15 – Here Am I – Mason Williams – 1968

            Here Am I - Mason Williams

          I love this song from the same album that gave us “Classical Gas”. Mason Williams, head writer for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, has some great, “heavy” lyrics.

As the universe spins

To a desolate end

In the Doldrums of Destiny’s Sea

So should I accept being

As reasonless as

The firmament’s futility

…but here am I holding your hand

In a garmentless promise

Of nothing we stand

With only the raiment of time

It is ours to endure

Or endear and end up

Embracing what ever we find

…and here am I holding your mind

            I don’t know how seriously to take this, but I always liked the instrumental break that follows the verses, a loopy, very sixties sound. Swirling strings, French horns, and electric guitar. On a best of Mason Williams CD I have, they cut off this last part, the best part I think, as a sixties time capsule, but I also have the CD of “The Mason Williams Phonograph Record”, which has the complete song for my Zune listening.

            When I hear it I am back in the basement of our house in Algonquin, which had two garages under the west end of the house, one of which my dad had converted into a pool room, housing our Sears pool/ping pong table. The walls were peg board, painted dark blue with fluorescent colored plastic daisy stickers on them. Yeah baby…. psychedelic!!!!

            I am sitting against one of the walls where I have created my first set of headphones, made out of two speakers from the earpieces of two phones, tied together with string, hanging from a nail on the wall, connected to our Montgomery Ward record player upstairs, which player was housed in a trunk my mom had “antiqued”.

In the mid-60s “antiquing,” meant painting the surface with a greenish paint, then after it dried smearing it with a cloth with a brownish paint, to give it an “old” look.

            My dad worked for Illinois Bell as an installer/repairman and had installed phone jacks in every room of the house. Some outlets were disconnected and I wired them together and connected them to the speaker outputs so I could take my “headphones” to my room or to the living room or to the pool room and listen to the record player.

However, since most albums were only about 20 minutes per side, you got a pretty good workout running to the player and turning over the album (unless you put a stack of albums onto the spindle that dropped them one at a time onto the turntable).

14 – The Dutchman – Steve Goodman – 1971

            The Dutchman - Steve Goodman

            This song reminds me of my grandfather, because my mom always called him a stubborn Dutchman, though he was not senile like the one in the song.

“When Amsterdam is golden in the summer,
Margaret brings him breakfast,
She believes him.
He thinks the tulips bloom beneath the snow.
He's mad as he can be, but Margaret only sees that sometimes,
Sometimes she sees her unborn children in his eyes.”

I always mist up a little on that line. Obviously, my grandparents had a child, my mom,

but I always wondered whether they wanted more, my mother being born during the Depression and my grandfather having lost his job as an engraver with the Elgin Watch Case Factory. I know they struggled to make house payments.

In fact, Home Federal Savings of Elgin (long gone, having been absorbed by State Financial, who was absorbed by Associated Bank) allowed them to make interest-only payments for several years so they could keep their home, something unheard of in today’s banking system.

The song also reminds me of my first concert. In 1972, Gary K. and I (the same Gary K. of the straight razor in my previous post) drove in my 1968 Mustang fastback to a coffee house in Rockford, Illinois, called Charlotte’s Web, to see Steve Goodman.

I was surprised to see how short he was, with such a deep voice. He was 5’4” or so, I think. His first song was “The Dutchman” with its mellow guitar opening. I knew he played the guitar, but was surprised (again?) to see hear how well he played, on that song, and throughout the show. He did all his hits as well. “City of New Orleans” (I always liked his version more than Arlo Guthrie’s) and “Lincoln Park Pirates”, the song that first got me interested in him.

In recent years the Cubs used his “Go Cubs Go” after every home win, but it always reminds me that he died four days before the 1984 Cubs clinched their first post-season appearance since 1945. He was only 36, and he was a true fan.

I consider myself a true Cubs fan as well; take that for what it’s worth. However, I had my 14-year-old heart broken in 1969 and it never really has recovered, even with post-season appearances in 1984, 1989, 1999, and 2003.

In 1969 I attended my first and only opening day, and attended five more games that summer with a group of 4-5 other guys. I don’t think today’s parents (me Included) would let their kids go to a Cubs game by themselves like we did.

First, we would save up about $10 or so, mowing lawns, etc. Then, on the day chosen, we would wheedle a mom into driving us the 8 miles to Barrington to drop us off at the Chicago and Northwestern station for the $4 (round trip) train ride into the city. From the downtown Northwestern station, also long gone, we would walk 4-5 blocks up to the Loop and go down into the subway to catch a train to the Northside which dropped us off ½ block from Wrigley Field.

