Fifty-Eight Years

 

I began writing this on November 22, 2021. For me and many of my generation, November 22 will forever be remembered as the day President Kennedy was assassinated. I was ten years old – a fifth grader at Emerson Elementary School. I was a member of the school safety patrol, and when I first heard the news, I was on duty with another safety patrol member, standing at the school gate as students were being dismissed. “Kennedy’s been shot!” yelled a passing student. “Yeah, right,” my partner yelled back. “He probably got a shot in the arm – so he won’t get sick.”

But no, as the story unfolded, we learned it was a gunshot. John F. Kennedy was dead. Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as the new President on Air Force One. Our fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Merisko, took it particularly hard. She had autographed pictures of the three Kennedy brothers, John, Robert, and Edward, posted on the walls of our classroom. Life changed in an instant in ways we could only guess.

Kennedy had defeated Richard Nixon by the narrowest of margins. A second term was far from assured. Would Kennedy have defeated arch conservative Barry Goldwater in a landslide as Johnson did? How much of Johnson’s victory was a sympathy vote for the assassinated President? Would Kennedy have been able to pass the landmark social legislation that Johnson was able to get through Congress? Would Kennedy have escalated U.S. involvement in the Viet Nam War that tore the country apart and allowed Nixon a second shot at the Presidency?

Many have speculated about where this country would be today had Kennedy not taken that fateful trip to Dallas in November of 1963. But history does not consist of “what ifs” or “might have beens.” History records what actually happened.

History tells us that when John F. Kennedy’s Presidency was cut short by an assassin’s bullets, Lyndon Johnson became President. Johnson pushed Congress to adopt the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Regional resistance to these laws all but guaranteed the eventual success of the “Southern Strategy” whereby the Republican Party pried the former “solid south” from the hands of Democrats.

First implemented by Nixon, the Republican party gained converts in America’s South by subtly appealing to racial fears and prejudices. Nixon spoke of “law and order” and opposed busing to achieve racial integration in schools. A few years later, Ronald Reagan continued that Southern Strategy by invoking the image of a welfare queen who drove a Cadillac and a “strapping young buck” who collected food stamps. He used these images, arguing for the need to cut social programs perceived as benefitting African Americans. Next, George H.W. Bush’s 1988 campaign ran the infamous Willie Horton ad to garner support from racist whites in the south. Then, after America elected its first African American President, Donald Trump rode a wave of backlash, saying out loud what former Republican candidates had only hinted at.

Trump insisted that Barack Obama was not eligible to be President, claiming without evidence that Obama was not born in the United States. Mexican immigrants according to Trump were bringing drugs and crime to the United States. Muslims should be banned from entering this country, and immigration laws should be changed to minimize entrants from “shithole countries.” When white supremacists demonstrated in Charlottesville, Virginia and were confronted by counter-protesters, Trump spoke of “very fine people on both sides.”  These are just a sampling of his statements appealing to the basest instincts of his supporters and dividing the country. Though Trump was defeated in seeking a second term, he remains the acknowledged leader of the Republican party and the likely nominee for the 2024 election.

So, what sort of America would we have if John F. Kennedy had not died that fateful day in 1963? And where would we be if Robert Kennedy had not been killed, but rather had defeated Nixon in 1968? And what changes in our history would have occurred had Martin Luther King and Malcom X not been felled by an assassin’s bullets? Would the deep divisions that now exist in this country have occurred?

Perhaps there is a parallel universe where all these men survived that will someday be discovered to answer all these questions. But absent that discovery, history will record only what happened in the 58 years since Kennedy died. And where the future takes us will depend on whether we choose leaders that work to heal the divisions that have been created during those years or leaders who seek power by widening them.

A Walk in the Woods

For most of my life, I lived and worked in the City of Pittsburgh.  My wife and I bought a house in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Carrick.  I worked in office towers downtown; my wife taught in a public school in one of the city’s East End neighborhoods.  We enjoyed what the city had to offer. We subscribed to several theater companies, and I was a frequent attendee of Pirate games, especially after PNC Park was built.

