It's Been Four Years.  Time For My Quadrennial Blog Post

Well, what a four years it has been!  A constant stream of news out of the White House, capped with a pandemic and all sorts of uncertainty as we approach a critical election just a week from now.

So what is my topic for this Blog Post?  I'm wishing my car a "Happy Assembly Day!"

It was 60 years ago today my 1961 Cadillac Convertible (serial number 61F018325) rolled off the Clark Street Assembly line in Detroit, Michigan.  Below is a copy of Cadillac's build sheets from that day keeping track of all the cars coming off the line

This car came into my possession in October of 1975.  It was a gift from my parents for my 14th birthday, a full two and a half years before I was old enough to get a driver's license.  My father was the General Manager of the Cadillac dealership in Plymouth, when someone traded in the car shortly before my birthday.  Since the car was a 1961, and I was born in 1961, my father thought it would be a novelty for me to have a car the same age as myself.

1975 was the height of the gasoline crisis, and people were dumping their old gas-guzzlers for more efficient models.  The dealership was only going to junk the car, so my father went to Gene the owner, and said he wanted to get it for me.  My dad knew the car had some value, but was able to get it for only $45.00

The car originally had a black top, which had seen better days.  My grandparents got me a new white top, which makes the car pop a bit more when the top is up.  Since my father had dealer plates back then, we never got it registered.  I never used the car as a daily driver.  I got a 1971 Buick Skylark when I finally got my license.  A few months before that, we used the Cadillac as a parade car for the 1977 Dennis Yarmouth Regional High School homecoming festivities, representing the Music Club.  My mother sort of took over the decorating and well, this was the result.

After the streamers came off, I did a lot of cleaning of the car.  I took several photos of it in the early 1980's.  The car pretty much looks the same now as it did then.

We ran the car on dealer plates for a few years until my father died in 1984.  A few years later, I got antique plates for it and would take it out once in a while.   Time and money for keeping the car on the road became scarce once my wife and I welcomed our first daughter Victoria to the family.  I let the registration lapse in 1994. and the car sat in my mother's garage for many years.  Unfortunately, the battery died, and the car wasn't started for about 25 years.

In 2006, I had an addition put onto our house.  A two car garage with a room over it.  I had the garage built extra long, because I knew that eventually, the Cadillac would be coming here.  After my mother died in 2018, I had to sell her house, and make plans for transporting the Cadillac about 60 miles to an auto shop to have new life breathed into it.  Thanks to Nathan Buckler for gingerly getting the car on his flatbed and driving it over the bridge to Middleborough.

The car spent 3 months under the supervision of my friend and skilled mechanic Marc Faria.  He was able to do the needed things you need to do when a car sits untouched for 25 years.

 

Finally, on September 30, 2019, the car was ready to be picked up.  It was a bit of a hairy ride driving home on dry-rotted bias ply tires, but I made it home in one piece.  I spent my 58th birthday giving the car a much needed cleaning.

A year ago (turns out to be the 59th anniversary of assembly day) I brought the Cadillac to Britton's Tires in Brockton to have a set of whitewalls mounted.  

The fall & winter of 2019 and 2020 were rather mild, enabling me to take the car out a fair amount on weekends.  I didn't want to travel very far, as I wasn't sure how reliable it would be.  I did have to have the car towed back over to Marc's to get some brake work done.

With the help of my daughter Elizabeth and her boyfriend Nolan, I was able to shoot a short little video of the car.

On one particularly mild Sunday afternoon in February, we picked up our friends Steve and Cheryl and went for a spin, and dinner

Then came the pandemic.  Weekend jaunts in the Cadillac gave Melanie and me a much needed break from being stuck at home.  We took the car on day trips to places like Plymouth.

We even drove through the lot of Tracy Cadillac, which used to be Gene Wildes Cadillac-Olds where my father worked, and where he got the car in the first place.

In May, it was back to the shop to have Marc install a new radiator and do an oil change.  We discovered the heater core was leaking, and had to add fixing the heat to the list.  He also replaced the fuel pump.

In July, my in-laws arrived from Texas to be safe from the Coronavirus.  They have enjoyed numerous rides in the car.

