The Haircut

I arrived at the haircut place at about 10 a.m. yesterday. Almost simultaneously, a young woman arrived and parked next to me. We both got out of our cars and went in. Being chivalrous or at least old school, I held the door open to let her in. As it happens, she got the very next spot and I had to wait a bit.

She was a nice looking woman, probably in her mid 30’s, with a bad haircut, unfortunately, going where I go, to a mass chain hair cut place is the cheapest answer but not always the best. However, when asked what she wanted she had not a clue so she gets what she deserves I guess. As you can see on an early Saturday morning it was quiet and I had nothing else to do but watch her and the other guy in the chair before me getting some sort of flattop. He was the right age for this and was a geek at best.

My turn came up, post geek, and I got into the chair and we talked a bit. It was mainly me talking about how quiet the city was over the long weekend and how my daughter and I had been out to dinner the night before and how quiet it had been for a Friday night in downtown Hamilton.

When finished, I went to pay, and the haircut person said I should wait as the other haircutter was not quite finished with the other woman. I asked why I had to wait and she said I could pay for them both at the same time.

I was startled! Why was I doing this? She said, “Isn’t she your daughter?”

The woman having her hair cut thought this was a great idea that I should pay for her. I insisted I had to go but she would pay for me. We all laughed as it was explained that because we both came in together, they all thought we were together.

The funny thing is, in my mind, I was thinking (but thankfully kept this to myself) that this woman was way too old to be my daughter! The real truth is that my oldest son is 48 so of course she was not too old and I shouldn’t be offended, but because my daughter in question is 17, I just automatically considered that only a teenager could possibly be my daughter. Not everyone would see this.

I paid for myself and left, wanting to tell my new found daughter that there are better places to get her hair done and that she needs to go find a style! She really was pretty underneath all that bad taste. And if she were my daughter……

The Wrong Number

I went to call my Aunt the other night and simply picked up the phone after dinner, sitting outside finishing a beer, and dialed her phone number, all the while thinking something was wrong. I have been calling my Aunt at her house for 40 years or so, and more often in later years, and I know her number like I know the back of my hand and yet, something seemed wrong.

When the phone was answered I knew it was a wrong number but I asked for my Aunt and was told it was wrong. I recognised a Baltimore accent so I knew I had the right area code but the number, although very familiar, was wrong.

I thought very hard and came up with the right number. I wanted to call 410-555-0364 (the 555 is a Hollywood gimmick as there are no 555 area codes and they always use it in movies) but instead I called 410-555-1792. (To be clear on the concept, I can’t use the number here because people may start calling my Aunt or this other wrong number.)

After my conversation with my Aunt I called my first wife to see if she remembered the number. It was familiar to her but she couldn’t come up with the original owners of that phone number either. She thought it could even have been our number because neither of us could remember it but we knew it.

My son was called but was not home. My daughter in law, a psychologist, said that I may have had a cognitive disturbance of some kind, a sort of brain fart. As I spoke with her my brain cleared and I knew what I had done. I told her not to give my son the message as I had just solved the puzzle. This was the home phone number of some old friends, both deceased for some time, but who I used to call often when we lived in Baltimore and once a year usually on Christmas Eve after we had moved. I called every Christmas eve no matter where I was for probably 17 years. I guess I just remembered the number too well.

so, how did you finally meet your wife?”

And you say, “OK, we now know how you met your mother-in-law, so how did you finally meet your wife?”

After my mother in law came home, and she spoke with her daughter later that day, she said she had met an interesting man (me) and I would be a good possibility for her daughter, who I had never met. My now wife assured her I was too old for her. All was forgotten.

A few weeks later we had an opening party, where we had the 12 artists signing calendars (100 signed ones to sell for $100 instead of $15 for a regular one) and a good time was had by all. There was music and food and alcohol and it was good. I brought a date that enjoyed herself, and at the end of the evening I was talking to some people when the crowd seemed to disperse, much like Moses parting the Red Sea, and people were being flung far and wide as this woman came barreling through the crowd towards me. She reached over several people fleeing for their lives and shook my hand, explaining that she was the art director for this project and it was her mother who had sat and waited for my mattress. I told her how nice it was to meet her and she left with her girlfriends, and as I looked into her eyes I felt an immediate connection, which my date did not feel.

