Childhood Memories of Buying a Christmas Tree

This is a revised version of a story that appeared in the Virginia Beach Sun on December 1, 1988.     

      Men measures their progression through time in many ways. As young boys, we cut our neighbors grass and as adolescents, we deliver their newspapers. As adults, we bring them their mail and sell them their cars and as old men we exaggerate how well we accomplished all of these tasks.

      For me, the one sure measure of time and my own journey through it has been the Christmas tree—or more precisely, how I have gone about getting one each year.

      I remember as a child, in Rochester, how my father and I would walk up the street to the City Service gas station where the man would have all his trees leaning on one side of the building. They would be stacked up in a giant heap making it impossible to compare them but nevertheless my father would hold up one after another, and ask my opinion.

     “What do you think of this one?”

  “How do you like this one?”

  “How about this one?”

  “Do you like this one?”

  Until finally he found one that he liked.

  “This one looks pretty good. I think we’ll get it.” My father would then pay the man what I suppose was a couple of bucks and then we would carry it back home. Not even the freezing cold could dampen my excitement.

When is Enough, Enough?

*nec dominam usque canit adipe

**Etiam non obscuram, sed eam attingit

It is estimated that the universe is around 13.8 billion years old and still expanding. It could very well be nearing middle age and at some point, another billion years or so, it and we, could begin our long anticipated death spiral, eventually bringing an end to…I don’t know, a 30-billion-year, bigger-than-a-bread-box experiment in going nowhere .

The point is the universe is not going to be around forever, although never has forever seemed so long. The consensus of every single person living on Earth, backed by every religion trusted by those gentle souls, is that whether a God created the universe with a wave of His hand or did nothing more than jumpstart something that eventually was going to happen anyway, the appearance of man has always been the intended end game.

If everything simply fell into place on its own, man still has every right to be proud but he can’t really accept any credit. Being around when shit happens is no big deal even if we are the best shit in the universe—and we don’t know for sure that we are.

However, if a God is behind this, and I don’t mean in a sinister way; but if He is behind it, a logical question would be, why did it take so long to get to the main act? What was He expecting? Is He happy with what He got?

If we are the straw that stirs the drink, why are we only now entering at last call?

The Ice Hill

     I had just gotten off the phone with my buddy Joe who lives up in the Detroit area. We’ve known each other for almost 60 years but probably don’t talk as often as we should. With the Winter Olympics entering their fifth day of round-the-clock coverage, the two of us were probably bored to the gills and took the opportunity to call.

Talking so infrequently has gotten both of us out of practice in the art of meaningful small talk. We talk about what we’re doing but, the truth is, we don’t do much—at least nothing worth talking about.

The grandkids come up, as does our ailments and the high cost of treating those ailments. Politics surface occasionally but neither of us has a real personal stake. We’ll both survive whatever Congress can throw at us.

Our lives resemble more of a holding pattern and fortunately, we won’t have to hold on forever. Detroit’s terrible professional sports teams continue to haunt Joe just as Virginia Beach’s lack of sports teams irks me but, again, neither of us really care.

There was a time when not having anything to talk about didn’t make any difference. Like those long summer afternoons when it was too hot to play baseball—too hot even to play catch. Neither of us had a problem with lying on the grass and watching the clouds pass overhead.

Now, it’s like the clouds really have passed us by.

“We’re going camping, this weekend,” Joe said, matter-of-factly. “We’re pretty excited about it,” he added, predictably.

Sounds exciting,” I said, as my elbow slipped and my head dropped. Our conversation was fizzling out faster than a 3 a. m. campfire and then Joe provided the spark.

“Remember Camp Cutler?”

Winning at all cost can cost a pretty penny

Donald Trump is the single most unqualified individual to ever come this close to winning the presidency. This is scary, but the scariest reality by far is that some Republicans, while agreeing he is unqualified are nevertheless admitting that they will vote for him.

Why?

Because they cannot possibly, under any circumstances, bring themselves to vote for Hillary Clinton. Hillary is a politician in a year when no one is hated more than politicians.

In fact, she is not hated within the Democratic Party as much as she is hated within the Republican Party who have hated the Clintons even before hating the Clintons was cool. In her favor, she is not hated within the Democratic Party as much as Trump is hated with the Republican Party.

It would seem that the Republican Party has cornered the hate market. I could be wrong. If so, tell me.

Who do they love?

The Republican Party has worked harder than anyone in the past eight years to foster a hatred of government, threatening to shut it down regularly and shutting it down on one occasion.

Then, in the height of arrogance, they have run on a platform that government isn’t working.

Winning is so important to Republicans—and losing, so distasteful—that they are willing to put the country at risk if it means salvaging a win.

To be sure, many Republicans cannot bring themselves to vote for Trump and will actually vote for Hillary because they realize what the stakes are.

