Reasonably Inexpensive Nostalgia, Part 1

We’re going to Logan for our annual Cache Valley Vacation. I love Cache Valley. I spent five of the best years of my life there trying to get through Utah State University. Going to Logan makes me nostalgic, almost as much as going to Heber does. Cache Valley is one of my “Gee Whiz” places, as in “Gee whiz I’d sure like to live there.” Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be practical to give up my years in my current school district and start over in one of the two school districts in Cache Valley. Logan will just have to stay a great place to take a fall vacation.

We have some big plans, including taking the girls to a corn maze at the American West Heritage Center. The Wife hopes to meet up with an old friend for a girls’ night out as well. Something about getting her eyebrows waxed. Sounds like fun.

In the unlikely event anyone actually finds my life interesting, I’m going to keep a running journal of our time in Bridgerland ... 

Thursday, 9:00 PM ... The Wife and I watch TV in our own motel room. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to watch an actual television. Most of my video viewing at home now is either a download or on DVD, usually on my computer. Fortunately, The Wife had the foresight to book a suite, so our TV is not tuned to an endless stream of Sponge Bob or iCarly reruns, as it normally would be at home. That’s what the girls are watching in the other room.   

Right now we’re watching American Chopper, one of my all-time favorite programs, while eating Thai take-out. It’s been a few years since I’ve seen a new episode of American Chopper. I didn't realize Paul Senior and Paul Junior were on the outs. I always thought Paul senior was the proverbial prick with a heart of gold. Turns out he’s just a prick. He still has a great mustache, though.

Friday, 3:45 AM ... I wake up, as usual. I realize where I am and that I don’t have to get up to beat the crowd to the gym today. I laugh out loud. The Wife thinks I’m nuts. I eventually fall back to sleep.

7:00 AM ... I wake up for good this time. There is an Anytime Fitness here in Logan, and I am eager to check it out. Unfortunately, the bathroom light and fan are on the same switch, and the fan is incredibly loud. The fan, which is only slightly less noisy than Paul Junior’s Chopper, wakes The Wife and kids. Once the kids are awake they never go back to sleep, so The Wife won’t be able to either. I guiltily slink off to the gym.

When I get to the gym my electronic key doesn’t work, although supposedly I can use it at any Anytime Fitness in the state. A guy inside takes pity on me and opens the door for me. I am impressed with the size of the facility and the amount of exercise equipment. I get on a treadmill and begin my morning run. I set my iPod to a playlist of favorite songs from 1990-91, when I was attending USU. I hear “Why Should I Cry For You” by Sting, “Mansion on the Hill” by Neil Young, “Hard To Handle” by the Black Crowes, and “Series Of Dreams” by Bob Dylan, among others.

About a mile into the run the left side of my right knee starts to hurt. Being the masochist that I am, I just ignore it and reach my goal. Usually the pain stops by the second mile, but today it doesn’t. I realize I’m not twenty-five anymore and vow to use an elliptical tomorrow instead of a treadmill, even though I don’t want to. I hobble over to a nearby Wal-Mart and buy some Arthricream, which of course makes me feel even older.

11:00 AM ... I take the kids to the Bluebird Restaurant - one of our favorite places, and a place we go every time we’re in Logan - for lunch. The Wife stays at the motel to catch up on her sleep. We get to the Bluebird and the kids, after a perfunctory stop at the table, head to the candy counter. The hand dipped chocolates they sell at the Bluebird are the best. Since I at least sometimes pretend to be a responsible parent, I make the girls come back to the table for lunch. Fortunately for Grace, a grilled cheese sandwich is on the menu. The girls eat quickly and immediately return to the candy counter, where I buy them all something.

After leaving the Bluebird we head up the street half a block to one of my favorite reasons for visiting Logan, Books Of Yesterday. Susan and Caroline are thrilled to be there as well; Gracie less so. Within five minutes of entering the bookstore, Grace finds me and proclaims that she needs to use the bathroom. Since there isn’t a restroom in the bookstore, we have to leave. Rather than take the girls back to the motel and disturb The Wife, I tell them that we are going to the grocery store instead. Grace then tells me she really doesn’t need to use the restroom. I tell her “tough”, and make all three of them use the restroom at the grocery store anyway.

When we leave the grocery store I take the girls a block and a half northwest and show them the house my parents lived in sixty years ago while my father attended USU when it was still USAC, and had to milk cows on campus early in the morning. My mom told me they lived in a little two room apartment in the back of the house, where she was pregnant and homesick. I have the girls pose at the entrance to the part of the house where my parents lived and take their picture.

