Grandchildren -- The True Treasures of a Long and Distinguished Life in and out of GeezerHood!

 

Memoirs of a Geezer

  

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:            Grandchildren -- The True Treasures of a Long and 

                           Distinguished Life in and out of GeezerHood!!

Such a handsome lad.  Love the 
Colorful Shades!

There are of course -- in the sphere of building great relationships with grandchildren -- certain imperatives:   Abundant and Unconditional Love, Frequent and Well-Deserved Praise, Support, Positive Affirmations... Many and often...   That's how and what we do, and will continue to do; that is, to shower our much-loved grandkids with the most important gifts we can give them, the aforementioned... 

We -- SweetHeart and I -- are privileged to have our first-born, a film and musical phenomenon, in the mix; a brilliant athlete and soccer star; a cross-country and track star athlete and a champion tennis player, and soccer star athlete as well.  But their far more important attributes are the human ones -- their loving and generous personalities, their remarkable senses of humor, their friendship, their kindnesses, their absolutely delightful behavioral characteristics!

 We are fortunate beyond my poor, or anyone's ability to heap praise upon them, or to offer our profound gratitude to have them in our lives!!  I mean, yeah, we're very lucky.  (I'm guessing many grandparental folk feel the same...  Yes?...  Right?!...  Are you listening out there??!) 

A Great Star on and Off 
the Pitch, and Handsome
to Boot!

Such a Talented and
Graceful Runner.  
Shown above at a 
Cross Country Event

The gifts they've given us, like discovering a cache of uncut diamonds while digging in a garden plot, include outstanding films enhanced by original music scores along with opportunities to appear in said films, hours of sometimes sun-drenched or wind-chilled pleasure witnessing soccer (Euro-football) action on the pitch, not to mention a race to score 121 points round a circuitous (preferred!) and colorful track (cribbage).  

Racing in challenging terrain or round an oval course is another delight we have enjoyed thanks to a granddaughter who loves running, does so superbly, setting personal
records with nearly every event.  Making the State Meet as a result of her abilities and her prowess!  She is poetry in a track uniform.  

We never complain of cricks in our necks, pains or anxiety watching our youngest grandchild smack a tennis ball with skill and poise, optionally lobbing it just out of an opponent's reach.  She -- an excellent singles player -- and her team of both singles and doubles made the State Tournament and emerged triumphant.  She plays soccer as well, and does so quite well!

A Star Runner, both
Cross Country and
Track -- Relay
and 
Whatever They call
the Mile, 
These Days!
(1500 Meters?  
Metric Mile...?)
(What's LuLu Lookin' at?) 

She plays tennis, she
plays soccer, and 
she crochets
superbly as one
can readily
bear witness! 
Her Turtle Loves
Her Too!

    This is, of course an obvious additive,            perhaps one that's needless to add, but I        feel I must pay tribute to our                            extraordinary children, essentially to                thank them for the great pleasure of being    an Abuelo y Abuela! 

    We offer praise and gratitude to said     children for making such titles and     transformative variations possible!  They,     the grandchildren, are life's previous     gems, like sunshine, their faces are glorious   portraits...  I mean, overall, as the title     infers...      Treasures worthy to be installed     in the Prado or the Louvre or at least our       local art center...!   Don't argue with me!!  

I think I said that correctly, or conveyed properly what I think I meant to say!  Didn't I?  (I mean, of course, the "transformative variations" phrase??!!) 

Of course there were challenges in the early or formative years of those beloved grandkids.  Hauling them in the big red coaster wagon down, but then up the steep hill from a lakeside "raceway" to the top of that mountainous incline.  I dripped, was drenched and soaked in sweat as though I had accidentally wandered stupefied into a car wash without the car.  (I think I only did that once, but I may have been inebriated, or simply stunned by an errant golf ball!...  or was it a dropped brick in a construction site??!!)....  I can't readily recall...  But refreshing, the car wash, that is!!

