The happiest day of my life....

....happened 32 years ago today.

It was game six of the 1980 World Series. My favorite team, the losing-est team in the history of American professional sports (you could look this up to verify if you don't believe me) was playing for their first World Championship. 

I was 29 years old and had just spend a pretty great weekend with my fiancee. She was a student at Princeton's Theological seminary and grew up a fan of the Pirates. I was a die-hard Phillies fan and grew up a Roman Catholic.

Something HAD to give. We could never stay married for the long run if one of us didn't change. So we compromised.

"I'll become a Presbyterian," I suggested, "if you become a Phillies fan."

This seemed to make sense to both of us. As soon as she agreed to this, it occurred to me I might some day write my about this in my memoire.  I was sure I'd call it "The Minister's Husband." Seemed like a great movie title at the time.

 We’d met one another in Knoxville, Tenn., at a magazine company called the 13-30 Corporation. I was a staff writer, she was  fact checker. I drove her up to Princeton in early September of 1980. We listened to a late-season Phillies game when I proposed my "arrangement": if you become a Phillies fan, I'll become a Presbyterian.

The Phils were several games back of the Expos at the time, despite having a two bona fide Hall of Famers (Steve Carlton, Mike Schmidt). Several other players in their starting nine also seemed at the time like they might one day make it (Pete Rose, Larry Bowa, Bob Boone, Greg Luzinski, Garry Maddox, Manny Trillo). The Phils were loaded. 

This seemed like a perfectly amenable transaction to her, even though her beloved Pirates had won the series a year earlier. I long have wondered if she'd have agreed if the Pirates had been battling for another world championship.

After dropping her off in New Jersey, I returned to Knoxville to finish out my job at the company. Our grand plan was for me to leave my job in May, come up for her graduation, and get married in May of 1981. Her dad, himself a Presbyterian minister, was going to marry us in his home church on Long Island.

In September, Phillies' manager Dallas Green applied a bullwhip to the "Fightin' Phils" and the team of battle-tested vets caught fire. They won 18 of 29 games that month and clinched the Eastern division on next to last day of the regular season. The team I had grown up rooting for my entire life was going to the World Series!  I thought I had died and gone to heaven. For the first time in my life, I was going to see the Phillies play for a world championship!

I came home for a long-weekend to celebrate my parent's 30th wedding anniversary on October 17th. During the Sunday anniversary festivities I made a terrible faux pas that embarrassed my fiance but that became part of my family's long oral history. 

After playing the most exciting 5-game league championship series in the history of baseball (you could look this up, too) and beating the Houston Astros, three games to two, the Phillies were locked in an epic struggle against the Kansas City Royals. Each team had won two games.

Game five of the 1980 series started right as the family sat down to celebrate my parent's anniversary. I tried to be polite and honor my parents and their moment, but it was hard. For the sake of propriety, I asked my brother Matt, then just 7 years old, to get me a score every a 30 minutes or so. He was too young to know how hard my heart was beating when he'd bring back his "reports" from the den where the game was flickering on an old black and white Victrola.

"It's 1-0, Chuck!" he'd tell me, proud to be able to read the TV screen, but oblivious to my annoyance. I needed far more data to be satisfied with his report. He was unable to tell me which team was winning or what inning it was. An hour later he came back and told me the score was 2-1. Still later, it was 3-2. I wasslowly dying inside. I had no idea who was winning.

My sister served soup and salad first and then a three-course dinner. It lasted hours. Finally dessert and coffee was served and I sensed that soon, I would manage to escape the day’s family obligations and go watch baseball history be made.

My dad chose that moment to address the family gathering, all 30 of us.   His kids, our spouses and significant others and a gaggle of grandchildren. “Before we adjorn, I’d like each of us who brought a guest with you to introduce your guest to us and tell us something nice about them."

Did I tell you I am the oldest of 11 children? That most of us had “guests” at this anniversary dinner and that in the room next to us I could hear the turned-down buzz of the  excited baseball announcers as they called pivotal Game 5 of the 1980 World Series in stentorian tones??

This was all I could bear. I exploded with impatience. “Jesus H. Christ, dad! I’ve been about as quiet and patient as a monk! Can we just end this so I can go in and watch the World Series! It’s game 5, you may know! The Phillies are playing in it! I’ve waited my whole life for this!”

