm.com/

Not sure exactly why, but

I signed up for gmail, finally. Initially I stayed clear because of privacy and "content ownership" issues, but it occurred to me that no one is really likely to give a flying fart about my puny little emails. And then I was introduced to "Buzz" which is clearly Google's answer to Twitter, and their bid in the "social networking" sphere. So naturally it got me to thinking about Twitter and social networking, and Droid phones and text messaging, etc. and it further occurred to me that I suppose I should have an opinion about all of this, or at least should say something about it even if I don't really have a fully formed opinion. Which I think I don't. Or at least, I'm not sure if I do, and if I do, I'm not really 100% sure what it is.

One side of my head is very much attuned to technology, and making use of it - I think having all the digital stuff we do is ultimately a good thing for the species and will continue to differentiate us from reindeer and wildebeests, though maybe not so much from chimps if they get hold of iPhones anytime soon. I think this sort of mass communications technology will quite possibly help lift huge chunks of humanity out of their only-slightly-post-neolithic existences more quickly than any other set of tools to date. This will (I think) be a good thing.

On the other hand, the same mass & instant communication capabilities are in the hands of people who wish me ill, not because of anything I've ever done to them, but simply as a result of where I was born & grew up & how I live. I'm enough of a happy idiot to believe that there aren't millions of these people out there who wish me ill, but the downside of our modern age is that there don't have to be millions of them in order for them to potentially do me & my ilk grave harm. And they are indeed working on it, with greater diligence than I'm spending on my day-to-day activities.

But the real "final question" that I suspect I'll spend more thought on, since there's nothing I can do about those bad guys in the paragraph above - nothing much to be done, really, I think they're probably part of the fabric of human life from here on out. They've always been around, of course, but now they're much better armed, in touch with each other over long distances (only a few years ago most of them would have been unaware of the existence of most of the rest of them), and they know where I live, so to speak. But my point, back at the beginning of this paragraph, was that I'm wondering whether we are in fact really seeing something evolutionary taking place. Some years ago we used to joke about teenaged girls having phones surgically implanted. We are not far from that capability (not far hell, I'm quite sure the technology exists, and is in the plans of more than one organization of some kind or another in the real world. And not all of those organizations wish us sweetness and light). But in a nutshell, my ponder is this: are we seeing the beginning of the Borg?

Friday, August 20, 2010

What is it that makes us decide we want to see a movie, and order it in,

and then let it sit on the coffee table of the family room for days on end ("bogarting the queue" we call it) until we either decide we don't want to see it after all and send it back unwatched, or else we decide we're in the mood for it and finally devote a couple of hours away from Cops and World's Dumbest to actually watch something at least ostensibly artful, or else we decide "Geez I'd better at least put it in the DVD player" and we do, and give it 20 or 30 minutes, and like as not walk out on it, and sneak it into the mailer and back to the post office with all due stealth. I think there shoulda been a question mark up there after "stealth" but I"m too lazy to go back and see if that was really all one sentence. Good for me if it was.

I think it's because Netflix gives the impression of being free & unlimited. But bogarting the queue is a bad thing, especially if more than one person feeds it, and tastes are not shared. I gotta cut that out. So I"ll watch The Road and Transsiberian over the weekend. Honest...

If it weren't "One damned thing after another" it would

be everything all at once. A'propos of bupkis, of course, it just occurred to me this morning. It actually re-occurred to me this morning. A while back my wife - in the throes of the sort of concatenation of events that's typical for lots of folks our age & socio-economic bracket - uttered the classic "One damned thing after another" remark, purely as a conversational deadair filler, and the response above just sorta popped out of my mouth. It made her laugh, which was a plenty gratifying result. Of course it's the converse, or contrapuntally moebius or whatever the logico-rhetorical descriptor would be, of the old "Time is just nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once."

Summer is almost over, at least notionally if not calendrically. I always point out to the captive audience of family that - technically - Summer lasts well into the school year by which we all seem to be bound when it comes to seasonal milestones, but in general, no one is having any of it. Summer is over on Labor Day. And it didn't really start 'til the Fourth of July, in spite of the fact that Commercial Summer runs from Memorial Day to Columbus Day (at least in New England. I realize Columbus Day - historically 12 October - is not universally observed).

