On this day in 1981 Picasso’s Guernica, his anti-war mural, was returned to Spain after forty years of hanging in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Picasso had requested the painting not be returned to Spain until Spain restored democratic liberties in the country.
The subject of the mural was the brutal bombing of the town of Guernica in 1937, by the Nazi Luftwaffe, who were allies of Fransisco Franco’s right-wing Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War. Picasso was commissioned to paint the mural showing the horrors of war to be exhibited in the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris International Exposition in 1939.
Today is also Grandparent’s Day.
We didn’t have a Grandparent’s Day when I was a kid. According to the internet, Grandparent’s Day was made official in 1978 as the first Sunday after Labor Day by then President Jimmy Carter.
I think relationships with my grandparents when I was young were a bit more formal than today. In fact, in my family, when we referred to them we always used their last name as in Grandma Rosch or Grandpa Christiansen.
All of my four grandparents lived in Oceanport, the town I grew up in.
I have written about my father’s parents, my Norwegian grandparents Sophie and Carl before.
My grandparents on my mother’s side (Rosch) lived right across the street. Technically their address was Main Street but the back lots of their property were on Willow Court, the street I grew up on, and right across from my house. My grandfather William H. Rosch however died in August of 1960 at the age of 75 when I was just four years old.
But I have nice memories growing up to adulthood with my three grandparents.
Kim and I are grandparents too now.
We have three grandsons, Cameron, Christian, and Ethan. I have written about them many times as well. But maybe not so much about Ethan.
Ethan is six.
He is very headstrong and determined but gets a little frustrated at times.
Recently at school, he and his classmates were assigned the task of drawing a self-portrait.
Ethan also happens to be very good at drawing, a talent that seems to run in my family, my grandfather Carl was an oil painter, my father worked with pastels, and my siblings are talented artistically as well.
However, Ethan apparently didn’t approve of being assigned the task of drawing a self-portrait.
As a result, he took on the brutality and the horror of being asked to do such a thing in a very Picassoesque way.
So, as all the other kids in the class drew their images as you might expect them to, Ethan created his Guernica, expressing his raw feelings on the matter.
And as his proud grandfather, I thought it was brilliant.
Happy Grandparents Day!
The class self portraits, Ethan’s is top rightIsn’t he cute? He had his first baseball game this weekend.Ethan’s GuernicaPicasso’s GuernicaEthan, Cameron, and Christian
Carl E. Christiansen, 94, of Woolford, passed away on Thursday, June 15, 2023 at Mallard Bay Care Center. He was married to the former Florence Rosch. A celebration of life will be held at a later date. (From the Thomas Funeral Home, Cambridge, MD)
It’s been two weeks since my dad passed away. When I was tasked with writing my father’s obituary, I panicked a little. The three lines of information on the funeral home website were begging for some detail. But the whole thing sounded depressing to me. I didn’t feel like writing. So, I did what I do best, I procrastinated.
But during that period of procrastination, I did something else that we all do these days when we don’t know what to do.
I Googled it.
Yes, I Googled how to write an obituary.
And I came upon “How to Write the Perfect Obituary, According to Professional Writers,” an article by Nicole Spector. It included lots of helpful information, but the most important point that stood out to me was this:
“…the fact that in the end, we all become stories. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, sure, but also: words to words.”
I liked that.
“…we all become stories.”
My dad had stories. And over the years I tried the best I could to listen to, remember, and document my dad’s words. Some of those stories I have already shared.
I just needed to write another one.
Right now.
I read another article recently that it was on June 17, 1885, one hundred and twenty-eight years ago, the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York harbor from France. Three hundred and fifty pieces of the statue were packed in two hundred cases. The following year it would be reassembled in its new home on Bedloe’s Island. In 1892 not far from the shadows of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island was established as America’s immigration processing station, and over the sixty-two years that followed the statue would stand watch over the 12 million immigrants who came to the United States through New York Harbor.
Somewhere on an interior wall hangs the plaque with the now-famous words of American poet Emma Lazarus:
“Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”
One of those tired and poor included eighteen-year-old Boletta Sophie Jansen who arrived from Oslo, Norway on a ship named the Kristianiafjord on April 15, 1916.
Carl Oscar Christiansen also came from Norway but entered the United States a slightly different way, a little less legally. He jumped ship in New York, then traveled west to Norwegian communities in Minnesota and North Dakota. When he returned to the east coast, somewhere in his travels, he met Sophie. Carl and Sophie were married in the Norwegian Seaman’s Church my dad thought was in Hoboken or Bayonne, but the only one I could find a record of was in Brooklyn.
Carl and Sophie would eventually move to Oceanport, New Jersey close to a community of other Norwegians with another Norwegian Seaman’s church on Atlantic Avenue in North Long Branch. They would have four children together: Evelyn, Gerda, Carl, and Theodor.
Carl Edwin Christiansen was born April 11, 1929.
He was raised in the Hillcrest section of Oceanport, New Jersey, a new subdivision where his father bought a few lots and built a couple of houses.
We always joked about Norwegians having hard heads, I don’t know if that was intended to mean “hardheaded” as being stubborn or hardheaded in the literal sense. It didn’t matter in my dad’s case because he proved to be both. My father told the story of a time when he was very young when his sister Gerda was responsible for watching him and somehow Gerda managed to drop him through the cellar window where he said he landed on his head.
