Well, I see in the papers that the old homestead at 4 Trinity Place is about to come down to make way for the Fastrac gas station expansion. It's the last of the three houses to go. The one behind it on Storrie Street and Oncher's next door have already bitten the dust.
We took the kids through the house around Easter of 2005 when the city still owned it. It was the first time they had been there since their grandmother had died ten years earlier.
There were efforts to save it, editorials even, but one look at what remained was sufficient to make one realize that it was beyond salvaging. Neglect and the elements had taken their toll.
We had owned it from 1960 to 1995, but for most of those years people still referred to it as the Turner House, where a previous generation of rambunctious boys had been raised, one of them my father's friend and classmate Dick Turner. They had left their mark with some fanciful drawings on a wall in the attic, and a safe in the basement which we never opened. Dad had played pool in the back room back in the 30's.
There were nine rooms and a bath and a half. The kitchen and upstairs bath were state of the art 1940's, including a GE dishwasher identical to one in the 1940's home of the future at the Carousel of Progress ride at Disney World (formerly at the 1964 World's Fair in New York). The downstairs made for a perfect party house with french doors linking the living room, dining room and Turner pool room (our back living room). Upstairs had two small and three spacious bed rooms, one of which, the nine-windowed southern exposure "sun room" we used as an office for Mom's school work and Dad's take home law practice.
When Jay and I were in high school and Mom had retired from teaching to raise Sean, Mom started a family tutoring service. Two bucks an hour for private lessons, one for group. Those dollar bills were put in a bank bag in the built-in china closet and we used the cash periodically to renovate the house, eventually wallpapering the entire downstairs. We (i.e., mostly Jay) did all the work ourselves and for the most part it came off pretty good. One summer we even put a new shingled roof on the garage, which still ranks as the dirtiest, sweatiest job of my lifetime.
*******
As the 1995 death watch moved along, the house began to die with her. While she slept in the temporary bedroom made out of the front living room, a severe rainstorm broke through the roof over the sun room. Not even every bucket and drop cloth in the house could catch it all. The water poured through the antique ceiling light fixtures.
The house hadn't been vacant two weeks after Mom's death when the boiler went out during an unusually cold spell. The boiler froze, the pipes froze, a couple of the radiators froze. We fixed the roof, replaced the boiler, shut off the broken pipes.
And gave the house away.
After two years, the not-for-profit sold it for next to nothing to a self-proclaimed handyman. He tried, and actually lived there with a young family, but the task was beyond him. When we returned in 2005 the fallen plaster from the ceiling still graced the floor of the sun room. Broken radiators were everywhere and the boiler frozen out again. They had vacated ahead of a mortgage foreclosure in the dead of winter. Vandals had poked some holes through the windows. Every inch of woodwork we had so carefully painted over so many years had peeled away. The dining room floor Jay had sanded was black with water stains from the burst radiator. A long dead cat lay decomposed on the molding rug in the master bedroom.
I found some of Dad's old files in the attic. I took those, but left behind our childhood crib. It will soon be part of the general fill beneath the new parking lot.
As the others got back in the minivan, I took one last look around, knelt and prayed on the spot where Mom had died, and muttered an exceedingly sad farewell to the House of Going.
[UPDATE: With the wrecking crew outside, they let me in for one last look. Pics are here.]
Well, we had to break the news to the other kids somehow!
January 5, 1990.
Happy birthday, Little Princess!
******
The hospital scenes include my Mom, and featured guest Sister William Aloysius, who not only assisted in the delivery of most of our children, but their mother as well.
The call of business brought me yesterday to the city of my birth, Troy, NY, for the third time in five weeks. The business was mercifully short, and we used my should-be-patented navigational method of follow-your-nose to wind our way back to the bridge over the Hudson.
I suddenly realized we had swung up to Fifth Avenue and when I spotted a church up ahead, I asked the driver, my former secretary, to pull over. For this was St. Peter's Church, the church of my baptism and our home parish until just before my third birthday.
Our other companion was her sister, also a former secretary of mine, and the three of us stepped smartly through the front door and back into the 1950's, for St. Peter's had hardly changed a whit from the days of my toddling.
Twenty-something companions were awed by the beauty of the architecture and decor.
"This is what churches used to look like," I told them.
It's the third oldest parish in the State of New York, following St. Patrick's in New York City and Old St. Mary's in Albany. A Catholic church has stood on that site since 1830. The present building dates from the 1850's, the interior decor from the late 19th-early 20th centuries. One of the early pastors was Rev. Clarence Walworth, whose name you might not know, but whose translation of a German hymn Holy God We Praise Thy Name should be on the lips of every English-speaking Catholic.
We wandered around, marveled at the marble high pulpit, the stations of the cross, the Christmas creche, the old confessionals. I realized I had missed the baptistry so I checked out the periphery until I found it in the back near the front door. (Churches are funny that way. You enter the front door to get to the back of the church, and the back door to enter the front).