 

There's still plenty of work that needs to be done on the Cadillac.  I've always tried to keep it as close to original as possible.  Just last week, it was back in the shop to have the heater core and water pump replaced.  Next year, I'll need to think about the interior and finally, some much needed body work.  I need a winning lottery ticket.

So, Cadillac Convertible 61F018325, Happy Assembly Day!  Here's to many more years and many more miles of enjoyment!  Back with my next blog post sometime in 2024.

My Quadrennial Blog Post: A friend lost and a friend found

{It's time for my once every four year blog post.  I opened this blog account twelve years ago, thinking I'd have something pithy to say every day or so.  I'd love to be able to offer up great work like my friend at Minnesota Public Radio who writes the wonderful Newscut Blog, but alas, I just don't have the discipline.  But I am bound and determined to offer up a single post in years with U.S. Presidential Elections.  Earlier this year, I was close to writing a whimsical post about vacuuming up bird feathers, but it fell apart (don't ask, it was kind of stupid.)  I gave some thought about writing about the election, but that just depressed me.  With time running out on the year, I was fearing I'd have nothing to say, but it finally came to me this evening.  I hope it's worthy.  Hope to catch you all again in 2020.}

As 2016 draws to a close, I'm thinking of two friends this year.  One lost.  Another found.  Both have had a profound influence on my life and I'd like to write a few words about them.

In January, I lost my friend, Deven.  He was tragically killed in a homeless shelter in Harlem.  His murder made the cover of the New York Post.

In June, I found my childhood friend, Bob. He has lived pretty much off-the-grid as a homeless individual for more than 40 years.

I looked up to both Deven and Bob when I was much younger, and there will always be a special place in my heart for each of them.

Bob

Bob lived next door to me when I was a kid.  His family moved in around the time I was 5 or 6.  When I was in first grade, Bob was in sixth.  I didn't realize it at the time, but Bob was a couple years older than the other sixth graders.  My mother now tells me he always seemed a little slow, compared to other kids his age and perhaps that's why he related to me.  Bob had an intense interest in music and all things space related, but especially the Monkees and Lost in Space.  Since Bob liked those things, I did too.  There was a stone boundary divider that ran along the back of my house, and behind Bob's house as well, however some of the boulders had been moved to allow Bob's house to be moved next to mine.  The stone formation created a little bit of a pit which we pretended to be the Jupiter 2, the spaceship in Lost in Space.  I seem to remember using some old junk we found to create a gyroscope which was supposed to guide us to Alpha Centauri.  Bob always played John Robinson, and I was Don West.  Other kids would also join in, and play other characters.  Those not in our favor were assigned Dr. Zachary Smith.  It was how kids entertained themselves in the 1960's.  In addition to his interest in Lost in Space, Bob was keenly tuned into NASA's Apollo program, and we watched all the space shots with great interest.  He knew the names of all the astronauts.

As I said, Bob was a big Monkees fan.  He had an affinity for Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork was my favorite.  When we weren't playing Lost in Space or watching the moon missions, we'd pretend we were the Monkees.  Bob had a used electric guitar, and I had a small Magnus organ.  We couldn't play either of them, but we'd listen to our Monkees records and jam along, much to the annoyance anyone within earshot.

I moved away from that neighborhood when I was ten, but stayed in touch with one of Bob's younger brothers, who was closer to my age.  I knew that Bob never finished school, and was living practically homeless after apparent bouts with mental illness and substance abuse.  His family did what they could, but there are limits to what can be done, and they lost touch with him.  From what I could tell, Bob seemed content in his world, and I always recognized he had a heart of gold. 

Deven

I was a freshman in high school when I first came in contact with Deven.  He was the news director of a local radio station I listened to, and had a call-in show that aired mornings from 10 until noon.  At the time, my high school was so crowded, we had double sessions, so freshmen and sophomores didn't start school until noon, an we'd go until 5pm.  Because of this, I was able to listen to Deven's talk show, and became a regular caller.  Deven never discouraged me, and later joked he was happy I would call because sometimes I was the only one who did.  I learned that Deven was an incredibly intelligent individual who left school when he was 16, not because it was too hard, but because it was too easy for him.  There was no challenge, so he set out to learn things on his own.  He campaigned for Eugene McCarthy in 1968, and worked as a reporter in Albany covering then Governor (and later VP) Nelson Rockefeller.  At the time Deven was hosting his talk show, he was only 22, but sounded far more experienced for his age.

