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My eye focuses
Spring’s curtain is going up
Yellow crocuses
PASSING: Bud Harrelson, January 11, 2024
Derrel McKinley “Bud” Harrelson passed on January 11, 2024 in his home in East Northport, N.Y. of Alzheimer’s disease. Harrelson was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2016 and went public with his malady in 2018.
At the time of his passing Harrelson was a partner in the Long Island Ducks North Atlantic Independent League, Islip, Long Island based team team he helped to found in 2000. The link below tells the story:
One of my earliest trivia questions for my confounded schoolmates was:
Q: What is Bud Harrelson’s real name?
A: Derrel McKinley Harrelson!
No, Bud Harrelson was not related to Ken “Hawk” Harrelson.
Bud Harrelson was signed by the Mets as a free agent in 1963, before the free agent amateur draft which began in 1965, after a year at San Francisco State.
Bud’s professional career began in 1963 with the Salinas Mets in California League A ball. Bud was called up to The Show in September 1965 where he caddied for Roy McMillan.
That very same year Bud began his 5 year hitch in the National Guard for 1 weekend a month which partially accounts for Bud’s relatively low number of games played.
Fielding statistics give Bud short shrift. During his Gold Glove campaign of 1971 his % of chances to league average was a pretty good but not great. However it must be factored in that during his career Harrelson played behind Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Jon Matlack, Jerry Koosman and Tug McGraw all of whom were fastball/K/fly out pitchers.
https://www.baseball-reference.com
Harrelson had a cannon for an arm and could hurl overhand from deep in the hole, whip sidearm from a set position and “shovel,” as Mets broadcaster Lindsey Nelson would put it to the 2nd. bagger for a 6-4-3 twin killing.
Harrelson had offensive value. After the success of Maury Wills, who finally made it to the Dodgers after 1100 minor league games by embracing switch hitting, speedy infielders such as Harrelson and his contemporary Don Kessinger were made into switch hitters during their minor league apprenticeships. Bud drew a good number of walks long before OBA became obsessional.
I recall a neighbor chortling with delight when Bud, hitting lefty, beat out a push bunt.
The 1973 Mets vs. Reds NLCS saw Harrelson gain national attention when the 160 lb. Harrelson clashed with the 200 lb. Pete Rose. The fracas had been precipitated by some verbal jousting following the Mets Game 2 9-2 victory lead by Jon Matlack’s 9 K complete game and Rusty Staub’s 2 HRs.
My brother and I were watching the game on a 12″ black and white TV perched precariously on the counter of Mr. Washington’s Sherwin Williams Main St, Port Washington paint store on a sunny afternoon…back when an NLCS game was still played in the afternoon!
On a double play ball Harrelson and Rose collided and Harrelson and Rose began throwing punches.
To my surprise and delight Harrelson did not back down and the Shea crowd cheered Bud even as the imbroglio was broken up by umpires.
Interestingly enough, neither player was ejected. This is hard to imagine happening in today’s MLB!
https://youtu.be/K8xKLbn04h)s?si=FbSHUy98PFLGb3Ar
What did happen was that Reds skipper Sparky Anderson pulled his team from the field for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, the Shea loyalists began shouting that Rose was ingesting fecal material and did not cease until manager Yogi Berra, Cleon Jones, Rusty Staub, Tom Seaver and Willie Mays calmed the crowd.
The ‘Ya Gotta Believe’ Mets shocked the Reds and wound up pushing the mighty 1973 A’s to 7 games before going down swinging…just like Bud!
From 1965 until 1975 the Mets were New York’s team, especially on the North Shore of Long Island where a train from my home burg of Port Washington could travel to Shea Stadium in 22 minutes.
As the 70’s stumbled on my interest in baseball cards, street baseball and live games was supplanted by televised games, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and Steely Dan’s PRETZEL LOGIC. Embarrassment too played a role as I recall an LRY girl telling me that baseball was “so 6th. grade” so I kept my fandom to myself even while rooting for Bud Harrelson and the diminishing number of players who had played for the Miracle Mets and the Ya Gotta Believe Mets.
By 1977 the residue of the Miracle Mets and Ya Gotta Believe had been washed away by the dispatching of Dave Kingman, the auctioning off of Tom Seaver, the passing of Mets’ matriarch and majority owner Joan Payson and the resurgent Yankees who had returned to the Bronx and the 1976 World Series.
From 1977 on the Mets would remain mired in the sub .500 mire of the old N.L. East; absorbing countless pummelings from the Pirates and Phillies until re-emerging as contenders in 1984 under the ownership of Nelson Doubleday.
Fans were few and hostile.
A brief digression…
Anyone who thinks that Joe Torre is a great manager should look at the winning %s of the Mets during his reign. And while this is not entirely Torre’s fault, the dis-invested ownership of Linda DeRoulet, Joan Payson’s sister, surely played a major role, Torre’s management of the careers of Dave Kingman, Joel Youngblood and especially Lee Mazzilli says nothing good about Torre’s talent judgement.
