Category Archives: Men

My Favorite Toy Almost Shot My Eye Out

26 Thursday Dec 2013

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Bob toy

BY BOB SMITH

My favorite toy growing up was an air rifle. That’s probably not politically correct today, when the issue of guns, pro or con, is hotly debated, but it’s true. When I was nine, and my brother Jim was 10, we started asking my parents to buy us BB guns. Like the kid in “A Christmas Story,” the universal response was that we’d “shoot an eye out,” or worse. We promised to be extra careful, arguing that we could have fun, and perform a public service at the same time by picking off squirrels in the back yard. No dice. Air rifles were as far as they would go. Because air rifles didn’t shoot real ammunition, my parents assumed they were safe.

So when my brother and I tore into the long, gun-shaped gifts on Christmas morning, we knew they weren’t “real” weapons. But to us they were still beautiful. Each featured a brown plastic stock with simulated wood grain, and a matching forestock under the barrel. The barrel itself was metal, about a half-inch in diameter, with a sighting nib sticking up at the end. You “loaded” the gun with a charge of air by pumping the long oval lever under the trigger. It opened and closed with a satisfying snick, and you could feel the tension in the trigger as the air was chambered.

The rifle exploded with a violent, satisfying POCK! sound when you pulled the trigger. You could even feel a mild recoil in the stock against your cheek and shoulder. Click, click – POCK! Click, click – POCK! Jim and I ran around the living room in our pajamas “shooting” each other, our sisters, the Christmas tree, the cat. It was glorious.

“Okay, enough already!” Dad bellowed from the dining room table where he sat musing over a giant mug of coffee, the floor around his feet littered with tattered wrapping paper and toys. He was badly hung over, which was something of a Christmas tradition for him. Mom seized the opportunity to shut us down – from that moment, we were forbidden to ever shoot air rifles in the house.

Fast forward to spring: the first warmish day with the sun shining and tender blooms starting to peek out on the trees. Jim and I put on our jackets, slung the air rifles over our shoulders, and headed out to do some play-hunting. We snuck up on some sparrows in a bush, and POCK! sent them flying. We stalked the wily squirrel, but couldn’t get close enough for a decent shot.

But then the game changed. I’m not sure, but I think Jim was the first to lean on his gun with the barrel pointed toward the ground. The dirt was soft and moist from the recent snow melt, and a plug of mud snugly filled the opening. Because he had already cocked the lever, it was already loaded with a charge of air, so when he pointed it at me, I instinctively raised my arm in defense. He fired, and the dirt plug exploded out with a menacing CHUNK! sound, spraying a hard splat of mud across my shirt and upraised arm. It hit with surprising force, particularly at close range. And the mud was pebbly – homemade buckshot.

Like splitting the atom changed modern warfare, our air rifle play-fights instantly went from tame to terrifying. We didn’t have BBs, and the dirt bullets wouldn’t kill any squirrels, but we’d still figured out a way to take an eye out with that thing.

Unlike Me, Christmas in Manhattan Never Gets Old

23 Monday Dec 2013

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radio city

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

Around this time of year, New York gets dressed up for the holidays. The shop windows proclaim the symbols of the season. Otherwise dull office buildings are decorated with wreaths and holly. Tourists flock to Rockefeller Center, and the many other public displays of Christmas. In fact, people come from all over the world to spend Christmastime in New York.

xmas windows

I think the first time I ever was brought into Manhattan was for the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Show. It was probably the late 1950s. I remember standing on a long line in freezing temperatures. But it was worth it. Once we got inside, I was in awe of the jaw-dropping majesty of the hall. And then a man appeared in the corner of the stage and began playing a marvelous organ that had bass notes that rumbled in my stomach.

After a while, the curtain opened and there were the Rockettes dressed as toy soldiers. And wasn’t it just so cool the way they fell down!  Needless to say I practiced that move with my cousins at my grandparent’s house on Christmas Eve that year. It was a lot of fun, but we found out just how hard it was to fall slowly like the Rockettes did.

After the Rockettes, there were some Ed Sullivan-type acts like jugglers, ventriloquists and singers. Little did I know that I was seeing the death throes of vaudeville right before my eyes.

Next there was a big Christmas-themed musical production number that usually featured snow men, reindeer and of course, Santa Claus.

