My wife and I are on vacation in Budapest right now.  We are visiting my brother, who lives here, and will be looking for our own home as we are considering retiring here.  I know you may be saying, “Budapest?”, “Where the hell is Budapest?”  Well, they used to say that about my home town as well, in fact you could buy a t-shirt at the airport that said, “Where the Hell is Yakima?”  I never owned one, I knew where the hell Yakima was…

To say that baseball in the former Eastern bloc is developing would be a compliment.

As I was looking for things to do while we are here for a month I did a Google, well Yahoo, Google is way too sophisticated for me, search ‘Baseball in Budapest’.  I was pleasantly surprised when I found a site for The Euro Interleague Baseball…association?  It is a league made up of fifteen teams from Hungary, Croatia and Serbia.  And they play baseball.  In this land of music and goulash, where Nazis and Soviets have tried to break a people, unsuccessfully, they play baseball

The local team is The Reds.  They play at a field near the Ferenc Liszt International Airport.  Ferenc Liszt was a famous composer, who probably gets credited as more Austrian because of the various configurations of the country pre-World War I, post-World War II, under Soviet control etc.  I assure you he is from Hungary.

My brother had not heard of the Reds, or baseball in Budapest let alone The Euro Interleague Baseball…association?   But because he is always up for an adventure we decided to go.  He invited a local friend of his, Csaba, who is called Chubby, he agreed to go even though he knew nothing about baseball in his land of very bad soccer, and away we went in a taxi to the XVIII district in Budapest.  On the front end of a thirty-day trip to Budapest my ample butt was sitting in a bleacher that had three large steps waiting for the game to start and my first chance to do the wave.

The field is a bit pedestrian to American standards, surrounded by untrimmed bushes that provide double duty as the bathroom for the visiting team…and any spectators who need to go…and as great hiding places for foul balls that are retrieved…by players…because we must have a small budget for balls.  The balls salvaged from the bushes are returned to the field of play because…well we talked about the small budget for balls.  The players willingly dance into the hole, behind the untamed bush, beside the tree or wherever a ball happens to land.  The visiting team unwillingly does their dance trying to avoid having to relieve themselves in the very bushes that may hold the next foul ball.  Sometimes they can’t hold it.

I sent an e-mail to the address provided on the Reds Hungarian website and I got a response from a person named Denes Simonyi, who told me about Reds baseball.  We e-mailed back and forth a few times, me asking about purchasing game swag for friends, talking about American baseball and if he had ever been to a game in the US.  He said he had and asked my favorite team, which I have mentioned in a previous post, is the New York Yankees.  That of course peaked Denes’ curiosity given that I live on the West Coast of the US, but my favorite team is a team whose lore is tied up on the East Coast.  I mentioned to him that when I was a kid, a little kid developing an interest in baseball, there was only one team on the West Coast, the San Francisco Giants.  Yes, the Dodgers would follow but at the time the Giants were the only thing.  Well, that would never do.

One of the Yankees great pitchers during the late ‘50s and early 60s was Mel Stottlemyre, and he was from my hometown, you know, the where the hell is…. place.  He was a hometown hero and he, Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Tony Kubek, et.al became my heroes.  I’ve been a Yankees boy ever since.

Anyway, Denes and I bantered back and forth a few times and I asked him to make himself known when we were at the game and told him I would be wearing my twenty-year-old beat up Yankees hat.  Denes responded with an invitation to visit him in the dugout during the game.  At that point it dawned on me that Denes was not only the baseball ambassador to me, but he was also a player, so I looked him up and sure enough there he was, young guy, number 31 in your program…if they had programs.  Third base.  Awesome it was for me.

The players are a mixture of Hungarians and those from other countries.  I met Matt, who is from Canada.  I would have liked to ask him more about what brought him to play baseball in Hungary.  There is Carlos, who is from Mexico, shortstop and catcher.  Good hitter popped a dinger over the center field fence.  I would have enjoyed speaking to him as well, but Carlos is all business on game day.  Denes plays third base and he launched a home run as well, crack of the bat – goodbye baseball.  Denes had some good defensive plays as well.

The first person I met on that hot May day was the fellow who was calling the balls and strikes behind the plate.  He was from Cuba originally, and according to him he had played with one of the greatest Cuban pitchers to play the game, Orlando Hernandez – El Duque.  A prized Yankee pitcher during their run in the 90s.  We talked the game, he in broken English and Spanish, and me in Broken Spanish and English.  That minor in Spanish finally came in handy for something besides ordering food at La Carreta.

He of course, was curious about how a fat little dough ball from Vancouver Washington ended up on the hot field in Budapest Hungary to watch a Hungarian baseball team play a Serbian baseball team.  Baseball is where you find it I told him.  It’s baseball season and here I am.