Oh, and didn't we have a hoot throwing them into the air and letting then land squealing and laughing crazily on a queen mattress.  Making them manic and buzzed in the process, and exhausting ourselves as well.  Our children were not always thrilled with that outcome, meaning returning to them the half-crazed and wired grandkids of course.  Lots of sugary treats didn't help much!  But SweetHeart and I sure had fun in the process!

(Special Note of Dedication:   For Coen (Coey, Co Co), Sean (Seany), Lucy (LuLu) and Sophia (PhiPhi, Phia) who give us such joy, laughter, love and happy adventures!  Thank You!!)  

Submitted 11-13-2025 -- by Joel K  

   

 

    

 

The Thing about Music....!

 

Memoirs of a Geezer

  

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:         The Thing about Music....!

Those Marvelous Turks make the Most Wonderful Music.. Oh and that's a Picture of Ataturk in the Background! Thank you...
(Can you Spot the Baglama?.... Or is that an Oud?)

That's Him...  That's
Mustafa Kemal
Ataturk!

    Reflection:   Is it a highly prevalent sort of contemplation, or         maybe meditation? A  practice among those who have entered     into the realm of, how shall I put this... GeezerHood, maybe?...  the     Age of "Greater Wisdom" or Elderlyness, perhaps, Historicalness     (could be?)...! Take Music, for example...

    I readily confess that my knowledge of and taste in music is         anything but exemplary, eclectic, or broad based, or extensive.  (Hope I'm not being repetitive or redundant or monotonous or     constant...   You may weigh in with your own observations about my     redundancy, if you wish!)  

   Where was I?!  Oh yes, the realm of music.  As a youngster, or an                   adolescent, I was eager to escape my home life, and thus I resolved to dash away, straw suitcase pre-packed, near at hand, or to seek and find a more propitious means of finding my way in life.

In the end, having come to my senses and having heeded advice from those brighter and perhaps more insightful than my, then, young self, I chose to enlist in the U.S. Armed Services.  You know...  ready availability of shelter, food, clothing, etc.    

Fresh out of secondary school, I reported to the local military recruitment center, swore

the appropriate oath, and before I could ask myself, "What the hell are you doing, you ridiculous bubblehead?..." I was on a Braniff flight, bound for a basic training center in Texas.  The weather was hot in June!  We did a lot of sweating.

Eventually, if we were well behaved (or our training leaders, perhaps, were sick of the sight of us!), we were offered what our lead Training Sergeant termed, "a Patio Break."  The music on its ancient jukebox was exclusively Country, not a standard nor an aria nor an R&R tune within ear shot.  I began to taste straw and alfalfa; I imagined tucking my thumbs into bib overalls, drawling and dribbling "Dixie Speak" and lots of Y'all's, Yonders, Reckons and fixins!

After suffering through the ear-piecing bellowing of training sergeants, calisthenics far too aplenty, "Attentions," "Forward or Backward Marches," and more insults than even my own dear father heaped upon me, I was dispatched to a training school in another

Texas location.  (Thought I'd never get out of Texas...), not to mention never hear another but a country ballad by George Jones, Buck Owens, Patsy Cline, Merle Haggard, Bob Wills, Texas "Fats" Pimpslee...   Hell, even a quite young Willie Nelson?

Then, before I could ask my pal, Rex Winkle, who originated from an obscure village in Southern Utah, "Hey, y'all goin don to the boozy waterin' hole made just for enlisted trash...?" I was sent to a strange foreign land...  TURKEY!  That extraordinary land southeast of

Bulgaria, south of the Black Sea, southwest of Georgia and Armenia, west of Hellas (or Greece, to lots of Americanos!)...  where I listened to lots of Turkish music...

Dede Efendi, Serdar Yilmaz, Baha Yetkin...  and the beautiful tunes of the famous, Zeki Muran (two dots above the "u), including "Let's Tweest Agin Lak We deed Last Sooomer"!  Zeki was the Turkish answer to...  I don't know...  maybe Elvis, maybe Bill Haley...  

