When it was time for dinner - you headed home

Dinner on the beach
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

JAMESTOWN, N.Y. - The days are finally getting a little longer. Those pre-5 p.m. sunsets were just awful in December and early January.

But it all reminded me of trudging home from wrestling practice and by sometime in March, coming home from those early track workouts held inside the high school because of the snow still on the ground.

Anyone else remember the shin splints we used to get running on the hard floors?

Tonight though, as I was figuring out what time Admiral Fox and I would have dinner, I thought back to growing up when at my house, dinner was at 5:30 p.m. That was 5:30 p.m. every day of the year, except for Christmas and Thanksgiving, when we would either trundle to a relative's house or host the entire Fitzgerald-Puls-McAvoy-Mattison clan at our casa. Still, even on those days, I could see my grandmother starting to fidget if dinner was served any later than 6 p.m.

The time for dinner was 5:30 p.m., by God, and if I was at some athletic practice, well, I ate alone later, in the kitchen, while my grandmother stood at the sink waiting for me to finish so she could swoop up the dishes, wash them and get them back safely in the cupboard.

It was heathenish to miss that 5:30 time, but it was an excused absence.

If I was out on the lake in the summer, or still at Jamesway trying to decide what treasure to buy, or just shooting the bull with Bud Hooper a block away, well, tough nuggies. The Fitzgerald family (my mother, grandmother, and sister) went ahead and had the meal at 5:30 p.m. on the dot.

What I got later was hell for not showing up at 5:30 p.m., because, that's when dinner was served. My mother bought me several wrist watches growing up with the clear directions that I was to get home by the appointed Fitzgerald dinner hour. I still have the Boy Scout watch - it keeps perfect time 40-plus years later.

I don't remember other families being as anal-retentive about dinner time, though I knew that when Derwood Hooper or Art Carlson got home, dinner was served pronto. Not that I actually witnessed that, because my 5:30 get-your-butt-home time was much earlier than the dinner times at other homes.

Since sometime in the early 1970s - whenever the last time I ate dinner in my growing-up house in Lakewood before my mother passed away - I can say with some certainty I have not eaten dinner at 5:30 p.m. Been in middle of cocktails perhaps, but I have an aversion to ever eating as early as 5:30.

Raising my four children (Have I really survived four kids?), dinner was when dinner was. The only thing I tried to do was have everyone sit down all together for a family meal - whenver that could be accomplished. And we always had a toast at the beginning of the meal to some accomplishment of the day, something newsworthy or sometimes just to say thanks to whatever higher power was in our collective vogues that night. Politicians were routinely roasted in our evening glass-raising.

But there was one other slightly odd thing at my growing-up dinner table that suddenly comes back, too - a utter lack of salt or spices. There was no table salt. No basic NaCl. I vaguely remember a pepper shaker on the kitchen stove shelf - up high and dusty.

My grandmother had some kind of dietary problem with too much salt and thus, no food served on our dinner table was salted during cooking or on dinner plates. Salt was verboten, period, spices something I read about in history class.. It could've been worse, I suppose, she could've been a vegan.

The photo with today's blog is obviously not of anything from my childhood. It's from the tropics where people not only rarely eat their evening meal at 5:30 p.m., there's plenty of salt available on the table, perhaps even on the rim of glass justed used to toast the sunset, certainly on the chips and salsa.

Must be somewhere near Margaritaville, where I'm going back soon to find my lost shaker of salt.

The effects of college roommates on life plans

Dormitory room for 4 guys
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

VILLANOVA, Penn. - Exactly why my mother was so hot on my going to Villanova University (where it was very expensive) instead of SUNY Oswego (where I had a Regent's scholarship are set to go) is still a little hazy.

Maybe it was because it was a Catholic college. Maybe she wanted me where the drinking age was 21 (not that it slowed anybody down at Villanova). Maybe she knew she was throwing me into the deep end of the pool.

That's how I learned how to swim in Lake Chautauqua - sheer panic when the water was over my head and the end of my dock.

But my first encounter at Villanova of real note was walking into a dorm room that was eerily similar to the one with today's blog. Four guys, a couple of dressers, no closet at all and some desk/tables left over from WWI.

I had three roommates, Jim Rawlings, Doug McDowell and Chris Ralston. Rawlins was a Navy ROTC guy and spent most of his time smoking cigarettes and dropping the ashes down from his top bunk on my head at night. Doug McDowell was a psychology major (like me) only because we had to put something down on our registration cards. Chris Ralston was an engineering major and studied harder than the rest of us all put together.

Amazingly there were few fights or even arguments. Given the size of the room, you might think otherwise.

But if someone was restless in the night and couldn't sleep, well, nobody slept well.

Ditto for someone getting sick. In a few days, all four of us would be hacking and wheezing and screaming.

Of the four roommates, Ralston (yes, we called him Purina sometimes), was the one who made an on-the-mark prediction about me in one of those late night, sucking-down-beer sessions. (The beer sessions were not only illegal, possession of alcohol meant sure expulsion from the University.)

We each guessed what profession we would end up in. Ralston, of course, was going to build giant buildings and bridges as an engineer. Rawlings was going to be some kind of career military guy. Doug was just hanging on (as was I) to see what the world brought.

I was clueless and could only predict what parties I was going to head to on the weekends. A life plan? Please.

But Ralston looked at me over the top of a Rolling Rock and said the word: 'Journalist.'

"You're one of those guys that just won't stop asking questions," he said.

(He might have said, 'one of those assholes,' but if he did, I've chosen not to remember it that way.)

We all laughed, because I was the one always asking why thing were done the way they were at the university - not a popular thing with the priests that ran the joint and believed the everyone should bow to authority, ecclesiastical or university-wide.