I called our mutual friend Edee, and asked about her. First, I needed to know how old she was and what did she do and asked for any information she could give me. I had an unwritten rule that I never went out with women who were younger than my oldest son. I just wanted to make sure she fit that profile and she did as she is eight years older than my son. I found out she was a full time art director and that she had been married before. This was all good information. And lastly, I wanted her phone number which I got.

At this point we all begin to act as if we are in the seventh grade. Our friend calls the woman to tell her I’m interested and assure her I will be calling. I put the number away so I can call her later on as I still had my date with me for a while, and “any port in a storm……”

My date (and wife) to be was getting worried because I hadn’t called and I had almost forgot about it but it looked to me that I had to get out of my current relationship anyway so I better call as soon as I had a space. My date to be was concerned and was calling our friend Edee to see what had happened to me, which was, of course, nothing.

I finally did call her and we made a date for dinner the following week. I went to her apartment and she lived in a lovely place, the first date I probably had who lived alone in a place not looking like a college dorm room. I dressed for dinner and had on a tie in those days and a sport coat, and we had a glass of wine at her place in chilled glasses (I was impressed) and we went to El Zocalo in the Mexican area of Detroit.

The story continues for the next 25 years, but a highlight of that evening was that 20 years later, at about the same time of year, we drove to Detroit and went to the same restaurant with both of our girls. They loved the place and the food and often ask to go back. It’s a bit hard for a one day event, as it takes about four hours each way, but we have done it before.

That's how I met my mother in law

Here’s a verse from The Echo Song (Sipping Cider), an old camp song:

That's how I got (that's how I got)
My mother-in-law (my mother-in-law)
by sippin' ci- (by sippin' ci)-der through a straw.
That's how I got (that's how I got)
My mother-in-law (my mother-in-law)
(everyone) by sippin' cider through a straw.

I met my mother in law before I met my wife.

 I had been asked by Edee Seymour, a woman who was at that time, working for the Michigan Arthritis Foundation, to participate as a resource person to a Michigan Artists Calendar, a fund raising idea she had, which included giving 12 different artists each a page in a calendar, to be sold as a benefit. I was one of several people she came to for suggestions as to who should be included and what we could do to promote this item.

Along the line she scheduled a radio interview at WJZZ, Detroit’s jazz radio for well-known Detroit artist Charles McGee and me. It was on a Wednesday afternoon, and their offices were not far from my office so it would be easy.

Three weeks before the interview, I purchased a mattress from Sears, which was to be delivered on the following Wednesday, the day they delivered to my neighborhood, and I had to take off the whole day (it could have been a half day as memory fails a bit) but I booked it off. On Tuesday evening Sears called to say it would not be here and it would be another week. I changed my schedule and went to work. The following Tuesday evening, Sears called again and said it was not available but would be delivered the following Wednesday, the day of the interview.

I was upset because I had to take off a whole day but would not know when the bed would be delivered, and therefore I couldn’t do the radio show. I called Edee and explained, and she suggested she could get an apartment watcher to sit in my place and wait for Sears if they had not shown by 11:00 a.m., which was when I had to leave for WJZZ. I agreed, and Edee called my now wife, the volunteer art director for the calendar project, and asked if she knew anyone who could sit and wait for a mattress. She explained that her mother didn’t work and could be convinced to go and sit and wait for the mattress.

At 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday, my now mother-in-law showed up with her violin, and told me she would wait for my mattress, and asked if she could practice her violin. I was delighted, and left her with instructions, which she followed, about the delivery.

She followed the instructions, the mattress was delivered and all was fine.

When she spoke with her daughter later that day, she said she had met an interesting man (me) and I would be a good possibility for her daughter, who I had never met. My now wife assured her I was too old for her.

The rest of the story will follow soon, but that was how I met my mother-in-law, not sipping cider through a straw.

Cabot Street Cinema Theatre

Taken from Wikipedia and the Cabot Street Theater web site.

One of the memories that stands out from our time living in Beverly, MA, is the Cabot Street Theater. A Beverly landmark, a national treasure, it was just a magic experience.

I often think how much my kids would love this place if it were available to them, and how we would enjoy walking up the street to go to the movies, a short three blocks away.

The Cabot Street Cinema Theatre is located at 286 Cabot Street in Beverly, MA. It offers live performances of the Le Grand David Spectacular Magic Company and art house films.

