The Milkman

I was the milkman growing up in our home in my Philadelphia neighborhood. I was responsible for getting the freshly delivered milk bottles from the metal crate on our stoop every morning and put them in the icebox. I also had to make sure I put the empty bottles out there every night before going to bed for the real milkman. They were glass quart bottles and we went through a lot of them everyday. We had milk delivered through the 1950's and well into the 60's.

We drank a lot of milk. Every day. We had milk in our cereal, and with our lunch which we had a home every day and with our dinner. We drank milk with snacks too. I drank a lot but Tommy drank even more milk than me. We drank our milk using dixie cups and early on we were assigned different color cups. Betsy was red, I was yellow, Tom was blue, and Cathy was green. The system sort of broke down when Rita came along because the cups only came in four colors.

We also had bread delivered to our home from Bond Bakery. A similar truck would come by every few days and drop off loaves of bread. There was another truck that came by weekly to deliver eggs, meats, vegetables and fruits from local farms. We always referred to this guy as "the farmer" but when he came up the street he yelled "the eggman". I always liked it when he dropped off a basket of peaches or apples. The guy's name was Ed Kilpatrick and he became a friend of my father. For a few years we would go out to his farm during the summer to hang out and have dinner. He also owned a vacation house near Lake Wallenpaupak in the Poconos and my father rented it a few times. Once in 1967, I think, we stayed there for a month. Dad came up on weekends. I didn't particularly like it because it was too much time away from my friends in the neighborhood.

An Evening of Phone Calls

I spent much of this evening on the phone with family members giving me birthday greetings and catching up. Actually the calls started in the early afternoon with a call from Lizzie who dialed me up while walking to work. We had a very nice conversation.  I had an hour long talk with Cathy which was a lot of fun and we covered a lot of territory. She said she always learns something when we talk on the phone.

However, we talk a lot about her ongoing health issues which makes me feel much better about my own health which is much better than hers and so many other people I know. We talked about some old family stories and also about the recent death of Aunt Kate. 

I had another long conversation with Rita which was similar to the talk with Cathy. I really do love talking with my sisters. I didn't talk with Betsy today but we had a few conversations recently and I'm sure I'll talk with her again soon.

I talked with Dan last week and he texted me a birthday greeting and a promise to talk in a day or so. I know he is very busy right now with issues about the house and his search for a new job. I'm looking forward to getting an update.

The highlight of the night was a double Duo video chat with both Katie and Sean at the same time and getting to see all three grandchildren on my phone. It was a lot of fun. We stayed on the phone close to an hour. Henry and Clara are gave me happy birthdays and did their usual silly routines. Andrew was fun trying to get to the phone with his mouth. I really do enjoy watching him moving around and playing with his toys. Becky and I are looking forward to spending time with Sean, Ashely and Andrew over the Christmas weekend which will actually be the first time in over 30 years that we will have not spent Christmas at home with the kids.

I also spent a lot of time this evening thanking people for birthday greetings on FB.

We had a nice birthday dinner of sandwiches from Zio's, chocolate cake and ice cream. We will be going out for dinner on Wednesday evening.

Glass of Beer - Everything Nice Strong Ale

Everything Nice, a limited release strong blonde ale from Ommegang Brewery, NY. A holiday Christmas Belgian style saison ale. Very tasty. A great beer to enjoy on my birthday.

Becky brought home a 4 pack of this and also a 4 pack of Fuller's London Pride. 

Stigmata @ 6

There have been numerous times when I've been traumatized by being raised a catholic. The first time and probably the most intense was in first grade as we were being prepared for the sacrament of communion. Of course as part of that we were also indoctrinated into the whole concept of confession and penance before we could partake of the body and blood of christ. But first we needed to be afraid. Very afraid.

The nuns accomplished this with lots of corporal punishment. We had to learn how to take holy communion and they really didn't want any little six year old playing with the host or spitting it out during the ceremony. 

So they told us a story about an older man in the neighborhood who was making his first communion many years ago as a six year old just like us. When he received the host on that day he wanted to see the host and he let it drop out of his mouth and on to the palm of his hand. The host then burned a stigmata into his hand that was a circle with a cross in the middle just like the host. He got branded by the body of christ and for the rest of his life he had that stigmata scar on the palm of his hand.

The nun then said that if any of us in that class were to touch the host in any way other than to let the priest place it on our tongues then we would get a stigmata too. Now the nuns and priest spent a lot of time telling us about being pure, not sinning and praying all the time. At some point I started to worry that if I didn't pray enough, if I made a sin or I did something jesus didn't like then his body would burn my mouth the next time I got communion. When saying my nightly prayers before going to bed I would always think about getting a stigmata. I would also worry about running into that old man with the burned palms somewhere in the neighborhood.

Many years later long after I stopped being a catholic I was somewhat amused when suddenly it became OK to take the host in your hands and put it in your mouth yourself. What happened to that stigmata? They change the rules? Was it ok now to spit it out too?

Being a catholic didn't last through my teenage years. Eleven years of catholic school saw to that. I also vowed that my children would never attend a catholic school either but for a lot of reasons beyond this stigmata story.

Glass of Beer - Grand Cacao

I'm sitting here at the kitchen table remembering and writing about Aunt Kate who passed away this week at 89.  So I'm having a couple of beers... including this very nice stout.

Grand Cacao, a chocolate stout from Troegs Brewery in Pennsylvania. This was part of a 12 pack of winter beers from Troegs. This is a very delicious decadent stout but not too sweet. Very nice. It's a happy beer to drink on a sad night.

Aunt Kate

Aunt Kate passed away this week on December 2nd. Today they announced her funeral on Thursday December 9th. I feel bad that I will not be able to be there with her family. We can't travel at this time.

