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My Back Pages: Memorial Day... My Personal Sorrow :    I have already posted my Memorial Day blog. While it is what I feel on this day of remembrance, I left one person out: My Father.   My...

   I have already posted my Memorial Day blog. While it is what I feel on this day of remembrance, I left one person out: My Father.   My father was a quiet man. A patriot, and someone who loved this country more than he could ever put into words. He also loved his family the same way. He was not outwardly affectionate. I can not tell you when my father kissed me, because, to my memory, and it goes back to when I was two, he never did. I don't know why.. all I can think of is that it, somehow, made him uncomfortable. I know that he loved me; he just never physically showed it.   My father was of the Greatest Generation and, to me, at least, he was a hero. He joined the US Army to fight Hitler and his Nazi's. He met my mother at his basic training camp of Fort Sill, OK.... then, they shipped him to Panama. PANAMA! They wanted him to stay there for the duration of the war. They wanted to make him a sergeant  and put him in charge of troops guarding the Canal Zone. My father,

My Back Pages: Memorial Day. 2014 : They didn't choose to be heroes. Freddy, Bobby, William, and all the others that heard and answered the call. They were just normal yo...

They didn't choose to be heroes. Freddy, Bobby, William, and all the others that heard and answered the call. They were just normal young men.... boys, really.... who just went about their day to day lives, dreaming their dreams of a future filled with love and marriage, perhaps a couple of kids and a house with a yard. They walked the streets of my hometown, as so many others like  them did in their own hometowns across this country, filled with the bloom of youth, the promise of their futures which were still shining brightly.  Whether they joined, as I did, or were drafted as others were, they still made the choice, without question, to answer it. They were swept up in the war machine and and did their best to play their parts. They paid the ultimate price, did Freddy, Bobby, William and others. They could have run and hid, as some did. They could have done other things, as so many of those who beat the drums of war  today, did to avoid service at that time. They didn't, b

My Back Pages: Spring and Summer of '59 - "What doesn't kill you.... :  While reading the posts from friends the other day, I saw one by my friend, Peg Teague Guelakis about how cruel some boys were back in ou...

 While reading the posts from friends the other day, I saw one by my friend, Peg Teague Guelakis about how cruel some boys were back in our day. It was about how some of them would torture animals, and how the mothers took a 'Boys will be Boys' attitude. As the day went on and I thought about this, I remembered how she also told  me that she was teased incessantly back then by certain boys. This brought to mind my Summer of Hell, in 1959. It actually lasted from mid-Spring until the fall; but, to me, it seemed to stretch out for an entire lifetime.   We were a rough and tumble bunch of street kids, my friends and I. Most of us came from families that struggled every day. We never felt deprived,  because this is just the way things were. We made our bicycles from parts that we pulled from the city dump. Back in those days, every thing was taken there and put into the landfill, or burned. Things like bicycles, old baby carriages, toys, etc, found their way to the huge piles wh

My Back Pages: Mother's Day : Mothers..... where would we be without them? Well, for one thing, we would not exist... no miracles coming from someone's rib.. no gro...

Mothers..... where would we be without them? Well, for one thing, we would not exist... no miracles coming from someone's rib.. no growing in a test tube somewhere, we simply would not be without one. For that reason, and for that reason  alone, we should bow down and thank them.. but that is not all there is to being a mother.. or having one.   Whether your memory is of a woman in an apron who cleaned the house, cooked meals for you, did all the shopping and the heavy lifting around the house, while your father went off to work; or if it is of a multi-tasking, modern day mother, holding down a job, running a household, raising 2.5 children, and scheduling playdates and organizing all of the modern child's out of the home activities. Either way... she is the one who worried incessantly about your health and welfare, jumping up and taking your temperature at the first sneeze, comforting you when you hurt yourself, making sure that you eat a good meal (I won't get into a d

My Back Pages: Regrets... : I wish I could paint. Oh, not just slop some paints on a canvas and call it my artwork, really paint what my eye tells my mind that it see...

I wish I could paint. Oh, not just slop some paints on a canvas and call it my artwork, really paint what my eye tells my mind that it sees. I am convinced that we all see things slightly differently.. pick out different subtleties in the world around us as it presents itself. I am quite envious of those who can. What remarkable beauty they can lay out on a canvass. I wish that I could paint, especially now, at my late age. Not only do I see things differently than others, I see things more intensely, more acutely, than my younger self. That young man was much too busy working and interacting with his co-workers, bosses, wife and children to notice the world around him.. at least, not as I do now. I used to be able to draw a bit when I was young, but that talent, sadly, has left me as the years flew past. Oh, to have taken advantage of that little trace of talent that I had. You have to nurture these things, coddle and work with them so that they may grow and bloom into something spe