THIS IS ANOTHER STORY I'VE TOLD BEFORE but not nearly enough. It's about my father, Harry Benjamin DeLeon, and about the time he went to war. Which was 1942 when he was drafted at the age of 33 years old, married with child, and one on the way. And away he went. I'm sure he had feelings about all that, but he never spoke them. Not to me. Probably not to anyone. When he came back after three years, he was a different person, I have been told. I wasn't born yet. The father I grew up with never spoke of World War II, not the stuff a son wanted to hear anyway. Did you kill anybody? Were you scared? What was the scaredest you ever were?

My dad never told. All through Vietnam, he never told, even after I said horrible things about the United States military in anger. My father served without judging, except in the darkness he could not share. Every story my father told about World War II ended with a punchline that wasn't funny. It was supposed to be funny, but it was just bewildering. The story about an R & R in India was supposed to be funny because it ended with monkeys throwing rocks at the tin roof of the quansot hut they slept in "just to keep us awake." But the monkeys were a metaphor my father could not descibe. On his way to rest and relaxation a truckload of American boys went off a cliff, and men like my father had to rappel down the mountainside to recover their bodies. And the monkeys threw rocks just to keep them awake.

Until years after the day he died, I never knew that my father took part in the invasion of Okinawa in August 1945. He was 36 years old at the time. When the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, my father was on a ship off the coast of Japan awaiting the order to invade. And all the time in the living years if we ever argued about the morality of using the atomic bomb, my father never called me dumb or lucky. Dad was never one of those "You'd all be speaking Japanese if it weren't for me" guys. But he was on a ship off the coast of Japan when we dropped the big one. Which makes me awed and grateful in a way only you can imagine. I can imagine not saying these words, or any words, or ever existing for that matter. But imagine if you were in the middle of that story from a son who never lived because his father died before he was born.

What are you staring at?

Continue reading "In The Name Of The Father" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 03:20 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

THAT'S WHAT I DO. Blame me, praise me, pity me, ignore me. This is what I see. This is what I find interesting. The patterns. The landscape. The game. This is the kickoff of a rugby match between an unseen team in black versus the white and orange of Philadelphia Whitemarsh Rugby Club. The unseen black team is the Chicago Lions. Are? the Chicago Lions. Our? the Chicago Lions. Whaddo I care? Fuckers beat us by three that day,that's all I know.

Continue reading "I take Pictures like this" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 03:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

MY APOLOGIES for allowing the Daily DeLeon to seem more like a weekly posting of late. I'd explain that I've been busy, which is true, but the real reason I haven't been keeping up with my cyber-duties is that I've lost my camera. I know, "Boo-freaking-hoo!" but it has had a direct impact on my photo taking ability, which frequently drives the content here at Double D.

Today I am buying a camera because I have finally convinced myself that it's gone for good -- "Oh why? Oh, why? I'd pay the devil to replace her. She go-o-o-o-one!" -- and not just misplaced. To that end I offer this photo from last May of Little John posing in front of Sam's Cafe in Grays Ferry at 30th and Wharton Sts.. There's grafitti on the gray wall behind Little John that says, "Grays Ferry don't like drug."

A coincidence?

Continue reading "Not Just Another Pretty Face" »

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THE NEWS THAT FIVE SUSPECTED ISLAMIC TERRORISTS plotting a murderous attack on Fort Dix all lived (or had once lived) in Cherry Hill, N.J., was almost comical in a scary, unfunny way. It was like finding out that Huey and Riley Freeman the angry suburban black nationalists pre-teens from Timid Deer Lane from Boondocks had actually planned to assassinate their middle school principal. We live in a world where the usual suspects kill each other at an alarming rate in the city of Philadelphia, where a milkman can murder innocents in an Amish schoolhouse, where a deranged Korean immigrant can mow down dozens of students and teachers on a mountainside college campus in Virginia. So why wouldn't we believe that a Philadelphia cab driver and a suburban pizza deliveryman would join forces with other illegal immigrants to murder members of the armed forces of the country they sought out to find freedom and a new way of life?

Because to most of us it seems preposterous, that's why. We can't wrap our minds around it. It's too mundane, too bizarre, too hideous to contemplate. You can't hail a cab in Philadelphia without being asked your destination by a driver speaking English with an accent from a country thousands of miles away. The same with home delivery fast food. The news that one of the the alleged terrorist plotters from Cherry Hill delivered for a pizza parlor called Mario's invited images of a Donkey Kong-type video game with the massively bearded and mustacioed Mario Brother Jihadists leaping over barrels and other obstacles rolled down at them by Uncle Sam.