We listened to that and other of Zeki's fabled melodies whilst speeding along dark, narrow, gravely roads at night courtesy of our favorite taxi driver, Hikmet, his ancient cab fitted with a 45 RPM record player buried somewhere in the dash board!  He spent more time looking at us in the back seat recommending others of Zeki's modern tunes!  "Face forward, look at the road!!..." someone hollered, brow dripping with sweat!

I mean, the point of all of this is this:   I missed my teenage music years!  Had no idea who were the Beatles, Everly Brothers, Byrds, Doors, Stones, Who, Floyd Pink, Beach Guys...   Truth is, I am very fond of all sorts of music -- Rock, Blues, Standards, Opera,

Who the hell are these oddly
appareled guys again??

Classical stuff, Country too...   It's just that I missed the 60s!  (I was keeping the world safe for democracy after all!!...  something like that!!)

When at last I matriculated, that is, entered University Life, having been honorably dismissed from military service, I had no idea what the hell my classmates or contemporaries were talking about!   "Who the devil are the Shondells, the Rhondells, Pips, people Grateful to be Dead??!!"  I was lost, out of it, ridiculed, but I could sing "Merhaba," "Nasilsinez," "Bishey Deyil," "Teshaker Ederim," and of course "Let's Tweest Again......."   

I should of course mention that one of my military compatriots in Turkey (there were four of us to a barracks room!) had a boat load of 33-1/3 RPM recordings of Warbling Persons...   E.g.  Julie London, Frankie Sinatra, Dean-o, Sammy Davis Junior Junior, Perry C., Billie, Nat, Ray, Mario, Ella, Bing, Pat, Dinah, Judy, Tony, Louie, Eartha, Dorseys, Mills Bros., Woody, Sarah, Fats, Vaughn, Mel Torme (I just remembered his surname!)

In the 70s and 80s I caught up with Willie, Waylon and the boys, having been indoctrinated by them on the aforementioned "Patio's"...  State Fairs, Summerfests, other concert venues!  I'm still a bit dense about popular music.  I constantly ask SweetHeart, Tad, and others, "Who's that?"....  Who sang, "Norwegian Wood Floors...  Do I like that one, SweetHeart"...? 

And thus, to end this foolish reminiscence, I apologize to music purists, to those with encyclopedic knowledge of modern tunes and their composers and singers of songs!  I apologize to Bob, John, George, Ringo, Paul, Norman, Tad and SweetHeart...  (Was there a Norman?)...

(Special Note of Dedication:  For SweetHeart, Tad, Alie, Bethie...  and for those four "insect guys," Zeki (who's probably dead), that saloon owner in Okauchee, and all others dedicated and devoted to all manner of music and to keeping memories alive and tunes warbled when lyrics and melodies or wandering notes wafting on the winds of time enter their thoughts!)

Humbly Submitted 07-16-2025 -- Joel K.

 

   

We Miss YOU Already... Um... Let Me Explain, She Just Moved Away!

 

Memoirs of a Geezer

  

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:      We Miss YOU Already...  

                   Um...  Let me Explain, She Just Moved Away!

An aircraft arrived, one of its passengers returning home from Israel.  We weren't aware of it, of course, or its impact upon our lives, not until Fred arrived at our door to suggest we wait a bit, wait for his good friend.  "She'll be here very soon.  She'll stay at the Astor until her furniture and piano arrive, a baby grand piano."   

"Wait?" SweetHeart and I asked, sort of in unison.  We were poised to rent our upper flat to an interested couple eager to submit payment and then schedule a move.  

"Hmmm..." SweetHeart mused, an index finger pressed along her jaw line.  "A baby grand piano!  She'll probably live here for a very long time!  That's a good thing."  She remained our very best tenant, becoming a best friend in the process, for 23 years.  We've long referred to her, to Joan, as "The One Above."  That piano gave us sweet music for many of those years as it sang, its black and white notes and chords penetrating through hardwood floor boards and a high ceiling.      