When we had a massive food fight in the cafeteria - and later a strike over the bad food served in the central dining facility - I was the one who called the campus radio station with on-the-spot reports on what dorms were throwing what kind of food out of what windows at the security guards trying to quell the near-riot. Amazing what a mess a jello fruit salad makes when it hits a cop's blue uniform.

I lost track of the guys after a few years. Rawlings left school (as did I) quite prematurely. I hope that Vietnam didn't get him. It wasn't until this moment writing this that that awful thought occurred to me.

I'll wager that my other two roomies graduated from Villanova and are getting ready for their 40th high school reunions just like us. In just four years from now, it will be 40 years from the date when I would have graduated from Villanova with them, if I had paid a little more attention in the classroom.

No, make that a lot more attention.

Long before pilates was SWCS gymnastics

SWCS Gymnastics
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

JAMESTOWN, N.Y. - I've never been much on stretching, though every doctor I've ever had tells me I should. And each day now, I have to do some stretching to get the muscles around my recently repaired knee working right.

Probably time for yoga or pilates.

In high school, the stretchers were in gymnastics, another athletic endeavor at which I had mixed success. I never had the flexibility to stand with the crowd in this photo, though I enjoyed some of the things: the rings, the parallel bars and, of course, the trampolines.

My problem was when I would try to do a flip, I would lose sense of where I was and never completed the manuever properly.

Years later, I came to find out that my inner ear - like many people's - simply can't re-adjust quickly, like in a flip or barrel roll in an airplane. (There's a long story about how I know that.) I could have practiced flips on the trampoline for years and still not gotten a decent one off.

The strength part of gymnastics was good for me, helping a lot with the wrestling and just plain self-confidence. When I was running (until the great Twist-and-Shout knee blowout) I would sometimes stop along the exercise trail and jump on the parallel bars and 'walk' across them, just like we did in high school as part of our drills.

This photo also points out that women, even in 1966, tended to be more limber than men. I didn't count today, but it looks like a 2-1 ratio.

My daughter did gymnastics for awhile growing up and now her daughter - at eight - is about to start, though the California gymnastic's clubs are thinly veiled hot houses for serious competition. Every mom and dad wants their daughter to go to the Olympics.

Jaysus.

I'd still like to get a trampoline for the backyard - Costco sells them for less than $200. But I can't get the image of several of our classmates flying loose off the trampolines in the gym, even with spotters standing by, supposedly to keep them safe.

I don't remember any serious injuries, but I did fly my off myself once, landing safely on Bob Fulcher and a couple of other guys who landed on the floor in a heap with me.

No broken bones, just seriously wounded pride.

And I also remember that I drew a caution from Mrs. Berg (on the right hand side of photo):

NO FLIPS WITHOUT THE SAFETY BELT, PLEASE.

She didn't have to tell me again.

They were the Music Men at Southwestern

The Music Men
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

JAMESTOWN, New York - For some reason, we called Mr. Turner 'Cho-Cho,' something to do with the ice cream bars he ate most days in the lunchroom, watching all of us to ensure that we didn't turn the SWCS cafeteria into some kind of Animal House food fight.

Dalton Berringer, on the other hand didn't have a nickname I knew of. But he was the only music teacher I got to know at all in high school.

Dalton was a whiz on the piano and once I asked him to try to play 'Nutrocker' by Bee Bumble and stingers, a song he said was beyond his abilities. But he said he was flattered that I thought he could play it.

The following summer, while breaking various speed laws on the lake, I was pulled over by the Sheriff's boat and it was Dalton B. himself running the controls, earning a little money in the summer. No ticket, just a friendly warning and mostly a lot of bullshitting about my boat. I realize now he probably wanted me to take him waterskiing.

Dalton B. also played gigs at the Hotel Jamestown, I remember, dinner music on the piano. He probably sang, too, though I don't remember for sure.

Cho-Cho and Mr. Bennett (in the center) did the various bands and I never got involved with band. My mother wasn't able to convince me to take up an instrument and besides, I was probably quite lacking in dee-zire to practice, I'm sure.

But the music teacher I remember the most clearly was a Mrs. Nelson, who might have been our 7th grade teacher. She always led us in song and at the beginning of whatever year it was, had us walk up and sing with her, accompanying us on the piano. It was some kind of test to figure out where we should sit in the room to get the best sound out of each of us.

Do I need to spell out why I remember her so well?

At 13 or 14, my voice, like those of most of male classmates, alternated between the vocals of the highest notes of Vienna Boys Choir and the scratching of Kermit the Frog (who was still just a dream in Jim Henson's fertile imagination).

Mrs. Nelson kept me at the piano for what seemed like an eternity one morning, asking me to try to hit the high notes over and over. She was a musical surgeon with a medical marvel in front of her - the musical equivalent of the Elephant Man.

I couldn't hit the high notes at all (my voice cracked and creaked like a wooden bridge) and the low notes seemed to come just as my voice would click over to Kermit, spilling out of my nose like a bad cold.

"You better take up an instrument," she finally said, dispatching me back to my seat, "You're never going to be much of a singer."

If you were there and laughed, I don't blame you. But it's one of the reasons I can't watch American Idol.

In retrospect, I should've snapped off some witty retort (today I would include menopause and a swat at her hairdo in some repartee), but at that age, the humiliation was quite sufficient to send me back to my seat cowering - and to avoid vocals for years.

What brings this all up now is that a couple of months into trying to make music on a guitar, I've come to realize that the guitar (for me anyway) requires (gulp) singing.

So every time I practice 'Michael Row the Boat Ashore,' or some other zippy song that only requires three or four chords and have to belt out with my voice, I try to block out old Mrs. Nelson from my mind and think about Dalton B.

