Category Archives: Men

Easter: Pagans, Peeps, Good Eggs, and a Bad Bunny

29 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by in Confessional, Men

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

EB 3

To me, the Easter Bunny is not a good egg.

BY BOB SMITH

The Bible, apparently, doesn’t discuss Easter in any detail. Or Christmas, for that matter. In fact, some believe the holiday is derived from a Pagan tradition that long predates Christ, and celebrates the spring equinox and gods or goddesses associated with that event (one of whom, apparently, was named “Eostre”). They say fertility symbols of eggs and rabbits (who reproduce like bunnies, because, duh, they are bunnies) are associated with Easter because of that pagan celebration of the renewal of life in the spring. And, of course, the Bible never mentions bunnies, baskets of chocolate, or hard-boiled colored eggs, either.

So who came first – the Christians or the eggs? Who knows. My problem is with the Easter Bunny, because for my kids, he (or she) killed Santa Claus. That’s right. There were three fictitious characters in our house: the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny, and the big kahuna – Santa Claus himself. Our kids never really believed in the tooth fairy, who had no persona at all. There was just money appearing under their pillows in place of an icky tooth they didn’t want anyway. It was an easy fiction for ready cash. But we invested a bit more in the other two characters.

We had told our kids all about Santa, and his rich, phony background: a home (North Pole), a cool vehicle (flying sleigh), and a demanding, high-profile career (running the most sophisticated, well-hidden, toy manufacturing/distribution operation on the planet). But the Easter Bunny? No home, and no vehicle of any kind. The Easter Bunny just hops around looking cute. Unlike Santa, the Easter Bunny doesn’t make anything – it merely distributes store-bought chocolate and jelly beans provided, presumably, by Mom and Dad. Santa had an amazing posse – flying reindeer and a legion of devoted elves. But the Easter Bunny’s peeps? Peeps. Chunks of marshmallow-ish fluff, coated with gritty pink sugar, that masquerades as candy.

Because it had such a thin cover story, our kids quickly dismissed the Easter Bunny as a myth. And it wasn’t long before that suspicion tainted and finally toppled Santa, too. Thanks for nothing, Easter Bunny.

Just keep that chocolate coming.

Time Warp in Copenhagen: Counterculture Thrives in Christiania

27 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by in Confessional, Men

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Frank Christiania

In Christiania, it’s 1973 all over again.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

Back in the summer of 1973, I attended a concert in Jersey City that was my closest meet-up with the hippie counterculture of the time.  It was a double bill of The Band and the Grateful Dead. I remember thinking, as soon as I got to my seat in the old Roosevelt Stadium, that this was not a run-of-the-mill concert. The guy in the seat next to me had set up a small recording studio. He had a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder that he had lugged in, along with two microphones that he had on stands. You see, the Grateful Dead did not object to people recording their concerts. That’s why there are so many bootlegs around today.

Sirius/XM satellite radio has a whole channel devoted to the Grateful Dead, and features these “audience recordings.” The next thing that told me I wasn’t in Kansas anymore was the open sale of drugs and drug paraphernalia. It wasn’t just pot, which was the dominant smell at the concert. People were walking through the stands selling all sorts of pharmaceuticals from amphetamines to LSD and more. This, too, was done openly.

Fast forward 40 years to 2013. I am touring Copenhagen with my cousin and he takes me to a section of Copenhagen called Christiania.
Frank Christiania 3

Frank Chritiania 2
We walk in, and it’s 1973 all over again. There are peace signs on the buildings, clothing from another era and open sales of drugs. It’s a hippie time warp. Christiania is 84 acres of downtown Copenhagen founded in 1971 as a commune. The founders simply squatted on an abandoned military base and have never left. The relationship between Christiania and the people of Copenhagen has been tense at times, but much to the credit of the liberal Danish people, it has been allowed to survive for all these years. Christiania considers itself a separate city state from Denmark. They even have their own currency, the Løn.

As you walk around Christiania, and see the carpentry shops, bike shops, bakeries, restaurants and jazz clubs, you get a sense of what might have happened if our generation had held on to the spirit of Woodstock.  That’s not to say that everything in Christiania is peace and love. There have been some violent incidents in recent years arising out of the drug trade. But by and large, this small community, estimated at about 850 people, has managed to support itself, and live the spirit of the Age of Aquarius. How much longer the Danish people will allow this extremely valuable piece of prime, downtown Copenhagen real estate to be occupied by the residents of Christiania remains to be seen.  But let’s salute a group of dedicated people who have held off “The Man” for more than 40 years.

