A Head Full of Junk

Chapter Thirty-Nine (Chris): The present and the future

2006-08-30T16:50:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it seems that we (especially me) dwell on the past when we write in this particular blog. Well, originally, that's what we wanted to do...we wanted to remember the great stories, the stupid stories, the fabulous things we had done, the stupid things we had done while we grew up. But sometimes, we must look to the present . . . and perhaps the future!

My oldest brother, Lee, and his wonderful wife, Patti, are setting upon a new "frontier". They have purchased a new (well for them) house in Ohio (oh, good Lord, don't let them become Buckeyes!). I have seen pictures...it's a beautiful little (well, little, if you consider a three bedroom house - LITTLE!) house and I'm so happy for them. For Patti, she is closer to her Dad (fabulous)...for Lee (well, and Patti, too) he is close to his Michigan-Bound brothers. All in all, I believe it's a good move for all concerned. And I can't wait to spend a few days down there, just me and my wife, Tina, and two of my favourite people in the world!

Now, let's talk about Paulie, the middle brother. Okay, I'll get it over with early...he owns a f***ing circus...two (sometimes three) dogs (dog, dog, dog!), three cats, a rat and a goldfish (at least I think he's still alive). I don't know HOW he ever relaxes or gets any sleep, but he's happy with it...who am I to say anything different? Paul has his own way, he understands that the winds change from time to time and, much like the willow, he will bend to those changes...unlike me. BUT! Even if I didn't think that he was a good guy, just because he's my brother, just because I love him, just because HE IS...that he can put up with that much cacaphony in his house, he's gotta be either the best person in the world or ... well, brain-dead! Of course I say that in jest, he is the best guy I know in this world.

I have written about these two wonderful people before in this blog and my own...but sometimes, late at night (and I like to stay up late at night) I think about them...the family I have left. I think that I don't call them on the telephone enough, I think that I don't e-mail them enough and I KNOW that I don't see them enough. But I think of them very often.

I think of them often. I worry about them. I care about them. I love them.

And I don't know if I would have grown up to be the good person I am without them!

Chapter Thirty-Eight (Chris): Summer in NC

2006-08-19T05:10:00.000-07:00

This would be the right around the time that we (the kids) would go down south to see our parents. I spoke with Paul recently and we discussed, perhaps, going down to see their gravesite...known as a columbarium. But we both agreed it would be weird...no house in which to stay, feeling like we were on the outside looking in.

It would be worse for me, I think. Not only would I feel like an outsider...I wouldn't know what to do with myself while I was there. Would we do the things that we did when Mom and Dad were alive...Sonics, Walmart, video games, Jeopardy, etc? We could but it wouldn't be the same.

And I don't mean to harp on the past (which I'm good at anyway). I just like to think that we have moved somewhat forward...and yet, we always must remember the past.

Those we have known and loved. Those who have gone before us.

And yet I can still feel the warmth of the kitchen fireplace on that one January First. I can still feel the contentment of waking up and looking out the window at a crystal blue sky and snuggling down into the covers...knowing I was safe and secure in the arms of my family. I can still remember and enjoy the feeling, once we had arrived at the house from the airport, sitting on the screened-in porch, having a cocktail with Mom and Dad and just talking about the day and the week and our lives. And watching, once in a while, a fish breach the surface of the lake. I can remember going to sleep with the sound of those incessant crickets. I can remember so many things...and, okay, it was hot! But not so hot that we didn't get out of the house and do things together. I can remember, on those days when I actually got up early enough, sitting with Dad at the table, watching the sunrise and just enjoying either good conversation or amiable quiet together.

I guess, as much as things change, this is why God gave us a memory. So we can remember all of the good things in our lives...

And I do.

Chapter Thirty-Seven (Chris): Many days and Nights

2006-02-08T07:55:00.000-08:00

Many times I think about the family. What we used to be, what we are now...and yet, there are just TOO many good thoughts to let the bad thoughts be pervasive. Lee going through the upstairs wall, Lee going through the back of the garage, Paul putting the flashlight under his face and scaring the holy heck out of me, Paul charging down the backyard, hitting the seawall with one foot and ending up, face first, in the lake. And well, then there's me. Too many stories to tell; The UFO incident (ask Paul about that), the screaming as I watch the stuntman Paul go flying off his minibike (as Ah-Nold would say, "You screamed like a Girly-Man!), the tree falling into the pool (iiiiiiIIIIIIIMMMMMMSCCCCCARRRREDDDDD! That was me screaming as I took the 14 stairs from my room to the living room, not touching one...I don't think I did). What's funny is that through a billion car accidents, motorcycle accidents (I was run down by the next door neighbors on my motorbike one time!), minibike accidents, scrapes, cuts, bruises...well, we, the triumverate of Townley, well, we've survived. I dislike this saying greatly, however, "Whatever doesn't destroy us, serves to make us better". Or something like that!

My brothers are two of the best people I would ever want to know in life. Okay, they drive me a little crazy from time to time, however, I'm certain that I do exactly the same to them. They just have the good graces not to say anything about it! I wouldn't have my life any other way. It's because of these two wonderful people that I have a penchant for music, an ear for GREAT music and a love of all types of music (Lee gave me 50's and early 60's rock & roll, Paul gave me 1970's progressive rock). I hope that, in whatever little way, I have shown them the great music of the late 70's and 1980's. Whether or not you believe it, there WAS some great music that came out of that era.

Lee and Paul both showed me how to play the guitar and I ran with it. Lee, who I will never be able to match on the keyboard, showed me a few things about playing the piano and other keyboards that I will remember all my life. Paul, on the other hand, introduced me to a whole different type of music than the straight-up rock that I was listening to. And much of what I write, musically, is based on this type of music that Paulie introduced me to.

On the other hand, it is because of these two great people and my parents, that I have a sense of moral stability, a sense of right and wrong, a sense of what we are here on this planet to do. Through many episodes in our lives, they have taught me...they have taught me to be a good person. Guess what? I could have gone over to "The Dark Side". It was these two Luke Skywalkers that kept me from doing so.

If you have read this blog from start to finish, you know some of the hilarious stories, you know some of the pain, you know a little about us. The Triumverate.

We stand before God and offer ourselves as living proof that, no matter what life dishes out, with His help and with our love for each other...Well, we survive. We enjoy each other. When we get together we scream and shout and hoot and holler and have the best time. We test each other's memories with our little trivia games. We make fun of each other...never really nasty stuff, just stuff that, after so many years, we have noticed about each other. We have a great time. We love each other. Mom & Dad wouldn't have it any other way. This is what they taught us. This is the way we live. This is who we are.

As Tiny Tim said, "God Bless Us All..."

Chapter Thirty-Six (Chris) My Favorite Toys

2005-12-03T07:14:00.000-08:00

When I read the essay by Paul it started me thinking about the toys I have had in my life. I've enjoyed so many different toys that it's hard for me to whittle them down to just a few favorites. But here goes anyway...

G.I. Joe: Fighting man from head to toe. I loved Joe because, as toy makers are wont to do, he had billions of accessories and different uniforms and vehicles and guns and (most importantly) all sorts of little tiny stuff for me to swallow and choke on!!! Yay, Me! Seriously, When Joe was the Big Guy (11-1/2 inches as opposed to the little tiny thing they turned him into) he was great. And he did have a bunch of cool stuff, most of which I had.

For instance, the jeep with attached trailer. In the trailer was a working light. Well, it worked for a little while until I wailed the jeep down the basement stairs onto the cold tile floor below. You could also hook up a 105 mm gun in the trailer. Well, after shooting the three bombs into the grass and never finding them again the 105 mm gun never worked again. That is because I wailed the jeep down the basement stairs onto the cold tile floor below. And the lights on the jeep itself worked. Well, they worked for a little while until I wailed the jeep down the basement stairs onto the cold tile floor below. And Joe himself had that really cool "Kung-Fu" grip! Well he did for a little while until I wailed him down the basement stairs onto the cold tile floor below. Immediate amputee. It was sad.

Joe also had a space capsule. At the end of the 1960's the hype for the space race was as gigantic as it had been all decade but even moreso, since we were close to reaching the moon. I had a Joe-sized Apollo space capsule and the silver suit and white helmet (including the "Snoopy ears" they wore underneath) that the real astronauts wore. Well, we had a built-in swimming pool and I used to revel in doing "splash-downs" with Joe in the capsule. That is until one time that Joe and the capsule decided to go the Russkie route and do a "crash-down". Right on the cement around the pool. Needless to say, it was a lot like wailing the thing down the basement stairs only more violent and more destructive. That was the end of Joe's NASA days.

All in all, though, I had hours of fun with Joe and his friends, Joe, Joe, Joe and um...oh, yeah, Joe! If I had only taken a little care of these things I'd be sitting on a fortune right now, too. Oh, well, we live and we learn.

Super 8 mm movie camera: When I was young I used to read books about how to be a filmmaker and, for one of my birthdays, my parents bought me a Super 8 camera. For a few dollars, you would get a cartridge that you slapped into the side of the camera and then you had a glorious three minutes to tell your story! I can remember doing a "comedy" film with Paul and doing a really horrid "Dracula" knock-off (I was a big monster movie fan in those days). Imagine this: a chubby Drac, wearing a brown suitcoat and a white mock-tee, complete with a Moe Howard haircut, fake teeth and dribbles of stage blood on his face. Imagine the "casket" being three sides of a cardboard file box (complete with fake wood printed on the sides). There were other films I made, some that still exist at the bottom of one of my boxes to this day. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas had nothing to fear from me...but, I did have a good time and it made me dream and actually attempt to reach for those dreams.

Cassette Tape Recorders: Almost every year, either for birthday or Christmas, I would get a cassette tape recorder. As a matter of fact, as recently as two or three years ago I got one. I also own one that I can track separate instruments that I am playing, one instrument at a time, and make it sound like an entire band (just like they do on CD's). So needless to say I enjoy tape recording things. I don't know why I do, I just do. In my youth and later I have captured some real gems on tape, things that people were saying that they thought would disappear into the air, never to be heard and the like. Not that I use these devices for surveillance, no. That's just a by-product of having a recorder. Now, while this might not be thought of as a toy I played with it as much as any other toys I had. I enjoyed it just as much, too!

Honorable Mention: The Thingmaker. What a great concept! Let's give children a slab of metal with designs and animals punched out of it, have them fill it with this glop called "Plastic Goop", put metal tongs on it in order to stick it into a totally unprotected heat source called "The Thingmaker". More like "The BurnMaker". Or maybe "The Horribly Disfiguring Scarmaker". Here's the kicker, you had to wait until that metal slab full of goop heated to Geothermal temperatures before the goop would solidify into something you could actually extract from the slab. The great thing was that you had to use metal tongs to get the thing out! Well, induction would immediately occur when you attached the tongs and bam! You got burned! Remember, we did all of this without parental supervision! Excellent!

Seriously, in my family, we had a built-in swimming pool, a pool table in the basement and a ravine full of frogs, turtles, fish and the like. Mom And Dad always made certain I had a bicycle and later a motorcycle to get around. They always made certain I had the toys I really had to have. They made certain that all of us never wanted for entertainment. Still, we all had the gall to say "I'm bored, there's nothing fun to do". Well, such is the life of a child. But, in the interim, I wish I had some of those toys to play with now. What fun we could have!!!

Chapter Thirty-five (Paul): My Favorite Toys

2005-11-22T13:19:00.000-08:00

A lot of people think I have never really grown up. I tend to agree with them.

Even at the age of 50, I still have my toys. I still love to play video games and tinker with computers. I still am a classic case of Arrested Development.

In this installment I would like to discuss some of my favorite toys through the years--Christmas presents, birthday gifts, or just fun stuff I bought for myself.

My first computer.

I will always remember my first computer. I had gotten a small Apple Mac Classic at work and even though it wasn't the greatest computer ever (black and white, a very basic word processor, a nine inch screen and not a whole lot more) basically I was hooked. That was back over fifteen years ago. Eventually I decided I needed one for my home as well. Not being of sound means (or credit), I was forced to Rent-to-Own my first computer--which basically means I paid about twice what the computer actually was worth.

So I went to Rent-a-center in Pontiac where I could get a computer for about $39.95 a week. That of course worked out to about $160.00 a month, a payment I could barely afford. But I wanted the computer and so I got it.

It was a beauty: A genuine Packard-Bell desktop PC, the hard drive was 420 MB and it had 4 MB of RAM. The processor was 66 Megahertz. 15 inch monitor. Now for the benefit of those who have no idea what these numbers mean, my current computer has the following: a 100 GB (as in GIGAbyte) harddrive, which basically is 100,000 MB (as opposed to 420 in the Packard Bell). I have 2 GB of RAM (2,000 MB as opposed to 4) and the processor is 3.6 Gigahertz (3600 Megahertz as opposed to 66). I also now have upgraded to a 21" monitor.

Oh yeah the Packard Bell ran Windows 3.11. My current computer : 3.1---->95---->98---->Me---->XP.

Needless to say, times have changed. Bigger, Better, Faster, More!

Not to brag about my latest computer or anything, but just to demonstrate just how impotent and puny my first one (which I eventually came to refer to as "My Packard Smell") was.

At the time, I didn't care. I played primitive games such as Leisure Suit Larry and the original Doom. I also got into the wonderful world of AOL, for finally I had enough under my computer hood to get online. From the beginning, I was completely hooked. There was a whole new world out there, and being completely inexperienced with the Internet (my experience at work was only in a small dial up bulletin board that was one of the first of it's kind and came only a few months after the revolutionary Q-link was popular amongst Commodore users like my brother Chris--they were actually the real pioneers of online). I remember one of the teachers would help me dial up on a 14.4 modem to an all text site called "The Well". I was truly a Greenhorn, but I loved AOL which was (and still is) "Internet for Dummies".

I especially enjoyed the chat rooms. Back in the day (I think AOL I used was version 2.5 and came on a floppy disk, as opposed to the ubiquitous CDs you see everywhere today), AOL charged you a flat fee then by the minute above the alotted minutes in your plan. My chatroom of choice was something called "Movie Quote Trivia" where everyone knew everyone else and spent hours there. One month I racked up a 147 dollar bill on AOL--a huge amount for me at the time.

I'm still completely hooked on the Internet, Internet gaming and the whole online gig. But I will never forget my first computer--kind of like never forgetting your first girlfriend.

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Lost in Space.

At the age of ten, I was a huge fan of the TV series "Lost in Space". Every Wednesday at 7:30, I was glued to my Television screen to watch the adventures of the Robinson family and the evil Dr. Smith. There were but a few toys tied into the series (unlike today, where there is massive support of TV shows and movies available in your local toy store). For instance, you could buy a plastic Aurora Model of the Cyclops that the Robinson family encountered in the 5th Episode of the series; Lost in Space lunchboxes and trading cards; and a few other cool things.

But absolutely nothing was as cool as the Mattel Lost In Space "Switch and Go" set from Sears that I received for my 10th birthday. This set--which goes for thousands of dollars today if you happen to have a complete set--included a large styrofoam replica of the Jupiter 2 (the Robinson's space ship), a plastic Robot and Chariot and yellow track tubing (with couplers) that you could set up and use to direct them around the floor of your living room. There were also little figurines of the Robinsons and Dr. Smith that came with it (a set of the figurines alone goes for 400 dollars on Ebay. Basically you could set up your entire Lost in Space set with space ship, Robot, Chariot and figures--even the Bloop! I spent hours and hours playing with that set, and it definitely falls into the category of toys I wish I had taken better care of.

holy cow! Only $13.99!!!!

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The Easy Show.

I have always been a fan of the movies, and cartoons and any other manner of motion pictures, even when I was a kid. So an absolute favorite toy for me was when Mom and Dad bought me a Kenner "Easy Show Projector" when I was around 12 or 13. It was a little red plastic projector that had snap in cartridges containing a 2 minute silent 8mm film or cartoon. You pop in batteries to light the light and then show movies on your wall. You could run it with the hand crank either fast, slow, forward or backward. Imagine the hilarity. I had a Superman movie (from the 50s TV show), Tom and Jerry, Popeye and a few others. Chris and I used to spend hours in my Mom's walk in closet on Southbrook watching those movies. We had a ball. Don't know what happened to that piece of my childhood either.

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the jolly chimp.

One of the scariest scenes in the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" is when Melinda Dillon's home in Indiana is invaded by aliens who kidnap her 4 year old boy, Barry. Strange things start happening in the house: vacuums and record players start up by themselves, lights flash and the usual phenomenon when you're being held hostage by the Grays occurs. At the beginning of that scene, a hideous robotic circus monkey on Barry's dresser parses his lips menacingly and starts clanging a couple of cymbals together. This is where I first saw "Jolly Chimp" although I have vague recollections of it being in a horrifying Civil Defense PSA on TV years earlier that may have warped me for life back then. "Jolly Chimp" is a Japanese-made toy that ranks among the creepiest ever made, and I have no idea why anyone in their right mind would buy one for their children---truly it would scar them for life as it did me. Anyway my younger brother Chris, always at the ready to get back at me for all the times that I teased and terrified him for whatever evil reasons I had when we were kids, tracked down and bought me the Jolly Chimp for my birthday just a few years ago--in fact you can still buy the damn thing today. It was just like the one on "Close Encounters", and I positively love it. Actually I am alternately fascinated and terrified by this little tin mechanical monkey. Nonetheless, it remains one of my favorite toys for reasons unknown, and I felt obliged to include it in my short list, if nothing else to show my brother that he succeeded. I'm scared even thinking about the "Jolly Chimp".

menacing monkey with painted toenails.

Chapter Thirty-Four (Paul): A Fall Tradition

2005-10-30T17:50:00.000-08:00

It was a beautiful, bright, crisp fall day today, a perfect October day before Halloween.

Heading outside to the store this morning, I was reminded of a fall tradition that occured in the Townley family for 14 or 15 years, while Mom and Dad lived in White Lake.

It was a tradition that not all of us looked forward to terribly--in fact we hated it, but nonetheless we did it year in and year out, every fall right about this time.

Of course I'm talking about taking the raft out of the lake.

The lake that my parents lived on, Tull Lake, didn't allow its residents to keep their swimming rafts in the water during the winter. Although logic dictates that having a raft frozen in the lake would really do no harm, perhaps it had something to do with the many snowmobilers that tore across the frozen tundra of Tull Lake during the winter that could run headlong into a snow covered, virtually invisible raft stuck in the middle of the ice and covered with snow. Anyway, all the swimming rafts--not just a big rubber tube but a large, heavy, unweildy square floating device that you could climb up onto and dive off of--had to be out before the lake froze.

It was usually around this time of year--the last weekend in October, a full five weeks or so since anyone had used the raft or even swam in the lake for that matter--that Dad decided that we needed to take the raft out.

"Come on, boys," he'd say. "Time to take the raft out." (Dad referred to us as "The boys" right until his death).

So, grumbling, we'd venture out, in either rolled up jeans (it was usually much too cool for shorts by then) or else break out the bathing suits one last time for the year. First Dad, brave and crazy as he sometimes was, would jump into the water and swim out to the raft.

"Water feels GREAT!" Dad exclaimed. "Not bad at all! You're gonna LOVE it!!'

Yeah right.

Anyway, Dad would climb up to both take off the ladder and pull the anchor up to put on top of the raft. The anchor consisted of a couple of cinder blocks tied to a nylon rope that was dropped to the bottom of the lake to help stabilize the raft so it wouldn't drift when we climbed on or jumped into the water.

I might point out that, because the raft had been unused for more than a month that it had become a haven for the dozens of Canadian Geese that lived on and around the lake, who would use the raft for a little island away from the neighborhood dogs--and also, apparently, as a public toilet. Most times, there was a LOT of goose crap on the raft, and believe me when I tell you that geese crap big--like your average Doberman or smallish human being--so there was usually a lot of the foul excrement covering the raft. We'd toss Dad a push broom to sweep, as best he could, the goose crap off of the raft. He'd then pull up the anchor and use a crescent wrench to take the ladder off the raft.

I would like to point out that there is probably a half dozen screwdrivers and crescent wrenches at the bottom of that Lake off our property to this day--maybe more. Dad had a propencity to drop them in the water until the sagacity of older age finally struck him, and he tied the wrench to a string attached to his wrist so's not to lose any more wrenches.

Anyway, that task being done, "the Boys" used the rope that held the raft to the shore to pull the raft in to shore. However, the lake was quite shallow so "pulling the raft in" meant getting it about 3 or 4 feet from the actual place where the water ended and the sand began. Then the real donkey work began. First we'd lift the end of the raft closest to shore onto a smooth large log that we could roll the raft onto shore, much like the Egyptians build the pyramids. This raft was one heavy mother--it took three of us just to lift the one end while the fourth (usually Dad) rolled the log in place.