A little family history never hurt anybody.

2:00 PM ... The Wife takes the girls swimming in the motel pool, so I have the next two hours to finally hit some of my old favorite haunts solo. I start out at Books of Yesterday. B.O.Y. looks like an earthquake struck, leaving piles of books everywhere. I’m looking for a couple of twenty-year-old crime novels by Walter Mosley, Devil In A Blue Dress and A Red Death, in the original editions that I used to own. Sure enough, B.O.Y. has them, and they are reasonable priced. I don’t even have to look for them very hard, surprisingly, considering the state of the store.

After Books of Yesterday I go to Hastings, another old favorite. Hastings has a couple of obscure Dylan CDs for really cheap, but I resist the temptation to buy them. I figure I can find them on Amazon. I finally go to Borders, which didn’t exist when I lived in Cache Valley. After Hastings, and especially after Books of Yesterday, Borders is a let down. It’s way too modern, and the book and CD selection is way too obvious. I prefer the cheap thrill of finding a book I really want in a pile in Books Of Yesterday. I don’t spend much time at Borders. My time is up anyway, so I buy a couple of pizzas from Little Caesar's and head back to the motel. When I arrive Susan is playing with a little boy I don’t recognize in front of the motel. Susan has a made a new friend, as usual.

I’m hungry, and after all the bookstore browsing, my knee is throbbing. I’m hoping to get off it and eat a piece of pizza. Just gonna hang out with the women in my life for a few hours ....

Too Tired To Run, Too Aggravated To Sleep

Susan and friend at the Utah State Fair, 9/12/10

The past few weeks I’ve been getting up at 4:00 AM to go to the gym. It hasn’t been a big deal for me to get up that early; I blame creeping middle age. Once upon a time I struggled to make it to a 7:30 AM class at USU. Now I look forward to getting up early to exercise and listen to music uninterrupted.

Yesterday and today have been a different story. We have had parent/teacher conferences at school the past two days, which have required twelve hour work days. As a result, I have still woken up at 3:45, but I have been too weary to get up and exercise. The problem is I start worrying about things, and I can’t turn my mind off enough to get back to sleep, although I’m really tired.

Right now my biggest concern is my oldest daughter, Susan. Susan is tall, blonde, pretty, intelligent, and athletic. Unfortunately, Susan has also become the butt of some bullying by some catty little girls in her class, probably for the reasons I just listed. She’s a little awkward socially and doesn’t relate well to kids her own age; she does better with kids who are a little older than she is.

One day last week Susan came into my classroom in tears and handed me some notes that another student had written to her. The notes were mean; among other things they accused Susan of getting easier work from her teacher because I work at the school, which was ridiculous. Susan is a smart kid and doesn’t need any intervention from me to grease her academic path. She does just fine on her own. The notes were also full of the usual fifth grade invective (loser, stupid, etc.) Like any parent, I took the notes to Susan’s teacher. The teacher dealt with the girl who wrote the notes by moving her away from Susan and informing the girl’s parents of her activities. I agreed with how Susan’s teacher handled the situation and figured the problem was solved.

Unfortunately, the note-writer is just one of a little clique of mean girls who have been hassling Susan. Susan told The Wife last night that the teasing has gotten worse because Susan told me about it. Apparently this catty little bunch didn’t like Susan telling on them. Susan didn’t want The Wife to tell me that the teasing is still going on, but The Wife did anyway, for which I am grateful. I am also pissed off. My daughter has as much right as anyone else to attend school without being harassed, and just because I work at the school doesn’t mean she should have to put up with any crap. My working at the school may not entitle my daughters to any special privileges, but my job also doesn’t mean my kids don’t have the same right to not be bullied as any other kid at the school.

Stay tuned.

Hours Of Awesomeness

I have an awesome playlist on my iPod. This playlist is unusual because every song on it predates 1955 - nine years before I was born - and consists of ancient blues, jazz, pop, and country (some of which goes clear back to the 1920s), with some rhythm and blues and early rock and roll thrown in as well. When I listen to the playlist I get to hear greats like Hank Williams, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Charlie “Yardbird” Parker, Louis Armstrong, Robert Johnson, Benny Goodman, Bessie Smith, and Bob Wills, along with more obscure - to most people - artists like T-Bone Walker, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Ben Webster, Lester Young, Rex Allen, The Light Crust Doughboys, and Billy Ward and the Dominoes. If you recognize any of those names, my hat is off to you. I love listening to this playlist, especially this time of year. There's something about autumn that makes me want to break out the good, old stuff.