No matter how bad our singing might have been in class, I remember that he would just smile and play the piano a little louder and louder and louder until his keys and strings of that cheapshit piano would strain like a badly constructed rope bridge.

But in those circumstances, I would sing loud, too. Hell, nobody could hear me!

Maybe today I'll substitute Dalton for Michael when I practice the guitar, a little low-key tribute to the only music teacher I've ever really had.

'Dalton row the boat ashore...'

Wrestling - the refuge of the nearsighted

SWCS wrestling squad
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

JAMESTOWN, NY - My mother was always puzzled why I went out for the Southwestern Central wrestling team.

After all, in 9th grade, I weighed 120 pounds and was already 5 feet, 10 inches tall. (I grew another half inch by graduation, not that it matters.)

And strong was not an adjective anyone used in regards to me at that point in my life.

'Why not basketball?' my mom always asked. 'You're tall and you can run fast.'

True, but the truth was, I couldn't see the basket well enough to put the ball through the hoop - even with my glasses.

But on the wrestling mat, all the action was done virtually by braille so the disadvantages of myopia were not as pronounced - but they were still there.

At the beginning of a wrestling match, when the opponents face each other, there's a period when sometimes you are simply standing, waiting to make a lunge at your opponent. When I lunged, the opponent usually wasn't there by the time I got across the mat, though they always seemed to be able to yank my ankles and drop me on my butt fairly easily.

That might have been a coordination issue and not near-sightedness, now that I think about it.

But the wrestling team was good for me because in the middle of the Jamestown winter, I spent afternoons grappling, stretching and sometimes lifting weights, the alternative to which was sitting home eating Chunky candy bars, drinking ginger ale or Coca-Cola and watching black & white television.

We had our wrestling practices at the now-demolished Lakewood Elementary School which was a pretty grim place downstairs in the locker room. We would take over the gym for a couple of hours, skipping rope and practicing. And just before each match, we would go through a ritual called the 'wrestle-off' to see who would get to represent SWCS against another school.

These wrestle off matches were as vicious as any inter-school contest. And to lose to someone you had to then see at school the next day, well, embarassing doesn't quite cover it.

I never made it to the big show, but at most matches I wrestled in the pre-match 'exhibitions,' frequently against people that weighed more than I did. Coach 'Flash' was trying to give me experience, he said.

It did.

I was thrown across the mat from Gowanda to Salamanca to Falconer, though I won a few matches when the guys were within 10-pounds of my weight class.

I used to think that I never made it to the big show because each of the four years I wrestled, we had guys in my weight class who were almost undefeated.

The truth is, as Flash once told me in front of most of the team, wrestling requires lots of muscles (which I was a little short of), great coordination (already covered, see paragraph 9) and an intangible, immeasurable quality called heart.

Only Flash didn't call it heart, he called it dee-zire. You have it, or you don't, he would say.

While I never made much success of the wrestling, his dee-zire lesson did stick and when I went into the newspaper business, I finally understood it as I pursued stories and tried to change the world with that same tenacity exhibited by many of the guys in the photo with this blog who pursued their opponents across the mat.

Dee-zire, you have it, or you don't.

Make the name tags big, REALLY BIG, OK?

Dana Bolles
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - I walked into a press conference two days ago and spotted, I thought, a woman who worked for a local radio station with whom I really needed to chat.

As I got close to her, the tiny name tag on her jacket fuzzed out (I can't see worth a damn up close) and, so I said hello Jenny, when in fact her name was Kathleen.

Wrong name, wrong person.

Merde! (See, I did learn some French in high school, thought 'merde' came from Phil Parks, who was several years ahead of us in high school and whose mother was French)

So this latest name tag debacle - and dream I had last night about our upcoming 40th reunion - prompted me to think that we better have REALLY BIG name tags or there will be a whole lot of goofy 'who the hell is that?' kind of looks being shot around the room.

Of course, in addition to that, we could ask people to comb their hair like they did in high school or maybe find a similar outfit to wear. Cheryl Towers had on kind of tennis sweater sort of thing. Or in Dana Bolles case, have him find a plaid jacket that comes close to what he wore in his yearbook photo.

I had one of those sportscoats, too, but mercifully when my mother pushed me out the door for school the day our photos were taken, she didn't make me wear it. I wasn't so lucky when I went to Villanova and my photos from that era - one of which I posted - are about as geeky as geeky gets. Thank God the photos are all in black and white. My plaid sportscoat was purple.

Purple. Jaysus.

Dana, by the way, has still not been located, though Randy Carlson found what he believes is a good address for him and mailed him an invitation. I seem to remember that Dana married Celeste Windoft, daughter of Byron, our American history teacher. And wasn't his dad, Harry, a referee at football games? I seem to remember Dana taking a lot of crap for that.

Dana was also a guitar player - that I remember for sure, and at one point was involved in radio.

In my dream last night, numerous women from our class were coming up and hugging me (it was dream, ok...) but I couldn't recognize any of them! As each one walked away, my wife would ask, 'And who was that?' in a voice that any husband in our class would recognize as the precursor to a full nuclear launch.

Name tags, amigos. BIG ONES?

Let's hoist a glass to toast our former teachers

Grey Goose vodka
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - I couldn't find a really good photo of an appetizing meal to post with today's blog.

And frankly, I was a little worried about even searching for what kind of image might come up if I Googled Chautauqua Chicken. (An algae-covered breast of poultry, gently sauteed in...forget it...)

(For the record, I have ordered Chautauqua Chicken to eat at our reunion banquet/soiree/sockhop/freaky-dancing event. Can't wait...)

And I expect to hoist a couple of Grey Goose vodka tonics at the bar with Jim Carr, who is to blame for my keeping a bottle of that stuff in the freezer.

