Long Lost...

... but found on these here inter-tubes.  A rare photo of me in my childhood:

OK, it's not me.  Close, though.

The Sunday Re-Run

This is actually a re-re-run.  But whatevah... **I** like the post.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Everythang Old Is New Again

I ran out of after-shave about a week ago so I swung by the Base Exchange on one of my trips out to Cannon Airplane Patch to re-supply.  Alas, they no longer carry the Burberry line of scents for men and I didn't like the other stuff they had.  So it was off to Amazon, yet again, and I wasn't disappointed.  We ordered a bottle of Burberry's "Weekend" and received it in short order.  In so doing I thought "I should write a post about after-shave..." but then a bell went off in my head to the effect of "I think you've done that before."  And so I have... about five and a half years ago, in October of '06.  Here's that post, updated with illustrations:

Scents

One of the more interesting, nay, fascinating, things about my recent trip to San Antonio was encountering perfumed women once again. I say “once again” because I cannot, for the life of me, remember the last time (or the first time, for that matter) I caught a whiff of a delicately perfumed woman in Portales. It just doesn’t seem to happen. Perhaps I’m just not hanging out at the “right” sort of places in P-Town. But it was a minor joy to have my olfactory senses treated every so often while in San Antonio. I like perfume, and have enjoyed it on the women in my life from a very early age.

It used to be that women had a “signature” scent, a brand they used almost exclusively. I’m not sure that’s true any longer…perhaps it’s an artifact from a by-gone age. Both my Mom and my grandmother had signature scents. My maternal grandmother was an Evening in Paris woman. Her dressing table was littered with those cobalt-blue bottles and containers, each emblazoned with a silver label with the brand name in flowing script. Evening in Paris was all she ever wore, as far as I know. My grandmother walked around trailing a pink could of Evening in Paris. You could walk into a room she’d vacated an hour ago and know she’d been there.  My mother was quite different in that regard.

Mom was a Chanel No 5 woman (which is hideously expensive these days; you know that if you clicked the link)…none of the upstart “new” Chanel fragrances for her, thank you. Just the original. She applied her perfume in a quick, deft manner that was the grand finale to her toilette ritual—otherwise known as “fixing my face”—a dab behind each ear and a dab in the crook of each elbow. She’d place her index finger over the bottle opening, tilt the bottle quickly on end, apply the dab, repeat. Not much at all, when you came down to it. “There are other places, too, but not for you to know,” she once told me, with a grin and a wink. Which, of course, was lost on me until much later in life. My mother’s use of perfume was subtle to the point one wasn’t really sure she was wearing any at all, but you knew she had a very attractive aroma about her. And that’s the way it should be, to my way of thinking.

The Second Mrs. Pennington wore White Ginger when we first met. White Ginger is a very clean, fresh sort of scent and it drove me nuts, in a very good, extremely good, way. Very appropriate for a young woman, and also very erotic. Perhaps it was the fact I was young and in love. Or perhaps White Ginger was the icing on the cake, so to speak. But whatever it was, that scent, on the rare occasion I encounter it these days, immediately transports me back to Former Happy Days. Interestingly, TSMP developed an allergy to perfume later in life and quit wearing it altogether. She also insisted I quit wearing after-shave, too, because it affected her in the same way.

Which brings me to the subject of male scents, or after-shave. My father, he of the Greatest Generation, used exactly two: Old Spice and Mennen Skin Bracer. That was it. I think that approach was wide-spread among men of his cohort. It was unseemly for men to wear “perfume,” and he told me so in no uncertain terms. So…during my adolescence the only scents in my medicine cabinet were his scents—like father, like son. 

That changed when I went into the military. I remember standing in the common latrine one evening, getting ready to splash some Skin Bracer on after shaving, and having a friend ask “Why are you using that cheap (stuff)?” “Here,” he says, “try this,” handing me his bottle of English Leather. I did. And I got a good comment from the Lady Friend that evening, something on the order of “Wow…you smell good!” (or something to that general effect.) I went to the BX the next day and bought some English Leather. Which, in turn, was followed by Jade East, Canoe, British Sterling, and all sorts of scents. I settled on Canoe and wore that until TSMP insisted I abandon all scent products. Now that I’m single again my “signature” scent is Burberry’s (or Burberry’s Weekend, when I can find it)…and will probably remain so.

Just a dab behind each ear and in the crook of the elbows... Heh.  Not really.  But I DON'T bathe in the stuff.