In 1977 my brother and I jumped into a packed Port Washington LIRR car for Tom Seaver’s return to Shea as a Red. It was not lost on me that Harrelson had been Tom Seaver’s roommate and that Bud and Pete Rose had been combatants.
When Seaver took the mound an ovation erupted such as nothing I have heard before or since. Seaver stepped off the mound and tipped his cap, which only lengthened the ovation.
Jerry Koosman toed the slab for the Mets. Harrelson, Ed Kranepool and Jerry Grote were penciled into the lineup by Brooklynite Joe Torre.
Of course Harrelson got a hit, of course Ed Kranepool launched a sacrifice fly that proved to be the only run tallied by the Amazins’ and of course Jerry Koosman took the loss.
…but you already knew that…
During spring training in 1978 Harrelson was dispatched to the Phillies for “prospect” Fred Andrews. Harrelson spent 1978 and 1979 with the Phillies spelling the defensively challenged Dave Cash.
In 1980 the Phillies released Harrelson making him a free agent who wound up playing out the string with the Texas Rangers.
As a Ranger Harrelson returned to short where he platooned with the immortal Pepe Frias and played alongside fellow Flushing refugees Rust Staub and Jon Matlack before retiring…but not before hitting his 7th. HR in 5515 PAs!
Harrelson was far from done with baseball and re-emerged as the Mets 1st. base coach and occasional TV commentator for WWOR 9.
In 1984 Bud piloted the short season, 75 games, Little Falls Mets, to 1st. place with a squad featuring future Mets Kevin Elster, Shawn Abner and David West, to a 44-31 record and being named New York-Penn League Manager of the Year.
Harrelson at this point was still on my radar screen as Bud morphed into a company man for the Flushing fiefdom.
1985 found Harrelson at the helm of the of the South Atlantic A ball Columbia Mets which featured future phenom Gregg Jefferies while earning a 79-57 record. During the season Bud bounced to Flushing where he replaced Bobby Valentine who moved to Texas on Davey Johnson’s coaching staff.
1986 saw Harrelson as the 3rd. base coach chasing Ray Knight to home plate in Shea Stadium in the epochal Game 6 of the 1986 World Series.
…Please go to the home page for this blog enter ‘A Night to Remember’ in the Search function for my account of Game 6 while managing Our House in Allston, MA…
Q: Who is the only Met to be in uniform for both the 1969 and 1986 World Series champions?
A: Bud Harrelson!
Sure it is a bit of a trick question but I was still in my 20s!
In 1990 Harrelson replaced Davey Johnson who had gone 20-22 42 games into that season and got the Mets to 91 wins, their 7th. consecutive winning season, although not enough to catch the pre-wild card Bonds, Bonilla, Drabek Buccos of the Jim Leyland era.
1991 saw a near total collapse as Darryl Strawberry went to the Dodgers while Frank Viola and Dwight Gooden failed to repeat their respective 20 and 19 win seasons of 1990 respectively.
As loyal readers of the NEW YORK POST knew there was a significant public dust-up with David Cone that accompanied this plunge. With 2 weeks left in the season and a 74-80 record Harrelson was relieved of his duties and replaced by Mike Cubbage.
At that point Harrelson fell from my radar screen although he was a partner in the Wilmington Blue Rocks, an affiliate of the Kansas City Royals.
Harrelson began blipping again when USA TODAY announced that the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball had placed a team in Islip, Long Island on the footprint of the old Islip Speedway whose Figure 8 track Demolition Derby was featured frequently ABC’s Wide World of Sports. to be called the Long Island Ducks; not to be confused with the Long Island Ducks of the American Hockey league who played for many years in Commack at the Island Arena. Harrelson was the manager as well as an owner for the Ducks maiden voyage.
Harrelson was a Vice President, owner as well as the manager in the Ducks’ 2000 inaugural season and remained as a coach until his 2016 diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease. Harrelson retired from baseball in 2018.
Many times Harrelson referred to the founding of the Long Island Ducks as his proudest accomplishment. During his time with the Ducks Harrelson resided in East Northport in Long Island’s Suffolk County where he was well know for being neighborly and his many charitable doings.
Bud Harrelson’s passing effected me far more severely than the passing of Tom Seaver via dementia although both passings were sadly foreseeable.
Bud Harrelson’s saga almost perfectly matched mine…
Baseball cards…getting to The Show…the Miracle Mets…the Ya Gotta Believe Mets…baseball is so 6th. grade…the decline of the Mets franchise from ’77 through ’83…the triumph of Harrelson chasing Ray Knight home with the winning run in game 6 of the 1986 World Series…the maddening ’90’s…minor league management…founding and owning the Long Island Ducks…and passing from Alzheimer’s.
…Bud Harrelson will missed by this narrator for as long as I have left to go...
2023/2024 Merry Christmas/Happy New Year: Santana ABRAXAS, Version 10
Steve Gallanter’s Blog: https://stevegallanter.wordpress.com
is a modest enterprise. I usually send out about 40 or so Facebook copies and another 20 email copies of brain candy with the occasional response from a friend being more than welcome as were the pass alongs which on 2 occasions reconnected me with folks from the past.