But what I wanted to throw out on the table (Good pun? Bad pun?) is having us (Class of '66 classmates) pay for the dinners and/or drinks of any of our former teachers who might be inclined to show up.

I posted the list of teachers the other day and I hope that some of those folks will come to one or more of the events. But it seems like it would be a nice gesture if, say, Harold Burgard showed up, to buy his dinner.

The Class of '66 is about to send out invitations to these folks, so time is of the essence.

As I suggested it, I suppose I should say I'll kick in the first $25 to the pot towards purchasing any dinners for our former wardens, er, teachers. I don't how many of our former wardens (sorry, slipped) would be willing to traverse the highways to Mayville for Chicken Chautauqua (or other such delicacies). But if we had 10 of these people show up, (Who are actually older than us, can you believe it?) it would be a miracle and triumph of geriatric medicine.

So, please let Randy Carlson know via email if you are willing to throw in a few bucks towards buying dinner and/or drinks for our former teachers. (Ha! You thought I was going to say wardens again, right?)

Why?

Well, it sure would be fun to do the following (particularly after a Grey Goose or two):

- Slap Gunny Anderson on the back and say Hi Gunny!
- Ask Gene Munson why he never mentioned we would eventually need to retire.
- Ask Bruce Crist what he thinks about American democracy - now.
- Give a squirtgun to Tony LoGuidice and let him go table-to-table wreaking havoc,
- If we ever find Dalton Berringer, make him play, As Time Goes By...

AND

Dance with Ethel Goller Enserro, to As Time Goes By, of course.

Break out the tennis togs, it's springtime

Southwestern Central Tennis team, circa 1965
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Definitely some wishful thinking going on on my part, but the sun is out again this morning and the prediction is that we might hit 70 degrees here today, after doing so yesterday...

Wahoo!

So even though I'm limping around the house and can barely get outside onto the brick patio, I think I'll pull out my tennis racquet and bash the ball into the back yard for the dog to chase - and retrieve.

The photo today with the blog is of our SWCS tennis team, most likely during junior year given that Ted Bootey is in it, kneeling in front of Coach Tom Priester.

Ted's dad was a judge, you might remember, and it seemed like whenever I got a speeding ticket, he was the justice that heard the case.

I didn't play tennis much in high school, it wasn't until I was in my 30s that I started to enjoy it. I played every afternoon with one of the editors at the Chico Enterprise-Record (where I was editor). We would smash the ball with great abandon to work out our frustrations of working for arguably the most conservative publisher in America.

How conservative? Well, let's say he thought that public education was a waste of taxpayer's good money, for example. Now that I write about education all the time, I'm beginning to understand his point a little better, although the alternatives are pretty unpalatable.

When I did play tennis, usually at the Lakewood Beach tennis courts, I remember there was a decided advantage depending on how hard the wind was blowing off the lake. If you tried to hit into it when it was ripping, the ball would barely make it over the net. Hitting it downwind, you could loft one to Terrace Avenue if you weren't careful.

One afternoon in the spring of our senior year, my 50-plus-year-old aunt, Ethel Puls (Gordy Puls' mother) whipped me in two out of three sets. Must've been that darned wind.

One particular note from this photo:

Standing next to Tom Priester is Merle Butler, who was killed in Vietnam and whose name I always look up when the traveling Vietnam Veteran's Memorial comes to Sacramento.

Searching for Joe Rushin, I found Miss Brownrigg

Miss Brownrigg & Mrs. Levine
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla - Shelley Kales set me on the track of finding Joe Rushin yesterday and while I didn't find Joe, exactly, I did find his wife (and maybe him).

Joe married Miss Brownrigg, one of our SWCS librarians, after his first wife died, all of which happened I think while we were still in high school.

But Miss Brownrigg (now Mrs. Rushin) left Jamestown when Joe retired in 1982 and moved to Florida where she started cranking out novels, all of which you can find at Amazon.com under Beverly Rushin.

One book just came out in paperback and I'll let you know how it is.

Here's her mailing address in Florida, at least according to the Herkimer High School from which she graduated in 1953.

The other data - and message from Beverly Brownrigg Rushin - all comes from the HHS website:

Address: 1342 S.E. Sandia Drive, Port St. Lucie, FL 34583
Phone: (561) 879-0872
E-mail: rushinb@aol.com
Occupation: Former librarian
Family: Married to Joe Rushin

"After graduation from HHS and from SUNY at Oswego in 1957, I recieved my MS from Syracuse Univ. in 1968. We lived in Jamestown, NY for many years until Joe retired in 1982. At that time we moved to Port St. Lucie where I became interested in community activities and also joined a writers group. I now have five published books. Three are at the local public library in Herkimer and I hope some of you will enjoy reading them. The titles of all five are, By the Sea, A Sudden Change of Plans, Broadsided by Love, My Rose and Shades of Love."

By the way, the list of teacher's addresses and contact information that I posted yesterday was compiled in good part from Tom Priester who has been helping get the reunion together. I think Tom is still selling bricks, too, as a fundraiser for the school.

I didn't get any of the letters off to teachers that I intended to yesterday - the over-the-counter painkillers keeping my knee injury under control stopped doing their job and I had to shift to a grape-based pain reliever.

Maybe later today I'll pen a couple of those letters, but no more grape-based remedies. The headache was worse the the knee-ache.

Drop a note to a former SWCS teacher

SWCS Teachers update
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

JAMESTOWN, New York - Randy Carlson just sent around an email reminder about the reunion that included a list of teachers with addresses, and in several cases, sad notes that they have passed away.

He may have sent this around earlier and I never saw it, but what a gold mine.

Thanks 'R' and whoever put the list together.