Committed to the Inter-tubes by Buck on 5/15/2012 11:32:00 AM 45 comments:

There should prolly be a limit on the number o' times one posts something/anything, and three is as good as any... for an arbitrary number.  I included the comments link above because (a) they're interesting and (b) this is one of my most-commented posts, evah.

Oooh! And Ahhh!

What a concept... a concept car that actually moves along the road.  It's beautiful, too.  Boy, is it EVER beautiful!

Want.*

* Which brings to mind something the Ol' Man used to say to me: "Want in one hand and s**t in the other.  See which one fills up first."  He was a rather pithy guy, my father.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack: In Which We Sing the Praises of Pandora, Yet Again

I've often said I love Pandora because of the way their musical curators seem to be able to reach right into my music collection for the songs they play, no matter what genre I choose to listen to... be it Beethoven, Mozart, The Stones, Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, Santana, Leo Kottke, Joan Osborne, and everything else.  That's magic, pure and simple.  But there's something even BETTER, and that's Pandora's ability to dive into my parents' music collection.  Like this:



Growing up in my household in the '50s meant being surrounded by music, mostly Big Bands... like the Dorsey Bros, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Glenn Miller, of course.  There were others, as well.  Crooners like Crosby, Sinatra, and Como.  Divas, too... like Ella, Kay Starr, Edith Piaf, and Peggy Lee.  EVERY single Broadway show Rogers and Hammerstein ever produced.  My parents seemingly had it all and those were my musical foundations.

So.  Ain't technology grand?  I can sit out on the verandah and be transported back into my very early youth while listening to Pandora and sipping my beer... and then I can come into the house and go on The Tube o' You and resurrect those old tunes and performances to my heart's content.  Yours too, Gentle Reader... if you have a mind like mine.

What? ANOTHER Re-run?

I'm afraid so.  There was this exchange between Lou and I on yesterday's post about jeans...

Bag Blog 12 May, 2013 19:14

Real cowboys wear Wranglers.

Replies

Buck 12 May, 2013 23:48
But... I am not now, nor was I ever, a cowboy.

Well... I lied.  I totally forgot about this lil number:

Thursday, June 24, 2010

We Were Cowboys Once, and Young

Blog-Bud Dan put a post up yesterday that talked about cowboys... and a good part of that post was about how he and his friends used to ride their hobby-horses all over the neighborhood chasing down bad guys and saving the ranch.  It was only a few days ago that the subject of cowboys came up here at EIP... on Father's Day, actually...  when we went off on a tangent talking about them and our youth.  It goes without sayin'... yet I always do... that I was BIG into cowboys in my yoot.  My parents had close encounters with the Poor House keeping me in cowboy paraphernalia, too.  And I have proof of my last.

That's the intro.  So cue up some appropriate music and return with us now to those thrillin' days o' yesteryear...

That's a Hopalong Cassidy shirt, pants, boots, guns, and RADIO at lower left.

Adding in the Cassidy hat, gloves, and tie.

I have no ideer who these clothes are modeled on.  Prolly some C&W singer.

Weren't we cool?  Heh.

Yep.  We were cool alright and we weren't wearin' Wranglers.

The Sunday Re-Run

Our St. Paddy's Day post is rather lame, so here's sumthin' a lil more entertaining.  Well, THAT'S a matter o' opinion, innit?  From July o' 2008:

All Over the Map

So… I mentioned this past Friday I remembered two addresses from my childhood, and I put up a post about one of them… 3 Rue Mozart. The other address I remembered was 41 Bahçelievler Yolu, Ankara, Turkey. And I spent literally hours yesterday with Google Earth and Google Maps, unsuccessfully looking for that particular address. It doesn’t exist, to the best of my knowledge, and I suspect the street was renamed at some point in the nearly 50 years since I left Ankara.

I had some clues to work with. First, my house was about a ten minute or less bike ride from Anıtkabir (Atatürk’s Tomb, pic on left... click for larger), which is arguably the most recognizable landmark in Ankara. Second, my house was across the street from a major university…which I believe was Ankara University. But, my…oh my… how things have changed! Back in the day, the house I lived in… an apartment building, actually… was one of about four apartment buildings on “our” side of the street, the rest of the neighborhood was empty lots. The university was still in the process of being built (or added on to), and there were no trees to speak of, except for very young saplings. There was lotsa brown grass, though… Looking at the Google Earth pictures one can see that’s certainly not the case today, 50 years later. My neighborhood, which was expanding rapidly back in 1957, is now established. There are large trees on the university campus, and not many vacant lots can be found in the general vicinity of where I lived. Which is not surprising, given the population of Ankara was only 453,000 in 1955; it’s up to 3,763,591 today.

