Father's Day

Father's Day is one of those minor holidays people don't really care about but celebrate anyway. You have to buy your father something  (a tie, deodorant, something for the garden) and your mother slaves over a hot oven and cooks a meal. Recently on the radio they were talking about what they learned from their fathers. I thought about it and came up with a few pointers I learned from the old man.

1) Working class Italian expressions: Hey gumba!  Capacole! Marone! "Gabbly gots" "Gots on gool". Well actually I picked up some of them from my summer job.

2) Gardening  My father liked to garden and I learned how to till soil, remove rocks from soil and how to garden. The secret of gardening is you have to water when you are tired and don't feel like doing it. Like having a dog, you have to take care of the thing even after the novelty has worn off.

3) How to avoid giving rides to people at work. I remember picking up my father with the Ford Falcon at his job in New York. He noticed one of the secretaries carrying a large plant. He grabbed me and brought me to the Audubon collection then we left after the coast was clear. My father was perceptive to the fact that his co-worker, carrying a large plant, could use a ride back to her home in Jersey City rather than having to deal with said plant on the subway and PATH train. He mentally added how long he would have to spend in Jersey City traffic if he was a nice guy and that is why he took up a sudden interest in Audubon. Learning to avoid giving rides home to people at work is something I became quite adept at over the years.  I stayed in an apartment in Watsessing for years in order to avoid moving closer to where the rest of the staff lived to avoid that task. Thanks, Dad.

4) Going to work when you don't feel like it. Watching your father trudge off to work every morning has a great impact on how dependable we will become in later life. People who's fathers ditch work will do the same when they have a job.

5) Learning that leadership involves negotiation. For a brief  period, my father was president of the Hackensack Democrat Club. 1968 was a divisive time for political parties. The New Democratic Coalition of Bergen County supported Eugene McCarthy for President and sat on their hands during the 1968 Presidential election that ultimately elected Richard Nixon.

The following spring some of the members decided to join the Hackensack Democratic Club. As a kid I got to listen to some of the phone calls the old man made. I remember he called people like Tony Andorra and said, "Well we've decided to let some of these young people join the Democratic Club but I thought it would be nice of some of the 'old timers' came to the meeting too." They would let the liberal wing in the club but he wanted a good showing among the old guard.

6) You should try to keep the family together even if it means visiting  sons and their new wives after they have eloped.

7) Men don't cook, do laundry, vacuum, shop at the grocery store, wash the kitchen sink or make beds.  Most men have had to change with time times on domestic chores but I still don't make my bed.

8) Don't spend more than you make. Driving an old car and not buying the latest gadgets may make you seem cheap but you'll be happier in the long run.

9) Driving a car. Most of us learn to drive from our fathers and that includes good as well as bad driving habits.

10) Picking up the check. Sadly, the oldest male at a table of relatives still has to pay for dinner. Among friends, the Dutch have great customs, ie. every man to himself.

Editor's note: My grandfather, father, and aunt.

Aunt Agnes on the Taliban exchange

I asked what Aunt Agnes thought of the Taliban exchange for Bowie Bergdahl.

Aunt Agnes: Well I needed to take another Demerol to get to sleep last night I'm so mad about this Taliban business. Here you have a traitor, Bowie Bergdahl or something like it. He got high on drugs, walked off his base and decided to seek out trouble in Afghanistan. Well I guess he thought those Taliban would hand him a medal but instead those old Taliban arrested that man. Served him right. For my money he made his bed and should have stayed right where he was and let the fleas have at him. 

But no, our president turns around and frees five terrorists from Guantanamo and in exchange we get that flea bitten patriot. Now Obama thought he was going to be a hero. Parades all over the place, good publicity but it backfired on him. Now everybody is mad at him. Well one good thing, we won't have to feed and clothe those prisoners anymore. They are off our hands now.

I'm sure in a few weeks Bowie, his parents who look like they never went home from Woodstock, and maybe a few of the Taliban will turn up on the Today show. I can see it now. Koda and Bowie like old friends. Not a barber in the house.

Editor's note: It's nice to hear from dear old Agnes again.