My own interest in radio was intensifying.  My friends heard my calls to the talk show, and told me I should consider a career in broadcasting, something I followed up on.  Deven was my role-model, and I charted my career path similar to his.  While I stayed in high school, and went off to college (finishing it in 3 years instead of 4) I too became a statehouse reporter at a very young age.

I lost touch with Deven after he left the station where he had the talk show.  This was pre-Internet, so I had no idea where he went, although I had heard he had moved back to his hometown of New York City.

Fast forward about 30 years, when Googling someone became a pastime of sorts.  I found an email address for him and reached out.   He quickly answered back that he was the same individual I used to call on his talk show.  We were in touch quite a bit via social media, and I even caught up with him for dinner not far from his home in New York about six years ago.  Deven had reinvented himself a couple of times.  After getting out of radio and journalism, he ran a very popular pub in NYC.  After that, he went back to school, and became a teacher, and blogged extensively about his experiences. When the classroom didn't work out, he became a school librarian, and totally embraced the challenge, bringing an antiquated middle school library into a state-of-the art, high tech resource center.  As all this was taking place, however something was going on inside Deven's head.  I'm told he suffered from Frontotemporal Dementia.  It's a slow moving brain disease that causes the patient to do uncharacteristic things.  Due to this, Deven lost his job, and got himself into some serious legal trouble.  The wheels pretty much came off his life, and in January, he found his way to the Harlem Shelter, where a young man with another severe mental illness inexplicably attacked him with a knife, and killed him.

A few months after attending Deven's funeral, I was driving to work, and spotted my friend Bob walking along the sidewalk.  He is hunched over, with long bushy hair and and a matted, scraggly beard.  Surprisingly, for his age, he has very few gray hairs.  I had been made aware by a mutual friend he was still living in the area, working odd jobs trying to get some pocket change.  I had been on the lookout for him, and was very happy to see him.  I turned my car around, and pulled up alongside him and called out his name, and identified myself.  I parked, and we spoke by the side of the road for about 20 minutes.  I gave him a ride to a few homes where he was hoping to cut lawns, but no one was home, before taking him to a place where he helps out loading furniture for the needy onto trucks.  It was so nice to catch up on the old days, and of our childhoods.  We even talked about Lost in Space and he had some great observations about Dr. Smith's character arc.    I've seen him a few times since, and had a small hand in helping four of his six siblings reunite with him.  He still lives his life his own way, but I think now he realizes his family loves him, and his friends still hold him dear.

So there are a few things I hope people take away from my musings.  Value friendships.  There may be long lapses in them, but be willing to pick up where you left off.  Sometimes, you can go back.  Know that mental illness is a terrible thing, and is not the fault of the individual who is suffering from it.  Be a friend, and if you can, offer some sort normalcy.  If you see someone who is homeless, know that they were probably someone's childhood friend.

My Quadrennial Blog Post

Leap Year.  The Summer Olympics.  The U.S. Presidential Election.  A blog post from me.  Yup, it's time for me to scribble out some thoughts for posterity.  I opened this account eight years ago, thinking I'd have the discipline to post my musings every couple of days or so.  Who was I kidding?  Keep in mind, in 2004, there was no Twitter.  "The Facebook" was limited to a few students at Harvard.  Those are platforms that are more conducive to my short attention span.

I've chosen to post here this day because today, June 16, 2012, I am 50 years, 260 days old.  Not a random day.  On March 6, 1984, my father also turned 50 years, 260 days old.  He also died that day.  He had been ill for about six months, and it didn't come as a surprise.  After much suffering, his passing, while sad, came as a relief.

