IT WASN’T ‘EMMY’NENT!

Well, I had it all figured out, it would occupy the space I had reserved on my mantle when I built a fireplace for it for my Noble Peace Prize, and I was planning to make a traveling case for it when I left the house everyday, but it is not meant to be this year. I’m talking of course about the Emmy #1 Son should have won but did not.

Life goes on and we must adjust, and I will try to understand that those (%^$#@^(&% in Hollywood don’t know what they are doing.

The thing that really makes me angry is for the second time in two years, it is the last award given out, and for the last two years in a row I waited through about 3 hours of lame jokes, had they hired the writers of The Big Bang Theory to write them, they would have been entertaining!

In spite of the fact that the writers are the best writers to come out of the world since the Ten Commandments, they were once again denied!

But life goes on and we must adjust, and I will try to understand that those (%^$#@^(&% in Hollywood don’t know what they are doing.

Of course #1 Son had a beautiful escort again to the awards (his wife Courtney), and so he should be grateful he won someone special, which is more than a statue, but his equal in all things except she is prettier.

I harbor no bitterness, and neither does TLW (The Little Woman) who said: “To think I changed his diapers once!” (Believe me, those words were cleaned up!)

I remember when he was just a tyke, came to work with me and was carrying on conversations with grownups like he was an old man. I remember people saying to him; “Try to explain to your Daddy…”

We are not disappointed. We are very happy that he had this wonderful opportunity, to write for a great show, to work with some really great people that I know personally, and to have a wonderful gal at his side. That is all the reward he needs.

But life goes on and we must adjust, and I will try to understand that those (%^$#@^(&% in Hollywood don’t know what they are doing.

IT SUCKS TO GET OLD

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Obviously!

All my life I have taken for granted the fact that I have people in my life that I think will live forever, then one day something happens.

In my life I have listened to people go on about someone who has just died and what a wonderful person he/she was. I think: are you saying these things in all sincerity, or are you saying them because you never really said them when they were alive?

A Real example of 'decent human being' My Man Bill R.I.P.

I have tried to point out in this blogue some of the people that I do admire, people who are special to me and have brought to the world that something special. There are many people that I truly love or like to see or be with, and some will disappoint me, but I will stay with my friendship for them, even if they don’t with me. My word as a friend is important to me, it is a legacy; it is what I want to be remembered for.

There is a couple, who through the years have been wonderful people, people that I love to see at holidays and special events, and always sit with them and talk, making sure that I do give them special attention. He is a rather humble man with a laid back attitude, never brags and always listens. You have to ask to find out anything about him. He is elderly and in the beginnings of Alzheimer’s disease and it will rob him of his most important treasure, his memories. She too suffers from the same thing, and so it goes.

Then there are people that have had great health all their lives who suddenly, are crippled with cancer or fibrosis or heart disease and you look and want to cry. No longer do they have the strength to match their desires to live, no longer will they enjoy the simple freedoms of life like a vacation or a simple trip to a restaurant, or even of holding a small child one more time.

As I get older I wonder what will happen to me. Where will I be and what will be the circumstances? I wish to see all the people who I have befriended, all my relatives all the people who have been in my life and given me a laugh or even a simple conversation. It is wonderful that I had life, that I had you all in my life, and I hope to continue that for a long time. Many of you I have teased on this blog, and I did because I trusted in our friendship, either family or friends. My greatest single resource in life is: the people who touch my life. To you all, before I go, thank you.

I don’t know what tomorrow brings, I hope it brings health to you and yours: I hope you can find the good in each day and live it. Live it up, dance, smile and laugh, don’t let things or people get you down. Remember from every bad event in your life there is more than one good one to take its place. Embrace your family, your love ones and your self most importantly. And remember this, my door is always open to you, and to those you love, just step through it.

To all the widows and widowers, take relief that you can say someone loved you once, to the parents, especially the mothers who have lost children, I lost a child to death and one to a disability that still haunts her to this day, don’t cry for the world to see, but get up each day and do something in their name, it keeps them alive a little longer than you can imagine.

I’m sorry if you think I’m in a blue mood, I’m not. I am realizing that every now and then I need to stop for a moment and tell someone I love him or her, before either of us are gone.

NOW DON’T GET EXCITED

“OK, you can get a few copies, but don’t buy out the store!”

So went the admonishment from TLW (The Little Woman). #1 Son’s show was being featured in Entertainment Weekly and the writers were going to be hi-lighted!