My 1964 Ford Galaxie: A “Great White Boat” of a Car

20 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by in Confessional, Men

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

a Ford under a galaxy of stars

A Ford under a galaxy of stars. By Julie Seyler.

BY BOB SMITH

In 1973, when I was 18, I got my first car: a white 1964 four-door Ford Galaxie 500 sedan that weighed in at nearly 4000 pounds. My then-girlfriend’s uncle gave it to me for nothing, and expressed great regret at having to part with such a fine vehicle. Unca Cholly, as he was affectionately known, was moving up to something better – probably a Pontiac – but he wanted the Galaxie to have a good home.

I was your stereotypical rambunctious 18 year old, determined to define myself as boldly independent of my parents. However, as a college student living at home with only a part-time summer job, I wasn’t going to turn into James Bond overnight. So the Galaxie was my key to the world – given enough gas and time, that car could take me virtually anywhere, and in my feverish imaginings, it did. But the reality was somewhat different.

First, it rode like a monstrous marshmallow. After a couple of cushy trips around the block, my brother christened it The Great White Boat. But make no mistake – it had lots of positive features too:

Real chrome bumpers you could use to open a beer bottle (so I heard).

A back seat as big as a small sofa. Out of deference to her Unca Cholly my girlfriend refused to explore its potential with me, but it did serve the purpose with some of my friends, and their less restrained dates, as I played the discreetly aloof chauffeur.

Triangular side vent windows in front that were perfect for flicking the ash off the end of your cigarette without having to open the whole window and risk sending unwelcome sparks into the back seat.

A steering wheel the size of a hula hoop, and power steering so light you could make turns with one finger.

A cavernous trunk Goodfellas (or their acquaintances delinquent in payments on the vig) would die for.

Then there were the negatives:

Primitive sound – AM radio with one oval dashboard speaker. The “latest”- an eight track tape player – had not been installed in this vehicle.

Pointy chrome gear selector and turn signal stems that were puncture
wounds waiting to happen. (By 1973, the automakers had wised up, and started putting blunt plastic knobs at the ends so if you rammed into the windshield wiper control in an accident you’d get a nasty bruise but no perforation.)

Rudimentary lap belts (front seat only) that would tear your torso in half in any collision over 40 mph, but might spare you from being skewered by the turn signal.

Miles per gallon in the high single digits on the highway going downhill with a tailwind. Plus the seals were bad, so it took a quart of oil every week and trailed a bilious white cloud everywhere it went.
The transmission was starting to slip, and the brakes were so low you floored the pedal and prayed at every stop sign.
And the insurance on that nine-year-old tank was more than any part-time job could support.

I think it took me five months – one glorious summer and into the fall – before I realized I couldn’t afford the gas, oil, seals, brakes, transmission, or insurance needed to keep the boat afloat. It sat for a month on my parents’ front lawn, a monument to my hopes of freedom, while I scraped around trying to figure out a way to save it. No one wanted to buy it, not even Unca Cholly, despite his misty-eyed reminiscences about its former glory.

Actually I suspect he was glad to have unloaded it on me to spare him the pain of having to finally put the car to rest. Which I did, one chilly October day when I paid fifty bucks to have it towed away to be cannibalized for parts. My next car was a used Japanese econobox that was a lot easier on my wallet, but woefully short on dreams.

"Bob behind the wheel" Mixed media drawing .

“Bob behind the wheel” Mixed media drawing by Julie Seyler.

Serendipity: Don’t Look, and You Will Find It

14 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by in Confessional, Men

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

road trip

Be open to the unexpected on the road ahead. Photo by Julie Seyler.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

I believe in the power of serendipity.

The dictionary defines serendipity as, “the phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.” Probably the most common form of serendipity these days is using an Internet search engine, and finding something great that was not what you were looking for. This is part of the attraction of “surfing the web” for many people.

But serendipity is not a new phenomenon. I first noticed its power back in the 1970s when I got my driver’s license. I would set out on a Sunday afternoon in a random direction from my house seeking an adventure. I would make turns on a whim. Sometimes, the reason for a turn would be simply to follow an interesting car like a Corvette or an Alfa Romeo. Sometimes, after the law allowing right on red was passed, it was simply a matter of making a right to keep moving. Most often, the turn was just a feeling drawing me off in that direction.