I’ve written a little bit about it before, but man, I love the old stuff. Music is one of the two greatest gifts God has given us, and music from the first half of the twentieth century is some of the greatest music ever recorded. I realize that commercial music is exactly that - music recorded to make a profit, and there isn't anything wrong with that. But it sure seems like they were able to make music that not only made money sixty years ago, but also had some heart and soul.

Listening to Hank sing “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” Louis Armstrong sing and play “(What Did I Do To Be So) Black And Blue”, or Benny Goodman play “Undercurrent Blues,” makes me happy. I enjoy the old music not only because it takes me back to another era, but also because it sounds relevant to me today. Seriously, I’d rather listen to The Chuck Wagon Gang sing a country/gospel song like “After The Sunrise,” which was recorded in the 1930s, than almost anything modern that I can think of, with the obvious exception of ... Bob Dylan (you knew I was going to work him into this, didn’t you?)

This week I discovered Bob Dylan’s radio show  Theme Time Radio Hour. I realize I’m a little late to the party, because the show was originally broadcast on satellite radio from 2006-09. I’d heard about  "Theme Time", but I never listened to an actual episode until a few days ago. The nice thing is I recently found a website where I could download all one hundred episodes, which I have been busily doing for the past few days. I’m grateful The Wife has been patient, because it has really sucked up the bandwidth.

Theme Time Radio Hour is really a lot of fun to listen to. Dylan chooses a theme for each episode - the first one I listened to was called “Friends and Neighbors” - and plays music related to that theme. Most of the music Dylan plays is ... ancient blues, jazz, pop, and country (some of which goes clear back to the 1920s), with some rhythm and blues and early rock and roll thrown in as well. He also occasionally throws in a little modern stuff, too. Bob Dylan not only plays great old music on his show, he also pontificates, quotes poetry, tells jokes, and relates anecdotes about the artists he plays, which are usually quite funny. Theme Time Radio Hour is now required listening for my morning treadmill jogs, because it is so entertaining it takes my mind off the fact that I’m jogging on a treadmill at 4:30 in the morning.

 Theme Time Radio Hour ... check it out. It’s good stuff.

My Man-Crush

I’m going to see Bob Dylan in concert tomorrow night. He’s playing at Deer Valley in Park City. My wife surprised me with tickets, and I’m going with my buddy Ken. The Wife isn’t a fan, so it was mighty nice of her to stifle her gag reflex and get the tickets for me. I’ve been a Dylan fan since high school – nearly thirty years ago – and I’m as excited for this concert as any concert I’ve ever been to. The man is a living legend  – Dylan, not Ken. Ken is still working on it, but I digress. Bob Dylan is pushing seventy years old, so I’m very happy to finally see him in person. I missed out on seeing Johnny Cash – another big favorite – before he died, and I’ve always regretted it. Not gonna happen with Dylan.

Because of my anticipation of tomorrow night’s concert, I listened to one of the most important (and best) concerts ever recorded – Dylan and the Hawks in Manchester, UK, May 1966 – while I was riding my bike this morning, and I’ve been wandering around the house today singing Dylan songs and extolling his virtues to The Wife. She doesn’t get it, so rather than continue to bore her with my pontifications, I’m going to blog about my man-crush on Bob Dylan. I can sum it up with one incident in the man’s life, and it happened at the concert I listened to this morning.

If this bores you, you don’t have to read it.

Okay, so you’re still with me. Good. Let me set the scene. It’s Tuesday, May 17, 1966, in Manchester, England. Bob Dylan is playing a concert at the Free Trade Hall. Dylan and his greatest backing band, The Hawks (later more famous as simply The Band) have been playing Australia and Europe for six weeks. They are wrapping up their tour in the UK. One of Dylan’s greatest albums, Blonde on Blonde, was just released the day before in the US.

Ever since the switch from being an earnest acoustic folk singer who played protest songs at places like the March on Washington in 1963, where Martin Luther King gave his famous “I have a dream” speech, to going electric at the Newport Folk Festival the summer of 1965 and nearly getting booed off stage, Dylan has been heckled by his former fans. Rock and roll music doesn’t fit in with their folkie, protest singer image of Dylan. The UK fans are especially belligerent. Dylan has taken to performing with a huge American flag as his backdrop, further alienating his already testy European fans.

