Month: May 2021

Celebration Time: Beatles Sing Along July 25 Rain or Shine

Coming out of the Covid pandemic shutdown has spawned all manner of articles on “social re-entry”.  Lunch with one or two friends is my recipe for social re-entry. More than that and I’ll need a lesson in the art of conversation.  

The neighborhood social network, NextDoor provides a stepping stone to establishing rapport through small talk. Yes, it’s still online, but I feel connected to my neighbors when they seek suggestions for a handyman or ask which restaurants are serving outside. It’s good practice in case I’m ever in a large gathering again like a party or a church function. I could tell the neighborhood started opening up when NextDoor’s online regulars moved from grumbling about gunshots in the middle of the night to complaining about bad grocery stores:

“I’ve had multiple bad experiences purchasing groceries from this store. Most recently, I purchased sour cream that already had mold in it right when I opened it.”

One post sought a “Depression Buddies” walk-and-talk group for those just starting to venture out. Though I love the idea, I didn’t join because well, I’m hoping my lingering pandemic depression will dissipate as I continue to move past the whispers guarding my door.

For years, a hundred neighbors have gathered at the end of July for a free Beatles Sing Along at a park in Chicago. We all think of it as the best event of the summer. Last year we voluntarily shut ourselves down since no one was gathering indoors or out, least of all singers spewing viral loads in speaking words of wisdom, let it be. 

Knowing there are many still hesitant to group and sing together, I asked my neighbors on NextDoor:  “We’re considering holding our yearly Beatles Sing Along on the steps of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sunday, July 25 at 5:00. Do you see any problems with this? Would anything keep you from attending?” Within a week, ninety yet-to-be-mets responded yes with heart emojis and fifty commented with exclamations like, ‘I’ve lived here for 30 years, how come I’ve never heard about this?”

The best comment: “What would keep me away? A hurricane maybe. Maybe.”

Meanwhile, Amada Senior Care Chicago offered to bring water, handheld fans and visors. Some have asked if they can bring extra folding chairs for those who can’t manage the steps. Yes neighbors! The MCA is jumpin’ to have such a fun midsummer event.

And so are we.

Join us if you’re in Chicago. We’ll give you a songbook of twenty-two Beatles tunes and one exhilarating hour to practice social re-entering, with no expectation of small talk. Bring your good voice, bad voice, in-between voice, marimbas, tambourines, kazoos, guitars, fiddles, horns, castanets, howling dogs — any instrument or noisemaker that suits you. Can’t sing? We’ll sing to you. Come for fun. Take photos. Dosey-Do. Give Peace a Chance. Let it be.

Hats off to the father and son duo of Curt and Chris Powell, our talented choir leaders, who will entertain us with their own set, as we wind down from our Beatles Sing Along.

Start Practicing!

Marlboro Woman

Agnes smoked Marlboros. I can’t separate the ubiquitous red and white box from any memory of my mother. Her hands were never far from that flip-top pack. Like shrimp between two chopsticks, a cigarette dangling casually between the joints of two fingers is a practiced dexterity, one she learned long before I was born.

The broad flatback of her hands extending from wide wrists guided her muscled fingers. They looked like they worked hard and long. But they didn’t. Her young hands held rackets, bridles, hair brushes and probably cigarettes. Her maternal hands chopped, sliced and scrubbed until motherhood bored her.

Freckles splattered over raised veins tunnelling through the back of her hands. When the freckles blended together into “liver spots”, I was ashamed, embarassed. Later on, those liver spots scared me, until I learned prolonged beach time was the cause, not alcohol or tobacco-related diseases. 