When the words from TLW were half way out of her mouth, I was out the door and beginning my search for a store that carried the weekly magazine. My first stop would be Stop and Shop. I needed to buy a pie for my brother-in-law because I thought it might cheer him up a little, he suffers from Pulmonary Fibrosis and he likes apple pie. I try to visit him often and we just talk, being how he can’t get around anymore, I add to his discomfort and misery by stopping by as often as possible. So far he hasn’t thrown me out yet, so that is good.

The Stop and Shop we have nearby is bigger than Texas, and has everything. The trouble is it is so disorganized they have more than one place to put the same thing! I get my pie and some provolone cheese (I have Italian mice!) and go over to the magazine section.  The magazine section is as long as US Highway 495 and has every magazine, every magazine that is except the one I’m looking for.

TLW is echoing in my mind: “Make sure you check the check outs also!”

There are as many checkouts as there are hotels in Vegas, and so I start to look, and as I go to each one, the person next to the magazine rack is eying me suspiciously, maybe thinking I want to cut in! I don’t pay too much attention unless they pick up a can of peaches that they may aim at my head. Doing all the racks at all the checkouts, I give up my quest and leave the store, stopping for lunch it is so big.

Next I go to Barnes and Noble bookstore, and visit the rack of magazines, and there it is. I reach and notice it is not this week: which is due out today. I inquire and am told to come back at 3:00.

I visit my brother-in-law and try a 7-Eleven for a look-see for the magazine, no such luck! Off I go again as it is 3:00 pm to the Barnes and Noble store one more time. I park the car: enter the store and go to the magazine rack, nothing has changed. I want to scream, but instead look for someone to help me. I go to a checkout and plead my case, and the lady comes around and points to the newest and latest edition! There it is, I point it out to the girl, she asks me for my son’s address so she can write to him, I suggest he is married and he and I are very happy with my gorgeous daughter-in-law. I thank her and leave with four copies!

Amen.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY ROOM

I have reached a verdict, I find this process BORING!

And so I returned from lunch to return to the Jury waiting room, expecting to be brought into room 107 to continue where we had left off the day before. The wait took until 2:30 before 40 people were now called into a room and sat quietly until the liars, oops lawyers appeared for the first time and told us they were picking 3 alternates for a case, outlining the case, a law suit against a high school, a glass company and a contractor.

Each lawyer tediously questioned the first three people selected from this little lotto drum, and I breathed a sigh of relief. They had mentioned that the trial was going to begin on a certain date, and I saw it conflicting with my plans for California in October. Of the three they questioned, they excused two and drew two more names from the drum as I held my breath once more. Both were excused, and I was getting very nervous about my chances of getting called as the room was dwindling down to a precious few.

Three more are called and I held my breath, as once more I was being bypassed. The maddening process of questioning these candidates, listening to their excuses and watching them wiggle out if they could makes you want to smack them. What do you mean you “May have a problem?” Don’t give us any phony excuses, and get your ass in that jury box before I knock you into it. Yes, I was getting that desperate.

The weather that day was picture perfect, sunny in the low 70’s and stuffy and dull in the courthouse. Stuck in the selection room late into the afternoon after waiting for hours with nothing to do but read and be bored was getting to me. Suddenly there was this sound. I heard the same sound once while working in NYC, while they were drilling underground for the 2^nd Avenue subway line. It was intrusive at first and seemed to be mysteriously coming from nowhere! Suddenly heads were turning and looking around, a slow moving ripple of giggles began to take root and grow steadily through the group of nervous survivors. The lady in front of me, about mid-forties was leaning back in her chair fast asleep, snoring to the tune of an old buzz saw or drilling through solid rock.

The liars, ooops I mean lawyers suddenly stopped, looking out to see what was happening, and someone mercifully awakened the slacker from her sweet repose! It struck me, what a great way to get out of jury duty! What liar, oops I mean lawyer would want someone who doesn’t pay attention to the trial and particularly his opening and closing remarks during the trial and all the questioning to sit on this sacred and entrusted panel?

My God, I have learned something new. Besides, I’m old now, who would fault an old man for falling asleep? Then they would start to think about all the toilet breaks I should need, and my meds, yes, I’ll need to reschedule when to take my meds so as to take them during the trial! The woman was a savior of my twisted and lost spirit, she had taught me that if you work hard enough at something, you do fall asleep, and where not better than the jury selection process?

And so dear readers, I was once more bypassed in the lottery of life. Just like the NYS lotto, the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes, the Irish sweepstakes and every pool and game of chance I played in life, I lost, but this time I was a lucky loser!