Despite my appreciation of the amenities the city has to offer, I never lost my love of a quiet walk in the woods.  As a young boy eager to escape the heat of a midsummer day, the woods offered cool shade.  There were several patches of woods near my suburban home.  One had a well-worn path on which we could ride our bicycles.  Another had a small pond fed by a spring that we tried to dam to make a swimming hole.  But someone always broke the dam before the pond could fill up. In any case, the pond mostly flowed freely down the hill to a small stream where we caught tadpoles and crayfish. 

Besides the shade provided by the green canopy, I savored the musty aroma of the forest soil enriched by years of leaves dropped each autumn.  I learned to identify various trees and enjoyed the root beer-like flavor I tasted when chewing on the stem of a sassafras leaf.  When I grew up and moved to the city, I would make it a point to take an occasional day off from work and escape to the woods of one of the region’s parks.  Now, as a retired person, I don’t seem to find enough time to spend rambling about in the woods.

So, when I recently visited my son in Pittsburgh, I was intrigued when he suggested that I take an hour or so to explore the Seldom Seen Greenway in the Beechview section of the city.  The entrance to the Greenway is just off Route 51, about a mile north of the Liberty Tubes, and near the south entrance to the Wabash Tunnel.  I parked my car in the small parking area near the sign that identified the Greenway. 

Beyond the sign, a wide, asphalt path leads to a somewhat spooky tunnel that guards the entrance to the Greenway.  The path shares the inside of the tunnel with fast-flowing Saw Mill Run.  Upon exiting the tunnel, I looked up to the right and saw that someone had painted the words to a poem on a concrete abutment.  There were several blank spots in the verse, perhaps left by the poet to allow the reader latitude to supply the missing words. 

Moving further into the Greenway, the main path travels through a peaceful, verdant stretch, accented by the occasional bird chirp and the burbling sound of the nearby stream.  The path seemed to end at the bank of Saw Mill Run at a place that looked like I could proceed further by walking in the stream bed.  Unsure of where that would lead, I decided to turn around.  A short distance before I returned to the tunnel, I noticed a path leading up the hill to my right.  I followed that path for a few hundred yards, and it led me out of the Greenway to a graffiti covered building near a set of railroad tracks.  So, I walked down the offshoot trail back to the main path and followed that out of the Seldom Seen Greenway.

I enjoyed discovering the Seldom Seen Greenway, which certainly lives up to its name.  Though it is located near a major urban artery, I believe very few drivers stop and spend time to take pleasure in what it has to offer.  Its relatively small size allowed me to enjoy a dose of nature before getting in my car to drive across the state to where I now live near Philadelphia.  And for that day, it was just enough to satisfy my need for a quiet walk in the woods.

Freedom

 

Freedom, keep tryin'
People stay alive and people keep dyin' for
Freedom, so don't lose it
Ya gotta understand, ya just can't abuse it* 

They are calling this the fourth surge.  Thousands of Americans are once again getting sick from COVID-19, and too many are dying.  The latest uptick in cases is largely a pandemic of the unvaccinated as over 99% of people requiring hospitalization are those that refused to get shots.  Breakthrough cases are occurring among the vaccinated population, but they are relatively rare, and their symptoms tend to be mild.

In any case, the country and the world have been suffering through the COVID pandemic for nearly a year and a half.  How much longer will we have to endure it?  That remains to be seen.  The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 lasted about two years before life began to return to normal.  That was without a vaccine, but with far fewer people.  The U.S. population in 1918 was approximately 103 million versus 330 million today.  More people logically means more potential hosts for a virus that continues to mutate.  And the unvaccinated are the most receptive hosts.  They provide the virus with its best opportunity to spread and evolve into new, more dangerous variants.