For almost ninety years the Cabot Street Cinema Theatre has been an important part of the Boston's North Shore community. Harris and Glover Ware, two brothers and former vaudeville musicians from Marblehead, MA, built the Cabot eight years after the construction of their first Beverly theater, the Larcom Theater. It was described as having “the most impressive auditorium of its size east of New York.” Erected with ballyhoo and great expense in 1920, it was immediately Beverly’s grandest playhouse. Large enough to accommodate any kind of entertainment, from silent pictures to opera, the Cabot was also grand enough—with its frescoes, filigrees, golden dome, and full balcony—to rival big-city show palaces.

The Cabot's architects were Funk and Wilcox, who had already made a name for themselves with the Athenaeum and the Strand Theatre in Dorchester, MA. Back then, movie palaces included fully equipped stages because film showings were often preceded by live acts—vaudeville. They were also built with orchestra pits for musicians who accompanied the silent films and the stage production.

Out of the 20,000 movie palaces entertaining America in 1920, the National Trust for Historic Preservation estimates that less than 250 remain. Eighty-eight years after it opened, the Cabot maintains a grand tradition of elegant movie-going and live stage entertainment thanks to impresario Marco the Magi. He stated, “The total effect of a motion picture is conditioned by the environment in which it is shown.” Marco selects the Cabot’s “films worth seeing more than once;” he directs its attentive tuxedoed ushering staff, and designs its interior decor, including the fresh cut flower bouquets. Raised in the grand tradition from which the Cabot was born, he has allowed movie-going to be an occasion where a community gathers to be entertained in an elegant environment.

Through the years, the theatre’s beautiful interior design was kept largely intact. A 43-foot dome with bronze chandelier still overarches the seats of the orchestra and balcony, and the ornate plasterwork of the proscenium is decorated with murals and gold-leaf. The interior design of circular or elliptical arches maximizes the acoustic and aesthetic effect.

 By August 1976, the Cabot Cinema (its name changed in 1964) had fallen on hard times. That changed when the present owners brought new life and a new name (Cabot Street Cinema Theatre) to the aging dream-palace. The long-dormant stage was soon fully restored and the world-renowned stage magic extravaganza known as Le Grand David and his own Spectacular Magic Company, debuted on February 20, 1977.

Today, in the elegance of an historic 1920 theatre, you can enjoy a wonderful selection of fine domestic and foreign language films on the big screen.

Le Grand David and his own Spectacular Magic Company, recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s longest running resident stage magic production, has amazed and entertained audiences of all ages for 35 consecutive years with its renowned stage magic extravaganza at the elegant 1920 Cabot Street Cinema Theatre. Each performance sparkles with classic illusions of stage magic, dozens of elaborate backdrops and curtains, hundreds of stunning costumes, beautiful choreography, and lovely classical music.

Beverly’s acclaimed troupe has mounted another, all-different, dazzling production, An Anthology of Stage Magic at the historic 1912 Larcom Theatre, a jewelbox of a playhouse located at 13 Wallis Street in downtown Beverly, just four blocks from the Cabot. With its horseshoe-shaped balcony and antique pressed tin interior, the Larcom is the perfect showcase for joyful family entertainment.

Chinese Restaurants of my Childhood

I remember the Lotus Inn in Baltimore on Reisterstown Road near Pikesville. It was the Chinese restaurant of choice for tons of teens in my era, and was a nice, average restaurant a bit out of the way for me. I spent more time at Nan King restaurant, just nearby my house in a slightly less upscale neighbourhood, I guess. In September, 2009,
I wrote about the restaurant and I said:  

 “When I was a kid I used to go to the neighborhood Chinese Restaurant, Nan King. It was across the street from the bowling alley in our Forest Park neighborhood, and was always a wondrous place, full of great and exotic food.

 Now, granted, this was in the days before we ever heard of Szechwan cooking or Sushi or Vietnamese cuisine.

 They had dishes with pork and shrimp and lobster, these were things that little Jewish boys only heard about, because they wouldn’t have been seen in our house. It’s not like we were kosher, it’s really just that these foods were foreign to us at the time.

 My father would not eat Chinese food, so this became a special place for my mother and I to eat lunch on special Saturdays. We would get Chow Mein and Fried Rice and all those exotic Cantonese dishes.

 As a teenager, I returned there with friends. My friend Ted Fisher and I would go there often and get combination platters, a great bargain. The pork chow mien and fried rice with an egg roll and soup was about $1.10 and the shrimp egg foo young and fried rice and an egg roll with soup was about $1.25. These came with dessert of course, peppermint ice cream!