It is astonishingly beautiful, dating, I later learned, from 1900, with an ornate baptismal font of marble, onyx and brass.
It was here that in July of 1951 I was given my name, and where, attended by my Aunt Marie Weise and Uncle Bob Brunelli, the stain of original sin was wiped away and I became, through the grace of Jesus Christ, a child of God and an heir of heaven.
*********
I should mention that this church is the only place in the diocese of Albany where the traditional tridentine rite Latin Mass of the Catholic Church is regularly celebrated. The old altar is still in use.
In the Spring of 1965 our eighth grade religion class began to discuss the various virtues associated with the Sacrament of Matrimony. Sister Anne Eugene was nothing if not systematic, so I was able to look ahead, count the number of kids in the row in front of me, and determine thereby which virtue I would be called upon to define within the next few minutes.
And then I turned pale.
Chastity.
Oh my God.
Are we even supposed to know about this stuff yet?
I mean, thanks to Billy Naple I knew something about the various structures and functions of the sexes, as well as he had been able to learn it from a cigarette-smoking thug on Wall Street hill. Billy had switched over to the public junior high school where apparently sex was all anybody ever talked about.
"Robert, chastity."
And now I stood up and turned from ghostly pale to a deep shade of red.
"Purity?" I mumbled.
"Yes, that's good. Now, boys and girls, chastity may seem like a strange thing to be associated with married people, but in the context of marriage . . ."
Keep going, Sister.That's it. You do all the talking and I'll look like I'm listening thoughtfully and then when nobody notices I'll quietly take my seatand the next thing you know Mary Petruccione will be busy discussing patience. That's a nice virtue. Why couldn't I get patience?
In the course of this practical guide (aimed primarily at young women, but with nuggets of wisdom available for all) on how to exercise and develop this mostly-forgotten virtue , Dawn manages to bare her whole sordid pre-chastity lifestyle and examine the very depths of her soul. She's not afraid to call sin sin and she doesn't remotely excuse her old behavior, though, in an odd sort of way she seems totally comfortable with it, in the sense that she knows she is forgiven, she is firmly resolved not to relapse, and can use her own bad example to accomplish good.
We corresponded a bit while the book was in its preparatory stages. A lot of the themes [NEVER use "a lot" in your writing, Robert!- Sister Monica Agnes] and several of the anecdotes opened out of town at her blog, The Dawn Patrol, where I've been a regular hanger-on for a couple of years.
I advised her privately that there is a very fine line between giving testimony (a la the Mission scene in Guys and Dolls) and BRAGGING. I've heard many a sinner confess his sins publicly in a way that made me wonder whether there wasn't just a hint of pride in accomplishment there. I rather think I have been guilty of that myself from time to time (I'm proud to say).
Dawn heeded my warning and walks the line beautifully and brilliantly.
While this is primarily a deeply thoughtful, well-researched and theologically uplifting book, interwoven throughout is her personal story and especially her spiritual journey which is startling and extraordinary.
Most of us are able to get through life, I think, reasonably comfortable with our relationship with God and don't bother asking too much of Him, and, for the most part He only seems to seek ordinary things from us.
But every once in a while, He takes a real good sinner, clobbers them over the head, slaps them silly and says, "WAKE UP! I've got a job for you!" and that, I think, is where prophets come from.
And that is how He took an agnostic Jew from a broken home who lived as the culture demanded and slept where her cravings directed and turned her into an Apostle to the young directionless women of the new century. How is this possible?
First, He introduces her to His Son and despite all the cultural pressures to the contrary, she accepts Him with ease and from that point on she manages to adjust every aspect of her life into His Will. Just like that.
Then, He has His angels whisper in a few ears and rearranges her reasonably settled life in quirky new ways. Several months of unemployment (this is about where I wandered in) lead her to even deeper thoughts and richer writing, and unintimidated proclamations of right and wrong.
Joy and peace run between the lines on every page. So do hip, sassy, straight-forward, and no holds barred. She speaks a message that is clear, honest and secure in herself, and one that will resonate, I think, with anyone (i.e. nearly everyone) who has ever felt that pang of loneliness and emptiness that comes from sexual encounters that are aimed at self-gratification instead of spiritual, emotional and mutual enrichment.
And, as is to be expected from Dawn Eden, it's a good read on any level.
When I first saw Scott Ott's moving satirical video, Zawahiri Christmas Greeting, I emailed Dawn and asked her if it was really any more ridiculous than her own life story.
The Power of God, what we sometimes call Grace, can do some pretty amazing things.
********** A brief aside: Dawn repeatedly points out her personal faith that God will choose her mate if she is to have one.
Is she sincere? I'll say. First she lets us know the combination of features which appeal to her: witty, charming, intelligent, well-read, virtuous, etc.
AND THEN proceeds to explain to all the single women of America where to find such men! Like, hey Dawn, KNOCK KNOCK, how many of those guys do you think are out there, and you're giving them away to the next sweet young thing who buys your book?