And then there was the grand finale – the living Nativity. Camels! Real, live camels walked across the stage led by Wise Men along with shepherds. And at center stage was a manger with Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus. After seeing this, I remember thinking that what our school Christmas pageant needed was camels!

As if all of that was not enough, soon after the stage show ended, the lights went down again and we saw a movie. All this for $1.50. No wonder there were lines around the block.

xmas tree

But wait, there was more. We always ended our trips to Radio City with a visit to the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. We watched the skaters glide across the ice as Christmas carols blared from speakers.  And then finally, we walked to get some food. Where? Why the automat of course!

Horn & Hardart’s coin-operate diners were a fascinating place for a kid to eat. Just putting in the nickels was fun.  I don’t remember the food being particularly tasty, but I remember having a piece of blueberry pie that was my first ever. I would never have ordered it, but I remember the little door holding the pie was at my eye level. It must have been pretty good because blueberry pie is a favorite of mine still.

The automats are long gone, but the Rockefeller Center skating rink and tree are still with us. And fortunately, Radio City Music Hall is as well.  Of course the movie is gone, and the prices are competitive with Broadway, but they still have a stage show with camels!

Today I work in Manhattan, so I am there practically every day. It would be easy to be cynical about all the commercialism, and take all this Christmas finery for granted. But I find that even after more than 50 years, when I hear the jingle of silver bells on a street corner this time of year, I’m still the wide-eyed child marveling at the wonder that is Manhattan at Christmas.

My Pregame Show: Remote Controlling

18 Wednesday Dec 2013

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control Bob
BY BOB SMITH

This past Sunday was snowy and cold, so I decided to space-out watching football all afternoon. First, I gathered the choice parts of the Sunday New York Times – the Book Review, Arts section, the magazine, Automobiles, and Week in Review. Solid, semi-serious reading. Next, the New York Post for comic relief – stories full of blood, sex, political graft, and combinations of the above. Rounding out the reading pile was the Asbury Park Press – good for the Jumble, and to see if any local politicians have gotten themselves mired in New York Post-worthy peccadilloes.

Most important, I assembled the electronic devices I’d need to ensure full control over my environment. First, the entertainment controls: the Samsung TV controller, the Denon controller for the receiver that distributes sound to speakers around the room, and of course, the silver Cablevision device. To watch a cable show, you first power-up the TV, receiver, and cable box by pushing the appropriate “on” button located near the top of each controller. Then you use the Cablevision controller to change channels, and the Denon device to change the sound volume. – unless you’re watching a show through Netflix or some other Internet-based service like HBO GO.

Because my system is wired wrong, and I don’t have the electrical engineering degree needed to sort it out, my amazing Denon surround sound speakers don’t transmit Internet audio. But you still must have the Denon receiver powered up to continue receiving a TV video signal. So for Internet-based programs, you turn Cablevision power off so no cable-based sound comes through the Denon speakers, and instead use the Samsung controller to adjust the sound that’s now coming only through the tinny speakers on the TV. Simple, right?

Then there’s the gas fireplace. This controller is straightforward, with two settings that work like the Human Torch character: flame on/flame off. It also has a thermostat to select an approximate room temperature the unit will maintain by activating an electric blower. I’ve never figured out how to adjust this temperature setting downward, so the fireplace constantly tries to keep our family room at a toasty 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Once it gets cranked up, you could melt marshmallows within eight feet of the hearth. On football Sundays, we call this the “red zone.”

To counter the red-zone effect, we have the white Casablanca controller, which turns the ceiling fans on or off, and adjusts their speed. You can also use this to reverse the blades’ direction, so if you’re feeling chilly, you have the fans rotate downward to recirculate fireplace heat within the room. And if you want to see if the dog, or anyone else hiding upstairs, may be susceptible to carbon monoxide poisoning, you rotate the fans so they pull the heat upward.

Entertainment: check.
Environment: check.
Next, communications: in case someone calls during the game, and I actually want to talk to them, I also include the cordless house phone in my couchside array. Because our telephone service is provided by the cable company, the caller’s name and phone number is displayed on my TV screen, so I can readily ignore any unwelcome calls, such as telemarketers. That includes the cable company itself, which at least once a month tasks some unfortunate drone with calling to ask if I want to upgrade my service. I could lease a high-end Ferrari if I canceled my current subscription, and used that money more wisely, so I always decline. (Of course, I have a little fun first: “Are you watching the game right now?” “No.” “Me neither, thanks to you.” HANG UP.)