 I know this place closed many years ago, as well we moved on to the Lotus Inn when we were mobile, a more upscale (slightly) place a mile or so uptown. When I was older, we were turned away from the Cantonese places by the more exotic ones, but my memories of sitting there with warm china containers with lids full of wonderful food and pots of tea still remains.

 Much like my story about the Pimlico Hotel, I have a Nan Kin story. No, I didn’t steal from these lovely people, but an opportunity came up a few years ago on eBay to acquire four tea cups from the restaurant. I hold the cups in my hand and it takes me back to a kinder, more gentler time……”

 However, today I found this postcard from the Lotus Inn and it brought to mind a story.

 When I was a kid, a teen ager, my fraternity (pledge class maybe) had a Father and Son Dinner. It was a lunch really, because it must have been a cheap way to do it, at the Lotus Inn.

 My father, a lovely guy, was a bad eater, or I guess just a picky one. He had a few things he liked, and many he didn’t. Chinese Food was one of his least favorites, in fact I never saw him eat any. However, because of this event, he was willing to go to the Lotus Inn with me. I believe he had fried chicken, which he did eat, but he enjoyed himself in the camaraderie of his son and another one of my friends and their father (who it was is lost in time) who shared our booth.

 As I remember it was a good crowd, and this was before political correctness so it was a Father and Son Event, not a child with any given caregiver.

 The restaurant is gone as are most of the attendees, but I remember the time so well….

                                                                                  

Lawn

After installing artificial turf in front of our newly renovated building, I went outside on Friday to walk over to the library and found an older woman (older than me) bent over looking carefully at out mnow completed lawn. I asked, “Can I help you?”

“Is it real”, she said and I told her it was. I explained the process and what it was called, as she asked for a name of the product and I explained it was artificial turf. “What about the black stuff, the dirt?” she asked, and I explained it was ground up automobile tires spread throughout the surface and it acts pretty much like dirt but it weighs down the carpet. I expected a negative reaction and was pleasantly surprised that she had a positive one. She was amazed.

I did explain that we did not have to pay to cut it regularly, did not have the kids trample it each summer and turn it to mud when it rains. This eliminates the dirt and dust being tracked into the building most of the summer and fall.

She left very pleased and I asked her to come back in a week or so when it will be entirely installed as thye still are working on the final stages.

That was the first time I’ve ever had anyone looking deeply into my lawn anywhere.

Sheetz

For those of you who know, there is Sheetz. For those who don’t,” above all else, Sheetz is about providing kicked-up convenience while being more than just a convenience store. Sheetz is a mecca for people on the go. If you need to refuel your car or refresh your body, we have what you need to keep you moving on to whatever comes next.

Road warriors. Construction workers. Soccer moms. They all have a special place at Sheetz. We know you don't have time to run all over town for the things you need. Sheetz has what you need, when you need it. And, we're here 24/7/365. Even on Christmas day.” From the Sheetz web site.

Sheetz is a great place for food, fuel and a bathroom in case you have a need.

They have pretty good food and lots of choices including cheap, hot food for travelers.

On the road, I like to go there (you can tell). They have more and better choices than a McDonalds and a place to get gas.

So there I was, on the road, but something was wrong.

The day before I left, due to undue tension at my abode, I missed my regular bathroom visit. In case I’m giving you TMI, as I age, I get more patterned than before, and some things I need to count on. My mother warned me years ago that old people get fixated on bowel movements. And while I may not be there (I’m old, not fixated), my missed opportunity messed me up and I decided, before a long ride, that I should settle this matter.

I asked my wife to see if we had any Senocot, a well-known laxative, and we did. It says an adult can take 2-4 tablets, 1-2 times a day to a maximum of 4 per day. I kind of read that as a dosage of 4. This was not necessarily a wise move, but I took 4 and went to sleep.

In the morning I was fine and regular and assumed it was a slam-dunk. My day started, and off we went into the car and drove.

There is an unwritten double entendre kind of explanation with the term Sheetz. Every time I passed a Sheetz, I did!

There are lots of them on the highways of America, and I visited so many. It was a treat, but they may have put up wanted posters posted by now in the Sheetz bathrooms looking for me. 

 I tried to “have a nice day” when I could.

My wife looked at a small spot on my arm and said, “What is that?