I was an Assistant District Attorney back in December of 1982 (check out my novel, linked below, for a look at some of my adventures, real and imagined) and on the weekend of December 11-12 I busily prepared for a DWI trial scheduled for first thing Monday morning in Amsterdam Police Court.
We didn't have a big staff, just the District Attorney, me and one other assistant. I brought the file home, studied it, prepared my opening statement, outlined the witnesses, tried to anticipate roadblocks from the defense. By Sunday night I felt pretty confident.
But sometimes life comes at you fast.
Mary went into labor overnight. Mom was summoned to take care of Anna and we settled in at St. Mary's Hospital. As morning drew near, I remembered the trial. Mary appeared to be stable enough for me to make a quick run downtown where I left a note for the District Attorney to call the court and let them know I couldn't be there for the jury trial. I then returned to my wife and Robert Neil Going, Jr. entered the world in early afternoon. I cut the cord, gave him his first bath, and taught him a couple of knock-knock jokes and the speak-easy scene from Horsefeathers. (Some of this may be apocryphal).
The joy of harboring our first-born son was only tempered slightly by the issuance by the Police Court Judge of an Order to Show Cause why the DWI case should not be dismissed for failure to prosecute.
Ordinarily this would not have received much attention, but the human interest angle kept it in the papers for a couple of weeks, most of the stories ending with, "And Mrs. Going gave birth to an eight pound 15 ounce 21 inch baby boy. Mother and child are doing fine."
And so I had a full contingent from the press in attendance as I made my argument for motherhood, America and apple pie.
The previous-generation judge says, "I don't understand why you had to be in the delivery room. I wasn't in the delivery room when any of my kids were born. What's all that about?" And then he turned to one of the reporters.
"Mrs. Patrick, was your husband there when you had your daughter?" he asked with a big chuckle.
She withered him.
"He certainly was, Judge, and I expected him to be there."
Recognizing that modern culture had caught up with him and was speeding rapidly past, and having his political antenna finely tuned, the Judge, in his infinite wisdom, fulfilled his duty as Protector of All That Is Just and dismissed the Order to Show Cause.
Three months later when we finally got around to trying the case, no one even noticed when I lost.
********
Where have all those years gone? The toddling and the Cub Scouts and the Wee Men's Baseball. The camping trips, the canoe adventures, the pilgrimages to Fenway Park and the defiant stand at Yankee Stadium.
The thousands of nights I tucked him into bed and told him stories of the Adventures of Daddy's Buddy Bobby, stories about the secret cave and the magic boat; stories about slamming that home run to win the game while everyone cheered.
One night when he was three or four and I was about to turn off the light, I suddenly grew a little wistful.
"Bobby, when you grow up and I grow old, will you take care of me?"
He looked up at me with those big eyes.
"A boy and his Daddy should always be buddies," he said.
"Don't you sometimes feel like we should have the theme from The Andy Griffith Show playing in the background all the time?" asked my friend Stubborn Jack Langley.
"What do you mean?" I asked while wolfing down the first of two two-for-a-dollar hot dogs.
"Look at us! We're sitting here at the grand opening of a brand new Stewart's store, like this is the biggest thing that's ever happened here."
I pondered that as I started on the second dog while Mrs. Judge was busy gathering up the two-for-one gallons of milk, ice cream and orange juice, as well as the two loaves of bread, two packages of english muffins and the ten half-price lottery tickets. We had been on our way to Walmart's when we remembered in the nick of time that the new Stewart's was knocking ten cents a gallon off the gasoline all day.
"Well," I munched, "you've got to admit that as Stewart's stores go, this is the best one around." And operating incredibly smoothly considering that better than half the town was wandering in and out all day. I later learned that they had manned the place with managers from all over the region. No moronic trainees for the moment. They even pumped the gas for us.
"Besides, It's Izzy Demsky's birthday. What better way to celebrate it?"
Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw Floyd the Barber oo-ing over a Crumbs Along the Mohawk make-your-own-sundae, but I was mistaken.
Later, after goofing around at Walmart's, we stopped at Fariello's for real ice-cream-parlor sundaes (I had the caramel over rum-raisin, a winter favorite), completely ignoring the four half-gallons from Stewart's. They'll keep.
On the way out we ran into Dave Hughes and his family, including the ones just in from Orange, California. Dave has been calling my radio show for weeks to remind me of the Messiah performance on Sunday and he mentioned it again.
*******
So, the next afternoon found us at St. Anne's Episcopal Church, one of the older buildings in town. The parish dates back to the early 18th century when Queen Anne funded a mission chapel to service the Mohawk Indians at Fort Hunter, about five miles west of here on the other side of the river. I think some of the cut stone from that first chapel was later used to build the Erie Canal. Queen Anne's Lace, a lovely weed, grows abundantly in that area (and throughout the valley), though I don't know if one has anything to do with the other.