Unfortunately, there are far more who while they cannot vote for him, will not vote for her. If this results in Trump winning the election, so be it. That’s the price, they will tell you, for living in a democracy.

Then, there are those who support Trump one hundred percent. They are behind him come hell or high water—and it will come because it always comes when you leave the gates open.

These folks like him because—

He is not politically correct.

He talks like them, says what they want to hear.

He is as angry as they are, even though like him, they don’t have that much to be angry about—upset with, maybe, but angry? Come on.

He is a smart businessman who has made billions.

Apparently, they also like him when they learn he is a businessman who has lost billions but smart enough to channel that loss into avoiding taxes for a couple of decades.

They like him because we’ve become a country that caters too much to the have-nots that he disparages at every opportunity he gets. It’s time, his supporters will tell you, that we start paying attention to them—many of them also have-nots, but have-nots in a good way, the American way.

I don’t blame Trump for his political success. I find much of his business success questionable and possibly abhorrent and don’t understand why more people don’t feel this way, but I never really understood the appeal of The Apprentice, so maybe I’m not the best person to judge.

He’s not the first person with an obnoxiously high opinion of himself.

I do blame those who support him despite never hearing a single proposal that made sense and a lot of stuff that makes no sense.

He wants to increase government spending, lower taxes and balance the budget. This alone should make Republicans want to look around and scream, “Next?”

The words out of his mouth are divisive, insulting, abrasive innuendos, easily disproven lies, and worst of all for a man who wants to be our spokesman to the world—incoherent.

I do not understand how winning could be so important to people that they would be willing to accept a Trump presidency. They have looked at all his negatives and decided he is better than someone who has worked for American citizens all her adult life, served honorably as a United States Senator, created a successful charitable foundation with her husband, served as Secretary of State during a difficult time that offered no easy solutions but plenty of opportunity for partisan criticism. In short, they are choosing a nincompoop over a politician because now, being a nincompoop seems more attractive than being a politician.

If Trump were to win, succeed in shaking the government up and it turns out badly, I think the consolation for many of his supporters would be, well, at least we won the election.

A not-so-famous man once said, “Winning isn’t everything. It is the only thing.” A famous man is credited with saying it but fact-checking, like politicians, are passé this year.

The point is, it wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now.  

Trump supporters had better come to their senses, because the matter rests largely in their hands. The next autopsy might be for the country and not just the Republican Party.

Reflections in the Middle of the Night

My grandfather and I lived four hundred miles apart for the first 17years of my life. However, we saw each other at least once and often more times each and every one of those years.

In 1964, I was beginning my first year of college in the city where my mom grew up and my grandfather still lived. This turned out to be a very good thing because when I arrived at the dorm to check in, I learned I didn’t have a room waiting for me. My grandfather was the first person I called.

Together, we scoured the Lowell Sun for apartments to rent, drove around to check them out, and finally discovered the one that would become my first home away from home.

Pa Toohey relaxing at the camp

That wasn’t our first shared experience. Not by a long shot.

In the late fifties, he was adding a second room to “the camp”—the small cabin located near Cobbetts Pond in Windham, New Hampshire. I was his assistant doing what young assistant’s do—which was try not to make the job any more difficult than it already was. When we were done, we’d go down to the lake where I would swim and he would just relax after a hard day of having me for an assistant.

Still, this wasn’t even our first experience at the camp.

In previous years, he’d taught me the fundamentals of horseshoes—how to hold them, how to throw them and how to determine the winners. On other occasions, he’d shown me where the best blueberries could be found or how to use a rope tied to a tree to keep the hammock swaying back and forth. Best of all was when he’d let me roll his cigarettes in his Top Cigarette Tobacco Roller.

But we went back further than that.

Early on, he’d introduced me to the pigeons—showed me how to hold them, round them up and load them into his car. Together, we’d take them for long rides, release them and then race them home. I still have the picture of the one he let me pick for my own.

A few days ago, I was doing something that caused me to recall an even earlier event, an event I don’t remember but am certain must have happened.

My grandsons, Brayden and his ten-month old brother Ethan were staying with us for a few days. It was four o-clock in the morning and I had gotten up to feed Ethan his nightly bottle.

As we sat in total silence and almost total darkness, our eyes met. Thoughts of events, yet unseen or even imagined became as real as the bottle we were both gazing over. We were both, in our own way, enjoying the moment when suddenly I was caught off guard by this memory of what likely could be the earliest shared experience between my grandfather and me. I couldn’t have seen it coming because I didn’t remember it ever taking place. Yet, there it was unfolding in my mind, just as clear as day, as if it were happening right at that moment.

It was a time, when I was very young—too young to do anything for myself. The best way to describe something you don’t remember happening but know must have happened because of everything else that happened after it, is that it was the start of something big.

