Making One's Own History at Home

If you subscribe online to The New York Times you receive advance copies of features that will appear in the Sunday edition of the printed newspaper. So it was Friday morning that I read what I presume will be the lead article of the real estate section: “When Your Home Has a History” (https://nyti.ms/2t7pbIR).

It was an interesting story about past occupants of apartments and houses and how such provenance might affect the sale or enjoyment of domiciles beyond their intrinsic value. As the article related, occupants do not always know the secrets of their homes before taking possession of the premises.

So it was for Gilda and me when we moved into our home almost 33 years ago. Oh, we knew who the sellers were, though we never met them, not even at the closing. They were represented at the closing by a court appointed lawyer picked to oversee distribution of any joint assets. You see, they were in the middle of a rather bitter divorce. 

Neither lived in the house when Gilda looked at it with our real estate agent while I was at work one day in early March. Living there were two dogs, one large, one small. The small one was the feistier. The dogs had the run of the house. You can imagine what we found on the seven rooms of wall to wall carpet when we finally moved in two months later. 

Gilda knew this was the house we should buy by a convergence of numerical coincidences: She saw the house on March 11. The house number was 11. Our birthdays are 11 days apart. We were married 11 years at the time. We were married in the 11th month of the Jewish calendar. On the first night as a married couple in our first home in Connecticut, when we looked at our digital clock, it was 11:11. 

We didn’t think about the previous owners other than to relate to friends how they must have really disliked each other not to reach a divorce settlement for nearly a year. The price of the house had been set by the court the prior August. It didn’t go onto the market until the following March 11. Though home prices had escalated since August, the price of their home remained firmly set in the past. Our gain, their loss.

And so it was for the first 10 years of living in our current home. Then, as I was fiddling around with the insulation in the rafters of our basement one day, an envelope fell to the ground. 

In it was a love letter. A love letter from him to her. I invaded their privacy. I read the letter. Wouldn’t you? 

I don’t remember any of it specific language. Though I saved the letter for several years, I eventually discarded it, much the same way he, or she, discarded their once-loving union. 

I hadn’t thought about that note for the better part of a decade until this morning as I read The Times while torrential rain, then some snow showers followed by strong gusts of wind assaulted our homestead, overturning a Weber grill on the patio, knocking down part of a fence and leaving a large lake with wind-blown ripples in our back yard. 

Our home indeed had a history, but not as memorable and meaningful as the one we have lived for more than three decades and who knows how many more. 

Guns Pose a Danger, And That's the Truth. Plus, Who Was Marjory Stoneman Douglas?

It is often argued that only a liberal, Democratic president can alter progressive policy. Only a Republican president can do an about face on conservative dogma. Thus, a Richard Nixon could open a dialogue with and recognize Red China. Bill Clinton could institute work requirements for welfare recipients.

In the wake of the Parkland, FL, high school shooting, with numerous corporations retreating from financial discounts for National Rifle Association members and major retailers like Walmart, Dick’s Sporting Goods and the Fred Meyer division of Kroger tightening gun sale guidelines, it is no wonder that Donald Trump is seeking cover for his heretofore unassailable backing of the NRA. He is, at least publicly, rethinking his previous unqualified support of second amendment rights that many have come to believe far exceed the intent of the founding fathers.

It is a savvy move by Trump but one that does carry risk. Savvy because Trump needs to expand his base. What better way to appeal to independents, and even some Democrats, than to crater into their gun control mindset? Trump is a master at reading the public mood. Clearly there is growing momentum for a review of our national gun toting policy, finally, after the second largest student death toll. 

Sure, NRA members and Trump’s conservative base won’t like it, but at this point in time he is their man. No one else in the Republican party can buck him at the polls. So they’ll vote for him because they know any Democrat would demand even tighter gun laws.