These trips (long before GPS) invariably ended in an intriguing new place. In addition to adventure, these trips served to familiarize a new driver with all the roads in a 50-mile radius of his home because I always had to find my way home. Then in college, I found serendipity in choosing college courses. My school had a system of registering for courses back then that was based on seniority. Juniors and seniors got first choice of their electives over sophomores and freshmen. I remember one year trying to get into a popular professor’s history course that was filled, and having to settle instead for a course with a professor I did not know. The course proved to be fascinating, and I went on to take two more courses with the professor.

And then there’s serendipity television. That’s when you turn on the television, and a great movie you’ve never seen is on the channel that the television happens to be tuned to. Back about 30 years ago, my wife and I turned on our television on a Saturday morning just to have something to watch while we woke up and ate our breakfast. Three hours later we finished watching “The Best Years of Our Lives.” The film pulled us in and never let go. We later found out that it was an Academy Award winner in 1947, but neither of us had ever heard of it, and probably would not have seen it for many years, if not for serendipity.

The Internet has increased exponentially the possibility of serendipity. Just about every time I go to Netflix to have a particular movie loaded into my queue, I come across another movie or two that I have never heard of that goes on to be a favorite. Companies like Netflix and Amazon have raised “we thought you also might like” to an art form. This is manufactured serendipity, but it still works if you go along with it.

And of course, that’s the secret to serendipity. You have to have a mindset that allows you to go off in an unexpected direction. I know people who have never had a serendipitous experience in their lives, because they simply opt not to. I feel sorry for them. Serendipity adds wonder to life.

A few years ago, my wife and I planned a trip to Colorado and nearby states. We had plotted a complete course for the 4,500-mile drive. Then, two days before we left, I happened upon a picture online that was just breathtaking. I found out that it was taken in Arches National Park near Moab, Utah. As a man who knows serendipity when he sees it, I knew that I had to re-plot my entire trip (including changing motel reservations) to fit in a swing into neighboring Utah. I did that, and the Utah detour proved to be one of the most enjoyable parts of our road trip.

So I am sold on serendipity. I think it adds spice to life in wondrous ways. It’s not knowing what’s around the next bend that makes life interesting. The great sage Yogi Berra would agree. After all, it was Yogi who said, “When you arrive at a fork in the road, take it.” That’s serendipity.

A Snapshot of Mom’s Old Brown Box Camera

12 Tuesday Mar 2013

Posted by in Men

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , ,

Bob - camera

BY BOB SMITH

I remember as a boy, playing in the snow with my big brother. Bulky as astronauts, we wore heavy coats, wool hats, mittens and insulated boots. There was a foot of snow in our front yard and we were trying to roll up a ball big enough to form the base of a snowman. But the day was too cold; the snow too dry. And we couldn’t get anything that big to stick together. The most we could manage was snowballs, which broke apart as soon as we threw them at each other’s heads.

Mom came outside, and asked us to pose for a picture. Hanging from a strap around her neck was a Kodak Duaflex IV camera, which consisted of a brown cardboard box (with leather-textured surface) with two lenses on the front, facing the subject – one on top for framing the picture, and one below that, with the shutter behind it, where the film would be exposed to capture the image. You lined up a shot by looking straight down through the square viewfinder on top.

“Come on boys, let me get you!”

We paused our snowball war, panting puffy clouds, and faced Mom. When you looked at the camera you could see her upside-down image in the viewfinder lens. She smiled and, as she centered us, she also centered her face, topsy-turvy and fluid, in that rounded frame. Jimmy rested his snow-crusted mitten on my shoulder.

“Okay: 1…2…3…smile!”

She squeezed the button on the side of the box, the lens snicked, and it was done. Mom rolled the metal wheel on the side of the camera to advance the film for another shot, posing us side by side, with shovels jammed into the snow like soldiers with rifles at parade rest. We smiled again at inverted Mom as she snapped the picture, and she went back inside.