Finally, I have my smartphone on the table. It’s not shown in the accompanying photo because I was using it to take that picture – which is one of its most useful features. If in the middle of the game you feel an urge to take a snapshot of your feet in dingy gray/ once-white gym socks, there it is. Bang. Instant gratification. Then you can message it to anyone you like. Bang. Instant gross-out.

It’s also good for taking calls from people you ignored when their name and number flashed on the TV screen. After all, if someone really needs to talk to me, they’ll follow up with a call to my cellphone. I simply explain that I missed their call to the house because I was out buying batteries for my controllers.

So there I was ready to control my world: video source, volume, channel, picture-in-picture, flames on or off, ceiling fans up or down, phone calls taken or ignored, toes waiting to be sent into the ether for snarky commentary, all the news that’s fit to print, and all the news fit to wrap fish. I had it all.

I fell asleep ten minutes into the game. But I had powerful dreams.

Winter: Nothing to Sing About

16 Monday Dec 2013

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snow Chelsea Piers December 30, 2012-6

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

Maybe it’s the blood thinners, and maybe it’s just age, but I am finding it increasingly difficult to deal with New York winters. Don’t get me wrong, I have never been a lover of winter. But I used to tolerate it better. In recent years, I am finding that all I need is one week of sub-freezing temperatures, and I’m done. I’m ready for spring.

I know several people who absolutely adore cold weather. They cheer for snowstorms. But as a person who has never ice skated or skied in his life, I see nothing to cheer. Where my winter-loving friends see a winter wonderland, I see frostbite, and a broken leg waiting to happen.

A man by the name of Carl Sigman, who I can only conclude was deranged, wrote a popular song in 1949 called “It’s a Marshmallow World.” You probably have heard it, particularly at this time of year. It begins:

“It’s a marshmallow world in the winter,
When the snow comes to cover the ground,
It’s the time for play, it’s a whipped cream day,
I wait for it all year round.”

Is this the height of perversion or what? This guy looks at snow, and sees marshmallows and whipped cream. Was he just hungry when he wrote this?

He goes on:

“The world is your snowball, see how it grows,
That’s how it goes, whenever it snows,
The world is your snowball just for a song,
Get out and roll it along.”

Get out and roll it along???

The only conclusion I can reach is that there is some sort of Stockholm Syndrome at work here. This fellow must have been living in Buffalo, and after years of being held captive by Jack Frost, he simply snapped, and embraced his captivity. Otherwise, why would anyone in their right mind write this:

“It’s a yum-yummy world made for sweethearts,
Take a walk with your favorite girl,
It’s a sugar date, what if spring is late,
In winter, it’s a marshmallow world.”

As I said earlier, I know people who love winter. But I also know people who have heart disease. Both are sick. Years ago, I remember hearing Garrison Keillor talk about winters in Minnesota. He said that winter was “the time of year when Mother Nature makes a serious effort to kill you.”

I think that’s the wisdom of the Prairie talking. People who grew up with cold respect it; they don’t necessarily love it. My daughter-in-law grew up in Northern Vermont, so she knows from cold. Yet when we went out to Minneapolis last year for a family wedding, she complained constantly about the cold there. (Apparently it’s a dry cold in Minnesota that’s worse than the wet cold of Vermont.)

Anyway, it’s just December, and I’m already ready for pitchers and catchers to report for spring training. And I just got word that I have to take a business trip. Could it be that a client in Aruba needs me to visit? Copenhagen??? You’re killing me!

The Solemn Side of 50: Aging Parents

11 Wednesday Dec 2013

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summer contemplation

We can help our parents depart gracefully.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

One thing that all we over-50s have in common is that if we have living parents, they’re nearing the end of their lives. It’s difficult to face that reality until we are forced to by catastrophic events. I had one of those catastrophic events recently when I was told that my mother had a tumor on her pancreas. My mother is 85, and so illnesses like this are deadly serious. As it turned out, her surgeon was able to remove the cancerous tumor, and we are hopeful she will have a few more years with us. As a two-time cancer survivor, I know that cancer is an intractable foe, and the rest of her life will be a battle against it.

a mother and her baby

Natural order.