Then we had to get into the water. This water was freakin' cold, like maybe between forty or fifty degrees--great if you are a Polar Bear, or perhaps one of those insane people in Minnesota who cut a hole in the ice and go for a swim every January first. COLD. Achy cold. Two or three of us had to go about knee deep in this abyss and start pushing.

Now the concept of simply rolling the raft onto the logs and thus onto the shore seems like a pretty good idea, except for a couple of drawbacks, not the least of which was the gentle slope of the beach which meant pushing this behemoth uphill. Also, "The Boys" made terrible donkeys, and the bottom of the lake was pretty slippery. Grunting, snorting, losing the feeling in our feet, the progress was excruciatingly slow, but eventually we slowly pushed the raft onto the shore.

We had another log to put in front of the first to continue the momentum. However, there was no momentum...it was just lift, push, shove, about 3 inches at a time, stopping at various intervals when the cold of the water or the soreness of the back kicked in.

Donkey work, indeed.

Anyway, we finally got the job done, the raft was completely out of the water and three or four feet onto the beach---we were done. Dad always said the same thing: "Thank you, gentlemen." We dashed for the warmth of the house, wondering, like we did every year, why we didn't do this before the water got so bloody cold. Looking back, though, the comraderie of Mal and "The Boys" and the tradition of "taking the raft out" is a very fond memory, indeed.

However, that was one good thing about Mom and Dad moving away in 1989--no more raft.

Chapter Thirty-Three (Paul): Halloween

2005-10-18T11:24:00.000-07:00

Halloween is my birthday, and this year it will be number fifty. Needless to say, there are a lot of memories that I have of October 31st, and I would like to share as much as I remember.

My earliest memories of Halloween are either through stories conveyed by Mom and Dad, or by watching the home movies from the fifties. I do know that Lee had the Chicken Pox on Halloween of 1955, and, with the excellent timing I would develop in my later years, I decided that, ready or not, it was time to make my Grand Entrance.

"I can't have a baby today," Mom wailed. "It's halloween, and Lee is sick." Nevertheless, I was born (as Victor Buono says) Normally...sufficiently...and despite a few hysterical Shepherds, quietly. 7:20pm Monday October 31, 1955.

Early home movies show Haloween at Mom and Dad's first house, on Fielding, with the Halloween revellers, mainly Billy Stanley (our next door neighbors' son, who was about Lee's age) and Lee going out trick or treating with Billy's mom Irene (the original Fran Drescher: "heheheheheheheh...") and a dark-haired Mom. One year (maybe the same year), Lee dressed as a Pirate. We moved to Dearborn Heights when I was about 2.

One year, after we had moved Lee and I dressed as Pongo and Perdita (from 101 Dalmations, in costumes hand made by Mom and originally used for a costume party that she and Dad had gone to). There were a lot of kids that lived on Dwight Drive in those days and a gang of us used to go trick or treating en masse up and down the street. There was Lee and I (and later Chris); Cathy and Kimmie Slotnick, Jimmy and Perry Allen and Eddie Cooper, among others. If memory serves me correctly, the Derry Children (Pat, Kevin and Owen) weren't allowed to go trick or treating. Marie Derry, their Mom, was very strict and a tiny bit strange and I think they didn't get to go for many years.

Kids didn't always say "trick or treat" back then. One of my favorite shouts at the door was "Help the poor!" It was a little strange, and probably not P.C. in this day and age, but times were simpler back then.

My most vivid memories of Halloween are after we moved to Farmington Hills. The houses there were more widely spaced apart, making it very hard to run from house to house to gather our loot. So we would go to Grandma Hill's where we would both celebrate my birthday and go trick or treating. Some of those older houses really creeped me out, as did some of the older people who answered the door but the homes were close together and we garnered a lot of candy.

1966 was the height of "Batmania". The campy TV series with Adam West and Burt Ward was a runaway hit that year and everything, it seemed, had a bat on it. Mom made Chris and I Batman and Robin costumes that year. My Batman costume had a cloth "Bat Cowl" that was actually clumsy, crude looking and hard to see out of. I lost it before Halloween and never did wear it. Chris looked spiffy in his authentic-looking "Robin" outfit though. I remember it was quite chilly that Halloween, and Chris's costume had sorts and boots but bare legs, so Mom made him wear a pair of white long johns to keep his legs warm as well. He looked quite pale from the waist down.

We would return to Grandma's and dump out our bags of loot on the living room floor. We'd always get Bit O' Honey, Dum Dum suckers, Apples (this was before anyone had to worry about some psycho putting a razor blade in a Halloween Apple), occasionally a full sized candy bar (which of course were the most coveted). There was always someone that handed out little boxes of a candy called "Snaps". They were two cents a box (unlike normal candy that was a dime a box). Problem was, it was black licorice candy, which I hated. I think I usually gave them to Mom, who did like licorice.

Seems like every year we'd come home from Grandma's around 10 to find our trees TPed and one year, our pumpkins smashed. There was quite the criminal element in Westgate subdivision (not the least of which was our next door neighbor Jon Bielby who was, I believe, the first terrorist). I'd get so mad, but what could you do? We couldn't prove anything.

It was fun having a birthday on Halloween too. Mom would refer to me as her "Halloween Pumpkin". I was kinda skinny until around age 7 or 8, so it took me years and many bags of candy for me to actually begin to resemble that pumpkin.

I think that I finally outgrew trick or treating about about 15 or so.

In 1989, Chris threw a huge Halloween party in Chicago. It was quite a blowout, and I drove there for the festivities. Chris was living with Mary Spitzer at the time, and they had a real big bash, much of which was caught on video and most of which was pretty embarrassing. In fact, it was something of a drunken brawl for a couple of reasons.

First of all, Chris, his best friend Jeff and I, tapped the keg of beer way, way too early---like at 1:30 in the afternoon. And, of course, we had to make sure the incoming beer wasn't poisoned or anything so we sampled the brew. Many times. I was pretty well trashed by the time the party started later that afternoon. When it was over I figured I drank for 12 hours straight.

What was I thinking? Also I dressed as a housewife---that's right, in full drag--for the party: a bathrobe, a nightgown borrowed from Mary, curlers and coldcream on my face. That coupled with the fact that I was completely shitfaced really added to the hilarity--and my embarrassment. I added to the ensemble with a plunger and a cigar. Plus I had a (cheezy) mustache at the time, so it did look pretty funny.

Watching the video, you can just hear the apartment gettting louder and louder as the night progresses. Lee and his then wife Barbara showed up as a couple fifties teenagers, and Chris's friend Jeff was dressed as a rocker--we called him "Jeff Leppard" the rest of the night. Chris himself had a nifty outfit (which was shrouded in secrecy until we finally saw him--Fernando from "Saturday Night Live", complete with the Ascot tie and the painted grey hair.

Another couple at the party, whom I can't remember who, maybe cousins of Mary or something, came as Pee Wee Herman and Miss Yvonne. Great costumes. However, true to the show, there was a secret word that everyone screamed when it was spoken, which only added to the din.

And, as was the case at just about every party attended by two or more of the Townley boys involving alcohol, there was the addled attempt to sing "So Much in Love" (a doo-wop song first recorded in the early 60s by The Tymes). That too was caught on video and was typically horrendous.

Anyway the party wound down and a bunch of us crashed at Chris's. I was roaring drunk, almost to the point where it felt like sobriety. Finally everyone fell asleep at around 3. I was up and at 'em at around 8 with absolutely the worst hangover of my storied drinking career. I drank a bloody mary and was out of the house by 10 or so. I think some people were going out to breakfast but quite frankly the thought of food really nauseated me at the time. The drive home was horrible, I was shaky and really hung over. It was the longest five hours of my life. The party was great, the after effects were terrible. It was probably the best and the worst halloween of my life, all rolled into one.

I still enjoy Halloween, there are no real traditions these days, only me getting one year older. And this year, I will have celebrated half a hundred of these things.

Chapter Thirty-Two (Chris): One More Time....

2005-10-07T01:35:00.000-07:00

If I knew, back in the late 80's or early 90's what was going to happen in the middle 2000's, well...I'm not sure I would have gone through with it.

But yesterday, the house sold...I have one more thing to do as Executor and then it will be over. After reading some of the entries in this blog, I remember well the fun we had, how much we enjoyed each other's company, how much we did together and how much we loved each other. As I said in my own blog, two people who mattered most are gone. BUT! They are in God's care and they are together. Sometimes, unfortunately, they are also watching us! LOL!

But I still have two brothers...two brothers that I love very much. They put up with my garbage, my crap, my crud...and, for whatever reason, they still put up with me. We are what's left. We are the progeny of those two wonderful people. We must carry on our name until we no longer can.

Both Mom & Dad left me with things I didn't ask for and things I didn't want. For instance...Dad left me sweating. My brothers have said that I can break a sweat buttering bread. It's true. So could Dad. Mom, on the other hand, left me with her worry. She always worried, about us, about Dad, about...well, everything. Now, so do I.

But, Dad instilled in me a love of certain music and a passion for being a good man...and to love the woman, the girl he married, to love unconditionally. He taught me never to raise my hand to a woman, no matter what (I must say, a painful but memorable lesson). Mom instilled in me, and both of my brothers, a love of music and a love of reading. She was a librarian, first and foremost. That love of reading. I still love reading. Mom must have known that it takes you away...it takes you to places you may never have the possibility to see in your life. Both of my parents were exemplary people...and I thank God for having known them. To love them. To be loved by them.

So, as I say my final farewell to their dream home, I also say "Goodbye" to them...but only for the moment. I know better. I know they will always be with me.

I say to my brothers, as well, I know you will always be with me, no matter what. I love you very much. I wish we could spend more time together. We have our lives to attend to. I understand that.

So....take, take me home.

Chapter Thirty-One (Paul): Early North Carolina Memories

2005-10-03T00:57:00.000-07:00

I think it appropriate on the closing of the sale of Mom and Dad's last home this past week to share some memories of those early days when they had just moved down and establishing a routine for retirement.

I had gone down that summer previous with Mom and Dad to see what had been done in the building. It would have been July of 1989, easily the hottest Godawful month of the year in a hot, extraordinarily humid climate.

I brought a video camera with me for the few days we were to be there (the last time they would visit before moving day) and took a walking tour of the house in progress. You could, even then, tell that it would be a beauty--only wood frame when we were there but clearly Mom and Dad were delighted with the progress of the building. That video is infamous for one of my famed beer chugs. I was extremely hot after I had walked around the house lugging the camera and taking the video for about a half hour, so I quaffed a beer on camera at the end--drank an entire 12 ounce beer in no more than 5 seconds. Everyone was pretty shocked at the velocity, but it tasted so good!

There were a couple of unique trees in the house. One was a severely crooked tree down by what would be the shoreline. It was strange looking but charming. The other was a tree that was growing right through the back porch. When building the house, the builder, Tom Eilert, noted that the tree would be very close to the back of the house and would, in fact, be in the way of the back outdoor patio. Instead of cutting it down, my parents had him build around the tree, so there was a hold the size of the tree trunk right in the patio. It, too, added to the charm of the new house.

So off they went, in early October of 1989. Once settled, Mom and Dad established a routine for themselves right off the bat. And, surprisingly enough, the routine started with a game of tennis. Neither had played before, but they found out there was a little informal group of senior citizens (I never thought of Mom and Dad as senior citizens, but this was a group of 60+ players that were pretty good players, and Mom and Dad enthusiastically took to playing every day. Dad especially was a really good tennis player, and I never got over the fact that he would play 60 minutes of fairly vigorous tennis and the first thing he'd do when he got back to the car was fire up a cigarette. Mom wasn't all that good but she was game. Some of the people I remember are Howard Lane (playing tennis at 83 years old!!!), Howard and Ava Nash, Jim Gunderson, Art Muccio, Margaret Widman, buncha others whose names escape me now. I always would play with them when we went to visit and it was quite the workout.

I remember after tennis they would also come back and eat Cantaloupe (which practically grew wild in North Carolina) watch "Family Feud" which starred the late Ray Combs back then. They both also immediately got involved with various bridge clubs down there and Mom got especially interested in crafts. Dad was mostly content to stay at home at watch TV (either The Weather Channel, aka Old People's MTV; or else CNN). They were very happy.

Our first Christmas down there was memorable. I remember arriving there at night, and we drove up to the house, it was really dark out (no streetlights and basically in the middle of nowhere) and the house was all lit up for the holidays, it was just beautiful. I think that was the first time we had soup the first night down there, which became a tradition. The whole house was beautifully decorated for the Christmas season and it immediately felt like home. I missed having Mom and Dad in Michigan, but they were happy and I was happy for them.

That first year was very special, because Mom and Dad were so excited about moving and decorating their new house, having a new circle of friends, and they were both in pretty good health. Even though the lake was a couple years away from being at their doorstep, you could see the level of the lake had gone up every time we went down there.

I loved the way the upstairs was designed. There was a full bathroom in the center, with a bedroom on each side. I don't know how we decided, but I took the Blue bedroom and Chris took the red bedroom. Plus, I got to sleep in my old bed from when I was a kid.

Another thing I really looked forward to going down there in the early days was renting the Nintendo. We would spend something like 25 dollars to rent a Nintendo Video game system and a couple games for a week. Chris liked to play "Double Dragon 2" and I was very happy to play "Super Mario Brothers" for hours and hours. Mom eventually took a liking to playing the game, and got very good at a game called "Dr. Mario".

The "Jeopardy" tradition followed Mom and dad and the rest of our family down to North Carolina as well. Not only gathering in front of the TV to watch it every night, but playing it as well at the kitchen table. The whole kitchen would fill with smoke as we would play, 4 out of 5 of us smoked and we were all pretty much in our cups as well (except Mom, of course). It was raucous fun, and Lee was usually the winner in the end--Mom, Chris and I occasionally won as well but older bro was the "head full of junk" guy. We would also occasionally play Trivial Pursuit (which Mom always accused me of reading asll the answer to) and Tripoley.

Various activities became routine as well. We would go to a restaurant that was devised out of an old house in Ellerbe; go to a nice little restaurant in Southern Pines where an incredible "Beef and Brie" sandwich was the specialty; Other great restaurants that I remember include the "Lob-steer Inn" (corny-ass name but great food) and "The Barn" (best damn Prime Rib I think I have ever tasted). Wal-Mart was a must, of course, and they changed locations during the time when Mom and Dad were down there, but we always made the trip, several times. It took a few years before a decent grocery store was located down in Seven Lakes, but finally they build a "Food Lion" (which Chris and I affectionately called the "Food King" after the movie "Animal House"). Chris and I used to go there to visit the meat: Abnormally red Hot dogs, C-Loaf, Liver Pudding, Souse and other bizarre stuff. I would always say that "No part of the pig is wasted in the south."

There were, of course, many other traditions that we established when we'd go down south to visit Mom and Dad. More to come.....

Chapter Thirty (Paul): Jerry and Me

2005-09-05T08:05:00.000-07:00

Without trying to sound a little bit egotistical, I think my family will always remember me when they think of Labor Day.

That's because, every year for Lord knows how long, Labor Day has meant the Jerry Lewis Telethon for Muscular Dystrophy. And for as long as anyone can remember, I have insisted on watching all or at least part of the Telethon.

When I was younger (and this goes all the way back to our Southbrook days), I would, like the ads say, "stay up with Jerry and watch the stars come out". I'd bring Mom and Dad's little portable black and white 13" television into my bedroom, put the TV on my desk chair right in front of my bed and stay up late Sunday night to watch the Telethon. Always fell asleep with the 'thon on and woke up watching it.

Everyone in the family would kind of razz me for watching it for some reason--in fact they still do to a lesser extent. Mom and Dad both hated the telethon, but I still watched it every year. When Mom and Dad moved down to North Carolina, I always called them like clockwork and asked them if they were watching Jerry. "Hell no," my Dad would always growl. Mom's responses were always similar.

I don't think I have missed an MD Telethon in 35 years. Chris talks about tradition a lot. This is my tradition, even though it has become an endless corporate parade of companies patting themnselves on the back. First thing I did when I woke up this morning was turn on the Telethon.

The stars did come out too. I remember the Martin and Lewis reunion, engineered by none less than Frank Sinatra himself. I remember Sammy Davis Jr. bringing down the house almost every year until his death 15 years ago (My God, has it been that long), but none more than when he first did "Mr. Bojangles", which later became a single for him. I remember the late Ben Vereen, of all people, singing an evocative version of the Foreigner song, "I Want to Know What Love Is" that positively brought tears to my eyes. They always had Charo. Norm Crosby. Don Rickles. Tony Orlando. Casey Kasem. Ed McMahon. Maureen McGovern.

And of course, as maudlin as it is, I was always around for Jerry's tearful singing of "You'll Never Walk Alone" at the end of every telethon.

Times have changed, in fact everything has changed in our lives, but I don't think I will ever let a Labor Day go by without staying up with Jerry.

Chapter Twenty-nine: (Lee) Mom, Kendallwood and Me

2005-08-15T19:47:00.000-07:00

It was the summer of 1964, and Mom and Dad had decided that we needed more space, so they were in the market for a new home. I was 14 years old, on summer vacation, and somewhat bored with the world around me….too grown up and cool to ride my bike anymore, and not yet old enough to drive. My Sundays, especially, were quiet, since most of my friends had family things going on, nobody was really around. I moped around the house a lot, and generally made a nuisance of myself. So when Mom embarked on her house hunt, she suggested that I tag along for company, and for something for me to do. Dad was usually involved with a project around the house, and wasn’t much for driving from subdivision to subdivision anyway, seeing as he drove a lot during the week in the course of his job.

At first, I balked, for no reason other than that I was a teenaged kid, by definition balky and obstinate. But, as the saying now goes, upon further review, I decided that it was better than hanging out at home helping Dad paint or some such thing. So, every Sunday morning after church (Mom hadn’t yet given up on trying to save my heathen soul) Mom and I would look through the Detroit News Real Estate section and plot our day’s course.

One of the saving graces for me at the time was that my mother was much more receptive to my kind of music than was my Dad, and she didn’t mind listening to Keener-13 or whatever I chose on the radio. Beatlemania was in full bloom, and Motown was a burgeoning force in the Detroit area, so more often than not, that’s what we would listen to. (To this day, I can’t hear Mary Wells’ “My Guy” without thinking of my Mom….it was one of her favorites). But I digress.

Off we would go, in search of the new Chateau Townley, to different areas and subdivisions, primarily in the Farmington and Farmington Hills (then Farmington Township) area. One fine Sunday, we were looking for a home in the Kendallwood subdivision of Farmington Hills. I was in charge of the map, which may or may not have been wise, but, nevertheless, I dutifully looked up the street and gave my Mom what I thought were concise, accurate directions. Well! We managed to find the street that provided entrée into the sub from the main drag, only to find a maze of curving, tangled streets once we actually made it in. Not a straight line in the bunch. And, as we bumbled our way through, the street names became more and more improbable….there was Nottingwood and Nestlewood, Sprucewood, and of course, Kendallwood. There was Westerleigh and Kirkside and Bannockburn, just to give the place a Scottish feel. Craftsbury, Shaftsbury, Chesterbrook, Westerbrook, Brandywine and Old Forge Lane. Every time we turned, there was a new street, each with a more pretentious name than the last. We found Bonnet Hill, Red Clover, and Glen Arden; Bay Tree, Baintree and Raintree. The main street through the sub seemed to be one named Aranel, but apparently, the rule was that every damned street in the sub was required to cross Aranel, preferably in numerous places. We wondered aloud whatever happened to Maple and Oak and Elm….sensible names for streets. At any rate, there was nothing for us to do but laugh about it, and with every new, pretentiously named street we would discover, there were renewed gales of laughter.

We never did find the house we were looking for, and it took us damned near a half an hour to extract ourselves fro Kendallwood sub once we decided to give up the ghost.

The house hunting continued through the summer, and Mom and Dad ended up building a house not far from Kendallwood, where, later on in my high school years, many of my friends lived. I finally learned my way around the nightmare sub of Farmington Hills.

Looking back, the summer of ’64 was a watershed for me in so many ways, not the least of which was that during these excursions, my Mom and I became friends. Somehow, somewhere along the way, she realized that I was growing up, and not her mindless little boy any longer, and I realized that parents were people, too, with their own dreams, disappointments and issues. From that time forward, I think I regarded my Mom a bit differently, and, as our relationship grew from the contentiousness of my early teenage years, I was always glad and thankful for the honest relationship we had.

Growing up happens when you least expect it.