The Google Earth screen-shots:

Metropolitan Ankara (overview)

My neighborhood (red arrow; the profusion of blue dots is Anıtkabir)

I was nearly 12 when my father was transferred directly from Paris to Ankara, without passing Go. “Go,” in this case, meant a trip back to the US before continuing on to my father’s new assignment. The family had just spent three years in Paris and Mom was homesick. She desperately wanted to go home before we went to Ankara, but that was not to be. I strongly suspect my father bribed her into acquiescing to the direct move, sweetening the deal with a promise of an extended vacation on the Riviera and northern Italy. He delivered on his promise, and we spent two weeks in Nice/Cannes and vicinity (including Monte Carlo) before driving down to Livorno to turn the car over to the Navy for shipment to Istanbul. In the meantime we toured northern Italy, including Pisa and Florence. My best memory of Italy was climbing the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which is almost guaranteed to give one vertigo. My father and I climbed half-way up the tower, but he didn’t want to go all the way to the top, unfortunately. Mom and my sister stayed on the ground…

So. We turned the car in to the port people in Livorno and took the train to Rome, where we spent a few days doing all the touristy stuff one does in The Eternal City… including being blessed by Pope Pius XII… our family and about 15,000 close friends others gathered in St. Peter’s Square when the Pope made his weekly appearance to bless the crowd from his balcony. From Rome we flew to Athens, where we spent another few days with Air Force friends of my father… and did more touristy things. I’m pretty sure Dad did a little bit of work while we were there, too, but my memory is hazy in this space. From Athens we flew to Istanbul and then on to Ankara, which would be home for the next two years.

And what a home it was! If you think Paris is exciting, Gentle Reader, you should have been in Turkey during the mid- to late-‘50s. Everything, and I DO mean everything, seemed exotic to my parents, my sister, and I. The language. The food. The clothing. The architecture. Every-freakin’-thing. And the BEST part was the fact Americans were generally and genuinely well-liked. There was no militant Islamic movement, and no terrorism…at all. For me... as it was in Paris, so it was in Ankara... when it came to “getting around.” Except for the fact I rode my bicycle to most places I wanted to go, or rode the bus. And I had a lot more freedom, too, in the sense my parents allowed me to go further a-field, as long as my journeys were in some sort of group… usually friends.

Today’s Pic: My sister Norma and I. This photo was taken by a Turkish portrait photographer during the family’s stay in Ankara, and is hand-colored in the style prevalent at the time. The artist got the colors wrong, too, as my shirt was tan, not green. Mom blew a gasket over this lil detail, but she bought the pictures anyway. (Yeah, the pic is a re-run. I originally posted it in March of last year.)

I did a follow-up post on the art of the hand-painted photo; you can find it here.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

Ella Mae Morse...



Ella Mae is a blast from my past, in that she was a favorite of both the Ol' Man and my Mom.  I was raised on a virtual smorgasbord of Big Band music, Barrel House, and classical.  My folks were nothing, if not eclectic.  It's too bad I couldn't convince the Ol' Man that rock 'n' roll was worthy of his attention... but Hey!  We all have our flaws.

It's one of the wonders of Our Modern Age that a great part of Ella Mae's oeuvre is available today on the Tube o' You.  And I'm FOREVER grateful for that.

Mom

I owe a big-ass debt o' gratitude to my Gentle Reader o' Many Names who took some time... and I suspect that time was considerable... to grace me with this:

The ships name was U.S.S. General H.W. Butner. She arrived on 23 October 1953 and the Captain was D. Branneman Capt, USN. It says you were 8 1/2 and your sister was 2 1/2, mother was 29 and just about over the hill (smile).

This is on Ancestry.com and they had a free access to europe records (I was too cheap to buy the add-on).

Further to that comment, this:

That was in reference to my post "When I Was Eight, Part II" wherein I said I didn't remember the name o' the ship we embarked on those so many years ago.  A remarkable case of inner-net detective work, eh?  Looking at that manifest made me remember Mom... in oh so many ways... and on that subject, I want to remember Mom like this:

Dad, Me, and Mom, c. 1949

Mom, c.19444 or so

Ah, but there's this.  That particular piece o' nostalgia set me off on a tangent this evening, one that called back many, many memories of Mom.  Those memories included both the good and the bad, but mostly the bad.  I don't know what it is about human nature that makes us prioritize memories and why it is the memories of the bad often preclude the good.  I spent the better part of two hours this evening mentally composing a post about Mom but eventually cast every single thought aside, mainly because I don't want to write another post like this one.  Once is enough, particularly in this space.