That is why I sought a vaccination at the earliest possible opportunity. Not only did I want to protect myself from getting sick, and possibly dying.  I wanted to protect others from being infected by me, especially my grandchildren who are not yet eligible to get vaccinated.  Earlier this year, it was difficult to find a location offering the vaccine.  My daughter relentlessly searched online to find a place where my wife and I might get vaccinations.  We ultimately had to drive over 100 miles to Wilkes Barre to get our shots.  Two weeks after our second shots, we felt a sense of relief – a sense that we hoped the whole country would feel as the percentage of vaccinated citizens climbed.  At its peak on April 10, 2021, 4.6 million people received a COVID shot.  Then, the number of doses began to decline as many Americans chose to not seek a shot. 

News articles about “vaccine hesitancy” began to appear as federal, state, local governments and private employers offered incentives to encourage people to get vaccinated.  Those choosing to not be vaccinated cited various reasons for their hesitancy or outright refusal – from distrust of all vaccines, to distrust of the government, to wild conspiracy theories that the vaccine contained a microchip that enabled the government to track your movements.

Despite former President Trump’s role in speeding the development of the vaccine and the fact that he received a vaccination in January, outright hostility to getting vaccinated has become a political marker of the far right.  To be fair, some Republican leaders have encouraged people to get the vaccine, but their voices have been weak and largely ineffective.  Freedom to choose has become the battle cry of many refusing to vaccinated.  Likewise, many of these same people want the freedom to not wear a mask in situations where medical experts recommend masks to slow the spread of the virus.

Sadly, this freedom is the reason this country is in the throes of the fourth surge in cases of COVID, aided by the highly infectious delta variant.  Regions of the country with low vaccination rates have been the hardest hit, their hospitals filling beyond their capacity with sick people who chose to ignore pleas to get vaccinated.  Many now suffering from COVID have come to realize that the freedom they sought was false – not a freedom worth dying for.  Some arrive at the hospital begging for the vaccine they had shunned, only to be told by hospital staff that it is too late for them to be vaccinated once they are sick with the virus. 

Freedom is a funny thing.  For some individuals, it means the power to ignore the measures scientists recommend even though ignoring those measures may cause real harm to themselves and others.  To those, like me, who have done our best to follow those recommendations, freedom means crushing the virus so we can begin to do those things we enjoyed before this pandemic, like dining in restaurants, attending live theater, and shopping inside stores without the fear of contracting a deadly virus.

Recently, my son’s family, my wife and I visited New York City’s newest park, called The Little Island. This man-made island in the Hudson River is constructed with flower-like, concrete piers and is beautifully landscaped with trees, shrubs and flowers.  A curved pathway rises and falls over artificially created hills offering spectacular views of the city’s skyscrapers.  It opened in May 2021 and can be accessed via timed tickets to regulate the number of visitors while COVID concerns remain. It features several performance areas including a 687-seat amphitheater and has food trucks with a variety of offerings that include beer, wine and cocktails.

We all took masks even though it is outdoors and all of us, excepting my 3-year-old grandson, are vaccinated.  We walked paths covering the entire island, listened to music performed by a guitarist and flautist, and ate a filling lunch.  Between our vaccinations, and masks that we put on whenever approaching a crowd of people, we felt safe from potential COVID infections.  As we left the park and headed to the subway, my son remarked that the experience had felt like the freedom we had craved for the past year and a half.

I hope those that speak of freedom will consider freedom to move about without fear of contracting COVID as a better alternative than freedom to ignore the recommendations of health experts.  To paraphrase the lyrics of the 1970s song by Bread, freedom is something you have to understand; you just can’t abuse it.

* Lyrics from the song, “Mother Freedom" by David Gates, performed by Bread.