Chapter Twenty-Eight (Chris) Come Saturday Morning

2005-08-14T07:06:00.000-07:00

There was a time in all of our lives when Saturday morning held possibilities beyond belief. Saturday morning could last forever and there were so many things to do. At that time of our lives when we went to bed on Friday, Saturday loomed large! There were so many things to do... cartoons... playing... just enjoying life.

I can remember my Saturday mornings...Sugary breakfast cereal! Sitting at the table and looking out at the world that I knew. Such a friendly world. A world without menace. I would eat up my breakfast cereal and then I would watch cartoons... cartoons that had a positive message...H.R. Pufnstuf...the SuperFriends...Bugs Bunny. The cartoons would generally end around 10 or 11 a.m. Then I was free to explore and play! I was lucky. I had a ravine behind my house and there were so many opportunities that came with that!

Frogs, turtles, fish and just the water itself! My neighbor'ss Dad called it a "Dirty old Crick" But to me, it was an amusement park. There were parts of the creek that were very large and you could see fish swimming about. There were other parts of the creek that were very small and those were the parts that we would usually jump across to get to the other side. Sometimes you would get a "soaker". That meant that your tennis shoe or as we called them "gym shoes" just happened to land in the creek and your foot would be wet for the rest of the day. We didn't care..it was a part of our life at that time! We found so much wildlife in those parts...we didn't know what to do with all of them. We made Turtle Towns in my sandbox for the turtles that we caught, we played with the frogs in the swimming pool until they got so sick from the chlorine that we had to take them back to the ravine and we got rid of the crayfish immediately because we were afraid of those little claws they had!

In those days there were no video games, no Nintendos, no computers. Everything that we did and everything that we imagined came from our own imaginations. We would actually go outside and play. We would actually go outside!

We made our own fun. We would ride our bikes for thousands of miles and still be home for dinner. We were not afraid to get dirty or take a few chances. We would ride our bikes over that jump and fly into the air. Maybe we would wipe out and skin our elbows. Maybe we would make it and feel like Evel Kneivel! We tried though.

Saturday Morning! What fun there was to have! We didn't carry the concept of time into that day....We just played and had fun until we knew it was time to go home for dinner.

Sometimes, on Saturday morning, my Dad had something to do. He would ask me if I wanted to go to the hardware store or somewhere similar with him. And I would jump at the chance. Riding beside him in his car, listening to "King Of The Road" or "Winchester Cathedral", we'd always try to whistle along, but we'd end up smiling at each other and we couldn't whistle!) We shared a common bond. We shared...and we knew that there was a love that was so far beyond anything else. When you are eight years old and with your Father, you are with a hero. You are with a wonderful man who can do no wrong. And you are with your best friend. And helping him do something for the family was fabulous!

And so that was Saturday morning....bright and beautiful. Wonderful and huge! It was Saturday morning!

Chapter Twenty-Seven (Paul): Worst. Umpire. Ever.

2005-08-09T09:13:00.000-07:00

When I was fourteen, I decided to train to become a Little League umpire. What the hell was I thinking?

It paid five bucks a game, not bad money for a 14 year old. Colorful American league Umpire Ron Luciano (who didn't call people out, he called them OUT-OUT-OUT-OUT), was one of my heroes. Nothing really bad could happen, (or so I thought) and I wasn't good enough to actually participate in the sport itself so I thought I'd give it a try.

And try I did.

I went to a half dozen umpiring classes at the local school and then, with no actual in-field training, I was cast into the wolves' den, calling balls and strikes the best way i knew how for an actual Little League game.

I was terrible. I was the world's worst umpire. I couldn't envision the strike zone on a batter if my life depended on it. By about the second inning of the first game, I was in trouble. Both benches were riding me about my calls, expecting of course a major league ump who was in complete control of the game and knew what he was doing. It started to rain, only making everything worse. Then the parents started screaming at me along with everyone else. It was miserable, I was hot and sweaty behind the mask and pads and it made my whole first game experience even worse.

Dad had come to the game and was behind the backstop yelling encouragement to me, "Walk it off, Paul!" "Don't listen to 'em, Ump, you're doing fine." and so on. But essentially I was in the middle of the most miserable hour and a half of my life.

At one point there was a play at the plate, and I called the batter out. The ump trainers had told us in a situation like that to make your call, make it decisively and, right or wrong, walk away. I was probably wrong and it was probably a horrible call. The kid I called out was in tears. The kid's teammates were swarming me, and his manager was down my throat, screaming and yelling at me. Dad screamed, "Walk away from him Paul, just walk away." Not being a terribly assertive person at age 14, I turned my back and meekly ordered "Batter Up!"

Mercifully, the game ended. I started walking to the car with my head down, Dad trying to comfort me, when I heard a shout coming from the field from someone coming towards us. This fat slob of a manager who had his player called out at the plate still wanted a piece of me.

'YOU! UMPIRE! WHAT'S YOUR NAME! I WANT YOUR NAME! GIVE ME YOUR NAME!"

To which my father whirled around, pointed his finger directly and emphatically into the manager's chest, and said the following:

"HIS name is Townley. And MY name is Townley. And if you say ONE MORE WORD TO HIM I am going to punch your fucking lights out!"

Stunned, perhaps by the unexpected ferocity of what Dad said to him and how he said it, the manager took a step back, and started blustering something unintelligible. Dad once again thrust his finger at the man for emphasis, said "Come on, Paul, let's go" and we turned and walked to the car and went home.

When we got home, it was dark and I was still pretty upset and wanted to quit. Dad and I went for a swim (like we did a lot in the evening) and then Dad called the head of the area Little League about the way I had been treated. Apparently the outcome of that conversation was that the manager (who they apparently had had similar problems with in the past) was banned from managing for the rest of that season, and then the Little League official talked to me and urged me to continue umpiring. I didn't want to, but I ended up doing one more game probably mostly to appease Dad, who didn't want me to be a quitter. I was every bit as bad in the second game, and probably missed just as many calls, but apparently the head of the league had laid down the law about mistreating the umpires (who, at 14 were only a couple years older than the kids playing) because no one gave me a hard time. Plus, unlike the first game I umped, this game wasn't close. However, I could see some of the kids (including one of the pitchers on the mound) laughing at the bad calls I was making and after that game ended, I decided I had had enough. I took my ten dollar check, probably blew it on junk or records, and the career of the worst umpire ever came to an unceremonious end.

Up until then, I had never heard my Dad talk or act like that, at least that I could remember. But after that incident, I was in awe of my Dad. Today, that's a given.

Chapter Twenty-six (Paul): Brussels Sprouts, Waldorf Salad and the Orange Medicine

2005-08-08T11:29:00.000-07:00

If you look at the three sons of Audrey and Mal Townley, chances are you will know that we haven't missed too many meals in our lives.

The dinner table has always been a gathering place for the Townleys, to relate the days happenings and of course, pack away enough food for a third world country.

Dad's call to dinner was usually the same (from his Navy days). "CHOW DOWN FOR ALL HANDS." I can still hear him saying that in a loud voice to this day.

And Mom would make us some great meals. The Pot Roast O' Doom notwithstanding (see chapter six), we ate pretty well, even on a budget.

The Pot Roast was a staple in our family. Mom would take a thickly cut chuck roast, put it in some foil, open a can of Campbell's Creme of Mushroom Soup and a package of Wyler's Dry French Onion Soup mix, wrap the whole thing in foil and put it in an oven for a couple hours. The meat cooked fork tender in its own juices. Yum! I think all three of us still make pot roast that way to this day.

Another of my favorites was a sandwich that Mom would whip up for us in the oven. She'd take a hamburger roll, spread Miracle Whip on it (about the only time I will eat that vile stuff), add swiss cheese and diced Spam, wrap 'em in foil and oven bake for a half hour or so. Again, yum! I remember they were always hotter than blue hell when they came out of the oven and the cheese often sticked to the foil. But boy they were good.

A tradition that Chris started when we began going down to North Carolina was to have soup the first night we were there. One of the first times we went down to North Carolina to visit we were kind of late getting in and Mom had prepared a crock pot of "Soup Starter" chicken soup. Chris enjoyed the meal so much that we had it almost every time we went down there for the first night. Even when it was 100 degrees out.

So many food memories from someone who loves to eat: Chicken Divan, Grandma Spry's Egg pancakes, countless cheesburgers from Dad's grill (I remember the plastic tomato ketchup dispenser that Dad filled with water to keep the house from burning down), Spinach Salad with Sweet Bacon dressing, Grilled Cheese, "Good Steak", Pancakes, Roast Beef and lots more.

Dad's specialty was "Good Tuna". It was just a fairly ordinary Tuna sandwich, but Dad added his own touches like minced onions and celery. And he always called it "Good Tuna". I don't know why, but they tasted so much better when Dad made them!

Mom used to make something called "Milk Toast". Looking back, it was pretty nasty and probably meant for some people who had no teeth. Mom would toast a couple slices of bread, then put it in a shallow bowl, saturated it with milk and sprinkled sugar, cinnamon sugar or brown sugar on it. Mom loved it.

Mom also loved breakfast while we were on vacation. It was like the highlight of the day for her. We'd go to a Waffle House or a Howard Johnson's and Mom would load up on eggs (dippie style), toast and jam and oatmeal. I remember the cool misty mornings in the mountains when Mom and Dad would get us up and we'd trudge out to breakfast.

One thing I didn't realize until only recently was that Mom wasn't a real fan of "al dente" vegetables. Meaning, she cooked the SHIT out of the vegetables she fed us. Spinach, Broccoli, Corn, Peas, Potatoes---all pretty much ended up the same consistency. She liked them that way and we gobbled it up nevertheless.

Back to a certain vegetable in just a minute.

Chris started another "tradition" on the North carolina visits. He called it "Caribbean Soul Night" in which essentially we watched him get hammered on Margaritas and Pina Coladas and we would have some sort of exotic fare for dinner. We had Pineapple kabobs one year, or Mango Pork or some such thing and listen to Jimmy Buffet music. It was a blast.

A real treat for us kids was when Dad had his bowling night, Wednesday nights, at Ford Lanes on Van Born Road. More often than not, he'd stop at Mr. Joes in Southfield and bring home a couple sacks of some of the best damn hamburgers I have ever tasted, and sometimes Kielbasa sandwiches. Oh my God they were GOOD! And Lee and I would go back there when we were older and slam down those same awesome burgers (but that time, with a cold beer to go with it).

There was always dessert too at our table, ranging from Ice Cream with Sanders Hot Fudge to Grandma's two-frosting cake with the jelly in the middle (Mom liked vanilla and Dad liked chocolate so Grandma Hill would make it half and half). One of Mom's specialties was gingerbread with warm lemon sauce. Mmmmm!

What with the three sons' respective expanded girth you'd think we would pretty much eat anything put in front of us. Not true.

Lee's bane was Brussels Sprouts, and I don't blame him. They are nasty little cooked mini cabbages and are an acquired taste at best. I pretty much list them among the vegetables that I'd rather avoid too, but Lee DETESTED them. Still does, to this day.

For some reason, I took a dislike to Waldorf Salad one night when I was about 8 or so. Ironically, I really like the stuff now. Anyway, Mom and Dad were of the mind that "how can you know you don't like it if you don't taste it?" So, at their behest (actually ORDER) I took a mouthful of the Salad, but kept it in my mouth without swallowing it, excused myself from the table, walked out the front door, down the street to Hass Avenue, got about halfway down the block and spit it all out. Right on the sidewalk. That was the last time I remember having Waldorf Salad at the Townley dinner table for many, many years.

Chris was always somewhat of a fussy eater, and to this day avoids vegetables like the plague, but nothing really stands out in my mind food-wise that he really hated. However, there was a certain type of medicine that the doctor prescribed for him that he absolutely detested. Dubbed "Orange Medicine", it was some sort of a sulpha medication that was supposed to make him feel better but usually resulted in a massive headache for poor Mom. She would chase Chris all over the house trying to give him the medicine (it was liquid), and actually it wasn't all that bad. To Chris, however, it weas reminiscient of the Apocalypse. When she would finally catch Chris and convince him that it was in his best interest to take the medicine, Chris would have at least half a loaf of bread to kill the taste and would gag, choke and sputter whenever he was finally administered the deadly potion.

(Years later the Doctor casually mentioned that the Sulpha medicine was and had been available in pill form for years. All that fuss for nothing...)

beef. it's what's eating dinner.

Anyway, I remember a lot of great meals in all our houses, and to this day, cooking and especially eating are two of my favorite pastimes. Just look at my waistline.

Chapter Twenty-Five (Chris): Rainy Days and Mondays

2005-07-25T18:50:00.000-07:00

My older brother, Lee, and I were separated by eleven years (as in "these go to eleven"). Now that we are older and have many of the same interests, it doesn't seem very far apart. But when you are twelve and he is twenty-three, it is a chasm. He was a working man, I was in sixth grade. He worked nights and I went to school during the day. We actually rarely saw one another in those days and, at very least, didn't know much about each other's lives. But, as brothers would do, I knew I could count on him at a moment's notice. Well, this is the story of one of those times that I will never forget.

When I was in sixth grade, my Mom decided that I was old enough to take care of myself in the morning and get myself to school, so she took a job (which was the best thing she could have done for herself in that she enjoyed it soooo much!) Well, being the little trouper I was, I did exactly that. After she made my breakfast and scooted off to work, I would watch television until the appointed time and then ride my bike off to school. It was great! It was a sense of autonomy previously denied to me. It taught me to be responsible (which in the next many years, I didn't always remember that lesson) but, nonetheless, it was a good lesson.

In the meantime, Lee, who worked nights, became the bear in the back room. Ocassionally I would hear him laughing at the dj on the radio but, other than that, he was OFF-LIMITS in the morning!

However, on this particular day we were having a torrential downpour by the time I had to go to school. I knew I wouldn't be able to make it to school on my bike, so I crept timidly up the stairs and stood in front of his door. Finally, I summoned the courage to knock, albeit lightly, on his door.

"Lee?" I whispered.

"What!!!!?" was the growling answer.

I explained my predicament through the door quietly. After a moment or so of grumbling, the door swung open (I believe I actually backpeddled two or three steps) and he said, "Let's go".

And, even though the conversation on the way to my school was sketchy and I believe there was some sort of wisdom about paying attention to things brought forth by brother Lee (I was too scared to listen or remember - or perhaps I was so scared, I've blocked it from my memory forever). The bottom line is that he got me to school, on time and sailed away, as I watched from the front door, in his red chariot, back to his lion's den.

But it was something that, obviously, I've never forgotten. And it did instill a bit of wisdom in me. Whenever one of your brothers (or sisters) is in trouble, no matter the what cost to you, you help. Always.

I will never forget that moment or that lesson. For what, I thank my oldest brother.

Chapter Twenty-Four (Chris): The Greatest Christmas Gift

2005-07-25T18:48:00.000-07:00

Although Paul spoke to some of the worst Christmas's we have had, for some reason, I have been think about Christmas. Maybe because it's so damned hot out that I long for the snow and the Christmas feeling. Perhaps its just because I have so many good memories.

I can remember those Christmas mornings Paul and I spent together. Grandma T, as we called her, would always come to visit and she always took over my room. So, that meant, I had to bunk with Paul. Although I believe we have discussed this before I will reiterate. Paul and I would be up by 4:00 a.m. or so and, having strict orders from my Dad, we weren't allowed to even make noise until 7:00 a.m. Well, we spent the time reading Superman comics, amongst others, and hanging out together and waiting for the clock to move forward.

Christmas was always a good time, especially when we first started going down south. Our Mom would always have special events planned (not just going to Wal-Mart or Sonics), Paul would always have his "Ultimate Christmas" tape (that's before we began making CD's), he and I would always fight over the Nintendo and we always had a great time.

There was one Christmas, sometime in the 80's or earlier 90's, that my Mom had a scare, medically. I never really figured it all out but I know that it was probably the best Christmas I ever spent with my brother, Paul. While Mom and Dad were off at the doctors Paul and I would get dinner together, set the table and so on. In reality, Paul would do most of the work and I would sit on my ass and watch him. But we also spent a half an hour with Groucho Marx. We would watch "You Bet Your Life" on television, every weekday at 5:30. Groucho was great and Paul and I got the opportunity to talk. That was even better. We just enjoyed each other's company while we worried about our Mom. Then they would return home and we would have dinner, usually Paul would bound out of his chair to clean up, while I sat like a pig in muck (a Malism...cleaned up for this blog) and watched intently as he loaded the dishwasher. Well, at least I watched intently! At the end of the crisis, my Mom told us that she was medically cleared. What better of a Christmas gift could you have asked for?

It was the gift of fun and laughter in the face of adversity. It was the gift of spending time with my older brother and coming to learn who he was, what he was and how great he was. It was the gift of spending time with each other. It was the gift of family. Which, in my estimation, is the greatest gift of all. God Bless Us all, everyone.

Which leads me to another story...this one about my oldest brother

Chapter Twenty-Three, part four (Chris) Chris's Cars, again

2005-07-03T23:43:00.000-07:00

Not only have I had weird experiences in my own car, but I’ve had strange encounters in other’s cars. Namely, Mom’s car. To wit:

The Horn Incident: I am somewhat skittish of nature anyway (I guess because I have two older brothers) and I have found that things that are not in my usual agenda cause me to…well…flip out a little bit. In this particular incident, I was sitting in my Dad’s chair, watching television after school. Now you must remember that the family room in which I was sitting was only a wall away from the garage (the one described earlier as being crashed into by a VW Beetle). So…there I sat, enjoying my afternoon television watching after school, when I heard the strangest sound. It started softly and then grew in intensity until it had me hiding BEHIND the chair.

“beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”

I was intrigued at this time but not in a panic…yet.

“eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”

Okay, now I’m in a panic…this thing is coming closer.

“eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”

We have the enemy in site and I am their’s. The sound continued into my own garage… my own home and wouldn’t stop!

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”

Finally, summoning a bit of courage, I walked out into said garage and found my Mom, standing in front of her Corvair, with the horn blowing loudly!

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”

Hollering at each other we finally decided to open the engine compartment where upon I pulled the wires to the horn.

“EEEEEEP!”

So much for the monster that ate my garage. Needless to say, my Mom didn’t have a horn on that car for the rest of it’s life with us.

Again: The Car Wash Incident: Well, once again, Mom and I were driving home from our respective workplaces. I didn’t have much luck with retaining my driver’s license in the early years, so I had to find ride where I could. And people ask me to this day, “Why do you drive like such a Grandpa?” Well, there’s you’re answer. Anyway, on this day, a beautiful summer day, Mom decided that we should get her car washed (the aforementioned 1974 Bel Aire that I drove into another car). Well, the automatic carwash was not accepting her car. Everytime the little thingy that takes your car in there came by, it reject Mom’s car. So the attendant advised that, perhaps, she wasn’t in neutral. So Mom mucked about with her automatic transmission shifter and suddenly, off we went. At about 40 MPH…through the carwash…at 40 MPH…there went the brushes, the rinses, the waxes and then we came upon the dryer. This thing had a great big wheel on it that passed over your car as it dried it. Well, at 40 MPH, this thing came at us with the fury of a Welsh Pembrook Corgi in heat. As the wheel headed for the windshield, we ducked, throwing our arms up in a vain attempt to protect our heads from the flying glass we were sure was about to be served up. The wheel hit, nothing happened and we were free of the carwash “Tunnel Of Hell”. At that point the attendant asked if we wanted another wash. Dazed, we both shook our heads and drove off into the sunset, with a half-washed car and a life-long fear of that type of carwash.

Finally: The Morning Of The Flying Geekoid: In this particular episode, Mom was driving me to work again. I was coming from a seven day disability claim (I had injured my ankle in a stupid incident) and was, allegedly, ready to return to work. Be that as it may, we were sitting at an intersection and, as my Mom began her right turn onto the next road, suddenly, there was a man’s face in the windshield. We watched as, in slow motion, this flying geekoid rolled across the hood of Mom’s car and ended up on the side of the road. Lying there…as if he was dead. My Mom and I could do nothing more than stare at the lifeless body by the side of the road. Years later Mom confided in me, telling me she thought he was REALLY dead! Minutes went by as we, mouths agape stared at this lifeless man, and he laid on the side of the road. Suddenly, as if by magic, he jumped up and started walking around…as if to walk off his injuries. Then, as suddenly as he got up, he laid down on the grass. My first thought was to go out and kick this man repeatedly, indicating that he shouldn’t have scared my Mother like that (although I was the one who was scared), but he seemed as though he was in enough pain that I decided against it. Now! Still sitting in the car I realized that we were only a block away from the police station. I realized this only because by then, five or six Prowlers had happened upon the scene, along with a EMS truck. Finally I got out of the car and surveyed the damage to Mom’s car. Aside from the original point of impact (in fact, Geekoid Boy had hit US!) and the evidence of his rolling over the car in the dust on the car, there really was no damage. I told Mom to stay there and I ran across the street to the Clark Gas Station. Now, let’s remember I was coming from an ankle injury, so I didn’t really run, I hobbled over to the phone at the gas station. From there, I phoned my Dad. My poor, beleaguered father. He sighed a heavy sigh on the phone (I figured he was thinking I had caused the whole thing) and, within moments, he was there. The Knight in a shining suit coat, white shirt and tie. He calmed my Mom down, spoke to the police and, as he always did, figured everything out for us.
As it turned out, the Flying Geekoid HAD hit Mom’s car, rolled across the hood and roof and ended up on the other side. When he laid down on the grass, my first instinct was to go out and kick him a couple of times.