Back in the 50s-60s and 70s the Wrigley’s kept 22,000 tickets for sale on the day of the game. You could literally walk up to the gate, buy a ticket, and go in. There weren’t a lot of advanced sales.

In 1969, a ticket to the bleachers was $1. On opening day, we splurged and bought grandstand tickets, which were $1.50.  At this point we probably had $3-4 left from our $10, and since pop, or a Ron Santo pizza, or a hot dog was around 50 cents each, and a program was 25 cents, which would last the game. 

On that particular opening day, Cubs superstar Ernie Banks hit two home runs, but the Cubs were still losing in the bottom of the 10^th (I had crumpled my program up into a ball, you can see it now with the creases) when pinch-hitter Willie Smith came up with a man on and hit a home run to win the game. The Cubs that year led from game one until the middle of August, when they collapsed and the Amazin’ (god that still sticks in my craw to type that) Mets came form 9 games back to overtake them and eventually win the division by 8 games.

During that season I bought all four daily Chicago newspapers (Chicago Tribune, Chicago Today, Chicago Sun-Times, and Chicago Daily News) almost every day and cut out the articles relating to the Cubs and taped them into scrapbooks (I ended up with two, at least, I’ve never been able to look at them since I sealed them in plastic after the end of the season).

I lived and died with each win or loss. Two of the games we attended we sat in the bleachers with the Bleacher Bums, who wore yellow construction hats and had cheers for certain players or to get a rally going, or to celebrate a home run.

As July leaked into August and the once robust lead was dwindling away, I even went so far as to make a voodoo doll (it came with a MAD magazine) with a little “Mets” sign around his neck, and I pierced it daily with pins and needles. It didn’t help.

The worst was a game in August,  the Cubs played in New York and they blew a late

inning lead when the Cubs center fielder (and my personal hero, after Don Kessinger, that season) Don Young caught a fly ball, then ran into the outfield wall at Shea Stadium and the ball fell out, allowing the tying run to score. The Cubs went on to lose, and Ron Santo blasted Don Young in all the papers the next day. The pressure was getting to him and to the rest of the team, it appeared.

            1969 was the season when Ron Santo started to jump up and click his heels after home wins, as he ran to the clubhouse that was in the left field corner of Wrigley Field. Some people say that that was what kept him out of the Hall of Fame during his lifetime. If that is what stopped some Hall voter from voting for him during his lifetime (he finally got in 6 months after he died last year), I pray there is a special place in hell reserved for him. Statistically, he was as good a third baseman as Brooks Robinson, but Ronnie never appeared in a post-season game throughout his 15-year career.

            The next time I let the Cubs get to me was the 2003 “Bartman” game where with only 5 outs between them and their first World Series appearance since 1945, they totally collapsed after a fly ball that was arguably catchable, was touched in the stands by a poor kid named Steve Bartman.

As I watched the game at home I became apoplectic as well, I kept saying, “That’s it! Now it starts! They’re going to blow it again!”  Visions of 1969 and of the ball going through Leon Durham’s legs in 1984 ran through my head. Lynn tried to calm me down, but I left the house and sat in our car in the garage, occasionally turning on the car radio as the collapse unfolded. Lynn was a little worried because she didn’t know where I had stormed off to, not thinking to look in the garage.

When the game was over, I came back in the house and put it from my mind. Even though there would be another game, another chance to get to the World Series, I knew it wouldn’t happen and, of course, it didn’t.

Fatalism is part and parcel of the Cubs fan’s life.

I hope they make it to the World Series some day, because on that occasion I will open my scrapbooks on the 1969 season and show them to my son and daughter, should they care about baseball at that future date.

13 – ‘Til I Die – The Beach Boys – 1971

'Til I Die           

            This song was a partial comeback for Brian after his late 1960s meltdown and disappearance from the band. It appears on the Surf’s Up album. Inspired by a late night trip to the beach where Brian contemplated his place in the vast universe (“I’m a cork on the ocean…How deep is the ocean…How long will the wind blow”)

            I had read about the song in article from November 1974 in Rolling Stone, which called it “…a crazy amalgam of Berry, Bach, and barbershop.”

            I guess it was the barbershop that caught my interest and sent me to Skipper’s to buy the album (which remains un-digitized, I got the song from Grokster I think).

            When I was in junior high school, I was in a barbershop quartet, actually a quintet. My voice back then was not that special, but I did have a larger range, and Mr. Iddings put me in with four other guys because I could sing all the parts (or he felt sorry for me because 3 of the other 4 were among my best friends).

            So they called it a barbershop quartet plus one, me being the one. We practiced before school began and I remember we had hall passes we taped to a piece of cardboard (not having access to lamination back then). 