That camera came out for every holiday, too. My brothers and sisters and I would be grouped on the couch, giggling, with our hands folded politely in our laps. Someone at the last second (usually Jimmy) would raise two-finger rabbit ears behind someone’s head, or jab an elbow to give the shot extra pizzazz. Because it was indoors, Mom used the flash, which consisted of a silver saucer-like reflector on a plastic battery compartment that screwed onto the side of the camera. Each flashbulb, approximately the size of a ping-pong ball, had a fuzzy maze of blue filaments inside. You had to press and turn the bulb into the hole in the middle of the reflector and eject it so it could be replaced after each shot.

When Mom pushed the button, the flashbulb would explode with a sound like one of the last kernels in the pan turning into popcorn. The brilliant light blinded us briefly, and we would wander around the room in a happy daze, closing our eyes to relish the moonlike afterimage floating across our field of vision.

You never knew what the pictures looked like until they came back from the camera store after being developed, when Mom would paste them into albums. The prints had a scalloped edge with a quarter inch white border, where Mom would include notations like “Easter 1965,” or “Bobby three and a half, Barbara two,” written in careful script just like the “correct” examples in my penmanship textbook.

A few years later, Kodak came out with Instamatic cameras that didn’t have a viewfinder, and featured a built-in flash that didn’t require you to replace a bulb every time you took a shot. There was no popping noise, and the flash was more diffuse so we didn’t get the floating moon afterimage either. We still had to pose and smile but not having mom’s wobbly face in the lens facing you, inviting you inside, took some of the romance out of having our pictures taken.

That Duaflex IV may have been a cheap low-tech camera, but as they say in the credit card commercials – the memories are priceless.

Stored in My Memory Bank: The Pink Pig, Dad’s Silver “Washers”

11 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by in Confessional, Men

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

il_fullxfull.244653389

Photo courtesy Etsy.com.

By Anthony Buccino

Dad was a carpenter, and each week he gave me the washers from his pay envelope. I’d plunk them onto my piggy bank. Yeah, that’s right, washers as in nuts, bolts and washers.

He told me washers weren’t money and I couldn’t spend them on candy or toys. When we filled the pink pig, we brought them to the big, boring stone bank. They said when I turned 16, I could take the money out.

Whatever they told me, it worked. Heck, I could barely read, and knew nothing about the nearly bald guy etched on my washers. Far from me to figure how worthless washers turned into money, but I accumulated the worthless washers regularly.

When I learned to count, I unscrewed the base, dumped the washers on my bedspread and piled them in five-high stacks. I cheered later as I slipped them back in the slot, clunk-clunk. This is probably how one-armed bandits got their start.

In my smart aleck teen years, I watched Dad when he brought home rolls and rolls of pennies, nickels and dimes. He needed glasses to read by now, and he wasn’t even 50. And there he’d be, with his coins scattered on the living room coffee table, his horn-rimmed reading glasses sliding down his nose, a hand-held magnifying glass in one hand as he tilted each coin to catch the light, date and mint.

He looked like Mr. Magoo. I laughed. “Dad, what are you doing with all these coins? Why aren’t you snoring through a John Wayne war movie?”

Looking at me over the top of his glasses, his grey eyes caught the light and yellow highlights glistened in his white-gray hair. Maybe he’d realize how much time he’s wasting and finish the basement where I could play.

“For you,” he said. “These are all for you.” He turned back to his clutter.

My wife likes to save pennies. Not in those cardboard collectors with the holes punched out and the year and mint pre-printed. And not only by buying bargains, or scouting a Rexall one-cent sale. She likes to save shiny pennies, and pay the change portion with dirty, gross old pennies. She sets aside wheat pennies for my out-of-date collection.

Perhaps she’ll get into the habit of saving dollars, too, when Congress changes from paper bills to coins. I have four of the president series (two Jeffersons, one J.Q. Adams and a Polk that came to me from an NJ Transit ticket vending machine). I keep those coins apart from my real money. NJ Transit says it’s converting those machines back to paper currency.

Those washers I saved were stamped with the image of Ike, and were mostly-silver fifty-cent pieces which we cashed in when Kennedy died. If only.

Forty-odd years later I’m shopping in Italy, struggling to tell a one-euro coin from a two-euro. I stop to don my horn-rimmed reading glasses. That’s when I see my father sorting coins. On my return I check out the washers in my attic.