In April 2014 I began tweeting and my number of views exploded to about 200 altogether.
Oh joy!
...But wait there’s more…
I am both absurdly proud and humbled by the 1217 visitors this brain candy dispensary has tallied so far in 2023.
When the Christmas 2013 blog was passed along quite a bit it broke into the Top 5 of my Google search.
Most gratifying were several comments along the lines of “Thank you for this acknowledgement of a personal Christmas tradition, as I too have one.”
I responded to all of these comments gladly. I was pleasantly taken aback at the number and intensity of these very private traditions and their importance to their adherents.
One gentleman took the time to send a message about his private tradition of chewing Trident spearmint gum after Christmas dinner as his now gone father had.
The last 10 years have brought thoughts of other Christmases to mind as my memory bank is thankfully still accepting deposits. Indeed, this blog has precipitated thoughts of Christmases past to the extent that a 2023/2024 addition is appropriate.
Keeping the faith is part of Christmas and the promise of a New Year is always uplifting even as the holiday transforms.
Christmas cards have largely been supplanted by a virtual blizzard of social media greetings.
Black Friday’s throng of shoppers have seen their number diminished by Cyber Monday’s ever increasing bandwidth and deliveries.
Indeed, grand-parenting, retirement, disability, estrangement and relocation change Christmas more with every passing year.
Still the Christmas spirit is till in my heart and those of many others…
In that spirit I am sending:
Merry Christmas: Santana ABRAXAS
Merry Christmas/New Year 2023/2024
Christmas is a time when we, even those of us who do not share in the religious meaning of the holiday, each have our own meaning for this day.
Santana’s ABRAXAS LP signifies Christmas for me.
I bought ABRAXAS for my Mom for Christmas 1970. Mom, Peter and I had seen WOODSTOCK and Mom was mightily impressed with Mike Shrieve’s epic drum solo on “Soul Sacrifice”. While Mom always tried a little too hard to like what I liked her enthusiasm was more than sincere.
I saved my .75 a week allowance, pestered Dad for money and raked some leaves to conjure up the $3.49 to buy the LP at Port Chemists.
(I gave Dad innumerable promotional packs of aftershave and Borkum Riff pipe tobacco. My brother Peter got Johnny Lightning 500 while I received several slot cars and Joe Paterno’s FOOTBALL MY WAY from Dad, a Penn. State grad.
It was my first “adult” gift-giving.
In 1970 I was 12. It was to be my last boyhood Christmas.
Turkey, homemade cranberry sauce, (my Mom never, ever served that jellied, canned..uh.. stuff), and visits from neighborhood kids fulfilled every expectation.
Mom was surprised and delighted with ABRAXAS even with its “dirty” cover. It played endlessly on the turntable of the Gallanter household’s Harman-Kardon Turntable, AM-FM Stereo with Recording Cassette Compact Stereo.
(Dad was quick to nudge me as a way of reminding me that he had purchased the stereo and had paid me to rake leaves. On this Christmas I actually found this habit of his endearing).
Christmas 1970 was to be the last Christmas of our family as a unit although neither Mom, Dad, Peter or myself knew so at the time.
1971’s Christmas crystallized the cataclysmic changes, voluntary AND involuntary, familial AND cultural, well-intended AND malicious that would sweep through the lives of Mom, Dad, Peter and myself.
Christmas 1971 couldn’t have all of us in the same room for any length of time. I brought ABRAXAS to our North Shore Unitarian Universalist Congregation’s Jr. High room where I played ABRAXAS through headphones repeatedly to the puzzlement of the folks I willfully disregarded.
Headphones were clamped over my head as the congas of “Oye Como Va” reverberated.
“When Steven doesn’t talk, he really doesn’t talk,” I overheard one girl mention as I re-cued ABRAXAS.
Hostility was assumed to be my motivation, and not one completely inaccurate, but astral projection back to 1970 was the guiding star. It was still my Mom’s LP but she was caught up in her own affairs and didn’t notice it missing. Dad lived in Forest Hills, Queens as the divorce was now final.
(I remember looking at a snapshot of Christmas 1962 in our home at 86 Henry St, Merrick, Long Island. There is a tower of blocks in front of me wearing a devilish grin with my Mom kneeling beside me with a bemused expression. I remember kicking the blocks over. 1962 is my earliest Christmas memory).
For several years I continued to play ABRAXAS at Christmas. Most memorably in 1975 when my Mom returned home from a hospitalization and I wanted to comfort her. ABRAXAS proved to be more curative than the turkey I attempted to cook with tomato soup flavored stuffing).
By 1973 I was not speaking to my Dad, an estrangement that lasted more than 3 years. ABRAXAS’ “Oye Como Va” reminded me of the photo of Mom and Dad celebrating their 1st. anniversary with a grinning Tito Puente, the author of the original “Oye Como Va,” at the Palladium in Manhattan, where my paternal grandfather worked.
ABRAXAS signified Dad as well as Mom and the paternal grandparents who posed with me on their laps but who I have no memories of.