More important than Summer being almost over is the fact that Foliage Season (or "Leaf Peepin' as we like to call it) is about to begin. This was brought home to me just yesterday when I noticed that the big shade tree out in the garden is beginning to shed its trashy little dull yellow leaves. We have no attractive trees on our property, that I know of. There may be one or two out in the Wayback, but mostly those are poplars and pines. I don't go out there unless I have to, there's too bloody much poison whatzit. So the poplars will dump their gnarly, leathery leaves all over the place, and the scrub maples will turn sickly yellow, while down on Main Street, toward the center of town, the stately oaks and maples that have lined the right-of-way for about 150 years will turn glorious gold & crimson, and burn themselves out in October, which will warn us that dismal November follows to be endured until at least we get a little pretty snow to distract us for a while. And as soon as the year is over we'll be sick of that and wish for spring.

One damned thing after another...

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

So last Friday was the thirteenth of August.

And it only just occurred to me that it was a notable day in the chronicles of who I used to be and how I'm not anymore, and how I got to be who I am now (which is somebody else).

So on the 13th of August, 1969, a new cluster of 2LTs (USAF) were created (by gosh & by golly & by act of congress), down in San Antone, at the old USAF OTS campus known in those days as "Medina" which was sort of an annex to Lackland AFB (more properly LMTC or Lackland Military Training Center, which was the main tenant of Lackland AFB). It was a hot day, and we marched all toy-soldierly out onto the bigass parade field, and stood while some buncha brasshats uttered the usual outrageous bumph, then we were commissioned and all of a sudden transformed from snot-nosed, wet-eared, greenhorn mewling & puking recent college graduates into the Air Force's version of Trained Killers. Well, maybe soon-to-be-trained-killers. If at all.

We threw our wheel hats high in the air, and somehow actually all managed to find our own (at least I did, I dunno how many lost theirs), and then glad-handed each other and got first salutes from various folks, fetched our gear from the barracks, and hauled ass out of San Antone with all possible haste.

I was a couple months shy of 23 years old. Hoping not to be sent to Southeast Asia, where there was a nasty shooting war underway. Many of my pals from Basic Training and OTS (I was one of the twice blessed who got to participate in BOTH levels of indoctrination) did indeed go to SEA - Vietnam & Thailand mostly. As far as I know they all came back. I lucked out & went to Korea. Some pals went to Alaska. After remote assignments, we ended up in places like Syracuse, Duluth, Petersburg Virginia, Seattle, etc. I ran into a couple of my Basic and OTS compadres later on at Syracuse. After leaving the service, we all pretty much left it & each other behind, though recently I've been in touch with a couple of the guys, quite by accident - one's a professor of something wet in Florida, and one's a golf pro.

Military service seems to stick with you; it plays a huge role in shaping who you turn out to be - sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, but always, it seems to me, for keeps. It's the classic "wouldn't want to do it again, but wouldn't have missed it for the world."

Saw Eliza Gilkyson & Cheryl Wheeler Friday night (the 13th of August)

They were each superb in their own ways. Great music, much laughter - if you've heard Wheeler's music but not seen her stage set, you're missing about half of her talent to entertain. And that's saying something, as her music is top notch. I had not heard Gilkyson's music before (though have heard her name around quite a lot) - she too is very versatile, very talented and put on a very enjoyable set. And of course the setting (literally on the shores of Lake Winnepesaukee, on the grounds of Brewster Academy) is picture postcard, and the weather could not possibly have been better.

I watched "The Lion in Winter" the other night

The one with O'Toole and Hepburn from '68. It is a monumentally good film. The language is amazing, the characterizations phenomenal (Anthony Hopkins' film debut as Richard I the Lionheart), the photography stunning (and to my eye at least VERY historically accurate).

Favorite lines:

Eleanor, when John (the pustule) whines that Richard has a knife: "Of course he has a knife. You have a knife, I have a knife, we all have knives, it's 1183 and we're barbarians."

Henry, when, upon learning that Henry has decided to have the Pope "annul her" and get a new batch of kids, since his sons are such putzes, Eleanor asks "To Rome?" and Henry says "That's where the keep the Pope."

The script is rife with lovely gems, but those two have always stood out for me. And their final exchange, as Eleanor is back in her barge and headed back to her imprisonment:

Henry: I hope we never die!
Eleanor: Me too!
Henry: Do you think it might happen?

and they both laugh, and laugh, as Eleanor's boat heads down river toward the channel.