A Sneak Peek at Boy Scout Memories From a Non-Scout

05 Tuesday Mar 2013

Posted by in Confessional, Men

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

Boys checking out scouts. Collage by Julie Seyler

Boys checking out scouts. Collage by Julie Seyler

BY BOB SMITH

Scouting made a big impression on me during grade school and high school, but not in the ways you might think. In the early 1960s, when we were about 10, my brother Jim and I wanted to join the Boy Scouts of America, but Dad wouldn’t allow it. He was convinced that once we joined, they would expect him to attend evening meetings, chaperone weekend trips, and generally participate in our lives in a personal, up-close way. He said it would force him to quit his part-time job (which the family could ill afford), but we suspected it was as much because spending quality time teaching us wilderness survival skills might cramp his drinking habit.

So my brother Jim and I would sneak around the church where they held the meetings, and peek in the windows to see if we could find out what the Boy Scouts were up to. One night, we saw a group of boys gathered around someone’s father in the meeting room behind the church. The scouts had pivoted open a stained glass half-window for air, leaving a wide five-inch gap that gave us a clear view of the floor. They all wore matching khaki shirts and dark shorts with kerchiefs around their necks fastened with a gold Boy Scout cinch. Some of them wore military-style cloth caps, and even the grownup wore a neckerchief. He was holding a length of nylon rope, and appeared to be demonstrating how to tie knots.

“That’s bullshit. They’re just tyin’ and untyin’ that rope,” Jimmy whispered, his nose on the stone sill.

“Yeah. Look at the scarf on that guy. Dad would never wear that.”

“No kiddin,” Jim agreed. “Buncha assholes.”

“Hey – what are you doing there?” The leader snapped as he walked briskly to the window, and slammed it shut.

Frantic, Jimmy and I scrambled out of the bushes and ran as fast as we could before a gang of scouts could pour out of the church like angry bees bent on testing their night tracking techniques. They never caught us, and we never went back. And we gave up asking for Dad’s permission to enlist. A few years later, the smartest girl in my high school class (let’s call her Eleanor) started wearing her Girl Scout uniform to school. This was a serious uniform – the kelly green beret with a pert nipple tip in the middle, starched matching denim shirt and sash festooned with handicrafts patches, and plaid pleated skirt. She rounded out the ensemble with clunky schoolmarm shoes, eyeglasses with pointed tips at the sides, and the coup de grace: white anklets with the day of the week script-stitched across the top. Crowds of sniggering kids, pointing and shaking their heads in amazement, would part like the Red Sea as Eleanor strode confidently down the hall, geek to the max. Apparently oblivious to the scorn and derision of the entire high school, she wore that outfit one day every week right through the end of twelfth grade. I secretly admired the incredible confidence it must’ve taken to do that, despite our relentless jeers. When I saw Eleanor at a recent reunion and mentioned her Girl Scout outfits with weekday anklets, she totally shrugged it off.

“Yeah. If you didn’t like it, you didn’t have to look,” she laughed. “Unless you weren’t sure what day it was.”

To this day, she remains a paragon of the I-don’t-give-a-crap-what-anyone-thinks merit badge, which is probably a sign of true genius. On the other hand, my brother and I still can’t tie a decent knot.





I Have a Doppelganger in Denmark

04 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by in Men, Travel

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

Frank Copehnagen 2

My cousin Frank.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

Thanks to an invitation to lecture in Copenhagen, I recently was reunited with my first cousin for the first time in 40 years. And here’s the kicker – his name is exactly the same as mine. Now, there are many people who have common names, and some with less common ones. I have a rare name. I don’t know of another person in the world alive today with the name Frank Terranella, except my cousin in Copenhagen. It was the name of our common grandfather, who died many years ago. I’m sure there are others, but I have never crossed paths with one.

Frank - Denmark

The Gang.

So how did my doppelganger end up in Copenhagen for the last 40 years? Well it’s a wonderful love story. My cousin went on his college junior year abroad in Copenhagen in 1970. There he met and fell in love with a beautiful blonde Danish girl named Karin, who stole his heart. They were married soon afterward. My cousin finished his education in Denmark, and then found a job as a teacher. Their daughter, Anna, came along a year later. Frank never saw a reason to go home much after that. Of course, that’s because he was home. And Copenhagen has been his home for the last 40 years.

