The Solstice is Past

The earth is journeying back toward the summer solstice in its perennial voyage around the sun, and the days are already growing incrementally longer. It's always struck me odd that we mark the beginning of winter by the moment that happens. Yet we all know the bulk of the weather patterns we associate with winter are still to come. The good news is that, by this time in January 2010, we'll have roughly 30 more minutes of daylight, and more to come each day until late June. Best wishes to all my readers at this holiday season built around the winter solstice, and best wishes, too, for a happy, healthy prosperous new year!

Hairdressing chez Chateau Page

Back in the winter of 1964, I took a brief fling at hairdressing for discriminating ladies of impeccable taste and ... uh ... je ne sais quoi (which is French for "I don't know what I'm talking about.") I was young and stupid then. Yes, yes, the only thing that's changed is I'm not young any more. Anyway, here is Monsieur making a high fashion statement with the coiffure of Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle WHO, you ask? Mademoiselle none o' your business, I say. Well, here you go...

The lady in question was simply delighted with the outcome of this daring fashion departure, as you see... And eventually danced the night away with a dashing young prince, who later became an obstetrician.... I love to think I played a role in this heartwarming drama. Oh, by the way, the thing with the prince and Mademoiselle never came to its warmly-anticipated fruition. But it WAS fun while it lasted.

And, instead of being a hairdresser, I practiced law for ... oh ... several decades. Eventually I got it right -- mostly. The law part, I mean.

Ain't life great??

A Holiday Pome

How about a nice cheezy Holiday Poem? OK, here goes... Happy Holidays! Season's Greetings! Christmas? Hell no, ACLU's bleating. Frosty's blaring in the malls, Crazed shoppers bouncing off the walls. We're rockin' around the (bleep-bleep) tree, While gagging on Diversity. The important thing is Buying Stuff, and Stuff and Stuff and Still More Stuff To strew beneath the (bleep-bleep) tree Belaboring Diversity. Baby Jesus? Forget that crap! We've got lots of Stuff to wrap 'Cuz here comes Santa Claus, Here Comes Santa Claus... *** Oops! There goes Santa Claus And to all a good night. Tomorrow we'll join the herd and haul All this Stuff back to the mall, And trade it in for still more Stuff. Pardon this doggerel; it's rather rough.

Cambridge, then and Now

In the early spring (read: late winter) of 1964, back when the Beatles were a startling new phenomenon in the pop music world, back when very few people much knew or cared where some place called "Vietnam" was located, I came with a gang of would-be Dartmouth College athletes from Hanover, New Hampshire (where the Connecticut River was still frozen) to Cambridge, Massachusetts. We were guests of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which bedded us down in the field house and let us launch our eight-oared shells from the MIT boathouse on the Charles River. We were training for the 1964 collegiate rowing season. On a calm day, as you see, the Charles was a fairly pleasant place to skim over the water... We never really amounted to much as a force to reckon with in collegiate rowing circles that year, but we worked hard at it and had fun -- and some of us damn near flunked out of the college. Eve and I went to Cambridge over Thanksgiving to spend the holiday with my daughters and their families. From our eighth-floor hotel room, we had a view of the Charles Basin that brought back some memories of those long-gone undergraduate days... Here's the Thanksgiving crew (minus yours truly, who was behind the camera, and Nora, who was slung on her father's back) on our Saturday trek from MIT to the Institute for Contemporary Art on the Boston waterfront -- a hike of no small distance on a cool, windy day. Well, I may be getting older, but I can still keep up with these kids who weren't even around back when I was pulling an oar on the dear old Charles.