Savviness comes with risk. If Trump doesn’t deliver more restrictive gun control he will be held accountable by independents and Democrats as an empty suit (which, given his corpulent state, is hard to imagine any suit he wears being less than overfilled). He would not be able to claim Democrats wouldn’t vote for gun control. Nor could he allege Republican congressmen and senators thwarted him because, as already evident, Trump now controls the GOP.  If he truly wants gun control it will happen. 

He must deliver on his promise.

Delivering on any promise is, of course, a challenge for Trump. More than once he has reneged on public promises. Recall how, with cameras rolling, he told a meeting of bi-partisan legislators he would accept any deal they brought him on the future of undocumented workers and border security. Just days later he rejected their proposal. So pinning Trump down on gun control may be as difficult, especially after he gets an earful from Wayne LaPierre and his fellow NRA sharpshooter elite. 

It’s always amusing and often instructive to listen to how late night comedians parse the news. After Trump told a televised bi-partisan meeting of legislators Wednesday he would favor taking guns away from “mentally ill people or others who could present a danger without first going to court,” (https://nyti.ms/2t6wkJo), Stephen Colbert noted he was “doing something Obama never did—he is coming for your guns!” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6dIrs0RurA)

If I were an NRA member, or simply a gun enthusiast, I wouldn’t worry. The odds of Trump following through on this initiative are as long as his ability to tell the truth.

Speaking of telling the truth, departing White House communication director Hope Hicks is reported to have acknowledged to the House Intelligence Committee earlier this week that she occasionally had told “white lies” in support of Trump’s candidacy and presidency.

“Well, duh,” commented Colbert. “Telling lies to white people is what got Trump elected.”

Touché. But not really. You’d have to be pretty naive to believe politicians and their staffs don’t dissemble the truth, not now-and-again, but pretty regularly. Just accept it as the price of any government doing business, hopefully, in the best interests of their constituents. Of course, that’s why we need a free, unbridled press to put the truth on the record.

Perhaps I missed it, but in all the coverage of the mass murders in Florida there has been nothing on Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the woman for whom the high school was named. Gilda passed along this article from prospect.org that provides a vibrant portrait of this extraordinary champion of environmental and women’s rights: http://prospect.org/article/who-was-marjory-stoneman-douglas

Twenty-Two Years: Time I Lived With My Mother and Since She Passed Away

Deducting the year I spent in Syracuse earning a master’s degree in newspaper journalism, I lived 22 years in my parents’ home in Brooklyn before starting my professional career in Connecticut at The New Haven Register. 

Twenty-two years. My mother passed away on this date 22 years ago. As it is this year, February 16, 1996, was a Friday. 

Two years ago I chronicled some memories of Sylvia Forseter on the twentieth anniversary of her death (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2016/02/twenty-years-ago-today.html). Naturally, there were more that never made it into that blog post. Here are some from my first 22 years with her, mostly from the years before my bar-mitzvah.

Mom was the antithesis of the “early to bed, early to rise” practitioner. She stayed up late and did not enjoy waking up early. Mom and Dad worked together in their lingerie factory. Dad would leave the house between 6:30 and 7 am for the near one hour drive up Ocean Avenue, then Flatbush Avenue, across the Manhattan Bridge and through the streets to the parking garage near their factory of the moment on Broadway, anywhere between Houston and East 8th Street. 

Mom would not walk to the subway, the elevated BMT line at Neck Road and East 16th Street a few blocks from our house, until after 9 am. It’s not that she stayed home to shuffle her three children off to school. I have no memory of her making breakfast for us. Nor did she make lunch for us as our school served a hot lunch every day. She just wasn’t ready for the morning. She enjoyed a leisurely cup of coffee and a cigarette before the hourlong ride on the train, less crowded at her preferred time than during rush hour. 

When you run your own business there’s no clock to punch in, or punch out. My parents rarely left the factory before 6 pm. My father navigated the stop and go traffic down Broadway, onto Canal Street, then back over the Manhattan Bridge and the return trek down Flatbush Avenue (idling only to secure a New York Post—back then a liberal tabloid—at the end of the Flatbush Avenue Extension near Prospect Park) before chugging down Ocean Avenue to our home on Avenue W.