“Why did you (kick) make us think (kick) that you were (kick) DEAD?! (kick, just for good measure)”.

Good thing I didn’t. As it turned out, this poor man was wheeling his way to his job. Think about that for a moment. This guy had no other way but bicycle to get his work. And, well, after he did his Flying Geekoid performance, his bike was f**ked! Later in the week, Mom and I saw him walking to his job.

In a stroke of kindness or just for good PR, Mom’s insurance company bought him a new bicycle. Last time Mom and I saw him, he was riding his shiny new bike to work.

So it just goes to show you that I’m not always the criminal in these scenarios. We are subject to outside forces that wash our cars, run into our cars and make them speak for themselves.
I still have to smile when I think of Mom and I in her car, singing the 1970’s songs of Neil Diamond, Harry Chapin, Neil Sedaka and others together. We listened to the AM radio stations together, we talked, we spent time together…

And we had some of the strangest things happen to us in a car since Henry Ford drove his first car off the line.

BLD - 7/3/05

Chapter Twenty-three, Part 3 (Chris's View) Chris's Cars

2005-06-21T10:03:00.000-07:00

Now that we have discussed all of the cars I smashed all to hell, let's talk about the "Next Generation".

For a while I drove an "024". I don't remember the make or model, it was just an "024". No power anything, no air conditioning, no nothing. An engine, a front seat and a steering wheel. That's it. I can remember all those July afternoons, driving like hell, just to get home to my air-conditioned home. Sometimes it worked, sometimes I sat in traffic and sweated. And at that time I could easily break out in a sweat while buttering bread, so sitting in a car while caught in traffic...well, you get the picture. But that only lasted for a few months.

When I worked for an insurance company, I did well enough that, while I was driving the "024", they gave me a "Company Car". It was a 1987 Chevy Cavalier. A great car, actually. It never gave me a lick of trouble. But, I wasn't the best at keeping the car in the best of shape. At one point, I had a take-out dinner of garlic shrimp pasta in the front seat and, well, some of it spilled onto that particular seat. No matter what I did, that car smelled like a shrimping boat for about the next six weeks. Good thing the boss didn't want to take it for a spin.

Then came another company car. The Who-knows-what-model-or-make, the car that looked like everything else on the road. What I do remember is that I had asked for a black car with slate gray interior. As my boss handed me the keys, she said, "I'm sorry, but it's a really nasty bright, neon blue with a grey interior". I remember saying something like "You're handing me the key to a brand new car and apologizing?". That was the nicest exchange she and I ever had. But soon after, I was promoted and couldn't hang onto that car. I was forced to buy my own car. With my own money. Without Mom and Dad helping. With my own money. My own car. With my own money.

So...with $2500 in my back pocket (provided by the company) and no credit and no other money to spend, I went out looking. Finally, time and pressure made me buy a small compact, make and model unknown! I drove away cheerfully with my prize only to find, in about twenty miles that the transmission wasn't working correctly. Well, in a fit, I kicked the front fender, bending it for life and misaligning the driver's side door. The place where I had purchased this automobile wasn't amenable to fixing it...I really think they knew that it was a POS when they sold it to me. So, for another $1000, I had the damned thing fixed and was off on my way. Well, as the months went by, other things went wrong (well, I guess I should have known) and more dollars went into the car. And going through one of those drive-through car washes...well, because the door was misaligned, I got soaked. Madly stuffing paper towels from the glovebox into the door, I still was wet as hell when I got out. I learned a very pointed lesson about that car that day! (And that reminds me about a number of stories about driving with my Mom, but that will have to wait!)

Now...I must amend this part of the story. A girl that I worked with, by the name of Kelly, a bright, cheery, very attractive blond with a great smile and an even better body had purchased a car known as the "Del Sol" (Brand f***ing new, as well). Well, one day I was looking at our cars parked next to each other and I said to her, I guess our cars really to reflect our personalities. When she questioned this, I told her that my car was old and a little broken down and hers was brand new and beautiful. Much like each of us. She was brand new and beautiful. I was older and a little broken down. It was at that moment that I told her, "You own the Del Sol. I own the Del Shitheap". And the name stuck. Well, turns out, the Del Shitheap conveyed my sorry ass over 80,000 miles and, as I brought it in to trade it in for $200.00, it was blowing black smoke from a blown head gasket (as a matter of fact I can still see the salesman shaking his head through the front window, thinking to himself, I gave him a $200.00 credit on THIS?) and that was the last I saw of it. I imagine it is a $200.00 paperweight on someone's desk right now. But, the poor little machine made it there and I will ever be in it's debt.

And with that I bought what I crowned as the "Del NewHeap". Again, another Chevy Cavalier (1994 version this time) which, with a little care and some very costly repairs, still conveys my sorry ass around town.

By the way, people who drive with me today say I drive like a Grandpa. Well, you know what? You're damned right I do. I've hit enough stuff at about a total speed of about 2000 mph. I don't want to hit anything ever again.

God and Mother Mary Bless all of my cars. They all, in their own way, served me well. I salute them and I think of them with great fondness and always will.

Chapter Twenty-Three part 2 (Chris's View): Cars

2005-06-14T08:57:00.000-07:00

I had cars, too. At first, it was my Mom's 1973 Bel Aire, which bore no resemblance to the Bel-Aire of the 1950's. This thing was like driving a cave. The car itself was dark green, the interior was dark something-or-other and it was like a moving cave. But, I was 16 years old and I didn't care, it got me where I wanted to go. One night, after partying, perhaps a bit too much, I was on the road with a friend named Matt and, on Middlebelt Road, I came over a rise to find a car, stopped dead in my lane, no tailights, nothing. Just stopped! I told Matt to hang on and we hit them dead on. I was somewhat in the clouds as I got out and started cursing at THEM for being stopped in the middle of the road. Towed and totalled...that's how the Bel Aire ended up. And that was before I blew the engine...which is another story altogether.

Then came the famous 1974 Torino. Bronze and beautiful. And a steal at $800 or so I thought. So, with my parents money I bought the car and, as I drove away from the seller's driveway, it began to rust. And the rust ate away at this car until I had a blue door on the driver's side and, due to an accident, a yellow door (which never worked correctly) on the passenger's side. Luckily, I never hit anything else with this car. Dad was able to sell this piece of junk to a friend for $200. Net loss: $600. Net Gain: I had a lot of fun in that car. I spent time with a girl I loved very much in that car, I mended fences with one of my best friends in that car and I was able to get around for a couple of years.

Then came the car of my dreams. A 1974 Camaro...350, 4 BBL engine, 60's on the back wheels, light blue (it looked like a Gramma's car until it went off the line) and black leather interior. $1000. That's it. $1000. This car was beautiful. I used to drive home from my dishwasher job at 100 mph, just to watch Johnny Carson's monologue (you remember Johnny, don't you?). I have so many memories of that car and the things that happened in it, because of it and as a result of it's power. Unfortunately, one month after purchasing it, I lost control on a dirt road and smashed the SOB into a tree or a telephone pole or whatever. I started the car, it took me home and died. It never lived again.

So, wanting another "bullet car" as Mom used to call them, I bought a Firebird. It was a three speed and wasn't fast, but it had the fin on the back and it looked very cool. I don't like to talk about what happened to that car, but, suffice to say it died an ignominious death. Smashed beyond compare. And it took me with it.

When I finally finished college and I needed a car to get to work and job searches, I bought my Mom's Citation. An ugly, tank-like, brown MF'ing car that was ugly, tank-like and just NOT a chick magnet. But for now, I will leave this as is.

In Part Three we will talk about the other cars in my life. I believe it's equally as interesting as the part I've just written.

"Baby won't you ride in my car, car? Baby won't you ride in my car, car?" More to follow.

Chapter Twenty-Three (Paul's view): Cars

2005-06-09T10:24:00.000-07:00

I'm sure this will end up being a 3-parter, which each of my brothers having his own memories of their vehicles, but here is my take.

=====

My first car was a 1968 Pontiac LeMans, purchased for 800 dollars and given to me by my Mom and Dad as a High School Graduation gift. It was really a good car, and served me well for a few years. Of course it was thrilling to get MY OWN CAR.

I had some good memories when I finally got to take the LeMans up to school. The rules at MSU were that freshmen couldn't have their cars but sophomore+ could. I was pretty popular on my floor sophomore year if nothing else for that reason: trips to Tom's party store and up north for our annual Memorial Day camping trip.

Once we all drove up to Coral Gables in my car. Now that doesn't seem like anything exciting, except that there were 14 people in that car. At once. With me at the wheel. My then-girlfriend Kathi, who was very tiny and of course the last one into the car, kept wailing "everywhere I put my hand it's in the wrong place!" Can't believe that I didn't get pulled over.

this looks almost exactly like my first car.

There was also the mooning incident. My roommate Leo and I, mature and upstanding individuals that we were, liked to cruise Grand River Avenue and moon people. I did the drivin' and Leo did the moonin'. One particular day we were in pretty heavy traffic and Leo decided to press a ham. He had just dropped trou and was about to treat some girls in the next car to his vertical smile when all of a sudden, our lane stopped and the right lane kept moving and suddenly here's one of East Lansing's finest right next to us.

"LEO!" I hissed. "COP!" Well he just about jumped under the front seat and fortunately for both of us the police officer didn't see Leo. But both of us were checking our underwear after that incident, and I don't think Leo did any more B.A.s after that little incident.

I traded my LeMans in to Alan Ford for a red 1975 Mustang. The transmission of the LeMans was slipping badly and as I drove to the car dealer in Bloomfield to pick up my new car, my old car was leaking some sort of viscious fluid at an alarming rate. But then there was the Mustang. Sharp car. Nice red spiffy-looking hatchback. Incredibly underpowered, as in you needed a good tail wind to get to speed. What was FoMoCo thinking when they took the once-mighty Mustang and put a puny little 4 cylinder engine inside? That's what they did in 1975. Anyway, this was the car I had when I moved to Grand Rapids, and got NUMEROUS parking tickets there before being retired. No real memories of that car really. It was nice enough, I guess.

My next car was a 1977 Renault LeCar. This was supposed to be the next wave in cars, fuel efficient little fuckers that were small on the outside yet surprisingly spacious on the inside. And, true, my LeCar got about 40 miles to the gallon, which was nice. It had a sunroof that encompassed almost all of the roof, which was also nice. It was kind of an ugly brown color--not so nice.

The first time I drove it, Mom, Dad, Chris and Grandma Townley came up to both visit and drop off my new car, which had been purchased in Pontiac. I had no experience driving a stick shift, and in the parking lot I scared the crap out of Dad (in the front seat) by racing through at about 35 miles an hour, happily shifting gears all the way. I think Dad required extra liquid lubrication at the restraurant after that.

I really loved the LeCar except for one thing: it went through clutches like Grant went through Richmond. I think I replaced the clutch 3 times on that car in the two years I had it. And, being an import, it was no cheap affair: over 400 dollars each time. I ended up selling the car to a delighted young lady who couldn't believe she was getting a 4 year old car for $450 (but I'm sure she came back down to earth after having the breaks and clutch fixed to the tune of about a grand).

LeCar. more like "LeClutch".

Next car was the first of a couple of "Mom and Dad hand-me-downs": It was a 1979 Granada, white, red leather interior, rather rusty, 100 thousand miles or so. It was the original "Thud the Rolling Dumpster". I remember numerous times getting ready to leave for work in our mobile home in Kentwood and the car not starting, so I had to have a fellow WCUZ staff member come down and give me a jump. My boss, John Bry, finally got fed up and put his foot down, so I had to make the car more dependable. This was also the car I was driving when I moved back to Detroit.

The Shit-vette was the next car I owned. This was a adorably cute little white 1982 Chevrolet Chevette, one of the biggest pieces of crap that I ever owned. First of all, I was WAY too big to be driving a sub-compact car, and I absolutely FILLED the inside of it. (There exists some video that Chris took of me leaving after a weekend at Sunny Beach, with nothing but my meaty roast of a face filling the front window of the car and the Shit-vette stalling every 10 or 15 seconds (as it was wont to do) as I tried to make my departure. You can hear Chris, who was operating the camera, giggling at my misfortune, but it actually was rather humorous).

Second, it apparently had been in an accident, because it pulled severely to the left. And thirdly it had a brake problem (apparently ALL the Chevettes had this problem). I had to replace the brakes--ALL the brake components, including rotors, calipers, shoes, everything, to the tune of more than 400 dollars each time. I had to replace them 3 times. Have I mentioned what a piece of garbage this car was? Also, when I was training at Toys R Us in spring of 1985 in Dearborn (corner of Michigan and Telegraph), someone stole the car. I wish they had kept it. I finally unloaded it to some poor schmuck for 800 bucks. Good riddance.

My next car, another former Dad car, was a K-car, a maroon 1982 Dodge Aires. Not a bad car by any means, until I was rear-ended by some dumbass drunk in a van on Southfield Road in Lincoln Park (I was living in Wyandotte at the time). There was substantial damage to the rear end and the guy was either uninsured or only had PL & PD. Being the nice guy I was, I only exchanged information and no police were called.

My next car was the shizz, as the kids say. It was a 1982 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, full sized, fully loaded, silver color, with power everything and, of course, "fully factory air-conditioned air from our fully factory equipped air conditioned factory."(or however that Firesign Theater schtick goes). Anyway, Dad managed to glom this beauty off an elderly couple in Bloomfield Hills for just 2800 dollars. And it was probably worth twice that. This car was just beautiful. The only thing that turned out to be wrong with it was, somewhere along the way, a mechanic told me the block was cracked. But that was after I was driving it for a couple years and it had served me well. One of the last times I drove it I was coming down Fort Street (WHY did everything bad happen to me in Lincoln Park???) and the entire inside of the car filled up with black smoke. That scared me to death. I ended up selling it for 50 dollars as scrap to someone who came to the house (the day I was moving to White Lake) and towed it away.

The next vehicle I owned was legendary in its crapitude. It was a 1979 Ford F-100 pickup truck with what amounted to a railroad tie for a front bumper and, all said, weighed about 8 thousand pounds. It was hideously ugly, rusted out and had 132-thousand miles on it (but the shmuck that sold me the truck said it had a reconditioned engine block that only had 32-thousand miles on it, and I believed him). Well, I had wanted a pickup truck for years and I decided to go for it.

This was the ugliest money sucker of a piece of crap vechile that I have ever in my life owned. I was able to enjoy it fairly incident free for about two weeks, then things started going wrong with it. Water pump. OIl pump. Alternator. Battery. Tires. Not to mention it got about 9 miles to the gallon. One particularly frightening situation occured when the brakes COMPLETELY WENT in the parking lot of my apartment when I was driving home from work. You name it, this truck had a problem with it in the couple years I was its "proud" owner.

Imagine if you will, driving north on the Southfield freeway at about 65 miles an hour on a bright spring morning. I was doing that one fine day, on my way to work when, after just having crossed 8 Mile road I heard a loud BANG--like a firecracker--under the hood. The truck had completely STOPPED RUNNING at 60 miles an hour. Engine--dead. Electrical system--D.O.A. I somehow manager to get the truck started and headed directly to a mechanic who proclaimed it would cost me 800 dollars to replace the oil pump.

There was another time when I had run to the bank and was weaving down Orchard Lake road around Pine Lake when, once again the truck died. I was able to get it towed in and found out I needed the water pump replaced. Another 500 dollars.

picture this with a shitload of rust, a cap and a railroad tie for a bumper.

Bad experience overall. About the only remotely interesting thing that happened in the truck was this: I was driving home from work one evening, on Northwestern Highway approaching 12 mile, going east. I was doing about 40, green light, when a Vietnamese woman in a tiny little import decided it would be a good idea to pull off of 12 mile onto Northwestern---RIGHT INTO MY PATH. I had less than 100 feet to stop. I locked all four wheels and braced for impact. POW!!! All I could see was a wholesale explosion of green fiber-glass, fender and metal as the railroad tie obliterated the rear end of this poor woman's car. I finally pulled to a halt in the median just as a police officer, who had seen the whole thing happen, drove up.

Fortunately no one was hurt but the Vietnamese woman, who spoke very little english, was hysterical. The cop walked up to me and I practically tackled him with every little detail of what had just transpired. The very nice Southfield Policeman calmed me down, said he had seen the whole thing, and no tickets would be written. He then proceeded to calm down the lady, who apparently faced a tribunal and certain hanging at home as soon as her husband found out.

The woman's car, which was probably worth 10 or 20 times what the truck was worth, was totalled. There was nary a scratch on my piece of shit F-100, as the makeshfit front end did what apparently what whoever put it on that truck intended it to do.

I finally got out of the truck and bought---surprise! another Pontiac LeMans, a 1993, which was radically different--as in severely downsized---in the 25 years since I had owned a LeMans. It was bright red and really a sharp little car. I bought it from Auburn Pontiac from a salesman by the name of Ralph Dikeman. One of the most cheezy, unintentionally funny used car salesmen I have ever met in my life. He was everything you'd expect a stereotyped used car salesman to be: 30 dollar suit, cheezy tie, coffee breath, package of Kools, and a general sleaziness that you had to experience to believe. It was hilarious.

But as it turned out, he sold me one hell of a car. The LeMans was Korean made, got good gas mileage and I honestly didn't have more than one or two (minor) things go wrong with it in the entire time I drove it. What a difference from the truck. A minor problem with the driver's side door developed eventually, so you kind of had to lift-and-slam to close it, but otherwise, it was a fantastic car.

After I bought the car, I literally abandoned the truck. I had no idea what to do with it, had no way to get it back from Pontiac (where the dealer was) to White Lake (where I was living). So I pulled it into the parking lot of a party store across the street and just left it there. Walked away from it. I fully expected to get a call from some police agency telling me they had inpounded the truck, but I never did. So it was out of sight, out of mind. I still can't believe I did that.

(After three or so years, I ended up giving away the LeMans to Karen's brother's family, who promised to give me 500 dollars but never came up with the cash--and their oldest son rolled the damn thing about 3 weeks later and I guess they thought that absolved them of having to pay me for it).

By and by, it was time for another car. And, amazingly enough, I went straight back to the venerable Mr. Ralph Dikeman of Auburn Pontiac. After all, he was a sleazeball but he had been reasonably honest and sold me a really good car before.

the real ralph dikeman. ain't the internet wonderful?

My next vehicular acquistion was a beauty. It was a 1995 Pontiac Grand Am, purple in color, clean as a whistle, with only 25 thousand miles on it. It was one of the first cars I had bought that really looked new. It was more than I wanted to pay but I absolutely fell in love with the car. Bingo! Ralph came up with the financing, and had sold me another one. This was a great car.

It was also the car that made many trips to Alpena as, shortly afterwards, I met Jessie and was making regular journeys up north. But aside from one incident where the clutch was ruined by a stupid quick lube place that put the wrong fluid in the clutch reservoir (at least i think thats what happened), this was was an absolute beauty, incredibly dependable, and served me well in the 4 years I drove it. I loved this car, probably more than any other I have owned in my life.

When Jessie moved in and brought with her a 1992 Chevy S-10 pickup truck, for the first time outside of living with my folks, I was in a 2 car family again. Initially Jessie drove the truck and I drove the Grand Am, but I would occasionally take the truck out and it was a fun little vehicle--unlike the moneysucking Ford truck I had had in another lifetime.

In August of 2002, we bought a van. It was a 2000 Chevy Venture, one that Jessie picked out from the lot at Jay Chevrolet, close to our new home in Highland. We were allowed to test drive it for one day, and Jessie fell in love with the van. We traded in my beloved Grand Am to get the Venture, and we're still paying for it. Being the wonderful husband that I am, I let Jessie drive the new van and I took over driving the truck. I didn't mind, really. The S-10 was a zippy little 3.8 liter six cylinder and I enjoyed the bench seat and the added room. The van was really nice, tan in color and very roomy, with lots of bells and whistles, but it was clear from the start that it was Jessie's baby. She managed to wreck the front end in early 2004 in a freak accident in Traverse City where she drove into a whiteout. But insurance covered and we still have the van today and it has served us well--it's HAD to because of all the driving we have done in it. Couple trips to North Carolina, one to New Orleans and many, many trips to Traverse City.