Columbus Day at the Shore, Take II

Some folks commented on my last post, which mentioned Springer's ice cream shop in Stone Harbor, NJ. Here's what it looked like on October 12, 2009: For some reason, my most lasting memory of Springer's involves eating ice cream cones with my parents and my two brothers in the parking lot one balmy evening in around 1954 or '55. I was partial to coffee ice cream then (still am), and my brothers and I were competing to see who could make his cone last the longest. I finished my ice cream through the pointy end of the cone, because it had been reduced to soup, but I won the first and last Page Family Ice Cream Cone Endurance Olympics. After that contest, the event was scratched as too foolish even for us. Here's another Stone Harbor landmark. I've never been in the place, but its logo appeared on T-shirts all over the world (slight exaggeration here, folks) for a few years in the decade of the 1990s: After we'd satisfied the urge to make sure the town of Stone Harbor was essentially just the way we left it last year, we drove down to the southern end of Seven Mile Beach, where the old Coast Guard lifesaving station still stands. Back in my boyhood, it stood in solitary splendor among the sand dunes; today, you'd miss it altogether unless you were specifically looking for it, because it's surrounded by residential properties and serves only as a point of historic interest. But we wandered on down to the ocean, pausing for a self-portrait at the beach access ramp. Cute couple, eh? Ah, so. Next time we'll pop up somewhere else. Until then, blessings.

Columbus Day at the Shore

Once again this year, our great friends Dennis and Penny Murphy hosted us at the South Jersey shore over the Columbus Day weekend. The weather was near-perfect; and, after a nostalgic visit to sleepy, post-season Sea Isle City... ...we gave the sun permission to set over the last vestige of Summer 2009 by the seaside -- or, in this case, the bayside. My fondness for the South Jersey shore goes back into the late '40s and early '50s, when our family -- often joined by another family with kids roughly the same age as my brothers and me -- would rent one or more beach houses at Stone Harbor or Avalon. Dad was on vacation and therefore relaxing more and more each day. The proof came when he pulled out his trusty pocket knife and started whittling; or when he'd organize a driftwood search so we could build a beachcomber's shack; or when he'd make us a kite to touch the heavens on a breezy day. This was soon enough after the end of World War II so that there was plenty of interesting flotsam on the beach from torpedoed ships -- and plenty of "tar", as people called the congealed bunker fuel oil that washed up on the beach and got all over us. In those days, the magnificent sand dunes along Seven Mile Beach were still mostly unregulated and not yet reduced to private gated compounds dominated by coyly hidden seaside palaces for the filthy rich. It was still OK (or at least not ABSOLUTELY forbidden!) to build a driftwood fire in a sheltered sandy hollow, among the sawgrass and low-lying tree shrubs, and roast hot dogs and marshmallows while savoring the joys of youth and freedom and grains of sand in our food. Later, in our teen-age years, a certain amount of innocent but urgent romance flourished in those magical places. Long sunny days at the beach and in the ocean might be followed by evenings on the modest boardwalks, movies at the small theatres and ice cream at Springer's in Stone Harbor. Precious memories, every one. Oops! Time for me to pull myself together and get to the office. The real world awaits, so now I'll wrap the nostalgia carefully back into its cocoon, to pull it out and marvel at it later.

Our First Apartment

WOW!! Pretty exciting image, eh? Right after I left active Naval duty and settled in Philadelphia, this is what our apartment looked like in 1972. We made quite a cozy place of this third-floor walk-up, before events led us onward into the future. I'm posting this photo only to test a new Epson Perfection V300 photo scanner, which is about as close as I ever intend to come to the digital claptrap which seems to be all the rage nowadays. Monochrome Forever!

USS WAYNE E. MEYER (DDG 108)

One of the more impressive events of a lifetime is to witness the commissioning of a United States warship. This past Saturday, October 10, 2009, Eve and I were among the invited guests at the commissioning of USS Wayne E. Meyer (DDG-108), the latest addition to our Pacific Fleet. Because Admiral Wayne Meyer had connections with the City of Philadelphia and environs, the commissioning took place at Penn's Landing, and here are some views of our most recent guided missile destroyer on that day... Preparing to read orders... A pair of squared-away bluejackets... The crew goes aboard. Crew manning the rail at the after quarterdeck; Ben Franklin Bridge in the background. Hand salute from ship's company. It was a day that made me proud of my long-ago Navy days. After that, we went to visit some dear friends at Sea Isle City, NJ... And if you can tell me why life ain't just wonderful, please do. I won't believe you if you try.