The Messiah was, in a word, magnificent. Local chorus, imported soloists and musicians. The acoustics were perfect and the performances moving and marvelous. They ended it with the Hallelujah Chorus, which guaranteed them a standing ovation, but they would have gotten it anyway.
Even Mayberry is good for a little culture once in a while.
*******
But if you want a BIG SHOW, you've got to head for the big city, in this case, Albany, where tonight we had front row balcony seats for the Kenny Rogers Christmas Show, and let me tell you it was well worth the price we didn't pay for the tickets (Anna's in-laws couldn't use them at the last minute). The first half was pretty much a long medley of his hits, and they are plentiful. The voice has lost some of its timber and strength, but the man has style and certainly can and did deliver the goods. Either half of the show would have been sufficient on its own. A real treat.
Of course, I won't be able to get that "Lucille" song out of my head for days, I'm sure.
Four hungry children and a crop in the field.
Makes me think of Stubborn Jack out in his super-deluxe Langley Seed Company tractor tuning in to my show on the tractor-radio.
I'll probably be talking about the great hot-dog bargain this week. That should get the locals stirred up.
On a cold evening in February, 1985 the five of us huddled in front of the living room fireplace trying out the borrowed black and white video camera.
The little guy with the flashlight is now my son the "lights god", a very busy stage lighting technician in New York City. The baby is now in his last year of college. Anna never did go on to a career as Dorothy, or as a shadow-figure performer, but she's a darned good RN at Albany Medical Center.
I still have that sweatshirt, and it still has the rip on the bottom of the right side from when I caught it on a barbed wire fence in eighth grade. The mustache, however, is long gone.
When Anna graduated from high school in 1999 she handed us a wrapped present: the original videotape containing this excerpt. She had found it a couple of years earlier and hidden it away.
My Grandfather Going met Grandma when she was a teenager during World War I, when he was a horseman bringing up the animals from South Carolina to ship them off to France from New York City. They married shortly after the War ended and settled down initially in her hometown of Brooklyn (which accounts for me rooting for the Dodgers over the Yankees in 1955 and 1956, when I was 4 and 5, respectively).
Aunt Marie, Dad's only sibling, was born in Brooklyn, but not much later they decided to move back to Amsterdam, his home town (there is a long family pattern of this, like there is some personal black hole that keeps sucking us back here even after we have seemingly escaped). The story is that he had passed most of the physical tests to join the Fire Department of New York, but asthma flared up and everyone thought it best for him to return to the healthy climate of upstate New York.
I don't know anything about Aunt Marie's birth, but Dad was born at home on April 30, 1922. We are a resourceful bunch, as can be seen by the fact that Grandfather Going delivered the baby. The Doctor arrived shortly thereafter, having been summoned from the pulpit while attending Sunday Mass at St. Mary's.
The tradition back then was to have the father present the child for baptism while the mother stayed home. Grandma had instructed him to have the child named James, the same as his father and grandfather and great-grandfather. When they came home from St. Mary's husband announced to wife that as far as he was concerned, there had been enough Jameses. "The boy's name is Francis!" (after her brother, and father, and grandfather). The Christening gown has been used by every male member of the family since that day in 1922.
Jim Going moved his young family to nearby Tribes Hill in the mid-20's, where he ran an early service station (his horse-training skills being of lesser value then) and a motor camp consisting of a handful of one room cottages to provide minimal shelter for the traveling public. Later he started an ice company and moved back to Amsterdam where they lived relatively comfortably.
When Dad turned seven, he became an altar boy at St. Mary's. He had started school a year early at SMI simply by tagging along with his sister. (They lived across Maple Street from the school at that time, in a house later occupied by my classmate Frank Romeo).
Less than five years later, during a brutally cold ( -28 F.) February in 1934, Jim Going developed a raging fever, demanding that Dad open the windows and shutters in their house on Wilkes Avenue. Grandpa Jim died shortly after, having just turned 41. ( Read more... )
I've got all kinds of vacation days I haven't used (again) with the year drawing rapidly to a close, so today I played hookey from my employment as Corporation Counsel for the City of Amsterdam and hied myself up to Queensbury to meet with the Thursday hiking crew, led, as always, by my high school principal, Father Joe Anselment, with whom I have been hiking off and on since election day 1968.
Although I am a permanent member of the group, I've been slacking off lately and this is only the second or third time I've made it this year. The last time was in mid-summer when we did Hopkins Mountain up in the high peaks area of New York State. Lots of up, then down, then up, then down, then up. I was not surprised to learn that someone a few years younger than I dropped dead on that same day on a trail in the same neck of the woods. When I finally reached the summit a full 45 minutes after my friends (this is the first mountain my son-in-law ever hiked with or without us back when they were fifteen and as I recall he never broke a sweat) I collapsed on the open rock and didn't even have the energy to eat lunch.
But I knew that after an hour or so I would be refreshed enough for the return trip. Except that the storm clouds swept in ten minutes later and we all went scampering back down the trail, so I ended up not only exhausted but drenched. And my dry clothes were in my wet pack.