She was different than most of our friends’ mothers. She went to work every day in “the city,” an uncommon practice in the 1950s. She liked to say my poor eating habits—she claimed I used to throw green peas at her from my high chair—prompted her escape from housework. In truth, her father had trained his four daughters to be vital participants in commerce, either on their own or with their respective spouses. She’d proudly tell people she was a full-charge bookkeeper, the equal of any CPA, without the high-falutin degree. 

Every Wednesday night she’d do payroll at our dinette table, tallying up the piece-work tickets each sewing machine operator completed the prior week and the time cards filled out by the hourly workers. The next day she’d walk from the factory to the nearby Chemical Bank branch to secure the necessary bills to stuff their pay envelopes. I wasn’t trusted to get the money until after I had graduated college.

The dinette table in our row house attained unparalleled status in our home. It was on that table that Sylvia emerged as an impresario of Jewish culinary arts and social entertaining. Before Rosh Hashanah she would roll dough into small triangles filled with shredded brisket for kreplach (Jewish wontons, or ravioli, your choice of international comparisons). Or she’d sit at a chair while stuffing and then sewing up helzeleh, chicken neck skin filled with matzo meal, schmaltz (chicken fat), and spices. Sounds gross, but it was yummy. (Heck, if the Scots can eat haggis, Jews can swallow helzeleh. On the subject of eating the unimaginable, she also boiled chicken feet in her soup, a, ahem, “delicacy” I never sampled, but was relished by my father and his brother, Uncle Willy—must have truly reminded them of meals back in the Ottynia shtetl of their youth.) 

For special occasions, particularly if they pertained to my brother Bernie, she’d make a crown roast, lamb chops stacked vertically in the shape of a crown. 

Among her other savory treats: sweet and sour lamb tongues, sauteed sweetbreads, gefilte fish, kneidlach (matzo balls), breaded veal cutlets, and the best chicken soup you’d ever slurp off a spoon. She never met a vegetable anybody would like eating. She was not a baker. That last task was assigned to our housekeeper/cook who made dinners for us after our mother returned to work. I’ve never, for example, tasted a more delicious pound cake than the one Bertha baked. My sister Lee agrees. Bernie was partial to her apple cake. 

Even on weekends she abstained from rising early enough to prepare breakfast for her family. If we did eat a cooked meal it was our father who played the short order chef. His specialities were French toast made with leftover challah and what he called “army eggs,” scrambled eggs with fried salami circles.

During my pre-adolescent years my parents socialized quite often. Mom enjoyed dressing up but rarely disposed of any ensemble, explaining that sooner or later the outfit or dress would come back into style and she’d be Johnny-on-the-spot-fashion-ready if she simply stored it in a closet long enough. 

To my mind she had two things that distinguished her when she dressed up. Depending on the weather, she would wear a mink stole (several tails could be attached as optional accessories), a black Persian lamb coat or a silver fox three-quarter length fur coat (she wore that coat to my bar mitzvah reception).  

And, as the daughter and sister of jewelers, she had some impressive pieces of jewelry. I would always wonder from where her jewelry would emerge as it never could be found in her bedroom. It wasn’t until my late teenage years that I was let in on the family secret. My parents has secreted a safe in a closet under the staircase leading to the basement. Dad had built a wooden frame around the safe. He placed a piece of wood in a slot in the front of the frame and draped a blanket before it to conceal its presence. Only after it became difficult for him to crouch inside the cramped closet did they share the safe’s combination with me so I could retrieve the family jewels my mother required that evening.

The dinette table also served as the location of the Friday night poker, hearts or Fan Tan card games my mother organized. The five of us played deuces-wild poker for penny-two-three stakes with two or three of my brother’s friends who would arrive shortly after we finished dinner. We kept a kosher house, but too often in my recollection I was forced to bring a pig to the table as I shook out coins from my glass piggy bank to fund my losses. 