I'd rather remember Mom as the beautiful woman with the deep, deep brown eyes... the woman who healed my wounds, both psychic and physical... with a kiss, a healing touch, and the promise that things would be better tomorrow, and they almost always were.  That's the way I want to remember her, and that's the way she should be remembered.

Thank you, Gentle Reader o' Many Names.  You fired off a great many long dormant synapses tonight, and for that I'm forever grateful.

Another Danged Re-Run

Blog-Bud Jim opened up a post today with a Google Earth screen-shot of his old neighborhood and then launched into one of his nostalgic posts about growing up in Bawston.  I use "nostalgic" in the best possible sense, which is your cue to get on over there and read... if you haven't already.

No, wait.  Read this before you go... it's a three year old re-run and features Google Earth Screen-shots of one of my boyhood homes, along with thumbnail sketches of the adventures Young Bucky Pennington and his two sidekicks... Tommy Wallace and Skipper Amey, fellow military brats... had while growing up and cut loose amongst the Parisians.  Like this:

One of My Boyhood Homes

I got this idea from another blogger, who posted Google Earth pics of the street where she grew up… as background to one of the strangest dream stories I’ve read in quite a while. The idea, such as it is, that occurred to me was “could I even remember the addresses of my childhood homes, and if so, would the house(s) still be there?”

Well… I remembered two addresses right away, the first being “3 Rue Mozart, Sceaux, Seine, France.” This is the house my parents and I lived in for about three years, give or take a couple of months. My father was stationed in downtown Paris… in a small non-descript sort of building on Avenue Kléber, just a stone’s throw from the Etoile, aka L’Arc de Triomphe. His workplace was in keeping with his mission, as he was in the USAF’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI). His building was actually an apartment house, and there were no signs or other indicators that the building was an Air Force installation. “Air Force office” would probably be a more appropriate term than installation, come to think on it. But, I’m digressing. What my father did has no bearing on what we’re on about here, other than the fact his being stationed in Paris was why I was in Paris. But, then again, that’s everything, ain’t it?

So… what you see in these Google Earth screenshots (as always, click for larger) are…

Metropolitan Paris.

You can see a placemark over my neighborhood, which was on the south side of the city. The actual city of Paris is within the boundaries of the ring road, which is quite visible in the screen shot. I went to school at Orly Field, which you can see in the lower right quadrant of the screenshot. I lived in Sceaux, but one street over was the village of Bourg-La-Reine, which was where the metro stop was. More on that, in a moment.

Second: My neighborhood.

Sceaux and Bourg-La-Reine.

The salient feature of the neighborhood is the Parc de Sceaux, which I’ve talked about a little bit here. The park is quite large, as you can tell from the screen shot, and was only about a six minute bike ride from my front door. I spent many, many hours riding my bike through that park and playing “cowboys and Indians” sorts of games… which were mostly Americans vs. Germans, Big Bang Two style. Keep in mind, this is around 1955 or so, and World War II wasn’t something a kid read about in history books. World War II was recent history back then and my father, and all my friends’ fathers, fought in it. There was also physical evidence of the war that hadn’t been cleaned up completely in the intervening ten years. Not so much in Paris, which was relatively unscathed by the war, but certainly visible in London (where we’d moved from) and MOST certainly visible in Germany, where the family vacationed. Digressions ‘R’ Us…

And finally: the house I lived in:

3 Rue Mozart, Sceaux. Second house on the left, with the three cars parked in front.

The amazing thing…for me… is that I recognize the street quite well. Even MORE amazing is the fact the vacant lot across the street from my house is STILL vacant, even though 50+ years have passed. That “vacant lot” isn’t as vacant as it seems, or at least it wasn’t when I was a child. The lot is (or was) actually a very large garden, with vegetables and fruit trees, and it looks like the garden is still tended today. The garden was owned and tended by my boyhood friend Christian’s grandparents when I lived on Rue Mozart, and my family was the recipient of a lot of goodies that came out of that garden.

Christian, a young French boy my age, was one of my partners in crime. My two other closest friends, Tommy Wallace and Skipper Amey, were the sons of US military families that lived in the area… and there were only three such families, including my own.

