MTT is dead

I don’t know why I should write a memorial to MTT. Many others are doing it better than I ever could. I did know the man. I worked with him. We were colleagues, I suppose, although I’m not sure he would have seen it that way. I was part of his support system which he seemed to view as his natural right to have.

I told Sepi his death reminded me of Dad’s in that he had been ill for a long time. More importantly, both men had not really been themselves for a long time. I was surprised to find out that I had written of MTT just one year ago. Here is the link.

He was amazing, no doubt. Anyone reading this who wants more of my views on MTT should go to the Tag Cloud and look for MTT.

I haven’t written anything here for a long time. I’m a little miffed that he has broken the dam, so to speak, instead of others more worthy. Well, I’ll try to do better. He’s in a happier place. I’m getting to a happier place.

Mom

Mom became a mother over 70 years ago on this day. She was 22 years old, living more than 2000 miles from her family in Ohio. There was family support from Dad’s side. One of his aunts came to stay with them for a couple of weeks after I was born to help out. Yes, it’s my birthday! Mom gave me a birthday card yesterday and wrote ‘To my first-born son’ on it. It’s an appellation I carry with pride.

Mom had had some ideas of a career, but she quit college to marry my father and follow him wherever he went. I don’t think it was ever an issue that she might be the one to lead. It was the tenor of the times. The real women’s movement didn’t get rolling for another 15 years.

Mom’s leadership has been more subtle. She did her duty and took care of 6 children while my father went off to work every day. But when I look at my values and where they came from, I find that many things I do now align closely with what I now see is her approach to life. Not to minimize Dad. But I’ve done several appreciations of him in this blog (here, here, and here) and not one of Mom.

So, I want to appreciate Mom. She pays attention to her surroundings and takes action based on what she sees. She doesn’t wait for a crisis to develop, she heads it off. It’s a trait that I’ve noticed in myself that has stood me in particularly good stead in a professional environment and it came from her.

I don’t remember asking her, but I think it’s likely that she learned to sew as a young child. She was a child of the Depression. Her family wasn’t poor, but they weren’t rich by any stretch. I’m sure she wore lots of hand-me-downs from her older sister. She didn’t have her own bedroom until she was in high school.

As I was growing up, I took for granted that she made all kinds of things from cloth: dresses, shirts, aprons, napkins, blankets, you name it! It wasn’t high style, but it was functional. And I don’t believe any of us were embarrassed to wear the clothes she made. I remember going to the store and looking through Simplicity patterns with her. That was her wheelhouse.

I think it was some time in the ’70s that she got a high end sewing machine that could do lots of fancy stitches and the like. Before that, it was just her trusty SInger.

She hasn’t done much sewing in the last decade or so. Nevertheless, her sewing room is still fully outfitted and ready to go. I’m sure it gets used regularly, but only for small projects and repairs now. I sneaked in there yesterday and took this picture:

The wall storage, work surfaces and shelves were all built by Dad to her specifications.

When Sepi and I meet people and we talk about our families, we are always proud to talk about Mom. How she’s in her 90s and in good health, and how independent she is. Come to think of it, we don’t say much about her sewing. Maybe it’s too subtle.

Thanks, Mom, for all the subtlety. You’ve been a quiet leader my whole life and I appreciate it!

Dad the list maker

I only have one photo to support my thesis, but I’m going ahead anyway. Here’s the photo:

This is a view of the interior of the furnace closet. All the notations are in Dad’s writing documenting the dates on which he had changed the furnace filter.

He had installed a water softener not long after we moved to the Santa Clara house. The water softener uses salt pellets which periodically have to be added to a barrel in the garage. That system has been replaced at least once in the 60+ years and the one now in use is 15 or 20 years old. The lid of the salt barrel is filled with similar notations of when he had added salt pellets. It’s even more dramatic looking than the furnace closet.

In Mom’s car at this very moment, I am sure – without looking, I’m at home as I write this – there is a little book with notations showing every gasoline purchase since the car was new. She has faithfully carried on this tradition of Dad’s for years now. I’m not as sure that she is keeping the service records there as Dad did.