And so I filed out of the room and back into the big room where it all started, had my summons validated that I had done my duty, and as that stamp came down on the badge, I really wanted to reach across the desk and kiss that lady with the stamp, I was free! I felt like I did when I graduated college and they gave me my diploma, I was done for a while!

JUSTICE IS SERVED-FINALLY! Part 1

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I was told to report to the courthouse in Riverhead at 10:00 am. As I found a parking space and marched into the building, I could see all the hardy souls looking confused and clueless.

Following the signs I entered the appointed room for Jurors, and got on a line, was given a questionnaire and a card to fill out, told to place the card in a box when completed and keep the questionnaire. A rather simple task that doesn’t require much in the way of thinking, so of course the guy in front of me has questions, lots of questions and the lady working for the Supreme Court of Suffolk County, civil at first was starting to lose her patience, and frankly, so was I.

So started a long day, which was uncertain as to how it would end. I took a seat and waited for them to call my name for a jury selection process, and at 12:05 pm, just as my stomach and mind joined together to petition me for lunch, I was called with 19 others, and marched into room 107, was told to take a seat and the court person disappeared. Returning she told us that the liars, I mean lawyers weren’t ready fir us and to come back at 2:00 pm She then gave us all the options for lunch.

“You can eat in the cafeteria, we have pretty decent food”, (Tuna for $5.75, ham and cheese for $7.50 and peanut butter and jelly for $2.75. All that was so inspiring! She ten said we could go to Main Street in town and find a nice group of restaurants and if we did, show our Juror ID and we would get a discount.

Off I go and walk to Main Street and find this Chinese restaurant called Hy Ting. I enter and order lunch, and the waiter is a far eastern version of Lurch. The place is decorated in early 1960’s style Chinese, a place that looks like Mao Tse Tung would have eaten there if he weren’t busy purging his mother.

“I’ll have the General Tso’s shrimp, won-ton soup and fried rice.”

Looking into the far distance, in a trance he shakes his head once and takes back the menu. Coming back he ask me if I want tea. I say yes and he places it in front of me. I never had a waiter ask me if I wanted tea in a Chinese restaurant!

Returning he brings me my lunch and I see that there is no mustard, so I ask. I am sitting in a booth, one side is enclosed half way up on my left side. Two minutes later I happen to glance over my left shoulder and I am staring into a small dish of mustard.

“Here” as he reaches over my shoulder from outside the booth and over the half wall! I eat and the food was good and enough. The price was good too, $7.50 for lunch. Lurch returns and hands me the check, I read it and show him my jury badge.

Looking frightened, he asks me: “What dat???”

“Well they told me at the court house if I ate in town and showed my badge I would get a discount!”

“OOOHHHH! Lunch sooo cheap! We don’t don’t do that, sooo cheap!”

OK I know he is right, but still, I am sooo cheap! Sooo cheap!

Tomorrow: Part 2, I reach a verdict.

THE PERFECT DAY

Its Thursday morning, and I have to report to the Supreme Court in Riverhead for Jury Duty. The weather forecast is to be perfect, sunny and 72 degrees, while I sit in a stuffy courthouse. Perfect, friggin’ perfect!

Of course as a retiree, my life is not set to accommodate the clock anymore. Getting up in the morning was a casual thing, now it has become a crisis! For some strange reason, I slept longer than I usually do this morning, and when I woke up I was surprised by the time but was going to stay in bed longer when I realized I had to get going! Sickening, huh?

I haven’t been in angry traffic in years, rush hour is not my favorite thing, and although I am reporting at 10 am, there are still commuters on the road at the hour I am going.

Then I don’t particularly like Riverhead, it is not Bellport or Holbrook, I have to figure out the town and what to get for lunch around there. And who knows when I will get out of there? What do I do for dinner, and time to write a couple of daily blogues and one weekly one. http://joenellen.blogspot.com/ and http://ellendelbloggolo.blogspot.com/

As you can see this and many other issues will trouble me in the coming days, and you dear reader will have to hear about them as I go.

Wish me luck, although by the time you read this, my luck will have run out!

EXCHANGING INFO

Lately I’ve been getting a rash of emails from the thieves in Africa, telling me I have been awarded $10Million US as they put it. This morning I had 4 such emails, all claiming to be different people all claiming to award me four different sums and the money is about to be transferred into my account.

