He was the egg man

While I was out wasting my time at rock concerts and sitting in my room listening to records and baseball games, this is what my grandfather was doing.

Royal Lockard had no time for any frivolities. I don't really remember him much like this, but I do know he was always working. He seemed to hold not much use for the modern world, and he seemed to live a code that was rooted in the 19th century, at least to me.

Men had their roles, women has theirs. Men took care of work outside the house, women took care of work inside the house. My grandmother didn't drive, or example. He didn't have much use for television, and for shows he did watch (Lawrence Welk, for example), it became a problem for him when the show began to feature more and more women. He was the youngest of 11 children, and as I have mentioned before, arthritis left him a virtual cripple in his mid-60s.

Royal and Orpha (along with their children Kline, Florence (known as Dolly) and Rolland (my dad) grew most of their own food on their 40-acre farm, which featured a very large vegetable garden and field upon field of sweet corn. They raised cows, chickens and pigs. Kline and my dad had to drop out of school after the 8th grade to work on the farm. And for as much as women seemed to take a back seat, I was told he encouraged Dolly to finish her education, which she did down the road five miles in Picture Rocks.

Theirs was a simple life for sure. Work seven days a week, with church on Sundays. We often visited on the weekends when I was very young, and I got to help milk cows and collect eggs.

If Royal was alive today, he would not call what I do working. Sitting at a desk was for city folks, and if you weren't using your hands and back, you weren't working.

The only time I saw him relax was on Sunday afternoon drives. The women would sit in the back and the men in the front, me in the middle between Royal and Rolland, who drove.  We would drive around for a couple of hours, look at neighboring farms and end up with ice cream, which was extravagant (or so it seemed to me) in my grandparents world,

On the way home, "Pappy" could see I was getting sleepy and invite me to put my head on his shoulder for a nap.

And between faith and family and the sweat of the working day, you could feel the silence  of these far, far simpler times.

In rural Pennsylvania. In another time. In another place.

Gotta stand and face it, life is so complicated

Living in the past and facing the future, at the same time

“It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia.”     Frank Zappa          

Joined the 21st Century this week with a Netflix subscription. The free trial selection is poor, but I am satisfied by the old and classic titles available overall.

The first two films I rented were Wim Wenders’ affairs, which being from the 80s are down-right contemporary for me. I plan of loading up on Abbott and Costello, Marx Brothers, and old sitcoms next – all of these will especially please Jack.

These rental choices, along with my musical preferences, beg the question: Are modern art forms bad, or just unappealing to me? Is a societal problem, or is it mine? Am I destined to live out my years reminiscing about the good old days and muttering about Dave Debusschere, “Muswell Hillbilles” and Soupy Sales?

Quite possibly.One explanation is my reverence for the past events in my personal life. Like Travis Henderson from "Paris, Texas," sometimes my losses seem overwhelming; for me, to retreat into the known comfort of memories is very satisfying.

Another thing that may change my way of thinking is when my kids develop their own individual tastes and are no longer under my spell. Perhaps I will be forced to listen to their “future of rock and roll,” similar to what I did to my Mom and Dad.

I don’t think I swayed them too much.

If fact, as I got older I sort of came full circle, finally appreciating the likes of Ernest Tubb and gospel music.

I haven’t come all the way around to “The Lawrence Welk Show” (a Saturday night staple in our house), but I still have a crush on The Lennon Sisters, and boy didn’t that Myron Floren wail on the accordion?

There may be champagne music in my future yet.

Those days they've come and gone

My parents used to watch Mitch Miller regularly. Maybe not as often as Lawrence Welk, but Miller was enough of a presence in our house that my brother tried to get me to go downstairs when I was 5 or 6 and say "Bitch" Miller in hopes of getting a rise out of our parents.

A rise because of 1) the obvious, and 2) it might be an affront to the man and his music.

Miller died yesterday, and his brand of corn made Welk's almost look progressive. I guess it wasn't surprising one of his show's sponsors was Libby's.

I think we had the "Yellow Rose of Texas" record, and I can still see rows of singers and the bouncing ball helping us all to sing along.

I'm not sure if my parents were deeply enamored of Miller's art, or if they saw "Sing Along with Mitch" as sort of an anchor against the tidal wave of the Beatles and their ilk.

I didn't pay much attention to Miller's professed hatred of rock and roll. Otherwise, I might have felt some disdain when I literally bumped into him on a New York City street a dozen or so years ago. He gave me a pleasant smile and hello, which I returned.

Instead, I remembered a time of sitting in the living room with my mom and dad, watching a show with a premise that today is almost unthinkable.