Yet ANOTHER Pretty Girl

Meet Lilliputnikskaya. She came to our house in early summer 2008. Before that, she'd lived under someone's porch and had become quite wise in the ways of the world. We were on a 90-day probationary program when she arrived; but, after an intensive screening and a thorough background check, she allowed us to become members of her household staff. We are well aware that this is strictly employment at will: missed meals and shortages of bedtime snacks are not looked upon kindly. So far, we've stayed on her good side, but eternal vigilance is the price of a happy cat-human relationship.

Another Pretty Girl (but DEFINITELY not No. 1)

I was getting a little tired of those dreary old dead-of-winter photos. Therefore, I assume you were, too. Here's a girl whom I met for the duration of a shutter-click at an outdoor market festival in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, in July 2008. Not only did she let me take her picture, but she lit up the viewfinder with the smile you see above. Too bad I didn't know about this gambit (or was too shy to use it) when I was young enough for it to blossom into something -- maybe.

Winter in Drydock, 1968-1969

During the winter of 1968-1969, USS Suffolk County (LST-1173) was being overhauled at the Horne Brothers shipyard in Newport News, Virginia. At night in winter, a naval shipyard can be quite an otherworldly-looking place: Four fellow junior officers and I rented a cottage in Virginia Beach -- a good 45-minute commute from the shipyard -- and lived there when we weren't on duty aboard ship. Virginia Beach is a lively seashore town most of the year, but here's what it looked like at night in January 1969: Main drag, downtown. Beach promenade. Winter is cold and dark pretty much wherever you go in non-tropical latitudes, it seems. We burned a lot of firewood in that little cottage -- and a lot of scrap wood we liberated from a nearby demolition site. Quite the band of jolly buccaneers, we were. At least we got away with it (most of the time). Those were the days. Cherish them, cherish them.

Hiking in the Chagrin River Valley and Other Adventures

Over Labor Day weekend, Eve and I visited my daughter Janet and her husband Steve in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. On Saturday morning, we took a hike in the Chagrin River Valley, through some beautiful meadows and hardwood forests. Here they are at an observation platform where we had a close encounter with a baby muskrat in one of the wetland areas, but the little twerp took a powder when I aimed my camera in his or her direction. Later in the day we visited the Great Geauga County Fair, where we saw some charming alpacas... ...and llamas And we ate lots of deep-fried country-fair fare -- funnel cakes, deep-fried Oreos, deep-fried Snickers bars, sausage sandwiches with grilled onions and peppers -- all of which I will never tell my cardiologist. And if you do, I'll deny it; then I'll hunt you down and feed you to radioactive cockroaches. The next day we toured the wine country along the south shore of Lake Erie, and we fetched up on a breezy terrace overlooking the lake and sampling some local wines... And the next day we came home. How was YOUR weekend, Dear Reader?

My No. 1 Girl Friend -- No Kidding; Cross My Heart And Hope to Die

It took some doing, but I am now blessed with a life companion who understands me -- not an easy task, believe me. A couple of days ago, she noticed I was howling, beating my chest, and posting a parade of photos of some women who played minor roles in my past life (well, they're minor now, having passed into whatever they've passed into). The rolling pin stayed in the kitchen drawer, and the back-seat driving became only a wee bit more shrill. Anyway, here she is -- living proof that the trial-and-error method works. After a lot of false starts, here's the one that worked...

"NO DIVING"

This is what happens when a photographer is in the right place at the right split second with the right equipment. Outside the border of this severely cropped (unfortunately) digital scan is a sign which says, quite clearly, "No Diving." Our young hero, however, seems to be training for the Olympic Mens' 10-Meter Platform Diving event. Photo made in September 1969 at the Currituck Ferry landing on Knotts Island, North Carolina. And so we chemically grab and hold onto the blink of an eye 40 years ago. Monochrome Forever!!

Holly, 1971

Continuing in the Hopeless Romantic vein, here's a shot of the girl I married in 1971. In the final analysis, that was a sad story, but with the totally joyous sub-plot of two lovely daughters who have since made happy marriages of their own. I took this picture inside a Chester County barn, where a shaft of sunlight from a hole in the roof back-lighted the subject and bits of hay dust floated about her head. With my penchant for nostalgia, I can tell you it was a very happy day, showing no foreshadowing of things to come -- things best left unmentioned here.