Some of these losers say they are dying of brain cancer, and want to just give me the money, and they know it sounds too good to be true. But they address me as “Beloved” and I suggest that they hurry up and die. I know I shouldn’t do that but when someone is using sincerity and God as a ploy to separate me form my money, I kind of enjoy writing that back to them.

Sometimes I give them phony names such as Algonquin J. Calhoun with phony addresses and phone numbers to the NY State Penal system or the FBI. But I decided to change my routine and started to reply to these phonies by taking the reply addresses they ask me to respond to and giving it on a response to another phony email, so everyone gets solicited and annoyed if possible.

This goes along with the phone calls that come around suppertime, while I’m eating it. A sales person will call asking for me or TLW (The Little Woman) and you all know how annoying that is. I generally say ‘Just a minute” and place the receiver down until I hear the phone make it disconnected noise. TLW yells at me for doing that because they are all trying to make a living and I should not answer the phone.

Of course I should take TLW’s advice, but it runs against MY conventional wisdom that is: Make them suffer too! It wastes their time while they wasted mine, and I feel that I have retaliated in some small way.

Sometimes the calls come for TLW and the caller says: “Can I speak with Ellen, Please?”

“NO!”

There is a long pause, they ask when is a good time to call.

I answer this with a time I figure TLW isn’t home but I am, so I can continue to torture these people and waste more of their time.

Do you think I’m not being nice?

IF YOU LISTEN YOU WILL SEE!

Every year around the 4^th of July, I get together with an old paisano from my old Brooklyn neighborhood, his name is Jim and together we celebrate our birthdays, his is on one day and mine the next. We discovered after the first year that his daughter Laura, a great mom, daughter and wife, had the same birthday as TLW (The Little Woman) and so we invited Laura and her husband Malcolm, a truly devoted father and husband to out dinner get together. Along with this wonderful family is someone very special, someone who when you first meet her you fall in love with, and all the goodness that comes from Jim, his beautiful wife Jasmine and daughter and son-in-law, seems somehow combined into a condensed package in this child Ava.

Ava suffers from Craniofacial Syndrome, a syndrome that affects at childbirth, and is the cause of too many complications for any child to have to deal with.

 

I could tell you about the syndrome, but just click on: http://ellendelbloggolo.blogspot.com/2012/09/september-2012-craniofacial-acceptance.html

 

But today I want to tell you about the child, not the syndrome, I want to tell you about what human spirit is all about. It is the thing you find in grown men, facing battle, scared and frightened, who summon up the courage to fight in wartime. It is the same courage that is called on time and time again when a mother loses a child and gets up each morning to continue, it is that courage that makes heroes live in all our lives, examples of courage.

 

Ava is a sweet quiet little girl about 7 or 8, but don’t quote me on that. She loves life and lives it, and invites everyone in her life to live it too. I see photos of her on occasion on Facebook and it never ceases to amaze me how much she does love life. It is like she is discovering each and every new moment and enjoying it fully. She is life itself. With her comes her mom, Laura, who if I had to sit and listen to her all day long, my sides would be rendered from laughter, she has a great sense of humor and it is in Ava.

 

Ava is very hip, challenging and now! She discovers something and she gets up close to it to understand it. Ava is challenging the rest of the world to see who she is, and when you look, you will hear the truth, she is in God’s image, she is what we all need to be, innocent, loving and enjoying her time on this planet. She does not ask for pity, she does not think the world owes her a thing: she is real in every sense of the word.

 

If I were to have friends, I would want an Ava on my list, at the top. Why, because she will teach me things about the human spirit, she will give me a lesson in old fashion understanding that you NEVER judge a book by its cover, but the content of its soul, and most of all: she will love and teach me to love the right way, with my soul, not necessarily with my eyes only.

So if you someday happen to see someone like Ava, pause a moment and ask yourself to get to understand that love is not based on anything but the heart and soul, and that in front of you is an example of it.

IT’S A QUAINT DRINKING TOWN…

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With a fishing problem!

Cape May is over, the vacation is done with and so I move on, sadly. While I was away I was a little lax in my updates to the real world. For one, the Mustangs, the beast of the Mid-Atlantic Conference, (MAC), AKA Stevenson University http://gomustangsports.com/sports/fball/index lost another game, but not without a great fight, losing in overtime 29-22! It would have been a lot closer except they don’t have a 5^th quarter in football, so I turned to my fifth in solace.

We haven’t heard a lot from #2 Son, always a good sign, and all is quiet on the western front where #1 Son resides with TLC (The Lovely Courtney). We are going through a rash of birthdays and so it goes for September.