Frank would visit the United States occasionally, but those visits were never in the New York area, so we never connected. As time passed, Frank’s daughter Anna grew up and gave him a granddaughter, Lea. She’s a teenager now, and I’ll swear that the 25 percent of her that’s American is dominant. Or maybe that’s just a function of the Internet, or American television on European youth.

So all this was going on a continent away, while I resolved year after year, decade after decade, to get to Copenhagen to visit the other Frank Terranella. Finally, I was asked to lecture in Copenhagen on United States trademark law. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse (even though lecturing is not something I’ve ever done). I knew it would give me the chance to see my cousin.
So my wife and I flew over to Copenhagen, and I gave my lecture. All went well. As soon as I was done, I called Frank. He came over to our hotel, and there we had the historic 40-year reunion. Both of us have a lot less hair than the last time we saw each other, but the ties of family are strong. It wasn’t long before we were telling stories of our youth, and bringing each other up to date on our lives for the last 40 years. It made us both smile – a lot.

Frank walked us back to his apartment where we met Karin. Now, when Frank’s daughter, Anna, was about a year old, he and Karin came to New Jersey to visit my grandfather, and I met Karin and Anna there. Seeing her 40 years later, her eyes and smile were just as bright as they were all those years ago, despite the fact that multiple sclerosis has now taken away her ability to walk. I recognized her immediately. She’s like a ray of sunshine, a grown-up flower child. It’s not hard to see why Frank gave up his home country for her.

Seeing my cousin with his wife was a testament to the fact that true love conquers all – including multiple sclerosis. I know that it sounds corny, but Frank and Karin are as much in love in their 60s as they were in their 20s. All that’s changed is that Karin requires a little more assistance than she used to, and Frank is more than happy to provide it.

The next day, I got to meet the now grown-up Anna and her daughter Lea. As do most Danes, they both speak flawless English. I am so sorry I didn’t get to see Anna grow up, but maybe now I’ll get to see Lea from time to time. We invited her to stay with us if she comes to America. Family reunions can sometimes be dreadful, but my recent trip to Copenhagen couldn’t have been a better experience. Reconnecting with Frank and his family made us forget the cold and often-dreary Copenhagen weather. We all resolved that we won’t wait another 40 years to connect again.

My Mom’s Dementia: Foggy Memory, Charred Pots, and a Cheshire Smile

25 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by in Confessional, Men

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Nana final

Art by Abby Smith.

BY BOB SMITH

Mom, now 86, is still physically robust. Granted, she’s unsteady on stairs and can’t lift anything heavier than a magazine or cup of tea, but her appetite is great. She even enjoys a glass or two of wine with dinner. Mom had always been cheerful and optimistic, too. And she still is. But her mind is slowly, but surely, fading away – lost in the encroaching fog of dementia.

When her short-term memory first started to fail, she would become agitated because she knew she had once remembered the name of that green stuff on her plate, and was frustrated at finding herself unable to identify it as broccoli. But as she slid deeper into decline, she found peace because the fact of how much she actually used to know was itself a lost memory.

We first noticed Mom’s dementia when she moved in with us a few years after Dad died. She insisted on cooking dinner, but routinely boiled vegetables until they were liquefied, and added so much butter to mashed potatoes that they were the color of daffodils. Once or twice every week, she would completely boil away all the water in the pot, and leave the vegetables cooking until they burnt onto the bottom of the pan.

Once it became clear she couldn’t handle cooking dinner anymore, we started telling her it was “cook’s day off,” and that we would prepare dinner for her – or buy takeout. Whatever. Just so she wasn’t tempted to put food in pots and fire up the burners.

But although we told her she couldn’t cook dinner, we figured it was O.K. for her to make her own tea. I would make sure the kettle was full of water before I left in the morning to ensure she wouldn’t put the flame under an empty pot. This worked reasonably well for a while, but then one Saturday I discovered her at the table drinking a glass of cold, whitish water.

“What are you doing, Ma?”

“Having a cup of tea, what do you think?”

“There’s no teabag. And it’s not hot.”

“Oh. Must’ve forgot,” she shrugged, and drank the milky water anyway.

Then one afternoon my son came downstairs, and the house reeked of gas. He discovered a full kettle on the stove with the burner turned on full blast, but no flame. He shut off the gas, opened all the windows, and found Nana in her room off the kitchen, fast asleep.