I mentioned above that I would say more about Le Metro. The metro was my friends’ and my ticket out of the ‘burbs and into The City. Now, being as how we…all of us boys… were only ten years old, we had limits placed upon us by our parents. We were free to ride our bikes all over the neighborhood(s), and were allowed to venture as far as the Parc de Sceaux. Everything else was “off limits.” But… we were boys. Very imaginative and a lil bit daring boys, too. Tommy, Skipper, and I figured out how to read the metro maps, locate the places we wanted to go (this being our favorite destination), save money from our allowances for train tickets, and actually travel into the city for the day… and get home by mid-afternoon. Without ever being caught. Which we did about once a month throughout my final summer in Paris. Years later I told my parents about our adventures and they were suitably horrified. Well, Mom was, anyway. Dad just kinda smiled a little bit, and I can’t help but feel he thought “That’s my boy!” But he would never have said something like that in front of Mom. And he would of beat the livin’ daylights out of me, had I been caught back then. But, Hey!  I wasn’t.  Caught.

Those clandestine trips into Paris are the things I remember most about living there. There are other things, true, but one never forgets one’s very first taste of independence, no?

 I think Google Earth is one of the coolest things about these here inter-tubes.

Boxes

One of the things I like about G+ is the "sparks" feature... which allows you to specify interests and then gives you a daily list of articles from around these inner-nets that fall into the category or categories you've defined.  I've defined a few interests, all of them obvious, like cigars, beer, and single-malts.  Here's a few grafs from a lil sumthin' in the Beaumont, Tejas local paper that popped up in the "cigars" category yesterday:

Cigar boxes are no longer a part of childhood. In an office supply store last week I saw a display of plastic boxes for children for use in school, for storing pens and pencils and glue and scissors and all the other easily-misplaced little impedimenta of very young artists.

Once upon a time, children employed wooden cigars boxes for such purposes; if one's father didn't smoke cigars then someone else's did, and so nice little wooden boxes were as common as 1943 steel pennies. I suppose that if now a child were to carry his art supplies to school in a cigar box he would be sent for therapy and his parents filed on with some state agency for Not Thinking Correctly.

The plastic boxes for sale now contain only air, and to a father that's disappointing; wooden cigar boxes came filled with, well, cigars, so everyone was happy. Contemporary boxes are filled with nothing more than the chemical aromas of Shanghai, and no one ever celebrated an accomplishment or a birth by lighting up a victory Chinese air molecule.

In another time-space dimension, the birth of a child was celebrated by the proud father handing out cigars to his pals. Upon retrospect one realizes that the young mother probably needed a cigar more than anyone, but such an image would not make an appropriately-sentimental greeting card. One wonders if somewhere there is at least one mother who smokes cigars while holding her infant, in Newton County, perhaps.

The article goes on at some length and it's quite a good reminiscence.  I do relate to the first few thoughts expressed above... I kept my childhood treasures in Dutch Masters boxes that were handed down from the Ol' Man.  My friends all had cigar boxes, too.  We kept our baseball cards in 'em, our marble collections (yeah, I shot marbles as a kid... do you know ANY kid that does that today?), and, for me, my model airplane paraphernalia... paint brushes, glue, small bottles of Testors paint, not to mention scads and scads of leftover decals.  I had more than a few cigar boxes.

I still have more than a few cigar boxes (see right), even after I've "gifted" ("pawned off" would be more descriptive) more than a few of 'em to grandson Sean and even some friends.  I find it hard to throw away these small objects of beauty, as I struggle to find some sort of use for 'em.  They only take up valuable and limited space right now, even considering the fact a couple o' boxes hold my Small Treasures, even today.

So... we have boxes.  If you have a child you want to indulge with a nostalgic sort of gift, drop me a line.  I've been known to ship, gratis.  And I have a few boxes on hand.

I Wasn't Always Scrooge

I've been seeing more than a few Christmas posts around the 'sphere of late and more than a few featuring the ways we decorate for the holiday.  I don't do any decorating at all these days, which is partly a function of my humbuggery and partly because I have absolutely NO space for decorations of any sort.  But it wasn't always this way.  Witness:

Those two pics are from my house in Ferndale, a near suburb of Dee-troit.  The top pic is from around 1989 or so, the second is around 1991 and features granddaughter Anastasia.  I scoured the archives this morning for pictures of other Christmases past and found virtually nothing.  Well... there WERE these two gems:

Heh.  That would be Lil Bucky "Hopalong" Pennington, c.1950 or '51.  We were cowboys then, and young.