The summers of 1974,1975 and 1976 found me at Rowe Unitarian Universalist Camp and Conference Center. ABRAXAS was in the ‘Radio Rowe’ LP pile for the public address system that broadcast on a loud, sporadic basis throughout the camp. Santana was very popular with my brother and sister campers although they would have been taken aback, to say the least, at the talisman it was to me.
Boston gained me as a resident in 1978. I left ABRAXAS with Mom. I played it upon my early Christmas sojourns to the ancestral home.
In 1981 a group of we Port Washingtonians had a Christmas celebration at the New York, New York discotheque in Manhattan. Mom remarked that the percussion of much disco reminded her of ABRAXAS. The next day I played the now battered LP. Upon hitching back to Boston I purchased a used copy at Looney Tunes Used Records.
1982 brought the realization that college graduation was beyond my capability. At home in Port Washington I put on ABRAXAS to please Mom before disappointing her.
By 1984 my Dad had passed. Yes, “Oye Como Va” reminded me that once upon a time Dad and Mom were deeply in love and Peter and I were fortunate to be the offspring of their union. I have no recollection of my grandparents on either side but ABRAXAS is a talisman of their lives causing mine.
10 years pass. ABRAXAS PLAYS annually on my Panasonic Plus Cassette-to-Cassette AM/FM with Auto Reverse boom box.
1995 found my brother Peter and I at odds to the extent that I spent Christmas in Boston brooding ambivalently although I did send presents to Peter, his wife Aida and Mom.
I consoled myself with ABRAXAS “Hope You’re Feeling Better”s theme of ambivalence powered by congas and Carlos Santana’s wah-wah guitar pyrotechnics.
2022’s first week has made “Hope You’re Feeling Better” a talisman of COVID even more than “Oye Como Va.”
“Is that you
Your eyes slowly fading?
Is that you
Your mind full of tears?
Is that you
Searching for a good time?
Is that you
Waiting for all these years?
Is that you?
Look across the ocean
And I hope you’re feeling better.”
https://youtu.be/P_vJBz2_LtE
The clever wordplay of shifting from the declarative voice to the interrogative voice is the kind of lyrical daring do that seems to have vanished, along with the presence of rock music in general.
But make no mistake; “Hope You’re Feeling better” is perhaps Greg Rolie’s finest vocals on ABRAXAS. The questing baritone being cut off by the fiery pyrotechnics of Carole Santana’s wah-wah wailing is a metaphor that is far more descriptive than any printed lyric can give voice to.
ABRAXAS is definitely the gift that keeps on giving.
The repeated playing of “Hope You’re Feeling Better” is an uplift in much the same way as “Oye Como Va.”
…Indeed, the ambivalent holiday of 1995 seeped to mind…
Being well into my 30’s in 1995 I had made my own Christmas tradition of surprising someone that I liked with a gift that spoke to an affection that had not been fully expressed. Being single, childless and employed in an industry that throws folks together and throws them away with equal speed I had learned that small blessings are sometimes the only blessings one can receive but that can be a good thing.
…I was sitting on the living room floor of 24 Haviland St, Apt. 28 at about 9 P.M. 2 days before Christmas wrapping up 2 gifts while ABRAXAS played through the open door of my bedroom. My roommate was out of the country for the holidays so I felt little compunction about playing my music a tad louder than I might have otherwise.
I was wrapping 2 gifts for a former co-worker. Patricia was a beautiful woman who had tended bar at the same venue as I. Although it had been a brief and occasional job for her the chit-chat of the time when I was an afternoon employee at that venue had crossed over to more chit-chat when we briefly worked the same bar.
Patricia was in the midst of several transitions in her life and I was taken aback, although pleased, when she asked me to call her.
Over the course of more than a year these calls became more frequent and more intimate and I found myself listening more than I spoke. Certainly, I was flattered to be trusted but more than that I trusted her with the pure aspects of my heart that had become very distant.
Pure and impure thoughts mingled, as Patricia was a beauty.
I was thinking about how to finesse a meeting with Patricia so as to give her both of her gifts. One was a sardonic look at the recent past while the other was a light unto what was to come.
The phone rang, landlines had only begun too cede their domain to pagers, and it was Patricia.
“…Steve, I am at the bar. I have a present for you. Where do you live?”
“I have 2 presents for you. I live 25 yards away I’ll be there in 5 minutes,” I replied. My heart did a full-gainer. Steeling myself I managed to wind some Scotch tape around my gifts and jetted out the door to the bar.
Patricia was by the pay phone smiling.
I ordered drinks, we took a booth and we spoke briefly of the joy and relief of having finished Christmas shopping.
“What did you get me,” she asked with the slightly turned head that moved my eyes and heart.
I gave her the 1st. package and she ripped off the wrapping with an urgency that was enthralling. Laughing out loud she proclaimed, “I don’t know what I would ever use this for!”
“I know, that’s why I got it for you!”
I slid the other gift over the booth’s table when the owner of the bar came by to shake my hand and wish me a Merry Christmas.