"She'll be the best tenant you could ever have," Fred stated with emphasis, quite insistently, his hand and arm gestures a convincing argument.   "I guess we'll wait," I said in reply, or maybe SweetHeart did.  "I mean, all the way from Israel to rent OUR upstairs flat."  That last remark was definitely hers.    

"She used to live on this street, north of here.  She loves the neighborhood.  You won't regret it for a moment...  best tenant you'll ever have," Fred repeated with even greater emphasis, his warm smile a reassuring promise, a kind of excursus or a codicil to his testament.  

The herald, Fred, arrived at our door in April of 2000.  The "best tenant," Joan, took up residence in June of the same year, or perhaps it was earlier in the year, April or May.  I can't find a record to verify the exact time.  Not terribly vital to this narrative, I suppose.

Don't know if it's a kind of phenomenon, as perhaps not all landlords / landladies and their tenants become friends.   So often, we're told by others, those relationships become more adversarial rather than warm and fuzzy and friendly, with cultural and social interaction mixed into the recipe.   But, after all, 23 years with the "best tenant..."  As landlords, we've been exceptionally fortunate.  

She became our surrogate "Auntie," sharing our cell phone provider, for example.  For 23 years, we've backed her car into her side of the garage.  Joan was never very good at backing.  Didn't matter.  I casually mentioned to her family, a son and two daughters, other relatives and friends, "I've driven Joan's cars for 23 years, but only backwards."  She's had three different automobiles over the years, the first was blue, one green, the current motor, a compact, is silver-grey.

Of course, there were a few challenges in our relationship.  Joan was, still is, an ardent devotee of The New York Times.  For quite a long period of time, the paper arrived sometime between 5:00 and 6:00AM.  It arrived with a resounding thud against the wall of our porch, as if hurled by a beefy shot-putter with great muscular arms.  The wall was just outside our bedroom, the noise of its arrival nearly catapulting us out of our warm bed. We spoke to Joan.  She spoke to the delivery people.  In a couple of years' worth of newspaper arrival explosions we forgot all about it.  (Or was it three years?  I probably exaggerate a bit!)

Joan has been, in the main, a quiet and considerate tenant, neighbor and great friend.  Except when she dances.  Or is it clogging?  Old houses tend to magnify sound, from floors through ceiling to the ears of downstairs denizens.   Things that fall or drop have contributed, over time, to certain evidence that Joan is in residence.  

Only once was there a sort of atomic blast, when a huge mirror dislodged itself from the single nail that held it in place.  We had trouble identifying the source, wondering if an aircraft had crashed into the neighbor's attic.  Glass and debris covered the floor of Joan's bedroom.  She was traveling to visit her daughter in Minnesota.  SweetHeart and I helped clean up the shattered glass and other resultantly exploded material, books and artifacts!  The mirror has not been replaced.

SweetHeart has helped Joan over the years with eyedrops, television issues, cell phone and land-line-phone matters, physical challenges.  I've carried up her groceries and other supplies over the years -- all of the above simply labors of love!  Keeps one in shape, of course, so not a complaint, you understand.  Repairs, too, of course...  plunging and plumbing, paint, knobs that come loose, carrying up, supplying and moving of chairs, leaking downspouts, outdoor umbrellas, luggage, spring and winter window manipulations...  But all of that goes with property-owning territory.  Mustn't grumble...  Exercise is beneficial...     

At 90 years of age, soon to be 91, Joan is moving into an apartment that does not require her to climb stairs, something she's done with grace and, recently, somewhat decreasing ease.  Her new place has an elevator and gorgeous views of Lake Michigan, watercraft and surrounding structures, grassland, the traffic that crawls or speeds along Lincoln

Memorial Drive.  The "crawlers" are cruisers looking for fun and places to park.  The "speeders" are eager to get home or to the tavern, a restaurant or shops, using the Drive as a kind of unintended expressway, unless, at times, when sirens and their official user-occupants intervene. 