I met Matt, who I instantly liked because he, like me is a Yankees fan.  We talked about a remarkable play Aaron Judge had completed the previous night, throwing out a runner at the plate from deep right field, on the fly.  Ball didn’t touch the ground.

I finally met Denes, who seemed a bit hurried, but as ambassador for baseball it was his job to make sure everything was going well.  Denes had some friends at the game, and he asked me if I would help them with the baseball strategies employed by both teams and explain some of the rules.  I loved doing that.  His friends, three fellows and two girls were young, and had never seen baseball.  It was like a foreign language to them, but they were polite and seemed to understand the explanations I provided.  We taught them the wave and yelling at the umpire for a missed called strike.  I wish I cared that much about soccer.

The game ended in a ten-run defeat by the Reds, in the bottom of the seventh inning.  By the way, no seventh inning stretch in this league, so no Harry Carey singing Take Me Out to the Ballgame.  No one-two-three strikes…  I’ll have to explain that sometime.

The Reds, overjoyed, gathered in the middle of the field and whooped it up and congratulated each other with high fives, yips and yells and I’m sure a good meal and a couple of bottles of palinka afterword.  For us it would have been burgers and brews.  The losing team dejected, gathered their equipment, made a final stop in the bushes before that long road trip home.  Such is baseball, a winner and a loser…no ties.

My wife, my brother, Chubby and myself scaled the field behind the bleachers to rendezvous with a taxi that would take us back to reality.

To say that baseball in the former Eastern bloc is developing would be a compliment.  There are many good high school teams who could beat the Reds four out of seven in a tournament.  An average college team could ten run them by the third inning, but here’s what you need to know.  They are passionate about their baseball.  They give it everything they have.  They are elated to win and disappointed when they lose.  Their passion for the game is like the passion for the game that every ten-year old has when they hit their first line drive over the shortstop’s head and round first headed for a double.  It’s infectious and the four of us visiting that day felt like we had been let in on a well-kept secret.

So here is my challenge to the people of Budapest.  Get to know your team.  Find that obscure patch of ground out near a tennis center in the 18^th district of Budapest.  Cheer for Denes, Oscar Matt and the rest of the Reds.  Love them, support them, learn the wave.  Your soccer is terrible anyway, so why not spend a lovely afternoon with men who love their sport, who enjoy each other and always put their best foot forward.  For those Reds who may read this missive, that is an American term meaning trying hard.

This Saturday is our last Saturday in Budapest before we make the long flight back home to beautiful Vancouver.  I miss my kids, I miss my dog, I really miss my bed.  I miss the smells around my home and the moderate weather.  This weekend I will assume the position on the top level of the bleachers at Reds stadium, I will do the wave, I will scream at the umpire, I will imagine that the Reds are my Yankees and I will watch the real boys of summer play the game they love.

 

Let me begin this tome by telling you I love baseball, unequivocally, my favorite sport.  I grew up in a town that was baseball crazy.  The weather was such that you could begin practice in Mid-February and you could play until November.  Not so much an always warm Southern California climate, but it was dry, and everyone knows you can’t play baseball in the rain.

I am a baseball fan, fanatic, eccentric. And a subset of that is my love for the Yankees. They have always been my team, will always be my team. I will follow them and listen to them when I can until I cannot hear anymore.

In my hometown, we had a short season A league team that at different times was a farm team of the Atlanta Braves, Chicago Cubs and the Kansas City Athletics.  As a small child I got to see Rico Cardy, Felix Millan and Billy Williams play.  I attended the camps the team put on for kids in the area.  I played pepper with Billy Williams and I played catch with my favorite Bear, their team name, Bob (Roberto) Aguilar.  I remember looking at his first baseman’s glove in awe with its ocean of leather and lack of defined fingers.  At the Bears games they played a bingo game and the first person to get a bingo won a prize.  It’s how I won my first transistor radio, in 1963 and I used it to, that’s right, listen to rock and roll…oh and The Bears.  I remember the radio announcer, Al Bell, who happened to be our neighbor and whose oldest child was my brother’s best friend, calling a home run; “It’s a long fly ball to deep center field, and that ball is…..”  You know the rest.  Al’s voice was deep and resonant with excitement and he loved his baseball too.  I still prefer to listen to baseball, and for that matter most sports on the radio.  We have an NBA team here in Portland, the Trail Blazers, and my typical pattern is to watch the first half on television and then run up to my office to listen to the second half on the radio.  There is no comparison to the tension created by a frenzied announcer and the nuances he or she creates to illustrate the events taking place on the court, diamond or field.  “Oooooh that was nasty” is one of Brian Wheeler’s favorite sayings along with “You had to see that to believe it.”, and “It’s a great day to be a Blazer.”  Before him there was NBA Hall of Fame announcer, Bill Schonely.  He gave us “Bingo, Bango Bongo” when Terry Porter passed to Jerome Kersey who tossed the ball to Clyde Drexler who finished with a monstrous dunk.   And Schonely is the announcer who coined “Rip City”, the sound the ball makes as it strokes the net without striking the rim.

