Bobservations

My Old House

My dear friend Sheri loves to go to New Home Shows. You know the scene: a developer or charity takes over a house and shows you how to have a home that makes your friends feel like crap when they come over. A full in-home gym, a home theater with actual movie seats and a 108-inch flat-screen TV, six bathrooms, and an indoor kitchen with a Sub-Zero. I’m talking about the heart of the woman who lives there, not the appliance.

I never go to New Home Shows. I go to Old Home Shows. My old homes.

Next month I am going to another Old Home Show with my girlfriend Kristen. Or as my friends will call her - my next nostalgia victim.

It all started about ten years ago when I had a dad-daughter vacation in New York City with Landon who was nine years old at the time. We saw the Empire State Building, FAO Schwartz and ate in a cool restaurant in Little Italy. She asked me where I lived when I was her age, and I told her about an hour and a half away.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         The next day we were pulling off I-95 to drive down the main street of Old Lyme, Connecticut. My family lived there for only three years, but it was a tumultuous time. We lost everything we owned in a bad restaurant investment and ended up living in an old converted one-room schoolhouse that came with the restaurant. It was located right across the street on what was called the Shore Road, a blissful stretch of highway that brought nothing but misery to my family.

As Landon and I drew closer to the scene of my father’s financial ruin, I got a queasy feeling. Why was I choosing to show her this particular house out of all the places we lived? Why not the nicer houses, with memories associated with happier times?  I hadn’t set foot in this town for fifteen years. I hated this place more than Dick Cheney hates the New York Times. I still remember the day we were evicted, and the sheriff knocking on the door asking if I knew where some of the plates and all of the liquor bottles were.

We came around the corner, and I knew at the crest of the hill was the Alamo of my childhood security…. “Schlosser’s Countryside by the Sea,” the absolute worst name I have ever heard for a restaurant. “The Rancid Clam” would have been better. “Bob’s Crap on a Bun” would have been better.

“It’s right at the top of this hill, Landon,” I said in a voice that was a mix of excitement and dread.  I pulled into the parking lot and there it was. Actually there it wasn’t. The restaurant was gone. I got out of the car held Landon in my arms.  She had no shoes on and there were nails and rocks all over the lot. Either the place burned down or it was razed. There is an old restaurant joke about two partners, Manny and Sal.

Manny: “Sal, we only had two customers Monday.”
Sal: “Yeah.”
Manny: “And only one customer Tuesday.”
Sal: “Yeah.”
Manny: “Think it will go?”
Sal: “It should. It’s made of wood.”

I felt an odd disappointment that I couldn’t stare that old dump in the eye one more time and spit contempt at it. Then I realized how perfect the moment was. I had built a successful life in Charlotte, a new and beautiful city. I was doing what I loved, and I was holding a beautiful child who would not have to wash dishes, clean lobsters, sweep floors, and lie to a sheriff. We needed those plates. The nasty past was burned to the ground and I was holding my future.

“Where is your house daddy?” asked Landon.

I swung around and said “Across the street, sweetheart.”

“Oh, it’s pretty.” Landon said.

And it was. Someone had restored the little place and planted some colorful flowers throughout the front yard.

“Where was your room daddy?”

“On the right, Landon. Really, it was a closet that we used as my room. The house only had one bedroom and my mom and dad had that.”
Landon asked if she could sleep in her closet. I hugged her and said yes.

Over the next few years I would return to Connecticut now and then to visit friends, and drive by one or more of the houses I used to live in.

I was even invited into two of them by friendly people who happened to be working outside at the time of my drive-by. It was fascinating to see the house with the sunny little living room my grandmother held me in as a baby. The house where my birthday party with the pony was held. The house where the police came to demand my rock band stop practicing at two a.m.

My kids have all been on “Dad’s Old Home Tours,” and have slowly found much more stimulating things to do with their friends. I can’t blame them. They did their time, and got a feeling for my past.  Last year I took the tour alone for one day, and then picked up my friend Geoff and we drove to see the Red Sox play at Fenway. Every year that I go, I say it will be my last. I pronounce I am done searching the pentimento of a strange youth spent, but I know that is a lie.

Kristen is in my life now, and there are seafood joints to be introduced, rocky beaches to be walked, and old houses to be checked on.

This July we are staying for a night at the Old Lyme Inn, a charming spot in one of the most picturesque villages in all of New England. I can’t wait to show her the Revolutionary era buildings I used to race my bike by, to savor the cherrystone clams, and to listen for the voice of my father’s ghost telling me to pull a crate of lobsters out of the walk-in freezer.

Dick Trickle for President!

A few years ago a radio personality who was arrested for sending his maid out on the streets to buy drugs for him, told me that there was no such thing as a political moderate, only far right-wing people who were always right, and far left-wing people who were always wrong.

He said the far right-wing people loved America, and the far left-wing people loved Communists and wanted to have very dirty sex with anyone named Kennedy or Clinton.

He said people in the middle did not really exist. You were one or the other.

This confused me because I have voted for both Republicans and Democrats. I feel conservative on some issues, and liberal on others.