For many years, I carried on this tradition in my own vehicles as well. I finally realized that there was no benefit to me so I stopped. I can look at credit card records if I have to although I can’t use them to calculate mileage, as he did. I am guilty of occasionally putting dates on things that I use: ibuprofen, laundry detergent, potato chips, toothpaste, for example, so that I can gauge how long they actually last. Perhaps that was Dad’s motivation. I prefer to think that he was a scientist to the bone and always wanted to work from a position of factual knowledge.

To be fair, I never saw dates written on any perishables at our house growing up. Perhaps, with 6 kids, things got used up so fast it didn’t matter.

1975

50 years ago . . . January 1975. I had just turned 21 the previous November.

I was living in the house on Bollinger with Tom, Bill and Nick. We had band gear set up in what would normally have been the dining room. None of us (evidently) knew anything about cleaning house so the place was filthy. Dirty dishes would stack up in the kitchen until someone – usually Nick – would crack and clean them up. Did we have a vacuum cleaner? Don’t remember.

Tom had brought his two cats over from his apartment in Sunnyvale but was concerned that they would run away so he kept them locked in the garage where they slowly went crazy. I only went out there a couple of times, but I remember seeing the exposed studs of the garage walls badly scratched all around up to a height of about 4 feet. I don’t know why we didn’t even let them in the house. Maybe we weren’t supposed to have pets.

I was in my third year at DeAnza. I had finished the requirements for a Music degree except for the Gen Ed stuff but stayed on the extra year so I could play bass in the #1 band. No question, that was a great experience. I had exited my old band, April, with Tom and Nick, in order to concentrate on jazz. They had reincarnated it with some new players and called it Dry Creek.

I don’t remember if Tim I and me had started Higher Ground yet. I was doing student setup work at Flint Center for a pittance. I had pretty much tapped out the classes available in the Theatre department so my only contact with them was when they came into Flint.

The four of us had moved into the Bollinger house a year earlier on a 14 month lease. The owner didn’t want to have to deal with finding tenants during the holidays again so he added two months to the standard 12. I wasn’t making enough money to continue and I’m pretty sure the owner wanted us out of there. (I’ve driven by that house recently and it looks just the same only rattier. I don’t think it has even been painted in all that time.)

There was drug use there. Mostly weed, but I remember seeing cocaine at least once. I never got into that and I was moving away from smoking already. Drinking. It was while I was living at that house that Tom’s mother got remarried and I got completely wasted on cheap champagne. I can still remember the spectacular hangover the next day.

It was probably around this time that I went to Dad and asked him if I could move back home. He said that was fine. It was a big deal for me because I was determined to be independent even though I really wasn’t. In hindsight, it is interesting that I went to Dad only. I think I even drove up to Menlo Park to talk to him at his office just so it would be him only. Maybe I was embarrassed to show up at his house and have to ask in front of everybody. I’m pretty sure I had stayed away as much as possible during the 1974 year. Mr Independent!

For income, besides working at Flint, I was playing music gigs on bass. I was in a quartet with some people (Susie, Greg and Tony) from the DeAnza band, We mostly did standards from fake books although I remember Susie wanting to branch out to more pop stuff. We didn’t really have a singer so that didn’t go very far. I was raw and learning fast but the others were good jazz players. I’m pretty sure I was the oldest. I also played in a big band run by a guy named Joe Doll. We did swing tunes from the 40s and some newer pop things (‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon’) for older audiences. I may or may not have date books from those years . . . (not looking now).

. . .

OK, I did some research. I did have Higher Ground so there was a little income from that as well. I think it wasn’t until later in the year that I started playing in the evening jazz band at DeAnza (technically it was a Music Department class). There was no money in that but another great experience. They called it the Daddy-o’s because most of the members were older and very experienced. Bass players were in short supply in those days! The Daddy-o’s were led by a pianist named Bob Russell.

With the death of Jimmy Carter recently, Sepi and I have talked a lot about the politics of those years. I’m sure I was aware of those things but it wasn’t important to me. Tom and I, in particular, were big Giants fans and we went to some games. How clueless we were going to a game in Candlestick at night in clothes we had worn that day in the South Bay! For those who don’t know, Candlestick was famously cold at night. Shorts and a light jacket didn’t cut it but we just didn’t think about it. We were in our little cocoon.

Later in the year I got a job at a department store called Mervyn’s working the stock room. I was able to move out again, this time to a room in a small house with Peter I in Mountain View. That’s a story for another day.