But this story is supposed to be about fandom, and as I stated in my first paragraph my favorite sport is baseball.  In the summer of 1962 when we moved into our new home I was five and would turn six in August.  Our neighbors to the north were and older couple without children.  Every child in the neighborhood was their child and because of their proximity and because we were new my brother and I were the chosen.  Duke, the husband, was a bartender at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in downtown Yakima.  It was the hotel visiting A League teams stayed at when they were in town to play the Bears.  Duke was a Yankees fan, and the reason he was a Yankees fan was because of a local boy made good, who was in the Yankees rotation, Mel Stottlemyre.  Mel was a 23-year-old farm kid, who played for a couple years in the minor leagues before the Yankees called him up, and pitched three games in the 1965 World Series against Bob Gibson, and from then on it was “pinstripes” for me.

I might point out at this time there were no Seattle Mariners to love, in fact there were only two teams on the west coast and both of those were originally from New York, the Giants in San Francisco and those stinking Dodgers in Los Angeles.  So for a little kid, with a love of baseball and no local, or for that matter regional team to root for, and with a local kid playing for the Yankees, well that was it.  I have had to explain many times to my friends who are millennials why I love the Yankees when the Mariners are our local team.  I just shrug my shoulders in my Majestic New York Yankees jacket and explain to them the Yankees have my heart, have always had my heart and will always have my heart.  If they protest I simply begin to list the names of players who I am familiar with but played before they were born or when they were too young to appreciate the sport.  Berra, Maris, Mantle, Ford, Murcer, Pepitone, and yes Mel Stottlemyre my hometown hero.  These men were all players who came up in the Yankees organization and played most if not all their baseball careers with the Yankees.  Yes, the Yankees have poached players from other teams, most notably Reggie Jackson, from the Oakland A’s and who, on a cold fall evening in 1977, turned three first pitches into three monstrous home runs and became Mr. October.

Another event that occurred in 1977 was Seattle’s acquisition of an expansion team, the Seattle Mariners.  A farmboy, former multiple 20 game winner and my baseball hero would be their first pitching coach.  Of course, from 1996 through 1999 he was the pitching coach for the Yankees as they claimed four consecutive World Series titles.  Yes, life goes on.  Over the years I have made hundreds of trips to Seattle to watch the Mariners and most of those trips have been to see the Yankees.  I saw A-Rod start his career in Seattle then finish with the Yankees.  In 2001 the Mariners tied the record for wins in a season, 116, and their manager was another of my all-time favorite Yankees, Lou Pinella.

I am a baseball fan, fanatic, eccentric.  And a subset of that is my love for the Yankees.  They have always been my team, will always be my team.  I will follow them and listen to them when I can until I cannot hear anymore.  I will continue to drive 165 miles to Seattle one weekend per year to see them play as long as I can, and when I can’t drive I’ll take the train or the bus.  I will, and I now have my right hand raised and my left on a Bible, hate the Red Sox and I will celebrate with glee when players like Roger Clemens, Johnny Damon and Jacoby Ellsbury leave the Red Sox for the promised land of Yankee Stadium.  And I will curse those, Johnny Damon, who return to Boston.

This year as I write this, the Yankees are in first place in the American League East division, baseballs strongest division year after year.  It is their rightful place, their ordained place and after this baseball year is over I will look forward to seeing Joe Girardi change is uniform number to 29, which will mean that they have won that 28^th World Series championship and are preparing for number 29.

As baseball patriarch Chico Esquala of the Chicago Cubs used to say, “Beisbol been berry berry good to me.”

I am not a person who believes in the power of the cosmos, karma, what goes around comes around, you know the drill.  In fact, when it comes to what comes around I think it may go around again, and again…working to fuck up my life, but as I pondered the new prompt and thought to myself, “I don’t really have anything to say about good money advice I’ve received”, but just when I though I didn’t, karma, or her more timely sister dharma dropped a conversation with a friend, well maybe ex-friend in my lap.  That’s how it is with this blog, or retrospective thing I guess.  Just when you thought you found a way out, you get pulled back in.  Salute to “The Godfather Part III”

Stop, drop and roll is what the tell you when you're in a fire, but what's the right thing to do when you're under fire by a long time friend who knows just a bit more about money than you...and isn't afraid to tell you! This happened today.