My dad’s shoulders shook with laughter and he waved a hand at my sister’s boyfriend, Michael. "Michael," he said with a smile, "Maybe you better just make your announcement." 

Michael stood up, his face flushed crimson. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box and turned to Heidi. “I’m so sorry,” he sheepishly said. “I didn’t mean to cause any family disruptions. I just wanted to tell you all that Heidi has agreed to marry me.” Then he handed the engagement ring to my sister.

A loud roar went up and six of my sisters stood up in unison and rushed to embrace Heidi. Then, like a gaggle of angry geese, they looked at me and hissed in one loud voice in a tone of utter judgment: “YOUUUUUUUUU CAD! How COULD you???" 

Then, the entire family (lead by my accusing sisters) rushed into the living room and turned the volume up on the game.  It was the bottom of the 8^th inning and the Royals were winning, 3-2.  We all watched intently  and with unbridled joy as the Phillies crawled back in the 9^th to score two runs and win the game, 4-3.

I had never been happier in my life! The Phillies were on the verge of a world championship!

I took my fiancé back to Princeton that night to drop her off at school. She had told me about all of her friends in letters and phone calls…..and I had met all but one of them when I had picked her up for the weekend on Friday. Now, on Sunday evening before I left, I wanted to meet the last one, a fellow I’ll call “Bob.”

It took some convincing for my fiancé to find him, and when the meeting finally took place, her reluctance immediately became transparent. We stepped into his dorm room and the room suddenly became alive with an erotic buzz that had nothing to do with me. They eyes locked and smiles came over their faces. I could have been a cushion on a chair for all they cared. I was as insignificant to them as that moment as a spider on the wall. Their blistering fixation seemed to last for hours.

When I mentioned my concerns about this to my fiancé, she laughed at my insecurities and shooed me back to my parent’s house near Philly with a light kiss and a hug.

Two nights later, me and my brother sneaked into Game Six of the 1980 World Series. The Phillies rode Steve Carlton’s broad shoulders  and a clutch hit that drove in two runs by Series MVP Mike Schmidt to a 4-1 win.

It was – until the birth of my son on opening day of the 1984 baseball season  – the happiest day of my life.

But life is a series of ups and downs. I know that now. One can never have too much good fortune in life before the karma changes.

By Thanksgiving, a month after the Phillies championship parade down Broad Street, my fiancé dumped me. And a month after that --  on Christmas day 1981 – she got engaged to “Bob.”

She  married Bob precisely one week after the date I had picked out to marry her.

I have no regrets. I wouldn’t say I stayed in the Presbyterian faith for long. I tried it for a few years out of some sense of obligation to my arrangement with my fiancé. But eventually I thought John Calvin had some weird ideas pre-destination.

Calvin never really figured in the vagaries of baseball when he developed his doctrine.

That was the problem. 

I was too much of a baseball fan to embrace pre-destination. 

Life, like baseball, throws you some curveballs. 

You just have to adjust your bearings.

My father's "sea ceremony"

Over the Labor Day holiday, I took my three children to Cape May for one final weekend together before my daughter, Isabel, heads off to a two-year stint in Nicaragua with the Peace Corps.

I am proud of her desire to help make the world a better place, but it's hard not to worry about her, too. Will we be able to reach her? Will she have phone service? Internet access? What will it be like living with a family in Nicaragua, while she struggles to learn their language?

She leaves the country tomorrow and it is hard not to wonder when I will see her next and what her experiences will be like.

Before she left, I wanted to honor a request my father made when he was stricken with lymphoma last  summer. Isabel's visit home -- and our trip down to the Jersey shore -- seemed like a good time to perform a "sea ceremony" for my dad, to scatter some of his ashes in a place of special significance to him.

Late on Sunday morning, after we'd enjoyed blueberry pancakes for breakfast, I walked down the block and ordered two hoagies for lunch. Then I iced down four dark Dogfish Head ales from a Delaware microbrewery and stuck them all in an old blue and white ice chest my dad left in my garage before he passed. It took us about 45 minutes to drive up to Corson's Inlet, N.J., a cut of water that separated Strathmere from Ocean City, N.J.

My father left his children with specific written instructions to deposit his ashes in Moose Pond, Maine (where he and my mother used to vacation every summer) "or any suitable body of water." I choose Corson's Inlet because I had gone fishing there with my dad on several occasions while renting a bungalow on the beach from friends of his in Strathmere.