Energy Then and Now

The foreground image is the Philadelphia and Reading Coal Company's St. Nicholas coal breaker in Mahanoy Township, PA, no longer a going concern. In the background are wind turbines on the ridge above Shenandoah, PA, which are helping to reduce the dependency on anthracite coal (still in abundant supply) for the generation of electric power.

Uh...Harrumph...He Clears his Throat

I guess my youthful heart has been hanging out there on my sleeve long enough. Time to come up with some more pithy, hard-hitting blogmanship before somebody accuses me of being ... gasp ... a Romantic. L'Uomo Universale, c'est-moi.

Kidney Stone Update

It's still there, an ugly little knot of pain down on the lower left, just south of the navel and north of the delicate region. Had another CT scan last night, and I'll be seeing a specialist in a few days. In the meantime... Groan... Chin up, Old Man.

The Latest Ailment of Advancing Age

I'm getting suspicious of Philadelphia -- or maybe paranoid is the word I'm looking for. Six years ago almost to the day, I was standing up in the Philadelphia division of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania speaking on behalf of a client, when I suddenly experienced what it must feel like to be kicked in the belly by a mule. Diverticulitis! An intestinal blockage of intensity and pain I wouldn't wish on even that tinhorn corporate micro-midget who had me so mad several weeks ago. But time passed and the medical care system worked its wonders. After two major abdominal operations and the considerable indignity of pooping into a leaky colostomy bag for three months, it appeared my old chocolate channel was back in tip-top shape. Yesterday I was sitting in a roomful of people attending the August 2009 Philadelphia Sheriff's judicial sale of foreclosed properties, bidding on behalf of a client. And yes, friends, that damn mule came along and kicked me in the gut again. It felt just like what I remembered of that diverticulitis attack of yesteryear. So once again I drove home from Philadelphia in extreme discomfort, only this time dreading a repeat of past sufferings. After a brief eternity in the emergency room waiting area, the requisite inquiries into my insurance coverages, more waiting, the surrender of several gallons of blood, more waiting, an X-ray, more waiting, a CT scan and more waiting, all made bearable by a couple of hits of morphine, I received the medics' verdict ... Kidney stone. Great was the rejoicing in my heart at that pronouncement! No surgery! No leaky colostomy bag! Just a day or two of gritting my teeth while the offending bit of crystalline matter works its way through the system -- like a golf ball through a garden hose -- and leaves me a free man once again. At least until the next time I go to Philadelphia.

BURP!!

There's a restaurant called "Rosy Tomorrows" in Danbury, CT, just off Interstate 84; Eve and I have dined there from time to time on our periodic trips to and from New England. We stopped there for lunch on our way to Boston in June. The Tower of Onion Rings was one of the eye-catchers on the menu and we, craving greasy fried foods more than our doctors would have liked, took the bait. We finished the whole thing, too. Very tasty at the time, but viciously vengeful in the aftermath. It would have been a bumpy night even if we hadn't been sleeping on an air mattress in my daughter's apartment.

Life is Good, With the Right Altitude

We encountered this young lady at the Life is Good Festival on the Common in Boston on June 20th. I was hoping she'd turn to face me, but I had to settle for a high-elevation posterior shot. I didn't even notice the "Mr. Nut Roasted" sign until I pulled the print out of the soup. I'm still trying to come up with a clever connection; but, the way my mind works, it wouldn't be suitable for a family-oriented blog.

Reinholds Inn

Here's a view of the Reinholds Inn in Reinholds, PA, about 10 miles from where I live. It's a favorite spot for the biker crowd to go for wings, burgers and beer on a Sunday afternoon. See the cat in the middle window upstairs? It's a ceramic tiger. Just thought you'd like to know.

Nora Jeanne Molyneaux, Take III

Oh, my GAWD!! Yes, she's definitely prettier than that nasty old Soviet ammo-carrier in the last post. Here's another shot from our visit with our sweet little granddaughter several weeks ago...