One of my biggest regrets is that I really never got to have an adult to adult relationship with my father.  I was only 22 when he died, and as anyone who is around my age knows, 22 is barely an adult.  I remember about a week before he died, I had what may seem as a small incident, that I soon recognized as a life changing moment for me.  With my father sick in the hospital, I went to cover the 1984 New Hampshire Primary.  My father sold cars all his adult life, and in his final years, had a small used car lot in Hyannis.  I had driven to Nashua in an Oldsmobile Cutlass he had on the lot.  But the car's battery kept crapping out, and the alternator light kept coming on.  In the past, I would have just called my Dad, and he would have come to my rescue.  But as I sat in the cold Olds around midnight outside the Sheraton Tara, I knew that day I would have to fend for myself.  The next morning after sleeping in the car (don't try to find a hotel room in New Hampshire on primary night) I walked to a Zayre's store, bought a cheap set of tools, and then went to an auto parts store to get a replacement alternator.  My father had taught me enough basic mechanics to know how to swap out the alternators.  I found a jump, and was able to drive home, content in the knowledge I would be able to survive after my father was gone.

As I lived each day since his death, I've always taken comfort in knowing my father was at one time, the same age as me on any given day.  From time to time, I'd figure out my age, to the day, and then figure out when he was the same age, what he was doing, and compare.  While it may seem a bit competitive, it was just a great way to gauge my accomplishments with his.

As tomorrow, which ironically happens to be Father's Day arrives, I am hopeful I will awake and be 50 years, 261 days old. It will be uncharted territory for me. I look forward to it and to many days ahead, hoping to do many things that would have made my father proud.  While he never lived to see 50 years, 261 days, lessons I learned from him will be with me.  Be honest, to yourself and others.  Accept everyone for who they are.  Speak only when you have something important to say.

Happy Father's Day.  Bookmark this site, and come back for my next post in 2016!

Thomas J. Brown
6/21/1933-3/6/1984

Guess it's about time I posted again.

Hmmmm.... 4 years between posts. Guess I'm set now until 2012!

Who has time for Blogs??

Well, it looks like it's been almost two months since I last posted an entry. Guess I've been a bit too busy to write!

Does John Kerry have a sense of humor?

A lot has been said recently about John Kerry's sense of (or lack of) humor. He does seem to cast a somewhat wooden shadow on the campaign trail. I can report first hand that he does have a sense of humor. Let me take you back to the early 1980's. Either 1983 or 1984 to be precise. John Kerry was Lt. Governor of Massachusetts, and I was a young radio reporter based at the Massachusetts Statehouse. Now back then, (and even today for that matter) the Lt. Governor's job was primarily cerimonial. The Lt.Gov was in place just in case the big guy croaked, got a federal job, or was indicted. Other than that, there wasn't a whole lot of heavy lifting associated with the post. Nonetheless, paths of the Lt. Governor and the reporters in the building did in fact cross from time to time. Most of those encounters with John Kerry were not memorable. But the one encounter I do remember had the would-be president busting a gut. First, a little background.
I spent a great deal of my time in the Broadcaster's Room at the Statehouse. That's the office were radio and TV reporters hung out and filed their stories. When we weren't filing stories or interviewing newsmakers, we would amuse ourselves with spoofs and other assorted sophomoric humor. One of the things we liked to do was collect tape of public officials saying things that sounded funny out of context. Back then, a way to relieve tension in the Broadcaster's room was to shout "Balls!" That would often be done in jest when a competitor was trying to file his story. Yeah, it's silly, but what can I say. Well the holy grail of audio tape was of course, to get an unknowing politician to say "Balls" into a microphone. One day, a golden opportunity presented itself on then-governor (and future presidential candidate himself) Michael Dukakis' daily schedule. The Duke was scheduled to tour the Titlist Golf Ball factory in southeastern Massachusetts. I alerted my client station in New Bedford of this fact, and asked them to ask the governor about his tour. The question was asked at an event later in the day, and Dukakis delivered the perfect material. "I got to see how golf balls were made, and I WAS PRESENTED WITH A SET OF BALLS MYSELF." Paydirt! Needless to say, we got a lot of milage out of that quote, playing it for anyone who would listen.
One who got to hear it was one of Kerry's press people. Later I got a call summoning me down to the Lt. Governor's office and to bring the tape. Down I went, tape recorder in hand and played Dukakis' declaration that he had been presented a set of balls for the Lt. Governor. He thought it was as funny as we did, had us play it a couple of times. I seem to remember him laughing so hard, he had tears in his eyes.

Leaping into the 21st Century

Well, here goes something. My very first blog. I've never done this before, but I guess it's kind of cool. Being able to post random thoughts for all to see.