My father always consulted the tide chart in the daily Inquirer before he went fishing so he could time his arrival when the fish were swimming into the inlet from the Atlantic Ocean. He insisted they were feeding then. I took this as gospel. Fishing was his favorite avocation. For many years the front door of his condo in Philadelphia was graced by a plaque that read: "Here resides a fisherman, with the greatest catch of his life!"

In his instructions he insisted that, following the sea ceremony for him, we have a party on the shore with hoagies or pizza and dark beer and that "everybody take a sip, even the kids!"

My sister Trudy had been holding his ashes on her living room mantle since his cremation last September. I took several ounces of his remains with me to the shore, placed carefully in a metallic canister that fit snugly into a coffee cup holder in my car. I thought Corson's Inlet would be secluded on a Sunday morning, and was surprised to see dozens of families on the beach enjoying the sunny day.  

Luke, Isabel and Lilianna, walked a half mile or so with me out to the inlet. A fisherman had cast his line into the surf about 50 yards away, his pole anchored to the sand. I picked a spot near him and placed the canister of ashes on the beach between us. I explained to my children why I had picked this spot and how it had brought back memories of earlier vacation days I had spent with him there. We held hands around the  canister of my father's ashes and I offered a brief prayer, thanking my father for the gift of life and for working so hard and for such a long time to make the lives of his wife and children secure and comfortable.

Then I took the canister into the green/brown waters of Corson's Inlet and poured his ashes into the water. I was struck by the pattern they made as they merged with the rolling sea. A constellation of tiny flecks of ash and bone spread through the water and twinkled like stars. I stayed there for a full minute, mesmerized by this shower of white, translucent  light swirling in brackish waters. Luke, my son, waded into the water and gently pushed the water in the direction of the ocean while Isabel recorded the moment with my camera.

We came back to the beach and unwrapped the hoagies. I opened the dark ales and gave each of my children a brown bottle, including the 16-year-old, as per my father's request. She took two swigs of it, washed down a bite of her hoagie, and let her brother finish it for her.

The first thought that occurred to me, as I bit into my own sandwich, was that I wished my father was there to enjoy the moment with his grandchildren and me; that he would have had a nice time with us. And then I chuckled at my foolishness. Hadn't the pattern of the stars I saw in the ocean told me something? Hadn't it been obvious?

My father's spirit was there with us. He was enjoying the moment; every bit as much as we were.

After his sandwich, Luke looked out at the ocean as calm waves brushed the shore. "Let me see," he said, a quizzical expression on his face. "I think I can remember this." He waited a moment collecting his thoughts. Then he repeated the words of a poem he had  been working on, around the time of his grandfather's death. I hadn't understood them at the time and I told him so. On the beach, though, the light of his sentiments suddenly flashed in my mind and his words shown with eloquence: 

"Wherever I go, I encounter myself"

From the heart of the hogs on the line
At the slaughter. In the fear of the swine

That's thicker than shit, so thick you can't breathe
For the smell of it. To the ease

Of the man who refused to go in-
To his hospital gown or the room he had been.

The self is an ending, and so is permanent—
A handful of grass weighs more than the firmament.

And if Lear gives a sense of the promised end,
So do the Jews in the camps they were penned.

So did the hand pressing over my hand,
Fluent as water reducing the sand,

And my mind which still reduces the man
To a name, and its carriage, and his hand on my hand.

 I felt better about losing Isabel to the Peace Corps for the next two years after we had eaten our hoagies and drank our beers. I was glad she'd been home to share this moment with us. 

I had faith my father would be with her in her travels to Nicaragua. 

I knew he would be as proud of her national service as I was. 

It sure tastes sweet! Celebrating a softball championship

The final game of the Chester County Co-Ed Western division championship ended with a 14-3 victory for the APSCUF Rams. The Rams got hot at the right time, winning their last eight in a row and plowing through two rounds of playoff games undefeated.


After last Thursday's come from behind, extra-inning victory, 20-19, the game on Sunday evening felt like an anti-climax. Kevin Flynn, the team's pitcher and most valuable player, missed that seesaw tilt but was back at the pitching rubber for the championship and in command the entire game.


Eighteen players showed up, so the biggest decision was how to get so many players into the game and still stay competitive. Team captain, Kuhio Walters, and I decided to honor the men and women who had been on the team since the beginning. Eight starters played deep into the game before we went to the bench. Their energy turned a relatively tight 8-3 game into a last inning blow-out.