I work for a very big company, I won’t say what, but it is owned by a liberal lying bastard who happens to have bought a home in 1958 somewhere in Nebraska.  He owns a lot of shit.  And the people who run my company appear to be A) replicants of the greedy bastard, created in the basement of the Tyrell factory, or B) Midwestern gentlemen who have swallowed the Kool-Aid and are trying to shove that putrid concoction down my throat.  The old fucker gets on TV a lot and has some very big friends.  I think I’ve said enough.

Anyway, I’ve worked for this company for 38 years, and for the most part it’s been pretty good.  But I am of an age now where I’m ready to stop doing this, and my mindset has turned to and “I don’t really give a fuck what you say” attitude.  That’s the reason for joining this blog, besides the prompting of a good friend.  I have a book in mind, in fact several, but I rarely have the time to practice, so at this point in my life I am just making myself do it.

The other thing is an emergency surgery I had a month and a half ago.  I’ve been fat for the better part of my life.  I’ve been called names, I’ve called fat people names, but at this point I just laugh at them.  I had been having some painful events about every four or five months and on a fateful day in August I would end up in the ER where they would snatch my gall bladder and refuse to give it back.  I cajoled, begged and demanded that my fleshly goods be returned to me…in as good an order as possible, but no, it was not to be.  When I came to the surgeon, an affable fellow, but very dry, without much of a sense of humor laid on me that they had experienced a little more trouble with removing my gall bladder than they had expected.  You see, it seems the problem with my gall bladder wasn’t stones or some deterioration of the bladder itself.  My liver…had killed it.  I had been fat so long that it had troubled my liver, who in turn decided to take it out on my gall bladder.

Now, I am not a drinker, at least not on par with a lot of people I know.  I can’t even keep up with either of my daughters, nor do I dare challenge my nephew, who at 6’3” can put a fair amount of beer away…and anything else for that matter.  We drink a lot of beer out here in Portland.  Did you know that’s where I am, well if you read my first story I guess you do.  We drink a lot of beer because they make a lot of beer in Portland.  I love my microbrews.  I am not the typical microbrew drinker from Oregon, in fact I really don’t like IPAs.  Did the beer police hear that?  I hope not.  No, I like lagers, ambers and goldens.  They are less hoppy and don’t taste like ear wax.  One of my favorite I encourage you who read this to try is a beautiful golden called ESG from Terminal Gravity Brewery in Enterprise, Oregon, population 2,900 or so.  In the Northeastern corner of Oregon, at the headway to Hells Canyon and truly one of the most beautiful parts of our state.  No, I am not with the Wallowa County Chamber of Commerce, it is just that damn beautiful.  For those of your who have travelled our state and visited Cannon Beach, another beautiful village, think about the craftiness, shopiness, artiness plopped down in the middle of the Wallowa Mountains, where it typically begins snowing in September.

So, what the shit does this have to do with money, surgery or the blog?  Well, here goes.  My surgeon, Dr. Kim, told me that as of this minute, that minute for you time travelers, I was a tee totaler.  Being that I am not a big drinker, repeating myself, I can live with that.  I have an advanced case of cirrhosis of the liver, not from drinking….but from eating….too much.  If I didn’t commit to losing a good deal of weight my liver was toast, I probably wouldn’t get that back either, and I would need a transplant.  And if I ever want to get that book in a hard cover with forward by John Irving, I need to get my ass motivated.  So here I am.

I thought about the prompt for a couple days, it was sent out on Monday I believe.  I mulled over in my head some type of poetry, rhyme, maybe a rap, “Money ain’t funny, it can get you someplace sunny…”   Livin for the dollar, make you holler, la la la…..shit.  I had given up.  It wasn’t working.  What do I know about money, and what was the smartest advice I had ever received about it?

Well, it wasn’t from my dad, who was fuckin’ around on my mother so much he didn’t spend much time with my younger brother or I, I mean he said save it, but never really took the time to show us how to make it work…you know the kind of stuff that asshole in Nebraska puts in the newspapers and his books.

I get too bored listening to the Wall Street Journal report on PBS, and other than Liz Clayman’s massive boobs and beautiful read hair, I don’t really care about what she says.  Cramer?  Hell no.  Any of our local talking heads?  No.  Sam Waterstone….maybeeeeee no.

My wife and I contribute consistently and regularly to our 401K plans and we both have reasonable retirement programs, thankfully because the jackass from Nebraska has eliminated them for all new employees at my company.  401K only.

So I was out, gave up, threw in the towel, was not going to respond, until…at 5:00 this morning I got a text from a friend of mine, Mark, the business manager for a school district in a small city in Washington.

