William Lobb

Author

Blog

Freedom Fest, 2020

So, the other night, in Montgomery, the local republicans had a “freedom fest,” with fireworks.

The hero-patriots got to sit in their cars and be socially distanced while they celebrated God knows exactly what. Thinking they were excited about:

Babies in cages?

Supession of the press?

Capturing COVID statistics so the administration can twist the narrative in a favorable light?

150,000 deaths due to inaction and lies, a quarter-million by the fall. 75,000 new cases a day?

Opening schools in the middle of a pandemic that’s not even completed the ‘first wave?’

Being the laughing stock of the world, and our slide into ‘shithole country’ status continues?

Hate rallies and the military in our streets?

Tear gassing citizens for photo-ops at churches?

Unidentified stormtroopers in Portland, coming to a city near you soon!

14% unemployment rate?

Russian bounties on American soldiers?

Small businesses on the verge of collapse?

Militarization of the police.

For profit prisons.

Health insurance that costs as much as your mortgage.

An additional SIX TRILLION added to the deficit, most of which went to large corporations, there’s a name for that: fascism

Boogaloo, the KKK and 1488?

To be fair, we’ve not had one single attack from the ISIS Air Force or Navy, thanks to our trillion dollar military budget, so there’s that…

FREEDOM!

Sunlight in July

There is a comfort in knowing if I stand in this exact place and look to the west, every July 15th at 6:34 am, when the sky is cloudless and clear, the sun will shine precisely on that spot, that rock. 
The trees around me will grow and die and fall, and the rock will probably be there for thousands of years, but that spot on the earth will always catch this July sunrise. 
No matter what is in this spot, I imagine the sun will hit it at this exact moment in the year till the end of my time and well beyond, the end of all time, I suppose.
That patch of dirt out on my back lawn is my particular and perculiar and private Stonehenge. 
Nothing is significant in this date or day or time,other than it was noticed at this moment, waiting for my coffee to perk. The comfort is knowing that as long as I can count on the sun hitting that spot next year, and the year after that  not everything is broken. 
So then, I take comfort in the laws of motion and inertia and gravity and particles of light, and not much else or many other things. My cousin is a scientist and he bought me a book on physics. He’s understands things, the mechanics of the universe. I don’t understand anything, I just need to know some things still work. 
I’m feeling a little windswept today, but not enough to billow my sails, or right this ship; the safe harbors are gone.  I feel at the mercy of the wind.

Father’s Day

My dad died so long ago I don’t remember much. I’ve not had much use for Father’s Day since 1965.

I don’t think about him too often anymore. I wore a mustache in his honor for thirty years, hating it. One day I decided it had to go. It was a freeing moment. Maybe my first day of freedom since the day he died.

I stopped using drugs and booze around the time the mustache left. His was this cool, thin Boston Blackie mustache. Mine was a farce. It was big and bushy and itched all the time, even disrespectful to the 1980s porn stars who wore the same lip hair.

I’m twenty years older than he was when he died. If we met today I would be the elder and allegedly wiser from the years. I have a hard time wrapping my head around that, especially me being the wiser. I just don’t see that.

Looking back at his ancient photos are looking back in time; a grainy black and white 4 by 4-inch portal, with a wavy white border. Not unlike viewing the world through a 12” black and white TV, with an array of vacuum tubes.

A simple time, an analog mechanical world.

Zip codes were new. He thought them unnecessary. His address was:

William Lobb

RD#3

Middletown, NY

That seemed to work for him. Stuff showed up in the mailbox.

A lifelong Democrat, dad and my uncle Ben crossed over to the Republicans after hearing Eisenhower’s farewell address. It was a different Republican Party then.

When JFK was killed I remember my dad was sad. He told me, “Ike was right.” I was six and was not quite sure what a military-industrial complex was, but I knew it would be a problem…

He admired courage, a lot. As a six year old boy I ran away scared when a friend got stuck in deep quickmud in a swamp. That was the maddest I ever saw him. You don’t leave anyone hanging, ever.

We had a party line at our house in Silver Lake. Three families connected to one line. My sister and I used to pick up our phone and listen in on our neighbor’s calls. Knowledge, we knew even in 1963, was power.

An uncle, who worked for the telephone company in Jersey, gave him an old phone. We ran a wire and hooked it up—we had TWO phones in one house! It was the first big secret of my life.

“Don’t tell anyone we have an Illegal second phone!”

Yeah, dad was gangsta.

I remember turning wrenches and learning that a busted knuckle was something better laughed at than cried over.

I remember old Fords.

I’m not much on the whole heaven and hell thing, never have been, but where ever his spirit landed I hope there are ‘49 Shoebox Ford convertibles, red please; flatty V-8s, 6 volt generators and three on the tree.

He left me with five sage pieces of advice:

Don’t believe your own bullshit.

Never take anyone’s advice.

Change your oil.

Don’t ride the clutch.

Don’t run from a fight.

We Should Be Antifa

Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, spoke of and warned us of the evils of the military-industrial complex in a 1962 speech.

The Republican Party in 2020 is precisely the system Ike was describing in his farewell address

Before you mindlessly speak of the “evils” of socialism, you need to study fascism and what exactly it means. To me, anti-fascism is exactly what the United States once stood for, what it once fought a bloody war to stop. It is exactly what Eisenhower spoke about.

I have and will always be anti-fascist. The fact that your sitting president casts anti-fascism as some sort of evil should terrify you, and cause you to act before you are in chains.

Rest In Peace, Champ

Shavers, Spinks, Holmes, and Berbick…

The last fights were as important, as defining, as the early fights. As important as Rome in 1960, as important as Sonny Liston, as Joe Frazier, George Foreman.

Ernie Terrell, 1967, learned his name was not Cassius Clay.

Ali could never retire. Ali had to be whupped. That’s the thing a lot of people never understood. I remember smiling every time he tried. I knew he’d never retire. He couldn’t quit. It wasn’t ego—yes he had a big mouth—but it wasn’t ego. He wasn’t a narcissist, he was beautiful and he knew it.

You don’t climb to champion of the world, not once, but four times, and quit.

You got to be whupped.

I realized last month that I’d blocked out those last five fights. I didn’t want to remember the whupping.

Ernie Shavers was close. Scary close.

Spinks whupped him once, then he came back. I met Spinks. He was a punk. I hated him.

Larry Holmes was tragic. A friend, Holmes beat him bad. It sucked to watch. I remember crying. Larry cried too…

Trevor Berbick—my only reaction was stunned silence.

Trevor Berbick didn’t whup Ali. It was a long march that started with Kenny Norton.

You got to remember the man as he was. From the greatness of Rome to the sad defeat in Nassau. It was all part of the story. It’s the only way it could have played out.

June 3, 2016… Rest In Peace, Champ.

A lot of people didn’t understand you. They don’t understand the sport. They don’t understand the fight. A lot of us completely understood you.