The next level: We taped a handwritten sign at eye level over the stove that read, “STOVE BROKEN, DO NOT USE.” We would reinstall the knobs in the evening so we could use the burners to make dinner, but leave the sign up for the next day to avoid having to re-tape it over and over. The combination of the missing knobs and the explicit sign convinced Mom that the stove was off limits.

After a few days, however, she grew impatient – and she wasn’t stupid.

“The sign says the stove’s broken,” Mom said as she watched me sauteing onions for
dinner.

“Yeah, Mom – it is. I just managed to get this burner working for now.”

“It’s been busted a while now.”

I silently stirred, hoping the conversation would end there.

“Public Service’ll fix that, you know. Give em a call.”

“I did call – they haven’t come yet,” I lied.

“Goddamn PSE&G. They make you pay enough. They can’t come when you call?”

“Damn those utility companies. Hey, how about a glass of wine?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” she laughed.

Mom is now living with my sister where she can be supervised all day, and her decline continues. Because of her good nature, she’s going cheerful into that good night. But like the Cheshire Cat, she’s fading out, and soon all that’s left will be her smile.

My “Torch Song” to Sondheim

21 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by in Art, Men

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Sondhein with group

There’s Frank – second from right. Photo courtesy Frank Terranella.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

Recently I attended one of those cultural events that only happen in New York. The New York Philharmonic played an entire evening of the music of Stephen Sondheim with the composer in attendance. We reveled to an orchestral music-only evening of selections from “Sweeney Todd,” “Sunday in the Park with George,” “Into the Woods,” and other less, well-known masterpieces like, “Pacific Overtures,” and “Stavisky.”

As I sat there listening to the concert, it occurred to me that I have been enjoying the music of Stephen Sondheim on New York stages my entire adult life. I saw the original productions of,” A Little Night Music,” “Pacific Overtures,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Merrily We Roll Along,” “Sunday in the Park With George,” and “Into the Woods.” This was as a result of being turned on to Sondheim by a college professor whose History of the American Musical course that I took in 1973 named Sondheim as the current torch carrier for the art form.

In the late 1970s, I started to correspond with Sondheim. I found him to be a most diligent correspondent. He never failed to answer every letter I sent him. I treasure those today. We conversed about his work on, “Do I Hear a Waltz?,” with Richard Rodgers, and his adaptation of George Kaufman and Moss Hart’s play, “Merrily We Roll Along.” He shared his feelings about collaborating with Leonard Bernstein on “West Side Story,” and about “Sweeney Todd” being performed by opera companies.

Over the course of the next 20 years I sometimes spied Sondheim on the streets of New York. I saw him outside the theater where a revival of “Follies” was being staged, and he sat behind me at a revival of “West Side Story.” Abiding by the unwritten code that New Yorkers have regarding celebrities in their midst, I did not try to engage with the musical master. Then, in 2007, I had a chance to meet Stephen Sondheim, and spend some time with him discussing his work. A good friend of mine, who teaches theater at a Midwest college, was leading a theater tour of students through New York and London.

Knowing what a big fan I am, he and his wife graciously invited me to join a small get-together they had arranged where the students would meet with Sondheim and get to ask him questions. And so on a spring day in 2007, I found myself shaking hands with Stephen Sondheim and sitting around a table asking the master questions. It was a delightful hour. It’s not often you get to meet someone who has given you so much cultural enjoyment over so many years. From the movie versions I saw of “West Side Story,” “Gypsy,” and “A Funny thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” in the early 1960s, through “Assassins and Passion” in the 1990s, it has been a wonderful ride.

Unfortunately, with ticket prices now routinely more than $100, and nearing $150, Broadway has turned away from the Sondheim type of show in favor of spectacles like, “The Lion King,” and “Wicked.” These days, the master can only get revivals of his earlier work produced on Broadway. Sondheim ’s latest musical, “Road Show,” was seen only off-Broadway, and out of town. There has not been a new Sondheim show on Broadway in nearly 20 years.

However, the change in Broadway fashions has not reduced the respect that the New York theater community has for Stephen Sondheim. We know that we are not likely to ever again see such a talent writing for the musical theater. But we will always have his great works. And perhaps the master, who will be 83 on March 22, will give us a few more masterpieces in the years when most men are long-retired. After all, he’s been through “Phantom,” and he’s been though “Spiderman” too, and he’s here. He’s still here. And aren’t we lucky.