Anyway, that was then. Today was a comfortable 55 or 60 and the mountain we chose (there were eight of us, and as usual the vote was 1-0 in favor of Father Anselment's suggestion) was French Mountain, lodged neatly between Lake George and the outlet malls of northern Queensbury.
I greatly enjoy these jaunts to the Lake George region, especially knowing that other people are working while I'm having fun. This was a much easier hike on a privately-owned mountain and I only fell ten or fifteen minutes behind the others, which is not to say I wasn't questioning my mortality by the time we reached the first summit/overlook. Not that there was anything to look over as a low-flying cloud had neatly engulfed us.
We had rare permission to go up and over and had spotted a car at the far end. Unfortunately road-building and logging had obliterated the continuing trail. At one point Father Joe vanished into the fog and we didn't see or hear from him for half an hour. Another priest with us kept setting way points on his GPS gadget, just in case.
Eventually we found an old logging road which seemed like the correct route until we reached the fork and I suggested right and the vote was 1-0 for left, so we wandered down that way for a while until it was clearly heading away from our destination at which point Father Anselment said, "I was wrong."
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the whole reason for this blog entry.
No matter how long Google lasts, this piece will be immortalized, because this will be the one and only location in the entire universe where you will ever find the phrase, "Father Anselment said, 'I was wrong.'"
**********
Anyway, we had a wonderful time and a pleasant lunch back at the overlook and I am now several steps closer to doing that 5K with the kids next year.
A fine piece of Americana takes place every Thanksgiving Day in Troy, NY (the city of my birth): The Turkey Trot, a series of foot races held no matter what the weather. Last year was ice, sleet and miserableness. This year it was merely a cold (34 or 35) rain. And a good time was had by all.
Your host arose about 5 a.m. to stuff the bird with the fabulous maple sausage stuffing that had been marinating overnight with the help of some Jim Beam Kentucky Bourbon, set the timer and let the oven do the rest.
The trip took about 45 minutes. I am an expert in navigating the peculiar streets of Troy, only because I had been wandering around the same area aimlessly Monday on business. We ended up parking on the same block as my previous trip and were at the starting area before 8.
I do not wish to misconstrue. Anna and Jamie were racing. Mary, Peter and I merely participated in the eight o'clock health walk, and despite our speedy appearances, we ended up being the last ones to finish. Even the escort car abandoned us and by the time we approached the finish line there was a guy with a bull horn instructing us to get on the sidewalk and about two million nine year olds facing in our direction with relentless determination. We moved.
Now Jamie, as you may know, is the president of the triathlon club at RIT. He's a serious runner, running seriously. Big sister Anna E. Going Porcello has never run competitively, but was determined to take part with Jamie in the 5K and has been in training, including all through her recent trip with Pete to Disneyworld.
She claimed going in that her best time was about 58 minutes for the approximately 3.1 miles and she was coming off a wicked set of germs that knocked her for a loop most of the last week. Still, she came, though they placed her near the end of the pack.
Jamie flew across the finish line at 20:07, ranking 141 out of 2,779 and 22/120 in his age group (the young and fit).
Anna, of course, took a little longer and Jamie, who looked like he hardly had broken a sweat, dashed back down the course and picked her up and encouraged her along and crossed the finish line a second time with his sister who ranked 2,723/2779, 149/152 in her group (mid-twenties cute girls) in a time of 43:47, shaving fourteen or fifteen minutes off her practice time and achieving a personal best (plus she started two and a half minutes from the starting line).
Needless to say, we are mighty proud of both of them.
***********
Later as I took the Thanksgiving garbage out to the curb and huffed and puffed climbing up my driveway to the house while clutching my chest, I thought, I can do this!
If my mother, Laura Brunelli Going, left one legacy for her adoring family it was the Gift of Faith. I've tried to take that legacy seriously with our own children, who remember their grandmother fondly, though Louisa was only in kindergarten at the time.
The morning of the day she died, Election Day, 1995, I appeared in Louisa's class of five year olds (the courts being closed for those of you keeping track of my time card) and read Green Eggs and Ham, a favorite of both Louisa and Mom.
Our daughters were both born mature (and the boys got there in due course), and there was never a question of whether all the kids would attend the wake. Louisa wandered around, visiting with the relatives and friends, holding on to her stuffed tiger. Every once in a while she would return to the coffin and run the tail of the tiger affectionately over her grandmother's still hands.
*********
Louisa's all grown up now, driver's license and everything. She's busy with Drama Club and National Honor Society and managing a 98.55 average this quarter (though we need to work a little harder on physics).
Last night, in a packed St. Mary's church, with her sister's hand on her shoulder, she approached the Bishop.
"I wish to be confirmed," she told him.
"My name is Laura."