The conversation started by him telling me about a truck he is going to buy, to pull the 5^th wheel he lives in.  It will be his home during retirement, which as he reminded me is still 11 years away.  He told me his truck is going to cost $60,000 after tax.  Sales tax in Washington state is about 8.2%, so that’s a lot of truck.  I suggested maybe he could find a good used one, to which, he of a degree in finance from the University of Washington, and a degree in Accounting from Central Washington University, reminded me that it just didn’t “pencil” out.  A used truck would be more costly per mile than a brand new one.  I believe I may have used that same argument on my wife when I was considering a sports car or something.  Dollar per mile, I’ll remember that.

We, well he, started talking about retirement, his being 11 years away and he openly wondered when I would retire.  Mind you now, this is at 5:12 in the morning, and I am at work, working, needing to focus on my tasks.  My shift is 05:00 to 14:00 and I’m pretty conscientious about my work.  So his query about when I and my wife would retire was responded to with a “don’t know”

He then went on to text me how it takes eight years for a person to make up the years between 62 and 65 if you wait until 65 to retire, and that he is going to wait until his full retirement age at 66 years and 10 months because the men in his family tend to live to be 100.  He asks me what my full retirement age, and I tell him I don’t know, but that I am going to start taking my Social Security at 62.  What started then was a downhill course that ended up in me receiving the Best Money Advice I have ever received.  I told him that I planned to retire when I felt like it, which must have offended his live to 100 practicalities.  You see the men in my family are lucky to see 80, My uncle died at 75 and my dad was 79.  And I had just received a death sentence, barring me being able to do something that having a lovely wife, beautiful kids, a mesmerizing granddaughter had not inspired me to do. “Mark, when I feel like retiring, I will retire.”

A couple of back and forths about reducing my net take from Social Security, telling me I had to wait a few months after my 62^nd birthday, which is not true.  My one word responses, “No”, “No”, “NOOO damnit”  I reminded him, maybe not so delicately, that he was the one who told me Social Security wouldn’t even exist by the time we retired.  Thank God I’m 6 years older than him.  I thought to myself that he might not live to 100 if he didn’t shut the fuck up about my retirement and my income after such.

He must have picked up that tilt, because he told me, that he was just letting me know cause most people don’t realize what it means to retire at 62.  I thought I saw a puppy being run over by a steam roller.    The puppy might have had his face.

I responded for him to relax, he knows about my diagnosis, and the fact that I recently had a scan for adrenal cancer, which killed all the women in my family to this point.  My mother, my aunt and my grandmother.  I continued that If I die that the difference between 62 and 66 won’t matter a small fuck.  Speaking of the f-word, he responded with an FO Jeff.

He then proceeded to tell me he was going to block me and he would like me to block him as well.

Mark, I think you need counseling, I replied.

He then responded that he thought I needed counseling and then asked me to delete him again.

I responded in typical ME fashion, “I’ll decide”  And that was the end of that.

I leave you my faithful readers with this.  I had struggled with this topic, but after that fateful encounter I know I had my selection, which would practically write itself.  The absolute best money advice I have ever received, although I’m sure he didn’t realize it would be this, was to block my ex-friend, who had surely blocked me.  I can feel the Benjamins welling in my pocket as I write.  I wonder if I can be disciplined about this savings plan, and I wonder if the rule of 72’s applies?

Though it’s the middle of Football season and the warm evenings of summer have turned to the into the chilly mornings of fall I think fondly of the coming of basketball, my favorite sport, and of a boy, who became a man who thrilled all who saw him on the court.  Of course I’m talking about Pete Maravich, The Pistol, who’s skills with a basketball delighted and amazed millions of fans in our country and around the world.  His magic, and he was a magician, before Magic Johnson was Magic, stunned and delighted those who lived in a simpler time.

A fictionalized look at what may have happened in the life of a boy who loved basketball and loved music just as much.

But basketball was not the only skill that Pete Maravich claimed.  As few knew, and I count myself among those who did, Pete was also gifted as a musician, specifically a percussionist.  And as even fewer knew it was his love of percussion, not his love of basketball that gave him fulfillment in life.

Pete was my neighbor.  He lived about three houses north of mine, in Raleigh, North Carolina.  He moved to Raleigh when his father Petar became head basketball coach at North Carolina State University.  Pete was about fifteen or sixteen years old then.  Pete was an outgoing kid, but it was hard to get to know him.  Because he had moved so much in his formative years he was cautious and didn’t like too many attachments.  His dad spent hours away from home teaching and coaching, and Pete was left to quietly hang around the house with his four sisters.

We all liked Pete, and of course we were amazed at his prowess with a basketball, but one balmy summer evening we saw another side of Pete that instantly endured him to us forever.

Pete was a classmate and acquaintance of my brother Hyman.  I would use the word friends, but I have already explained why that isn’t a description I would use yet.