Fittingly, Flynn caught the final out, a pop-up to the mound. I asked every team member to play to sign the ball and gave it to Flynn for his mantle. Fifteen or 16 of us ended the evening hooking five tables together in the Square Bar and enjoying the rest of the evening with pitchers of Yuengling.

It's not hyperbole to say the season has been one of the best experiences of my life. I wish I could play like I did in my 30s, when I started a softball team at the Daily Press in Newport News, Va. The friendships I made on that team are among the strongest of my adult life. Eight of us still meet at least once or twice a year for brews, golf, cards and camaraderie.


Luke, my son, was only a two years old when I started that team. We called ourselves the Typoz. I remember stashing Luke's baby stroller in the dugout with us, Luke strapped into it, watching the action intently, soaking up the cheers and the atmosphere, relishing the whole experience. My teammates rustled his thick, brown hair for good luck on their way to home plate. More times than not, this small superstitious gesture brought it to them. And it brought luck to Luke, too. That was the making of a baseball fan and player. 

For me, this entire championship season was the most fun I've ever had on a team -- because Luke shared the experience with me. It made me proud to watch him play. He's a good player and I knew when we added him to the roster he'd help us win. He plays with reckless abandon, the way the best players play. To see him stretch routine singles into doubles and to run down and catch fly balls in the outfield was a joy to witness. 

I started the championship game as one of the team's designated hitters. It was my only plate appearance in five playoff games. I hit a hard ground ball to the Baptist second baseman who turned it into a force out at second base. The next time around the line-up, Luke hit for me and then he finished the game in the outfield.

When he scored the winning run in our improbable win last week, yelling and screaming and wearing a grin as big as the sky, my heart flew into my mouth. I almost hurts to be that damn happy. 


Last night, I got to taste the sweetest drink of all...the taste of champagne after a championship, my arm wrapped around Luke, members of the same team. This is why we still play a kid's game. 

Kuhio Walters walks on the wild side

There are moments in life you always remember. Little gifts from the gods that make all the aches and pains and tears of life easier to endure.  Last night was one of them: a silly co-ed league softball game that the union guys will be talking and smiling about for years, if only because we were on the winning end of the final score, 20-19.

If regular working stiffs can be part of something epic, that’s what this felt like.  Like Leopold Bloom walking the streets of Dublin on June 16th, having a stout with the boys and living the dream or Lennon-McCartney recording "A Day In the Life." We'll remember this one.

We knew before the game that winning would be a long shot. We were playing the local Baptist church in the second game of a best of five championship series.  They’d beaten beaten us roundly in our two regular-season games, winning both games by the 10 run "mercy rule". We’d extracted an ounce of revenge on Sunday evening, winning the first playoff game 13-9. 

But we were playing game two without Kevin Flynn, the team’s ace and our most valuable player. This is what we all learned about Flynn: he makes pitching look easy. We discovered how hard it really is to lob a softball 45 feet to a small white target and get it to drop gently into a space about one foot  square. 

Flynn has been doing this for three years now and each game he gets a little bit better. He’s learned to put spin on his throws. He varies the arc of his pitches to try to keep the hitters from getting a bead on them. He moves the ball around, trying to tease the brawniest bashers with balls off the plate, giving them pitches they can’t drive. He’s always thinking of new ways to make hitting harder.

You can laugh if you want. It’s slow pitch softball and there’s not much a pitcher can do to prevent the best hitters from smashing even his best pitches. But what we learned last night is that Flynn has impeccable control. He throws strikes. Heck, he’d rather declare bankruptcy than walk a hitter. We just didn’t know how precisely proficient a pitcher he is until he wasn’t on the mound for us in a big game. 

Kuhio Walters, the team captain, replaced Flynn. Walters is our fastest runner and I hated to lose his outfield speed by asking him to pitch. But we had no choice. It would have been nice if I could do it. It’s good strategy to let your slowest player pitch if he/she can throw strikes. But I tried it once two seasons ago and gave up eight runs in less than one inning. Out of a dozen hitters, I walked eight of them.  It felt like I was tossing pineapples to the plate.

On Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of 100 degree heat, Walters and I went out to the diamond to practice pitching, to get him used to tossing strikes. He threw about 50 pitches…and landed less than half of them within proximity of the plate.  When he threw batting practice before the game, I noticed his teammates were lunging, trying to put their bats on his pitches. A lot of his throws bounced in front of the plate. 