Not only that but in addition to being dropped into the cellar, he said during his lifetime he had been hit by a car, fell out of a tree, fell on his head ice skating, and hit by a baseball bat twice.
And later still that hard head would prove to come in very handy as he developed his Parkinson’s and became prone to falling.
Though he grew up in Oceanport, for a brief period, about 3 years, his father moved the family to the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, another Norwegian neighborhood, in the 1930s so he could find work. During that time, they rented the house in Oceanport.
Returning to Oceanport the family lived in the house his father built on Springfield Avenue. He told of being raised in the church (that North Long Branch Seaman’s church) and spent Christmases there and remembered how excited he would get when the Oceanport Hook & Ladder fire truck would come by the house on Christmas Day. He said he would run out of the house and leap the hedge to get the candy from the firemen. He attended Oceanport’s Wolf Hill School and Red Bank High School. At the time Oceanport kids could choose between Long Branch High School and Red Bank High School.
One of his buddies growing up in Oceanport was Bobby Rosch. That turned out to be pretty cool for Carl because Bobby had a little sister named Florence.
Carl was active in Oceanport Boy Scouts as an early member of Troop 58 led by Paul Sommers Sr. In World War II he was a member of the Crop Corps and participated in the war effort working on a farm growing food for the troops.
He once told me that at one time he was the strongest kid in Oceanport. I think it was his school bus driver that got him interested in lifting weights. He could arm wrestle, climb a brass fire pole without using his feet, drive a nail with one swing and in the Boy Scouts, he said they called him “One Chop Moe.” He couldn’t remember where the nickname Moe came from.
He worked as a pin boy at the bowling alley in Long Branch and at Wood’s Boat Works and then was drafted into the Army. He enjoyed his time in the Army.
It was while he was in the Army, in 1952, that he married Florence, and they had their first child Patricia (Patty).
My dad always said he had been lucky in life and in his work. My mom thought after the army he went back to work at Woods Boat Works for a bit and then to Bendix as a drill press operator working the evening shift. In his off hours, he had a floor sanding business, a trade he learned from his father. He became a union carpenter in the early ’60s and then to the job he would retire from at the Wolf Hill School as their custodian extraordinaire. But even after he retired, he wasn’t finished working because when he moved away from Oceanport to Woolford on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, he became a waterman and crabbed commercially for eleven years.
It was during the time of shift work at Bendix that he started building his house on Willow Court. He and Florence along with their now three kids, Patty, Carl (Chrissie), and Curtis were living in the rented two-bedroom bungalow next to the property he would build his house on. With the assistance of his wife Flo, his father, his brother Ted, and his many friends skilled in various trades, he built the house he would raise his family in for the next 30 years.
Most all those friends like my father, were Oceanport Hook & Ladder volunteer firemen so when the fire whistle blew all the helpers would drop their tools in place and run the block and a half to the firehouse and climb on the waiting fire trucks.
Carl joined the fire company in 1955. He served in almost all capacities including Chief. He was also a volunteer member of the Oceanport First Aid Squad and once was on the crew of the ambulance that delivered a baby. Carl was very active in both organizations until the time he left Oceanport.
He finished building his house and in 1961 his fourth child, Gary was born.
My dad continued his activities with Oceanport Boy Scouting as an adult and in the 1960s started a second Oceanport troop, Troop 178 that was sponsored by the Oceanport Hook & Ladder Fire Company. In the beginning, Troop 178 was mostly made up of neighborhood kids from Willow Court, Arcana Avenue, and Trinity Place. In that capacity, he mentored many young kids as they rose through scouts which included camping and many backpacking trips on the Appalachian Trail.
Another great memory of many local kids in Oceanport was that of my father bringing one of the fire trucks down to the Fort Monmouth Marina and lighting up the ice on Oceanport Creek so that whoever wanted to, mostly him though, could ice skate at night.
Boy Scout camping eventually led to family camping as my dad convinced my mother to try it, first in a tent and eventually in camper trailers and truck campers. That was the way they got to see the country.
My dad would also eventually convince my mother, who can’t swim, to buy a boat, first a little one, then they got bigger and bigger. Then living full time in Woolford, Maryland on the Eastern Shore, his last boat, called “Pop’s Lady” (my mother’s nickname is Lady) was a thirty-three-foot working crab boat. He and his first mate (my mother) would drop their three long trot lines baited with bull’s lips every morning and take their catch to the wholesaler. The first time I introduced my wife to my parents they were sitting under a tree with a big bucket of bull’s lips rebaiting their lines.
As he got older, crabbing commercially became difficult and he sold the boat but continued to do carpentry jobs for the neighbors on Deep Point and their church, the Milton United Methodist Church building their new sign and a free book exchange library that still sits outside the Woolford Store. Skilled in fine woodworking as well, he made furniture too for my mother.
He liked to ride his bike and would frequently make the almost four-mile round trip up to the post office to pick up the mail. When he started to experience an increased incidence of falling while riding his bike his physician suspected something was wrong and in 2016 Carl was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. Yet, in spite of his diagnosis, his hardheadedness made it difficult to tell him he couldn’t do what he used to do and so he would insist on climbing ladders, using tools, and fixing things that he shouldn’t. He liked to show off by doing squats in the doorway while resting his heels on the door sill.
After his ability to maintain balance and walk deteriorated, he spent some time in the hospital and eventually to rehab and long-term care at the Mallard Bay Nursing and Rehab facility in Cambridge. My mother would visit him there almost every day.