Hyman, Roger Nash, Nels Belavich and Clete Stevenson had a band, a real garage band.  They practiced in the garage every Thursday night and Saturday afternoon.  They weren’t good, not playing the high school dance good, but they made pleasant sounds occasionally.   Not the sounds that high school boys are often famous for, passing gas, popping the tab of a can of beer, or whistling at a passing coed.  They made the sounds of an off key A chord on their used Fender guitars or their borrowed Rickenbacker bass.  Clete had an old Fender Rhodes that used to belong to the church where is father was the music minister and when the church upgraded to a Roland, Clete bought the Fender.

It was a good time to have a garage band and there were scores of them across Raleigh.  Rock & Roll was a communication style as well as a particular type of music.  The Beatles, who had just broken up a couple years ago were popular, as were the individuals from the Beatles who were on their own.  The Stones, The Kinks, The Who, The Guess Who, all of these put their musical stamp on our lives and of course on my brother and his bandmates.  There were also the new bands, Led Zepplin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult.  Their sound was a lot harder and the vibration their music caused in our stomachs and our chests was enticing.

The missing segment in the group was a noticeable lack of drums.  Roger was the drummer, but Roger’s family was poor.  His father owned a garage on Petrie street, but has passed away a couple of winters previous after a grueling battle with cancer.  Roger would often have to miss practice because he was working part time at a local gas station.  The family needed the money and as the oldest in the family it fell to Roger to help support them.  Roger didn’t even question it.

When Roger was twelve his father bought him a beginners Pearl drum set.  It had a snare, a tom tom, a bass drum, a high hat and a couple of crash cymbals.  Roger had bought an old wooden office chair from the second hand furniture store in downtown Raleigh from which he commanded the drums.  Lots of banging and crashing, and every once in a while, a rambling flamadiddle followed by a paradiddle.  You know, cheddar to cheese, cheese to cheddar, that kind of thing.

One Wednesday night the band practiced without Roger, who as I mentioned previously was working late at the gas station.  Hyman had invited Pete Maravich to drop by to hang out, maybe listen to records and to listen to the band.  Roger’s drums, and all the other instruments stayed in our garage so the hassle of transportation wouldn’t be an issue.  The garage was our domain, our space and we owned it.  There were posters everywhere.  When practice was over we would turn off the incandescent lights and turn on the black light which illuminated the entire wall covered in black light posters.  There were political posters, peace signs, posters of musical groups.  We had even made some of our own posters paying homage to Grand Funk Railroad and Pink Floyd.  There was an old console hi-fi in the corner of the garage and an old couch and bean bags we sat on while we listened to our favorite records.

The band was about thirty minutes into practice, which meant they had played about five minutes of music, when Pete showed up.  He was dressed in a pair of Levi’s, a t-shirt and a vest with tassels around the edges, ala Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider, except Dennis Hopper’s tassels were on a really beautiful jacket.  Pete’s hair was down to his shoulders, as were those of my brother and his friends.  Mine too for that matter.  They were a motley group of all American high school boys and it was about to get serious.

It was frustrating for the band not to have someone playing the skins, as all the cool kids call the drums.  No drums, no beat. No cymbals, no emphasis, and if there was one thing about their music it was all about the emphasis.

Hyman asked Pete if he would sit in the old wooden office chair and hit the snare drum to help keep time.  He showed Pete how to count, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, tapping the taped up drum stick to the beat of the song.  Pete said he would try, he wasn’t too sure about this, but as he tap tap tapped on the snare and caught the sounds of the raspy spring he smiled, a closed mouth smile as kind of to say, hey that’s kind of cool.

Pete was an athlete of course, first and foremost, so the athletic side of the drum kit wasn’t threatening.  Once he had the tap tap tap down, and he understood it wouldn’t be embarrassing or painful he actually became pretty proficient…at the tap tap tap.  That first night ended listening to Pink Floyd’s Ummaguma album, and we all acted out “Careful with that Ax Eugene” screaming at the top or our lungs when Eugene hit whoever was telling him to be careful with that ax.    We fell down laughing

Pete became kind of a regular on Wednesdays and Saturdays, after basketball practice of course, and he would sit down at the drum kit and by now he was even using a second drum stick to add some crash cymbal and tapping on the pedal to the bass drum.  Sometimes he would add a little hi-hat too.  It was crude but Pete put his athlete’s training into it and while it wasn’t good, it fit with the skills of the other musicians.  Most of all we watched as Pete came out of his shell.  He shared his frustration with his father never being around, always traveling and his need to hang out with the guys.  His sisters were all great of course, most of us agreed with him about the Maravich sisters, particularly Hyman who married Gina Maravich a few years later.