Dealing with my mother’s serious illness has made me realize that the decline and fall of parents is part of the fabric of life after 50. It’s an ordeal not just for the parent but for the over-50 child as well. Parents are our bulwark against death. As long as we have a parent alive, the grim reaper will take the parent before the child. It’s the natural order of things. But once we don’t have the parent ahead of us, we’re next. And that’s kinda scary.

It seems to me that American society in general, and our healthcare system in particular, do not handle well the illnesses of people at the end of their lives. Instead of concentrating on the quality of life, and the patient’s wishes, we do everything we can to increase the quantity of life. To add a few months to life, we take extraordinary steps like respirators. Rather than give up fighting for life, we bring out radiation therapy and chemotherapy, knowing full well the misery they will cause.

But who determines when a parent will be forced to fight for life or be allowed to peacefully expire? When the issue came up during the Obamacare debate, people like Sarah Palin criticized the “death panels” that would decide who lived and who died. We find it impossible to let go of people who sometimes are begging us to let them go.

Issues like living wills, hospice care and assisted suicide become all too real once you have an aged, sick parent. It’s the side of life after 50 you won’t hear talked about on other blogs. But this blog is dedicated to presenting the “warts-and-all” picture of life after 50, from the white of a daughter’s bridal gown to the black of a father’s funeral drape. After all, we all are in the same boat. It may help to talk about it.

And it doesn’t have to be grim. The end of life can be a celebration of what that person has meant to us; a celebration of the difference that person’s life has made. It can be a time to finally say “I love you,” and to show it by our actions. It’s up to us over-50s to show our children, through our example, how we want to be treated at the end of our lives. In effect, while our parents are teaching us how to gracefully exit this life, the best thing we can show our children is how to be good children.

Holiday Good Samaritan Went the Extra Mile

09 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by in Men, Travel

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Ken car

Car was in trouble.

BY KENNETH KUNZ

It was only 20 more miles that the coolant hose had to hold out, but it just couldn’t – or wouldn’t! After I pulled my car to the shoulder and shut the engine, I pondered the white plumes surrounding the vehicle hoping (and praying), I would not also see flames. I didn’t.

Admonishing myself for not getting my car serviced before I embarked on my Thanksgiving day trip to my mom’s, I opened the hood, and took a look. (As if I was going to be able to do something – ha ha!) The steam finally began to subside, and as I began thinking of where I’d have AAA tow the thing, a vehicle suddenly pulled over.

anti freeze

I needed this.

I swear the tall figure that got out of that Ford Bronco, and started walking toward me, was moving in slow motion, as if in a fantasy scene from so many movies we’ve all seen. The man reached me and my car, handed me a gallon container of engine coolant and said, “You’ll need this!”  How did he know already?

We finally located the problem, and proceeded with the repair triage. It was arduous, at best, especially with all the hot fluid, and the minimalist spacing in a foreign car engine compartment for even regular size hands to navigate. And both of us having good sized hands, of course.  We finally cut a piece from a ball point pen cartridge, finagled it into the torn hose connection, invoking a crude version of Auto Shop 101, taped it up, and turned over the engine. Success!

Conveniently, we shared the same destination, and this Good Samaritan offered to follow me all the way in to make sure I arrived safely. Such a nice guy that he wouldn’t shake my extended hand, as he felt his was too soiled from the task we had just completed – mine was almost as dirty as his. And of course, he would not accept the money I offered him for the anti-freeze. So we just fist-bumped and both headed east – 20, hopefully short, miles to go.

Nineteen, 18, 17 miles more – all systems go. Sixteen, 15, 14 – temperature gauge off again. Thirteen, 12, 11 – small puffs of smoke. Ten, 9, 8, – LOTS of puffs of smoke. Seven, 6, 5, 4 – wafts of steam clouds. Is this the longest it has ever taken me to drive this stretch of highway? Three, 2, 1 – last traffic light.  My new acquaintance pulls up alongside me to ask if I think I’ll make it. I assure him the last few hundred yards are doable. And they were.