I don’t have that piggy bank anymore, though sometimes I still have to dip into cash reserves during poker games with my friends. Not too often, but enough to remind me of fun times back in Brooklyn those first 22 years of my life.

Reminiscing About a Favored Aunt in the Shadow of the Super Blue Blood Moon

As Gilda and I drove south on the Hutchinson River Parkway just before sunrise Wednesday the moon was low and loomed larger than normal. It was the morning of the Super Blue Blood Moon and though it appeared bigger and closer than usual it was not blue and had only a tinge of the blood red it would develop when seen later on the West Coast. 

Were she alive today my Aunt Pola might well be preparing for the wedding she never experienced. She would say, my sister Lee recalled earlier this week, that she would marry after a blue moon. Well, blue moons—the second full moon of any month—never presaged a wedding announcement. But Wednesday’s lunar eclipse produced a super blue blood moon, the first one over North America in 150 years. Wistfully thinking, it might have prompted her to begin assembling her trousseau.

Some families have that mysterious, maybe even dysfunctional, uncle. If not in your own family you might associate him with Uncle Ben from Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, who ventures off to Alaska, or maybe Uncle Sid in Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness!, a rascal of a man, or perhaps, heaven forbid, Uncle Charlie, the serial killer of widows in Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt.

Our family had no such ne’er-do-well. But we had Aunt Pola. I never quite knew what she did to sustain herself during her 78 years. Oh, I know she helped her father in his jewelry store and later assisted Aunt Vicki and Uncle Harry in their jewelry business. And she did bookkeeping for different small firms after her father died in 1951. And she liked playing the stock market. My brother Bernie enjoyed talking investments with her. But I never pieced together how she paid for her travels or her studio apartments along West End Avenue in the upper 70’s in Manhattan or her larger apartment on Indian Creek Drive in Miami Beach.

I did, however, learn a cold, hard fact of family economics life as a teenager. I can’t remember what it was I wanted to buy, but I do recall asking my parents for the bank book reflecting the weekly funds I had diligently been depositing every Friday throughout my elementary school years. In truth, it was money my parents gave me, but I am sure each of you would agree with my assumption that once given the money was MINE. 

Wrong. My parents—my mother, really—had turned my bank account over to Aunt Pola. I had more than $800 in that account. Pfft! Gone with the wind. I remember saying I hope my bar-mitzvah money would remain mine. “We’ll see,” my mother replied.

Following the birth of a son (Sol) to my grandparents Louis and Sara, Pola was the eldest of four sisters. Pola, Sylvia (my mother) and Victoria (Vicki) were born in Lodz, Poland. Lily came after the family reunited in 1921, Louis having emigrated a few years earlier. 

The trip from Europe was not Pola’s first adventure. When she was around four years old gypsies kidnapped her. She couldn’t recall any specifics of her captivity or release, but, like O’Henry’s classic story “The Ransom of Red Chief,” Pola was returned to her family in due haste and without a bounty being paid, though she did acknowledge the gypsies took her earrings and the collar of her dress. 

Pola might have been snatched because her parents had the outward appearance of wealth. They lived in a two story house with parquet floors, a balcony, two servants and, a rarity for Lodz in the years surrounding World War I, interior running water and a toilet. 

On the way to America, the four children and their mother encountered an unexpected delay and expense. My mother came down with measles. They had to stay in Paris for several weeks. By the time they arrived in New York their cash was depleted, as was Louis’ from buying second class passage for five.

At Ellis Island Pola encountered the first “colored” person she had ever seen. She screamed. She also ate something she liked the rest of her life—frankfurters in green pea soup.

Pola grew up in the Bronx, first on Third Avenue and then the Grand Concourse, in apartments adjacent to her father’s jewelry store. In 1938 the family moved to Manhattan. Louis had bought a store at 97th and Broadway. They moved to 99th and Broadway and then to 98th Street. 

From her father, she said, she inherited the trait of putting off work till the wee hours of the night. Eleven to two was their optimal work time, a habit my brother also practices. 