Listen to the Music

 

Don't you feel it growin' day by day?
People gettin' ready for the news
Some are happy some are sad...
Oh... we got to let the music play* 

I’ve enjoyed listening to music as long as I can remember.  As a young boy, I yearned for one of those small, battery-powered transistor radios that you could carry around without having to plug it in.  I had a little black cuff link box that I would hold to my ear, pretending it played music.  When my godparents gave me a transistor radio as a first communion present, I was in seventh heaven.  I carriedthat radio with me constantly, usually tuned to KQV in Pittsburgh. I listened to Hal Murray in the morning and Chuck Brinkman through the evening.  I learned the lyrics to all my favorite songs and sang along with The Beatles, The Dave Clark Five, The Beach Boys and Four Seasons when their tunes blasted from my little radio.

When I got a little older, I abandoned KQV and its top forty format for the soul sounds being played on WAMO by Brother Matt and Sir Walter.  I grooved to tunes by The Temptations, Four Tops, The Dells, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.  In the early evening, WAMO featured Porky Chedwick spinning dusty discs containing songs I was too young to hear when they were new.  Late at night, I enjoyed Terry Lee’s Music for Young Lovers on WMCK.

My musical tastes changed again in the late sixties as single 45s gave way to album rock and FM radio.  WDVE became my radio station of choice.  They played obscure cuts from albums, and often they would play an album in its entirety.  If I couldn’t find an FM radio, I listened to progressive rock on AM 1590, WZUM.  One of my best friends joined the Columbia record club, initially getting something like 13 records for $1.99, and then being forced to buy another 13 at “regular club prices.”  We’d gather around an old stereo in his basement and listen to Déjà Vu, by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Tarkus by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Cruisin’ with Ruben and the Jets by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, and The Gilded Palace of Sin by The Flying Burrito Brothers.

It was around the time I was in high school that I finally earned enough extra money from my paper route to buy tickets for a live concert.  So, two like-minded friends and I purchased tickets to see The Band at the Syria Mosque in Oakland.  To this day, The Band’s music counts among my favorite.  Having experienced one live concert, I knew I had to attend more.

So, to the best of my recollection, the following list includes the acts I was able to see in live concert over the next 40 years:

• Argent and The Kinks, together at the Syria Mosque in the early 1970s;
• Traffic and Edgar Winter’s White Trash at the Civic Arena – we had floor seats; they frisked all attendees and made one of my party empty the wineskin he tried to smuggle in under his shirt; despite those precautions, a young girl sitting in front of us threw up, perhaps from what she had been drinking before entering the Arena.
• I saw The Beach Boys, Boz Scaggs and The Rascals during my freshman year at IUP (1971-72).  It may have been one concert or three – I honestly don’t remember;
• Sha Na Na at Clarion College – a great time was had by all;
• Michael Franks, most famous for his “Popsicle Toes,” at IUP with my future wife around 1976;
• Blood, Sweat & Tears at Duquesne University with my wife, Susan.
• Neil Diamond at the Civic Arena with Susan;
• Barry Manilow at the Civic Arena shortly after the release of his 2:00 AM Paradise Café album with Susan.
• Many years passed between the Manilow concert and the next one I saw with The Mavericks and BR549 at the Byham Theatre in Pittsburgh.  I attended that concert with my son Samuel who was in high school.
• More years passed before I attended the Rodriguez concert at Barclays Center in Brooklyn with my son Michael a year or two after the film “Searching for Sugar Man” received an Academy Award for best documentary in early 2013.  Since then, I saw:
• Three Dog Night at the American Music Theatre in Lancaster, PA with my brother Bob;
• The Avett Brothers and Old Crow Medicine Show at the Petersen Event Center at the University of Pittsburgh with Samuel;
• Jason Mraz at The Mann Center in Philadelphia, the summer of 2018 with Susan, my daughter Anna and our friend, Kirsten;
• Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden in January 2019 with Susan;
• The Outlaws Concert featuring Willie Nelson, The Avett Brothers, Old Crow Medicine Show, Allison Krauss and Dawes at the Key Bank Pavilion in Pittsburgh in June 2019 with Samuel.
• I saw several big name acts in concerts at PNC Park after Pirates games including Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Steve Miller Band, The Clarks, and Huey Lewis and the News.