We'll miss her terribly, that is, the proximity of her, of Joan, the ease with which we can see her and follow her activities, her travels, her wonderful poetry.  She has published volumes attesting to her poetic talents.  Joan is a rabid reader.  Her books, a mountain of them, will leave with her, or find homes with other avid readers.  Joan is very generous, kind and thoughtful, and funny, too.  She has a terrific sense of humor!  

Happily, she's not moving far.  We'll visit; we'll see her whenever we can, whenever she feels up to hosting her former lower-flat neighbors and friends.  We'll make plans to collect her for a trip to one of our favorite coffee houses, or for a spot of breakfast or lunch.  Errands perhaps, possibly a visit to our local bookseller.  Joan never forgets our birthdays and wedding anniversaries, gifts and treats of breakfast or lunch always part of the celebrations.   

We've grown to love Joan.  To be accurate, or to be honest, we grew to love her almost from the start of what "initial-ists" termed "Y2K."  It only took us a day, maybe two at the most.  She's easy to love, attested to by her many friends, her family, her grandchildren and great grandchildren, her poetry and Shakespeare groups, neighbors and so many others.  Stay well, Joan.  Settle in.  Enjoy your new digs.  We'll see you again in a couple of days!    

Humbly Submitted 12-08-2022...  Joel K.  

   

  

  

 

 

TORN!...

 

Memoirs of a Geezer

  

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:             Torn!...

We find ourselves, at this juncture in time, a short while removed from the Holiday Season that renders 
Christians utterly jubilant...  at least for a brief period just prior to, on the two special days of the actual event, and in some cases for the week that follows into the eve of and the start of a New Year. 

Decorated House!

Many of us, I'm certain -- myself included -- find reasons to decry the Season for its orgy of spending, its specious bloom of "good cheer," the multiplicity of artifices, idols, iconic representations, yes, and also that profusion of electric lighting intended, we're often told, to brighten the drabness of winter.   Or else to inculcate, many would
insist, a belief system with appropriate symbols of the "true meaning..."   

  

I was raised by a gentile father and a Jewish mother; a fact that to this day tends to confound and confuse my sense of self-identity, my psychic awareness!  I'm TORN!

I often tell SweetHeart, my life partner and the love of my life, that I intend to allow the Jewish side of my persona to prevail during the Christian / Christmas holidays.  SweetHeart demurs.  "You were raised Christian," she argues.  "You have the Christmas tradition in your bone marrow.  Whether or not you accept its mythology, its religious significance or the pageant of the Santa-infused idea of an anti-religious feast day...  Doesn't matter.  We're celebrating Christmas, as if we are true believers, or merely Santa-obsessed revelers.  And that's the end of it!" she states demandingly, and quite forcefully.

I groan acceptingly, if grudgingly!  But, still, I'm TORN, I tell you, and I tell her, and everyone in my family, myself...   An old friend told me often, "Your face is the map of Israel."  My neighbor who is a Jew and who understands my matrilineal heritage, insists, "Then you're Jewish, sonny (she's a bit older than me!).  If you wanted, you could

emigrate to Israel where you'd be immediately accepted and with full Israeli / Jewish citizenship."  I try to find my passport (but furtively!)...

A neighborhood rabbi, for whom I wrote a personal history (needed for a chaplaincy quest!), revealed my story, my lineage to his colleague, a proselytizing rabbi.  The latter appears at my door with some frequency -- mainly, I think, on Jewish feast days.  He tries valiantly to bring me into the light, into the fold.  I resist.  I've been too far down a different pathway, and, for the past many years, I've practiced no form of religion!  None! 

Undaunted by my failure to respond to the rabbi's inexorable efforts, he brings me Chanukah candles, boxes of them, "gelt" in the form of foil-wrapped chocolates, 

dreidels, boxes of matzah and other Jewish gifts and artifacts.  He once appeared at my door, invited himself in and placed tefillins (phylacteries) on my head and arm.  He blesses me.  He brings his children to sing Hebrew songs.  I continue to resist...  

