“My brother”
That was the subject line in one of the most memorable emails I’ve ever received. It was sent to me just a little over three years ago, the day I was headed off the grid for brain surgery. The email came from Marc, a coworker of a similar age and disposition--we were both cranky old men--and the text of the message was simply this, “Go with God.”
I actually responded to that email before turning off my devices. (My brain surgery was scheduled for the next morning and I had told friends I needed a day to be left to my own devices--which meant no emails, no texts and no devices.) My response, “Just not all the way.”
Marc
I shared that email exchange with coworkers a year ago after Marc died suddenly. He’d had severe headaches for several days and died alone in his apartment, found by a coworker who checked in on him. I do not know the official cause of death, but it had every sign of a burst brain aneurysm. The most significant symptom: a severe headache.
At a memorial luncheon for Marc, I was one of several speakers who offered remembrances.
I talked about the “Go with God” email. I also told people that Marc and I were good friends for more than 10 years, but we only met one another in person once. (Network TV news can be like that--now more than ever. You work with people “side-by-side” and yet from different cities and bureaus, on the road, on location and on your devices.) That one time I met Marc, I’d been working the overnights for almost 10 years and was burning out. My bosses sent me to the bureaus to give me a break and meet some of the people with whom I worked overnight after overnight.
For Marc and me, the real-life connection was just as real as the virtual. Again, we were of a certain age and disposition with an appreciation for history and looking back at how we’d gotten from there to here. We talked about our careers and the people with whom we had worked. When I told Marc that I had worked in local news in Philadelphia, he asked me if I had worked with a man named Ed. Ed and Marc had gone to graduate school together and it turned out that Ed had actually hired me. Marc and I traded stories and memories about Ed. I emailed Ed and asked him, “Do you remember Marc?” His one-word response, “Vividly.”
Memories with Marc were always vivid.
Memory is a strange and magical thing. Out of the blue on Easter night (it was just last week, but it feels like a month ago), I got a text message from Kimo, another former coworker.
Blast from the past. Hoping you, your family and loved ones are safe and hanging in there with the new frontier.
Months ago--before coronavirus and stay-at-home orders--I’d reconnected with Kimo, a videographer I’d worked with during the ‘80s and ‘90s back at local TV in Philadelphia. In January, I organized a reunion for old-timers from that TV station at a Phillies game in June. (Of course, the reunion is now on hold. See Quiz #15, Old Dogs, March 15, 2020.) I’d sent out email blasts and Facebook posts to get the word out about the reunion. Someone told Kimo and Kimo connected with me. An in-the-moment guy, Kimo told me no Facebook, no email, just text messages.
So, on Easter, after trading texts on how both of us (and our people) were doing, I sent Kimo a few photos I had of him from the one work trip we took together to cover the Philadelphia Flyers in the Stanley Cup finals in Edmonton in 1987.
Kimo, 1987
Edmonton, 1987
In a series of staccato texts, we careened down memory lane, 23 years disappearing in 10 minutes. I remembered Kimo sticking up for Dave, the editor on the trip. Dave was a little person and some of us had to share hotel rooms. Kimo insisted that Dave get a single room in case he had special needs. Kimo texted me how Don, the sports anchor, bought beer from the hotel for the crew at the game.
6 beer maximum for every sandwich ordered with room service. 4 BLT’s and 24 beers. Gotta love those Canadians. Put them in a Styrofoam cooler. Dave used it for a seat in the arena. Cooler broke and the beers went rolling down the floor. Once again, the crazy Americans had arrived.
Kimo remembered that I'd needed to leave that trip early to settle on buying a house. We texted about softball games in Fairmount Park. The time one of the on-air reporters had gotten kicked out of not just the game but the park for arguing with an umpire. The time a clueless coworker had run from 1st to 3rd, telling us all afterward that he thought no one would notice because there was a play at the plate.
Kimo texted he was looking for Mr. Peabody and a WABAC time machine. (Check the link. It’s worth the trip.) Kimo said he’d use it to go back to the park, softball and beer with coworkers. He thanked me for the texts, calling them “a golden jukebox.” Again, It was over in minutes, truly a blast from the past.
Memories are like songs from a jukebox. They take you back in an instant, and yet sometimes you can hear an old song in a whole new way.