Dylan’s 1966 concerts are divided between an acoustic set and an electric set. At the beginning of the concert Dylan comes out with just his acoustic guitar and his harmonica and plays acoustic music. Bob Dylan is twenty-five years old with a wild head of hair and some pretty hip clothes for the era. He formerly performed in work shirts and blue jeans, so his appearance has changed quite a bit.

Interestingly, during the acoustic part of the show, Dylan doesn’t play any of the “classic” stuff that the fans want to hear (“Blowin’ In The Wind” or “The Times They Are A-Changin’”). Instead he plays acoustic versions of songs off his last three albums, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde, which are essentially rock and roll albums with a smattering of acoustic material included. Despite the lack of protest music, Dylan’s acoustic set is fairly well received.

However, Dylan then brings out the Hawks and rips into a song called “Tell Me, Momma,” and the audience starts to get agitated. In fact, not realizing that rock and roll history is being made right before their eyes, some of the crowd boos and shouts out rude stuff. A few of his former fans start clapping rhythmically at an inappropriate time, trying to throw Dylan and the band off. Dylan starts to mumble something under his breath until the clapping clods eventually quit so that they can hear what he is saying. Dylan’s electric set continues like this, even though Dylan and the Hawks are playing definitive versions of some of his greatest songs.

The jeering gets worse. Dylan and the band finally come to the last song. While the musicians are tuning up, an idiot in the audience shouts out “Judas!” (that someone would compare him to Christ’s betrayer is a good example of the depth of feeling some fans had about Bob Dylan playing rock and roll instead of folk music). Another genius shouts “I’m never listening to you again!” Dylan turns to the hecklers and says, “I don’t believe you. You’re a liar!” Then Dylan turns his back to the crowd and says to Robbie Robertson, his lead guitarist, “Play it f*cking loud!” And Bob Dylan and the Hawks tear into the greatest version of “Like A Rolling Stone” ever recorded.

So that’s it. I admire the man’s tenacity and audacity. I love the fact that Dylan wouldn’t be daunted or dissuaded by his erstwhile fans. Rather than caving and going back to folk music, Dylan made some of the greatest music of his career, even though it wasn’t appreciated at the time. And, despite a motorcycle accident where he broke his neck a few months after the concert in Manchester, Dylan has continued to make great music. Bob Dylan’s last four albums, Time Out Of Mind, “Love And Theft”, Modern Times, and Together Through Life, are some of his best, most accessible work, and he was sixty plus years old when he recorded them.

And, thanks to my wife, I get to see him in concert tomorrow night.

A River Runs Through It and the Meaning of Life

  

Me with a favorite book, September 1993

I’m working my way through Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It this summer for the hundredth time, and thinking about family.

I first read A River Runs Through It over seventeen years ago. I came to the book by way of the Robert Redford movie, which I saw with a good friend at a movie theater one snowy winter night in Heber the first year I taught school. I liked the movie so much I bought the book, and as good as the movie was, it couldn’t hold a candle to Maclean’s original story. Norman Maclean is a great writer; he’s one of my favorites. The man’s prose is like most authors’ poetry; A River Runs Through It is a very beautifully written book. Maclean uses fly fishing as a metaphor for - and counterpoint to - life. Maclean’s description early in the story of his brother Paul’s fly-fishing ability and technique is some of the best writing I've ever read, and you don’t have to be a fly fisherman to enjoy or appreciate it.

 

Running through Maclean’s book like the river in the title is family. A River Runs Through It is funny, but Maclean isn’t a comedian and doesn’t go for cheap laughs. Instead, the humor comes naturally from growing up home-schooled by his Presbyterian minister father, and with his argumentative younger brother. One of my favorite parts of the book describes the one and only fist fight Maclean ever had with his brother, and their mother’s unfortunate intervention in that fight:

 ... I did not see our mother walk between us to try to stop us. She was short and wore glasses and, even with them on, did not have good vision. She had never seen a fight before or had any notion of how bad you could get hurt by becoming mixed up in one. Evidently, she just walked between her sons. The first I saw of her was the grey top of her head, the hair tied in a big knot with a big comb in it; but what was most noticeable was that her head was so close to Paul I couldn’t get a good punch at him. Then I didn’t see her anymore.

 

The fight seemed suddenly to stop itself. She was lying on the floor between us. Then we both began to cry and fight in a rage, each one shouting “You son of a bitch, you knocked my mother down.” 