Since moving to West Chester, I’ve attended several concerts featuring local bands.  I listen to WMGK (102.9 FM) when I want to hear Classic Rock and WXPN (88.5 FM) when I want to hear something new.  I still love listening to the music and hope to never stop attending live concerts. 

Even when I’m not near a radio, there is always a song playing in my brain.   Like The Doobie Brothers sing, “Whoa oh, listen to the music, all the time.”* 

 

* Listen to the Music, by Tom Johnston, as performed by The Doobie Brothers.

Summertime (And the Living Was Easy)

 Summer is upon us – not officially.  This year’s summer solstice will occur on June 20.  But for me, June 1 ushers in the summer season, and with it, memories of the carefree summer days of my youth.  As an adult, summer too often means mowing the lawn, pulling weeds and working on projects around the house.  There’s some rotten wood up on the fascia, or is it the soffit?  I can never keep those straight.  Better line up some contractors and get some estimates.

I never had to think about such things as a kid.  Oh, there were chores, of course.  But I didn’t have to determine when they needed to be done.  My parents decided when I should mow the lawn or water the garden.  And most of those chores came only when I grew older – into my teen years. 

As a young boy, summer meant playing trucks down in “the shade,” which is what we called the tree covered lower portion of our neighbor’s yard.  If my friends and I felt ambitious, we might grab our bicycles, clothespin a baseball card to one of the fender struts and pretend our bikes were motorcycles.  Most of the streets in our neighborhood were hilly, but there was a street where we rode back and forth for hours that we called “the level.” 

When we got tired of pedaling our bikes, we might decide to go into “the woods.”  The woods were a cool respite from the blazing summer sun and offered nearly limitless opportunities for fun.  We had to get our mothers’ permission before heading into the woods, but our mothers hardly ever said “no” if it meant getting us out of the house.  Their most frequent summer refrain was, “Get out of the house before I give you something to do.”

We might spend several days building a shack in the woods where we could hide from younger siblings and read our comic books in peace.  Creeks snaking through the woods yielded salamanders and tadpoles that we captured and took home to show our parents.  One of the neighbor kids proposed a get-rich-quick scheme to trap muskrats. He claimed their pelts could be sold, but we were never quite sure who would buy them. 

As some of the neighborhood kids got older and more resourceful, they built “dinkies” to race.  I’m not sure where that word came from, but that’s what we called what the rest of the world called go-carts.  To the kids in my neighborhood, a go-cart had to have a motor.  These motorless dinkies consisted of a plank wide enough to sit on and a cross piece with wheels scavenged from a broken scooter or discarded baby stroller.  The cross piece was attached to the plank with a single bolt so it could swivel when pulled from either side with a rope or pushed by the driver’s feet to steer.  Rear wheels were attached directly to the plank. A small board was attached in front of the rear wheels to act as a brake when pressed by the driver.

Some dinkies were more elaborate with an actual seat, but not much more.  The hilly streets allowed for races with both drivers praying that they wouldn’t encounter a car as they sped around a corner.

On hot, summer evenings we would gather under the streetlight in front of my house and play games while our parents talked or listened to a baseball game on the front porch.  Hide and seek was a favorite.  We hid behind hedges and parked cars, waiting for the “it” person to call, “All-ee, All-ee in free!” 

When our parents decided we had had enough fun for one day, they called us into the house for a bath in cool water to try to beat the heat.  Air conditioning didn’t exist beyond grocery stores and movie theaters.  Despite the heat, we never seemed to have any trouble drifting off into dreamland, waking up refreshed and ready for more summer adventures. 

Now, when I tire of pulling weeds from my flower garden with rivulets of sweat streaming down my back, I’m tempted to curse the long, hot days of summer.  But those summer memories of my youth put a smile on my face as I retire to the comfort of my air-conditioned home and wonder when my grandchildren will be ready for a game of hide-and-seek under the streetlight.