This seemed not to mean much when he faced the Baptists in the first inning. They went down on just five pitches. We answered with four runs to take an early lead. In the second though, Kuhio  imploded. The clean-up hitter lead off with a high pop up that he nabbed near the pitching rubber. But then he went cold and walked the next four hitters.  His nervousness reached new heights -- and the inning reached its crisis point -- when next he misplayed two easy grounders hit right at him by the Baptists' two weakest hitters. By inning's end, the score was knotted, 4-4.

The game see-sawed back and forth until the Rams put six on the scoreboard in the 5^th to open some distance.  When the Baptists came to hit in the top of the 7^th, Kuhio took a 15-10 lead to the mound  and the game seemed secure. 

That’s when Kuhio’s touch deserted him yet again. Sensing his nervousness, the Baptists became selective.  They took six walks in the inning and all six of them scored. I finally replaced Kuhio and asked our shortstop, Manny Otero, to come and pitch with the game tied, 15-15. Manny walked the first hitter he faced and then served up a grand slam home run to give the Baptists a 19-15. This wasn’t a tide turning, this was a tsunami. They had scored nine runs.

Some teams would have called it quits at that point. I’ve been on a few teams what would've had some colorful things to say to a pitcher who issued five walks in the last inning to let a beaten team climb back into a ballgame. Not one word of angst was directed at Kuhio. He’d kept us in a game we had expected to lose anyway, so why moan?  The Baptists were raising Cain on the sideline, hooting and hollering as if Gabriel's trumpet had called them home. Who could blame them? We had them dead and buried and then let them experience the joy of resurrection. 

The bottom half of our line-up was due up in the bottom of the seventh, yet the team seemed serenely confident.  It was almost like they had planned this all along, just for the fun of it. The first four hitters hit singles, the last one flying off the bat of Emilee Hussack, her second hit of the game. Moments later, she scored the tying run scored on a long sacrifice fly to left field. 

The Baptists got two runners on in the top of the 8^th but couldn’t push a run across. We did in our half of the 8^th. Luke, my son, slashed a double to center field and came whooping and hollering home with the winning run, his arms waving like pinwheels, on Tim Brown’s fourth opposite field hit of the night. 

It was an evening I won’t soon forget. I bet Kuhio won’t soon forget it either. Maybe this is why grown men play a kid's game. From such memories, epics grow.

And I bet when Kevin Flynn shows up for game three on Sunday evening, a whole lot of his teammates will be mighty glad to see him.

Glory Days: Game one of the Chester County Co-ed Western Division playoffs

I had to say something to inspire the team. But what? They needed a pep talk, but what do you say to professors who inspire students at the front of a classroom for a living?

I was too old to run the bases. I only played the field or went to bat when we were short-handed. So I had become the de facto bench coach of a team of mostly 40 to 60 year old academics. Pep to these guys was a 5-Hour energy drink.

We were about to start the Chester County Co-Ed Softball League Western division best-of-five game championship against a younger, much faster, much better team from the Baptist Church of West Chester.

What could I say? I had no plan, no real idea. I just had a vague notion they needed a pep talk. We'd taken our practice swings and infield and we were gathered around the backstop watching the Baptist hitters pummel moon shots to the far reaches of the outfield. The left side of their infield was tossing lasers over to first base. You could hear their throws hiss like rattlesnakes as they kissed the first baseman's mitt. They were two dark-haired men in their early 20s. Ripped and righteous in their confidence.

"Come over here, let's talk," I called to my union team, the Rams. But what to say? The Baptists were the division's elite team. They'd scalded our asses twice, winning both games by the 10-run "mercy rule". They were the number one seed. But we were hungry. Hungry for redemption and maybe something more. Something that felt even better than another notch on the resume. Something to brag about at the corner bar later on.

This was the most important day of the year...... for some of us, maybe the biggest day of the decade. We were mostly tenured profs with publications on our vitae and papers to read at future conferences, but none of that mattered as much as this: winning a softball co-ed league championship; feeling the giddy joy of staving off the ghosts that were coming for us soon. We weren't young any more but we wanted to pretend to be.

"These guys are a pretty good ball club," I said. "They beat us pretty good. But they haven't seen the best of us yet. Let's show them we can play ball too. Let's put some runs on the board and give them something to think about. C'mon! We can do this!"