On June 15, after nearly twenty months at the facility, he passed away.
The Obituary
Carl Edwin Christiansen, 94, of Woolford, passed away on Thursday, June 15, 2023, at Mallard Bay Nursing and Rehab. He was married to the former Florence Rosch.
Carl was preceded in death by his father Carl Oscar, and his mother Sophie; his sisters Evelyn and Gerda and his brother Theodor; his son Carl Robert; his grandson Donny and his great-grandson Jaden.
Carl is survived by his wife of seventy years, Florence (Flo, Lady), his daughter Patricia (husband John), and his sons Curtis (wife Kim) and Gary (wife Marie), and Carl Robert’s wife Teesha; granddaughters Chelsea, Alexa, Hayley, Savannah, Jenn, and Kelly; grandsons Jason, Johnathon, Reiss, Kyle, and Gavin; great-grandchildren A.J., Devin, Braylen, Jaxson, Emmy, Isla, Elijah, Isiah, Oscar, Anders, Leona, Cameron, Christian, Ethan, and the most recent, Jack.
He was lucky in life.
And we were blessed to be able to share a part of that life.
The son of immigrants, the last of his family of first-generation Americans, he now rests in his new home where the tired are also welcomed and he can once again breathe freely.
At this time there is not a memorial or celebration of life scheduled.
However, I would encourage you to take Ms. Spector’s advice and if you feel moved, share a story and post it, tag his Facebook page, or forward it to me and I will post it.
And maybe enjoy a Manhattan while you are writing.
Postscript:
We would like to thank the staff at the Mallard Bay Nursing and Rehab for their care during Carl’s stay, as well as the many residents who supported my father and became our friends too.
Carl E. “Moe” ChristiansenAppalachian Trail“One Chop Moe”Flo and Carl at Springfield Ave houseEarly Troop 178 photo, Larry on the right was this only kid not from the neighborhood.Wolf Hill SchoolCarl and ChrissieCurtis, Chrissie, Patty, and Gary on the front lawn of the house he built. The bungalow in the background.
Pop’s LadyThis is What an Amazing Father in Law looks likePop and his LadyMy Pop the Waterman
This weekend, Kim was up visiting her mom, so after a morning work meeting on Saturday, I did a quick trip up to New Jersey to help with some family business.
A New Jersey Turnaround so to speak.
The nagging song in my head the last couple of weeks has been Las Vegas Turnaround by Hall and Oates.
Las Vegas Turnaround was on the album Abandoned Luncheonette released in November of 1973.
I wasn’t a really big Hall and Oates fan back then in that I don’t think I ever bought any of their music and besides, you could hear plenty of it on the radio.
But I remember the first time I heard this song.
To my parents, it was known as Hi-Henry’s. Then for a little while, the Cat’s Meow and I am told, JM’s River Edge. Then for many years and up until recently, it had been the Casa Comida Restaurant.
In my life experience, however, in the early to mid-1970’s, it will always be remembered as Barry’s.
Crossing over one of the two bridges that connected Oceanport with Long Branch, the Branchport Bridge, the old building, and the prominent sign always greeted you on your right. I remember that sign growing up, in whatever iteration it was at the time.
The last couple of years, other than two day trips, once for my brother Carl’s memorial service and once for my Aunt Joan’s funeral, I hadn’t been back to New Jersey. In fact, the last time I spent a night there was the night before my brother passed away.
But in late July Kim and I had the opportunity to go back up to celebrate my sister’s 70 th birthday and visit an old friend, Monmouth Park, on Haskell Stakes day. It was a nice weekend and it was nice to be back.
And then yesterday, arriving late in the afternoon, I made the nostalgic trip over the Branchport bridge with the building that was Barry’s in my teenage years, now empty and for sale on the right as I left Oceanport. Then I made the left on Atlantic Avenue to head to the ocean to visit another place that had significance in my life growing up, the North Long Branch beaches.
In 1973, the legal age to be served alcohol in New Jersey was eighteen. Even though I didn’t turn eighteen until June of 1974, that didn’t keep me from being one of the regulars at Barry’s. Some long hair, an early attempt at growing some facial hair, my brother’s draft card, and a good friend who was already eighteen who worked there, and I was good to go.
I even remember nights we closed the joint and ended up sitting at a table having a beer with the owner, Barry himself.
Barry’s always had good live music. Tim McLoone, of McLoone’s restaurant fame, played there regularly early in his career. He is somewhat of a legend along the section of the Jersey shore where I am from but with a restaurant now at the National Harbor he is known in the Washington DC area as well.
Another band whose name escapes me would let me join them and play harmonica occasionally. That sometimes went well and other times did not.
And then there was my favorite band, Guildersleeve (I think that is how it was spelled). A versatile band with a female and a male lead singer. There were a couple of songs, however, during their sets, when the bass player would sing. One was Drive my Car by the Beatles. The other was Las Vegas Turnaround.
I guess going back to Oceanport after a couple of years, spending some time in the picnic area of Monmouth Park on Haskell Day, and having that song playing over and over in my head recently has made these last few weeks a bit nostalgic for me.
It was about this time of the year 44 years ago that I was getting prepared to leave Oceanport. I remember at the time friends telling me I would be back in three months, and that I would never be able to leave Oceanport. And though that first year I probably spent more of my weekends in Oceanport than I did away from Oceanport, I never did go back there to live.
But hey, who says you can’t go back?
Who says you can’t go home?