To paint her nails, Agnes would sit in her arm chair next to the mahogany table, a cold beer on a coaster and a cigarette in a flowery ceramic ashtray. She never smudged them, never blotched her cuticles, never spilled the polish, never needed to mop up after herself.  She’d unscrew the top of Revlon’s Fire and Ice and pull out the dark-bristled brush coated in toxic red lacquer. With one hand flattened on the table, and the other one holding the grooved white plastic top, she’d drag the brush along the lip of the bottle to get the exact amount of polish. Pulling the brush from the bottom of the nail to the top in perfect form, nail after nail, she’d quietly finish the job, then blow on the tips of her fingers to dry them. She was never hurried, but finished before the cigarette was burned to the halfway mark. Lifting the cigarette to her lips without smudging her half-dried nails, she’d take a long rewarding drag.

At the mirror, she’d further glamorize her ensemble with matching lipstick. Gripping a short, thin-handled lipstick brush in her right hand, she’d cradle the unopened lipstick in her left, slide the top up with her left fingers, and let the top drop into the crook where the palm meets the thumb. Holding both parts steady, she’d flick the curved tapered bristles of the brush back and forth on the creamy substance with her right fingers. She’d outline the edges of her top and bottom lips, then brush the bare flesh inside the lip lines with vertical strokes. After blotting her freshly-colored lips with a folded Kleenex, she’d lift a lit Marlboro from the ashtray and gently mouth the filter tip.

In the 1960s Philip Morris secretly started using chemicals in Marlboros to free base the nicotine and increase its addictiveness. Smokers said the cigarettes calmed their nerves. By the 1970s Marlboros were the best-selling cigarette in the world.

My mother carried a small leather purse until the day she died. The only contents: lipsticks and Marlboros.

May Day

For a few years my son and I lived with his stepfather at the confluence of New Jersey’s freshwater Toms River and brackish Barnegat Bay. The east-west river begins in the swamps of the Pine Barrens, widens and swells as it picks up smaller estuaries on its way east. Just ten degrees north of the subtropical Horse Latitudes, the Toms River is beloved by sailors, especially during summer’s prevailing southerlies.  

Our sandy backyard bulkheaded the rich brine nourshing vibrant sea creatures that, in turn, fed the migratory bird colonies.

We lived for the water.

The used Sunfish we purchased for fifty dollars came with a booklet on ‘how to sail’. With a crab claw sail and simple two line rigging, the thirty pound polystyrene Sunfish distinguished itself as a perfect learner’s boat. A 1971 ad in Boating magazine called the Sunfish the “Volkswagen of sailboats.” I called it a styrofoam bathtub.

1973 Budweiser ad

I practiced my new book-learned sailing skills, 100 feet offshore, moored to the bulkhead with a double braided dockline. On our first untethered day at sea, six-year old Joe, who’d studied the how-to manual, rigged the sails. We lulled away the dead calm until Joe spotted our German Shepherd swimming our way. As she approached the boat, I pointed toward shore and asserted “go home”. Which of course she did. She was, after all, a German Shepherd.

The next time Joe and I unmoored, we made it to the middle of the wide river before the dog got to us. We were too far out for her to swim back so we hauled her aboard and headed to shore. The only solution was to tuck the faithful dog away in a bedroom before heading out to sail. 

One breezy afternoon, we took turns at the tiller, successfully jibing and tacking as the wind took us west. But then we tacked to come back east. The sweet southerlies that had funneled us upriver suddenly turned on us like a mad dog turning on its master. The rogue wind bared its teeth. We were trapped. Thunderclouds whipped up the tide. The sail luffed out of control.

The boat, too light for wind-churned waters, threw us around like a sea monster. I reassured Joe we were safe since we were both good swimmers. 

“We can’t leave the boat,” pleaded Joe.

“We won’t!” I assured him. But truth is, he’d seen the thought to abandon the boat cross my worried brow. I could swim with one arm around Joe’s chest but I couldn’t pull the Sunfish with the other.

Private docks, woods and marinas dotted the riverfront. No beaches. I spotted a sliver of sand and rowed furiously. We pulled the boat up, tied it to a tree and ran to the door of a stranger who drove us home. The next day the Coast Guard towed our Sunfish home. 

“No markings on this thing,” the officer said. “You should name her ‘May Day’.”

And we would have.

If we’d ever sailed again.