I thanked him and introduced Patricia who also wished him a Merry Christmas.
“You know him?”
“I’ve been coming here since 1979,” I offered while wondering what Patricia might think of my recreational habits.
Patricia unwrapped the second gift and plugged it into a socket. She smiled a closed mouthed gesture of gratitude while nodding slowly in a way that signaled that all was right in the world if for only this moment.
“C’mon open your present.”
I opened Patricia’s package to find a mustard colored turtleneck that would undoubtedly be a good fit underneath a leather jacket for Boston’s winters.
I blinked involuntarily and held her hands briefly.
“Hey, do you think that the Prudential Mall is still open?”
“If there is any night of the year when it would be open late tonight would be that night.”
“Let’s go, we can leave the stuff in my car.”
My mind was pondering whether this meeting was a gesture of sympathy for being estranged from my family, gratitude for being a shoulder to cry on or just because Patricia was a good kid…or something more.
We walked the 200 or so yards to the Prudential Mall and after determining that indeed the stores had closed at 9, walked back to the car and I removed my gift.
We hugged.
Patricia got into her car.
I returned to my apartment…
1997 found Mom in a nursing home for the final phase of her life. I bought her a new Walkman with ABRAXAS poised to play. She was delighted.
1999 found Mom receiving a Discman. The first CD…? Yes, she remembered.
2004 brought the end of Mom’s life. On that Christmas I played ABRAXAS at 2 AM in the living room of 42 North Bayles Ave, Port Washington on my Discman in a private memorial to Mom.
2013 found my now gone friend Steve Boisson offering that he had “never thought of Santana as Christmas music” while offering blues artist Charles Brown as his own eccentric Yuletide troubadour.
2019 found me in brother Peter’s place in Port Washington, N.Y. the night after Christmas patting my protruding tummy and nursing a straight up Jameson.
Peter’s television was displaying a vivacious Latina declaiming the weather.
“That’s Audrey Puentes. Her father is Tito Puentes,” Peter offered.
“Hmmm..,” I said to myself.
My grandmother Marie Jack, biologically my Mom’s stepmom, gifted me a Christmas ornament featuring 2 cardinals in a gilded cage in, I believe 1973. It never occurred to me at the time that I would never see Marie again although the passage of time and circumstances eventually made this reality evident. From 1997 to 2017 I brought the ornament to the ancestral home for the talismanic Christmas tree. In 2017 I neglected to bring it home but Aida was good enough to rescue the birds as they nestled in my rolling case for the Greyhound to Boston.
Much to my sadness the fragile frame of the cage was twisted in transit and my efforts to restore it fell short. However, it is intact, if a little twisted, and resides next to Aunt Goldie’s sock monkey as ABRAXAS plays.
Our decade has brought the passage from this world and from my life of more than several folks; Martha Shaw among them, and places. Looney Tunes records, where I purchased my Santana ABRAXAS CD has been gone since 2012; likewise T.C’s Lounge, with local watering holes and record stores right up there, or down there, with trilobites as fossils.
ABRAXAS keeps record stores and Christmas alive at one and the same time as this mind contemplates Christmas 2022 and the New Year of 2023.
To all those folks both present and absent I humbly offer,
“Oye Como Va.”
ABRAXAS signifies Christmas; calling out to heart the folks who have passed, friends who are missed, places that are gone and the phases of the Christmases past, present and future.
ABRAXAS is a talisman as real as a rock, in LP, cassette, CD and YouTube formats that holds in its notes the presents, love, tears and hopes of Christmas every time I so much as touch it.
I am listening to it right now.
“Oye Como Va”
“Hope You’re Feeling Better”
!Merry Christmas!
!Happy New Year!
HAIKU 5*7*5*: AARP
No more ‘woe is me’.
Think of the benefits of
Me! AARP!
G.L: HOMELESS?
G.L. is a neighborhood woman I became almost acquainted with about 12 years ago. Our paths had crossed at a Fenway CDC meeting concerning the Huntington Ave. branch of the YMCA’s plan to demolish their old gym and enable Northeastern to expand with the blessing of Mayor Menino in spite of the fact that the mandated Institutional Master Plan(IMP) had been circumvented and Northeastern was disregarding its own promise to cap enrollment.
…I will spare you readers the saga. Suffice to say that the gym was demolished and Northeastern continues to expand…
G.L. was someone I had already seen around the neighborhood for years and years. Shopping at Whole Foods, wandering through CVS and browsing at the Mass. Ave. Economy Hardware. As is so often the case maintaining eye contact for more than a nanosecond became appropriate.
Such is the etiquette of what passes for “community” here in liberty’s chosen home.
G.L. was a 30ish woman with a tea with milk freckled complexion and long, cascading mahogany wavy hair cascading down the back of her spindly frame.
I had never spoken with her but her neighborhood shopping, accompanied by the kind of 2-wheeled cart usually wielded by someone much older, was characteristic of a local.
I did notice that she wore a 6″ diameter J.F.K. MA/D button on whatever her outerwear was. Whether the button was old or a retro item I didn’t know but it was interesting.