I know I've mentioned a lot of the folks on that list in various blogs and suddenly seeing their names again - and knowing that they are alive - has cranked up the memory meter again, especially now that the anesthesia from my knee surgery has passed through my system.

I mean, Harold Burgard lives on Pork Road in Clymer. He must be, well, somewhere in his 80s, right? "Every time a noble dies..."

Harry Robie has take up residence in Kentucky. He jump-started my writing career by publicly accusing me of being lazy (I was), and telling me I was wasting an incredible talent (I'm still faking that...).

And Ethel (Enserro) Goller. Gawd. Can't go there.

So in my second day of slacking around the house, unable to do much more than reach for the Motrin and the TV remote, I'm going to pen (it's a phrase, even I can barely read my handwriting) a letter or two to Harold, Harry and Ethel and maybe some others.

Harold, Harry and Ethel: sounds like a title for a British sitcom.

Throw in Hubie (Hubie Davis) and you have a smash hit.

What now-famous actress does Gloria look like?

Gloria Boutelle
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Some people loved their SWCS high school yearbook pictures - other people hated them.

Put me in the 'hated-them' category.

I don't know which category Gloria fits into, but when I was looking at the yearbook today, I got stuck on her picture and saw more than a passing resemblance to an actress who has been all over the big screen for years now.

No fair scrolling down, I'll get to it.

Some years ago in one of my classes (called Literary Journalism, an obvious oxymoron my English Dept. colleagues say) I had a young student who bore a passing resemblance to Cybill Shepherd (a young Cybill Shepherd, not the middle-aged woman who does such a fine job imitating uber-bitch Martha Stewart in made-for-TV movies).

In that particular class, I frequently write pieces along with the students, hoping to demonstrate my compentence (or lack thereof) to show that it can be fun, not just work.

But I touched off a riot in the classroom when I wrote that one of the women in the class "bears more than a passing resemblance to Cybill Shepherd," without naming who it was. I also refused to give up the name, even after being plied with copious amounts of alcohol by very persuasive coeds after class. There's some parts of teaching I will miss when I retire.

Last year - 15 years after writing that piece - I ran into that former student in an airport, and damned if she doesn't still have a passing resemblance to Ms. Shepherd. (Remember Shepherd in Moonlighting with Bruce Willis? Well...that's who my former student still looks like - Shepherd, not Willis...)

Anyway, it might be because I saw Mystic Pizza the other night (and either Ocean's 11 or 12) that when I saw Gloria's photo in the year book, the resemblance came into focus.

Get it yet?

It's not the hairdo, which was very chic in 1966. No, I think it's the lips and nose (Sorry Gloria, is this too embarrassing?)

So who is it?

Julia Roberts, of course!

In this photo, Gloria Boutelle bears more than a passing resemblance to actress Julia Roberts. Keep looking at it for a second (and please forget that Julie Roberts was ever married to Lyle Lovett... Banish that image.). The resemblance is there.

So after this, I think I should keep thumbing through the yearbook to look for resemblances to other famous faces. Who knows who lurks within the pages of that red-covered book?

Hoo-boy! Any nominees?

There are weddings and there are weddings...

Mariachi cell phone
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

PUERTO VALLARTA, Jalisco, Mexico - So how exactly does a mariachi player on a cell phone relate to the Class of '66?

Well, it doesn't exactly.

Except that Saturday night, when I was attending a somewhat traditional Mexican wedding here, it got me thinking about some of the weddings I went to in Jamestown - even my own.

In my case, my wedding ceremony in Busti was performed by Justice Willard Ayers (sp?) one snowy night after I spent several hours at The Pub getting up my courage by pouring down several double Manhattans.

Not much of a wedding party and it was in the middle of a blizzard. We didn't get stuck in any snowbanks (either going out or returning) to our Jamestown apartment where we celebrated with Andre Cold Duck.

You might remember cold duck. After a bottle or two, your peripheral vision would begin to wane and the next morning the headaches were spectacularly intense.

I did attend a much snazzier soiree when Bob Fulcher was married at a Lakewood Church on Summit Avenue, down near where the Harp family lived. It was the first time in my life I threw my back out - bending over to tie a shoelace while getting dressed.

In that particular case I was able to straighten up long enough to attend the wedding but spent the next six weeks wearing a back brace while attending classes at Villanova.

The wedding Saturday here was interesting, even though the actual ceremony was conducted entirely in Spanish which made understanding the vows a cross-cultural challenge. My Spanish isn't great, but it sounded like the promises were a lot more complicated than what I have heard in most U.S. weddings.

Still, the young couple getting married looked like they stepped off a wedding cake. The groom was a red-cheeked Canadian (who barely can say 'si'), the bride a beautiful Mexican girl (whose English is excellent). They are on their way to a life in Canada. Brrrrrrrrr.

And the mariachi guy in the photo?

He was stepping out from the wedding party to make a quick call and quite surprised to see me with a camera.

But he did give me a quick 'buenas noches' and grinned.

Memories of shoveling and shoveling and ...

Snow shoveling memories
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

JAMESTOWN, NEW YORK - I don't know if we ever got quite as much snow as shown in this photo from northern Japan, but there were times when the snow was up to the top of our windows in the front yard, easily eight feet.

And as a kid, well, that meant no school (Yea!) and usually a day of building igloos and wandering around the neighborhood throwing snowballs at the few cars that might have been on the roads.

My mother taught at R.R. Rogers school in Jamestown and would have the radio turned up loud (tuned to WJTN?) as she got ready for work any winter morning when the snow was flying, hoping herself for a snow day.

But most days it was suck-it-up and go to work, and for me, suck-it-up and go to school.

When I was about 13, what I remember most is hearing her leave, then come tromping back down the path about two minutes later at which time she would bang on my bedroom window - the signal to slip on my boots and help shovel her car out.

