Waiting in Line All our days are spent in line but standing’s not the norm, though patience’s needed there as well as those in mundane form. Crawl, stand walk and run overrunneth your cup, eat, sleep, live and love till your turn is up. Your place was granted by your time ’tis hard to cut ahead, but when you do, remember that you’re that much sooner dead. Starting sans the gift to see the purpose Read more…
I was behind the wheel of a 1969 Dodge Dart Swinger in Lavalette New Jersey with my old friend, Joe. We were driving up and down route 35, hoping to find his girlfriend who was on vacation with her parents. He was determined to find her, so I soldiered on, trying to see the road and traffic through the windshield as the wipers did their rhythmic sashay, pushing the rainwater out of my field of Read more…
One problem with writing about something so ultra contemporary as the covid-19 pandemic of 2020-21, is the inevitable fall of the subject from timely relevance. For one who likes to write for all time, it would seem a poor choice, so I’ll do what I can to infuse something that some poor soul in the future can chew on and relate to. My immediate focus is our old benefactor and protector; something that so many Read more…
When I first became a serious student of Jazz, one of the things that I enjoyed doing was reading about the lives of the musicians that created it. They gave the music the breath of life, and I found descriptions of their exploits, both on and off the bandstand, to be enjoyable, and, instructive. Bix, Prez, Bird, Trane and so many others were the people that not only created it, but also lived it, so, Read more…
When confronted with some of the strange practices and lifestyles that are tolerated in our modern liberal culture, I sometimes become distressed. One way of dealing with this is to indulge in the bittersweet memories of youth, and recall that some of the things that I did would never have had to have been reprimanded by Ward Cleaver or any other contemporary TV Daddy. They wouldn’t have been depicted there, but they DID happen in Read more…
It was the spring of 1989. Germany was still two countries, the Clintonistas were still Arkansas bound, and ‘text’ was NOT a verb. Just about two years of my new career in Data Processing had gone by, and I was working in a testing group as an employee of AT&T. I had landed a job at an installation that was famous in local folklore as “The Tower” in East Brunswick New Jersey, where EVERYONE who Read more…
There are a few pivotal times in a boy’s life when he feels that he has reached a milestone and is about to enter a new phase of maturation. I don’t mean the obvious ones like Bar mitzvahs or Graduations. I’m talking about the ones that are events that come so close to the edge that they are a risk to life and limb. Youth has its rewards and pitfalls. Avondale Jr. High School; that’s Read more…
I had just agreed to pay six dollars for a brand new tire for the car that I needed to drive to work every day. The cause of this windfall was the fact that one of my car tires was continually leaking air, and could not be repaired. And, since I had purchased road hazard insurance when I had originally bought the tire, they were charging me only for that portion of the tire that Read more…
I’ve been advised to start writing a blog. So, I figured I’d better create some material. Hence, these words. The WORD processor at my fingertips underlined the last sentence in the above paragraph, probably because it figured that ‘Hence, these words’ wasn’t a complete sentence. I don’t care. It also didn’t recognize the word, ‘blog’, and suggested that I add it to a dictionary. Reluctantly, I did. It’s amazing to me that so many books Read more…