October I will be on the road for a while, in Albany for a few days and then Los Angeles for a week, where there is business in one and pleasure in the other.

Fall is my favorite time of the year. The weather cools down and the humidity goes away, meanwhile the holidays start up with Halloween and Thanksgiving, then of course Christmas and then the New Year.

The Island really becomes beautiful in the guise of Mother Nature, with the trees and the smells of autumn in the air. Bright sunny days that get shorter each day seem to sparkle for some reason, we get together with friends for dinner parties and I have more interest in doing things.

This Christmas I will have a guest for the holidays, my Aunt Marie’s granddaughter Christina, who will learn a lot about her grandmother from her cousins, which she will find fascinating I’m sure. But she will also be meeting her family for the first time, experiencing an Italian Christmas Eve, my favorite holiday, and will hopefully want to be part of our family.

I have always felt that my sisters are very gracious and welcoming. When we have had holidays over the years, we have invited friends of the family to take part if we felt that you were very special and would be a great fit. We still carry on the tradition, but Christina never met us until her grandmother passed this year. She got to meet two of my sisters along with Mom and me, so she has a lot of catching up to do with two other sisters and all the kids that come with that!

I’m excited about the new-year coming, and am looking forward to doing new things with my life, including the continuation of work on the board of directors. I have been on a 2-week diet and have lost 14 days so far!

The Editor and staff of DelBloggolo bring this update to you!

ALL GOOD THINGS MUST COME TO AN END

And they do, but so do bad things too.

At the end of the day, we TLW (The Little Woman) and me had a great vacation, one that was filled with sweet moments, both romantic and funny, and pleasant days walking on the beach, taking tours and shopping, with visits to restaurants to have great meals and enjoy ourselves.

I can’t speak for TLW, but I know it was good to spend the time with her, for her and her alone, it made us recall days gone by. There was a sweetness in the night air when we sat on the screened in porch and enjoyed the night’s secrets, that sweet surrender to a glass of wine and a giggle or two.

TAKEN A FEW YEARS AGO

The beauty of Cape May is that as you walk, you see a restaurant and say: “Oh! Remember our last visit there?” they we would give it a positive rating and look for a newer experience. One night we had dinner with some friends from home and sat on the porch of one of our favorite restaurants for drinks, before going into the restaurant to dine on a great meal. Corrine and Doug, proud grandparents gave us the latest in their lives as we shared our lives events with them.

BOARDWALK

But the sun is setting and life must go on. We will keep the memories and try to build new ones along the way, we have no choice, the sun is setting. But when it goes down behind the horizon, I will have to say good night Cape May, I will miss you until we meet again.

"Oh, when the sun beats down
And burns the tar up on the roof
And your shoes get so hot
You wish your tired feet were fireproof
Under the boardwalk
Down by the sea, yeah
On a blanket with my baby
Is where I'll be

(Under the boardwalk) Out of the sun
(Under the boardwalk) We'll be having some fun
(Under the boardwalk) People walking above
(Under the boardwalk) We'll be falling in love
(Under the boardwalk, boardwalk)

In the park you hear
The happy sound of the carousel
You can almost taste the hot dogs
French fries they sell
 
Under the boardwalk
Down by the sea, yeah
On a blanket with my baby
Is where I'll be

(Under the boardwalk) Out of the sun
(Under the boardwalk) We'll be having some fun
(Under the boardwalk) People walking above
(Under the boardwalk) We'll be falling in love
(Under the boardwalk, boardwalk)

Oh, under the boardwalk
Down by the sea
On a blanket with my baby
Is where I'll be

(Under the boardwalk) Out of the sun
(Under the boardwalk) We'll be having some fun
(Under the boardwalk) People walking above
(Under the boardwalk) We'll be falling in love
(Under the boardwalk, boardwalk)"

THE DRIFTERS HAD IT RIGHT!

GOODBYE MARYANN!

As I sat waiting for the Little Woman (TLW), across from me was a church, sitting majestically at the end of the oldest pedestrian open-air mall in the US in Cape May, NJ. The church takes in many visitors from out of town every year during the summer months, as well as its regular sinners who go to pray there.

It struck me that with all the tourism: it must be difficult for the church to conduct a funeral service there with all that foot traffic and curiosity seekers who visit the church. It also occurred to TLW as she joined me on the bench, and noticed a hearse parked at the very end of the pedestrian mall near the church.