Somebody from Jersey maybe?
But it’s alright.
Yeah, it’s alright.
Unlike Bon Jovi though, I am still waiting to crash into my pot of gold.
But it’s alright.
In fact, it’s good.
The Branchport bridge with “Barry’s” in the backgroundNorth Long Branch
I got a reminder that three years ago on another July 13th I posted a photo of my feet, next to the pool I had just opened and the palm tree I had recently planted. Feet FaddishI called it. Then in September of 2021 I returned to my lawn chair with Feet Faddish Two.
Once again it’s the 13th of July and since it was hot and I was tired from working outside, I thought I would stop for the day, and revisit my feet, my pool, and my palm tree once more.
So I inflated my pool, and positioned my lawn chair so that my feet would rest “under” one of my palm trees. My palm trees are growing but I had a scare in April when we had an unexpected cold snap. My palm trees are still young so I wrap them in bubble wrap to protect them from the cold in the winter. I made the mistake of unwrapping them a little early this year and I thought I had lost a number of trees. Though most have come back, one didn’t make it and a couple more are struggling.
If you look close you can see on the other side of my pool is my Par One golf course green so the pool can double as a water hazard.
My sister-in-law Teesha has recently made the decision to retire to the somewhat mythically sounding place called Margaritaville, in South Carolina. I am happy for her. With my brother Carl now gone it has to be hard to remain in that house.
The Fourth of July week was pretty cool. Kim and I got to hang out with all the local family on the fourth. Later in the week we took Cameron out to the Eastern Shore to see my dad who he hadn’t seen in a while and spend some time fishing and crabbing. My California brother Gary was on the east coast with my sister in law Marie so we got to hang out a little.
Sunday morning I got a call from my old friend Donny R. We grew up together, spending time in school, the Boy Scouts, and Oceanport Hook and Ladder. Donny was a police officer in Oceanport and is now retired in upstate New York. His birthday is close to mine in June so I wished him a late happy birthday. Before I left New Jersey, we would often throw ourselves a combined birthday party in his backyard.
It was nice to hear from him. He told me he lives about 20 miles from Saratoga Racecourse and I told him that visiting Saratoga was on my bucket list so he said we were welcome anytime.
Though it was very nice to hear from him, when you are my age, phone calls from old friends from home often come with some bad news too. In the case of Donny’s phone call, it came with lots of bad news, the passing of three friends I knew from Oceanport.
Karen S. was the daughter of two of my mom and dad’s best friends so we saw a lot of each other growing up though she was a bit younger. And she ultimately married another friend of mine from Oceanport.
Larry Y. was another Oceanport guy and member of the Oceanport Hook and Ladder.
Kevin A. was an Oceanport guy who was also a member of Oceanport Hook and Ladder. Like Donny, Kevin was also a police officer in Oceanport. My favorite Kevin story is the night he found me and my buddy Joe (who I have written about a number of times before) after a couple of beers attempting to get Joe on the back of my motorcycle so I could take him home. Instead, Kevin nicely suggested we put Joe in the Police car and he followed me on my motorcycle first to Joe’s address to drop him off and then to my house where I waved him thanks and went safely to bed.
That was the mid 70’s. It probably wouldn’t happen that way now, and probably shouldn’t.
In less than a week we will acknowledge another year of our Donny being gone, this year will make twenty years believe it or not. His accident occurred July 19, 2002.
I have heard two messages discussing fear in the last week both originating from a similar part of our world on the Eastern Shore. One from our buddy Bill Ortt in Easton, and one in the Harriet Tubman story. Harriet’s birthplace was just a few miles from my parent’s house in Dorchester County.
I must admit Harriet has become my new Sheroe in recent days and I have been trying to learn as much as I can about her. Maybe that is another story for another day.
Trusting the information Kim received from the policeman she spoke with on the phone, Donny experienced no pain. But I have always been troubled by the concern of whether he experienced fear.
We know Savannah experienced fear that day and is still working to sort that out.
Bill Ortt’s message included quotes from Zig Ziglar, an author and motivational speaker who died in 2012.
Rev. Ortt explained that Zig would propose you could look at fear two ways:
One is FEAR meaning “Fear Everything and Run.”
The other is FEAR meaning “Face Everything and Rise.”
In Harriet’s story from the movie anyway, she is helped by a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, Reverend Green who before she left on her first journey to freedom would advise her that “fear is our enemy. Trust in God. The North Star will guide you, follow the North Star…”
It’s a tough challenge but facing our fears does allow us to learn and grow.
And, trusting in God.
It worked for Harriet.
I know our Donny trusted in God, and that helps to mitigate the sorrow.
I don’t fear the day God calls me. And like my wise friend Donny R. said, every day we wake up and get out of bed is another birthday and should be celebrated.
It’s not that I don’t get scared. Like those times Kim is almost home from visiting her mother and the house is a wreck. But that is a different kind of fear.
Listen to Rev. Green and Father Bill.
Fear is your enemy. Trust in God. Let the stars guide you. And if you can’t see the stars follow the river.
Face your fears and rise up.
And as I remember the events of July 13, 2019:
“Cameron told me this morning that when I am not alive anymore, he wants my truck.
That caught me off guard a little but hey you never know.
You never know what God’s plan is.
So today, I think I will just sit by the pool, next to my little palm tree, and look at my feet.
The garage will be there tomorrow.
Me, and days like this, may not.”
Today was a day for me to take a little break.