The Fenway CDC meeting regarding Northeastern’s plan was held in the Community Room of the Morville House, the seniors’ building a mere hop, skip and jump from my domicile.
The YMCA meeting attracted about 100 folks. Some folks were repelled by Northeastern’s utter disregard of their own stated promise to cap enroll. Others were cheered by the fact that Northeastern was a non-profit in the increasingly gentrified Fenway.
I had more than a little skin in this game as a 40+ year resident of the East Fens and as a “student” at Northeastern 78-82 and again in 85 when Northeastern was the country’s largest private university and the least expensive.
G.L. made no comments but appeared attentive. Once the discussion concluded on an inconclusive note and the remnants of Martinelli’s Effervescent Apple Juice, donated by Whole Foods Market’s Symphony Hall branch had been drained when I walked over to G.L.
“What did you think?” I asked.
“It is complicated, the whole IMP thing”
“I love your J.F.K. button.“
“Thanks. Did you like J.F.K?”
“Well, I was 5 and J.F.K. was a very mixed bag as a President but his murder was one of the worst things that has ever happened in this country.”
“Yes. Well have a good night.”
Further salutations were needless as both of us were wearing stick on name tags.
G.L. always gave me the toothy grin that follows the inadvertent meeting of head nod acquaintances at CVS.
Eventually, this retracted back to head nods. I thought little of it and indeed G.L. wasn’t seen at any of the local organizations meetings that I attended. Evidentially Whole Foods was still on the itinerary. I took the liberty, after the obligatory head nod, to glace into G.L’s cart and saw no meat. A fleeting thought, of which I have many, thought of asking whether she was of Veggie Nation that I am a citizen of but that fleeting thought was a …fleeting thought...
As the years crawled by, am I the only 1 whose sense of time has gotten slower with age? Please advise...
…the fleeting eye contact became more fleeting on G.L’s part and eventually on mine...
Hey, there have been 100s of Fenway folks I have chatted with on 1 or 2 occasions. Indeed, over the course of 7900+ bar shifts chatting with strangers is a career skill.
Still…I did notice that G.L. was now trailed by a Pullman type of 2-wheeled luggage rather than a shopping cart and now narrowed her eyes to avoid even the most inadvertent of eye contact.
So be it….and these little non-interactions continued through my visits to Whole Foods, CVS and Mass. Ave. Economy Hardware. The J.F.K. button remained affixed regardless of outerwear or weather.
2020 ushered in the COVID era and the closing of my employer of better than 9 years. While I was fortunate enough to receive unemployment benefits and SNAP benefits and remain well the temporary closing of the Huntington Ave. Y had left my frame looser than I would like.
To combat this I power walked through the Prudential Mall complete with mask, water squeeze and a Walkman, I am not making this up, blaring the Gypsy Kings or the Rolling Stones. When my ears were naked the Pru’s s music system invariably treated me to a 120 BPM instrumental version of George Michael’s “Every Thing She Wants” whereupon...
…there was …
G.L. being trailed by the very same 2-wheeled Pullman luggage; now bulging from its contents and patched with swatches of silvery duct tape. G.L’s hair was now noticeably longer and grayer and her knees were bony. Even in the climate controlled Pru she wore a hoodie under a windbreaker paired with cargo shorts and the omnipresent J.F.K. button
G.L. had been by herself on each and every previous sighting, including our chat at the Fenway CDC, but now there was a gray-haired gentleman walking alongside but not really with her.
Hmmm…
I had never contemplated any sort of attraction beyond fleeting eye contact. Was this guy her?…closer inspection wasn’t advisable as I had to keep up my 2 steps per second pace for the 300 steps on my route on the way to my 10,000 steps…so I kept on stepping until my 10,000 steps were stepped, drained my water squeeze and strolled to my domicile.
My next mall walk saw the same scene with the battered bulging Pullman, hoodie, shorts, J.F.K button and the guy.
Having avoided eye contact I continued another 2 steps a second and on my next lap saw G.L. and the guy sitting on a bench. They were sharing a bottle of Coke and seemed to be engaged in an animated discussion.
I switched lanes so as to avoid detection and kept on stepping.
30 seconds later, I stride by on the the front of the bench. G.L. made a nanosecond of recognition and returned her attention to the guy and her now unzipped Pullman while handing the Coke bottle to the guy.
I dared not look at the Pullman.
“Is G.L. homeless?” I asked myself.
Homelessness folk are the reality of Boston.
My initial experiences with homeless folk were on my boyhood visits to New York with my parents during school vacations and for the occasional sports event. I recall all too well seeing a man curled up in front of a building adjacent to the Tin Lizzy restaurant in Manhattan where I dined with Dad prior to attending a Ranger game. I recall being stunned, tearing up and then backing away.
My Mom took my brother Peter and I to Madison Square Garden to see the bowling alley and we were startled by panhandlers in the Long Island Rail Road lobby in Penn Station.
By the time I was able to gallivant into “the city,” which means Manhattan, (No, Mets games do not count), when I was 13 I had learned to acknowledge and distance myself from stuff that was all too factual.