Yeah, I know. This sounds like so much cliched pablum. What else would I say: "Win one for the Gimper"? I don't think so.

Our first two hitters knocked clean line drives to center field. Our third hitter smacked a hard grounder into the hole. The ball skidded out of the shortstop's glove and rolled two feet away. He had a force play at third base but thought he'd take the sure out at first, but his throw sailed high and wide and the first baseman couldn't nab it. The ball careened against the chainlink fence and a run scored on the error. Our clean-up man slashed one down the line that handcuffed the third baseman. Another unearned run came home.

Up came our MVP, Manny "El Toro" Otero. Chiseled like a marble statue, with massive arms and legs. A gentle soul with a vicious uppercut stroke that frequently painted glorious parabolas against the summer sky. He was build like a brick outhouse, squat but square. On the first pitch he hit a whistling screamer past the head of the Baptist pitcher. The ball got to the outfielder so quickly -- he caught it on one neat hop and fired it to home -- he nearly had a play on the runner coming in from third base. Later in the game, Otero jacked a ball that rattled against the fence 325 feet from home plate.

Three blessed runs in the first. Five more the second. Play good "D", we shouted from the bench. Throw some leather at them!

By the bottom of the 5th, we were 10 runs ahead, 13-3. And the team got complacent. I could sense it. We squandered a chance to put them away with two errors on one play that allowed the Baptists to score a 4th run in the bottom of the inning to keep the game alive. Dark storm clouds were forming in the west, heading our way. Bad omen. The Baptists scored another in the 6th but came in for their last at-bats down eight runs.

A soft dink fell out of Otero's reach at shortstop. A slow roller with eyes found a hole for another hit. Off in the distance, little tongues of lightning flickered a menacing message and the sky faded to a dense, swirling gray. Rain drops began to fall and the field got slick. The Baptists' 10th hitter slashed a liner straight to our left fielder, as sure-handed an outfielder as you'd ever find in any Iowa cornfield. The ball skipped on the wet surface and found a spot under his outstretched arm. It careened against the rubber of his cleated right foot and went spinning out of bounds and down the foul line toward the outfield fence. Three runs scored on the play and my gut felt like a dishrag being wrung dry.

Mercifully, the bases were now empty. Things settled. The storm held off and we secured two outs before the Baptist lead off hitter came up for the last time. He'd hit two homers in the game already and slashed a double. But one batter later, he got caught in a run-down between second and third.

Game one went to the union heathens, 13-9. One down. Two to go.

Mid Year pop music report

In alphabetical order, here are the 11 CDs that seemed to hold my attention the longest since the start of the new year. It's hard to say whether any of these will make my annual end of the year list. I need to listen to all of them more carefully between now and December. It's hard to know now whether they will bear up to repeated playing. And we haven't heard what else the year may bring. But, for what it's worth, these are 10 discs from the first half of 2012 worth seeking out.




Europe by Allo Darlin'. Tuneful ear candy from a young London band lead by songwriter Elizabeth Morris. The four-piece band plays soft, jangly, guitar-oriented indie pop and occasionally extends the music palette to ukelele. Morris's earnest vocals are easy to embrace; her lyrics are amusing and confessional. Highlights include "Capriconia" and "Neil Armstrong," a whimsical tip of the hat to the first man on the moon.

 
Bloom by Beach House. This CD, the fourth from Beach House, may be their most challenging CD yet. Victoria LeGrand and Alex Scally have crafted a record that seems more like a suite of that meshes together in a dream-like sequence than individual songs. "It's not the band's most immediate music, but the album's challenging mix of heartbroken words and aloof sounds rewards patient and repeated listening," trills the All Music Guide.

Locked Down, by Dr. John.   Mac Rebbenack is back with a blistering set of hoodoo voodoo and he still sounds ticked off at the Army Corps of Engineers for what they done to his hometown, N'Awlins.  (They left the city unprotected to the wrath of Hurricane Katrina by allowing the city's levees to remain in a weakened state for decades). Locked Down isn't as swampy as his 1968 record, "Gris-Gris" but it may be his best record since that classic.  Its grooves are  raw and immediate; its lyrics are charged with righteous indignation. It melds primal rock, careening R&B, and electric blues in a downright nasty brew.