And though I am really happy for my sister-in-law and her move to the mythical place called Margaritaville, I am sure that comes with some fears.
For now, me, with my little pool, my little palm trees, my banana trees, my one-hole golf course, I have all the amenities I need to rest my feet in my mythical place I can call “Box Wine Ville” if I want.
Fear will be there tomorrow, me, and days like this may not.
Trust in God, He will guide you.
Postscript:
Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of Karen, Larry, and Kevin.
“No, we don’t Carl, we don’t have an upstairs, we always eat here on the porch.”
“Yes, we do! We eat upstairs!”
“Alright, alright.”
This past January I was going through a cabinet in my home “office” that was full of my old notebooks and journals, and I began to leaf through them. I am not particularly organized so it’s not always clear if the entries are chronological or not, but in one notebook that contained most of my 2016 first-year Musings notes, I found a page dated April 29. I am going to assume, therefore, that this was April 29, 2016. Here is a somewhat edited version of that day’s notes:
Yesterday my dad was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. His primary care had suspected he might have the disease and he sent him to a specialist in Salisbury who confirmed the diagnosis. He was ordered to be put on medication to start treatment.
Since I have had a couple of weeks to process the possibility of this diagnosis, to some degree I am glad that it has been confirmed and possibly the medication will help him. He has endured changes that have noticeably impacted his activities of daily living and maybe some of those changes can be relieved.
Last week he had my mother ask me over the phone if I wanted his bicycle. He was told by the doctor he could no longer ride his bicycle.
I thought that was sad and told him to keep it out there for me to ride when I visited.
It must be really hard.
I don’t know much about Parkinson’s Disease at this point, but I suppose I will begin to learn.
I guess only time will tell.
In the meantime, I will learn as my dad goes through this, at least as much as I can.
And so began the learning experience. The journey of watching the life of a once-proud, confident, independent, talented, competent, most of the time charming, and all the time stubborn individual, whose life had impacted so many, begin to implode.
A guy who was known for his physical abilities, his sense of balance, his strength, and his accuracy. He could cross a log over a stream with ease, he could lean comfortably over the edge of the roof of a building while pulling a roll of tar paper up on the end of a rope; he could climb a rope using only his arm strength, he could drive a 10-penny nail with one swoop of a hammer and cut through a branch with one chop.
“One Chop Mo” they called him in Boy Scouts.
He could ski, ice skate, windsurf, climb a ladder, carry a backpack over miles of the Appalachian Trail, drive a firetruck, fight a fire, and even deliver a baby.
He could build a house, build a fine piece of furniture, build a First Aid building, and build a community-free library.
And he could ride his bicycle.
But not anymore.
The conversation illustrated above became more common as his disease progressed. But it wasn’t always like that and before reaching the point of incoherent sentences or confusion, as much as I could, I asked questions and wrote things down.
Though some of those conversations reached long into the night and were sometimes blurred and marred by Manhattans and red wine, not to mention the progression of his Parkinson’s, I tried to do the best I could to document his comments. The Manhattan’s were always good grease for the wheel on his end, but on my end red wine didn’t always allow me to capture those memories as well as I would have liked.
But we had fun.
My dad talked a lot about “going home” as his mind began to change.
He always wanted to “go home.”
“Home” to him, in his later Parkinson’s years, was in Oceanport, N.J.
Though he lived in Woolford, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and hadn’t lived in Oceanport in thirty years, in his memory, he lived back in the town he was raised in and where he raised his family.
His life was going full circle.
And in his defense, in the house that he built in Oceanport; he did go upstairs to eat. The kitchen was on the middle floor, or more exactly the third level of the four-level split he built. If he was in the basement where his workshop lived, or in the “rec” room where his bar was located, he went up the stairs to reach the kitchen and eat.
So in his previous house, the “home” he remembered best as being his home, he went upstairs to eat.
Except for the few years as a child when he lived in the Scandinavian neighborhood of Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge section, my father was born and raised in Oceanport.
My grandfather moved the family to Brooklyn in the 1930s to find work and for three years, my dad lived and attended New York’s public school system in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades.
It’s been a while since we have had the ability to have those conversations when I could learn more about his life. But interestingly, this past Monday, on his birthday, out of the blue, he shared another story I had not heard before. You have to understand this was a big deal because most of his speech now is unintelligible. On Monday, while we celebrated his birthday in the facility where he now lives, he shared the story of another birthday party he had in Brooklyn in 1939 when he turned ten years old. He said he had just started to play guitar and they played “kissing games.” He also mentioned that baseball was big back then.
I don’t know where all this came from but I got pretty excited and of course, took notes on my phone.
I have never heard him say anything about playing the guitar, but I definitely believe he played “kissing games.” I did try to push him a little with some follow-up questions about the Brooklyn Dodgers but at that point, it was over. The clarity had ceased.
I think he had a great birthday and for me it was awesome.
On April 29th in 2016 I wrote:
“I don’t know much about Parkinson’s Disease at this point, but I suppose I will begin to learn.
I guess only time will tell.
In the meantime, I will learn as my dad goes through this, at least as much as I can.”
It’s now April of 2022.
I am still learning.
Though I probably still don’t know as much about Parkinson’s in the clinical sense as I should, I do know how it has affected my dad and impacted my mother.
My dad once told me “At one time I was the strongest kid in Oceanport.”
I believe he probably was.
That strength is gone now.