MARYANN'S RIDE

“I’m going inside the church and look around” she said as she took off. She climbed the steps like there was a shoe sale going on, and I just folded my arms and took a snooze in the open crisp air of the beautiful September morning and continued to wait for our tour to start of historic Cape May.

Bouncing off the steps as she left the Chiesa del Madonna della Mare, she began to describe her reconnoitering.

“They have some pictures and flowers and things in the front of the altar, and a TV screen in the back that invites you to watch highlights of MaryAnn’s life in the back.” She reported. Just then a gentleman in a somber mood and equally somber attire, moved through the mid-morning crowd toward the church holding a small square silver box.

“Ah! MaryAnn has arrived!” I exclaimed and TLW agreed.

“I wonder where Mary Ann came from?” I asked, “and if they will have a memorial then ship her back to maybe Florida or somewhere else in the world?” I continued.

We discussed that maybe MaryAnn lived here once, was a big mocker in the church and then retired to Florida to live and die.

“Do you think they will scatter the ashes since there is no urn?” I asked.

“Well, you know Daphne who works with me? She said they wanted to bury some ashes in the cemetery in a grave of another deceased person, and it was too expensive, so they are going to bury the ashes when no one is looking!” TLW continued.

“Wait a minute Gracie!” I said with my best George Burns imitation without the cigar, “Daphne is going to sneak the ashes of someone dead into the cemetery, and then look around to make sure no one is looking, dig a hole on a grave site and pour in the ashes like she was cleaning her bar-b-q, then taking off!”

I’d give anything to see that, in fact: I’d love to report the event to you on this blogue, how many blogs give you that?

Turns out, MaryAnn was having a big sendoff, as cars starting arriving in large numbers, taking over the side streets.

THE CAPE!

As you stroll through the streets of Cape May New Jersey, at the very southern tip of the state, you get into a time warp, that can free your imagination into thinking anything you want as a member of pre and early 20^th Century Cape May!

The streets are old and tree covered, and on a summer’s day, they shelter one from the heat of the midday sun, encouraging you to hear the voices and sounds that at one time passed through the town and made time stand still.

I would love to come here just to write a novel of historical content, I could easily fill it with characters I would image lived here and work or played along the avenues and shores that make up this great little city.

The building themselves, either the commercial or private homes all retain their flavor from so long ago, the streets whisper the events that occurred as I would imagine them of so long ago.

There is an essence, an aura of things past that seems so sacred and defined, untouched by modern man, yet so respected to last another hundred years. When the tourists are gone, a peace settles over it and life becomes serene and almost hallowed. My presence seems an intrusion to what is dormant and sublime.

As I gaze along the avenues and streets, I see the churches and old stores, so influenced by the sea, it echoes stories I don’t understand, but leave me with a curiosity. I look and see trees hundreds of years old, breaking through the concrete walks and they say: “Stranger, what stories I could tell you, what events you have not witnessed, what intrigue you have missed, can you stop a while and listen?

I can see an old sailor walking down one of the streets, maybe a pea coat and cap, and a pipe tilted in his mouth, his head bent down deep in the trials he witnessed at sea,  maybe his wife and child, waiting at a threshold, anxious to see their man again after his time away on the blue waves of the deep.

Sometimes I sit on the porch and look out through the trees, and the sunlight filters through, touching my face in splashes of sunlight, old homes sitting serenely and in a quiet stateliness, bearing testimony to life here 100 years ago.

The wind will rise from the ocean and carry the salt air across my path, and I remember that like the wind everything here on earth is temporary, for even the strongest wind dies, and so I will leave here and dream of coming back once more, just like the wind.

WHO???

Took TLW (The Little Woman) to breakfast at IHOP a week ago Sunday. This was the second Sunday in a row that I did this, and like the first time, we was seated by a nice young man, quiet and reserved but I though very likeable.

As we were finished with our breakfast, I noticed the young man and it occurred to me that he reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t put my finger on who. Then like a bolt out of the blue, it came to me! The waitress came over and she gave me the bill, and I asked her:

“Does that fellow look like Andrea Bocelli?”

Andrea Bocelli

“Wow, as a matter of fact he does! You know, that never occurred to me until you mentioned it! Yes, he sure does.”

We go to the register and who is taking my money but Andrea Bocelli’s look-alike.

“Do you know who you look like, someone famous?”

Kenny Loggins

“Well, people tell me Kenny Loggins.”

I look at him and wonder who that is.

“No, Andrea Bocelli!”

He looks at me like he is wondering who that is.

