August 27, 2007
August 26, 2007
The rocks we carry
THIS IS A STORY, and perhaps a lesson in life, I heard from an Amish man. Technically I guess he was a Mennonite, or whatever you'd call someone who drives a truck for a living who once rode to worship in a horse-drawn buggy.
When he was a boy, he and his friends did something bad, a prank that had bothered him his whole life, or at least from the moment he had stopped laughing. As pranks go, this one was gentle. Nobody got hurt, except the pranksters. In fact, they were hurt only by their guilty consciences. I may get some of the words wrong, but let me tell it as I remember it.
When he was growing up in Berks County there were weekly services held in individual homes of the small Amish community. Families gathered in a neighbor's house to pray, and after a while the children were allowed outside to play while their parents stayed inside. Bored teenagers are the same, with or without electricity, and so this Amish boy and his buddies decided to pull a practical joke on the recently arrived, and to their minds, obnoxious new minister by filling his carriage with rocks from a pile of stones recently cleared from an adjoining farm field.
There must have been a ton of them.
The giggling boys waited behind some trees until the meeting ended to see how the minister would react. Instead of being upset or seeking an explanation, the young minister simply unloaded the rocks one by one and returned them to the pile. The boys watched for half an hour until he hitched his horse and rode off. The minister never spoke of it. Turns out, he was a pretty good guy.
Years later the boys, now grown men, were filled with regret and felt the need to apologize to the young minister, now middle aged. As a group they went to his house and confessed their trechery and asked his forgiveness. He forgave them, of course, but he seemed baffled by their heartfelt sorrow over something that happened 20 years earlier. He remembered the incident, but he had never dwelled on it.
Finally, he felt sorry for them. "You mean you've been carrying those rocks around all these years?" he said. "I put them down that same night."
August 25, 2007
Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't
I USED TO COACH TEMPLE UNIVERSITY'S rugby club during the late 1980's and early 1990's. And I heard from one of my former players a few weeks ago following a reunion game between Temple Rugby alumni and the current squad, a match won by the old boys. His name is Joe Ruszkowski and he wrote from Honolulu, Hawaii, where he lives, works and surfs.
Continue reading "Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't" »
Temple
Temple
August 20, 2007
Hell, yes, he's heavy. He's my brother.
When my father died in 1983, my brother Bill was a pall bearer along with my son Danny, who was 12, and who turned to my big brother and said, "Pop Pop's heavy." My brother and I shared a look with each other. If he only knew, we thought. Pop Pop was heavy, all right. He ain't heavy is what brothers say about each other.
My big brother Bill died on a Monday morning one year ago tomorrow. My little brother Doug died 35 years ago this Wednesday. I remember I kept saying, "No. no. no." to the people bringing the news my brother was dead, along with his girlfriend Susie, and everyone else aboard the sight-seeing plane that crashed into a mountain in Venezula. My brother Bill died in his bedroom in Beach Haven, where he collapsed after showering. Both of them were there one minute and gone the next.
Both times I raged, raged, against the dying of the light.
I learned so much about what was important from the death of my brother Doug. And wouldn't you know everything I wanted to say to Doug I never told my brother Bill. After more than 30 years to think about it.
If there is anything I know about brothers, after being one all my life, is that brothers are nitwits. Magnificent, loyal, heroic, but nitwits. They never think to tell each other the unspoken things that must be said, because, who will if they won't?
Pride has probably destroyed more brotherships than anger or envy or fatigue. You have no idea of how prideful a brother can be when in mortal combat for his birth right, his self respect, with one of his own. How unforgiving. Every punch, real, verbal or metaphorical packs a wallop, as if a brother reached down into China to grab hold of that righteous anger and then swung it with all his might.
I guess what I'm saying is, forgive your brother, whoever he or she is. Lose the pride, pick up the phone, be the one who knocks, be the bigger man. You may find a bigger man at the other end if you give him the opportunity. If not, so what? You gave it your best shot.. And you'll never regret that. If you get along great with your brothers, next time you see one, give him a big hug and kiss him square on the lips. And if he objects, tell him Clark says he's a big fruit.