And the sense of balance he was once so proud of, gone too.
It’s hard to believe it has only been six years that we have been on this journey.
Yet he still has those days when he amazes me.
So I guess I will keep on learning.
As long as he keeps sharing.
Postscript:
I shared his birthday photo on social media and he got many responses and comments. I read as many of those comments as I could to him while I was with him on Monday and will follow up with the rest the next time I see him. Thanks to all for helping to make his birthday special.
My dad enjoying his birthday ice cream cone. He hadn’t had an ice cream cone in about 10 months.
“Oh yeah, love’s the only thing that matters anyhow.”
Those lyrics are from the song Sweet Cherry Wine by Tommy James and the Shondells released in 1969.
I have been singing it over and over again lately, and with the help of my “Alexa,” listening as well.
I haven’t written anything to post on “Musings” in over three months. I haven’t felt like it. I have been in a funk since Christmas. I don’t know why exactly. Maybe it’s seasonal depression; maybe it’s the #PutinPriceHike on our gas costs; maybe it’s the massive losses in our retirement accounts at a time when I would like to retire; maybe it’s the Valentine’s Day card I bought for Kim that cost me eight bucks (8 bucks!); maybe it’s the threat of World War III and nuclear war looming over the futures of my grandsons; maybe it’s the weight gain I can’t blame on anybody but myself ushering in a new stage of my old age.
In 1969 I remember Sweet Cherry Wine as being a cool song that I liked. At that point in my life, I wasn’t paying too much attention to lyrics in songs so I didn’t really get the message.
Having grown up on lyrics like “Makes my heart go run-run ditty” or “Down dooby doo down down, Comma, comma, down dooby doo down down,” what was the point of listening to lyrics.
Anyway, I just thought it was a song about drinking wine.
We had a lot of division in the country in the 60’s and 70’s. In fact in Tommy James’ book “Me, the Mob, and the Music” he writes “Before the 1968 election, there was very little left-right, conservative-liberal dichotomy. That election, that year, was when we lost our national unity and became a red and blue country. Divided we fall.”
We had Vietnam, we had Watergate, and not long after we had our first oil crisis.
My daughter Hayley reminded me this past week about a photograph I had taken when I was in high school that got published on the front page of a local newspaper called The Advisor on February 3, 1974. The photo was taken during the oil embargo of 1973 and 1974 and she wanted to use it as part of her lesson for one of her classes.
The oil embargo of 1973 had some similarities in origin to at least a part of our current oil and gas situation (the Putin part) in that during the Arab-Israeli War of 1973 the Arab nations imposed an embargo on the United States in retaliation for providing arms to Israel thus banning petroleum exports to the US and other nations supporting Israel. Domestic oil production had declined and we had become dependent on importing foreign oil.
We had long lines at the gas stations and prices jumped. It was common for gas stations to run out of gas. I happened to have worked part-time at the Shell station in my hometown of Oceanport where the photo was taken and therefore I had a pretty easy time getting gas. I had taken the photo as part of an assignment for my high school photography class.
“Divided we fall.”
That may be true. I think September 11, 2001, would tamp that division down a little but it is raging back.
We have climate change, social media, fake news, Build Back Better, Make America Great Again, socialism versus capitalism, and on and on.
Heck, even the Senate’s attempt to cure my seasonal depression is pitting family member against family member.
Though often thought to be related to psychedelia and drugs, Sweet Cherry Wine was more a song protesting the Vietnam War and according to Tommy James in an interview in 2010 the song “was about the blood of Jesus.“
“…yesterday my friends were marching out to war
…listen, now, we ain’t a-marching anymore”
“No we ain’t gonna fight
Only God has the right
To decide who’s to live and die”
I have always said that writing is great therapy.
I guess I should start practicing what I preach.
Maybe practice what I preach in more ways than just writing.
It’s coming on Christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on
From “River” a song by Joni Mitchell
I heard this song recently.
It’s a beautiful song.
But it’s kind of sad.
I guess we have all had times in our lives when we wished we had a river we could skate away on.
As I write this on an early December evening, I was reminded by a social media post that on this day one year ago, just a few weeks before Christmas, a friend of mine from my hometown of Oceanport, New Jersey had succumbed to complications of the Covid 19 virus.
His daughter posted a photo a few days ago also on social media, of this year’s Christmas decorations on their house with the comment “We didn’t even have a Christmas tree last year….but we decided to make up for it this year.”
Yeah, buddy.
I remember Christmases like that. The Christmas of 2002 when we had to have Christmas somewhere, anywhere but not at our home. Too many memories for that, so we ended up in a house in Deep Creek, Maryland. And the Christmas of 2018 when we didn’t put up a Christmas tree either for the first time in my life because we just weren’t feeling it.
But then in 2019, with the kids coming up from Florida we tried to regroup and be festive. And we had a nice Christmas.
Then just a few months later, the virus shut us down.
Christmas 2020 was spent spread out with Kim’s mom on Christmas Eve, my parents on Christmas Day, and the local kids a couple of days after Christmas.
Holiday distancing to allow for social distancing.
I am sure for Christmas 2020 there were probably many who wished they “had a river to skate away on. “
But this year, though not everything has returned to the way it was back in 2019, we are trying once again.
And like my friend’s daughter Michelle and her mom Linda and their family, again with the Florida kids coming up to Virginia for Christmas, we decided to try to make up for it this year too.