But it isn't a game is it? It's as real as the computer screen you're reading. Nine-eleven really happened. Nickle Mines schoolhouse really happened. Virginia Tech really happened. The slaughter in North and West Philadelphia really happens. And yet life goes on somehow. There is happiness and pride and love and expectations we all feel, even though we know that none of us gets out of this world alive. There may be a heaven or a paradise waiting at the end of that, but I don't know if that gives us the courage to open our eyes in the morning. Of all the lessons America has learned from Sept. 11, 2001, the one most real to me, the one I can visualize more clearly than all the images we have seen a thousand times, is the indivisible lesson we learned from Flight 93. Average Americans siezing the moment, fighting until the end. Together.

Continue reading "Why We'll Win" »

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NOW i GET IT!! Now I get it!! The Geico Cavemen are supposed to be retarded people. Well, Duh-uh. But really, it's taken me all this time to realize that. I was thinking it was some kind of ethnic-racial code among hip advertising types, "Kivil my mizzle." But who's the target?

I didn't get it until I saw the new Snickers canday bar commercial featuring a soccer mom at her son's soccer game sitting in a lawn chair and having a shock-oh-lot orgasm over a new Snickers bar with a dark chocolate coating. "Oh, dark choclate!" Mom murmurs. And the two caveman sons in soccer suits, let's just call them special soccer kids, look at her in confusion. "You always told us it's what's inside that counts," says one. Mom says, "Ohhh, nooo." And the two little retarded caveman special soccer kids begin to cry. With a big, "Ah-hoo" sob.

This is an actual TV commercial. And it's hilarious. And I think you'll be hearing about it in the near future because the jig is up with the cavemen. And by "jig" I didn't mean. . . Oh, shut up.

Continue reading "Get a Load of the Retard" »

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LET'S GO OVER the punch list of candidates for mayor these days before the primary election.

Tom Knox: rich white guy with dead smile who was born a poor black child growing up hungry in the projects, mother cried, brother died, said in the last debate that he'll kick Bob Brady's fat Irish butt. Check.

Bob Brady: Mr. Machine, Democratic party boss, congressman, healer of disputes, union guy, card-carrying carpenter, and Irish butt aside, his head is the size of an over-ripe melon. Check.

Dwight Evans: no slouch in the melon department, his huge bald noggin has its own gravitational pull, passionate, patient, effective legislator, visionary,"most qualified," the Fresh Prince of Belfield, Stenton and Ogontz Aves. Check.

Chaka Fattah: early front runner in need of a jockey with a whip down the stretch, airport salesman, poverty crusader, race baiter, 10-NBC anchormate, congressman who looks entirely too satisfied with his current day job, and what is up with that smug creepy half smile around the eyes? Check.

And finally, Michael Nutter: Olivia's dad, Mayor Street nemisis, smoke-free, voice like Ernie's roommate Bert, living proof that goatees aren't for everyone, principled, stubborn and prepared, nerd turned rock star in final days of the campaign. Check.

Does that about cover it? Sure there are "issues" in this campaign, but it will be the personalities of the candidates, their character, that voters will judge tomorrow. Ultimately it will be an issue of trust. "Do I trust this guy to lead my city?"

Believe me, we've had worse choices. Remember that 1987 "evil of two lessers" post-MOVE confrontation election where voters were forced to chose between reelecting Wilson Goode or reelecting Frank Rizzo. The Bomber versus the Bambino. I still get the heeby-jeebies thinking of it.

Last Thursday morning I spoke to five classes of seventh and eighth graders at Southwark Elementary School in South Philadelphia, where the majority of students are either black or immigrants from Southeast Asia..I asked how many of them heard gunfire more than twice a week in their neighborhoods. The majority raised their hands in each class.

"What can the new mayor do about that?" I asked, and they looked at me like they had never heard such a ridiculous question. Just the afternoon before the school had been locked down for an hour because of a shooting incident on the street outside. Many of these kids parents fled the killing fields of Cambodia to seek the American dream. Mr. Next Mayor, you owe these kids an answer.

Continue reading "Mr. Next Mayor, What Can You Do?" »

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I was arguing politics not long ago with a guy who thinks a lot like me. It started as a discussion about politics but at some point he was shouting and I was shouting back. What we were arguing about was the next mayor of Philadelphia, who that person should be and why. He's Irish, this fellow I'm mixing it up with. I hadn't even decided who "my guy" for mayor was, a discovery I made after he announced "his guy." Then and there I found out for the first time what I was really thinking by listening to the words that came out of my own mouth.. Which is why honest political arguments are not only healthy but crucial. We should be able to explain, if only to ourselves, the reasons we chose to cast our vote for one or any candidate for mayor of Philadelphia. For those of us who live in the city, the only vote bigger is for President of the United States. That is, if you believe that the mayor matters, or that the president matters, or that your two cents add up to one vote.