She had a deliberate, intense manner of talking. She was highly opinionated. She liked going to the movies. In late 1970, or maybe early the next year, the two of us went to see a double bill at a Brooklyn movie theater: I Never Sang for My Father and Five Easy Pieces. The first movie became one of my favorite films about family relations. 

Five Easy Pieces was another portrait of a father-son dynamic. But the story got only as far as the famous chicken salad sandwich scene in the diner before Pola had seen enough of Jack Nicholson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdIXrF34Bz0. We left the theater. (One of these days I’m going to have to watch the full movie.)

Pola also “had the wanderlust,” first evidenced by her departure to California in 1942 when she was 28. She stayed two nights in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles before a cousin moved her to a hotel in a more Jewish neighborhood. 

The Ambassador had a storied history. Six Academy Awards ceremonies were held there, many Hollywood stars were guests, it housed the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, and, tragically, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in the pantry of the hotel’s kitchen as he was exiting a ballroom after his 1968 California presidential primary victory. 

Pola lived in Los Angeles for two and a half months. She returned to New York to attend the wedding of my parents in September 1942. She dreamed of going back but never did till late in her life.

Back in New York, she lived with her parents. In January 1951, with her parents scheduled to fly to Florida where her sister Vicki was vacationing, her father entered her room around 2 am. He said he wasn’t feeling well, that she shouldn’t wake her mother. He said he was going back to bed. He never woke up.

Her mother, she observed, died that day, as well, though not physically. Always frail, she lasted another four years. According to the Jewish calendar Sara Gerson died on the same date as her beloved husband, Louis, the 13th of Sh’vat.

Pola Gerson died June 4, 1992. She was 78.

(FYI—Many of the details of Pola’s early life came from a videotape interview Lee, Bernie and I produced in 1987, five years before she passed away. I would encourage everyone with older relatives to undertake similar recordings to preserve family and personal histories.)

Kasich Is All Cuddly But at Heart a Conservative

You have to hand it to John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, who failed in his attempt to secure the Republican Party presidential nomination but who continues to try to present himself as a reasonable, humane, thoughtful, non divisive alternative to Donald Trump should there be a vacancy, for any reason, at the top of the 2020 GOP ticket. 

Kasich appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers a day before Trump delivered his State of the Union address Tuesday. He sounded soooo normal. And Meyers, usually a sharp observer of the political landscape, fell into the trap Kasich set. 

You see, Kasich is a conservative. His tone might be different, more pleasing, than Trump’s, but his substance, the outcome of his actions, were he to inhabit the White House, would not be materially different.

Like an old sweater one wears around the house, Meyers felt comfortable talking kumbaya with Kasich. (Here are two clips encompassing the totality of the interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ4sZY_RowM

and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnd-dyL5SIE) 

But Meyers never asked him any nitty gritty questions about what the Trump administration has done and if he would have done the same or acted differently.

What, for example, is Kasich’s position on coal? Is he in favor of softening environmental regulations on coal mining and burning? What’s his position on alternative energy sources? Would he permit oil and gas exploration along our coastlines?

Would he have nominated Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court? In general, what criteria would he use in selecting federal judges?

How would he have fixed Obamacare? 

What are his beliefs on abortion and funding of Planned Parenthood for non abortion related activity?

What are his positions on NAFTA, the Paris climate accords, NATO, the Keystone Pipeline, the Trans Pacific Trade Pact, the United Nations, Jerusalem as the location of our embassy in Israel, the prison at Guantanamo Bay, the Iran nuclear deal?

How would he resolve differing views on the Dreamers? Would he build a southern border wall? What, if any, changes would he like to see in our immigration policy?

Does he believe Russia interfered in our 2016 election? 

Is he comfortable with the influence the religious right is having on government? 

Is the new tax plan acceptable to him?

Many of these questions can be answered by looking at Kasich’s Web site (https://www.johnkasich.com). For example, Kasich champions his opposition to abortion and funding of Planned Parenthood. 