We Were Cowboys Once, and Young

Blog-Bud Dan put a post up yesterday that talked about cowboys... and a good part of that post was about how he and his friends used to ride their hobby-horses all over the neighborhood chasing down bad guys and saving the ranch.  It was only a few days ago that the subject of cowboys came up here at EIP... on Father's Day, actually...  when we went off on a tangent talking about them and our youth.  It goes without sayin'... yet I always do... that I was BIG into cowboys in my yoot.  My parents had close encounters with the Poor House keeping me in cowboy paraphernalia, too.  And I have proof of my last.

That's the intro.  So cue up some appropriate music and return with us now to those thrillin' days o' yesteryear...

Weren't we cool?  Heh.

Father's Day

Better late than never, as they say...

Happy Father's Day

Today is the day we celebrate the Ol' Man, Dad, Pop, or whatever name you apply to your father. He’s the guy who is our earliest impression of what it means to be a man... and the guy who is primarily responsible for molding boys into men. Here's my role model:

 

Dad in his Army Air Corps lieutenant's uniform, me, and Mom... c.1949.

The Wiki has an interesting article on Father's Day... including the proper spelling as opposed to common usage... which includes this lil bit:

Where Mother's Day was met with enthusiasm, Father's Day was met with laughter. The holiday was gathering attention slowly, but for the wrong reasons. It was the target of much satire, parody and derision, including jokes from the local newspaper Spokesman-Review. Many people saw it as just the first step in filling the calendar with mindless promotions like "Grandparents' Day", "Professional Secretaries' Day", etc., all the way down to "National Clean Your Desk Day."

Heh. That describes the earliest time period when a movement was on to make Father’s Day a national holiday… or during the very early part of the 20^th century. I think it’s interesting to note that all those ersatz holidays actually have a day named for the occasion now… even though they may not be officially recognized holidays.

But anyhoo: call yer Ol’ Man.

So... Holding with our tradition here at EIP we have recycled last year's post on the subject.  It occurred to me that I'm Green in at least this one regard... we do NOT send old blog-posts off to the landfill or otherwise harm our ecosystem, beyond actually publishing this pixelated fertilizer.  Blog posts have a half-life of at least 5,000 years, yanno?  Coz the inner-nets are forever.  Or so I'm told.

It slipped my mind that today is Father's Day until I rolled out of bed and read a note wishing me a Happy Day.  My Bad.  As for the reason there's this apparent lag between rolling out of bed and making amends?  Not as much a lag as normal people would assume... 15 minutes, is all.  It was another episode of "Up All Night," in that we didn't retire this morning until sometime after 0715 hours.  I do it because I can.  But this sorta thing has its downside:  my day is well and truly blown.

Rituals

I always take my whiskey neat... without any sort of mixer, water, or even ice.  Just straight up, thank you very much, and that'll be fine.  I actually drink nearly all my alcohol straight up, the only three exceptions being martinis, margaritas, and gin and tonics (and the occasional Manhattan).  So what you see above is a major departure from normal practice, in that I added ice to the Drambuie and single-malt last evening.  Ice.  We never do that sort of thing.  Ever.  And I immediately thought of my father as I did so, for some unknown reason.

I say "unknown reason" because my Dad always mixed something into his drinks... usually ginger ale for the classic highball or soda in those rare times he drank scotch.  And water with his raki.  Always something - he never took his whiskey neat as far as I know.  So it's a mystery as to why he popped into my head last night.  Maybe it was because of the evening ritual, maybe it was because I was breaking habit, maybe it was something else.  But there he was, and there he remained as I sat outside taking in the sunset.  

I thought back on HIS evening drinking ritual... always two martinis before dinner and two highballs after, rarely if ever more.  But it was ritual, indeed.  My Mom would mix up the evening batch of martinis every afternoon between 1630 and 1645, slip two olives on the toothpicks, put the pitcher and two vermouth-rinsed glasses in the freezer, and wait for the sound of my Dad's car in the driveway, which happened sometime around 1730.  Her timing was exquisite: she'd have the martinis poured by the time Dad hit the back door. She would open the door, place the glass in his hand, and turn her cheek up to him for a kiss.  They would then go straight from the kitchen to the bedroom, where he'd change clothes and they'd begin the day's recap, moving from there to the den.  Every night, Monday through Friday, like clockwork... it never varied, it never failed.  Or in those rare events when it did fail, there would be a call telling Mom he'd be late.  

It was amazing, really.  Serious June and Ward stuff, except for the fact that my sister and I were under strict orders to be invisible until such time as we were summoned.  That first hour or so of the evening was reserved for adults... we could commune over dinner, which was family time.  And we did, every night, the four of us... in the dining room over a proper dinner.  My childhood was full of rituals like this.

