Poem: Old Days and other musings

                                              Old Days

                                        Old days gone

                                        no more penny candy

                                        and ten cent comic books

                                        baseball all summer long

                                        and barbecued lawns

                                        and I hear these days no one waves

                                        to the friendly engineer

                                        he left on the midnight train

                                        and the caboose carried with it

                                        old days

Nostalgia is a funny thing. It plays tricks on you. What it does is takes all your bad grades in your life experiences and expunges them. The above poem is like that in a way. But it's really a treatise on youth. Even people born in the depression (my father and late mother were) look on their childhoods with good memories. At the time it was written and even today I consider it my best. My definition of a good poem is that it says the most in the least amount of words. This poem won an honorable mention in a contest for Best Student Poetry In New Jersey, 1987. This book is published somewhere, but I have yet to see it. I find giving prizes for poetry a little outrageous. It's like saying Frost was better than Wallace Stevens. Or that Robert Lowell was better than Anne Sexton. It's a matter of taste. Isn't it?

But I digress. This poem evoked memories from people of my generation. One of my ex girlfriends(they're all ex girlfriends now) gave it to her sister to read and she wept. Words are more powerful than you think.

Mother's Day

As this blog has already stated previously, my Mom has gone to the great hereafter but she will always live on in memory. I was the last of three kids. I remember some great things about us. Before I went to Kindergarten we used to hang out quite a bit. The diner on Smith Street was one of the haunts. But the first day of Kindergarten, I saw all these kids crying for their mothers when they were dropping them off, but not me. I think my mother was proud of that. My Mom loved music boxes and I bought her a whole slew of them over the years. My mother used to like to hear me sing to her. A favorite was Chantilly Lace by The Big Bopper. I sang How Great Thou Art at my parents' 40th Anniversary. Hold it. This is supposed to be about her and not me. Sorry. My mother used to take us to the library and this fueled my life long love affair with books. And this may have been the reason two of the siblings majored in English in college. My mother was quiet.
She had the prettiest blue eyes known to man. I didn't inherit those, although my sister did and hers are quite stunning also. My mom was a generous person. She was also an emotional person and would cry watching tv shows etc. I inherited that part of her. At my sister's wedding my mom did not cry but I did. As a matter of fact I couldn't read the famous love chapter found in First Corinthians because I got up there and starting bawling. My mom loved birds and especially cardinals. She had a great Soprano voice even though she didn't sing really loud and along with my father encouraged me to sing. Bottom line, my mother was an encourager and a compassionate person. She always believed in me even when I didn't really believe in myself which was and is most of the time. My Mom had the most beautiful penmanship I ever saw which makes up for the lousy penmanship I continue to have. She adored my father and their marriage was so strong and and example of...in sickness and health 'til death do us part. She left me in February of 2009 in the hospital where she worked for 26 years of her life and where she exhibited the kindness and compassion she modeled at home. I miss her but I know I'll see her again. Happy Mother's Day Mom. I know you're in good hands with God.

Love,

Greg

The Kissing Waitress

My Dad and I go out and eat dinner just about every day especially during the week and we go to one of the local "theme" steakhouses. Now gee, we are regulars so we get the hello from just about everybody who's waited on us. There is one waitress there who is so cordial, we get a kiss from her. I guess this past Friday must have been "share with the customers" day. She came over and talked about how she had to break up with her boyfriend because he was cheating and was a drug abuser. She was obviously rattled and distraught. Anyway, I found myself on the "other" end of the relationship thing, trying to convince her that she'd be alright. Walking away after taking our order she muttered, "love stinks." I probably would have quoted Bob Dylan and said "love is just a four letter word." During this confab I also heard her divulge her real age and her plans of moving in with this guy. It's incredible what people will tell you if you just sit there and look attentive.
Now another waitress, who I believe only waited on us once, came over to say hello and tell us her birthday was coming up and told us it would be her 20th. It's funny. I don't know how much of this stuff my father remembers because his short term memory is not that good but he does remember "The Kissing Waitress". Kind of reminds me of the "kissing bandit" on The Flintstones. I have a longtime friend, and I was talking to his now longtime girlfriend and he said to her, "watch it he'll draw it out of you". But as far as doing that at a restaurant, all I really want from the waitress is to watch out for my refill, and if she's my type, aBIG KISS.