My mom was also working at the junior high around that time, washing and drying the towels for all the gym classes for District 300. I remember seeing her down in the lower level of the school as a van dropped off canvas sacks of wet towels which she placed in one of two industrial sized washers, then dried them in a big dryer, then placed them back in the sacks for pick up. It was ungodly hot in the fall and spring, warm and toasty in the winter, but backbreaking nonetheless.

For one concert we got hold of an actual barber’s chair, and also, unfortunately, a real straight razor. During one song we lathered up Gary K. and then somebody (I don’t think it was me, but I may be suppressing the memory) used the straight razor to remove the lather. Being 13-14 years old at the time and none of us  had ever shaved before, we noticed rather quickly that the lather was turning pink, due to Gary’s bleeding.

As the song ended, we took a towel and wrapped his throat as we took our bows and ran to the bathroom to clean him up. None of the cuts was deep, but the straight razor was quickly taken away from us.

It’s funny, but I was quite the singer, in grade school, junior high, and high school, I was in acapella choir in high school, choir and barbershop quintet, in junior high, and in grade school I was in several talent shows (they had one every year at Eastview Elementary in Algonquin).

In 5^th grade I tried out for a solo for a song called “Minstrel Man”

            I want to be a minstrel man,

            I want to dance like no one can,

            I want to fill the throng with zest and song,

            I want to hear the music of a minstrel band,

I want to parade down every street,

And smile at everyone I meet,

I want to tour all over this great land,

In a first class minstrel band.

            Why do I remember every line? Jeez, there’s a bunch of drivel locked up in my head!

            I didn’t get the solo (Gary K, who we would later lacerate in the barbershop quintet, did) but I was in the backup troop that had canes and straw hats that we twirled and waved.

            The year Mary Poppins came out 1964, I was one of three chimney sweeps that sang and danced (with black soot on our faces and push brooms in hand) to “Chim Chim Cher-ee”. The year before that I was in and improv ensemble of 4^th graders who acted out the battle of the bands between the Beatles and the Dave Clark Five. I was the drummer for the DC5 and as a foursome of 4^th graders in Beatles wigs, lip-synched and air-guitared to a 45 on a record player to “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” We (the DC5) rushed out and pushed them off the stage and took their wigs, as we lip-synched and air-guitared to “Glad All Over “.

           

Such cutting edge satire! We killed!

In 8^th grade I had a very brief thespian phase. I was in two plays. The first was Huckleberry Finn, where I played the sheriff in my great grand father’s frock coat and whiting in my hair to make me look older.

In the second play, I can’t recall the name at all; I replaced the male lead when he quit to play football or something.  All the girls were 9^th graders (Freshmen) and I was an 8^th grader about 2 years younger, emotionally, and scared to death of girls. Before the first performance, one of the girls asked me to take off my glasses, to improve my leading man looks I suppose, and I stumbled through the performances, never seeing anything very clearly.

At the end of the play I had to hold hands with the leading lady, and I remember she wore gloves, my hands were so sweaty. At one point in the play I had to laugh, and it was so fake that half the audience imitated it.

This led to two of the greatest embarrassments of my young life. After the play was over one of the girls had a cast party at her house and they played Spin the Bottle. I was 13 and all the girls were 14 or 15 and I had major crushes on every one of them, but when the bottle spun to me, I couldn’t do it…I froze...The games, and the party, were over.

The next year I was now a Freshman, the cock of the walk. In fact we were the last Freshman class at Algonquin Junior High School, because the next year it became a middle school, and the freshmen came with us to Crown High School, they never got to be cock of the walk.

When they had tryouts for the theater club, a different teacher than the one who had cast me the previous year now ran it. And when I showed up to the first meeting, I found that we were supposed to have an audition piece. I didn’t have anything prepared, so the teacher/ advisor said, “OK, dance like Goldie Hawn on Laugh-In”. This in front of all my peers and several other teachers. I said I couldn’t do it in front of a crowd (for a theater club?). I’ve never been a dancer, before or since.

They sent out all the kids, leaving the advisors, and I still couldn’t dance like a go-go dancer. I was humiliated. I never acted again.

Indeed, when I was in high school, I was required to be in the chorus of a play or two, because I was part of the choir. I was supposed to sing and dance in the chorus for “Oklahoma”. I attended several practices, but when the play ran, I had my mom write me an excuse to get out of it. I had no problem singing in an ensemble, but I drew the line at do-si-doing in the background of a musical.

Breaking News>>>>>>

Let me break format here to explain why there’s been no new post for a while. Things have been in flux for me, professionally, for the past week or so and I have done little in my free time but try to think through the issues.

The thing is, I had a job offer to set up a Quality system for doing military Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) for a company only 15 miles from home (as opposed to the 70 mile round trip I currently make). It’s a good opportunity, but I had some issues.