In Quiz # 30. “Slugger” on April 16th, I told the story of how my father had come to call me “Slugger.” He’d actually gotten the nickname from Steve, the coach of Lewis Oil, my first Little League team. Coach Steve, had called me “Slugger” after I hit a seeing-eye home run--my lone accomplishment for Lewis Oil. My father never forgot that and called me “Slugger” my whole life.
My sister Ginny phoned me after reading that quiz. (She began with a conversation that would make any news executive smile. She wanted me to know what parts of our conversation could not be used in the quiz (“off the record” as it’s called in news), what parts could be used but not as coming from her (“not for attribution”) and which parts could be used with her name attached to it (“on the record,” the gold standard of news.) Ginny told me this story on the record.) She’d never known that my father had gotten “Slugger” from Coach Steve and Lewis Oil. She always thought it was a general term of endearment for little boys and told me she had even called her son David, “Slugger.”
Not an hour later, David texted to let me know that he too had read the “Slugger” quiz. Did I know that his mother had called him that? I called him and told him that I’d never known that until I’d heard it from Ginny not an hour earlier. David said, growing up, he had thought his mother called him “Slugger” because it was a common term--until he realized that it was not. No other parent called their boy “Slugger.” By memory and magic, Lewis Oil and my father lived on into the next generation.
For the older among us, I think the jukebox memories of old stories are about connection, comfort and curiosity.
Connecting to people at a time when death seems all around us.
Comfort from that connection with people still here--even as we remember those who are not.
Curiosity about what it all means--how did we get from there to here.
In Quiz #30. “Slugger,” I also wrote about how people of my generation are now posting old high school photos on Facebook as a sign of support members of the Class of 2020 who will not be able to celebrate a normal graduation. I have not done that because I don’t see how my posting old pictures of me in high school supports kids in high school today. Teenagers today live in the moment--not memories---and it’s not a good moment in time. We can only wonder how they will look back on the pandemic--and how it will impact them.
Their future is uncertain--and so is ours. How will all this end? Can we even imagine an end--and how we will get from here to there? Reopen the economy? Walk into a crowded store? Watch a baseball game with old friends in a jam-packed stadium? The future seems unmoored and out of reach. A distant land so far away we cannot see the way. It’s no wonder we’re living in the past.
I began this quiz with the story of my friend Marc. I miss him and as I contemplate this deadly pandemic, there’s a song that plays in my head. It’s “Only You Know How,” written by Terre Roche of The Roches from their album, Moonswept. It’s about making sense of another national nightmare, 9/11.
Did you ever ask yourself, how did we get here?
Floating on a sea of sorrow, nothing else is clear
Nothing else is clear
And you might be a puppy dog, you might be a cow
Only love can save you and only you know how
Did you ever take a walk to the edge of town?
Back before the airplanes came and took the buildings down
Took the buildings down
When this life is over, then it will be now
Only love can save you and only you know how
Will you accept an apology from the bottom of my heart
And will you send me a letter from the bottom
Of your deep blue sea
What did NOT happen?
A. I am old enough to actually remember jukeboxes. They had one inside the eat-in counter at a drugstore in the town where I grew up. Play the song, “Everyday People” by Sly and the Family Stone and I am back in that drugstore with my childhood friends, Dickie and Tommy;
B. The song “Ob la di, Ob-la-da” always brings me back to a Christmas party with my cousins. I think it was the first time I really paid attention to the Beatles.
C. I got my first record album from my sister Ginny and brother-in-law Larry. It was Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Down on the Corner.” Just the opening beats take me back;
D. In college, I had a record player and you could play an album over and over, the arm coming to the end of the songs and the center of the disk, only to return to the outer rings to start playing the album over--again and again. I pulled an all-nighter once and the album I remember playing Bruce Springsteen’s “Greetings from Asbury Park” and the opening guitar riff from “Blinded by the Light;”
E. In college, I loved Jackson Browne. Decades later, I knew I had a connection with my work friend Ryan (20 years my junior), when we traded lyrics back and forth from “The Late Show. “But when you know that you've got a real friend somewhere, Suddenly all the others are so much easier to bear.”
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Want more?
Here’s the next quiz in the series: Quiz #33. The Pledge.
Here’s the next quiz in the series: Quiz #31. “It looks weird.”
Here’s the first quiz in the series: Quiz #1. Stella and Social Distancing, March 13, 2020
The quiz is explained here: Steve’s Stay-at-Home Coronavirus Quiz.
Here is an archive of all the quizzes.
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