I am very proud of the way our men and women in uniform have served our country. They know this is an unpopular war and yet they do their jobs with bravery, skill and dignity. They should be treated with honor.

I like the idea of student loans for college. Since this has been privatized, some unscrupulous lenders have screwed some kids with quite high interest rates. I hope our government watches this more closely. I got a low interest government-backed loan for college from the Industrial National Bank, and I paid it off in three years. I always appreciated the opportunity.

I am conflicted over the death penalty. On the one hand it seems barbaric, and yet when I think of that animal that buried that little girl alive, I could kill him myself with my bare hands.

I can see why people want the right to bear arms, but I don’t know why we need to allow assault weapons that our police departments hate. Even the NRA is coming around on this one after Virginia Tech.

I wish more of our wetlands could be kept out the hands of developers and put into a protected state, and yet I agree with President Bush about exploring the possibility of new nuclear reactors. The nuke power program France has seems to have worked well.

I used to love the stories years ago about the meetings between then House Leader Tip O’Neil and then President Ronald Reagan. The icon of new conservatism and the standard bearer of old time liberalism would, from time to time, sit and drink a scotch together, and no doubt argue about issues. Two men with nothing in common but the respect each held for the others commitment to his beliefs, and an Irish ancestry.

That seems to be gone today. Maybe forever. I can’t see Harry Reid helping President Bush clear brush at the ranch and then knocking down lemonade together. We Americans now want our politics played like our sports. Either you are on my team or you are the enemy.

As a Red Sox fan, I am not allowed to appreciate A-Rod. He is a worthless showboat in Red Sox Nation. And so is Johnny Damon, the bastard traitor.

I don’t think we will ever go back to political civility again. The screaming heads on radio and TV won’t allow it. Neither will the single-issue people, or the political advisers like Rove. Too much money involved for them. They only make money when there is hate to broil. Believe me, I see it everyday.

I have decided to not fight the new ways. In fact, I have come up with a fiscally brilliant idea based on our love of sports!

I want all our candidates to dress in either blue or red jumpsuits, depending on their political persuasion. Like a NASCAR driver, each candidate would slap a patch on his or her suit representing some company or organization that supports him or her.

For instance, John Edwards could have a “Gee your hair smells terrific” patch.  Hillary could choose from dozens of Hollywood studios for patches, as could Fred Thompson. As a Mormon, Mitt Romney would be a natural for bike companies and producers of white short -sleeved shirts. With all these endorsements we could end the election reform problem forever!

In the end though, it probably doesn’t matter. It looks like in a couple of years the White House will be occupied by a New Yorker, one-way or the other. Rudy is the front-runner for the GOP, Hillary the front-runner for the Dems, and Bloomberg the billionaire mayor of the Apple has just gone Indie, and will probably run too.

The next President of the United States…will be a New Yorker. That ought to piss off about 75 percent of the population beyond the Hudson River.

Start spreading the news, it’s gonna get ugly.

A Visit to the Jail

A friend of mine is in jail. He is the only person I have ever been friends with who has spent more than a night or two behind bars. I will call him Hal.

I met Hal quite a few years ago at a golf club where we both used to play. He was a much better player than I, and was kind enough to help a neophyte conquer the initially frustrating techniques a beginning golfer must learn, so he can move along to the next set of frustrating techniques.

Hal was a salesman and did a lot of business on the golf course. He was a natural comic, fast with a bawdy joke told with a big smile, which revealed bright white teeth framed by a deep golden golfer’s tan. The kind of guy who women gravitate toward at a party. He was engaged twice, but slipped the rope both times. He was also a drunk. His favorite line was “I always stop drinking for a month every year. February, the shortest month.” This was his attempt to manage his alcoholism.

It didn’t work. Hal was stopped for DUI a couple of years ago. Then he was stopped again, and his license was suspended. And then it happened. Police spotted his car late at night as he headed home from a bar. They ran the plates and discovered the suspended license. Bottom line…. he was driving drunk for the third time and with a suspended license. The judge gave him fourteen months in jail.

Guys like Hal have a lot of buddies, and his close ones show up with regularity for jail visits. But after a few months, and with better weather warming golf courses, his closer buds started calling his less close buds. That’s when my phone rang.

Hal’s close friend: “Bob you don’t know me but I’m a friend of Hal’s.”
Me: Right.
Friend: ”Hal, as you know, is a guest of the state and could really use some new company. Several of us trade off seeing him on the weekends, but to be honest, we’ve got this traveling game that in two weekends is at Myrtle Beach, and to make a long story short, can we count on you to go see Hal?”
Me: Sure.

Can we count on you? Very clever. What kind of guy wants to be known as a man who can’t be counted on? What kind of guy would turn his back on some poor schlub who was in a miserable cell with God know who in the next bunk.  I had not seen Hal in several years, but off I went for a weekend in another city, in another state, for my first visit inside a jail.