Continue reading "Hell, yes, he's heavy. He's my brother." »
August 16, 2007
I wish they all could be Philadelphia girls
DID YOU EVER NOTICE the "Oooo waah, Oooo waah. . ." background harmonies the Beach Boys sing in California Girls when they sing the lyric, "I dig a French bikini on an Hawaiian island girl, by a palm tree in the sand."? I can almost see the hand movements of a Polynesian dance with each "Oooo waah. . ." It's one of those almost unnoticed visceral textures that Brain Wilson wove into Phil Specter "wall of sound" harmonies.
I was feeling in full "Oooo waah" mode when I saw this woman wearing a white skirt over her bikini bottom on the beach in San Diego just below where we were staying near Sunset Cliffs. It was all very chaste, but very appreciative, admiring a beautiful young woman with her family (I think she was a mom) who made a simple white skirt seem almost otherworldly.
As my son, Danny, said to me one morning as we walked along the bikini-clad pedestrianistas walking back on our way to buy a breakfast burrito on Newport Ave. in Ocean Beach, "It's like walking through a nudist colony. You're supposed to notice they're not wearing clothes, but your not supposed to stare."
Unfortunately, I lost most of my good photos from our California visit when I lost my camera after a visit to the sets used for HBO's John From Cincinnati at Imperial Beach, the last city in the United States on the Pacific coast before the Mexican border.
How did I lose my camera? Some things I know some things I don't. Or as John now says, "I don't know, Butchy, instead." Either way, that Snug Harbor Motel looks even scruffier in person than it does on TV. We even saw, what looked to be squatters, staying in one of the rooms. We saw the empty swimming pool and the plywood shuffleboard prop with the wrong numbers. I even appropriated (stole) a souvenir, a grubby styrofoam life preserver ring. And within the hour my camera had disappeared.
Karma calling?
As I look back from Philadelphia on our family trip to San Diego I think of the "Oooo waah" harmonies and the last lines of California Girls. "Well, I've been all round this great big world and I've seen all kinds of girls. Yeah, but I couldn't wait to get back in the States, back to the cutest girls in the world." Bah-Dum! I wish they all could be. . .
Continue reading "I wish they all could be Philadelphia girls" »
August 12, 2007
So much for Vin Diesel
THE MOST IMPORTANT PART ABOUT SHAVING YOUR HEAD -- or having your head shaved, for that matter -- is that you don't have a big ball of fat hanging from the back where your head joins your neck. This is information that has been passed on to me since I had my head shaved last week. Shaved it myself, actually, after having it buzz cut. The barber who buzzed me told me she thought I had a good head for shaving, to which my wife responded curtly, "So what do you think she tells everyone else?"
I never even thought of that. Why would a female hair cutter in a combination tatoo parlor/mohawk barber shop off Newport Ave. in Ocean Beach, Cali., volunteer that I had a great head for shaving if it weren't true? Ocean Beach is a post-hippie biker-friendly neighborhood in the city of San Diego -- think of South Street by the Pacific instead of the Delaware. In fact the O.B. hair cuttery has the same name as the one I infrequent on South Street, The Chop Shop.
My buzz cutter never used the words gnarly, naggly, sloped, misshapen or lumpy. She did mention bumps, which she said my head didn't have, which I took as a good thing. She never mentioned a thick fat neck, which creases like a backwards smile everytime you lift your shaved or naturally bald fat neck head.
I don't have that either. But I can't stop looking for them now that I've been told. .
I was standing in line at the 30th Street Post Office Saturday afternoon when I saw a three-creaser from behind. [ Dude! Wear a hat! If you could make that face in a mirror, you'd never make it again.] I was wearing a Dirty Franks baseball cap at the time. I had just had my comeuppance.
On Baltimore Avenue in West Philadelphia I walked into a store where I was well known and doffed my cap to a group of ladies with a hearty, "So whadaya think?!" I did a left to right, hot-CHA-cha-cha, Jimmy Durante profile. This apalled-looking lady to my left stared at my head. A lady to my right thought something in Spanish, which she did not speak aloud at first. Soon I translated both reactions. "Cabeza blanca!" Which is to say a well-tanned California face does not work with a pale white Philadelphia scalp that hasn't seen direct sunlight since infancy.
There I was thinking my newly bald head made me look like Vin Diesel and I return home to discover I more closely resemble Michael Smerconish.
August 11, 2007
So Long San Diego, Wish You Wuz Here
THE CONSENSUS AMONG THE DELEONS is that this farewell sunset photo from our vacation in San Diego to visit my sister Denise, her husband, Stu, and their fabulous daughters Whitney and Kassidi, is that this should be called "Pepsi Sunset." Either that or "Ultimate Product Placement."