The snowplow would come by and box her car in quite thoroughly some nights and if it was snowing hard in the afternoon, I got to repeat the drill, this time shoveling so she would get the Rambler back in its spot.

But it was all just inconvenience when I was still in high school. After all, those big yellow boxcar buses took us directly to SWCS for our day of incarceration.

After graduation and my abortive attempt at Villanova (abortive at getting good grades, quite successful in the social and alcohol arenas), I went to work (and JCC) and discovered that the snow was as much as pain in the ass as putting up with various bosses at the jobs I held.

Suddenly, most mornings I had two cars to shovel out of the snowbank that we called our driveway. Afternoons, my mom was pretty much on her own, but when I came home later in the evening (from work or the bars), so was I, and had to carry a snowshovel in the tiny trunk of my Triumph Spitfire.

More than once I drove like a maniac to pass Jerry Ruby driving the big Lakewood snowplow down West Summit, fighting to get to my parking spot before he threw up a two-foot snow berm right where I wanted to be. Two feet was nearly as high as my car.

But I also remember Jerry also coming along in the mornings, just as I had shoveled our cars out. Sometimes, he would get a big grin on his face and throw up a huge mountain of snow for me to deal with, other times, he would slow down and lift the plow, giving a friendly little wave.

I learned quickly that buying Jerry a beer at the Big Tree bar Friday nights would save me a lot of shoveling.

Here's to you, Jerry...

Waking up New Year's Day to a blizzard

Snow, what snow?
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

JAMESTOWN, New York - The New Year always dawned cold - sometimes with a few feet of snow on the ground - and I remember thinking that Christmas vacation was almost over.

When I saw the photo with today's blog, I was reminded of those New Year's mornings.

The end of the Christmas holiday for me meant long months before the weather warmed and I could think about getting my boat out of storage at Maple Bay Marina and get back on the lake, to water ski and generally raise whatever hell was possible.

And I think February was the worst month, with those bitter, bitter cold days with no sun, howling winds and only Valentine's Day as a holiday worth thinking about.

Most New Year's Eves, I remember mostly wandering around with my friends, occasionally finding a party, more often just wandering.

Today in Puerto Vallarta I woke up to a chilly 69 degrees after listening to fireworks for a good part of the night. From our deck, we were able to see fireworks from a half-dozen hotels, the walkway along the city and to the north at all the beach resorts.

We will be celebrating the first day of the new year in La Manzanilla, 100 kilometers south of here where the main attraction (besides a French restaurant) is a swamp featuring crocodiles - the big monsters like we used to see on Ramar of the Jungle. Last season we saw a 25-footer and the only thing between you and destiny is some yellow police tape that says Peligroso!

That's a long way from Jamestown, a long way from the frostbite ice skating that sometimes was a big part of New Year's Day - if it wasn't snowing horizontally.

And in a weird way I kind of miss it this morning as we pack for our sojourn.

I'll get over it.

When running was for glory - not exercise

Verne and Mark
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

JAMESTOWN, NY - After a two-mile walk down the beach yesterday - and being passed by dozens of energetic runners - I ran across this photo, taken at a track practice probably during our senior year at SWCS.

It appears that Mark Swanson is a step ahead of Verne Ahlgren, though with Verne's steps, one extra stretch would put him ahead of Mark.

I remember Joe Rushin standing alongside the track a lot with his stopwatch, timing people without them knowing it. Then, he would come up to you when you least expected it and tell you how you were doing.

One day Al Ross and I decided to run a 100-yard dash, after arguing who was faster. Al's long legs could carry him faster over longer distances, but up to 220 yards, I could usually beat him.

This particular day, one of those rare warm spring days, we ran like demons, a dead heat at the finish line where Coach Joe stood, having timed us.

When we stopped, panting, the look on his face was a mixture of suprise and rage.

We had run arguably the best race of our lives, both of us around 10.7 seconds for the hundred - faster than I ever ran for sure. I was a 11.0 seconds guy usually - on a good day.

After chewing on us both for a moment, he said he probably needed to have us race against each other at the meets - we obviously had more at stake than when we ran against other schools.

Of all the folks who we had as teachers and coaches in high school, I think I miss him the most - even when we he was chewing me out, emphasizing each syllable FITZ-GERRRRRRRRRR-ALD!

Getting out on the links in the springtime

The golf guys at SWCS
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

PUERTO VALLARTA, Jalisco, Mexico - Hitting the links around here is expensive, maybe $200 per-person, per round on golf courses that feature wild parrots in the trees and occasional crocodiles lingering in the water holes.

Going into the rough here can be filled with special meaning.

The photo with this posting today was probably taken somewhere outside of the the SWCS campus on Hunt Road, but could have been taken at Moonbrook golf course, I suppose, the only course can remember.

It seems to me we had an after-prom(?) party at Moonbrook and there were legends about couples who wandered out onto the greens to, well, look at the stars.

The only member of the Class of '66 in this shot is Jim Jackson, whose name I believe is on the list of people still being sought for the reunion next summer.

I remember that his dad was a city councilman - maybe in Celeron - and that Jim was a whiz kid in math class. (Compared to me, anyway.)

Senior year, when by some mishap I was writing sports for The Trojan - I remember having to write up a story about the golf team and being completely lost with the terminology. I went to Golf Coach Gene Munson - who also was my guidance counselor - and got yet another lecture about my long list of shortcomings. He was the same guy who first put me in honors classes and then later decided my future was more likely as a delivery driver.

Next to Jim in the picture is Bob Johnson, whose mom was the postmaster in Lakewood.

The last time I saw Bob he whipped me in badminton and then also nailed me in fencing class.

Never did a golf match with him.