Cognitive test

I don’t remember where I heard the story. I think it was about the time that I had to witness Dad go through a cognitive test. I think it was about two years before he died. Mom had been saying for a while that he was ‘losing it.’ and all of us kids didn’t believe it.

Watching the test made me a believer but it was heartbreaking. In hindsight, that could be considered his day of death for me. He was clearly no longer the man he was.

Anyway, I think the story is kind of funny. It couldn’t have been Dad, though. It’s not his style. He took the test seriously and tried his hardest to answer the questions correctly. Interestingly from this remove, I don’t remember any discussions with him about his condition. Of course there was nothing to be done but work around it.

So, the story goes that a man was being given a cognitive test. The tester asked questions like how how much time is there between 1:45 and 3:30 and the responder was clearly having trouble. Then the tester asked, ‘Who is the President?’ and the man responded quickly:

‘That asshole!’

Dad’s house

When I was a teenager, I was highly annoyed (to say the least) at the arc of my father’s life. He went to college, found a girl, graduated, got a job, got married, had kids, bought a house and . . . lived happily ever after. He was completely devoted to my Mom. Any arguments they may have had were hidden from us kids. He retired from a job he held for over 40 years. Finally, he died in the same house he had bought over 60 years earlier.

Perhaps I’ll address those feelings here someday. Today I want to talk about his house that he bought in 1958, that he raised 6 kids in and that my mother still lives in.

Because she still lives there, I have the privilege of going back to this house of my early years and viewing it with a different perspective. It’s different in many ways. There was the major addition in 1965, which I lived through. There was the reconfiguration of what was originally a ‘den’ and later my bedroom into a ‘sun room’ that is now the location for all large family dinners. Outside, it’s even more different. I think there is one tree left that was extant when I was a youngster.

So, what am I getting at? I was out in the back yard yesterday and went into the little shed on the back corner of the house. Dad built that shed. We were looking at the dripper system that is all over the back. Dad laid that out and it is still functioning reasonably well. On the edge of the deck opposite where most of the plants are is a hose bib. Dad plumbed it in copper pipe. The concrete walk on the side of the house was poured by Dad. I remember him reading about how to do exposed aggregate and trying it on that walk. It didn’t work out so well but the walk is still there and hasn’t fallen apart.

In the garage, there are screws, nails, hooks, shelf brackets, and other useful hardware, all sorted into boxes and neatly labeled. His toolbox is filled with inexpensive tools that were good enough for him. I made a living using tools, so I look at these sometimes and sigh if I have to use one. I can get the job done with them, though.

The cabinets and shelves in the garage were all built by him, as were many of the cabinets and shelves in the bedrooms and ‘family room’ (now known as the office). The construction isn’t fancy, but it has held up. We got a contractor for the major addition I referred to, but Dad drew up the architectural drawings.

Those who are gone live on in our memories. My memories of Dad are many, but being at his house and seeing his work is a different kind of memory. If I wanted to, I could show any of those things to another person and say, ‘My Dad did that!’ and it would tell them the kind of person Dad was, even if they had never met him.

That’s pretty cool!

Birthdays of dead people

Dad would have been 92 yesterday. I marked the day but didn’t think of making a post about it until too late in the day. His loss has receded into the general noise of the past.

I suppose it happens to everyone. It happened with Zach, too. The date of Zach’s death passed me by completely this year. I literally didn’t think about it at all until a day or two later. That’s a first. I did have an idea for a post on Zach’s birthday but the day slipped away from me. He would’ve been 33.

With Dad, I’ve been better able to recall the earlier times when he was his real, dynamic self. The last two years of his decline are what we have (mostly) forgotten.

The other day, Mom had me get out a walker that had been purchased for him. She wants to have it nearby for herself now. It led to some talk about Dad’s last days but in a fairly dispassionate tone. Maybe elegiac or wistful might describe it better. We talked about her and Mary getting him to Christmas Mass in the rain. It turned out to be his last time out.

Mom had told me she got emotional on Zach’s death date this year but the thought of Dad’s passing doesn’t have the raw emotion attached to it. His death date is coming up in about three weeks, tho’ . . .

I’m glad I’ve been able to change my focus to birthdays rather than death days. It’s part of looking forward, I believe.