I found the place without any trouble.  It was just on the outskirts of town. Visiting hours were one to three, and I sat in the parking lot for about an hour thinking about how a guy I used to ride in a golf cart with could find himself here. Golf course restaurants generally have pretty mediocre food, but I’ll bet Hal would give about anything for a ham and cheese sandwich, fries and an Arnold Palmer Lemonade. I also thought about what to say to him. “How are you?” seemed ridiculous. He might be too embarrassed to talk about what he is going through.  Maybe I’ll tell him about my life. My girlfriend, and my trip to Maine coming up. Get his mind off of where is. No! That is stupid! Why would I talk about women and travel to a guy living behind bars with other men!! As I walked toward the entrance to the jail I had no idea how I was going to fill the next two hours.

From my car in the lot the facility looked no more threatening than a middle school. But as I got nearer, the razor wire above the metal fencing became more obvious and serious. The quiet of the countryside was broken now and then by a shout, or a metal door slamming shut. I admit, I was a little uneasy.

I opened the double door to the office area and walked into a surprisingly small room that again had a middle school feel to it. In the right corner of the room was a large window with a sheriff’s deputy leaning against the counter. Not that big a guy. About 28 or so. His face wore a mask that said “I’ve seen and heard enough B.S. for a life time. I don’t care what you brought, what you forgot, or how you feel. Here, we go by the book.” He gave me a form to fill out.

“You can sit over there,” he said, motioning toward a bank of gray plastic chairs set against a beige cement block wall. On the opposite wall was a rudimentary mural that covered the entire wall. It was done in gaudy, almost psychedelic colors, and depicted several people walking up a golden hill. Each of the people was either Hispanic or African-American. Along the sides of the golden road was a school, smiling family members, a church and for some reason bikes and birds. The only white face was a middle-age man giving a diploma to a Hispanic appearing male. Political correctness had not made much of an impression here.

I filled out the form which basically explained who I was, and sat down on the gray plastic chair. In a couple of minutes an older guard poked his head from behind the counter and growled at me, “You need to wait outside.” I shot up and went out to lean against the brick wall. In a few minutes other visitors started to arrive. They were closer to the actual time we would be let in. First, an African-American family. I guessed a brother, mother and grandmother.  Then a very pretty brunette woman about twenty-five and a little blond girl I thought to be her daughter. After that around ten to fifteen other people showed up representing a cross section of today’s America.

After about thirty minutes we were one by one called inside. I was asked to pull out the pockets of my pants and walk through a metal detector. Then I walked into a small space where I was sealed, as the sliding metal door closed behind me. A second door opened where another young sheriff’s deputy with the same “I don’t need to hear it” face greeted me. He searched me and directed me to a room about the size of a company lunchroom. More gray plastic chairs ringed it. I sat and waited for my friend. First to the room was a white guy who I guess was the husband of the pretty brunette. Then it was Hal. Another deputy walked him in. I must say this was handled with as much respect as one could hope for, given the situation. Hal was wearing street clothes, jeans and a light blue short-sleeved shirt. He waved and smiled when he saw me.

“How ya doin?” Hal asked, in a relaxed surprisingly happy tone.
“I’m great, thanks,” I said.
“Thanks for coming, I know this sucks, blowing a weekend.”
“No, it’s fine, I found a great little mom and pop place for breakfast.”

We talked non-stop for two hours, and he did most of the talking. He told me about the second week when a new cellmate went nuts and started screaming at him at three am. The guy took off all his clothes and for no reason kept throwing a small chair at Hal. Then he grabbed Hal’s small radio and shoved it up his own butt. It was three days before they moved the guy. And the other prisoners thought Hal snitched, so when he would walk down a hallway the occasional fist would meet his face or shoulder. He spoke of working hour after hour in the kitchen. This business of lying around a cell all day and reading was not a part of Hal’s life. I won’t disclose anymore of our time together other than to say he told me this….

“I will never, ever allow myself to be in this situation again. Most of these people are drug addicts. They have never held a job for more than a few weeks at a time. They have no life-skills. I volunteer to help them understand how to fill out a tax form and a job application. It is impossible to sleep at night. I have a hearing problem and no one cares. The noise is unreal and I am worried about my other ear.”

I listened for two hours. When I was ready to leave we stood up and I hugged him. He seemed resolved to his situation and to turn his life around. I also think he put on his best upbeat face for me.

“You see that hot looking girl there” referring to the brunette with the child. “That’s her husband, not a bad guy. We go to the AA meetings together. He’s a cokehead.”

I looked at the brunette. Her eyes had a distant anger; her face revealed resentment that life landed her here with a child, at her age, with her beauty. Her husband wore a wide smile as he tickled his daughter’s chin. She stared through the window looking for some life that didn’t exist.

I told Hal I would return in a few weeks, and I will. His jailer led him away for more work in the kitchen. He smiled and waved at the exit of the room. At nine tonight his day will end and he will fall asleep on the hard bed with a blanket for a pillow. Screams and shouts will ring throughout the night. The prison soundtrack.

Be careful, Paris. Be careful Lindsay, Britney, and Nicole. You are but a party or two away from the same fate. In an equal America.