We live today in a sound bite world. For Meyers (and, to be honest, lots of other TV hosts) to give Kasich and other politicians a soapbox to sound statesmanlike without providing specifics would result in saddling us with another Trump, albeit with a more teddy bear demeanor.

We would be shaking our heads and wondering how we got duped again. Meyers is an entertainer. I get that. But he has injected himself five nights a week into the political dialogue so he needs to step up from one dimensional attacks on Trump’s behavior to offer constructive alternatives. 

Have more respect for, and confidence in, his audience, that viewers want not just jokes but hard information when interviewing Kasich et al, as he has done with his Closer Look segments. 

Alternative Universe: What alternative universe does Donald Trump live in? Prior to delivering his State of the Union speech he said his goal would be to end the divisiveness that has existed in the country for many years. 

It’s a laudable objective but does he not recognize that he is a prime reason we are a polarized society? 

From his despicable advocacy of the birther movement questioning the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s presidency to his abusive comments, delivered live and in tweets, mostly about women but also about anyone who disagrees with him, to his embrace of neo-Nazi and alt-right leaders and members, to his denigration of national organizations such as the FBI and the CIA, Trump has done more to divide our country than any president of the last century. 

It’s no wonder that Kasich thinks being a “good guy” might be enough to propel him forward. 

Recalling Ikea's Entry Into the U.S.

The year is 1985. It’s early spring. I’m in Chicago for the National Housewares Show and decide to visit the State Street downtown flagship store of Carson Pirie Scott, the perennial maid of honor to the bride of Windy City department store retailing, Marshall Field & Co. 

I’m sitting in the office of the chairman and chief executive, Dennis Bookshester, six months earlier the subject of a cover story in Chain Store Age on his efforts to resurrect Carson’s fortunes. He’s a veteran department store executive recently successful as the head of Caldor, a now defunct upscale discount store chain based in Norwalk, Conn.

I’ve known Dennis for several years so the conversation is casual and friendly, not guarded, not strained as often the case when executives talk with the press.

Dennis is outlining a strategy for overtaking Field’s based on making home goods a star attraction when suddenly Stewart A. Levine, vice president and general merchandise manager, Home Division, bursts into his office excitingly conveying news that Ikea, already operating in Canada, would be opening its first store in the United States, in Plymouth Meeting, PA, outside Philadelphia, later that year. 

The three of us talk about Ikea for several minutes, wondering whether it would conquer America as it had Scandinavia and parts of Europe. Would American consumers opt for no frills furniture retailing with the type of do-it-yourself assembly that leaves one frustrated after several hours of futility and vowing never to subject oneself to another such experience just to save hundreds of dollars? 

Thirty-two years later the answer is a resounding, YES! While knock-off stores, most notably STØR (with its pseudo Scandinavian name), tried to co-opt Ikea’s layout and expansion strategy in the U.S., they lacked Ikea’s systems, vendor relations and financial clout. 

I never met Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of Ikea, who died Saturday at age 91 (https://nyti.ms/2GmrvOy). But I’ve shopped his stores for three decades (buying a TV stand, dresser and wardrobe system, plus assorted kitchen utensils and dishes). Shopping Ikea is never a quick in-and-out affair. No visit, however, is complete without a stop at its restaurant for Swedish meatballs with Lingonberry sauce. 

Picking a Favorite Football Team, Songs of My Parents, Punishing Helmet Hits

It is six days until kickoff of Super Bowl LII Sunday between the Philadelphia Eagles and the defending champions the New England Patriots. If my father were alive, there’s a good chance he would be rooting for the underdog Eagles.

Not that he handicapped any games. He barely knew what football was, the American version, that is. Growing up in Poland he knew football for what we call soccer. But I digress. 

After arriving on American shores in 1939, my father had a difficult time learning the intricacies of what was then, and by some still is, considered the national pastime, baseball. Occasionally he would watch parts of a game with my brother Bernie and me. It was our mother who took us to ball games until Bernie was old enough to escort me to Ebbets Field, Yankee Stadium, the Polo Grounds and Shea Stadium without adult supervision. 