After Mom passed away, we were initially going to sell her car, a reddish-maroon 1996 Ford Taurus, but then I decided that I wanted it myself. Lee doesn't drive and Chris had a paid off car that he liked a lot, so I gave each of them 900 dollars (1/3 of the bluebook value) and Mom's car was mine. She had bought it shortly after Dad died, drove it very little and kept it up very nicely (except, of course for an accident she had in the Aberdeen Wal-Mart parking lot in 2001--but you could never tell to look at it today). The Taurus had less than 60-thousand miles on it when I received it, and it's still a beautiful car. And it reminds me of Mom every once in awhile and I have other good memories of Chris or me driving this very car up to the Food King or Wal Mart when we went down to visit.

We sold the S-10 to Jessie's brother Chris for 300 dollars. Jessie had gotten a great price on the truck to begin with in 2000, so it owed us nothing. However, like the LeMans (version 2) before, a short time later, Chris drove off the road near his home and totalled the S-10. I could probably see why our vehicles get scared when we offer to sell them to relatives.

So that's it. A parade of the vehicles I have owned and driven. With tons of memories in each one.

Chapter Twenty-Two (Paul): The tape recorder

2005-06-02T10:53:00.000-07:00

It seemed like we always had some sort of a tape recorder in our home.

=====

I think I got my first tape recorder when I was about 9 or 10. It was just a little 3" portable reel-to-reel recorder that had a microphone and a cord attached. I'm not quite sure whether Mom and Dad bought it for me or else it was a hand me down from Dad's job.Anyway, I loved it. When I was 10 my absolute favorite TV show was "Lost in Space", and I would tape the audio off the television with my little reel-to-reel, maybe 15 minutes a side at slow speeds (like 3-3/4 or even 1 7/8 ips). I loved taping things, my voice, television, radio, pretty much anything. So did Chris, and still does to this day. And my brother and I taped everything back then.

This was an early "comedy" exchange between Chris and I on one of those tapes, where I was trying to record him saying grace--you know, "God is great, God is good..." on tape for Mom and Dad:

Paul: "Say grace."

Chris: "Father knows Best."

Paul: "No-ho-ho! Say GRACE!"

Chris: "You mean Dick Grayson?"

Paul: "No. Say "Grace"."

Chris: "Grace."

(ok so it wasn't hilarious but we were having fun).

This may sound a little gross, but Chris and I (me around 12 and Chris 7) also used to record our farts. Just kids being kids, I guess--and a fine use of technology at that.

Always being incredibly loud children, it must have been some sort of self-flagellation that Mom and Dad would give us those tape recorders. Basically it afforded the ability to make loud children (and Lord knows, we were hella loud) even louder. I remember one time when Dad just had had enough of the noise. Chris and I were hacking around in my bedroom and making all manner of racket. Anyway, Mal burst through the door and grabbed us both by the arm. Both Chris and I were still sniggering at whatever it was that annoyed Dad in the first place--no doubt the loud racket coming from the upstairs bedroom. (What Dad didn't know was that the recorder was still rolling while he was chewing us out)

This is basically what was caught on tape:

"It's NOT FUNNY AT ALL." Mal intoned. then he said,

"Chris...c'mere."

Suddenly terrified, Chris could only manage to squeal, "ahh...ahhh....."

"ROARRRRRRRRRR!" Mal shouted in Chris's ear. It sounded like a cross between a Grizzly Bear and an F-111 passing over our house (well, maybe not that loud, but you get the point). "There, you like that kinda noise? Huh? Now QUIET DOWN!" With that, he thundered out of the room.

Later on we would play that tape over and over and roll on the floor in hysterics. I don't think that Mal ever got to hear it though. he probably would have murdered us.

(Sidebar: Dad was constantly telling us to be quiet or turn down our music. Sometimes, being the ever the helpful father that he was, Mal would turn down our record player for us. Turn it WAY down. Turn it way, WAY down. In fact, he would turn the volume so far down that you couldn't hear it. And if we protested that we couldn't hear it, Dad always said the same thing: "Listen hard.")

Another time, Chris and I (again) were horsing around in the basement of our Southbrook home. Again, we were making an unGodly amount of noise, which was amplified by the tile floors and the wooden paneling of our finished basement.

And, once again, our trusty recorder was recording.

Mom was hollering downstairs for us to come and eat or go shopping or something like that. We couldn't even hear her above the racket.

"HAAAAAAAAAAAAY!" Mom screamed down the stairs. "my GOD do you know what that sounds like?????"

With all due respect to Mom, she sounded a little like Frank Morgan in the Wizard of Oz as the Guardian of the gates. God it was funny.

One of the coolest pieces of technology we ever had in the Southbrook house was the day Lee came home with an Aiwa 7" reel-to-reel stereo tape recorder (with detachable speakers) that he set up in his bedroom. It was just so cool. Lee bought the Herbie Mann album "Memphis Underground" and it sounded SOOO sweet on the reel to reel. He had a few others, including the Beatles' "White Album" but I had never heard anything sound so good, having had nothing but scratchy records up until then.

Lee and I also recorded a few songs with his deck. We weren't very good, but we did record some songs like "Blue Suede Shoes" (with Lee on the piano and me banging on a cheap set of drums--we were always a pretty loud family) and the Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City" (featuring the vocal stylings of Barrold Reginald Bunker-Harquart). I also remember some times when Mom would grab a drumstick and wail on the cowbells while we recorded. We were Michigan's answer to the Cowsills.

Chris took the tape recorder to the next level in his early teens, with some sort of a Firesign Theater knockoff that he did with his friends. They called it the "Waterfall Theater", and did little plays and comedy routines and the like.

Even later on, it seemed like one of us always had some manner of tape recorder, especially Chris. In the 90s, he carried around a little hand held recorder that he used to tape some of the funniest comedy bits I think I've ever heard. They were mostly little vignettes revolving around one of his many alter egos, "Del Tremens", a rock star that was sort of a cross between Ozzy Osbourne and a member of Spinal Tap. He did a sort of radio "talk show" for "PLXR Radio" which involved Del "interviewing" people, cooking "drunkin' punkin' pie" and basically cracking himself up the whole time.

Then there were the commercials. Chris would conjure up a somewhat sleazy, gruff sounding pitchman known only as "The announcer" who did ads for a bunch of equally questionable businesses (all of which, curiously, were on Harriet Avenue in Detroit): The "Big Boob Boutique", the "Fat Man's Store" and "Dave's Smoke-n-Guns" (in which customers could buy both a firearm and a carton of Kools under the same roof). The ads pretty much sounded the same, with soft-core porn music in the background and "The Announcer" intoning something like:

"Heeeeeeeeeey, honey, come on down to the BIG BOOB BOUTIQUE, 1516 Harriet Avenue in Detroit. We use only the finest kevlar-teflon-nipple-resistant material and we wanna BUILD YOU A BRA. We'll look at your boobs...we'll play with 'em...we'll weigh 'em...and we'll BUILD YOU A BRA. That's the BIG BOOB BOUTIQUE. 5691 Harriet Avenue, COME ON DOWN......."

For some reason, the address was different every time too, even for the same place. And the ads all sounded alike, with a couple of the details changed depending on the business being pitched. As it was, most of Del's shows were 75 percent commercials, sandiwiched in between some incoherent, hilarious banter from Del, who quite often forgot the name of his guests and would usually pass out by the end of the show.

heeeeeeeeeey, Pal.......

Finally, just one more tape-recorder-related incident from the late 90s. We were down for a Christmas visit at Mom and Dad's, and for some reason, Mom was pissed off at me. (To this day, I have no idea why, Mom and I almost always got along great through the years). I was elsewhere in the house, Chris and Mom were in the kitchen and Chris had his hand held with him as usual, The tape was rolling when Mom decided to play "Jingle Bell Rock" by Bobby Helms, a song I absolutely detest (I can't even tell you why, it's totally random, but I really HATE THAT SONG). Anyway, she turned it up 'way loud. Chris asked her if she was doing that to annoy me and without hesitation, Mom said, "Yes." He got that all on tape.

When Chris told me about that later, I found it hilarious.

Chapter Twenty-One (Paul): California

2005-05-31T11:25:00.000-07:00

there were a lot of vacations growing up, but perhaps the one to the west coast in 1973 was the grandest of them all.

------

I quit a very good paying job in the produce department at Great Scott supermarket to go on vacation in August of 1973. The manager was surprised, because he was expecting me to be full time from now on and had no idea that I would be going away to college in the Fall anyway.

Either way for the excellent money I would have been making (a hefty $4.15 an hour when the liminum wage was $1.35), I choice door #2, the trip. And I'm very glad I did.

The plan was to fly to Salt Lake City on United Airlines, rent a car, then go to Reno, Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas and Phoenix over a period of about 10 days or so. It was, to say the least, an ambitious itinerary.

We flew United to Salt Lake City on a bright, crisp day. For reasons unknown, we got bumped up in first class for the flight, and enjoyed champagne and a full meal for the flight.

SLC was kind of a quiet town, home of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. We went to the Giant Tabernacle and swam in the Great Salt Lake. The Lake was kinda weird, very shallow, and because of its high salt content, it was very easy to float on the lake. But you had to literally go out about 100 feet or more to get waist-deep in the water.

From Salt Lake City we went across the dusty state of Nevada in the north to Reno and Lake Tahoe. The thing I remember most about Reno is the sign leading into the main part of town.

Reno was very much like a small Las Vegas. We wandered around the city for awhile and also made a little side trip to Lake Tahoe on our way to San Francisco. It didn't look far on the map, but took a lot longer because of the mountains.

On to san Francisco, a city that I fell in love with. From the crooked Lombard Street to Telegraph Hill to Fisherman's Wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge, SF is a beautiful city. The air was cool and clean despite the fact that it was the middle of summer and the city was awesome.

One of the things that Mom looked forward to more than anything was driving down the Big Sur between San Francisco and Los Angeles with a view of the Pacific Ocean most of the way.. However, unfortunately it was more like "The Big Fog", with dense fog obscuring the view most of the way. We saw the Hearst Castle at San Simeon and ended up in L.A.

While in L.A. we went to Disneyland, Universal Studios and swam in the ocean. The waves were huge and Chris and I loved body surfing in the turbulent water. I remember that the floor of the ocean was very rocky and were hard on the feet, but we loved it.

San Diego (and a hotel room on the ocean) was next. That was a nice clean city and, yes, the weather it beautiful there, just perfect. We took a little side trip to Tijuana and i wasn't impressed. There was a beautiful wedding shirt (for men) for sale and to this day, i will always regret having not bought it. Also when I was passing by a corridor, a young Mexican woman sidled up to me and said "Hey buddy you wanna buy a SWEETCH BLADE KNIFE?" Umm, no thanks.

We went to Las Vegas through the Painted Desert from San Diego and, believe it or not, iIT RAINED. In the desert. It was cool, a gullywasher that lasted about fifteen minutes.

Las Vegas was just plain cool. This was in the days before the main strip was an enclosed mall and you could drive right downtown. We saw all the great classic hotels and casinos, like Circus Circus, The Mint, The Sands and took in a show at the Desert Inn. It was Rich Little and Frankie Laine, kind of an odd combination but we had a great time.

Phoenix was the last stop on the trip. All I remember most about Phoenix was that it was (literally) 114 degrees there and i could feel the heat of the pavement right through my tennis shoes.

From there we flew home.

It was a great trip.

From the back seat of the car, unfortunately i don't remember as much as I should I suppose, because most of the time Chris and I were horsing around in the back or else I had my nose in a comic book or something like that. Chris bought a count Dracula hand puppet along the way, which of course was the beginning of the "Hu-hu-hu-hu" days (using the puppet, he would untie my shoes or something like that and then "The Puppet" (as we call it) would laugh in my face: "hu-hu-hu"). Guess you had to be there.

Through the years, I had always marveled at how well Mom planned our vacations. Imagine, if you will, the logistics of planning the trip, packing enough clothes for two adults and three kids for 6 or 7 days, budgeting three meals, snacks and attractions, plus both Mom and Dad putting up with three squirming children in the back seat of a car all this time.

We had some great vacations: from Mackinac to New York City to Gettysburg to Florida, they were awesome.

But seeing as how 1973 was one of the last trips we would take as a family (Lee couldn't make it on the West Coast Swing as it was), Mom and dad saved the best for last.

Chapter Twenty (Chris's View): The Ride

2005-05-30T15:26:00.000-07:00

There is so much more to this story than I think anybody ever knew at the time. I'm too old to be punished now, so it all can come out. When Paul went away to college, his first year he was not allowed to take his car. So there it sat, in the garage, beckoning me with it's wiles. In those days I used to get home from school about 3:30 and my Mom didn't get home until about 5:00. So! One day, I nabbed the keys and took Paul's car for a ride around the subdivision we lived in. It was fun. So, every time I had the chance, I would do it again. What a nice way to spend an afternoon, driving around with the windows down, blasting such great's from the 70's as "Takin' It To The Streets" and "Magic Man" from the AM radio. Which leads to two of my favorite stories concerning driving that car.

This first involves two of the "foxiest" (c'mon, this was the 70's!) chicks in my junior high school. I was driving near the back of the subdivision and, there they were, Kristen Johnson and Cathy Cole. A long-flowing haired brunette and a tall blond. I drove up to them as they walked through my subdivision and asked them if they would like a ride up to the front of the subdivision. Of course they said "yes" and both sat in the front seat right next to me, oozing teen-aged sex and perfume. As we drove, Maria Muldaur sang "Midnight At The Oasis" on the radio and I was with my own little harem, even if it was only briefly. I let them off at the front of the subdivision and drove the car home, satisfied that my exploits made friends of these two beautiful girls forever. Of course, in reality, they still ignored me at school and I don't think we ever spoke again. But for one moment in time, I was "The Man". I was cool. I was the only guy in school with the "Chick Mobile"!

The second incident in Paul's Le Mans involved a near disaster. We lived on a very short gravel road. Well, genius that I am I wondered how fast I could get going on this dirt road. Right around fifty-five, I began to fishtail. OHMIGOD! First, I was headed toward Porter's mailbox. I spun the wheel and avoided that collision only to realize that I was now headed straight for Berneker's mailbox (see below regarding the Bernekers). Well, by now, I frightened beyond compare, NOT that I would smash Paul's car all to hell, but of getting caught driving, thus securing my lack of a REAL driver's license for many years past my sixteenth birthday!!!!! I HAD to do something!! With the accuracy of a Hollywood stuntdriver I spun the wheel, jammed down the brakes and spun the car into perfect position in front of my very own driveway. This would have been one of the coolest stunts I have ever performed in my life, had I not be screaming "THERE'S GONNA BE A CRASH!!!" the entire time!!! Well, I looked over to my neighbor's house and there was the oldest boy laying on the ground convulsing in laughter. I didn't think it was so damned funny! Very shakily, I drove the car into the garage and just sat there, staring straight ahead and thanking God, over and over. Needless to say this incident kept me from driving Paul's car for a good long time.

As for the incident below, from Paul's recollection, here is my story. It was a Friday or Saturday night. Mom and Dad had gone out as had Paul and his friend Jim. So! Now that my car of choice was Mom's Corvair and certainly NOT wanting to stay home and watch "Nanny and The Professor" or some such drivel on television, I grabbed the keys and hopped in. But tonight, I was on the edge...they should've chukked me in the fridge. Tonight, I was going out on the MAIN roads. No more of this "subdivision" stuff...no, tonight I was going to go out there with the big boys. I turned left out of the subdivision and headed off, obeying all of the traffic policies, not speeding, seatbelt firmly in place, stopping at all lights. I drove a total of one square mile, a box around where my subdivision was. I do have a vague memory of sitting at one light and looking over at an older couple who were looking over at me, eyes like saucers and jaws firmly planted in their laps. I smiled, the light turned and we were off. But then something went very wrong with the plan, so very, very awry. As I drove up the street (13 mile) that led to our subdivision I saw lights turn in from the other way. Call it prescience, fortune-telling or just a gut instinct, I knew it was Paul. So, what could I do? I turned into the subdivision and drove down the street and turned into the driveway. For a brief second I considered speeding up and hitting him in an attempt to kill him, thus ensuring his silence on the matter but he was too close to the house and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to talk my way out of that one. So I calmly parked the car, unbuckled my belt and got out! He was fuming. I'm not sure I've EVER seen him as mad as he was and I received quite the talking to that evening. So, until I received my real driver's license and began to proceed to smash every car I could get, into everything I could find, my driving day's were over.

To my brother's credit and (perhaps his knowing I would still be grounded, even today), he never said a word to anyone about the incident. Not one word. I owe him a great debt of gratitude for that amongst other things. When I finally told my parents, years later at one of our kitchen table summits, they were flabbergasted. Paul and I were, on the other hand, quite amused.

Chapter Twenty (Paul's View): The Ride

2005-05-27T12:03:00.000-07:00

This was just a little incident that happened in the early seventies.

I think it might have been around 1974 or so, perhaps, because I was home from college and working for Lee at the Clark Station on Orchard Lake Road near 14 Mile, a gas station that is now a Pier 1 Import store.

Anyway, this particular evening, my friend Jim picked me up from our Southbrook home to go out for a few beers at our favorite location, Mr. Joe's in Southfield. We probably left about 7:30 or 8 and, most nights we usually didn't get back until midnight or later.

Well about 9:30 or so, Jimmy wasn't feeling too well so we decided to leave the bar. He brought me home and left. As I walked up the driveway I noticed that Mom's car (a green 1969 Corvair that she dearly loved) wasn't there. "That's strange," I thought to myself, as my extraordinary grasp of the obvious kicked in. Mom and Dad were gone for the evening as well and only Chris (who was about 12 at the time) was home alone. Had the folks taken the small car out? Doubtful, as it was kind of small and Dad usually owned a boat of some sort--he liked a lot of room.

As I walked towards the house with a somewhat befuddled look on my face, wondering whether or not a call to the police would be in order, I heard a car drive up the driveway. Turning around, I noticed it was Mom's car. Peering closer I noticed that, behind the wheel, was Chris (who was about 12 at the time). He calmly pulled into the driveway, and put the car in park, just like a professional. Chris turned off the engine and having noticed me standing there with my arms folded, watching him drive up, approached me, ashen-faced.

Busted. Big time.

Man was I pissed! But.... I didn't turn him in. (to be continued, by Chris....)

LOOK! Here comes Chris!

Chapter Nineteen (Paul): The Music of Our Lives

2005-05-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

I think this entire family has been blessed in that there has always been music in our lives.

=====

Whether it was the music that Mom and Dad played on the Hi-Fi, the constant presence of a piano in our house (and, later on, assorted guitars, celli, sousaphones, baritones and drums) the concerts, radio stations we listened to and much more, we have always been a musical family in some form.

Chris has played in no less than four bands (and I'm sure he will correct me on this if I'm wrong): The Electric Shamrocks, Phaethon, Current and the Deluxe Radio Theatre. I think it was always his desire to be a rock star: writing, producing, performing his own music, most times with one of his best friends Jeff (whom he has known for almost 30 years); His college band, Current, had a song appear on a WILS (Lansing) compilation album of local talent and appeared more than once "live"; His current band, DRT has two original CDs out and a wealth of material worthy of radio airplay. Chris has taught himself guitar, keyboards, and vox as well as audio production. To say music is a big part of his life is an understatement.

Lee, on the other hand, was (and still is) a virtuoso on the keyboard. He had a gift for recognizing songs and being able to play them after only hearing them once or twice. I don't know whether it's perfect pitch or just incredible God-given talent, but he's got it. Lee can play jazz, blues, rock and classical, and play it all well--though most comfortable, perhaps in the lounge piano style (and that's a compliment). In Chicago, Lee has also been a part of a band that played Chicago-style blues with a little country tossed in for good measure at a neighborhood tavern. That he didn't pursue a full time career in music performance is the audience's loss.

Two of their signature songs: Chris's "Liquid Vacation" and Lee's "For My Broken Heart" are undiscovered gems worthy of airplay on any radio station in the country. And I am being totally objective when I say that.

Not having nearly the talent that my two brothers have when it comes to music writing and performance, I have pursued my intense love of music in a different way. From age 12 (or even earlier) I always thought I wanted to be in radio, spinning the hits or bringing my "theater of the mind" to the world. I majored in radio in college, spent seven years in professional radio in Grand Rapids, MI (in news, but I always yearned to be a music DJ during that time), got out of the business altogether for 4 years (inexplicably, working in retail at the time, and not even at a record store) until I got the job of a lifetime, running a High School FM radio station, a radio job without the sometimes ruthless hours, and better money, job security and benefits than I could ever hope for in professional radio. This job, which I have had for nearly 17 years, allows me to be in a musical environment, around music and able to enjoy music all day long. It is truly a dream job.