Kim and I were already a little ahead of the game preparing for this Christmas in that we had never taken our Christmas tree down from last year.
Yeah, I know that sounds weird, but it kind of fit in with all the other plants, even though it was artificial.
We decided we would enjoy it all year long.
So we decorated the tree for the Kentucky Derby, then the Preakness, and the Belmont. Then in July for the Haskell. Those Haskell hats remained on the tree until I finally took them down the weekend before Thanksgiving.
In fact, over the weekend in October when Savannah and Leon got married, Christian happened to find the one lone ornament from the Christmas before, that we overlooked taking down.
Appropriately so, it was an angel.
So, on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, with the angel continuing to watch over us, all those hats were replaced with Christmas ornaments. And the decorating continued in the weeks that followed, inside and outside the house.
Joni, in her song “River,” goes on to explain she lives in a part of the world where everything is always green:
But it don’t snow here
It stays pretty green
Though the desire to escape is real, the hope of having a frozen river to skate away on, is just that, just a hope. A sad one maybe, we can’t always skate away from the unexpected.
Because the truth is:
It’s coming on Christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Christmas is coming.
And the Christmas season is a time of hope, a time of renewal, a time of anticipation of what is to come as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day. As well as to anticipate what that will mean for us in the coming New Year.
A time of joy and a time of peace.
And maybe… that hope, and that joy, and that peace isour “river.”
So put your skates on.
Postscript:
Kim and I would like to wish all our friends and family a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! And a special Christmas blessing to all our new friends at the Laurel View Village in Davidsville, Pennsylvania, and Signature HealthCARE at Mallard Bay in Cambridge, Maryland.
It’s a Thursday evening and as I sit here writing wearing my vintage Troy Polamalu Bumblebee Pittsburgh Steelers jersey, I will soon need to put down my pen to prepare to watch the Steelers play the Vikings on Thursday Night Football, in hopes that by the time I rest my head on my pillow tonight I will not be wishing there will be a river, or maybe three rivers that I and all other Steelers fans could skate away on.
Lastly, I will leave you with another thought from another post I saw on social media today from our friends at Christ Church in Easton, Maryland that I thought was fitting:
Life requires many responsibilities of us each day, and so many of them don’t go according to how we had planned or expected. Joseph was required to go with Mary, his wife, back to his hometown of Bethlehem. We can wonder about his thoughts as he was navigating this tedious trek home. But what we know of is the miracle that took place there, after they arrive!
Heavenly Father, help us to keep our eyes on you as we respond to the many responsibilities that we face each day so that we don’t miss the blessings that you pour out. Amen.
Amen.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from all of us.
Namaan, Alexa, Cameron, Savannah, Leon, Christian, Ethan, Kim, Curt, Hayley, Malcolm, and Donny too.
Post Postscript (added for this post December 21, 2021)
Shortly after finishing this letter, my aunt, Joan Christiansen passed away. I have referred to my Aunt Joan a couple of times before in these musings inYou Are My Sunshineand Hello In There. She was special. We are all familiar with the proverb “it takes a village to raise a family.” But more often, it takes family to raise a family. When my sister, my brothers, and I and my cousins were kids, aunts and uncles were more like deputized parents. They stepped up as they needed to cover one another and keep us all safe. We shared our Christmases and Easters and other holidays too. We shed some tears and lots of laughs. We have many memories and on December 11 we had a little more of that sunshine taken away.
We sang “You Are My Sunshine” at her gravesite.
Prayers go out to my cousins and their kids and their kids too.
Kim and I got up early and walked five miles along the Sugarland Run Trail.
After lunch, we decided to keep moving and ride our bikes, so I loaded up the bikes and drove to downtown Herndon to jump on the W&OD bike trail.
Today, not feeling the cycling cool, I opted not to wear my bike shirt, just a sleeveless tee-shirt and I put my bike pants on under my shorts.
Besides being more practical since I could carry my wallet and phone, though not my goal, the bike pants under my shorts made my butt look bigger.
When you are me, that’s a plus.
I have never been to the Belmont. I have been to the Kentucky Derby, I have been to the Preakness, but never the Belmont. Growing up in New Jersey, not that far from Nassau County on Long Island, I had plenty of opportunities.
I remember a bunch of us watching the Belmont race one year at my friend Ricky’s house back in the 70’s. As we watched the winner being brought into the winner’s circle for the photos and the interviews, there on our TV screen was another good friend and classmate from Oceanport, Chris Nagel smiling and wildly waving his tickets, winners I guessed, while pressed up against the winner’s circle fence and on national TV.
Since I am not normally that lucky when it comes to betting on these races, the 2008 Belmont Stakes is another memory. A long shot named D’Tara won the race at odds of 38 to 1. A horse named Dennis of Cork ran second. Anak Nakal and Ready’s Echo ended up in a dead heat for third. I had all four of those horses boxed in a trifecta (the first three horses) and the exacta (the first two horses). As a result, I landed two trifectas, one with each third-place horse, and the exacta.
Kim got some new patio doors and a front door out of that one.
The problem with biking along the W&OD bike trail is there are beer stops. Heading towards Reston the first stop was The Bike Lane, a bike shop that also brews their own beer. They had a great Kolsch and we sat outside at a picnic table. I asked the guy pouring my beer if Tommy, an awesome young man who attends my church still worked there. “Tom Brown?” he asked, “yeah we call him ‘T Bone,’ he is off today for his sister’s graduation party, I’ll tell him someone was asking about him.”