**********
And here's the kids on Confirmation Day, together for the first time since last Christmas:
This video represents the one and only time I was allowed to "sing" before a hometown audience, at the Rotary Show in the Spring of 2000 at Amsterdam High School. I played Frank Butler for one song from Annie Get Your Gun, with Theresa Jackson as Annie. If you're wondering why she doesn't appear on camera all that much, keep in mind that she has her own version of this without too much of me in it.
And there arose a generation that knew not The Gipper.
The roots of yesterday's debacle go back, I think, to the late 19th century and the machinations of Mark Hanna, the Karl Rove of the McKinley era, the grand master strategist who organized the corporations of America to pool their resources and power to put the Republicans back into office.
The working people were starting to flex some muscle, what with labor unions and the populist movement of William Jennings Bryan. The wealthy businessmen of my home town, and I'm sure many others, put things very simply to their mill workers: vote for McKinley or else.
There's something in the water or the air around here, because somehow the message didn't get through and Amsterdam voted for Bryan.
So the factory owners shut down their shops for a year.
Now they got the message. And never forgot it, even though the original cause passed from memory. The new immigrants from southern and eastern Europe began seeing Republicans as "them" and Democrats as "us".
When the Democrats came into power, the little people allowed for a certain amount of crookedness and free-spending, especially after the income tax began to soak the rich. Still, they would only tolerate it so far and so long. When change was needed, enough of them would vote the Republicans in to straighten things out and institute reform.
But they still didn't like them.
Once in a while a national Republican figure would galvanize them: a Coolidge, an Eisenhower, a Reagan. Some of them even trusted Nixon because of his humble roots and the fact that he disliked a lot of the same people.
But once Republicans start acting like the Democrats they replaced, well forget it-- throw 'em out. Might as well sign up for the real thing. Which is why yesterday the Democrats elected quite a few people you might consider having a beer with to replace Republicans who had grown too arrogant, too complacent, too unmindful of why they were sent there in the first place.
I did my duty. I was a good soldier and voted for quite a few losers yesterday and plugged for my party here and on my radio show. I don't like that we lost control of so many things. I genuinely fear the consequences of putting those people in positions of power. But I understand.
And aside from Rick Santorum, I can't say that I will miss very many of the folks who disappeared off the political map on November 7, 2006.
I have an incredibly long memory, which means my brain is starting to get really cluttered. I was born June 30, 1951 and I have a pretty firm recollection of some things from the spring of 1952, before I could even talk. I could probably draw a pretty accurate sketch (if I could draw) of the apartment we lived in in Troy, NY which we moved out of just before my third birthday.
I remember running around the small yard with the train tracks to the rear, and watching the slightly bigger boys, like my brother Jay, climbing over what was probably a very short chain link fence to the sidewalk beyond. I would try to follow them and end up getting stuck on the top and hanging from my coveralls and crying until Mom came down from the second floor to rescue me. She was likely pregnant at the time and taking a break from shoveling coal and hauling ashes from the basement.
The first real year I remember, though, was 1956. By then we were living at 20 Kent Place in Westmere, just outside of Albany, and the neighborhood was full of baby boomers. It was the summer of Mickey Mantle's triple crown breakout year, and the summer of Elvis. It was the year of my first political memory, Huntley and Brinkley broadcasting the Democratic Convention. Mr. Chairman, Alabama passes.
It was the year I started kindergarten and learned the Regents Prayer (outlawed in 1962): Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country. Mrs. Bealfeld must have added the "Amen" on her own.
We always kept our eyes closed when we said that prayer together sitting on the floor in a circle. One time one of the kids raised his hand after the conclusion and said, "Johnny had his eyes open during the prayer!"
"And how do you know that?" Mrs. Bealfeld wisely asked.
It was the year I first learned that my surname could sound humorous to some. "Going-going-gone!" the dental hygienist with the sparkling wit said to the poor little kid. Bob Cummings was big on television then, so I got a lot of kidding as his alter-ego.
And it was the time when Peggy Button coerced me into holding her hand as we walked up the dirt alley between our houses. That affair didn't last past 2:30 as I recall.
It was the autumn of an amazing two or three weeks of the Hungarian Revolution, the Suez Crisis and the national election that brought back Eisenhower and Nixon for another four years.
I remember trick-or-treat that year. I was dressed as a bum, which meant my face was only slightly dirtier than usual, thanks to some burnt cork Mom liberally applied to my rosy cheeks. There was a house we went to near the top of Oxford Place where the teenage girl distributing candy was playing the latest Elvis Presley record on her hi-fi. Hound Dog as I recall.
And it was the year I began to realize, even at the age of five, what a contrarian I was turning into. I was the only kid in the neighborhood interested in the election, the only kid in the neighborhood who didn't like Elvis, and a couple of weeks earlier the only kid in the neighborhood rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers to repeat as World Champions over the damn Yankees.
"So how come you hardly ever mention me in your blog, Daddy?"
That's a hard one, Louisa. It's probably because you're my baby and the last one living home and I just don't feel like letting go of that over-protective phase that all parents go through.