A multi-media Christmas Card from Britain

Marcia Carlson
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A few days ago, I was in my pre-Christmas slump or depression or regression - whatever - and I received a copy of a Christmas 'card' that was sent to Marcia Carlson (now Marcia Carlson-Hein) that just pulled me right out of my haze and had me practically dancing.

I say practically, because my knee - injured doing The Twist last July 4th - is out of control and surgery looms ahead, just after I get back from Mexico.

I figure, why not go to Mexico, boogie-board, surf, hike, drink margaritas and try to dance? I'll just get anything broken repaired when the surgeon opens me up in January, right?

With that kind of medical philosophy, it's no wonder the nurse in my doctor's office tells me I'm in great shape - for someone 10 years older.

But this piece of music, Wizard in Winter by the Trans-Siberian Orchesta is phenomenal and the light show created to go with it should rouse even Ebenezer Scrooge out of his bah-humbug routine.

Below is the link to the web page that explains the urban legend about the light show and the music, provided to me courtesy of Marcia's husband Ric, who is a Mac guru.

With any luck, we'll get to see Marcia and Ric at the reunion next summer.

WARNING: If you listen to this song more than once or twice, it will stick in your head worse than the Mickey Mouse club theme. M-I-C (See you real soon!) K-E-Y (Why? Because we love you!) M-O-U-S-E.

DA LINK:

Wizard In Winter

Suppose Lake Chautaqua had great surfing?

How about that wave?
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

HAWAII - The picture with this blog is from the Dec. 5 surfing competition in Hawaii where the waves are a tad more fierce than what we had to deal with off Lakewood Beach. (A tad in this case is a factor of about 20...)

Still, when I saw this photo, I was reminded of how much where we grew up - and what we had in the way out outdoors and sports and opportunities - dictated so much of who we ended up doing recreation-wise.

I learned to downhill snow ski here in California at about 27 years old. I went to Lake Tahoe with a couple of newspaper buddies and spent the weekend downhill skiing wearing a T-shirt and levis. Yup. It was that warm. I got a helluva sunburn, too.

My only other experiences in New York - once at the high school, a second (at some resort called Cockaigne?) led me to believe that snow skiing required dressing up as if you were about to join a British polar expedition. And then you got to work your butt off trying to get back up the slope after a less-than-fun run down an icy hillside.

In California, that first ski day, there were bikini-clad young ladies adorning the slopes and riding up in the chair lifts alongside me.

Jaysus. There goes my blood pressure again.

But as I pack my bags for a three-week Mexico sojourn, I think about what I did learn - how to water ski, swim in cold water and handle small boats - all skills that have served me well.

The other key thing - thanks largely to Doss Johnson firing me briefly from my job as a lifeguard at Lakewood beach - was learning how to sail a small boat. Out of work and semi-disgraced in the family (How the hell to you get fired from being a lifeguard my mother asked? Easy, just don't show up for work one day.) I borrowed my cousin Gordy Puls' Snipe sailboat for about a week (while the Lakewood City Council pondered my appeal for reinstatement) and thanks to the gentle waters of Lake Chautaqua, I learned the basics: how to tack, how to run downwind, how to steer with an open beer in your hand.

Those same principles came into play a few months ago when I was 50 miles off the California coast, barfing my guts out and praying for a wind shift as I pounded Sabbatical into headwinds and had green water over the deck for hours. The beer in this case was filling the scuppers. It was a long way from a Gordy's Snipe zipping back and forth in front of Lakewood Beach(so I could signal Doss with my finger when he came out for his many cigarette breaks,) but still...

Suppose we had grown up where the surf broke large right in front of our houses?

Might Mick Olsen be a surfboard God now? And what about Linda Davidson (whose name surfaced today to add to the email list)?

Could Linda have end up in surfing movies? Think about that shock of blonde hair and her presence.

Another theme to explore for next summer's reunion.

What could have been?

Think about it, classmates...

One good thing about getting older, maybe

Hard on the fingertips
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

LAKEWOOD, N.Y. (CIRCA 1963) - When I was 15, my mother (after much pleading on my part), bought me an acoustical guitar, a not-too-expensive model, because she was a very smart woman. She knew the attention span of teenagers, particularly her son.

Anyway, I learned about a one half of one song, never really got the whole 'tuning' thing down and gave it up, probably after a week, and maybe a half-dozen hours of practice.

Fast forward the Wayback Machine to 2005.

(Jaysus, not so damn fast! I get dizzy quite easy when sober.)

Now I have an acoustic guitar that a friend (whose house I am housesitting) lent to me and after about a week of puttering around, I can almost play about five songs and not wince at the sound coming out of the instrument - or the sound of my voice singing.

I haven't had the courage to record anything yet. I gratefully accept my wife's white lies about how good I'm getting.

So why is it in 2005 I can do this, but couldn't in 1963?

Some of it is attention span, though I'm not sure I have that good an attention span right now anyway.

What I think it might be that now I believe - no, make that understand - that things are within my reach and I never believed before.

(Hmmm... you are thinking...'Has old Fitz slipped what few cogs are left on his wheel?')

Maybe, but here's a case in point for me: foreign languages.

Jon Giacco and a raft of other high school teachers/zombies convinced me at SWCS that I had zero aptitude for foreign languages. Zero, zip, zilch, nada, cero, etc... Bad news for me. (Lots of crappy grades in high school.) Worse for my mother when you consider that my late father spoke (and could write in) eight languages. My mom could only handle three, English, German and Latin. I believed that I was at the end of the anti-evolutionary scale when it came to language learning, though curiously, I had read at least 100 of the novels in the SWCS library by 9th grade, including a few that Mrs. Levine, the librarian, thought I was too young for. Yes, the library had interesting books. They just never seemed to make it into our English classrooms.

But that is another story.