Pete’s drumming was improving as were the skills of the rest of the band.  That was a good thing because Roger, a year and a half older than Hyman, had been drafted into the Marines.  He gave his drum set to the band, he really couldn’t take it with him, and besides, there was not much drumming for him to do in the jungles of Vietnam.

Sadly, Roger would die in the jungles of Vietnam and we would see him last in a coffin covered with an American flag placed in the National Cemetery in Virginia.

Al I mentioned the band was improving. Not that they were ready to tour with Bachman Turner Overdrive, but for sure they could hold their own at a high school dance.  They played that dance in the fall of the following year.  It was just an after game dance celebrating another football loss, but there they were, on stage, hair flying, music sounding similar to the records we listened to, and people dancing, dancing slow, dancing fast but dancing none the less.

Over the course of that school year Pete’s skills with the drums improved.  The music of War influenced the band and Pete added congas and timbales to the set.  Pete was never happier.  It seemed the more he melded with the drums the more he came out of his shell.  Did I mention that Pete was Hyman’s best man at his wedding?

Pete left Raleigh the year before college.  His father had taken the head coaching job at LSU, in Louisiana and Pete would play for him.  He would have a remarkable college career then a wonderful pro career cut short by injuries.  Pete and Hyman remained fast friends, laughing about the days of the garage band, and every once in a while, taking out an acoustic guitar and a djembe and reliving the times when things were simpler and life was a little bit slower.  Pete had a room in his house and in that room was a custom DW drum set he used to sit down and tap tap tap on.  Pete died in 1988, of a diseased heart that should have killed him as a much younger man.  Hyman, Clete and I like to think that his love of the drums made him happy, and kept him with us a little bit longer.

Yes, I love basketball, it’s grace it’s magic and because of Pete Maravich.

On Tuesday I joined about a thousand Bruce Springsteen fans at Powell’s City of Books in downtown Portland to celebrate the publishing of Bruce Springsteen’s self-written autobiography.  I went with my friend Adrian from work, who wanted to make sure he didn’t miss this rare opportunity to have his photograph taken with “The Boss”.

For 40 years my life has intertwined with the music of Bruce Springsteen. On Tuesday I was priveledged to meet Bruce, and it led to a time of reflection on the past years of my life.

When we arrived at Powell’s, about 11:00, the line already stretched from the main entrance of the mammoth bookstore down an entire city block between Burnside and Couch.  We were early and we had our tickets so we figured we had time to duck into Sizzle Pie, a local pizza joint and grab some lunch before we took our place with the rest of the Springsteen fans.  We gobbled down a slice and made our way to the line, which now stretched around the block and up another block.  We didn’t know that once we reached the doors we had only made it about 1/3 of the way to our destiny with Bruce.

We checked in, got our signed copies of his book and our wristbands and joined the ever expanding group which now went part of the way up a third block.  During our pilgrimage to the door we talked, a lot, about families, jobs, history with music, likes, dislikes and what we were going to do with the rest of our day.  After about forty-five minutes we were finally at the Powell’s door, but as I mentioned this was just the beginning of our trek.

We climbed stairs, zigged and zagged through carols of books, glancing at the governing subjects on the way.  Thousands and thousands and thousands of books, on every topic imaginable.  I wish I could remember all the subjects because it would make a great tome, celebrating our journey as we passed through the books on language, cooking, metaphysical studies and religion, architecture and design, but I know that with every changing topic we were that much closer to our opportunity to greet the man who had provided so many many hours of entertainment to so many many millions of people over a career that spanned more than 40 years.

As we passed book after book I thought about what Bruce Springsteen means to me, and how he fits into the story that is my life.

I reflected on how I had personally become aware of Bruce Springsteen, and how that awareness connected with my journey from my small town in Central Washington to Portland, my home for most of the last 40 years.  I love Portland, I think I have always loved Portland, well at least since the first time I journeyed here on my own to follow a girl.

I had just finished my first year of college at the local community college, or did they call it Jr. College back then?  I don’t really remember.  During the summer my love interest, who was a year younger then I decided she was going to move to Portland to attend Bassist college and study Fashion Merchandising.  I hadn’t had any part in the discussion, but I’m sure glad she decided to move here.

In October of 1975 I talked my folks into letting me travel to Portland to visit Vicki.  It represented my first trip on my own, other than a couple of trips to football games during my senior year in high school.  As I directed my Plymouth Duster over White Pass I had all kinds of emotions.  Freedom, adventure, more freedom, adventure.