(I have boxes of unopened Chanukah candles; of the opened boxes, I bring some of the colorful content to birthday parties...  just in case!  You never know...  possibly the party host is experiencing a regrettable paucity of candles!  One likes to come prepared!)    

Still, in all, I guess I must confess to a certain and thinly veiled delight in The Season, particularly when the shopping and the (ugh) mall visits and the spending have all  finally, at last!, yielded to the actual Eve and the family celebration that commences with song and greetings and expressions of love and welcome.  (I grumble and make sour faces to disguise my delight, however!).  

We order beautiful pizzas from our, and my, favorite parlor.  It's a once-a-year indulgence and our family's principal Christmas Eve repast.  And salad, loaded with pepperoni, spicy peppers and other tasty ingredients.  (I pick off the cheese cubicles...  I don't care much for cheese cubicles or other forms of that specific dairy comestible!)

We chat endlessly, share "What's new's...  and What have you been doing lately's and Tell me about your life and recent adventure's...  How's your work coming along's..."  We stuff ourselves with the aforementioned edibles, sing more Christmas songs.  Our daughters bring their ukuleles and song sheets, and we warble on, harmonizing to familiar favorites.  The house fairly rings with music and song.  Wonderful stuff, in all, a really terrific day surrounded by and among the people we love best in the world.  (I check my online bank balance frequently!!)

 

Finally, we remove piles of gifts from beneath the "gorgeously adorned" artificial tree and distribute them to the celebrants gathered round the drawing room and its wonderfully effective gas fireplace.  

Following the gift-giving element with its frenetic ripping and tearing of holiday wrappings (I try to salvage the paper like my mother taught me...  but to no avail!), we sing more tunes, drink celebratory artificial wine-like juices, toast one another again and again, walk the dogs (there are two of them, one each in our children's families -- Petey and Yoshie, both male canines!), or sit and sip and nibble the endless cookies and gingerbread effigies and salted nuts.  (I'm particularly fond of mixed nuts and Virginia peanuts...  I tend overdo the nut thing; a flaw in my character, I suppose...)  

As if the joyous celebration at SweetHeart's and my family home isn't enough, at approximately 6:00 PM we pack up our necessaries, our "dish or dishes to pass" and repair to the home of our niece.  She and her husband have a large dwelling with a subterrranean space where the younger revelers gather to "talk treason" and to remove themselves from parental interference.  The food is always plentiful and "nummers" as my dear departed mother-in-law would say -- her word for yummy.  

Eventually, following this grand reunion with hosts of cousins, grand nieces and nephews, other relatives and friends, as the clock alarms us (particularly me as "I should be in bed by now!"...) with its reading, we begin to "Welp," my brilliant son-in-law's coinage for "I've had it.  I'm tired and it's time to go!"  (Another translation is, "Well, I see by my watch or my Cellular time reading that's it way past time to get the hell out of here!"). 

As I now reflect on the Season just past, I smile, or, more accurately, effect a silly grin and remind myself it's over for another full year.  Hooray!  Next year, I'm adopting my Jewish half, and I'll brook no objections from any quarter.  I mean it!  (Fat Chance...  Yeah, like that's gonna happen Man, Dude, Bro...  I like to use all three!).  See ya next year, Santa, you fat old obnoxious, red-nosed bankrupting jerk!!  

Humbly Submitted, 01-05-2022 -- by Joel K.  

  

 

   

  

Losing a Great Friend too Soon, too Young... It Just Aint Right!!

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:             Losing a Great Friend too Soon, too Young...  It Just Aint Right!!  

We'd often get together at the weekend for prodigious night-clubbing and drinking.  It was a Friday night.  We decide -- or maybe he decides -- to venture to a night spot we'd often frequented. (Long gone now, it was called "Beneath the Street," I think...)

A splendid looking chap...
Dashing, even! 

The Everly Brothers are appearing, and we somehow snag a table "expensively" close to the stage, as if we'd bribed the head waiter.  No head waiters there, just servers, "beverage hosts" and bouncers.