Вели́кая Оте́чественная война́

The Velikaya Otyechestvennaya Voyna arguably stands as the high-water mark of Soviet patriotism from the 1917 revolution until the days of Sputnik and the manned Earth orbit of Yuri Gagarin. The fellow in the photograph was one of the Soviet reenactors at the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum's 2009 World War II weekend at the Reading Regional Airport on the first weekend in June. The uniform appears to be naval, but I'm curious about the death's head insignia on the left sleeve (I didn't get a chance to ask at the time I took the picture). If any reader of this feuilleton happens to know anything about Soviet uniforms of the Great Patriotic War, I'd welcome some information. Whatever the full explanation, it's quite clear this chap is well-armed, assuming he has some kind of a mechanism for aiming and firing the ammunition he wears with such obvious pride.

Nora Jeanne Molyneaux, Take II

At the Life Is Good Festival, Boston Common, June 20, 2009. Who's Imitating Whom? Vocalizing, June 20, 2009, Boston, MA. You were warned several days ago. Grandfatherhood is bringing out the Daddy in me, and one of the results is photographs like the above, which I took during a visit to Lindsay and her family in Cambridge at the end of June. So, among the nostalgia pix I plaster up on this wall, from time to time you'll see up-to-the-minute images of persons and things I find significant in the moment. In the words of the promoters of the June 20 Boston Common festival, life, indeed, is good.

"Tinhorns, Cheapskates & Stuffed Shirts"

There's a place in Washington State's San Juan Islands called Boat Harbor. Back in 1966, a family named the Kendalls owned it. They maintained a rickety boat landing dock, but did not necessarily welcome visitors, as witness the rather poorly preserved photograph above. Despite the fact that the Kendalls were not famous for their hospitality, my Seattle relatives and I tied up at the Boat Harbor dock one July day and went ashore for a visit. Of course, we dispatched one of my young cousins up to the haunted-looking house on the hill overlooking the harbor to pay the landing fee; we could afford it because we had no stuffed shirts or cheapskates aboard. After consulting the Ship's Dictionary (American Heritage) for a definition of "tinhorn" (a petty braggart, esp. a gambler, who pretends to be wealthier than he is), we decided none of us fit that category, either. Interesting place, that Boat Harbor, with some sort of a history (which I don't recall in any detail) as a base for pirates or smugglers or other shady swashbuckling types, and the wreckage of a square-rigged vessel set into a concrete foundation along the shore. From this distant perspective in time, I wonder how much, if at all, the landing fees have gone up. Or whether the place has been overrun by tinhorns, cheapskates and stuffed shirts. I can't seem to find the Boat Harbor Yacht Club anywhere in cyberspace.

"Good Ale, Raw Onions, No Women"

On a dreary day in March 1966, the slogan "Good Ale, Raw Onions, No Women" still described the bill of fare at McSorley's Old Ale House on the Bowery in New York City. Since then, the "No Women" feature has passed into history, swept into the maelstrom of feminist sentiment that arose not too long after I took this picture. But if you thought the advent of female customers changed anything about the place except the gender of its clientele, you'd be wrong. The folklore is that the joint still hasn't been cleaned since 1854 -- except as necessary to comply with public-health ordinances. For a gang of Dartmouth College lads on the loose in the city, McSorley's was an indispensable stop on the road to ... well ... whatever came next. For many of us, it was military service during the Vietnam years. Ladies and gentlemen, here's a toast to our youth: Not entirely misspent, we hope! A postscript: An anonymous commentator has insisted that the slogan was "Good Ale, Raw Onions, and No Ladies." I wouldn't swear to anything on the strength of my memory alone, so I'm going to leave the title of this posting as it is, acknowledging all along that I may be dead wrong. Wouldn't be the first time, nor will it be the last.

Nora Jeanne Molyneaux

Okay, now you're in for it. It's time for old Gramps to start hauling out granddaughter pictures and shoving them in your face, like it or not. This shot of Nora is actually now about a year old, but it gives you some sense of how much she loves to eat....