First, their insurance is going up in June and the cost for me, Lynn, and the kids will go up to about $750/month or so. (Our share, the company pays 50%), which will cost me an extra $1500/ year. The small salary increase I would get would be almost all eaten up by that increase alone.

And second, last year I left here for a job in Elgin to do the same thing, set up a military system, but they were so clueless that after I had spent 3 months creating a Quality system from scratch to satisfy the military requirements, they were shocked when I told them what it was going to cost to test the qualification board at a local, government-approved, lab. They were convinced that because they built boards for another branch of the company that owned the lab, they could “cut a deal” with the lab. I told them it was unlikely that a government-sanctioned lab would cut any sort of “deal” based on that, so they said, “OK we’re not doing military then.”

Two weeks later my boss called me into the conference room to tell me, “____ (the owner’s son or brother, I was never sure) says you spend too much time at your desk.”

I said, “ You mean when I was creating a system from scratch, writing procedures, doing capability studies, doing corrective actions? Where else would I do the computer work involved?”

He said, “I don’t care, get out into Final Inspection and learn how to run the flying probe tester and the AOI (automated optical inspection).” Two machines I had never run in my 35-year career.

I had already re-learned how to do all the chemical analyses in the lab (something I had not done since I had set up plating lines 30 years ago at Accutronics) as a back up to the lab tech, so I said OK.

Two weeks later I was called in again and told I was being fired for not learning how to run the machines and made to sign a letter that seemed to blame me for everything that had ever gone wrong in the history of that building up to, but not including, the death of Walter Payton (it used to house his lift truck company). I was so stunned, I just signed it and left. (I could have brought up how I had been lied to about insurance costs: he said it was about $700 a month where it was actually $1200, but what would be the point?)

The reason I had taken this job was to help out at home. Lynn had just started chemo for breast cancer and was looking forward to weeks of radiation when that was through and I was needed several times to pick up my son at kindergarten and covered at home when Lynn had an appointment and couldn’t find anyone to watch the kids for a couple hours.

I carried a bunch of stuff from my cubicle to my car (I also left a bunch of stuff, I was literally in a daze) and called my old job to see if they could use me at all. It had been 3 and a half months since I had left and they had hired someone to replace me.

We were f----d! I couldn’t make our mortgage payment on unemployment! We had paid off both cars several years before (they are 14 and 8 years old) so we only had mortgage, food, utilities, and kid’s stuff.

The circuit board industry has been decimated in the last 10 years or so, as I’ve related in earlier postings, so there weren’t many shops left I hadn’t worked at. I decided to call my old boss and friend from my Accutronics days at the shop he now worked at and he had me in for an interview the next week. After catching up a little with him, we hadn’t spoken in 12 years or so; he introduced me to his son, who he is grooming to take his place in around five years, and Bob H. an old colleague from my Chicago Etch/Dynacircuits days.

The interview went well, I thought, they were looking more for a Quality Engineer as opposed to a Manager, it seemed, so I knew they could not offer anywhere near what I was currently making. I went home that afternoon, preparing to calculate how my reduced income would impact our budget.

When I checked my email, I saw one from the HR manager at my previous place of employment, asking whether I would work to help them get the new military qualification. I emailed back, “Yes” and waited to hear from the place I’d just interviewed at.

Two days later I got a call from Bob H. with an offer that was as low as I had expected for the Engineer position. That same afternoon I got an email from the other lace offering what I had made before I left. The person they had hired to replace me had backed out the day he was to start. I took the job again, even though it was still a 2-3 hour daily commute.

           Though I was only out of work for a month, it was incredibly stressful, so you can see I was a little leery about grabbing this latest offer. It paid a little more, and had the potential for a nice bonus when I complete the qualification.

After talking it over with Lynn, and thinking about it for a couple days, I sent an email turning down the job. Lynn said that it was a “P---y move” (or maybe a sissy move) to turn it down that way and pushed me to call him and explain my reservations.

I sent a text asking if he was available for a phone call during my lunch, thinking it would be easy for him to just say “No” and be done with me, but he texted back “Yes” and I called. After explaining why I was leery, and receiving assurance that I felt settled some of my qualms,

I asked whether the offer was still open, he said (understandably) he wasn’t sure now that he wanted me!

We agreed to wait a few days, Friday ‘til Monday, then get back together and see how we felt about going forward. I went home that night and talked it over with Lynn and decided I would take the job, if offered.

When Monday rolled around I remembered we hadn’t said who would call whom. I waited all day for a text or call on my cell, but none came. Finally, when I left work at the end of the day I called him and got his voicemail. I left a message to call at home after 6PM, but it never came.

Man…Karma’s a bitch!