I have my parents to thank for instilling a love of music in me, and I think my brothers will agree. Mom played piano for years and years and later on Dad bought her an organ as well. I can still hear Mom playing such songs as "Begin the Beguine" and "Those Foolish Things" on the piano.

Mom and Dad had a good sized record collection and would play artists such as Frank Sinatra (still an all time favorite of all three of us sons), Ernie Ford, Peggy Lee, the big bands like Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey, movie soundtracks like "Sound of Music" and "South Pacific" and much more. I remember hearing this music in our Dearborn Heights home and looking through the curious but diverse collection of albums they had: "Sixteen Tons" by Tennessee Ernie (an album I just recently purchased on CD); "Latin Ala Lee" by Peggy Lee; "Jumpin' with Jonah" by Jonah Jones; "Songs for Latin Lovers" by the Ray Charles Singers; and many more. Though I wasn't a fan of everything they played (Lee and I sometimes referred to their music as "square"), I have an appreciation of this music and Mom and Dad's encouragement to us to make music a part of our lives. For that I am eternally grateful.

One of the great things about having both an older and a younger brother was getting to enjoy their music as well as my own as I was growing up. It was kind of a sequence in which we passed our musical influences down the line.

When Lee was in his teens, he listened to music by (among other groups) The Association, Spanky and Our Gang, Roy Orbison, The Dave Clark Five and of course, The Beatles. (We all loved the Beatles and still do) As a result, I still listen to a lot the music Lee did today. I remember us in our darkened bedroom on Dwight at night, listening to the great Detroit radio stations of the 60s on Lee's transistor radio: CKLW, WKNR (Keener-13), and WXYZ (Wixie Wonderland).

In my college days, I developed a taste for progressive rock. Genesis, Yes, Jethro Tull, King Crimson and Pink Floyd were among my favorites, and of course I shared them with Chris. To this day we are both huge fans of Prog-rock, but we also share a love for all sorts of music, ranging from Peter Gabriel to Sinatra to Swing Out Sister to Jimmy Buffett and everything in between. We listened to the RIFF and WWWW (before it went country) on the radio and still to this day, talk about music all the time. Same is true with Lee and I and Lee and Chris.

Music is a gift, and if you think about it that way, I think that our entire family has been very, very fortunate.

Chapter Eighteen (Paul): The Saga of the Starlight Mints

2005-05-23T09:40:00.000-07:00

I just want to say this from the outset: Mal won. No doubt. Game over. We all knew at the very moment it happened that Mal won. There was no use even trying to outdo him, ever again. Read on to understand what this means pertaining to this particular chapter.

=====

I really don't know how this bizarre tradition of exchanging Starlight mints began. I think the early genesis of this practice (mainly between Chris and I but sometimes extending to the entire family) came during our semi-annual trip to Sonic's Drive In Restaurant in Aberdeen, North Carolina, a few miles from Mom and Dad's retirement home.

In terms of back-story, each time we visited the folks down south, a trip to Sonic's was mandatory. All of us, especially Mom, loved their foot long hot dogs, shakes, and later on, a nasty little concoction called "Ultimate Tots". About as far from being from heart smart as you can hope for (except of course for Hardee's "Monster Thickburger"), the "Ultimate Tots" consisted of a large order of deep fried tater tots smothered in chili, that nasty plastic nacho cheese you find at restaurants, onions, and then, the piece de resistance, Jalapeno peppers.

Anyway, every time you ordered something from Sonic's, the car hop would bring your food, and with it (no doubt because your breath would otherwise smell like onions the rest of the day), a Starlight mint for everyone.

One of the times we ate at Sonic's, wordlessly, I offered my starlight mint to Chris, who was sitting with me in the back seat. Having one himself, he silently held up an open palm, as if to say, "no thanks." I raised my eyebrows like John Belushi, again offering the mint. Once again Chris refused my kind offer. I offered again and, to appease me, Chris took the mint, only to offer it right back to me a couple minutes later.

(Chris and I tended to act like kids when we go down south, and this was a spontaneous offshoot of that planned immaturity)

I don't know how it evolved from that, but Chris and I, at various times, would exchange a single Starlight mint, sometimes dozens of times. We began hiding a mint in each others' bedrooms and in the bathrooms upstairs. Under the pillow, in the medicine cabinet, in underwear drawers. One of my most inspired presentations of a starlight mint under the cap of Chris's can of deoderant. Chris too, continued to find unique and creative places to present me with a starlight mint.

This went on for many a visit. It became more and more competitive as to who could find the best spot to hide a mint for the other to find. But one year, Dad (who we didn't even think was observing this childishness from visit to visit) got us. He got us good.

Another sidebar, if you will: I am paranoid about flying. Not that I am afraid to fly, but it seems like something bad always happened to me when I flew down to visit Mom and Dad. And sao I was always a stickler for getting to the airport at an unGodly early hour, even before September 11th. It no doubt drove everyone crazy, but I was always the one who had delayed flights, cancelled flights, flights I was bumped off and so on. For that reason, I hated flying and was always suspicious of the airlines.

So anyway, this particular flight, we were scheduled to go out of Moore County Airport 15 minutes away (back in the day when it was much more convenient to fly down there). The four of us (Chris and I flying together) were waiting for the flight to leave, all checked in and secure (such as it was). I noticed Dad speaking with the guy at the USAir desk and asked him what he was asking them. He said he was just inquiring as to whether or not the incoming plane was on time. So i thought nothing of it.

Anyway, we said our goodbyes and Chris and i got on our little "Buddy Holly" airplane for the short flight to Charlotte, where we'd catch a real plane to Detroit. After we settled in, not more than 10 minutes later, the stewardess came up to us and solemnly asked, "Are you the Townleys?"

Waves of paranoia and guilt flew through both of us. What had we done? Was there something wrong with the flight or the ticket? Had the plane exceeded weight restrictions because of our respective expanded girths?

Time stood still. Our hearts stopped. We both silently nodded.

With a smile, the Stewardess said, "these are for you."

With that, she handed each of us a starlight mint.

Game over. Dad wins.

Chapter Seventeen (Lee): Mr. Berneker's Door

2005-05-23T05:27:00.000-07:00

There is a home in Farmington Hills, Michigan. It is a comfortable home in a comfortable neighborhood. Four bedrooms, two and one-half baths, nice lot, and a swimming pool in the backyard. It also has a 2 car attached garage. With a service door in the back for access to the pool. Nice home. Nice neighbors. Nice service door. It is the home in which I lived in my later teen-age years and I was quite happy there. Did I mention the service door? In the garage? At the rear, for access to the pool? Well.

Spring of 1969 was a lovely time in my life...I was working as a clerk in a liquor store, and attending my first year of college, while residing at the aforementioned home. I had a nice girlfriend named Karen, and I owned a 1964 Volkswagen. Black. Nice car. Dependable. Cheap to run. My mother refused to ride in it with me. But I digress. My VW was directly responsible for my learning two very important life lessons in the spring of 1969....first, when the auto mechanic says it's fixed, don't necessarily take his word. And secondly, when the item which has just been fixed involves stopping a motor vehicle, even a small one, check it out before you absolutely NEED to stop the motor vehicle.

Along about now you may be wondering what all this waxing poetic about my car has to do with the service door. In the garage. At the rear. For access to the pool. Let me add this about that. There was not ALWAYS a service door at that particular location. It was, how you say, retrofitted into it's present location (well, at least that's when the HOLE for the door was created, anyway) one fine spring morning in 1969, as memory serves, approximately ten minutes after I had picked up my car from the auto mechanic's shop. Fixed up nice, with new brakes. Expensive brakes. Just off the boat from Deutschland. A hundred bucks American (1969 dollars, that is), and guaranteed for as long as I owned the car.

Now, with all this foreshadowing going on, it doesn't take a genius to figure out the next succession of events. Boy picks up car, boy drives car home, boy drives car into garage, boy hits brakes and pfffffthh! Brake pedal goes to the floor. In the words of that master tunesmith C.W.McCall, "it was kinda like steppin' on a plum". I covered my eyes and prepared to die.

When the last of the paint cans which had heretofore been neatly arranged on several shelves on the back wall of the garage stopped bouncing off the hood and top of my car, I opened my eyes once again. My buddy, Don Liphardt, who was in the passenger's seat at the time of impact was white as a ghost, and may well have peed himself also, I don't know. A quick survey of the damage showed that , probably owing to the light weight of the car, and my relatively low speed (under 30) the car had more or less bounced off the wall, rather than going clean through. About four feet of the wall was pushed off its’ foundation by about 12 inches, and my car had numerous dents from the paint cans. It also sported a somewhat psychedelic look from the several paint cans which had opened during the mishap.

My mother, God rest her soul, was not given to histrionics, having raised three boys, but this one must have pushed her over the brink. When I went inside and sheepishly told her what had happened, she flew into a full scale snit over the whole thing. Whereupon I yelled back that it wasn't MY fault that the goddamn brakes didn't work (I think this might have been the first time I cursed in the presence of my mother). At any rate, after a couple minutes of us barking at one another, Mom picked up the phone, pulled my Dad out of an important business meeting with an "emergency" phone call, which of course caused his heart to stop beating momentarily. When he learned that no one was dead, he came up with probably the funniest line of the whole incident. "Audrey", he intoned as only Mal could intone, "I am twenty five miles away in a meeting. What the hell, exactly, would you like me to do about it?"

After we had the car towed back to the garage where it was fixed, and it was determined that there had in fact been a loss of braking ability due to some air in the lines, I was more or less off the hook as far as being a complete idiot in my parents' eyes. But the question remained, what to do about the garage wall?

As luck would have it, the next day was Saturday, and as luck would further have it my parents' friend and neighbor, Al Berneker, was a union carpenter. So my Dad and I traipsed over to Al's house the next morning to ask for his assistance or at least a suggestion about what to do with the busted garage wall. So Al came over, and alternately looking at the wall, then looking at me and shaking his crew-cut head, then looking at the wall once again, he hit on a solution.

"#$%@!!#%** it!" he exclaimed. Let's put a $!#@**##$%&* door here! Whereupon he dispatched Mal to the lumberyard with instructions on buying a suitable door, went home to grab some tools and proceeded to teach me how to frame out a door opening. I worked alongside Mr. Berneker and my Dad that afternoon, and the new door was installed and functional before sundown.

I learned a couple things that day, aside from whatever carpentry skills Al was able to impart in a few hours. I learned that being a good neighbor meant lending a hand when your neighbor needed one. I'm sure that Al didn't relish the idea of giving up his day off to fix something that the dumb-ass neighbor kid had damaged, but, being a good neighbor and a good guy, he gave of himself anyway, because, well, that's what people did back then. I also learned a lesson about pre-judging people. I had always regarded Al Berneker as kind of a redneck--the kind that didn't much care for us long hairs, anyway. And, I'm sure he regarded me with a similar suspicion, what with my long hair and all. I like to think we came away from that Saturday with a new respect for one another....I know we always waved to one another after that.

As for me, I got to have a couple beers with the big guys that afternoon, after the work was finished. And, I sold that bloody car.

Chapter Sixteen (Paul): St. Malcolm

2005-05-19T08:18:00.000-07:00

I don't know how he did it. But Dad still does it in a roundabout way today.

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To this day, we call them "Mal Spots".

For some reason, whenever we went somewhere with Mom and Dad, he had this incredible way of always getting the best parking spot in the whole parking lot, no matter where went.

It could be the Saturday before Christmas at 1:00 in the afternoon at Wal-Mart. Dad would pull right in to the parking lot, and amidst the massive pandemonium surrounding the car, drive right to the front and get a place to park next to the door.

What was especially funny (and, I'll admit, somewhat astounding) was Dad would just calmly sail into the parking spot as though it had his name on it. It was almost uncanny at times. I don't know how he did it.

Dad has been gone for eight and a half years now, rest his soul, but we still ask him to find us a good parking space. Wherever we go (usually shopping), either Jessie or I will say something like, "Come ON, Mal, help us out, where's the spot?" We will never have the success rate that Dad did, but more often than not he does come through for us.

We have dubbed him "St. Malcolm" -- the patron saint of great parking spaces.

And you don't have to be in the immediate family for St. Malcolm to answer your prayers. Trust, and he will provide.

Chapter Fifteen: (Chris) The Fishing Trip (continued)

2005-05-18T19:23:00.000-07:00

This is just a short entry concerning Dad and fishing, however, he had taken both Paul and I to some beautiful stream somewhere in Michigan to fish. I hated fishing, but the reason is a whole other story, but went anyway. Finally, we were at the site, standing on a bridge, watching the water rolling by with our lines in the water. Apparently, however, Dad was not having a good time. He had either tangled his line or something had happened. Suddenly, this peaceful family scene was broken by my Dad swearing loudly, snapping the pole into many pieces and throwing the entire mess into the river.

As I remember, that was the end of the fishing trip. Again, we didn't dare laugh at the time, however, later in life we were able to remind our Dad about the incident and he claimed not remembering it at all.

Chapter Fourteen (Paul): The Fishing Trip

2005-05-18T13:33:00.000-07:00

Maybe a "you had to be there" thing, maybe not...

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Dad used to like to have us come and fish with him on his boat both in Michigan and down in North Carolina. Although I don't think any of us liked to fish nearly as much as Dad did, we went along anyway, with a good opporunity to bond and get---God forbid---a little fresh air. I used to like fishing a lot more when I was drinking because I could just stare, glassy-eyed, into the hypnotic water, but when I quit drinking it didn't have nearly the appeal it once did. But we went anyway.

This particular trip was down in North Carolina in about 1993 or so. Dad, Lee, Chris and I all went out along the shore of Lake Auman (amazing that the boat actually held all of us), and of course, in order for all of us to fish, a couple extra lines had to be rigged. Dad apparently had lost his lure on his favorite pole the last time he had fished, so Lee ended up preparing the pole to use.

Mind you this was Dad's favorite pole. The one he always used. It probably wasn't any better or worse than any of the others, but Dad liked it. It was kinda like a comfortable old pair of shoes, I guess, but it was his favorite.

Lee took several minutes painstakingly stringing the pole and tying the lure on the end. Finally it was ready. With one grandiose, magnificent, championship style motion, my brother wound up and cast the entire thing: the lure, the line, the rod and the reel--into the lake. Both Chris and I saw it all happen from beginning to end..and held our breath.

Dad was absolutely livid. His eyes went wide, his face turned red, and if memory serves me correctly, he was almost too flabbergasted for words. In the meantime, having witnessed this absolutely magnificent cast, perfect save for holding onto the pole, Chris and I could absolutely NOT LOOK AT EACH OTHER. Dad was SO angry and the whole scene was SO funny that if we had even snuck a glace at one another we absolutely would have fallen off the boat laughing.

Instead, we gingerly walked to the front end of the boat and found we could actually see the lost fishing rod. It was in about 3 feet of water and easily retrievable. Desperate both not to laugh and to retrieve Dad's favorite fishing pole to somehow save the situation, Chris and I both offered to jump into the water where we easily could have gotten the pole. Dad, however, would hear nothing of it. It was as though he preferred more to be pissed off about the lost pole than a retrieved pole, he absolutely forbid us to jump in the water.

Thus endeth the fishing trip.

I think what made the whole sequence so damn funny is that I saw it happen from beginning to end. Seeing that pole fly gracefully through the air after it had been so carefully rigged up was a thing to behold. Not to poke fun at Lee, who of course felt awful about what had happened, but just to watch that happen was once of the funniest things I had ever seen.

Chapter Thirteen (Paul): Mal-speak

2005-05-17T22:54:00.000-07:00

My Dad pretty much had a language of his own. Many of the phrases he came up with, which we affectionately called "Mal-isms", were both priceless and hilarious. Chris even made a "commercial" hawking the "Best of Mal-isms" using dad's actual voice saying his favorite bizarre phrases. To Wit:

If something didn't go quite right, Mal would say that it went over like "a Turd in a punch bowl". Alternate: "It went over like a fart in church".

If something displeased our Dad he would usually say "That just gripes my ass."

Dad's take on the phrase "You better believe it" was: "I hope to shit in your vest pocket." or occasionally, "Hope to kiss a pig."

If we couldn't find someplace we were going, Dad usually said it was like "chasing a fart in a windstorm".

Dad also had a great way of expressing himself in bizarre ways in normal conversation. When he and Mom first moved down to Seven Lakes, the lake they lived in, Lake Auman was not even close to full. It was filling from being dammed up about 5 years earlier and wouldn't be to Mom and Dad's property line for two or three more years. Matter of fact you could drive a car down to where the water had reached (from the Dam and various springs), which was a good 500 yards from the backyard. One particular day Dad, Chris and I took the convertable down to that very area, to take the boat out on the water (there was still a LOT of Lake Aumun, even though not full. There were, however a lot of wet spots due to the various springs and standing water around the sand where we parked. The last thing Dad said before we got out of the car was, "Now boys (he called us "the boys" until we were in our 30s), don't step in the mud around the car". We got out, gingerly avoiding shoe befoulment, when from the other said of the car, we heard Dad mutter, "MUD you stupid ape". You guessed it. After giving us a big lecture about not stepping in anything, Dad's foot had found a mud puddle. It was a scream--even Dad came to laugh about it after awhile, but he wasn't too happy with himself at the moment.

Perhaps the best example of Mal-speak came when we had a Nintendo gaming system during a visit in the mid 90s. Chris and I usually took turns playing the Nintendo, but Mom too became quite an afficinado, and she was pretty damn good at games like "Dr. Mario" and "Tetris".

Anyway, this particular afternoon, both Chris and I had pretty much hogged the machine all day long in the Den. Mom apparently wanted to play for awhile too, and, in the other room, mentioned it to Dad. (We didn't hear it). Chris had that game at the time. In a booming voice from the kitchen, Mal said (and I quote): "Hey kid....your Ma wants to play ZIPPO." Translated, this mean. "Chris, would you please let your Mother play the Nintendo." We absolutely howled. In fact, we laughed so hard that Dad started laughing too. Both Chris and i knew exactly what Dad wanted, but it was the way he had expressed it, calling the 34 or 35 year old Chris "kid" and the Nintendo game "Zippo" was just, as Dad often said, "HIGH-larious."

Chapter Twelve (Paul): Flying Food (parts 1 and 2)

2005-05-17T10:12:00.000-07:00

Nobody enjoys a good food fight more than I do.

On a handful of occasions in the venerable cafeteria at Hubbard Hall, we would, to the chagrin of the cooks and staff, engage in a little projectile dinner, especially when we would come tumbling home, fat, drunk and stupid like most college students, after Friday happy hour.

Anyway, our family had a handful of those experiences as well. I have already mentioned Mom and the "Milk Dump", but a couple more stories also came to mind.

#1: A Mint Chocolate Chip Convoy.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Often times, while we were living in Farmington Hills, we would make the trip into Farmington to do some shopping, go to a movie, or maybe exchange light bulbs at Detroit Edison (remember when you could do that?). Anyway, there was a Baskin-Robbins in beautiful downtown Farmington, and often times, Mom and Dad would treat us to Ice Cream.

If memory serves me correctly, this time, Mom wasn't with us when we stopped for ice Cream one day in the late 60s (maybe '67ish or so). She was elsewhere in Farmington doing some shopping, and Dad, Chris and I got some business done also in Farmington and then stopped at B&R for Ice Cream before we picked her up. Dad, being the kind hearted man he was, decided to get Ice Cream, not only for us, but also for Mom. He got her a cone of Mint Chocolate Chip.

In the words of Papa Jupiter in "The Hills Have Eyes", "That was a BAD mistake."

You see, Mom didn't like Mint Chocolate Chip. In fact, she hated Mint Chocolate Chip. Apparently Dad was supposed to know this. Apparently Dad either forgot or didn't know this important little fact. Mom held the cone in her hand, fuming, for a short while before she absolutely tore into poor Dad, saying that "you should know that I hate Mint Chocolate Chip! We have been married for twenty years and you should know this!"

When Mom was pissed, she would say something, then pause, as if to think of what she wanted to say next. After a good five minutes of berating our father, she fell silent, no doubt stewing over my Dad's blunder. It just so happened that our car was over the I-696 expressway on Orchard Lake Road. Without a word, she flug the dripping cone out of the window and clean off the bridge onto the expressway below.