It is often comforting to arrive at one’s mother’s house, especially on Thanksgiving, but this day had become something special.  A mini-disaster (or at least a royal pain in the butt), turned into an affirmation of the goodness of man. A stranger taking it upon himself to take time from his own holiday and help a fellow life-traveler. A simple and selfless act of which to be most thankful indeed. I wish I could be that generous and helpful to a stranger.  Perhaps now I will be so inspired sometime in the future.

Everyone should experience a Thanksgiving day (and every other day) as wonderful as the one I had this year.

For Me, December 8 is John Lennon Day

06 Friday Dec 2013

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john imagine

Photomontage by Julie Seyler.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

In the course of any lifetime, there are memorable historic events – you know, those “where were you when …” events. We recently passed the 50th anniversary of the President Kennedy assassination. That was certainly one of those days. I have long held the opinion that you cannot call yourself a Baby Boomer unless you were in school when JFK was killed.

We’re coming up on another of those events for me. It’s the day that John Lennon was killed. It was a frigid December night in 1980 as I walked from Lincoln Center to Columbus Circle to catch the A train. There were a lot of sirens that night going toward nearby Roosevelt Hospital, but there are always sirens in the city, and so it didn’t make a big impression. But by the time I got home, the news was on the radio. John Lennon had been killed.

My immediate reaction was that Mark Chapman had not just killed John Lennon, he had killed The Beatles. Just a few months before, Lorne Michaels had offered a ridiculously small amount of money if The Beatles would reunite on Saturday Night Live, as Simon & Garfunkel did. In an interview, Lennon said that coincidentally, Paul McCartney had been visiting him at The Dakota that night, and they were watching Saturday Night Live when Michaels made the joke offer. They even considered getting into a cab, and going to 30 Rock as a surprise stunt. But now, Mark Chapman had made any Beatles reunion impossible.

The outpouring of grief and affection for John Lennon was striking. People congregated for weeks near The Dakota just to be near where John had lived. Months later, Elton John did for his friend what he had earlier done for Marilyn Monroe with “Candle in the Wind.” He immortalized John Lennon in a song called “Empty Garden,” that poignantly expressed our collective grief. Elton’s song characterized Lennon as a compassionate gardener whose absence leaves an empty garden. In the words of the song:

He must have been a gardener that cared a lot
Who weeded out the tears and grew a good crop
And we are so amazed we’re crippled and we’re dazed
A gardener like that one no one can replace
And I’ve been knocking but no one answers
And I’ve been knocking most all the day
Oh and I’ve been calling oh hey hey Johnny
Can’t you come out to play

I can’t think of a better way to remember John Lennon. He was a man who fought for peace. He was a man who told us “All You Need Is Love.” And he was the man who got us all to “Imagine” a better world. For all these reasons, December 8 will always be John Lennon day for me.

Sarasota Statue a Throwback to When War was Glamorized

05 Thursday Dec 2013

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Bob statue

“Unconditional Surrender,” statue in Sarasota, Florida. Photo by Bob Smith.

BY BOB SMITH

Alongside the road by the bayfront in Sarasota, Florida, is a 25-foot-tall statue of a 1940’s-era U.S. Navy sailor kissing a woman in a nurse’s uniform. She’s bent backward with her eyes closed, and one arm dangling at her side in blissful submission to his embrace.

The statue, entitled “Unconditional Surrender,” is a copy of a lesser-known version of an iconic photograph taken by Alfred Eisenstadt.
The date was August 14, 1945, and the U.S. media had just announced that Japan would agree to surrender, thereby ending four long years of war. Japan’s surrender was particularly significant because the Japanese had fought so tenaciously, and had sworn to fight to the last inch of soil if their country was invaded.

Like today’s suicide bombers, Japanese kamikaze pilots found glory in sacrificing their lives to kill Americans. Moreover, Japan had prompted the United States to enter the war by attacking Pearl Harbor, the 9/11 event of our parents’ generation.
Japan’s surrender was likely prompted by our destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9 , just a few days earlier. In the world’s first and (to date) only wartime use of atomic weapons, the United States had wiped out two entire cities and killed between 75,000 and 125,000 people, virtually in the blink of an eye. More than twice that number would die from the effects of the bombs over the coming months and years.