Just then the waitress appears and said:

“Do you know who you look like?”

TLW pipes up and says that I had already informed him.

I say to the waitress”

“He says he looks like his mechanic!”

The wanna-be Kenny Loggins and look-alike Andrea Bocelli says to no one in particular:

“Great, now I’m going to get lectured for not knowing who this Bocelli guy is!

TLW observed the fact as we left the establishment how one age doesn’t know much about the other’s world.

Two people with similar looks on their faces, an amusing moment in Del Bloggolo land.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY NEPHEW DAVID!

FRESH STARTS

After driving #2 Son back to SUNY/Purchase for his last year, it got me thinking about those very days when I attended college and what it was like. I remember seeing my old friends and making new ones.

Some of us hung around in cliques and some in two’s or three’s but you always got together with others and had a great time. Academically it was a mixture of friends and classes, kidding each other about our major, and even what we would be like after graduation.

There was a young lady, a beautiful girl who had jet-black hair and this incredible face, who was sweet on me. She would often stop by where I was sitting in the student lounge, and chat. She was studying to go into the TV/Radio business as a communications major. She was smart and fun: at least I could make her laugh easily enough, and she made me laugh too. The young lady had a refined way, dressed well for a college student and the manner to go with it.

My college career was tough to sustain, since I had to work s much as possible to stay in school since my parents didn’t have the money to send me. Dating was sometimes out of the question because of either the studies, including expensive art supplies and film for my photography classes, so I pretty much had to avoid committing myself to anyone, without the freedom from school.

To this day, I wonder what happened to her, if she got her career going, and if she held it against me that I never took the time to date her. After my car accident, she visited me in the hospital almost everyday, she would come and sit with me for a while and go back to class.

One day the doctor told me I was going home, and I never got to say goodbye, and I never took the time to try to get in touch with her. I was bitter that I had lost a whole semester and that I was going to be laid up for a while, so it kind of went on the back burner, without flame.

Somewhere she is hopefully married and happy with grandchildren, maybe retired from a great career, at least I hope so.

Some things are not meant to be, and some things are. I won’t regret because I got a wonderful lady myself.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BEAUTIFUL NIECE LAURIE ANN O'HARA!

IT AIN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE

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Way back in the old days, life sure was a lot different. Trust in your fellow man was a taken for granted everyday occurrence. People were a lot poorer and everyone had to work to make life possible. It seemed almost seamless as we went through our days, one at a time, without fanfare or a need to be appreciated.

Mom stayed at home, as did all moms I knew, and their lives were governed by what was important, raising and teaching their children. The ordinary such as insurance salesmen was a lot different too. Once a month our doorbell was rung from three floors down on the bank of buttons that were situated in the vestibule as you entered the apartment. In the apartment, you rang your end to let the person by the main door into the stairway.

RRRRIIINNNNGGGG!!!

RRRRIIINNNNGGGG!!! (right back at cha)

“OLYMPIAAAAAAAAA!!!”

It was the insurance man, coming to collect his nickel, that’s right, a nickel a month for insurance. He was a very business looking man, with a grey suit and fedora, who would climb two flights of stairs to my third floor dwelling, knock on our door and Mom would allow him in. He carried a little account book, open it, Mom would hand him the nickel and he would open the little passport size book and mark her down as paid, and off he went to his next account. Yes, the nickel didn’t even need to be shiny, either!

Then there was a Fuller Brush salesman, he came around a little less often, with his black suitcase of the latest in brush wares and mount the two sets of stairs and knock, Mom would check out what was the latest in brushes and once in a while purchase one.

We even had a man who collected and sold junk on a horse drawn wagon, as well as a fruit and vegetable man with a horse drawn wagon, along with a fish monger.

In the summer time, there was a little catering to kids too. There was aside from the Bungalow Ice Cream truck, a hot dog wagon, with a big colorful umbrella, that fascinated me to no end with the wagon’s compartments. The peddler pushed it to various spots in Brooklyn and sold his dirty water frankfurters, with the big red letters, impressively designed along the sides of the cart and the Sabrett logo on his umbrella, usually red and yellow and self-contained to hold franks, buns and sauerkraut, along with mustard and relish. Some nights, along came a truck with a ride like a whip or a rocking seat, making it virtually impossible to be bored.

Once we moved out to the sticks, we lost most of that, save for the ice cream truck. We did have milk delivery though. You had on your doorstep a red wooden Sagtikos Dairy box that could hold four quarts of milk. You left a note in the box for how many you needed and whatever extra products like cream or butter.