She certainly had a lot of issues these past few years after having multiple strokes and suffered from Alzheimer's along with diabetes and being a cancer survivor. She was 89.

Aunt Kate was always one of my favorites from my father's family. She was about eleven years younger than him. Sadly their mother, my grandmother, died shortly after giving birth to her in 1932 due to complications from cancer. She never knew her mother.

I had a long phone talk with her a few years ago when I called her when my granddaughter was born. We talked a lot about when she was living as young person in Germantown. She reminded me again that she was my first babysitter. She also described handing me across the porch railings at the family house at Greene and Logan to the nuns next door. Yes, my father's family lived next door to a convent. 

I was at her wedding when she married Uncle Bill at St. Francis of Assisi our parish church down the street from our house. I was a four year old kid but I remember that day as the first special church event of my life with the extended family all there. All my aunts and uncles were there along with the older folks like Nana and Aunt Nellie. I also clearly remember my sister Betsy being the flower girl at the wedding. Coincidently we would also joke that Betsy would also be a babysitter for Aunt Kate's children. 

When we were kids our family visited with Aunt Kate and her family all the time. We were always going over to the house in Glenside. We also went on vacations together up to the Poconos or down to the Jersey shore.

Another memory of Aunt Kate was the day my father died. I was notified by a Navy chaplain to call my family ASAP.  I called home from the base several times but the phone was busy. Apparently I eventually got through right after the family at home was notified that dad had died from a ruptured aneurysm. All I could hear was people loudly crying until Aunt Kate came on the line and although her brother had just died she calmly talked to me and gave me the information I needed. Within hours I was flying home on emergency leave but I never forgot her voice on the phone that day. I can hear it right now softly in my heart.

Omicron

When the Delta variant of Covid-19 appeared and created such havoc in our society I expected that it wasn't the last variant but I thought the next one would be Epsilon. Well, apparently those CDC or World Health Organization like to be creative with virus names so now we have Omicron.

The new variant has begun spreading around the world and across America where the virus has been politized to the extent that infected right wing anti-vaxxers will be crowding hospitals and morgues in the name of their so called freedom. They will also be spreading the virus everywhere and cases of this variant have been found in twelve states so far. Public health officials are urging caution but warning against panic. 

Apparently there is still much to learn about this new variant of the virus but it is coming at a bad time as we begin the winter season. A lot of people had been trying to get back to normal like going to concerts, shows and large public indoor gatherings. It is also now the holiday season of family parties and dining without access to outdoor patios. 

We had been planning to go out to a show ourselves tonight but have decided to cancel our plans. We just don't want to be out in a crowded space listening to music. I've also decided to not go to beer club next week. I had been considering it but now it seems just not worth the risk especially since we will be visiting Sean, Ashley and Andrew for Christmas. 

Maniac Memories

Recently the band 10,000 Maniacs was asking their fans for memories. They have been celebrating 40 years together as a band. My experience with the band goes back 39 years. I submitted a memory to their website database and a couple of weeks later they published on their FB feed.

My submitted memory was...

“The first time I saw the band was in the upstairs room of Mr. Goodbar on Elmwood Ave in 1982. Mary from Play It Again Sam’s was spinning records there and recommended to me to see this band. First impressions were Joy Division covers and a spinning teenage Natalie. I would see this band many times over the years all over town including in 1983 at the Pastime Lounge. I worked there as a DJ and booking bands, and the band played there several more times over the next few years. I made a few posters for the band playing the Pastime Lounge.”

Yod's Swag

An old friend from the local Buffalo music scene contacted me the other day and offered me some of his CDs. I said sure and he mailed them to me. I got them today.

Yod (not his real name) was in several bands we used to often see in the 1980's around Buffalo. Saw him a few times in the 90's too. His bands also played the Pastime Lounge where I worked. At some point he moved with his family to Long Lake NY in the Adirondacks. He would occasionally get down to Buffalo to play out or visit family and friends. I ran into him a couple of years ago at an event for the first time in a couple of decades. He pulled a CD of his latest music out of his pocket and offered it to me. He called it his swag!

We're friends on FB and he contacted me earlier this week to see if I wanted his latest collection of music. I got the package today that contained four CDs. I'll be giving them a spin. His old band was Dark Marbles.

He plays around in the Long Lake area and sometimes performs at the Adirondack Hotel. It would be nice to see him play there some time.

Random Album Effect - Kiss

I haven't done a random album effect recently but did today and I enjoyed it very much. It also didn't have anything to do with the band Kiss. 

The first album up was Iron and Wine's Kiss Each Other Clean. I've been listening to Sam Beam's albums since the early 00's and have always found them pleasant and interesting. I hadn't heard this one in a long time and it was very satisfying. It was also much more produced than his previous albums. He is a wonderful songwriter.

The music then jumped to Siouxsie and The Banshees and their really good experimental album from 1982 Kiss in the Dreamhouse although there were some attempts at mainstream acceptance. This was their fifth album. It was a nice change from the first album here.

The next album really changed things up. A Kiss in Time was a Patty Griffin 2003 live album but it was very understated and pleasant. I liked it a lot and it sounded great after the Siouxsie album. It was very warm, acoustic and under produced.

Then up came the Cure's Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me from 1987. This was their seventh album and very quintessential Cure and would probably hit their peak with their follow up album to this Disintegration. However, it was great to listen to this album again. This was also something I haven't heard in many years although several songs here including Just Like Heaven and Why Can't I Be You? have found their way on my mixes over the years.

This was a very satisfying Random Album Effect session.

• Iron and Wine - Kiss Each Other Clean, 2011
• Siouxsie and the Banshees - A Kiss in the Dream House, 1982
• Patty Griffin - A Kiss in Time, 2003
• The Cure - Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, 1987