It happened so fast that no one knew what to say. Chris and I sat quietly in the back, mouths hanging open, as Mom didn't say other word the whole way home. I mumbled something like "geez, Mom, Lee would have eaten it..." (Lee of course, being the resident garbage can who would scarf up pretty much anything we didn't want).

Anyway at the time something occured to me: I envisioned some poor trucker in his 18-wheeler below on I-696 who, at that exact moment, happened to be going under Orchard Lake Road. Imagine what his reaction would be suddenly seeing a Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Cone, seemingly coming out of nowhere, splattered on his windshield.

I wonder what that driver must have been thinking after that happened?

#2 Chris and the Sloppee.

One warm evening on Southbrook, a bunch of us kids (Dave Kargela, Jon Bielby, Mary Sauer, Chris and I) were horsing around in our front yard, shooting baskets and having a pretty good time. Just then Dad drove up from the store and, nice guy that he was. had bought us all Slurpees from the 7-11 up at 13 Mile and Orchard Lake.

We were all enjoying our slurpees and were still playing around when the one of the kids took some of his slurpee in his straw and spit it at Chris. Jon Bielby, who was our next door neighbor, in fact was younger than me but older that Chris. Jon was a little shit. He would play frog baseball and blow up small animals with firecrackers, and once, he dug up my Guinea Pig, Brownie after we had carefully buried him in the back yard following his untimely (and, for me, traumatic) death a few days after we bought him.

Anyway, Chris's reaction to Jon's little provocation was to hurl his entire slurpee at him, missing terribly and nailing the flank of Mom's Station Wagon. Jon retaliated by throwing his slurpee, most of which nailed Chris solidly on the chest and face. Two slurpees down. Chris ran into the house, crying and our little group broke up.

That in itself wasn't exactly amusing, but what was funny about that story came a little later when Dad was explaining to Mom what had happened: "Well Jon hit Chris with his Sloppee...." I think that little error made even Chris smile. It sure makes us smile today.

Thanks to Chris for clearing up the specifics of what happened. Call it "Sloppygate".

Chapter Eleven (Chris): a Roo-ing Night!

2005-05-15T17:56:00.000-07:00

Down the street from where we lived during the late sixties and early seventies, there was a dog named Dutch. He was a Weimaraner and extremely large and high-strung. If he was out, anything that passed his house would be immediately chased with a commensurate "ROOOOOOOOOOOOO" sound following.

Flash forward: My brother Paul owned a mini-bike, which we both loved to ride. We were only allowed to ride up and down the dirt road upon which we lived but it was sheer freedom. And if Dutch was out, we would have to hustle past him, at full bore, with him "ROOOOOO"ing and chasing us the entire time. After a while, on cold nights, we would drive like all get-out down the street, providing our own "ROOOOOOOOOOO" in the absence of Duch. When it got cold we would say, "It's a rooing night".

Now that I have introduced the mini-bike, let's flash back: At first, our parents wouldn't let us drive the thing anywhere except around our circle drive. Well, Paul used to stop, with me waiting a distance away and look at me. He would signal the "hands praying", which I would return. Then he would put up one finger, meaning "one turn around the circle" which I would return. Then he would going roaring by a few times until the cycle would begin again. Enough said about that.

On one paticular summer day, Paul stopped and and went through the motions and then roared by me. Little did I know that the throttle on the mini-bike was stuck and he was completely out of control. That is, until he went over the handlebars, all elbows and assholes, landed flat on his back and slid a few feet on a gravel driveway as the bike sailed merrily away under it's own power. The scream that came from my mouth had started in my toes and came out as though I had been stuck with a spear in the stomach! I ran to him SO hoping he wasn't dead! Needless to say he wasn't.

I don't remember if the mini-bike disappeared very suddenly from the house right after that incident, but I will always remember the fear and dread that coursed through my soul upon watching this incident. Yet again, like "The Dive" and "Bucky" Paul, much like the stuntman he has proven to be all of his life, had done something spectacular in my life that I will never forget.

Comment/rebuttal by Paul: OK, so I teased you about it, but dammit, I LET you ride the Mini-bike! More than you let me ride your Motorcycle!

Co-authors

2005-05-15T17:53:00.000-07:00

Chris and possibly Lee if he's up for it, will be "guest" contributors to the blog. Or co-authors. Or whatever. Suffice to say that all three of us have different memories, sometimes of the very same thing, so we're all going to pitch in.

Chapter Ten (Paul): Bucky and Me

2005-05-13T11:20:00.000-07:00

This could have been a lot, lot worse. But it turned out that I really wasn't hurt all that bad...but I haven't ridden a horse since.

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One of the many things there was to do in Seven Lakes was to go horseback riding. There was a horse stable on the north side of 211 and, for a small fee, you could go on a leisurely ride in the country with a guide.

Now I have always been a little scared of horses. They were big and intimidating. They give you "horse looks", which in order to fully appreciate, you'd have to talk to my brother Chris.

a "horse look".

That I even got on a horse this day in about 1990 or 91 was a miracle, but in a never ending attempt to have fun, I decided to join my younger brother and my Dad on a horseback ride through the back lots of Seven Lakes. After all, what could go wrong?

Anyway, we walked slowly on our mounts along the roads towards the back of the subdivision. At one point there was woods on one side and homes on the other. Everything was going just fine. It was the guide, me, followed by my Dad and Chris.

Suddenly, something must have spooked my horse. He reared up, and I remember seeing nothing but blue sky above me for a second as said horse and I went up. However, what goes up must come down and I fell from the horse--hard. THUD. My initial thought in the split second that I was falling to earth was the horse was going to land on me. I tried to get up but I couldn't. I might even have blacked out a few seconds, because the next thing I remember was my Dad bent over me looking upside down at me with a concerned face.

"Don't try and get up," Dad said. "Just lay there for a second." Always one to listen to my Dad, I immediately sat up and tried to stand. Everything seemed to be working ok, although my butt hurt like hell. The guide was very apologetic and said that she might have seen a cat or something that spooked the horse, and that he normally never did anything like that.

Well I sure as hell wasn't getting back up on that horse. I walked back to the stables, got the convertable and drove back home. I was sore, but I was okay.

Chris later said that, for a brief, shining moment when the horse first reared, I looked absolutely sensational, like the Lone Ranger on the great horse Silver. But then I came crashing down to earth, losing both my mask and my dignity.

When I think of what happened to Christopher Reeve on a horse, Looking back I was very very lucky to have a big fat ass. If I had falled any differently I might have broken my back or something worse. But suffice to say it was just another strange little incident in our strange lives.

Every time I went by the stables from then on out, I would always point to the stables and said "Look! There's BUCKY!"

Chapter Nine (Paul): MILK!

2005-05-13T10:46:00.000-07:00

I may or may not have been permanently warped by this incident. Looking back, it's pretty damn funny.

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For several dinners when I was about 7 or 8, I had the knack of spilling my glass of milk that I had all over the dinner table. Mom usually had a tablecloth on the table and it always looked nice and i pretty much always ruined it.

Anyway, I was on a roll in the milk-spilling department. I think I had knocked over my glass for 2 or 3 straight dinners. Lo and behold, it was about halfway through this dinner and, sure enough, I was reaching for a roll when my arm knocked over my glass of milk again. This time Mom, who was sitting next to me and had been chewing me out on a regular basis for being so damn clumsy, said absolutely nothing. She simply picked up the now-half-full glass of milk and dumped the rest on my head. I ran crying from the table to my room and I remember hearing my Dad saying "Ah geez, Aud....."

I don't think I ever spilled my milk again, no doubt out of sheer terror. To this day, I hate milk. But to think of my Mom doing something so random, so out of the blue is actually hilarous.

Chapter Eight (Paul): A Head Full of Junk

2005-05-13T10:22:00.000-07:00

Our whole family was always competitive, but never moreso when we would play "Jeopardy" during our visits to North Carolina.

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One of the highlights of a visit to North Carolina, at least in the earlier years before Dad died, was our "Jeopardy" game. After dinner, we would gather around the kitchen table, collect our various drinks of choice, and see who would reign supreme in the home version of the game that most of us watched religiously every night.

Dad would act as the "reader" most games. He would have the game board and read the answers and determine who "beeped" in first (We didn't have the sophisticated ring in buzzers like the TV show, so we would call just call out "BEEP!" when we knew the answers). It was a judgement call as to who beeped in first and we had many a spirited arguement over who got to answer the question. Mom always accused me of "sulking" when I didn't get the call, but I always thought I was getting the short end of the stick because everyone expected Lee to beep in and he was generally the loudest.

Mal was also a funny emcee. Whenever there was a "Daily Double" he would make a noise (like they do in the show), but it was always something like "Siss-boom-bah" or "Clank-bonk" or just simply, "BOOM!" Once he simply belched to indicate to us that there was a Daily Double. He'd have trouble reading the answers sometimes, and of course, Mom would always scold him or we'd give him a hard time, but all in good fun.

The games usually were fairly competitive, and Mom and especially my older brother Lee were usually the ones to beat. Lee, especially, had (and still has) a vast knowledge of minutiae (a "head full of junk" he called it, and the source of this blog title) and knew the answers to nearly everything that was thrown out. I would guess that Lee won about 75-percent of the games, Mom and I would each win about 10% and Chris about 5%. (Just a rough estimate, don't hold it against me). Chris and I were always more than happy to make sure Lee had plenty of Scotch during these games, mostly in the hope that he would be too lubricated to effectively play the game. Once in awhile it worked.

We'd get into spirited arguements, we'd get pissed off, but most of all we had a great time. Everyone except me smoked back then, so by the time the night ended the entire kitchen was blue with cigarette smoke, like a poker game or something. I am an asthmatic and sometimes had to turn on the ceiling fan or duck out for some fresh air, but I have nothing but good memories of those Jeopardy tournaments.

Chapter Seven (Paul): YORK!

2005-05-13T09:56:00.000-07:00

We had a very sweet and very dumb Basset Hound named "Happi" that we bought for Dad's 40th birthday. We all loved the dog but, like much of the rest of the family, she was a little bit weird.

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Dad had a camera that had a timer on it when we lived on Southbrook, and decided to take a family portrait in the living room. He carefully set up the camera, the three sons sat on the couch, Mom sat on the floor with the dog next to her and Dad would run over after he started the timer and sit on the floor next to Mom.

Dad hit the timer and dashed over to where we were sitting and sat down. Unfortunately, the dog was in the way and Dad sat on her. The only way I could describe the sound that Happi made was "York!". We all busted up laughing just as the picture was taken. I am looking for the resulting picture and will post it as soon as I can scan it.

The dog was okay, of course, but at the time it was just hilarious.

Chapter Six (Paul): Mal and the Pot Roast

2005-05-13T09:47:00.000-07:00

Dad had somewhat of a notereity in our family as being a "taker-backer". Any time something went wrong with something he had purchased, no matter how old or used it was, Mal would take it back to the store. Most times he didn't have a box, or a receipt, and he always got his money back. This, however, was the ultimate.

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Mom had a way of making Pot Roast that was just awesome. You take a thick 3 or 4 pound Chuck or English Cut Roast, put an undiluted can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup on it, then top it off with a package of dry Onion Soup mix. Wrap it in heavy duty foil and put it in a 350-degree oven for a couple hours. The roast cooks in its own juices and the soups and is normally tender and delicious. I still make Pot Roast this way.

However, one night, while we were living in Farmington Hills, the Pot Roast Mom made, even though she made it the same way she always made it, was tough. Very tough. We could barely cut it, let alone eat it. Dad, of course was fuming. Finally he stood up in the middle of dinner, snatched it off the table, wrapped it back in Aluminum foil and drove back the the Great Scott Supermarket at 10 mile and Orchard Lake, where Mom had bought the roast. I went with him. The roast was still warm when we got to the store. Dad explained to the astonished store manager that this was the toughest, worst piece of meat he had ever eaten.

The Manager gave Dad a full refund and profuse apologies. Dad's closing comment to the guy was the suggestion that he "find a dog with a strong set of jaws" to eat the roast. I can't even remember what we ended up having for dinner, but my memory of that part is clear as a bell.

That is an absolutely true story, both of my brothers will attest to it, and this was vintage Dad.

Chapter Five (Paul): Christmas Traditions

2005-05-13T09:24:00.000-07:00

This was written in 2002. Obviously things have changed since then, but I wanted to include it from our personal website.

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Christmas in the Townley family has always been special. When I think of all the wonderful Christmases my parent, brothers and I celebrated, it always gets me a little warm and fuzzy. Through the magic of our 8 millimeter camera, my Mom and Dad recorded some of our very earliest Christmases, preserving the memories of more than 40 years ago.

In my early years, we always spent Christmas eve at my Grandma's. There was always a large group of people there, including assorted Aunts, Uncles, Nieces and Nephews, Cousins, and of course our own family. We'd sit around and eat and drink and open presents. I remember Grandma and Granddad Hill had a really bright shiny aluminum Christmas tree with one of those multicolored spotlights with the rotating color bar. It was definitely cheesy, even for the early sixties but I remember it as though it were yesterday. Man I wish I could find a "Hi-fi" tree like that.

In my very early teens we usually had my other Grandma (Dad's Mom) visiting from Ohio. Thus, my younger brother and I had to sleep in the same bed, in my room. It was always difficult getting to sleep on Christmas eve, we were so excited about opening our presents. We always woke up about 4 or 5 in the morning and we had STRICT orders from our Dad NOT to wake them up until 7:00am. So my brother and I would read comic books and horse around in our room until we were allowed to go downstairs. Sometimes we'd set the clock ahead a few minutes to try and get our Dad up earlier but he wasn't having any part of it. 7:00 was the wake up time for Christmas Day.

Lately the tradition is this: On Christmas Eve my Mom puts together an incredible buffet dinner with cold cuts, all manner of hors d'ovures, cookies, candies and a whole lot more. There's usually the little cocktail rye with the mixture of sausage and velveeta--yum; the requisite cocktail weenies in barbeque sauce; the awesome sugar cookies and the cheese ball among other things. We would start the festivities around 6:30 at night, when we dig in to the goodies. We traditionally watched "A Christmas Carol" starring George C. Scott (the definitive version, no doubt). We have been watching that same movie on Christmas eve for more than 10 years. Before we watched the show, Mom would allot us one of our presents and we opened our stockings. We would all have fun going to the dollar store and buying all manner of little gifties for each of our stockings. Nothing terribly expensive stuff, but there were pens, decks of cards, little votive candles--just cool stuff.

this was one of the more bizarre traditions that we have been doing for years on Christmas Eve.

Christmas morning is pretty much the same in our family as many other families. There's no getting up at 4am nowadays. We sleep until 7 or 8 in the morning, sometimes later. By 9:00am, we rouse the late sleepers and open our presents. And later on in the day we have a traditional Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. We have been very blessed to be able to do this every year, even though Dad passed away in 1996. We will always be together on Christmas.

This past year (2004)was our first Christmas without Mom and the three of us (along with Jessie and Denise) had a great Christmas nonetheless, although it was a rather bittersweet one.

Chapter Four (Paul): The Dive

2005-05-13T09:07:00.000-07:00

This was a pretty embarrassing moment. I'm glad i don't drink any more, if nothing else to avoid things like this from happening.

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We had many great visits with Dad's sister's family, the Hugheses, since we were children. Every fall, we would make the five hour trip to Lancaster, Ohio to go to the Fairfield County Fair, go apple picking and occasionally climb Mount Pleasant (which was really nothing more than a hill). Less often, the Hughes came to visit us, especially when we were living on Southbrook and had the pool at our disposal.

One of the last visits with the Hughes family (My Uncle Bob, Aunt Vivian, and cousins Cheryl, Keith, Vance and Adrienne, although this time Cheryl didn't make the trip) was in the summer of 1974 or 75, I believe. All I know was that we were able to partake in the alcohol consumption with Bob, Viv and Dad because I was of age. So Vance and I (and probably Chris as well) were sucking 'em down pretty regularly.

So, as I did a lot during special occasions, I had enjoyed a few beers. By Saturday afternoon, I will pretty lubricated. We had decided to go swimming. I put my trunks on, and as everyone was heading to the lake, I broke out in a run. I had done this before, just running full speed and into the lake where I would then dive into the water.

It had worked every time before. But not this time, thanks to all the liquid refreshment I had enjoyed prior to the swim.

As I got closer to the water, I tripped on the cement edge of the seawall and lost my balance. I'm imagining I looked a little like one of those gooney birds trying to take off that I used to watch on "Wild Kingdom". Arms flailing, legs furiously pumping, I came to rest, face first, in about a foot of water at the edge of the lake. So I stayed there, face down, as everyone else, astonished, no doubt stared at me and wondered if I was dead or something. Finally Mom came up to me and lifted my head up by the hair, giving me a concerned "are you all right?" look.

I looked at Mom and said "I...AM...SOOOO...EMBARRASED." Relieved, Mom simply let my head go and my face plopped right back into the mud.

It was embarrassing and funny all at the same time. Of course, everyone there was rolling on the ground laughing at me. It must have been quite a sight.

Chapter Three (Paul): Mom's Death (Part 2)

2005-05-12T06:51:00.000-07:00

This chapter is the last 18 hours of Mom's life. If it sounds like I have written this without emotion and somewhat coldly, but it's not that. This is the best way I know how to deal with this day and I really want everyone to know exactly what happened. I can't even explain why, but maybe this is just a part of the closure, which, 14 months later, I find myself still having to deal with.

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Sunday, March 21, 2004 started on an ominous note. I awoke suddenly a little after 4:30 in the morning hecause I thought I heard Mom calling me. Jessie and I usually have a lot of ambient noise in our bedroom when we sleep, plus a fan was running in the room as well, so it was something of a miracle that I heard her.

I came out of the bedroom and Mom had fallen and was lying on the floor in the dining room. She had had trouble sleeping and had come out of the bedroom to sit at the table for awhile. It was when she tried to walk the ten steps to the couch and fell. God knows how long she had been there. If she told me I didn't remember. I got her to the couch and cleaned her up, fortunately she had fallen on the softer carpeting. Apparently she was all right.

The days since Mom had arrived had become increasingly difficuilt, because she was growing weaker and weaker almost by the hour. just a little over two weeks later I was amazed that Mom had even been able to make the trip from North Carolina. She was even weaker than before and spent most of the time on the sofa with her head down or in bed. Jessie and I tended to her as best we could but it was clearly a losing battle.

A few days earlier, we took Mom to see my physician, Dr. David Vella. He pretty much reiterated what Mom's doctors had said, that the end was near. Although it was still a shock to hear to me, Mom was completely okay with it, almost relieved. The doctor suggested either removing the device from Mom's chest that would administer a mild electric shock when her heartbeat became irregular. Mom was very anxious to do that but probably too weak to actually go out to have the procedure done. Vella also suggested that Mom just simply stop taking the medicine that regulated her heartbeat, and when she had one of those episodes, she would just painlessly go. That was what she wanted more than anything. She said over and over that she just wanted to die.

It was so hard to hear that, but I was beginning to understand. Mom was suffering, and I didn't want her to suffer any more.

The day before we had a visit from Hospice, and arranged for a lot of things to make Mom as comfortable as possible during this time. Mostly medications, an on-call nurse, and possibly a new hospital type bed, one that could be adjusted, like one of those craft-matics. Mom got pain medication, medicine to help her breathe and a whole lot more. I was very impressed with their professionalism, and the woman from Hospice gave me her card with a phone number I could call day or night, if there was a problem. Little did I know how soon I would need that number.

When I brought back Mom to care for her, I thought she would get at least a little better. Not that we thought we could nurse her back to the robust, active woman she once was, but maybe some improvement, some trips to Wal-Mart or the movies, something like that. We didn't come close. Instead of getting better, Mom had gotten progressively worse, and I understand why.

You see, up until Mom moved here, she still had responsibilities around the house, if nothing else to feed the cat and herself. Once she got here, Mom had absolutely nothing she needed to do, and finally, after all these years, she was completely worry free, and I think she was, little by little, letting go and drifting away.

Of course, I was positively astonished at just how fast she went downhill in the two weeks she was with us. We kept her as fed and as comfortable as possible, and that's the best we could do. But it was increasingly difficult to watch her fade away and it was hard to keep a cheery attitude.

I had planned on staying home all day Sunday. The day before Jessie filled in for me at Randy Long's 50th birthday party, which was held at a Mexican restaurant in Waterford. Mom practically insisted that we go but I didn't want to leae her for even a few minutes.

Sunday morning Jessie and I decided to get a baby monitor so we wouldn't repeat what had happened earlier that morning. I wanted to be able to hear Mom no matter when or where she needed us. So I made a quick trip to Wal-Mart and got a monitor, which I installed in the back bedroom.