Pat disappears, and I don't really notice where he's gone, as I'm pleasantly floating on a euphoric bubble of booze-inspired semi-consciousness.  Don and Phil, the Everly Brothers, sit down at my table.  "Hey, how you doin' this fine evening," asks Don, or maybe it was Phil...

"Uh...  I'm doin' fine, thanks," I say, somewhat bewildered.

"What did you think of our set?" asks Phil, or Don maybe.

"You two are great," I say in reply.  "I love your style, your singing and the tunes you do.   I love the old stuff, your signature tunes."  

"Lemme buy you a drink.  What are you drinking?  Miss!!" one of them calls out, "Give our friend, here, whatever he wants!"  This from Phil, or maybe it was Don.  I accept!

"I guess I'll have another of these," I say.  "Nut brown ale."  

"Wanna jolt of something stiffer?" asks Don (Phil?).  

"Nah, thanks, the beer's just fine."  

It goes on like that for 15, 20 minutes, the length of their break between sets. They return to the

stage. I muse that my great friend, Pat -- sometimes I called him Gord -- was in Armed Forces Radio (and Television) in Germany.  He had extended his enlistment to do something he loved. And he was great at it, with an excellent, sonorous and "pear-shaped" tonal quality to his superb voice, a bonus in such work, probably needless to add.  

He met many celebrities in Germany through his work, including "Jack," who became an NBC newscaster in Los Angeles and married an actress named Joan.  Pat and Jack became and remained good friends in spite of the distance between LA and Milwaukee. Pat was best man at their wedding. 

Eventually, Pat returns to our table, explaining that he was visiting, catching up and sharing stories with Don and Phil whom he came to know through Armed Forces Radio.  

"So," I ask, "Why were the Everly's so friendly toward me of all people?"  

"I told them you're a big-time Milwaukee DJ.  'He'll play lots of your music if you're nice to him', I told the boys!"  

We laughed.  I cursed and complained at him with jovial good humor.  He was like that, always...  full of practical jokes, silliness, fun and great humor.  He loved to put me in crazy and     sometimes embarrassing circumstances.  That was his way, and I thoroughly enjoyed the sport! He was among my very closest and most cherished friends.  He was in SweetHeart's and my wedding, and we were in his.  His wife -- we call her Joey -- was and is a treasure, and remains a great friend whose company we enjoy enormously. 

Pat died in April of this year, far too young, far too soon.  We were in the military together, and spent some 18 months stationed in Turkey.  We had great times and many adventures, loaded with mischief.  Late one evening, returning from our duties, our second shift in "Research and Development" in the Air Force Security Service, we "borrowed" one of the shuttle buses in order to get to the Airman's Club before closing time, but that was one of our tamer episodes. We raised lots of hell in Istanbul, drank way too much, traded in contraband, once were caught up in a minor revolution...  Pat enjoyed the time my feet were run over by a taxi cab outside a pavilion (an Istanbul night spot!).  What a sense of humor.  Far more than that, he had a gift for comedy, fun and wildly silly humor!!

He loved being of Irish descent; a DNA test proved him to be predominantly Irish. He and Joey, Steve and Andrea were able to visit Ireland, a trip he greatly enjoyed.  And there may even have been some pubs involved...  

Too many years passed that we did not see or interact regularly with one another on a personal level, but we did always manage to meet on occasion, to speak via telephone and trade nonsense. SweetHeart and I visited him in hospital during his final days, told stories, even sang one of his favorite tunes. He seemed to enjoy the occasion, at least we hope he did! 

Pat was -- like SweetHeart and other great friends still are -- a treasure in my life.  I loved him more than I ever told him, and wish I had done so.  I'll miss him every day.  But like the aftertaste of a favorite dish or a nut brown ale (or, these days, a Diet Pepsi Cola with a wedge of fresh lime), a memory will rise in my throat and move to my heart, and I'll savor, once again, his memory, our friendship and the times we spent together.   

Humbly Submitted, 05-23-18 -- Joel K.