In 1985, when I went to Spain, part of the deal I made with my university was I would learn enough Spanish to read my lectures aloud (at four Spanish universities) and also be able to do a little polite conversations in the social gatherings that were part of the Fulbright grant and a monthlong tour of the country with other college profs.

I learned Spanish (enough) in eight weeks (8 weeks!) to avoid making a total ass of myself (the key word there is total), and since then have gotten semi-fluent.

Why? Had to for that trip to Spain. And some years later, knowing I would be sailing Mexican waters, really wanted to.

Ditto for French. When I went to France and toured on a canal boat for two weeks a few years ago, within a couple of days I was jabbering like a madman in every bakery and bistro - en Francais, merci beaucoup. I wasn't afraid of it anymore and besides, it just isn't that hard to understand with a little study and extremely attractive female French tutor. (Oops... delete, delete, delete..)

So that leads me to one of the goals I set for myself when I turned 55, a goal to achieve before I, um, well, you know, pass to the next world. It's to learn to play a musical instrument. I chose the ukelele first, but had that choice vetoed by my wife, Admiral Fox, who feared endless choruses of Tiny Bubbles - or worse, Tiptoe Through the Tulips.

When I did pick up the guitar this time, I thought about all the people I know who have mastered the guitar - at least enough to sing a few tunes - and thought, hell, I can do it if they can, fer Chrissakes.

I wish I had adopted that attitude say, 20 years ago (when I started learning Spanish), but the important thing isn't when you wake up to realize something, it's waking up and realizing something - ever.

So after I get done banging on this keyboard, I'll sing Fre-re Jacques and a few other tunes for my captive audience (a half-deaf old Labrador named Bear) and then put my feet up and read a little Spanish to tune up my language skills for my trip to Mexico Christmas Eve.

We're going to Puerto Vallarta, where you can't move without tripping over a gringo, but after a few days it's on to more remote places where you better be able to ask directions in Spanish - and be able to understand the answer.

And maybe before I go, I'll be able to strum enough to get away with playing the song below, made famous by the Texas Tornados, among other folks.

Una Mas Cerveza
by Tommy Alverson

Was down in Mexico where I had roamed
Not too much Spanish by then had I known
I found myself in a terrible mess
There were ten bad banditos, one gringo to mess

I was surrounded no where could I run
They had Los Pistols and I had no gun
I searched my memory for something to say
I had to think quick this could be my last day

Una mas cerveza
Una mas cerveza
Una mas cerveza
Was all I could say
Una mas cerveza
Una mas cerveza
Una mas cerveza
Just let me go my way

I saw a cantina so I went inside
I found a dark corner a good place to hide
I was no safer when I looked around
Not una mas gringo was there to be found

A small crowd had gathered around to my chair
“Eduardo Dormito” they pointed and stared
They gave me a guitar but what could I say
Oh yes I remember that mexican phrase

Una mas cerveza
Una mas cerveza
Una mas cerveza
Was all I could say
Una mas cerveza
Una mas cerveza
Una mas cerveza
Just let me go my way

Was 'Allentown' Billy Joel's best song?

Billy Joel
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

JAMESTOWN, N.Y. - I'm not exactly sure when 'Allentown' was recorded by Billy Joel, but I remember the first time I heard it - living here safely in California - and it struck me that it could have been written about Jamestown.

Of course, using Jamestown instead of Allentown would have totally screwed up the lyrics, so I'm glad it went the way it did.

When I left Jamestown in 1970, in a blue VW bus with a wife, a three-month-old son, and a psychotic black cat named Mr. Kitter, I was leaving what looked like dying factory town. In the bars (yes, I was occasionally in the bars in Jamestown, seeking information and career advice, of course) the fear was palpable among the drinkers and advice givers about shops closing down and/or moving to the south where they could pay lower wages and maybe less benefits.

This was all in the wake of the Art Metal scandal, about which I know only a little except that a number of fairly close family acquaintances lost their pensions - completely. They didn't even get a chance to be privatized.

But "Allentown" strikes a chord even today and when I listen to it, I see flashes of some of the factories I worked in (briefly...very briefly) and how it seemed that wasn't what I wanted.

When I worked Van Stee Corporation, half the workers all were missing a digit or two from industrial accidents. "Lefty" was more meaningful than a simple sobriquet for someone who used their left hand.

At 57, I'm still occasionally plagued by the same question I had at 20: What will I do when I grow up?

Maybe just write screeds like this and hope that some day I'll be able to strum "Allentown" on the acoustical guitar.

Hell, I'm doing great with "Hail, Hail, the Gangs all Here" and as soon as I can limber my fingers up enough, I think "Frankie and Johnny" is within reach.

Watch out Billy. I'm movin' up on you.

Today's song?

Tell me you couldn't guess...

Allentown
by Billy Joel
(1982)

Well we're living here in Allentown
And they're closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem they're killing time
Filling out forms
Standing in line
Well our fathers fought the Second World War
Spent their weekends on the Jersey Shore
Met our mothers in the USO
Asked them to dance
Danced with them slow
And we're living here in Allentown

But the restlessness was handed down
And it's getting very hard to stay

Well we're waiting here in Allentown
For the Pennsylvania we never found
For the promises our teachers gave
If we worked hard
If we behaved
So the graduations hang on the wall
But they never really helped us at all
No they never taught us what was real
Iron and coke
And chromium steel
And we're waiting here in Allentown

But they've taken all the coal from the ground
And the union people crawled away

Every child had a pretty good shot
To get at least as far as their old man got
But something happened on the way to that place
They threw an American flag in our face

Well I'm living here in Allentown
And it's hard to keep a good man down
But I won't be getting up today

And it's getting very hard to stay
And we're living here in Allentown