She got off the floor, and, blind without her glasses, staggered in circles between us, saying without recognizing which one she was addressing, “No, it wasn’t you. I just slipped and fell.”

 

So, this was the only time we ever fought.

When I first read that passage it reminded me of the relationship I had with my younger brother Phil, except we definitely fought more than once. When we were kids, we would pound on each other one moment and be best friends the next. Even as teenagers we still occasionally settled things with a punch up, and yet no one else could ever settle things that way with one of us if the other was around. A River Runs Through It gained unexpected poignancy for me a few years ago when Phil, like Macleans’ brother Paul, died an untimely death. Like Maclean, there wasn’t much I could do to prevent Phil’s death, and I’ve brooded about it ever since.

 

Despite that ending, A River Runs Through It is not a morbid book. Another aspect of the book that keeps me coming back is Maclean’s love of - and almost reverence for - the mountains in which he grew up. I can relate to that. Like Maclean, I spent several summers working for the US Forest Service when I was younger, and I miss being in the mountains every day.

 

Rereading A River Runs Through It also reminded me that one of the great things about my Forest Service years was the opportunity I had to retrace the path my grandparents - my mother’s parents - made (almost literally) through the mountains during the early and middle parts of the twentieth century. They were from the same generation as Norman Maclean, and ran a sawmill set in the Uinta Mountains, east of Heber. Maclean’s parents had a cabin in the mountains because they liked to fish; my grandparents had a cabin in the mountains because they had to earn a living. Thanks to some exploring I did as a Forest Service employee, and thanks to some great road trips with a favorite uncle, I learned my way around the areas in the mountains where my grandparents (and parents) lived and worked.

 

My cousin Jim recently e-mailed me a photo of one of the cabins my grandparents lived in while they cut down trees in the mountains. Here it is:

Not exactly the luxury mountain cabin common nowadays, is it? There wasn’t a jetted hot tub in it, anyway. The cabin doesn't exist anymore; it was only meant to be a temporary accommodation for my grandfather and his family while they worked. The Forest Service demolished it fifty years ago.

 

Finally, the lesson Norman Maclean teaches in A River Runs Through It is that our families define us. Who we are and what we do with our life is shaped by our family, for better or worse. Ultimately, we have our free will to choose our own path through life, but our family sets us on that path. As Maclean writes, near the end of the book:

Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand are dead, but still I reach out to them.

  

A River Runs Through It is a great book. Check it out if you haven’t already.

 

 

 

Remembering Veterans...

Ten years ago I wrote a monthly newspaper column for the late, lamented Wasatch County Courier. I didn’t get paid much for doing it, but I had a lot of fun. The main focus of my newspaper column was history, especially Wasatch County history.

Today I'm posting a column I wrote for the Courier back in 1999. I always liked this column, because it dealt with two things near and dear to my heart: family and patriotism. Bear in mind that it was originally published the week before Christmas in 1999, so add ten years (now eighteen years) to any historical references. I’m posting it here today because it also applies to Veterans Day. This article may not contain the greatest writing in the world, but it came from the heart:

Joe Thacker and friend

"I'll Be Home for Christmas" has always been one of my favorite Christmas songs. Bing Crosby recorded it back in the 1943, at the height of World War II. “White Christmas” was more popular, but for my money, nothing can beat the emotional resonance of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” I’ve often wondered what that song meant to the Heber Valley men and women fighting in the second World War, and to the families they left behind. I can’t really know, because I wasn’t there. I can only imagine how poignant Bing Crosby’s song was for those people during that terrible time.

I also recently reread the book Citizen Soldiers by Stephen Ambrose. Citizen Soldiers is a history of World War II from D-Day to VE Day, told by GI’s who were there. I highly recommend this book. Ambrose’s tale of the Battle of the Bulge, which was fought the week before Christmas 1944, inspired me to talk to a relative who participated in World War II. I asked my uncle, Joe Thacker, about his war experiences. Uncle Joe spent three Christmases in the service of his country.

My uncle Joe Thacker is the son of Ray and Mima Thacker. He grew up in Charleston, along with his three brothers, Dale, Vern, and Dan, and his three sisters, ReNee, Vera, and Marva. All four of Ray and Mima’s sons served in World War II. Dale was in the Navy in the North Atlantic. Vern served in the Navy in the Pacific. Dan trained for the invasion of Japan in Oregon.