The scene unfolds this way. Sometime in late 1946 or early 1947—we were visiting at my grandfather’s big house or he might have come to my little house.

My mom, having bathed and fed me, was putting me to bed.

“I hope he sleeps through the night,” she might have casually said as she passed me around the room for my good-night kisses. “Today has really been a long one.”

“Look,” I imagine my grandfather saying, “We’re all going to hear him when he wakes up but there’s no need for you to get up. I can feed the little stinker if he starts crying.” My grandfather talked a tough game but was a real softie at heart.

“Are you sure?”

“Don’t you think I know what to do?”

“Pa...”

“Okay, it’s settled.”

Of course, at some point, I did wake up and began to wail like there was no tomorrow, which is usually the case when a baby wakes up in the middle of the night. I’m sure everyone did hear me but everyone except my grandfather turned over and went back to sleep. He had the situation under control.

There, in the early morning darkness, he and I stared across the ridge of my bottle into each other’s eyes. Neither one of us spoke because he was a man of few words and I was a baby of no words. He wasn’t a singer so there probably wasn’t a sound to be heard. That didn’t mean something wasn’t going on.

He may have been thinking about all the good times we’d eventually share at the camp or maybe the pigeons. I’m sure hunting for my college apartment didn’t cross his mind. I probably thought, in whatever manner a baby does his thinking, that I was a very lucky boy.

Now baby feedings are a common enough occurrence. Everybody does them. But those that happen at 4 a.m. are different. Maybe the hour causes them to seem more like a dream. Likewise, bonding experiences are nothing new either, but each one is different. This one was certainly getting crowded as I held Ethan in my arms, while imagining my grandfather holding me in his arms.

Everyone was in the room—my grandfather, me as a baby, me as a grandfather, and of course, Ethan, whose eyes were darting back and forth and looked to be telling everyone in the now-crowded room, “This is my bottle, so don’t even think about making a move on it.”

Any way I looked at it, I was the middle link in a five-generation bonding experience. As his brother Brayden has been fond of saying in the past few months, “I didn’t seen that coming.”

Who's in Wall Street's pockets—and does it really matter?

There is a lot of debate going on as to which political party will do more for Wall Street and big business. Trump says Hillary is in bed with the big Wall Street firms. On the other hand, whenever Trump goes to bed, it’s always big money turning off the lights.

I think it is fair to say that both parties do Wall Street’s bidding. They always have and they always will. Politicians bow to the will of Wall Street and big business for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks—because that is where the money is.

And it isn’t just campaign financing—although that is always appreciated. I think it simply comes down to the rich—wealth-with-power-thrown-in and powerful—political-power-with-wealth-thrown-in, taking care of the rich and powerful.

Both parties should stop running away from the obvious. The truth is, while not in every way but certainly in many ways, America is great not solely because of democracy and not solely because of capitalism but rather because in America, democracy and capitalism have become uneasy bedfellows.

Our government has consistently, and unabashedly, allowed itself to be corrupted by money while our economic system has unenthusiastically allowed itself to be governed by regulations—with a clear understanding that they don’t go too far.

So do elections not make a difference? Is neither party different from the other?

Of course, elections make a difference. And yes, the parties are different. Just not to the rich.

Look at elections the way you would look at a boxing match or a concert. You’ve got the main event and the undercard.

Both parties take care of the headliner—the rich, but it’s the undercard where the most interesting fights occur—and Democrats tend to favor the undercards.

Republican trickle-down theory, at its best, was a policy of taking care of the wealthy, first and foremost, on the outside chance that with so much money floating around, some of it was bound to wind up in the pockets of the middle class—if they lived long enough and the poorer class—when hell froze over.

At its worse, it was a cruel joke.

Republicans believe in their souls that taking care of the wealthy is the only way to take care of the masses. Make a man rich, they believe, and he will take care of the rest. That’s what the wealthy do—except that history tells us they don’t. Never have and never will.

But Democrats have and will continue to.

Their history of protecting workers and defending unions, have resulted in shorter work weeks, higher hourly wages, pensions, healthcare, and safer working conditions. They have defended minorities—racial, religious, and otherwise—the majority of whom have always resided on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.

On the other hand, Republicans gave us the Gilded Age plagued by the recessions of 1873, 1893, 1907; the roaring twenties followed by the Great Depression; and the Bush tax cuts and deregulations that led to the Great Recession of 2008.

Workers will receive minor tax cuts from Republicans but the nation will go broke from the massive tax cuts given billionaires and millionaires.

Republicans are convinced that raising the minimum wage will kill jobs by destroying companies. They believe allowing CEOs to become billionaires is the way to grow companies. The problem is that even companies that do badly have well-paid CEOs and even companies that do great have low paid workers. Why don’t Republicans and CEOs just admit that they don’t really care for workers and would be happier employing robots? Sure, they would have maintenance expenses but gone would be health insurance, pensions, and break rooms.