In 1975 I first attended CBGB’s by the nexus of Bleeker and Bowery and saw the Ramones invent punk rock. The Bowery was then studded with SROs and rooming houses. Following visits saw the bums drinking “puck,” a concoction of sweet sherry and red wine. Nascent punks from Long Island were markets for yelps of “Spare change” and many obliged.
Following settling in Boston in 1978 my rooming house residence(s) featured many folks who were minimally housed. I got to know and even befriend some of my domestic neighbors and occasionally shared TVs, stereos and beer.
For a variety of reasons these houses no longer exist. Indeed, 57 Hemenway St, where I lived from 79-85 is now owned by the Fenway CDC and boasts a plaque by the front door testifying to this once common housing.
As the cost 2021 saw the lessening of the COVID pandemic I saw G.L. around from time to time although eye contact was nil. Upon her passing me at While Foods accompanied by the 2-wheeled shopping cart I would spy a look at her feet and she was wearing socks; the absence of socks being mute testimony to the lack of laundry facilities that are one of the many effects of homelessness.
“Is G.L. couch surfing?” I asked myself while glancing at the left greens in her cart. “Couch surfing would explain the clean socks and food. Maybe you should just stop speculating,” I told myself. “Maybe she is unemployed. Maybe, just maybe, she is one of those folks for whom public perceptions are virtually meaningless.”
From 1980 to 1982 I was on the paid staff of the Pine Street Inn homeless shelter. A sister Rowe camper arranged a meeting with the Asst. Mgr of the Women’s Unit. I worked primarily in the Women’s Unit giving shower passes, assigning lockers and signing up women for Boston City Hospital(BCH).
Undiagnosed diabetes, hyperglycemia, sight and hearing loss were very common maladies. Much of our guests’ problems were organic.
Additionally, illegal immigration, the closing of residential hotels and the barring of sub-let leases created a structural force that was very real.
But the time was mostly enjoyable and enlivened by playing my 12″ single of Ottawa’s “Hands Up” for our guests. The work was more jovial than trying and the flexible schedule fit my needs.
L. and I would make the occasional trips to the Candy Cupboard for snacks for our emaciated guests. This is in stark contrast to the obese denizens of Mass. and Cass of 2023.
G.L. seemed to be thinner and grayer every time I saw her and the now wobbly wheeled Pullman moving through CVS without the gray-haired guy. The J.F.K. button still affixed to her hoodie. She was wearing socks.
Both of us avoided eye contact.
Is G.L. homeless? A couch surfer? The lover of the gray-haired guy? Is this little slice of the Fenway a product of my overly presumptuous mind? Maybe she is just one of those folks who don’t give a flip?
I do not know whether G.L. is homeless.
Indeed, in a lot of ways I would prefer not to know.
G.L, I wish you, and your J.F.K. button, well.
HAIKU 5*7*5* Autumn calling
Brown leaves on cement
The days are growing shorter
Fall is heaven sent
HAIKU 5*7*5* Air conditioner
Air conditioner
drips
drops
on
my
head
below
Hair conditioner
HAIKU 5*7*5* Basketball: 1977
Manorhaven rocks
During the Summer of Sam
Cut offs and tube socks
2023: 10 SIGNS OF AGING.
1) Your age is 455 in dog years.
2) 44 years a vegetarian.
3) Your nose and ear hair grow at an alarming rate. The hair on your head…not so much.
4) Procrastination regarding daily events lasts about as long as it takes to enter this sentence.
5) Your injuries are visible.
6) “Thank you” is good.
7) AARP!
8) You are kept awake for hours by computer work; even while wearing blue light blocker shades.
9) Spying deer, skunks and porcupines at UU Rowe MA Camp and Conference Center is chapel.
10) Writing for folks feels right now.
MOVIE: SUKIDA
2005
DIRECTED BY
Hiroshi Ishikawa
WRITTEN BY
Hiroshi Ishikawa
PRODUCED BY
Hiroshi Ishikawa
CAST
Young Yu: Aoi Miyazaki
Adult Yu: Hiromi Nagasaki
Young Yosuke: Eita Nagayama
Adult Yosuke: Hidetoshi Nishijima
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZBJyfKmN5Y
Japanese culture has come to take up more waves of my bandwidth every year of the 21st. century.
My 2001 obsession with Ichiro Suzuki blossomed into the reading of Robert Whiting’s SLUGGING IT OUT IN JAPAN about MLB star Warren Cromartie’s stay with the Yorimuri Giants of the NPB. Mr. Whiting’s YOU GOTTA HAVE WA was a gift from my brother Peter and opened a window into how the game of baseball in Japan could be both so similar and dissimilar to MLB here in the U.S.
Japanese pop music first blipped on my radar screen at the Boston-Boston disco with Yellow Magic Orchestra’s “Computer Games,” which became “Firecracker” in its 7″ 45 RPM incarnation.
In 2014 my Hewlett Packard Pavilion 23 computer brought superior sound and vision to its 23″ inch screen thus enabling
…the kawaii antics of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu…
…the motion capture digital dancing of Miss Monochrome/Yurie Horie …
…and the viral phenomena of Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plastic Love.”