All of this came rushing back to me last night, unbidden.  But I'm glad it did, coz they just don't make 'em like that any longer... for better or worse.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

Taking a page out of Blog-sister Kris' book...

I could very well have been one of those kids in this video, as I was 11 years old when "High Society" was released.  Now, that said... Mom and I used to do a killer duet on this song in the way-back, until such time as I got into my teens and singing tacky songs like this became uncool.  But Mom never quit trying to engage me with this song and every so often we'd do it... up until I was a senior in high school.  Srsly.

So.  We've defined a Sinatra station on Pandora and we're listening to Ol' Blue Eyes... and Ella... and Nat King Cole... and a plethora of other older-than-me-and-gone-on-to-their-reward artists.  And we're thinking of Mom.  Fondly.

Mom

Correction:  Memory ain't what it used to be.  The song is from the 1959 film A Hole In The Head.  I was 14, so I couldn't have been in that clip.  And I guess I did sing the song into my teens.

Too Poor To Pay Attention

My Mom used to have this saying back when I was a kid: "We're too poor to even pay attention!"  At least she was the first person I ever heard say that.  She was most certainly given to hyperbole, as well, seeing as how my childhood was decidedly middle-class.  But I thought of that saying today as I made the Morning Rounds, since I was only giving my daily reads a perfunctory glance, if that.  Too poor to pay attention, too distracted to even chase the usually interesting links.  Mebbe it's the weather.  It's still iron gray and duller than a Friday afternoon safety briefing outdoors. Chilly, too.

The weather-blahs never used to set in until the end of February back when I lived in snow country.  They seem to have arrived way ahead of schedule this year.

―:☺:―

Now... that said... blog-bud (Seattle) Andy was waxing rhapsodic about the morning sunrise as seen from his place o' bid'niz.  I commented to the effect that I have a few of those tee shirts, too. I was always an early-guy, mainly coz I got more done between the hours of 0600 and when people began to wander in than the rest of the day put together.   And here's proof... a "classic shot of the parking lot," in James Taylor's words:

Taken in Rochester, NY on May Day 1998.  There were no parades or Maypoles that day as I recall.  The trees were in bloom, though.

Happy Father's Day

Today is the day we celebrate the Ol' Man, Dad, Pop, or whatever name you apply to your father. He’s the guy who is our earliest impression of what it means to be a man... and the guy who is primarily responsible for molding boys into men. Here's my role model:

Dad in his Army Air Corps lieutenant's uniform, me, and Mom... around 1949.

The Wiki has an interesting article on Father's Day... including the proper spelling as opposed to common usage... which includes this lil bit:

Where Mother's Day was met with enthusiasm, Father's Day was met with laughter. The holiday was gathering attention slowly, but for the wrong reasons. It was the target of much satire, parody and derision, including jokes from the local newspaper Spokesman-Review. Many people saw it as just the first step in filling the calendar with mindless promotions like "Grandparents' Day", "Professional Secretaries' Day", etc., all the way down to "National Clean Your Desk Day."

Heh. That describes the earliest time period when a movement was on to make Father’s Day a national holiday… or during the very early part of the 20^th century. I think it’s interesting to note that all those ersatz holidays actually have a day named for the occasion now… even though they may not be officially recognized holidays.

But anyhoo: call yer Ol’ Man.

Still More Random Notes

So. Yesterday… being close to the first of the month… was filled with the banal yet essential trivialities of life. Bills were paid. I completed the bi-monthly commissary and beer run with minimal drama and maximum efficiency. I got my quarterly haircut. So on and so forth.

The usual, customary, and reasonable Happy Hour was my reward for completing the necessary tasks but with the advent of warm weather we’re deprived of our soundtrack, seeing as how we keep El Casa Móvil De Pennington buttoned up tight when the AC is running. Our neighbors doubtlessly appreciate that… even though I try to keep the music at a level that’s sufficient for my ears only. We do live in close quarters here in Beautiful La Hacienda Trailer Park, though.

―:☺:―

I always get my hair cut out at the base barbershop (of late… more on that below), which tends to be more economical than the civilian shops in the area. There is a downside, though, as employee turnover is high out at the base and I’ve never quite understood why that is. I have theories… well, one theory. Most of the barbers, and they are ALL female, are probably married to GIs… and when the GIs leave, so does the help. I don’t like that. I prefer to go to the same person each and every time for my four-times-a-year barbering experience. Build a relationship, and all that. But if that’s what I TRULY wanted, I’d go local… as the barbers in the old shop I patronized a few years back were steady in their employment… being owner-operated.