The day went on. Mom spent some time on the couch, and took phone calls from both Margaret and Carol as well as Chris. Jessie and I pretty much just hung out around the house, I played a few games and puttered on the Internet. As evening came around, Mom decided to retire to the bedroom and rest a little bit. Jessie and I were watching the movie "Moulin Rouge" and I had the baby monitor close at hand.

We could hear Mom in the other room talking. It was kind of strange, but she seemed to be having some sort of a conversation with someone. She sounded strangely calm and was actually saying some pretty funny things. One thing she said I distinctly remember was "I don't like men with facial hair." I don't know who she was talking to, or whether she was asleep and dreaming, but she seemed very much at peace.

I would stick my head into the bedroom now and again and say "Mom, are you all right?" to which she would quietly answer, "Yes. I'm fine."

The movie was crappy, really lousy, and made no sense. Maybe I was just distracted, or just tired but i wasn't enjoying it at all. I was kind of just looking at the TV screen and not paying much attention to the movie.

I think it might have been around 9:00 in the evening that Mom's "thumper" (as she called it) went off. That was that little device that gave off an electric shock if the heart was out of synch. It went off twice, and she hollered both times. She had told me that it wasn't as though the electric charges hurt so much, but they just were surprising to her, but her cries of surprise/pain were scary.

We rushed in to see if she was okay and she seemed a little dazed if anything. Nonetheless, I decided to call the nurse anyway. After several calls, I was told by Hospice that the on-call nurse would call shortly. She did and said she would be out soon.

Mom kept saying she was fine and shooed us out of the bedroom where she was half sitting, half laying on the bed like she had been doing for several days.

Around 10:30 Mom said she needed to go to the bathroom. It had become a two person job, and we put Mom onto one of our dining room chairs and slid the chair the short distance from the bedroom to the bathroom. I made a mental note that we needed to get a wheelchair to make this job easier.

We got Mom onto the toilet and then I left. Jessie stayed with her just to make sure everything was okay. Apparently Mom wanted to change into her pajamas, so i brought them in after she was finished.

Mom put her arms around my shoulders and I attempted to lift her back onto the chair. I said, are you OK Mom? And she said, "I'm OK."

That was the last thing she said.

For some reason, she seemed a lot heavier this time--normally I could lift her up with ease and move her about.

I then said one of the most ironic, chilling things I think I will ever say in my life:

"Come on, Mom, stand up.....it is like she is dead weight."

Mom's arms were around me and her eyes were open but she said nothing. I looked over my left shoulder and I immediately realized she was gone, although I didn't want to believe it at the time.

I gently set her down on the bathroom floor. Mom was completely still. About a million things raced through my head. I wanted to call 9-1-1, do CPR, do something. I ran out of the bathroom and grabbed the phone, desperately looking for the number for Hospice. I think Jessie said that there was someone who had just pulled into the parking area in front of our house. It was the nurse. Inexplicably, I ran outside to meet her, in shorts and barefoot, panicky. I said something to her like "I'm Paul Townley, I think we're losing my Mom...." I was almost incoherant. Not even waiting for the nurse, I ran back into the house and into the bathroom where Mom was still laying. Right about that time the phone ring, and it was Jessie's younger brother, Chris, whom she had become very close to in the past four months since they met for the first time in December. Everything thinks they are on the same wavelength anyway, but he wanted to know if everything was all right. How very strange.

The nurse came in and quickly ascertained that Mom had passed away. She then grabbed both Jessie's and my hand very tightly and said that this was a very holy moment, that Mom wasn't going to have to suffer any more and that this was a beautiful, natural thing. I mumbled something about how Mom wanted to change into her pajamas and the nurse offered to change her.

I walked out of the bathroom in a state of shock and held Jessie tight. Shortly thereafter the nurse came out and said she needed to call the police (which was standard procedure) and also a funeral home. She wanted to know which Funeral home to call. I knew of one, Elton Black and Sons on M-59, so I fumbled through a phone book trying to find the phone number. While the nurse made the phone calls I went back into the bathroom, and just sat there, looking at Mom almost in disbelief. Mom had gotten what she wanted for the past year of her life. I kissed her softly on the cheek.

I walked into the bathroom a couple more times after that, just to make sure everything was all right. One time when I went in there, I looked at Mom's face and couple have sworn she was smiling.

It seemed like it took forever for the police and the funeral people to get there. I made quick phone calls to Chris and to Lee to tell them about Mom. I don't even remember what I said or what they said. I was getting more and more angry that the people who were supposed to be here weren't. Then, about 11:30, the police arrived, two very nice Oakland County Sheriffs deputies, who just needed to have a few routine questions answered. Ironically, Jessie realized that one of the deputies was the exactly same guy who had written her a speeding ticket about six months earlier. Nonetheless we sat at the table and chatted, and they filled out the information. They were very nice and sympathetic. As they left, one of the cops said "I am sorry for your loss." and strangely I thought of all the times I had heard that phrase on "NYPD Blue".

Finally it was nearly midnight when two men from Elton Black showed up. I remained at the table, and after a few minutes the Hospice nurse said "Here's what is going to happen. They are going to bring your Mom out on a soft stretcher. You will be able to see her once more. You can do or say anything you want, and when you give the word they will take her away."

A short time later, they brought Mom out. Jessie and I were standing in the area between the living room and the dining room. They paused there and, for some reason I will probably never know, I crossed myself. To this day, I don't know why I did that, having fallen from organized religion years before and never a practicing Catholic. I nodded to the two men and they took Mom away, into the night. As they reached the door, I softly said,

"Good night, Mom."

Chapter Two (Paul): Mom's Death (part 1)

2005-05-11T11:05:00.000-07:00

Again, this a bit of a downer, but this is one of the two most profound things that ever happened to me, and I want to make sure I never forget what happened.

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When it comes down to it, Mom lived much longer than she probably should have.

Now I'm not trying to be flip or disrespectful by that statement, but I think that, based on all she went through in the last year of her life--including Mouth Cancer and two massive heart attacks--Mom was lucky to live as long as she did (although to her it was more of a curse than a blessing).

Christmas 2003 was very much like the other Christmases we had had since Dad died. The trip down there, lots of food, the usual things we always did when we went down there. Mom was not doing great, but she was able to make a typically great Christmas for us. And I truly believe that, for the most part, all of us knew it would be her last.

After Mom's cancer surgery in the Fall of 2003, Chris has spent a lot of time down there, taking care of Mom, who had stubbornly refused to give up the house and move into assisted living. We had talked extensively about doing that, but it was quite clear that Mom didn't want that. Chris himself wasn't exactly brimming with health either, having suffered two heart attacks in the previous five years. Because of the circumstances of his own life and the often cruel turns it had taken for him, Chris was able to be a full-time caregiver for much of the last six months of Mom's life. And I hope that he will always know how grateful Lee and I (and, undoubtedly, Mom in the next world) for all he did.

It was a very nice, andf for me a very bittersweet Christmas. Although Mom required somewhat more help around the house than normal, and got fatigued quite often, it was pretty much like all the other visits. We watched "Jeopardy", had our great Christmas Eve buffet that had become tradition, and watched the George C. Scott "A Christmas Carol" like we had every year for more than ten years. We opened presents Christmas morning. Mom was even strong enough to make Christmas dinner

In January the news came. Based on all that was wrong with Mom, not the least of which was Lung Cancer, which had been somewhat recently diagnosed and which Mom had undergone radiation treatment in the fall, she called me one day to tell me the doctors' prognosis was that she had 2 to 4 months to live.

What do you say to a loved one who has just given you that devastating news? What do you think? My initial reaction was denial. Mom had BEATEN cancer. She was getting better, I thought. I know that she wouldn't live forever, but I thought things would be all right.

But truth of the matter is, she was getting weaker by the day.

I told Mom that I thought it would be a good idea if she were to make the trip back here and live with Jessie and I. As usual, she resisted. Even up until the end she said she didn't want to be a burden to Jessie and I. But nonetheless, we agreed that, tentatively she would come to live with us Spring Break, in April of 2004. I would drive down and get Mom, her cat Toby and her clothes. We'd drive back in our van and, finally, we would be able to take care of her like we had wanted to for months.

At the time, I prayed that she would make it that long.

I conversed almost daily on the phone with Mom throughout the next couple of months. Some days she said she felt pretty good, other days were not so good. But she kept getting weaker and weaker. She was falling down, and not able to take care of herself properly. She wasn't eating right. It was becoming obvious that she couldn't make it on her own.

She was trying to pack her belongings for the April trip, a little at a time. It was a long, slow process, and, because she got tired so easily, lasted seemingly forever.

By the beginning of March, I could sense an air of desperation in her voice. She was terribly, terribly weak. I had told her a couple months earlier that if she felt she couldn't make it, just say the word and I would come down and get her. Bravely, she steadfastly refused, not wanting to burden Jessie and I. Jessie was as adamant as I was that we wanted to take care of Mom. We had the room in our house, there would be someone there almost 24 hours a day (except for an hour between the time Jessie went to work and I came home during the week). It just made sense.

I can't remember the exact conversation that led to our decision that I would be driving down to get her early. I basically said, "Mom, you need to tell me that you want me to come down, and be honest with yourself. I don't know what to do otherwise, and only you know how you are."

She replied, in a very small voice, ""I think you should come now."

The date was March 4th. I was going to North Carolina six weeks early. At work, I hastily fired off a memo to my bosses that I had to leave right away, tomorrow, on a family emergency, and I wasn't sure when I would be back. I raced home from work, hurriedly packed an overnight bag, made a reservation at Red Roof Inn at Charleston West Virginia, and first thing the next day, Friday morning, less than 18 hours after that initial phone call, I was on my way. I prayed for a lot of things that day---that I wouldn't run into snow in the mountains, that Mom could make the trip back okay, that we could fit all she wanted to bring back in the van.

The next day, in the early afternoon, I was there. Immediately I started packing things in the van and surprised Mom by saying I wanted to leave tomorrow. She wasn't sure she was ready, but it looked like everything was in order and Mom made a few phone calls to local friends to say that she was going to be leaving in the morning.

Mom's biggest concern was fitting everything she had into the van while leaving enough room so the cat could move about if necessary. "Plenty of room," I said confidently, hoping like hell that there would actually BE enough room. "Plenty of room." It became kind of a catch phrase for the next 12 hours or so.

Another concern that Mom had was her Oxygen machine. It had become a piece of vital equipment for her in the last few weeks, a bulky, heavy piece of equipment that took up quite a bit of room. She was under the impression that she had to turn it in when she left and get another one when she came to Michigan. But it was quite obvious that she could not make the trip without it. After a long discussion, I told her we were taking it no matter what and we'd deal with the consequences later. As it is, even though we mentioned to Hospice that we had this expensive piece of equipment after Mom's death, no one seemed interested enough to come and pick it up, and it remains in one of our back bedrooms to this day. So much for all that worrying.

The next day, we were off.

Two of Mom's closest friends, Margaret and Carol stopped by in the morning, and it was a rather tearful farewell. Margaret was always the less emotional of the two, but both she and Carol were a mess. I knew they needed this moment, but I was also anxious to get going, as I had booked a hotel in Canton, Ohio for the night, with a long trip ahead.

Mom never looked back as we drove away from the house for the last time.

Long story short, the trip itself wasn't too bad, although we didn't make it as far as I thought. We ended up staying in Charleston again, at the same Red Roof Inn. Mom's cat, by the way, was as good as gold. Instead of sleeping in his bed that we had provided for him in the back seat, Toby instead nestled in between us and pretty much slept the whole way. We had to make a number of stops along the way, including a Denny's outside Cleveland where I got Mom something to eat in take out.

Finally, a mere 72 hours from the initial phone call, Mom was home. We would take care of her.

Chapter One (Paul): Dad's Death

2005-05-10T12:48:00.000-07:00

I realize this is kind of a bummer topic to begin this blog with, but I want to kinda get it out of the way so I don't dwell on it. I will probably follow this with the events leading up to Mom's death as well.

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Mom and Dad had spent six idyllic years in retirement in Seven Lakes, North Carolina, enjoying (and sometimes complaining about)the warm weather, as well as the opportunity to pursue some of the many hobbies and things they had meant to do throughout the years, and enjoy their fellow retiree friends, many of whom had ventured to this small community in south-central North Carolina to retire.

In the summer of 1989, Mom and Dad had watched with delighted eyes as their dream home--painstakingly designed by Mom--was built, moving in and settling into their new life together. They discovered there were many new things to do, not the least of which was tennis--there was an informal pickup game among the senior citizens, some of whom were more than 80 years old--which Dad loved and, despite the fact that he was still a more than pack a day smoker, was quite good at.

It seemed like the perfect retirement. Besides tennis, my Mom and Dad enjoyed movies, playing bridge and going out to eat, but most of all, my Dad seemed to like sitting at the kitchen table, smoking and watching The Weather Channel and the TV news the best.

During 1996, Dad started to have some health problems, many of which were unbeknownced to us three children. He and Mom made many trips to Duke University and to the Moore County hospital for tests and to be poked, prodded and whatever.

(Mom said later on that at the time they didn't want to burden us with the details of my Dad's various maladies, which I believe, but I also took her to task for NOT keeping us informed).

Dad had problems with his back, which eventually led to him having to give up his beloved Tennis. During July of 1996, my brother Chris and I made our annual summer trip down to visit Mom and Dad. And it didn't seem as though Dad was doing too bad. He "kept his dauber up" (which is a term he often used when we were down) despite not being able to play tennis, and we spent what was a fairly typical week doing all the things we always did: going to the "Food King" (a.k.a. Food Lion, which they had just build in Seven Lakes), Sonic's drive in and of course, Wal-Mart. Just a routine visit that turned out to be the last one before our lives were changed forever.

It was only a few months later that we began to realize that Dad was a lot sicker than he wanted us to believe. During one conversation during the July visit, he let it inadvertantly slip that he had been diagnosed with Lung Cancer but, he later explained, the spot on his lung was so small that it was almost not even worth mentioning, something that hopefully radiation would take care of.

We talked on the weekends and sometimes more. Dad's usual conversation with us was like the old Tim Allen routine. "Hi. How's the Car? Well, here's your Mom." Even though Mom said he looked forward to our calls very much, Dad was sometimes a man of few words.

Fast forward to Sunday, December 14th. I got a call in the morning from Mom, who told me that Dad had been taken to the hospital in the middle of the night. She was somewhat vague about the reasons, but apparently he was very weak and was having some trouble breathing. I asked Mom if she wanted me to come down early (we had tickets to come down for Christmas on December 19th, the following Friday, and Chris and I were flying together into Moore County Airport). Mom said that wouldn't be necessary, that the doctors were taking good care of Dad and he'd probably be giving all of us a call later on that day. There was even a possibility that he could get out of the hospital in time for our visit.

Sure enough, Dad called me later on in the afternoon. He sounded weak but not too bad. We talked about small things, like we always did, about the coming holidays, and so on. I could tell he was tired, having pretty much been up since the middle of the night, so I decided to cut our conversation short.

"Well, take care of yourself," Dad said. "We'll see you in a week or so."

"OK." I replied.

There was a brief pause.

"Dad?" I said.

"Yes son."

"I love you, Dad."

"Awww, I love you guys too. See you soon."

I hung up the phone with a slightly uneasy feeling. I couldn't explain it, but something was wrong. Maybe the tone of Dad's voice, maybe my own paranoia. To this day, I can't explain the strange feeling I had.

That was the last time I ever spoke to Dad.

The next day was Monday, and I was just wrapping up work for the day, maybe about quarter to five or so. I got a call from Mom. Not terribly unusual, she called me both at work and at home at various times of the day, sometimes with news about Dad, sometimes just to talk. Mom and I talked all the time on the phone.

This time, when I answered the phone and heard Mom''s voice, I immediately knew something was wrong.

She told me that the doctors had told her Dad had some sort of disease in which the lungs fill up with a thick mucus that required surgery to remove. I later learned that he had Mesotheliomia, a form of cancer, that affected the lining of the lungs. The lungs fill up with tumor mass, eventually to the point where the victim dies. It is the same disease that killed Steve MacQueen in 1980.

All those doctors and nurses and tests and trips to High Point, all for naught. Mom''s voice trembled as she said simply, that there was nothing that they could do except make him comfortable. They were hoping for Dad to have surgery, but he was just too weak and wouldn''t survive it.

Needless to say, I was stunned. I tried to comfort Mom the best I could, and she said they were talking about having Hospice bring Dad home and keep him as comfortable as possible. Once again I asked if I should come down early, and she basically said there was no reason to at this point.

All this, at Christmastime with the family coming to boot. I can't imagine the kind of burden that placed on Mom.

Chris and I were scheduled to fly down on Thursday, December 19, 1996. The first leg of the flight went as scheduled, but then there was a delay in Charlotte in our flight to Southern Pines, and we sat and sat. I called Mom a couple of times from the airport just to update her, and the last time I called the house, Margaret Widman answered the phone and said my Mom was at the hospital, that Dad had taken a turn for the worse and she had to leave.

Margaret and her husband Bill would pick us up from the airport and we were to go directly to the hospital. But still US Airways couldn't come up with a replacement for the defective plane we were supposed to have taken hours earlier. The flight was originally supposed to leave at about 4:30 but instead we were forced to wait more than 3 hours in Charlotte--easily the most frustrating 3 hours of my whole life.

Finally, when we arrived, Bill and Margaret were waiting for us and said they were taking us home instead, that it was too just late to go to the hospital and Dad was stable and Mom was exhausted so we would wait until morning.

The next morning, December 20th, we went to the hospital, about 10:00 or so.

I don't think any of us were prepared for what Dad looked like. I think we all expected just to see the same old Dad, but only in a hospital bed. But when we got there, Dad was in Intensive care, his hair dissheveled, laying flat on the hospital bed. He was pretty much drugged up when we got there and had all sorts of tubes, monitors and other assorted medical gadgets all hooked up to him. He just looked awful.

We tried talking to Dad but he couldn't speak very well. I'm sure he recognized us though because he put his arms around us as best he could. We tried to make him as comfortable as possible but it was pretty futile.

There was a chaplain there also, and he told us to tell Dad that it was OK to let go, that we would take care of Mom and just to relax (for some reason he was very antsy and twitchy, which Mom later told us may have been due to nicotine and alcohol withdrawl). We alternated talking to him and wandering through the hospital.

After a couple hours, Chris and I left to go pick up Lee, who was arriving at Moore County Airport in the early afternoon. We were both hungry and searched in vain for a McDonalds or anyplace to get something to eat. But we picked up Lee and headed back to the airport.

We spent the next couple of hours in the hospital talking to Dad and the minister and trying to console Mom, who was being stoic about the whole thing. We were also discussing bringing Dad home and getting Hospice to help us out. We were determined that Dad would see his beloved lake and the home he loved so much once more

Truth of the matter, it was only a matter of time. And not much time at that.

I was a mess. Whereas Chris and Lee were more or less being stoic about Dad, I couldn't help it, I was trying my best to keep it together, but I would walk away with tears streaming down my cheeks, then tried to put on a brave face for Mom''s sake.

Finally, later on in the afternoon, Mom sent us home. She had a few things to take care of and she would join us for dinner at home a little later.

The three of us all went into the hospital room to say our goodbyes to Dad and that we'd be back in the morning. As I leaned down to hug Dad, he said, in a very weak, cracked voice, "Where's Mom?" (He often called our Mom "Mom"), I said she was right outside and would be there in a minute. That was the last thing my Dad ever said to me.

We went home and Mom later joined us, saying that she had had Dad moved to a private room and had all the medical crap disconnected. We had a quiet dinner and watched TV, saying little. I remember we watched the "Mary Tyler Moore" show on Nick at Night and then, after it ended, we conversed quietly for a bit until, exhausted, we decided to go to bed.

It was 10:45pm. We all said good night and, for some reason, I said softly but aloud, "Good night, Dad."

About a half hour later, in bed, just about to doze off, I heard the phone ring. Lee took the call, and a couple minutes later he stuck his head into my room and said that Dad had died.

We all gathered downstairs at the kitchen table. Mom was in shock. Chris and Lee were still stoic, but I couldn't help it. The tears poured down my face. I was stunned, shocked, disbelieving. The rest of that night was a blur, as was a lot of the rest of that visit.

The next day, however, we learned that Dad had died at almost exactly 10:45, December 20, 1996--ironically, the same time I had whispered "Good night, Dad."

Prologue

2005-05-09T09:23:00.000-07:00

I have decided to add this, my fourth blog, to the others with one expressed purpose: to outline the history, life and times of my family, past and present. I have been called the family historian, and at the behest of my brother, I am just going to start outlining our family history before I forget it.

I also changed my mind and decided to stay with Blogspot because it's the one I know best.