Voyageur by Kathleen Edwards. I'm a sucker for Kathleen Edward's alt-country sound and this 2012 release is up to her usual high standards. Her lyrics give listeners personal glimpses into life lived on an emotional roller coaster: the "voyage" at the heart of the record is a misguided love affair. Her lamentable choices, sung with heart-torn regrets and played with ragged glory by her band, go down as easy as Jack Daniels over ice.

Clear Heart Full Eyes by Craig Finn.  Finn's first solo CD feels like a return to form after the relative disappointment of Stay Positive, the Hold Steady's 2008 effort. Finn's songs on Clear Heart are fixated on the American fascination with religious experience, personal pilgrimage and eventual loss of faith. It's a journey worth taking. The band doesn't rock quite as hard as the Hold Steady does, but their performance seems to serve the contemplative nature of the songs.
 





Grifter's Hymnal by Ray Wylie Hubbard. Long associated with the outlaw brand of West Texas country music, Hubbard was introduced to the music world in 1973 when Jerry Jeff Walker recorded his classic, "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother." For years, he's burnished his outlaw reputation with a rawboned version of country music that skews close to the heart of rock 'n roll. Put "Coricidin Bottle" on and hear the sounds of a band coming unhinged from the git-go. Lucas Hubbard, Ray's son, plays lead and makes his Papa proud. Ringo Starr has a vocal cameo on "Coochy Coochy."

 Home Again, Michael Kiwanuka. Rippling with a sweet and soulful vibe, this is the best world music I've heard so far this year. Home Again is getting huge support from Philadelphia's public radio station, WXPN, which has placed the  title track and a lilting blues called "I'm Getting Ready" into heavy rotation. You can hear echoes of Van Morrison and Bill Withers in his plaintive vocals.





Signs & Signifiers by J.D. McPherson. Not sure this one will have the staying power needed to make my end of the year list, but I'm pretty certain "North Side Gal" is gonna be one of my favorite songs of the year. McPherson and his band, wearing hairstyles straight out of "Grease", channel the swagger and swing of Elvis Presley's Sun Studio trio (Elvis, Scotty Moore and Bill Black). If you can resist tapping your foot along to the dozen rockabilly-tinged songs on this record, you better have your pulse checked.

On the Impossible Past by the Menzingers. A short, sweet, burst of power pop/punk from Scranton's favorite sons. Sounds like Green Day ramped up on amphetamines that have been washed down with Red Bull. "The Obituaries" may be the best song you'll never hear on the radio all year, featuring hooks galore and a refrain replete with F'bombs that make it difficult to resist wanting to sing along with your car windows open. Dead solid certain to embarrass your 15-year-old if she's traveling with you. I speak from experience.  


Wrecking Ball by Bruce Springsteen. A return to form for Springsteen, Wrecking Ball contains his best songwriting since Tunnel of Love IMHO. Springsteen's songwriting can be called calculating on this record, if only because he's so obviously penned a soundtrack to the 2012 election season for President Obama and the Democrats. You may not be okay with that, but count me all in. The stakes are high. "Easy Money" doesn't just rail at the fat cats on Wall Street, it's a bald face call to armed insurrection for their theft of the treasury. Woody Guthrie famously painted "this guitar kills fascists" on his instrument. Don't be too surprised if Springsteen  doesn't borrow that line for his summer tour.

The Lost Kerosene Tapes, 1999 by Bob Woodruff. Woodruff is barely  known, even among diehard alt-country fans. What a shame! Dreams & Saturday Nights is a hard to find, out of print classic from 1994. If you like Steve Earle's early CDs, (especially Guitartown and I Feel Alright) you'll probably dig Woodruff. The Lost Kerosene Tapes, 1999 are just that: an incredible collection of incendiary songs songs that were lost in the vaults of time for the last 13 years and recently recovered and released. Not likely to make him a household name but epic none the less. 

Father's Day will never feel the same

Father's Day will never feel the same. Not after last year.


My father was diagnosed with lymphoma one year ago on Father's Day 2011. Three months later the tenacious cancer claimed his life. The picture above appeared on his obituary in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Sept. 15th of last year.


I have been thinking a lot about my father these past few weeks and a lot about this holiday. I miss my dad, but I have been miffed at him recently. Sometimes the telephone will ring and I half expect it to be him, telling me about a PBS special he thought I should watch or about a New York Times column by Maureen Dowd I need to read. I usually fielded these calls as gracefully as my personality would allow: not very.