Still and even… I wish there were establishments that provided services such as this in my neck o’ the woods. I’d pay good money for this…seeing as how it only happens four times a year:

We then walked down an alley and into a barber shop. There waiting for us was an old man, the barber, and two young Japanese maidens, all three smiling broadly. The old man waved me into one of the barber chairs, and I dutifully sat. The old man reclined the barber chair and I stretched out, fully supine. One of the girls then proceeded to take off my shoes and socks, while the other fetched a large handful of steaming towels from a container. She artfully wrapped my entire head in those towels, leaving a small space for me to breathe through. All the while this is going on, the other girl is washing my feet. After a few minutes, the second girl unwraps my face and the barber proceeds to shave me. The first girl is still working on my feet, giving me a pedicure and ending up with a prolonged and wonderful foot massage. After the barber finished shaving me I was escorted to a wash stand where the first girl washed and towel-dried my hair. Then it was back to the barber chair for the actual haircut while the two girls gave me a manicure. The whole experience ended with both girls massaging my entire upper body. I walked out of that place feeling like a million bucks, and I’ve never had a “haircut” like that, ever again.

Ah… but that was in Japan, in the ‘70s, and all that was had for the princely sum of around 15 Yankee Dollars, if memory serves. But the haircut was a birthday present and I didn’t pick up the tab. It could have been more, but I doubt it. (You’ll also note, if you follow the link and read the whole thing, that I was “going local” when that piece was written a few years back. We’ve since changed our habits.)

―:☺:―

Blog-Bud Kris is back from her cruise vacation and has posted interesting narrative and pics of the experience. Some of the pics she’s posted are of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor… which resulted in me posting the following in her comments:

Seeing the Statue of Liberty at this level is awe-inspiring. People go mad taking pictures - myself included - and there typically isn't alot of conversation. Respect for this iconic image is obvious - the experience is treated with reverence by everyone.

The family spent five consecutive years overseas when I was a child... with no trips home... and we returned to the US via sea (the ol' Military Sea Transport Service, out of bid'niz now that everyone goes to and fro by air). The ONE thing among many I'll never forget about that trip... and it was epic, as we embarked in Istanbul and made many port calls in the Med on the two week journey home... is my Mom bursting into tears when the Statue of Liberty came into full view as we sailed into New York harbor. It was a defining moment for me, and something I'll NEVER forget.

So... I know exactly where you're coming from with this.

S’true, that. I’ve spent some time today remembering that experience… of standing on the ship’s rail in the morning’s summer sunshine, watching the coastline get steadily larger… from the thinnest of thin lines on the horizon to the point where it began to fill our view, further enlarging to the point where one could make out buildings and such… and then my Mom’s hand gripping mine so hard it hurt when Lady Liberty came into glorious full view. It was then I was going to say “Mom!” when I looked over and saw the tears streaming down her face and my father’s arm around her shoulder. Things just don’t get any more poignant than that, Gentle Reader. I was 13 years old at the time.

Just as a short digression… I’ve also wondered a bit this morning about the navigation skills of the master and crew of the ship… and just how they managed to end a two week voyage across the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean so as to arrive in New York in the morning daylight… not to mention to facilitate the disembarking process in a manner that would allow all aboard to either make other transportation connections or get to their hotels in a timely manner. A small miracle that was.

But… let us return to our reminiscing… Five years is a long time to be away from home. Our consecutive tours in Paris… three years, followed by a two-year stint in Ankara, Turkey… were probably a LOT harder on my parents, particularly my Mom, than they were on my sister and I. Keep in mind this was in the 1950s, and we went five years with no TV and no telephone, just for starters. My family went entirely without a lot of the things we take for granted today… like fresh iceberg lettuce… for an extended period of time. While the experience was wonderful for my sister and me it was doubtless much less so for Mom. The support mechanisms our troops take for granted today… big-ass commissaries and base exchanges, just to name two… existed only in rudimentary form “back in the day.”

Another memory I have of our return is what Mom ordered for dinner our first night home. She instructed the waiter in the restaurant to cut a full head of lettuce into quarters and bring her a bowl FULL of Thousand Island dressing. And that was IT… all she had for dinner, period, full-stop. I remember that very well, as it became part of the family lore… a tale told and retold throughout the remainder of my childhood whenever the subject of homecomings came up.

I suppose you hadda be there. I'm glad I was.