But on August 14, people in America weren’t wringing their hands over whether or not our use of the atomic bomb had been justified. This was a day when unbridled joy broke out across the land, and drunken revelers spontaneously poured into the streets of New York and other cities. It was in the midst of this happy mayhem that an anonymous sailor grabbed a dental assistant he’d never met and planted a kiss on her startled lips.

Unconditional Surrender has been derided by many as a kitschy and derivative – journalistic – hardly qualifying as art. However, one World War II veteran with a strong sense of nostalgia, and the bankroll to back it up, felt it worthwhile to pay around half a million dollars to have the statue displayed in Sarasota. So there it stands (at least for a couple more years).

What strikes me about the photo, and the sculpture, is not that they capture a moment that has any direct emotional significance to me; they don’t. What I find interesting is that there never was a similar galvanizing moment in our lives at the end of a war – because the war of our youth, Vietnam, divided the country, rather than united it.

There were gung-ho types who went off to that war in the blind faith that it was their duty to do whatever our leaders had decided was right. There were the hippies and others in the peace movement who demonstrated against the war, and ran off to Canada, or invented exotic ailments to exempt them from the draft. Any young man who was undecided, but nonetheless fit and unwilling to buck the system, was subject to being drafted, and sent off to fight an obscure, unpopular war.

I was fortunate, because by the time I turned 18, the war was winding down and they never called people with my draft card number. But even though I didn’t go, the media images in my mind from Vietnam are far from glorious. There was the wrenching photo of a naked young girl running down the street among a crowd of terrified Vietnamese citizens, fleeing the napalm bombing of her village.

There was the horrific image of a South Vietnamese general at the moment he was executing a prisoner, where you could actually see the pressure and wind rush from the gunshot distorting the doomed man’s face. And finally, there were the photos of Americans lining up to be evacuated from Saigon by a helicopter waiting on a rooftop.

Maybe it’s good that our generation doesn’t have any romanticized images to associate with our “big war.” Thanks to the Internet and smartphones, and the resultant near-instantaneous global communication of words and images, that kind of photo is unlikely to ever be so dominant again. Even an event as happy, and apparently as innocent, as the kiss reflected in Unconditional Surrender would quickly lose its impact in the real-time, You-Tube’d, instant-messaged context of all the horrors that had come before it.

My 14-Year-Old Self Came in the Mail. Should I Open?

25 Monday Nov 2013

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AshtabulaPostMark-001

BY ANTHONY BUCCINO

A large brown envelope arrived recently in snail mail from Ashtabula, Ohio. It contained copies of letters I wrote to a young woman named Mary when we were 14. We met in the northeastern Ohio township, and decided to keep in touch when my summer vacation ended.

I found her on Facebook, and we got in touch after four decades. When she realized I’d become a writer, she mentioned my letters in a box in her attic. Would I like copies? What could I have possible said in those letters to a relative stranger 300 miles away? And why would she save them into this millennium?

“They’re about what you’d expect a 14 year old to write about,” she said.

Would I like to meet myself at 14? Not that I could go back and talk some sense into my head, but what I think about those times now and what I was actually saying at the time, well, they’re mountains apart.

I’m sure I was a bad writer. I wrote those letters before I decided to become a writer. Mary does get credit for encouraging me to write about anything and everything. At 5 cents to mail, I guess I wrote a dozen letters.

What were my interests in 1968? I was too young to worry about the draft. I’d just learned to ice skate and dabbled in hockey. I had a fish tank of dubious quality. My fish, when they weren’t eating each other, got white spots and died. Or their tails rotted off. Is that what I wrote about? Was that how I thought I’d impress this future drum majorette?
The Star Beacon, year unknown. typos and all.

Mary was friends with Natalie, who lived next door to my best friend, Pete. I only ever met and talked with Mary when she was visiting in Natalie’s yard. A home-made swing hung from a long thick rope tied off at the top of a thick branch of a strong old tree. Sometimes, when no one was around I’d swing on that tree. Other times, the girls might let me push them a time or two.

I take comfort that I was not writing poetry then. It would have been awful, I’m sure. I hate to look at my handwriting in those old letters. My mom called my penmanship chicken scratch. Why couldn’t I write neat and nice like my older sister who put up with me visiting her in Ashtabula my teen summers?