I didn't like to be told what to do by him when I was growing up and, after I left home, I didn't like it any better. After bristling for years about being told what I should do with my free time, I wasn't always as patient as I could been. Now, of course, I wish I could take his call and agree with him: "Yes, thanks Dad, I should watch that Pete Seeger documentary. I will as soon as I get off the phone with you." I miss him. I even miss his unsolicited advice.


When my semester ended several weeks ago, I decided to finally begin the task of cleaning out my garage....a space my Dad appropriated soon after I took ownership of my home in Downingtown. In fact, his request to use my garage for storage came on the day of settlement. I received one of his hand-written notes in my mailbox on the afternoon the deed was signed over to me. I was impressed by his thoughtfulness when I tore open the envelope. How good of him, to wish me well in my new digs and to calculate the arrival time of his wishes for the precise day the house became mine. He had sent it three days earlier from Wisconsin, where he was visiting my sister.


Then I read his request and I had to stifle the urge to laugh. Two of my sisters had turned aside his request to use their basement or garage to store his stuff. Now he was making this request of me.  I was an easy mark. Unlike my sisters, I was divorced. I didn't have to answer to a spouse. On top of that, my brother had been helping my dad pay his bills. For years my father had used his homes as an ATM machine, borrowing against the equity to pay his bills. I knew I could save my dad (and the rest of us) nearly $300 a month if we stopped paying monthly rent on a storage unit in  Jenkintown.


I made a deal with my dad. If he would allow me to use half the garage to store my things: golf clubs, my lawn mower, two bikes, some boxes of books, he could use half of my garage space. But he would have to empty the storage unit and get rid of most of the stuff there. Although this pained him, he agreed. The local siblings rented a dumpster, had it delivered to the storage unit, and spent six hours filling it up with the stuff he couldn't squeeze into his allotted space in my garage. 

It was a sad day for my father. My mom, who dealt with my father's hording issues for decades, was happier than I had seen her in years. She couldn't conceal her delight in his misery. She smiled the whole day long.

Six months later, however, my mower and bicycles were stuffed into one corner of my garage. The rest of it was packed with his things. My golf clubs were transported to a basement closet. Boxes and boxes of his things filled the garage. Much of it was fishing and camping equipment; enough to outfit a small sporting goods store. There were tools. A variety of hammers and saws and shovels. And plastic tool boxes (some full, a few half-full, many totally empty). There were boxes of Gerber baby food jars full of screws, nails, bolts and tacks. This was stuff in plain sight. Other things he wisely kept hidden from me.

On the weekend of his funeral service, I invited my brothers, brothers-in-law and nephews to come and claim some of his camping and fishing equipment. Dozens of rods and reels, a gaffer hook, several sets of waders and fishing nets, pup tents and sleeping bags all left the premises. But in the last few weeks I have filled two garbage cans full of junk every time the trash collectors come, slowly emptying my garage of stuff he'd been gathering for years. 

Why he kept the stuff I've tossed out is hard to imagine. A few boxes were full of things that still had use. His clothes and several boxes of books I gave to Goodwill. Four spare wheels/tires I dropped off at Goodyear Tires. The rest of it boggled my mind. Scraps of wood. Dozens and dozens of empty 35 mm film cannisters. A box of half filled cans of paint, decades old and rusted shut. A box of spray paint cans, all empty. A box of old turpentine cans, also empty. A box of empty baby food jars. Several boxes of rags. A box of empty coffee tins. A box of rubber bicycle tire innertubes.Chemicals for his camper commode.

I feel a sense of some relief now that I can see space for my car. But there is a sense of sadness, too. A sense I had been used by my father for all those months, that he had needlessly appropriated garage space for this junk. All I really had done was enabled his hording pathology right to the bitter end. The stuff was so well hidden from view that, it occurred to me, he realized I would have tossed it all out once I discovered the contents of those boxes. 

As I unburden my garage of the flotsam of father's life, there is also the sad realization my father's hording issues have been passed on to me and some of my siblings. My own home is awash with "stuff." Thousands of CDs and records. Hundreds of books. Dozens and dozens of ball caps and sports jerseys. Things I don't really need but can't yet part with. I have a high tolerance for clutter and it bothers me.

Is seems inordinately difficult for me to unburden myself of my junk. I am not my father; I am not that "bad".

Not yet. 

Unfortunately, we can't always throw away the things our parents leave behind. Some of the stuff just sticks to you.