I mean, I know you'll be 17 in January and you've already been through the boyfriend thing and the semi-formal and all that, but jeepers did you have to grow up so fast? After I begged you not to?
"I'm a good kid, Dad."
No kidding.
(And it's "Dad" now, not "Daddy". See what I mean?)
So you were probably entitled to a little slack when you got thrown out of class last week for doodling.
When I came home from work and found out about it and threw open your bedroom door and confronted you, you looked like you were expecting something quite different from, "At last! A child who takes after her father!"
Years ago, when I was in high school, I once did something really bad. We were having a French Fair and I had chosen for a project a model of a French village. I had great plans for it, even thoughts of swiping the motor from an old portable tape recorder and adding motion and rotating sets. Unfortunately I spent most of my time thinking about it instead of doing it, and, lacking your artistic abilities, I found myself at the last minute (God, how things never change!) throwing together some scrap pieces of plasterboard, a hand mirror, some plywood and a little cloth. I can't remember how I held it all together, but it was god-awful.
"Un Petite Village en France" the hastily-written card said.
Well, Sister Rosanne had us send written invitations to our parents to attend this Fair, all done in class and sent out in school envelopes from the office. I was so ashamed by the whole thing that I not only made up a phoney address for a number I knew didn't exist on Meadow Street (on my paper route), I even changed my father's first name, hoping it would end up in the dead letter office.
The French Fair came and went and my parents missed it, of course. Sister Rosanne was not impressed with the petite village and plopped a D- on it, which was actually considerably generous. Meanwhile Andy Budka's modeling clay bust of Charles DeGaulle was all the rage.
Then, a day or two later my classmate Kris Freer who worked in the school office came running up to me with the terrifying news that my invitation letter had been returned to the school with stuff like "PHONEY ADDRESS! THIS KID'S TRYING TO PUT ONE OVER ON YOU!" stamped all over the envelope in official Post Office red.
"You've got to get it out of there before they send it down to The Wizard!" I cried. (We called Sister Rosanne The Wizard because, like Oz, she was always sending us out to perform impossible tasks.)
Kris got back to the office too late.
The next day a very official looking envelope arrived from the school addressed to my real parents at their right address. It contained a sternly-worded dissection of my artistic talents, and closed by mentioning how the invitation had been returned with the wrong address.
"Deliberate?" she speculated.
Mom was not taking the whole thing too well, and she made me sit in the kitchen until Dad got home and she handed him the letter and I squirmed in the corner while he read it.
And then he laughed.
"Frank!" my mother exclaimed, I think because she thought she was supposed to, but he brushed off her protests and sat down and proceeded to tell me about the time back in 1938 when he and a couple of his buddies protested an injustice being done to one of their classmates by the English teacher and how the four of them got tossed out of the school for the rest of the day and how they ended up spending the afternoon playing pool in the back room of Dick Turner's house on Trinity Place (the same house we were then sitting in) and how his mother didn't find out about it for twenty years.
Anyway, Louisa baby, I think you're a pretty darn good kid regardless, and I thought you'd like to know.
And I'm delighted that you passed your driver's test Monday. Seems like you're pretty much all grown up now.
On this 50th anniversary of the commencement of the Hungarian Revolution, a great deal is being written (though perhaps not as much as there should be) and quite a few people with better credentials than I are analyzing what it all meant and what, if anything, it accomplished. Still, I'd like to put my two cents in.
First, it reminded us at just the right time that, as Dr. Fred Schwarz used to say, you can trust the communists to be communists.
We were in the early years of the post-Stalin era and, as we've heard so many times since, a new enlightened leadership was at the helm. Nikita Kruschev had denounced Stalin and his terror and all the usual suspects (who had ignored Stalin's terror while it was happening) proclaimed the age of peaceful cooperation. Anti-communism in the United States had run its course following the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, and we were back on the road to blissful ignorance.
What started as a small demonstration of students in solidarity with their counterparts in Poland became in a few short days a mass movement and before you could blink the "puppet" government of Hungary declared its neutrality and withdrew from the Warsaw Pact. At that point the enlightened forces of peaceful cooperation sent in the tanks, crushed all opposition and installed a new and more oppressive puppet to replace the old. Before the western borders closed for good, thousands escaped, many to this country. Cardinal Mindzenty, newly freed from jail, spent the next couple of decades as a virtual prisoner in the American embassy.
As a nation, we didn't do much, except to use the bully pulpit to remind the rest of the world what the stakes were. All we could do was stand at a distance with tears as we heard that last plaintive cry for help. Later generations would do the same when we watched the end of the Prague Spring in 1968 and Tiananmen Square in 1989. Funny how it just keeps happening over and over.
I wonder if the Soviets would have acted any differently if they knew the impact their invasion would have on a certain middle-aged actor in California. Janos Horvath tells the story here. Clearly Ronald Reagan had an insatiable appetite for every detail of that lost cause.