Uncle Joe served for three years as an army engineer. During Christmas 1943, Uncle Joe was in Louisiana completing basic training. He spent Christmas 1944 on the island of Leyte, in the Philippines. Uncle Joe was part of the Philippine invasion force, and has some amazing and scary stories to tell about that battle. On Christmas Day 1945, after the war ended, Uncle Joe was on a boat headed for home. That was probably the best Christmas of all.

Uncle Joe’s memories of the Christmases he spent during the war are bittersweet. He remembers the camaraderie he felt with his fellow soldiers. Their loyalty to one another and the devotion to duty they felt got them through the homesickness and the rough times. They supported one another. Uncle Joe said that remembering the real meaning of Christmas, the birth of the Savior, also helped ease the pain of being away from loved ones at home.

Uncle Joe commented that, although it was difficult to be away from home at Christmas, it was harder on the folks left behind. My Grandmother Thacker briefly kept a journal during the early months of 1944. Each entry details how lonesome she was and how miserable and cold the weather was. Receiving a letter from one of her sons serving in the military gave Grandma a lot of happiness. She missed her sons and worried about them every minute of the day.

Grandma Thacker wasn’t the only one who missed loved ones during World War II. Millions of Americans sacrificed time away from their families to secure the freedoms we enjoy today. Some even gave their lives so that we Americans could continue to live the way we choose. The next time we sing a Christmas carol, especially “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” let's remember the sacrifices the men and women who serve our country have made to protect our freedoms.

“. . . when they built you brother, they broke the mold.”

Phil meets Susan for the first time, April 2000.

The line in the title is from “Terry’s Song” by Bruce Springsteen. I can never listen to that song without thinking of my brother Phil.

Three years ago today (March 15, 2006), my dad called me to tell me that Phil had died. Lisa and I drove from Eagle Mountain to Salt Lake in a snowstorm to handle the arrangements. I try not to dwell too much on sad anniversaries, but with Dad’s death two months ago, Dad, Mom, and Phil have been on my mind. It’s hard to lose a parent, but neither of my parents’ deaths affected me the way Phil’s death did. Before Mom died, she had been sick for a couple of years and was confined to a wheelchair. Mom was ready to go. Dad missed Mom for the next eleven years. When he died in January, I knew I would miss him, but I also believed Dad was where he wanted to be: with Mom. I don’t have any regrets about either of my parents; I was there for them when they needed me.

I wish I could say the same about Phil. Phil and I were only fourteen months apart in age; we spent most of the time between the years 1965 and 1983 together. Phil and I were best friends when we weren’t trying to beat the hell out of each other, but anyone else who tried to mess with us had better look out. We were brothers.

The last twenty years of Phil’s life were miserable, with intermittent bright spots. Phil was forty years old when he died. He was working as a police officer with West Valley P.D. He wasn’t a perfect officer, but Phil loved his job. He loved dealing with people, even when they were skells. Phil liked the people he met in the course of his job: the good, decent fellow cops whom he respected, the lady who owned the hamburger joint where he worked security, the little kids he was able to help. Phil didn’t like the cops he worked with who he considered phonies or posers, and he didn’t like people who abused their spouses or their children.

Most important to me, Phil loved my daughters, and they loved him. Phil is holding my oldest in the picture I posted above. I wish he could have spent more time with them. I said in Phil’s eulogy that my kids were lucky to have a guardian angel who was a cop, and I meant it.

March 18, 2006

Phil’s death wasn’t suicide, but I wouldn’t exactly call it an accident either (actually - to be charitable - I would call it involuntary manslaughter.) After three years I am used to him being gone, but I haven’t made peace with it, although I am trying. I still think about Phil nearly every day, and I wonder if I could have made a bigger difference in his life, especially near the end. I really don’t know what I would have done differently; you can’t live a person’s life for him. For better or worse, people have their free agency. I did make sure that Phil had a decent funeral, and that he was respectfully laid to rest.

I wish Phil could have seen himself the way other people saw him. The greatest tragedy of Phil’s life is that he didn’t really understand how much people loved him. He based his opinion of himself on someone who didn’t deserve that trust.

Another song, “Before They Make Me Run,” by the Rolling Stones, also reminds me of Phil. In that song Keith Richards - Phil's favorite Stone - sings, “Gonna find my way to heaven, `cause I did my time in hell.” That line could have been Phil’s epitaph. I hope Phil did find his way to heaven, because he deserved it. Phil was a good guy. He had his faults, but the good in him far outweighed the bad, and I don’t think he ever quit trying.

In the end, what else matters?