“But, Ma, she writes like a girl!”

It was my sister who got married, and left Jersey for Ashtabula. Her letters home were something we all looked forward to reading. Mother answered those letters. I never wrote to my sister. Why would I? She was old and married! But I think I got the bug from her to write to someone – Mary. And later, others. As these ancient missives resurface I wonder if letter writing as a lost art form should stay lost.

So, what do I do with this envelope of long-lost and forgotten musings? Shall I open it and greet my teenage self? Discover how I chronicled my wonder years?

Or shall I leave it sealed and keep safe whatever memories of those times that still swirl and swell in my grey matter? Sealed forever or open, here’s to Mary, Rhonda and others, too. I’ll always remember you in ink stains and sparkling synapses.

Aging Baldly

22 Friday Nov 2013

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Kenneth now

No hair to be seen.

 BY KENNETH KUNZ

Even at a very early age, I was resigned to the fact that, someday, in the far distant future, I would no longer have a full head of hair. After all, my maternal grandfather was bald, and so the genetic hair-loss link between him and me, I was led to believe, would lead to my own hair loss someday. I also decided, early on, that I would grow my hair as long as I possibly could when the time came around. I suffered through years of ’50s-style crew cuts, until eighth grade, when I was allowed to eschew the crew, and opt for a longer, albeit quite conservative, look.

By the summer before my junior year in high school, the hair got longer. It was a struggle at times. A friend of mine and I got thrown out of the local barber shop because of our looks. (We were soliciting patrons for a Key Club pamphlet!) And my mom issued a veiled threat that she would inform my dad of what my brothers and I were ingesting if I didn’t “get that hair cut!” She was an elementary school teacher at the time, and was getting drug seminars every Friday for a while. Have to admit, I got a hair cut after much consternation and pacing back in forth of that very same barber shop I just mentioned.

Kenneth around 21

Hair on head and shoulders.

My freshmen year of college was spent in Tallahassee, Florida, which still had white and colored drinking fonts out in the open, if not in actual use, and where the upperclassmen informed me and a fellow Northeastern liberal that the locals didn’t cotton much to blacks – and long-hairs. We kind of pooh-poohed all that, until we were stranded one night in a broken-down, borrowed car while returning from a concert in Jacksonville, when the local gendarme took one look at us, and informed us that we were not in his “joorisdickshawn,” and wasn’t likely to be helping us right soon.

As we watched him leave us on the interstate, we knew it would be a long night. And it was. Upon reaching my senior year in college, now back in New Jersey, I had to listen to wise-cracks from folks – like when going to a Jets game at the big Shea, I heard guys say to my dad that it was nice that he was bringing his “daughter” to the game. Or ducking debris tossed at me as I bicycled my way through the Jersey Pinelands on my way to Ortley Beach. Pineys were much like folks in Tallahassee in those days. (They may still be today.)

Sometime later, subtly but surely, my forehead began to recede. But it wasn’t until my late 30s and early 40s, where it all really began to finally go away. Around the age of 50, I finally decided to shave the rest of what was left. I knew the decision was cool, when the 20-something girls I was working with at the time oohed and aahed when I first showed up to work with my newly-liberated dome. I am fortunate to be in an era where shaved heads are quite accepted, although I would not shave my head if I had a full head of hair. I would totally still prefer having all my hair, even though I am quite secure with my head as it is now. Incidentally, I still have a full head of luxurious hair in nearly all my dreams.

This leads me to the loss of hair elsewhere on my body. I have, since puberty, had a good amount of body hair. Mostly arms, legs, and chest. (None to speak of on my back.) Somewhere in my 40s, I started to lose hair on the outside of my shins; calves. No one could explain why this was happening. Nearly everyone, including my primary care doc, theorized it was from wearing jeans, and the seams wore the hair away. Why then, only on the outer calves?  No one knew. Then it started disappearing on my thighs. Again no one knew.  It wasn’t fair, and I couldn’t blame by grandfather for this one. I will say, I did find a perfect spot on my left calf for a really cool tattoo. Pretty soon my legs will be as hairless as my head. And I just don’t know why. At least no one is making comments about my legs.

But wait, I think I do know where ALL the hair has gone – it’s coming out of my ears and my nose. Sheesh!