Note: This is not my hand although I guess it could be.

My wife looked at a small spot on my arm and said, “What is that? I don’t like the looks of it!”

I said, “It’s an age spot”

She said, “Could be cancer, let the doctor should look at that!”.

I grumbled.

A few weeks later I was at the Doctors office with my wife and I said, “Will you look at this, my wife thinks it’s a bad thing,”

She said, “I don’t like the looks of that, go see the dermatologist!” and she made a referral for me and I was hooked in the system.

A medical student working in the dermatologist’s office said, “What are we looking at, and I showed her and told her what had happened so far. She said, “It’s an age spot!”

The dermatologist came in and said, “What are we looking at?” I said, “I think it’s an age spot, my wife and doctor think it’s suspicious and your assistant here thinks it’s an age spot”.

He said, “It’s a maturity spot (better name)!”

I said, “Great, no cancer here”, and I went to leave but he said he better look me over for fear my wife would find more. He did look me over and found nothing.

He said, “Now that I looked you over, your wife will not be able to send you back with more stuff!”

I am now relieved and I am beautiful!

I wonder what the perfect age is for dying....

Munch - Death in the Sick Room

I wonder what the perfect age is for dying, so that your obituary says or your friends say, “He was such a young man…”

Clearly I have passed that mark.

I imagine it’s a max somewhere in your 50’s, where you seem to be gunned down in the prime of your life.

"To An Athlete Dying Young" is a poem (XIX) in A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad (1896). It is perhaps one of the most well-known poems pertaining to early death; in this case, that of a young man at the height of his physical glory.

Published in the period between the two Boer Wars, the poem gained even more popularity during World War 1, as many saw it as a poignant lament for the lost generation of so many bright, young men, cut down in their prime.

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

This will not be my epitaph, nor is it in any way fitting. As well, I doubt I will die pretty soon anyway; the dying young was just the fact that I had to rule out as a part of my obituary.

I spoke with someone yesterday who has already written theirs. She just thought she should put the facts straight and save their kids the trouble and bother of writing one. I never thought about it until they brought it up and I decided that this seemingly never ending blog can serve as the world’s longest obituary.

I can’t imagine writing my own, although there was an artist I knew years ago in Baltimore, Jonas Fendel, who wrote his own. He knew he was dying (as if we don’t) and decided to write a quite funny one based on his notes for his students. It was short and humorous, and it just sounded like him.

I only know that when I go, no one will say, He was such a young man…..”

The very last words my daughter heard as she rushed out of the house on Friday night ...

This is not really my SRX, it's Jewel's but it's the same kind of vehicle but with a bit more damage.

The very last words my daughter heard as she rushed out of the house on Friday night were, “Be careful, my car is parked towards the middle of the driveway as I was going back out, and didn’t think anyone was going to pull out first!”

A warning is just that, a warning. It is meant to convey a message, and is thought understood by the person delivering such a warning. How wrong I was! Not a minute later my daughter reappeared, grief stricken, as she had just rammed her mother’s car into her father’s car, causing as much damage as can be administered within a four foot distance.

Words cannot express my outrage on this subject! I was enraged! I was having an out of body experience, and not in a good way. We had to leave in a few minutes for a football game and had to be there to see my other daughter as a cheerleader, on the jumbotron. I did not have time to linger and both cars were reasonably driveable although my door won’t open beyond about 60%.

Today they go to the body shop for estimates. There is no estimate for the number of years it has taken from our lives, just an estimate for auto body damage.

I asked my daughter to invest in good leather heels, she will need them in order to walk everywhere.

A Lunch to Remember

Back in the day, Mr. Mike’s on Woodward Ave. in Detroit was a really good Greek restaurant. Today, as I looked on the net, it seems to be a Karaoke and Sports bar with a Soul Food menu, buts it’s still been operating since 1936.

I liked the place and ate there as often as it came up. It was a place for lunch for me with a great Spinach pie that came with three Greek meatballs. It was really good.

I had a guest one day for lunch, although I can’t remember who it was. I was downplaying my “man about town” image for some reason, and was trying to look frugal but reasonable. I took the guest to Mr. Mikes for lunch, and when asked by my guest, “Do you come here often?” I assured them I liked it, but seldom came there.

The waitress approached just then and put down a Gin Martini on the rocks with olives in front of me, and said, “Here’s the usual for you Arthur, and what will your guest have?”