The Story of Therapy Dog Tails 558
Where Everyone Gets a Dose of Puppy Love
BACKGROUND 243: JLHS Part Two 16
Sun., Oct. 7, 2007
Falling behind once again, huh, friend. Well, it’s five-thirty on a Sunday morning of a long weekend and here I am so maybe I’ll get somewhere this morning. It’s good that Luz is now sleeping in the studio because I haven’t even hooked the old computer back up again in the bedroom. It’s obsolete now and pointless even though the printer in there is still working fine. But everything is out here now and with Luz moved out of the living room, I can stand here and listen to the old LPs that I’ve got on the computer now and write.
That’s right, I’ve been rearranging all of the music in iTunes the past few months. I used to use the “album” column for chart date / peak so that there was a different album for almost every song and that seemed to slow the processor down with 10 or 15 thousand albums in there. So I’ve been moving that to the “grouping” column and putting album titles in the album column. Originally that was just meant to clear out that column some but now I’m finding that I really like listening to the old albums the way I used to listen to them. At this moment, for example, I’m listening to the Beatles 2nd Album in the same play list as it originally had. That might have been the very first LP that Dale and I bought in 1964 and so it’s good to hear it that way again. Of course, all of the Dave Clark Five LPs are now in here the way they first appeared.
Anyway, be that as it may - and with 14,000+ songs to convert, that process is taking a long time - I’ve got to get back to the Threads story before it is lost to history and that story continued yesterday so let me just take Friday night (where I left off yesterday) through yesterday and then I’ve got a letter to write here. I wanted to write a letter to Yael this week but never got a chance to do that because of all the kids that were hanging around me in room 145, which is the room where she and I worked on that response to Clarke and that was what started everything off. That was two years ago now. It must have been around October / November 2005 that we sat down together in that room with Y’s computer and worked on that. Nothing happened until after my mother died, however. I wanted to write to her and to Amanda and to Mykal but there were a lot of kids coming around looking for help on essays and some that I had assigned to come in and then Luis hung around looking for piano lessons and Michael came by two or three times just looking for company and so I wasn’t able to get anything done. I’ll do it here.
Friday after school: Bridget was one of the kids who came by with essays after school this week. I spent at least an hour with her on Wednesday and then again on Thursday and she was back with a newly written New York Times essay to be corrected on Friday. She’s a senior who came from Africa (Ghana) only about three years ago and she is a beauty. I really didn’t know her before this semester other than by name but she seems to like me because even after going over these essays - and she works hard - she was just sitting there telling me all about Africa when Michael showed up. Luis had already showed up with a copy of Fur Elise that he had downloaded and was sitting at the piano trying to figure that out. I had to show him that in musical notation you can add lines below the staff as needed. That was a revelation. Then Michael waltzes in for the third day in a row. The day before he had threatened to take an overdose of Excedrin as a way of getting me to take just one. Turns out that he believes that aspirin prevents heart attacks and so he wants me to take an aspirin a day. I had made the mistake of mentioning that I had not taken an aspirin in over two years because for some strange reason I had stopped getting headaches. This is true even though I’ve been drinking the usual amounts. I don’t seem to get hung over anymore. Even the Friday before this last didn’t leave me particularly hung over. I used to get a lot of headaches and made sure to carry some Advil or something like that around but I don’t do that anymore.
In any case, Bridget finally left when it became clear that I was not going to be staying much longer and Michael was not going away. I had mentioned to Ben that we ought to hang out. The week before he’d had to go to Washington D.C. to check in with his son Zack who is now a freshman cross-country runner at George Washington U. Even just standing in the room, Ben had volunteered that Zack had been acting in a very immature way and he felt that he had to go down there and have a talk with him. He doesn’t want to see what happened to Jake happen all over again with Zack. Jake essentially flunked out of college and has been trying to get back on track over the past couple of years - and has made progress the past year. Zack has a track scholarship that they don’t want to jeopardize.