I had an 8-track player in my car, but I didn’t own an 8-track tape of Bruce Springsteen music.  I had Grand Funk Railroad, probably three or four different tapes, Jethro Tull Aqualung, Yes Time and a Word and Fragile, two or three Pink Floyd tapes and most likely some Deep Purple, Sly and the Stone’s Greatest hits was always my go to, but not one tape by Bruce Springsteen.  Heck at the time he only had three records out.  Greetings from Asbury Park New Jersey, The Wild, The Innocent and The E-Street Shuffle, and this new one…Born To Run.

I landed in Vancouver at my aunt and uncle’s place, where I would set up camp for the weekend.  Then I buzzed across the river to see my gal.  She lived in a rooming house called “The Martha Washington” for young ladies who were attending any one of the downtown colleges in Portland, or just starting out and whose parents wanted the security of knowing their young ladies would be protected by a stout and inquisitive staff of matronly ladies.

It was great to walk around downtown Portland with Vicki.  I had been in other large cities, Seattle of course, San Francisco, Spokane, Los Angeles, even Portland, but it had always been with family, chaperoned or with no say in what the events of the day would be.  My cousin Cathy’s wedding, shuttling my grandparents to see their youngest daughter, my aunt.  I enjoyed being around my family.  My aunt Peg was the consummate hostess.  My uncle Fred was a gas.  Uncle Fred was the first man to have one thousand hours flying a helicopter and he worked for Aerospatiale, a French helicopter company, as a salesman.  I think they called them salesmen, I don’t think they had sales engineers, or sales consultants yet, but uncle Fred was one of those.  He was the best, hilarious, caring and he always made time for us kids.

As Vicki and I made our way, by car and foot around Portland we happened across the Paramount Theater.  I noticed a group of scruffy twenty somethings gathered around the entrance and a marquee that foretold of tonight’s concert.  “Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band” it shouted to those who travelled southward on Broadway.  Hmmm I thought to myself, and maybe out loud.  A concert, I loved concerts, but who was this “Bruce Springsteen”?  We walked on.  How sorry I would be.

I returned home that Sunday evening and as I left Portland I had a satisfied feeling in my heart.  I had completed this trip, I had visited my girl, and I was headed home….freedom.  As I drove away from Portland on the Interstate I could see the lights in my rear view mirror and I heard the city say, “Please come back soon”, and I would.

My parents took Time Magazine, and the school received Time as well as Newsweek, and low and behold, who should grace the cover of both magazines the Monday after my fabulous trip to Portland.  That’s right, Bruce Springsteen, the phenomenon, making a musical splash that would be heard around the world.  As you may have realized I kicked myself for not spending the twelve dollars for two tickets for a concert that was far from sold out.

I knew the song Born to Run, but not much else from that album, until a local band, The Raggband, or The Ragg added She’s the One to their rotation.  I loved that song, and ever since then I have loved the music of Bruce Springsteen.  I ran out, purchased Born to Run at a local record store, probably Budget Records and Tapes, from “Budget Bob”

I have made many trips to and from Portland, and moved here in 1981, the year between Bruce’s release of “The River” and “Nebraska”.  In 1984 I sat in my office at work and worked the push-button dialer to a frenzy trying to get tickets to Bruce’s concert in Seattle in support of “Born in the USA”.  I figured since we had multi-line phones at work if I didn’t get through right away I would just punch another button and move on.  Didn’t work.

My life in Portland has been pretty special.  I met my wife Linda here, we married here, we had our first child here, at a hospital that is now the American headquarters for Adidas.  Our second child was born elsewhere, but she is still a product of Portland ingenuity.

During every phase there has been a Bruce Springsteen song, or album to accompany the event or events surrounding our lives.  Elation, sadness, whatever it is, as I look back it has had a Bruce Springsteen soundtrack.

And now as Adrian and I have passed through these thousands of books, and in 2016 after Bruce Springsteen has entertained hundreds of millions of music fans, including myself.  As he has put out so many good records, my personal favorites are Born to Run and Magic, and played so many concerts that run about three and a half hours…or more I am a mere 10 feet from the man, The Boss.

As they led me up to the stage to meet Bruce Springsteen, I handed off my camera to a willing Powell’s employee.  I shook his hand, and thanked him for the many years of great music.  He was kind, he thanked me for being a fan and acknowledged my greeting with a “you’re welcome”.   Not a smart-ass comment as I would imagine some artists would offer, but a genuine kind of “I do this for you” attitude.  And then…I was being led off the stage with a “be sure to watch your step” as I walked away, probably three feet off the ground from the meeting.  It was over…and that was OK.

I had connected with the man who has done more for my personal appreciation of music than any other artist and I, as though I had eaten a good meal and had a great cigar, was satisfied.

Thank you Bruce Springsteen, for your dedication to your craft, your dedication to your fans, to your commitment to excellence and for knowing that we so much, appreciate you.