Another four miles and one very large hill later we stopped at The Caboose, a brewery in Vienna, Virginia adjacent to the bike trail. There we had a Czech and a Citrus Pilsner.
Then it was eight miles and that one big hill back to Herndon, ending at the Green Lizard, our local bike shop, for one more draft beer.
Then home to watch the Belmont Stakes.
It was a good race, though I didn’t get as lucky as I did in 2008. The horse Rombauer who won the Preakness beat my pick, Known Agenda, for third place knocking my trifecta out. But I did have the exacta. Not bad since I just played my birthday numbers and threw in Hot Rod Charlie because he had a good story.
No Triple Crown winner this year, some unneeded drama, now we look forward to next year.
At one point on the way home on the bike trail, Kim and I had gotten separated a bit.
I was riding slow, now tired from the long day.
A bike rider came up behind me and gave the courtesy warning before passing me, “passing on your left.”
Only this guy said, “passing on your left, ma’am.”
I had to laugh.
It was a nice relaxing day.
Lots of exercise.
Lots of sun.
A few beers.
Lots of racing.
And the question,
Was it my hair?
Or my new butt maybe?
That earned me a…
“Passing on your left, ma’am?”
Guess I will never know.
Postscript:
Our feature image is a selfie taken at The Caboose Brewing Company and Tavern in Vienna, Virginia.
In my hometown of Oceanport, New Jersey, there is a parade held on Memorial Day each year. Over the years I marched in that parade as a Cub Scout, as part of the Maple Place School band, as a Boy Scout, and as an Oceanport Hook & Ladder volunteer fireman.
In my younger years, my neighbor Warren Del Vecchio always played Taps on his trumpet from the hill overlooking the town memorial located on a small island of grass with a monument and a flagpole at the confluence of three streets in the area of town known as Wolf Hill. His trumpet would sound from the hill behind us immediately after the honor guard from Fort Monmouth finished shooting their rifles in the air in salute. It always brought on chills. To me as a young person, Warren’s playing of Taps earned him celebrity status and I always felt like I was important because I knew him personally, kind of like “yeah, I know that guy, he is my neighbor.”
Like most events during the pandemic, last year’s Memorial Day parade in Oceanport, as it was in hometowns all over our country, was canceled.
This year, however, due to vaccines and our beginning to return to some state of normalcy, the parade goes on, though sadly in my opinion, since I have moved away, the route no longer terminates at Wolf Hill, with the monument and the flag pole.
The President told us earlier in the year, if we were all good, we could spend the Fourth of July with our families without distancing and even without wearing masks.
We must have been really good because its only Memorial Day and the masks are coming off all over the place and groups are gathering once again.
I am still not sure how to handle the change in mask usage and it’s obvious when you enter a store where masks are not required and everyone is still wearing one, the rest of the world is too. After a year of socially hiding, I have grown comfortable with being unsocial and putting on my hat, my sunglasses, and my mask and going to the grocery store hoping no one will recognize me.
And then there are the situations like the time I was at the self-checkout and the loaf of rye bread I just waited fifteen minutes to have sliced didn’t show up under the bakery search as a price option and I finally had to get the attendant to assist me, all the while the blood was receding from lips and face as they took on a nice grayish color and tightened up tautly. Thankfully, all this was happening under the cover of my mask. As far as the grocery attendant knew, I was smiling even though at that point I was only able to point and grunt at the rye bread and the touch screen.
And I can’t ignore the fact that I can’t remember the last time I had a cold or have been sick.
Then just when you think it’s safe to go out of the house, THEY’RE BACK!
Like an old 1950’s science fiction movie, they come crawling out of holes in the ground every seventeen years. They fly across the sky clumsily like Flash Gordon’s spaceship from the 1930’s serials. And the rhythmic whirring sounds in the air all around might as well be signaling a flying saucer invading Earth from outer space.
They get in your hair, they cancel out your cell phone audio, they just plain creep you out. Like some prehistoric creature whose ability to naturally evolve has been robbed, they seem out of place in our new world.
Hey Cicadas…it’s the 21st century, we have Africanized Honey Bees and` Murder Hornets now. We drive electric F-150’s, and watch shows like Pooch Perfect and The View on TV’s that have flat screens! We have evolved!
You guys need to get to the gym.
It is nice to see Memorial Day weekend signaling the unofficial beginning of summer and returning to its traditions.
Oceanport will have its parade.
My brother Carl’s annual Memorial Day party will go on, as he would have wanted. He will be there in spirit I am sure.
I am able to kiss my mother and father this weekend without guilt, and most importantly, without a mask.
And I will admit it is nice to have at least the option to be social again.
And of course, we can’t forget the real reason for the day that gives us the three day weekend and the excuse to parade, eat hot dogs, drink beer, and go to the beach:
Those brave men and women who gave their lives defending our freedom.
May God bless each and every one of them and may their families feel proud and appreciated for their sacrifice, in grief and in memory.
Thank you.
My brother Carl, Memorial Day 2020. May he be resting in peace, because he deserves to be.
Postscript:
The feature photo is from the Oceanport Memorial Day Parade in May of 1969 when I was in the seventh grade and is courtesy of my friend Kathy MacDonald. That tall fellow at the end of the saxophone line is me. That is Kathy’s brother Bob next to me. Also in that line is Veronica Bradley and David Halpstein (not sure that is correct last name, if you are reading this from Oceanport help me out).