Old t shirts

Last week I got a phone call from the Lupus Foundation. They didn't want money. They wanted me to put out a bag of old clothes for them to pick up. Sounded easy at the time but it forced me to choose among my most prized belongings. My old t shirts.

After throwing in some old pajama tops I never wear and some socks with holes in them I came to the t shirt containers. I have two large storage containers I got at KMart a few years ago and there they were. In forty years of buying and being given t shirts as presents, surely I had a few hundred I could give away. 

It turned out to be not as easy as it sounds. Matt Nokes in a Detroit Tigers outfit almost made it to the Lupus bag but I thought "One day it might be valuable". Perhaps he will do something noteworthy in a few years and I can sell my t shirt for hundreds of dollars. All of the trips I've made over the years were represented in the loot. Tokyo, Nova Scotia, Scotland. My title Data t shirts from when I lived in Denver stayed. A t shirt saying "President Bill Clinton salutes the can-do spirit of East Texas" stayed but Bodacious barbecue from Austin got tossed. I almost tossed my Weird New Jersey t shirt but it too stayed put. 

A Bud lite t shirt from the eighties got tossed. So did a bright orange t shirt from the Butterfly Festival from a few years back. I was always afraid to wear something that loud. Still a lot of my old t shirts got saved. A good session in the machine and they'll be good as new. And I promised myself to put some forgotten shirts in the rotation for the summer.

Louie CK

As most of the TV seasons are coming to an end, Louie C K is just starting up. Last week he had a show that got a lot of attention,  It was the show that asked why middle aged guys with beer guts never ask out overweight women. I dunno. Maybe we're afraid they'll say yes.

With most of TV aimed at hip young (or at least young) people it's nice to see a show aimed at middle aged men with beer guts. He sort of represents an every man. He has the whiny, annoying daughters, the crummy apartment, the out of style pants.

Of course we really don't all have the life of Louie C K's that is portrayed on the show. He does have a cushy job. How easy it must be to go to a nightclub every night, tell a few jokes, and have earned enough money to live in Manhattan. He also gets to hang out with celebrities like Sarah Silverman and stay up late, go to bars, play cards, and have enough money to eat out for breakfast.

Still it's refreshing to see someone who's not young, or pretty, schlepping around sort of like a normal person. You can pop open a can of beer while watching the show with the feeling Louie is doing the same thing after the show.

Mother's day gifts

As we get older our mothers start dying on us and we feel a bit of remorse when we realize that we don't even have to send a card or buy flowers at the supermarket on Sunday morning. People who buy flowers at the Shop-rite on Sunday morning are what my mother used to classify as "last minute Joe's". It's like you couldn't deal with Mother's Day until the last possible minute and then you combine it with buying dog food and hot dogs for work.

I remember when my father bought my mother a washing machine for Mother's Day. Mother was actually quite thrilled to have something she could actually use, would make her life easier, and wouldn't give her hay fever. Last week I helped a friend buy a refrigerator and it reminded me of when Mothers got refrigerators and stoves on the second Sunday in May. Sears had prices on the machines that were higher than what they had on their website but they matched the price. A lesson to be learned. At any rate, for the mothers out there, Happy Mother's Day!

Tea taste test

Idle hands being the devil's workshop, yesterday during coffee break I noticed I had two different kinds of tea bags. I had Shop Rite as well as Lipton. I never noted any real difference between them but always assumed the Lipton was a tiny bit better since it was the name brand. Yesterday I did a taste test. I microwaved two cups filled with water and the two tea bags. I sampled the two teas. 

The results? I could not tell them apart.  The tea bags looked the same. The amount of tea in the two bags seemed to be the same. The flavor seemed to be the same to me.  The color was about the same. Perhaps next time I'll try a more exotic (and expensive) tea. 

Leggings

One of the questions besetting modern man is the question of leggings. Who should were leggings? When are leggings appropriate? Recently a school banned leggings. People throughout the world are debating the issue of leggings. In Britain, there is a movement afoot to sell leggings to men. I would show the pictures but this is a family blog. Probably the safe way to deal with leggings is to wear shorts over them. Leggings and only leggings? I suppose in the right settings. Casual Fridays? Perhaps in banks and insurance companies but I would avoid them at wakes.