Breaking News

I read the news today, oh boy,

About a lucky man who made the grade,

And though the news was rather sad,

I just had to laugh,

I saw the photograph*

 

For the better part of my life, I read the newspaper.  As a young boy obsessed with baseball and the Pittsburgh Pirates, I pored over the sports pages, studying the statistics of my favorite players.  My father subscribed to the Daily News – a local paper, but with a decent sports section.  On Sundays, we received the much thicker Pittsburgh Press. The Sunday sports section published the batting averages of virtually all baseball players – in both leagues.  The Sunday Comics entertained me with the likes of Dick Tracy, Peanuts, Lil’ Abner and Pogo. 

After we came home from church, most Sundays would find my mother in the kitchen cooking our Sunday dinner while my father sat in his favorite chair in the living room reading the Press.  I would lie on the living room floor, reading my favorite sections of the newspaper scattered around me.  Besides the Comics and Sports, I liked to look at the magazine sections. The TV Graphic contained brief descriptions of television shows for the coming week and told you if the show was a repeat.  The Sunday Roto had pictures of scenes from around town. This Week Magazine had plenty interesting articles on various subjects.

During my high school years, I delivered the morning paper to about 60 homes in our area.  I would wake up around 5:00 AM, and try to complete my deliveries by six o’clock, so I could catch another half hour of sleep before getting ready for school.  Then, on Saturday afternoons, I would knock on my customers’ doors with stubs in hand to collect payment for the delivered papers.  I did not make a lot of money delivering newspapers, but the tips I received around Christmas helped make it worthwhile.

When I became an adult and had to pay for my own newspaper, I had to decide what paper I wanted to read.  The Post-Gazette was the morning paper, so I could read it on the bus during my morning commute.  As a bonus, I could continue reading it when I got to work during my first cup of coffee.  On the other hand, the Press would not be delivered until the afternoon, which meant I had to read it on my own time after I returned home from work.  Plus, I had a history with the Post-Gazette from my days as a paperboy.  I also preferred their editorial page to the more conservative views of the Press. 

The Press went away after the newspaper strike of 1992.  The Greensburg Tribune-Review expanded to the Pittsburgh market to fill the void left by the Press’s demise.  The Trib was owned by conservative mogul Richard Mellon Scaife, which kept me from ever seriously considering it as an option.

When I retired in 2012, I continued to start my morning with the Post-Gazette over several cups of coffee.  During this time, news via electronic outlets on the internet, such as Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, and The Daily Beast, began to seriously compete with print newspapers.  In September of 2019, the Post-Gazette announced that they would publish print editions only three days a week.

But by then I had left Pittsburgh and settled in West Chester, Pennsylvania – about 25 miles from Philadelphia.  For a while, I continued to subscribe to the digital edition of the Post-Gazette, to which I added digital editions of the Washington Post and the New York Times.  But I missed the feel and the smell of newsprint – the ink stains on my fingertips – the sound the paper made as I flipped from page to page.

West Chester has a small paper called The Daily Local.  I bought a digital subscription to see if it had enough substance to warrant buying a print subscription.  It did not.  That left the Philadelphia Inquirer.  I purchased Sunday editions on a number of occasions to see if I liked it.  I determined it was a serious newspaper, but the Sports section?  No news of the Pirates, hardly a mention of the Steelers, and the Penguins only came up when they played the Philadelphia Flyers.  Nevertheless, when I showed my wife a special price for which we could get both print and digital editions of the Inquirer, she offered to get it as a Christmas present for me.

For a little over a month now, I’ve gotten a little spark of joy every morning when I look out my frontwindow and see a newspaper lying on the sidewalk.  Old habits remain as I pore over the Inquirer’s Sports and Comics as well as its articles on the major stories of the day while sipping my coffee.  Reading the Philadelphia Inquirer is helping me to learn more about the region where my wife and I have chosen to spend our retired years.  It may actually turn me into a Philadelphia Phillies fan – except when they play the Pirates.

 

*  “A Day in the Life,” John Lennon and Paul McCartney