The number of people who don't care, don't believe, don't hope, don't vote is appalling, really. I know some very smart, very decent and very disillusioned middle class taxpaying adults who haven't voted since Vietnam because "voting only encourages them." Them being politicians, a subspecies so dependably despicable that politicians spend millions every election claiming not to be one. Everyone has a right not to vote. No one can force you to care.

. Thing is, my opponant and I didn't disagree on anything that mattered in terms of what each of us desires from the next mayor. In a brilliant feint, my Hibernian antagonist pulled a rope-a-dope. Instead of attacking he got all limp and sincere, leaning toward me and asking, "What can he do?" meaning the next mayor, or any mayor, perhaps. "What can he do?" about the obscene murder rate among young black males. The homicide statistics by age, race and gender in Philadelphia are as appalling as the hunched shoulders response by everyone from City Hall to the rowhouse kitchen table. Most homicides in the city are a rigged lottery, a two-for-one crime: One gets taken out, one gets taken away. If such a devastating racial imbalance was about jobs, or housing or educational opportunities instead of bloody murder, maybe more people would be upset. All I know is that if 10 white people were murdered over the weekend, or in a single week, this city would be going nuts. Why? Because it would be unacceptable. Because we would all demand that something be done. By comparison as a city, both black and white, we've lived silently with the awful truth of this self-selected genocide for decades. "What can he do?" the Irish man asked quietly. And I could only nod sadly.

Continue reading "A City Worth the Arguement" »

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OBVIOUSLY I SURVIVED this road warrior clash at the intersection of OhMyGosh and AreYouKiddingMe. But sometimes a picuture can tell a thousand words about what never happened. When I took this shot on the entrance to the southbound Schuylkill Expressway at 34th St. in Grays Ferry, I was looking at the big grinning grill of the truck coming up on my left. I didn't even see the impending action movie collision with the SEPTA bus that never happened.

Continue reading "Why Do I Feel Like Corzine?" »

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THAT SOUND YOU HEAR is the gloves coming off the candidates for mayor of Philadelphia. As the gloves hit the floor the sound they made was "Fake. Fake. Fake." I first heard it Saturday evening during a TV commercial attacking the frontrunner in the Democratic primary, which ended with the words, "Tom Knox: Fake, Fake, Fake." Welcome to bareknuckle politics, Philadelphia style. One thing I can guarantee is that those sounds will grow louder and more frequent during the next 16 days leading to the May 15 election. The airwaves will be filled with the pitterpatter of gloves, blackjacks, anvils and kitchen sinks being thrown by the candidates or their proxy non-profit "Truth" sqads.

The fake, fake, fake ad (all you need is K.C and the Sunshine Band as background music and you could dance to it) is the handiwork of a mysterious and recently formed political interest group called Working People for Truth, the very name of which sounds like a lie. Working People for Truth is a local version of an "independent" political group like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which sank John Kerry's candidacy for president. Such groups are called 527's, presumably because that is the number in the IRS tax code that applies to them, however in truth they're called 527's because the number 666 was already taken.

With just over two weeks to go in what had been an extraordinarily gentlemanly election campaign by Philadelphia standards, the fake, fake, fake ad (you got the beat -- just substitute "fake your duty" for "shake your booty" ) signals the replacement of Mr. Nice Guy as campaign manager by a guy named Bruno who won't give his last name. Until now the harshest words spoken by any of the candidates' campaigns toward an individual have been directed toward Mayor Street by Michael Nutter, who's campaign was languishing near the bottom of the pack until he unleashed his secret weapon -- his adorable daughter -- on the airwaves. Those "my dad" ads transformed Nutter's public persona from that of a back bench malcontent with a voice like Bert from Sesame Street into Cliff Huxtable, seemingly overnight. While the long knives were sharpening to carve up Knox, Nutter has emerged down the stretch like Smarty Jones at the Preakness. Unless yesterday's rousing endorsement for mayor by The Inquirer jinxes him, Nutter should now be seen as the frontrunner. In which case you can expect to see attack ads from a newly formed 527 called Barrom Smokers for Truth. Cough, cough, cough.

Continue reading "The First Casualty in Any Election" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 05:45 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)