So, Happy Birthday Dad and Zach! I miss you but I am working on bringing my memories of you to bear in a positive way.

styptic pencil

Mom had given me Dad’s overnight kit several months ago. At the time, I was getting ready for my Europe trip and thought I might use it instead of the one I had already. It languished in a corner until the other day, when I finally took it out and looked through it.

Pretty much everything in there was unusable but it did give me a glimpse into Dad’s way of thinking. There were 35 mm film canisters with various pills (all OTC, cough drops and pain relievers, no prescriptions). A couple of razors, one electric shaver and one safety blade type. No shaving cream and no Old Spice. Band Aids. A little sewing kit. A shoehorn. And a styptic pencil.

I knew what it was as soon as I saw it but I couldn’t believe that he still had one. More amazingly, I think it was the same one that he used with me when I was learning to shave! There were a lot of cuts in those early days.

Alum Sulphate, it says. Since, after 50 years, I thought I might have mis-remembered it, I did an Internet search and found that not only did I remember it right, they are still available! Wow! I don’t know if I’ll have the courage to actually use it, but I’ll keep it around for a while and see.

Dear old Dad!

community

I don’t have a plan today. I have time to write. Lots of it, although I did say I wanted to get out and take a walk before the rain starts. It’s cloudy and blustery right now, but patches of blue are still showing through.

Teresa’s birthday is tomorrow. Jane has set up a Zoom meeting for all of us to join virtually to celebrate. I gather Zoom is an app like Skype but oriented more around groups.

So I am thinking about community. Sepi and I are spending a lot of time on FaceBook. Why? Because we crave community. I believe it is hard wired into the human animal. That is why slowing the spread of this disease is so difficult.

In my case, my course of action was pretty straightforward. First it was no groups of 1000, then 500, then 100, then 10. Now in Germany, no groups of more than 2 – 2 people! – are allowed to gather in public. The Symphony at one point was going to do a radio broadcast of a concert with no audience but then the number was changed down to 100. It takes 10 or 15 people to put the orchestra on stage and the band is about 100 so . . . no radio broadcast. In fact, no nothing. We’ve all been sent home.

My craft, my industry is dead in the water because the whole thing is predicated on people gathering. It seemed to simple and foolproof only a few weeks ago.

Maybe at some point, concerts will be redefined as essential services and allowed to go on. Although as my friend Kim said in another context a couple of years ago, ‘Without your health, you have nothing. Nothing!’ We were talking about someone who was wealthy but got sick and died. Now there is a politician in Texas suggesting that old people should allow themselves to die so the economy can do better. As someone commented on FB, how is it that so many psychopaths have gotten themselves in positions of power?

When I put in the tag for community, I thought surely I had used it before. It’s a word that Dad used a lot and I thought I had written about it. He consistently referred to the Sunday Church service that he and Mom went to as the ’10 am community’.

I remember years ago when we used to have Mass in odd places like the lawn at Maryknoll, Dad would bring up Jesus’ comment that ‘whenever two or more are gathered in my name, there I am.’ His point was that it didn’t have to be a dedicated structure to find the presence of God.

But it does have to be a human gathering, and that is in short supply right now.

In the US Congress, there are rules in place requiring physical presence in the chamber for voting. There is talk now about relaxing those rules. However that plays out, despite Zoom and Skype and Teams whatever other software is out there for getting people together, humans will always need to gather. Community is too important to leave to the machines.

Dad’s hangers

I guess it was about a month ago that Mom invited me back to her and Dad’s bedroom to pick out what shirts I wanted from his closet. We wore the same size.

They’ve been coming up in the rotation for the last week or so and I noticed that the hangers they were on were built like tanks. Nowadays if you take your clothes to the cleaners, they come back on wire hangers inside their plastic bags. It wasn’t until I felt Dad’s hangers that I realized how much these simple little things have changed.

No picture, because they look exactly the same. Well, not exactly, because Dad’s old hangers have some kind of black coating on them. The newer ones are a brass metal color and can be bent rather easily. Dad’s black ones weigh about 50% more and are much tougher.

Someone probably did a study and found that clothes hangers didn’t need to be so strong. Kind of like modern cars compared to cars from the ’50s and ’60s. My Corolla has dents that my old 1964 Valiant would laugh at.

At our house we are using mostly the new plastic hangers. I like how they give the shirts a little more area to sit on. I’m going to keep Dad’s real steel hangers, though. Like the shirts themselves, they are a reminder of him.

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