Japanese movies followed. The high resolution of my new computer enabled watching movies I had only heard of; Yasujiro Ozu’s LATE SPRING and the epic serial of INFERNAL AFFAIRS among them.
SUKIDA was recommended over the bar by a guest of mine who told me it was her “favorite artsy movie.”
SUKIDA
PLOT SYNOPSIS
Yosuke(Hidetoshi Nishijima) is a high school student who has quit the baseball team, grown out his hair and aspires to be a musician. Yosuke plays the same short instrumental:
“Dear Blue” by Yoko Kanno
on his guitar repeatedly above a river spillway.
Yosuke is joined by Yu(Aoi Miyazaki) a girl from one of his classes. Yu lives with her older sister, who goes unnamed, and her mother, who is not seen.
Yu hums the tune to her sister who is mourning a tragedy. Yu arranges a meeting between Yosuke and her sister. A tragedy ensues.
17 years later Yosuke and Yu meet again under completely different AND very similar circumstances…events unfold.
SUKIDA
opens abruptly with nary a hint of back story or expository dialog. This conceptual sleight-of- hand braced this viewer for an accelerated pace. This expectation was immediately and slowly defied by the appearance of the visual motifs that run through both halves of this movie.
SUKIDA
is muted. The sound is quiet, as opposed to the digital din that has become the new normal of the 21st. century. Yet, sound is prominent and skillfully used as the sparse murmuring of Yu and Yosuke as Yosuke plays guitar is at the same volume as the cascading water and the crickets of the grass.
SUKIDA
uses subtitles via YouTube’s ‘Settings’. Ordinarily this viewer prefers even the most inexpert dubbing to subtitles as subtitles move the eye to the bottom of the screen; thus focusing on dialog rather than visual information. Additionally, this brain’s literary bandwidth and the visual bandwidth are far from the same.
However, on this occasion the subtitles work as the sparse and often monosyllabic voices of Yu and Yosuke provide the murmurs of meaning and the written words are merely minimal clues.
SUKIDA
manipulates the viewer’s musical expectations. Yosuke’s guitar is heard before his figure, let alone face, is viewed. This lends a certain voyeuristic aura to the goings on yet the sight of the guitar always lets you know that the sound is coming from a specific source and is not merely a soundtrack strategy.
SUKIDA
projects a grayish monochromatic palette. The dirt, grass and sky are almost one in color in both image and motif. The tumbling clouds above the heads of Yu and Yosuke call to mind nothing so much as the cumulus choreography of Francis Ford Coppola’s RUMBLEFISH
SUKIDA
has a certain sly sensuality. An uplifted jaw, and a middy dress billowing in the wind prepare one for the almost intimate actions of the adult phase of the saga.
SUKIDA
has a narrative taking off from unlikely coincidences that become inevitabilities. This is more pronounced in the 2nd. half of the movie when Yu and Yosuke reconnect. This is foreshadowed by Yu saying “Let me hear it when it is finished,” and the gentle shock of Yosuke’s 1st. initiating dialog.
The railroad station scene in the reconnection of the 1/2 half of the film is in real time and the 2 minute sequence feels much longer. As unlikely as the reconnection is it feels right as the theme of predestination has now grown in the viewer’s mind. Not to be overly pretentious but this tale has a strongly deterministic bent.
SUKIDA
changes its visual palette when Yu and Yosuke reconnect some 17 years after their meeting. The shades of pinkish highlighting the 2 incidents bonding the adult Yu and Yosuke are much richer than the previous cinematography. Yes, ‘less truly is more’ as these departures from the preceding minimalism shock the eye and lead the viewer into the actions of Yu and Yosuke as adults.
Kudos to Hiromi Nagasaki as the adult Yu and Hitoshi Nishijima as the adult Yosuke for using very much the same gestures; Yu’s fidgeting hands and Yosuke’s downward glances, as in the adolescent 1st. 1/ of the movie. This physicality gives the story a credibility that it otherwise would not have.
SUKIDA
becomes marginally more colorful in the 2nd. 1/2 as the splash of pinkish flesh in both of the criminalistic scenes foreshadow the intensity of the of the latter stages of the story.
Indeed, the teen yearning of the beginning becomes the adult desire as both Yu and Yosuke are now employed on the fringe of the “big plate” of the music industry.
Yu has an undefined administrative job in the music industry as Yosuke to struggles to get his 17 year old song recorded when Yu happens into the recording studio of Yosuke’s company and plays while Yosuke watches Yu in the CCTV monitor.
This meeting sets the stage for the doppelganger events of the 2nd. half of our saga.
Gentle readers, the ending will not be revealed.
SUKIDA
…Static in action, yet leaping 17 years…
…quiet and musical, cruel and romantic…
SUKIDA
unites contradictions to the enhancement of all themes and the diminishment of none.
Yes, A.R. this might be my favorite “artsy movie”.
SUKIDA and the theme can be heard on the links above and on my Facebook page.
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