I won't tell you where we stayed (Sunset Cliffs) or how much it cost (free) or how that happened (connections) but I will say it was pretty much perfect. Having said that, I wish to apologize to any San Diegans who took offense to my last column in which I suggested that their wonderful city "has not suffered enough."
I was speaking in the "baseball" sense, or course, but I also meant in the "city prestige" sense. The only people who knock San Diego live in San Diego. Sound familiar? However, San Diego doesn't draw the reflexive "Ewww" that some people who have never been to Philadelphia, or have been once, seem willing to share with strangers.
I used to be defensive about Philadelphia. ( If you think THIS is defensive, you shoulda seen me then.) It's been a long time since I worried about Philadelphia's image. Philadelphia can take care of itself. How I feel about Philadelphia, on the other hand, can be wounded. On the airplane back from San Diego most of the people got off in Chicago and when the flight attendent mentioned that the plane would continue on to Philadelphia some guy in the seat in front of me stood up and made a crack about being glad to get off the aircraft.
No, it wasn't Wilson Goode.
It was just a guy making a bad joke to two buddies. But it made me feel bad. And that made me feel foolish to feel bad. And that made me think of the letter I got from a reader who thought I was picking on San Diego.
For the record, I love San Diego. I love Ocean Beach, which is the South Street neighborhood of San Diego, except their Pacific Ocean is our Delaware River. I love that the barber shop where I got my head shaved was called "The Chop Shop" just like the one on South Street near Fifth. In fact, the owner (I think) of the O.B. Chop Shop said he'd been to to the Chop Shop on South Street, and then declared, without an itch of East Coast irony, "I love South Street. . . and Manhattan."
Did I say shaved? Yeah, more on that later.
August 06, 2007
Oh, goody! Another cool thing in San Diego
I AM WRITING THIS FROM SAN DIEGO, where it is always sunny, rather than Philadelphia, where it is always sunny only in situation comedies. It is the day after Barry Bonds hit his record tying 755th home run and the caption on the front page of the Union-Tribune actually begins like this,"San Diego became part of baseall lore last night. . ."
It's hard to imagine a newspaper in Philadelphia -- let alone Pittsburgh, New York, Boston, Chicago or St. Louis -- feeling the need to trumpet the hometown's claim of being a legitimate "part of baseball lore." Especially a steroid-laced part of baseball lore. But that hip hip hooray bit of needless boosterism tells you a lot about how San Diego sees itself as a major league city.
Clearly this is a city that has not suffered enough.
A bad day in San Diego is like that TV commercial for Florida where the people on the beach moan when the sun goes behind a cloud for a few seconds. "It was so much nicer yesterday." In fact, the weather in San Diego is not perfect all the time. Sometimes it's like Pamela Anderson on a bad hair day. You'd have to be Pamela Anderson to notice it.
If 75 degrees and sparkly is your idea of a perfect summer day in August, then San Diego won't disappoint. It's the kind of weather that makes you wish you could grab a city by the T-shirt and slap it around a little bit just to remind it that not all cities have weather like this.
In some cities it gets hot followed by humid followed by hotter during August. In some cities you have to change your shirt at 8 a.m. because its drenched through with sweat before you've even walked outside. Some cities have situation comedy weather.
San Diego, the next great American city on a pace to surpass Philadelphia in population, is struggling with the same increase in murders as we are. Sort of. In a cover story in the San Diego Weekly Reader, the City Paper/Philly Weekly equivalent, headlined "Tales from the Homicide Beat" the writer points out San Diego's alarming spike in homicides, which have zoomed from 53 by the same time last year to 66 as of June 30.
I almost did a spit take when I read that. Clearly, uniformly gorgeous weather does not incite murderous passions on an East Coast level where 66 homicides by mid-summer would be an occasion for "The Philadelphia Miracle" headlines.
Continue reading "Oh, goody! Another cool thing in San Diego" »
SITE SPONSOR
Search
Categories
Recent Posts
- Bill, You are a naughty, naughty boy
- The rocks we carry
- Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't
- Temple
- Hell, yes, he's heavy. He's my brother.
- I wish they all could be Philadelphia girls
- So much for Vin Diesel
- So Long San Diego, Wish You Wuz Here
- Oh, goody! Another cool thing in San Diego