Then there was my favorite deliverer of all time, the Duggan’s man. He was my hero, delivering donuts and cakes, freshly baked, all with my name on them. It so happened that the delivery man was a neighbor of ours, and real gentleman who had a very nice family, his name was Erickson, and his son, my friend was Paul. I can’t believe I never wheedled out of Paul any free donuts!

Boy, life just ain't what it used to be!

MY AUNT MARY

If you were Italian, you might have had an Aunt Mary. You could have an Aunt Marie, but you needed an Aunt Mary.

Now Aunt Mary wasn’t rally an aunt, but a second cousin. She was a beautiful woman and quite a character, filled with emotion and the Italian way of demonstrating her emotions, with her hands.

Aunt Mary had a wonderful husband named Uncle Johnny and he died too soon. He was an entertainer and he took the time to entertain me. One day he had a trick tie, and as any youngster around 5 or 6, his audience was easy to work. I sat on his lap and he took a glass of water, and dumped it into his tie! Imagine that! He dumped a whole glass of water into his tie, then put the water back into the glass it came from! How did he do it? Like I said, it was magic.

Aunt Mary loved to talk and talk she did, as I was mesmerized by the manual ballet her hands performed, expressing herself so eloquently. By a show of her hands she could stress a point, name someone a son of a bitch and tell you how happy she was for you. She was cool.

Aunt Mary was one of these short ladies that did everything quickly, and you better be on your toes or you fell into her whirlwind. She was my Godmother and had two children, a lot older than I was. I had two cousins I really loved, because I didn’t have an older brother, one was my cousin Victor, and one was Aunt Mary’s son, Anthony. They were glorified in my mind and probably bigger than life in mine. She also had a wonderfully beautiful daughter named Marie, a daughter who was her best friend later in life. Italian families had great mother-daughter relationships, and Aunt Mary and her daughter Marie were the prototype.

Aunt Mary came to this country early in her life, I think in her teens and grew up in my Grandmother’s home. She was treated like a daughter and sister in the household. Dad had a sister Angie, Victor’s mom and a sister Theresa or Tessie or Chi-Chi, named by my cousin Victor because he couldn’t say Tessie as a baby.

Aunt Mary worked in a factory that made children’s play clothes, operating a sewing machine, and she was so fast they couldn’t afford to let her be a supervisor. She loved my Dad who ran the shipping department, and would often come after work at night and visit. It was a visit I made sure to be near by for, because she was hysterical, saying things that were in her own vernacular, yet so true and at the same time funny, waving her arms as she spoke, filled with life. She was beautiful!

When I look back at all my relatives, I realize how very special they all were, how they had so much to offer me, in good memories, love and happiness. I miss those days and wish I could have them back again, even for a moment.

JOOOOOOOOOE!

That was the cry that greeted me one morning last week. The thing that all modern America dreads, loss of the Internet in any shape or form: was the issue that TLW (The Little Woman) was dealing with.

Now I’m a believer in modern technology, I happen to like color TV. I think the Princess telephone looks good on the nightstand, and I’m really impressed by my stereo record player, and darn, I wish I could get the carmakers to reintroduce the cassette player!

I must admit, I’m losing some ground, I no longer have a teenager living at home so I don’t dare buy anything that requires wires that hook up to the TV. I do have a cell phone, but it needs to be charged, and I have to look at it as a way to communicate, right now it just helps to keep the loose change from making too much noise in my pocket. And as far as blue teeth, I don’t have any, and don’t plan on any implants.

I must say I see people who walk staring into a thing called the i-phone or i-pad, mesmerized by what they are looking at and I get to meet them as they bump into me because they can’t see where they are going. I know the device can slow you down when driving, causing people behind you to go around you, but a lot of them are waving hello and saying you are #1 with one finger up in the air as they go by!

Turns out TLW was locked out of her computer, it would not let her sign on with her usual password and I had to get involved. Off she goes to take a shower and get ready for work as I put in the effort to solve her problem. I find and fix her problem and happily she goes onto the Internet, talking to me while I’m trying to write. Mind you, I don’t mind her talking to me ever, I enjoy it, but I needed a few moments to collect my thoughts and continue what I was writing. (It was my last will and testament, and I was trying to fit all my readers of this blogue in, so it takes concentration. You don’t want to put the commas in the wrong places with the numbers.)

So modern technology will not assign me to the back seat, but the driver’s steering wheel, by golly!