The seeds had been sown. For the next thirty-two years he would work tirelessly to apply what he had learned to do nothing less than save the world.
Less than ten months after he left office the people of Hungary walked in freedom.
And Poland.
And Czechoslovakia.
And Bulgaria, Rumania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.
And Berlin.
Old and grey now, the heroes of 1956 should stand tall and proud and receive their just accolades. It seems they accomplished something marvelous after all.
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Today we observe the 30th anniversary of that unforgettable day, October 23, 1956, when the people of Budapest -- workers, students, soldiers -- rose up in revolt against communism and Soviet occupation, and for freedom and nationhood. Today we commemorate the shining example of idealism, patriotism, and sheer courage that is the immortal legacy of the freedom fighters of the Hungarian Revolution.
Late in my Family Court career I was assigned for a couple of terms to Otsego County Family Court, located in the near-perfect Village of Cooperstown, a short walk up the hill from Doubleday Field and the National Baseball Hall of Fame. They put me up at the Tunnicliff Inn, where you can still get the best bowl of chili in upstate New York.
But of course I had to work, too. Reviewing this case now, I wonder how I was ever able to do it. I wonder how any Family Court judges manage to keep at it. I remember now why I used to write in the margins of my notes, "IHTFJ".
As it happens, this was the last decision I ever wrote.
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ROBERT N. GOING, JFC:
STOP!
That is a word not often used by the courts, perhaps even less by the Family Courts where our primary goal is to put families back together and provide services and bend over backwards to accommodate the needs of those appearing before us and to provide opportunity after opportunity for litigants to achieve that minimum degree of skill and/or concern for their children so that somehow, someway we may create a family unit that has that bare sufficiency to permit us to return children from the care of the state.
But comes a time when if the law is to mean anything, if the concerns of our legislatures are to be addressed, if the mores of our times are to degenerate this far and no farther, then someone must finally say,"STOP!". ( Read more... )
Friday night football doesn't get any better than this. We're playing Glens Falls High School, one of only two teams to beat the Amsterdam High School Rugged Rams in their 2005 State Championship season.
Sure, most of our stars graduated and this team is no where near as dynamic as that once-in-a-generation dream team, but these boys have still got spirit and determination and we come into our final home game, remarkably, at 5-0, two fewer losses than at the same time last year.
Last week we avenged the other loss, against neighboring Gloversville. The game was part of the annual Homecoming Celebration, highlighted by the parade, complete with class floats, down Lindbergh Avenue (which runs parallel to Coolidge and Pershing, all of the streets having been named in a more appreciative era; Grant and Lincoln run into Lindbergh; the next hill over also has Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, McKinley, Taft and Roosevelt [the first Roosevelt]).
Anyway, tonight the score is 14-14 at the half, and 14-14 after three quarters. Rather late in the 4th we go ahead 21-14, and then Glens Falls systematically marches down the field until they find themselves fourth and goal on our one yard line with fifteen seconds left. The massive home crowd is shouting DE-FENSE; the respectable visiting crowd boldly cheers the Glens Falls Indians on from their side. Snap to the quarterback who heads straight up the middle.
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The lights, the colors, the crowd, the band and majorettes and flag team and cheerleaders. That great new artificial turf field. The five bucks for an arm's length of 50-50 tickets.
Tonight we had the annual "Senior Show" at half-time featuring the graduating members of the band and majorettes, this year with a Secret Agent theme, keeping in line with their class of "007" status. Splendidly done, as always.
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TOUCHDOWN Glens Falls. Score is now 21-20 Amsterdam. Do they go for the kick to tie, or do they go for the win?
They line up for a do-or-die two point conversion.
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We lost a playoff game here maybe four or five years ago against a determined LaSalle team that knew they had to make every play a razzle-dazzle go-for-broker, four downs every series no matter where they were on the field. It worked.
A regular season game? I'll bet it's been nine or ten or eleven or twelve years since we lost one here. Had to have been before the Josh Beekman (now playing his fifth year at Boston College) era. I'm pretty sure it was even before our previous state championship season in 1995.
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Snap to the quarterback. Keeps it again.
Two point conversion attempt is . . .
GOOD.
Glens Falls 22, Amsterdam 21.
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Did I mention that there are still fifteen seconds on the clock?
Does anyone remember that 1995 game for all the marbles in the Carrier Dome in Syracuse when we were the team that went ahead with a few seconds left and on the ensuing kickoff that team from south of Buffalo kept the ball alive for at least half an eternity, lateralling all over the field before somebody finally dropped them?
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After the kickoff we get the ball with five seconds left.
Time for one more play.
Our quarterback is cool as a cucumber. All the time in the world. The offensive line holds, he scours the field looking for that one shot.
He fires downfield, straight as an arrow. Two defenders and one receiver leap into the air for the ball!
The clock runs out while the ball is still alive. Both crowds roar! Everyone is on their feet!!