At four o’clock Ben was across the hall tutoring three girls and I stuck my head in and said I was still around. A few minutes later he showed up in 145 and I packed up. I have been locking my cart in the back closet in there (where Y used to lock her stuff) because I’ve got the sound system on the cart and I can just leave my computer on it as well. So we started down toward the front of the building where Ben said there were a few others who might be interested in hanging out a bit. Michael followed me down there and tried to invite himself out with us but I vetoed that and reminded him when he said that he could follow us that Ben had a car. Michael says that he is going to be getting a motor scooter in the next few weeks so we’ll see if that happens.
Keely Ryan and Kate Lupson were hanging around up there so it was the four of us that went out front and hopped into Ben’s car just as Hoxha was pulling out of the driveway. I took a look in there and saw that there were still quite a few cars in the parking lot late in the afternoon on a Friday of a long weekend. I don’t know the cars, however, and don’t know if these were all school people or if the place is used by others on weekends and during off hours. The security guy (Paul) had left by then.
We headed for upper Manhattan for no other reason than that was where Ben and I tended to go last year. That was both because it was Amanda’s and Andy’s neighborhood and because it was convenient for him going back home up the Henry Hudson. This turned out to be Kate’s neighborhood, as well, and she showed us her building in Washington Heights where she has lived the past couple of years - she is 28 and coming off a career in music publicity so is not new to New York or to living in New York. The building she was indicating is at the top of the hill where the road winds down from St. Nicholas or whatever it is up there near George Washington H.S. to Broadway. You remember that “s” turn that you make to wind on down to Broadway, right, friend? Half way down that hill was the building where her “ex” lived and still lived and she showed us that and thought that maybe he’d be hanging out there on the street. I don’t recall the name but he was a dark-skinned Dominican who was sleeping in the same bed with his brother. Why that fact came up I don’t know but Kate seemed strangely eager to ride by this place and point all of this out to us so I asked if she had given him reason to break up with her. I just wanted to hear what she might have to say about it but she didn’t say anything - just gave us all the impression that she had not quite wanted it to end the way that it did. I couldn’t even say how long ago this had been.
Since we’d spent money at Havana Central the week before and Keely had already said that it was too expensive to go back there, I had in mind the Irish bar near Ron’s place where he and I had spent his birthday last spring. I remembered the beer being cheap there and that was the destination when who should call but Ron himself. I was just about to call him when he called me and said that he would meet us there. This place is on Broadway at the last A train stop around 205th. After driving around a couple of blocks we found parking almost in front of Ron’s building - just around the corner leading up to Yara’s place, in fact. With Kate in the car there was no shortage of conversation. In fact, I’d said almost nothing during this ride.
I thought I’d remember the name of this place but I can’t think of it now. We sat down at the first table and Ron walked in a joined us just a few minutes after we’d gotten there. Everyone showed a desire to both eat and drink so Kate ordered food as well as some hard drink, Keely and Ben got a pitcher of Bass Ale, I got a Guinness and Ron ended up with a pitcher of Coor’s Lite. I ordered french fries and discovered that the fried chicken fingers reminded me of Fulton House chicken so I’ll definitely be back there for more of that. The Fulton House, you’ll recall, was that place out near where Fulton Rd. hits Hills and Dales and was the only restaurant other than McDonald’s that I can recall going to as a kid. It was in Jackson Township and if Dad had any sort of social life when he was a teacher in the 50s, I never heard about it and never suspected it. I mean, I’ve had, if anything, way too much of a social life since I started teaching but, of course, this is New York and as far as I know Dad was nothing at all like me in this sense. I mean, I don’t think I’m a particularly social person. At least I never was. That was the only way I was able to live the solitary life that I lived out here in Linden for so long while Luz was going to New York every day. I think it has something to do with the fact that people have gravitated to me the past three years. I must give out some sort of vibe but I’m really not any sort of socializer even though I don’t act the way nonsocial people my age generally act either. I don’t have the concerns that someone my age is supposed to have. I’m supposed to be preoccupied with mortgages, pensions, retirement, problems with children or grandchildren. aches, pains, prescription drugs, the last hospital visit, alienation from the spouse, etc. Instead, I’m still absorbed by the same things that absorbed me at the age of 20, 30 and 40 and I don’t see that changing. In fact, I dread the moment when I no longer care to listen to these old LPs I dread that possibility ….
[The Beatles 2nd Album has played through and now I’ve got All Summer Long on. Jan and Dean or Gerry and the Pacemakers might be next.]