Health insurance won’t expand under Republicans who’ve taken 60 votes to kill Obamacare and not released one plan to replace it. It’s not because they’ve been busy doing other things.

Republicans at the state level have shown us what they think of voting rights.

All those Republican recessions and depressions mentioned earlier cost millions of jobs—over 15-million in the Great Depression and another nine million in the 2008 recession. Democrats receive no credit for recouping those jobs. Halting the skid and turning the corner should count for something.

People might not like hearing these facts but people have to get over liking only what they want to hear.

The rich will always win. There is virtually no way for them to lose. It reminds me of an old joke, so old it was politically correct to tell it back then.

Put a fat lady, a bulldog, and a can of dog food in one room.  In another room, put a fat lady and a bulldog.  In the room with the fat lady, bulldog, and dog food, the lady ate the dog food.  In the room with just the fat lady and the bulldog, the fat lady ate the bulldog.

CONCLUSION: Fat ladies will always make the best of a situation. 

Rich people are the fat lady.

Today’s poor and middle class don’t have the luxury of winning no matter who is in office. They have to look for small wins anywhere they can find them. They can’t be sucked into thinking things are going to be great. They should be happy with things being good because when you already live in the greatest nation, good ain’t that bad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sizing up the Trump kids as they size up their dad

The Trump kids, bless their hearts, have been thrust into a horribly awkward position. The success of the GOP in this year’s presidential election is resting clearly on their shoulders. They have the unenviable task of making their dad look less scary.

They must portray Hillary as a murdering thug deserving to be locked up, but must do so with smiles on their faces instead of eyeballs bursting and veins popping.

They must articulate a clear, concise message in a comforting tone to offset the rants and rages of their dad who usually appears to be “wound tighter than a bigot at a Black Lives Matter barbecue.” The must look poised as an antidote to their dad’s poison.

Most people seem to agree that the kids are pulling it off. They are polite, well-dressed and have excellent posture. They smile. They are not panting or foaming at the mouth. They don’t appear to be sucking up any more air than anyone else in the room and their arms aren’t flailing away at imaginary demons.

They don’t punctuate each statement, no matter how far-fetched, with a “believe me,” which does start to sound a little disingenuous after a while—if not a little far-fetched. In short, they are believable without having to beg for it. They don’t make that little teensy tiny A-ok sign that dad does when he wants to appear very exacting and in-the-know—unusual for someone who is anything but on the mark and almost never in the know.

But something—and I’m speaking for myself now and only because Cruz authorized me to—something just doesn’t seem right. Questions are surfacing in my head, which not only Fox News but also the right-wing liberal press have failed to ask.

Are they as good as they appear to be? Let’s face it. Trump does have some of the best marketing people billions can buy.

Even if they are as good as they seem, and it does seem like a big if, what does it have to do with his qualifications to be president and how much of it is really his doing?

After all, he has properties around the world and his own jet to get his there. I’m guessing he was away from home a lot during his kid’s formative years. And when I say a lot, I mean a whole lot not a little a lot (picture a teeny tiny A-ok sign here). Even when he was at home, which home was it?

Ivanka told us that there is no one who loves his family more, but two messy, very public divorces conducted in large part on the pages of New York City tabloids call for either a new definition of love or a more inclusive definition of family.

I’ve played golf and know that it can take a good chunk out of a Sunday morning. But if you own courses around the world and play with kings and presidents and movie stars and business leaders, and politicians, you probably aren’t finishing the round with a burger and a beer in a place called the “The 19^th Hole” and returning home for a sit-down dinner.

The kids all hold positions of authority within their father’s company. They tell us nothing was handed to them on a silver platter. No news there. Trump doesn’t do silver. Still, they all insist they worked hard for what they got.

Again, they could be right. Or, they could be delusional. I had a supervisor when I worked for the Post Office whose father was the Postmaster. He swore he neither asked for nor got any favors. What he did get when his father retired, was a demotion back to the carrier ranks. I think that says more about the perks of working for your father than the tale the kids are telling.

It’s been said that Barron Trump—and isn’t that a positively splendid name for a billionaire’s son—has his own floor in Trump Tower. He is too young to have addressed the convention but I can only imagine the kind words he would have had for the dad that’s given him more real estate than most New Yorker’s will ever have.

I mean them no disrespect. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to take away from them standing up and telling the nation how great their dad is. They seem well-adjusted but appearances aren’t everything, which is something I’m sure their father never told them. 

What I do know, and you can take this to the bank, is that if he were my dad, even a flawed dad, I would sure as hell know the value of faking it, if I knew what was good for me—and I think all the Trump kids know what is good for them.