Football was not a game my father ever spent any time watching. Because of his bald pate, he did, by the way, bear a striking resemblance to Y.A. Tittle, the “Bald Eagle” Hall of Fame quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers and, late in his career, the New York Giants, the team he led to three consecutive NFL Eastern Conference titles in 1961-62-63. Alas, he never was able to win a championship. 

Thirty-seven years ago my father got caught up in the frenzy of football memorabilia. As Bernie recalled, in late December 1979, Dad, an independent apparel manufacturer, surprised him by saying he was rooting for Philadelphia to win its next game. Bernie asked if he knew whether the team was playing football, basketball or hockey. “I don’t know, or care,” he replied. “I only know that if Philadelphia wins and plays next week, then I have an order for 10,000 green T-shirts with white sleeves!”

It was the Philadelphia Eagles football team. They played the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a divisional playoff game. Philadelphia lost, 24-17. 

There are no shirt orders on the line for this Super Bowl matchup. I am rooting for the Patriots. Except when they’re playing the Giants, I favor New England. Their quarterback, Tom Brady, is just the best to watch dissect a defense. There are no other indispensable stars on the team. 

I want New England to win, as well, because our grandson Finley has become a Patriots fan and wears a Brady jersey while watching games. He began life as a Giants and Eli Manning fan, as his father, Dan and mother, Allison, and grandfather are. But living outside Boston the transformation into a Patriots booster was inevitable. 

To my knowledge, he has not succumbed to becoming a Red Sox devotee. I’m counting on his parents to keep him a Yankees fan. 

  

Sing a Song: When you’re in a reflective mood, do you find yourself humming or singing a song? I often do. But they’re not songs of my youth or adulthood. They are songs my parents sang.

My mother always had music playing in the background. Mostly American standards played on WVNJ-AM or WPAT-FM. She enjoyed Broadway musicals and operas. But the only two songs that resonate among memories of my mother were sung by Kate Smith and Jo Stafford.

“When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain” was Kate Smith’s theme song. I remember the lyric Mom sang as, 

“When the moon comes over the mountains

Someone waits for me” 

but the actual lyrics are, 

“When the moon comes over the mountain

I’m alone with my memory

Of you”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOvmnQjOxPU

When she was in a more jocular mood Mom would sing the Jo Stafford song: 

“Shrimp boats is a-comin’ 

Their sails are in sight 

Shrimp boats is a-comin’ 

There’s dancin’ tonight”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1dz1YRXdOA

Dad, on the other hand, did a virtuoso performance of “Home on the Range.” He’d belt it out whenever we’d be driving close to home after a family outing. Bernie says he liked that song because it was one of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s favorites. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_YK7ebcZ2o)

And Dad would sing late in the afternoon in his factory, usually while repairing a recalcitrant Merrow sewing machine. I can still see him hunched over the black machine, but I cannot place any melody.

Back to Football: There is one other star, maybe even a superstar, player on the Patriots. He’s Rob Gronkowski, a tight end who is a favorite receiver of Tom Brady. But it’s not certain he will play because he is recuperating from a concussion suffered when his helmet was hit by a defender’s helmet during the Patriots’ victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Helmet to helmet hits are the scourge of football especially now that concussions are considered the reason many players develop brain injuries. Yet defenders persist in leading with their heads when making tackles. 

There’s a simple way to reduce helmet to helmet injuries and other violent acts that lead to injuries: Suspend without pay the offender for as long as the injured player misses playing time. If the egregious incident occurs late in a season or playoff game the offending player’s punishment carries over to the following year if the injured player has a lingering injury. If it is a career ending injury the guilty party would be suspended for a full year in addition to any games left in the current schedule.

Faced with the loss of salary and playing time, tacklers will not risk butting helmets and coaches will go back to teaching fundamentals of football that do not include head to head contact.