(Grand) Father's Day in Harvard Yard

Every year, my birthday (June 18) coincides closely with Father's Day (this year, June 21). Last Thursday, Eve and I made the arduous trek from home to Cambridge, Mass., 360 miles of traffic-choked frustration. Notwithstanding the travelers' woes, however, we had a wonderful visit with my daughter Lindsay and granddaughter Nora Jeanne. We also caught a fleeting glimpse of Nora's father Brad, but he's in the indentured servitude called a first-year medical residency at Mass General; we stopped by the hospital and caught a few moments with him wearing his scrubs -- which look uncannily like a prison uniform. Lindsay and family live in an apartment in Grays Hall on the Harvard campus, and a sweeter venue you could not imagine. She's an instructor (Statistics), a Ph.D. candidate (Education Policy) and a freshman proctor at Harvard. I'm rather proud of her, just in case you were wondering. At 18 months, Nora has begun to develop a vocabulary, starting with "No." She's a sweet little thing with a smile that lights up her face like a tropical sunrise. No doubt you'll see some pictures here whenever I get around to posting them. All too soon, the weekend was over, and we made the homeward voyage. Here we are, back in that warm quotidian bath.

Why "Son of a Curmudgeon"? (Reprise)

Over the years, people have called me a son of many things, most of them based on my supposed relationship to female dogs. But why a Son of a Curmudgeon? It started one winter day, just before Christmas, in the early 1960s. Our family had gathered in the living room. My brothers and I were taking bets on whether or not the Christmas tree would remain standing under the onslaught of Mom’s relentless tinkering with the ornaments and placement of the lights. Everyone was in a festive, poisonous humor. The language was quite inappropriate for the season. We decided to take a break for family photos. What a great idea! I can’t remember which moron came up with it, but at least it promised to sidetrack momentarily the strife over the tree. We started with Dad. We sat him in a straight-backed chair, handed him a walking stick, and told him to look as crusty and disagreeable as he could -- not a difficult assignment under the circumstances -- while one of us took the picture. I wish I could show you the result, but it's lost to posterity, more's the pity. Pop looked like one of those sourpussed elderly gentlemen you sometimes see in old studio photographs, their necks clamped in steel and celluloid to prevent the slightest appearance of comfort or relaxation. From the day it came back from the photo shop to the day it vanished into the ether, that portrait was titled “Curmudgeon.” Dad decided he enjoyed the role and refined it considerably during the remainder of his life. Happily, he could toggle it on and off at will, and never lost his capacity to enjoy or share a good joke or a conversation. As the years go by, I find myself wondering if curmudgeonliness might not be an inherited trait. There are times I feel an almost overwhelming urge to growl at someone.

Another Sentimental Journey

Here's a rainy-day photo I made on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, during a trip there in 1970 (actually, it was my first honeymoon, may that marriage and my late ex-wife rest in peace). It was the last time I visited that part of the world. I would love to see Cape Breton on one of the two or three sunny days that occur up there during the year, but these things are hard to plan for.

The Famous Virginia Beach Daisy Chain

Maybe someday I'll get tired of telling tall tales about my Navy days, but not yet. I'm sure you'll get tired of it before I do. Anyway, during the winter of 1968-1969, while our ship was in drydock for a major overhaul, four of my fellow junior officers and I rented a quaint little house in Virginia Beach, from a sweet little old lady who I'm sure lived to regret her decision to lease the place to us. To keep a rough tally of beers consumed on the premises, we made a daisy chain out of our aluminum pop-tops (remember those?), and placed the end in the flower basket of the rosy-cheeked young lass in the picture, who occupied the living-room mantel along with other bits of bric-a-brac. By the end of the winter, that chain circled the living room and was starting to creep up to the second floor. I'm surprised our landlady didn't see to it we were court-martialed.

First Pennsylvania Home

Here's a shot of our family's first home in Pennsylvania, just after we moved from Detroit to West Conshohocken in 1949. I was four years old, and my two brothers had not yet been born -- although they came along pretty quickly after we got settled. The place was called "Stoney Creek Farm," and it was on River Road. That road is no more, having been superseded by the Schuylkill Expressway over the next several years; this was the prime reason we moved away from Stoney Creek Farm. If you're ever driving east on the Schuylkill Expressway (toward Philadelphia, for the compass-challenged), if you look to your right just before you come to the Conshohocken Curve, you can see this house nestled in the woods and overgrowth directly across the river from the old Lee Tire plant. So what, you say? I don't know. Maybe I'm getting to that age where my nostalgia becomes everyone else's burden.