Author Notes

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.

Shopping…

In the grocery store, wearing the mask Janet Baskerville made me, and being genuinely happy I have such a nice mask.

Worrying about what I’m touching, and then touching my face because it itched. Thinking about going in the men’s room and washing my hands and face, but what the fuck lurks in there waiting to kill me, but I really need to piss, but I’ll find a tree on the way home, outside, and away from people where it’s safe, right?

That Fauchi is a good guy, right? I saw him on a magazine in the check-out line. He can be trusted, right? Except I read some dirty shit he pulled during the early days of the AIDS virus, so maybe he’s no better than the rest…

Embracing the word “contactless” now, because that’s a good thing, right? Go home and sit in my cocoon and be safe, right? I’ll be contactless.

Seeing the last four-pack of toilet paper and getting excited.

Looking really hard for Lysol.

Trying to understand that there is a difference between baking soda and baking powder and realizing I’m sixty-three years old and don’t know what either is used for, but I know one takes odors out of stuff.

Finding eggs and feeling like I should tell someone, or do I keep it a secret?

I want to get an anti-body test, but I heard there are 20-30 different companies making these tests and I could whip something up in my shed, using motor oil and gasoline that would probably be as accurate.

False-positive is a thing I worry about now.

Wondering if I’ll ever see my daughter again, as her part of Florida burns.

And that Foghorn Leghorn acting motherfucker in the White House directing this shit show, as he gets his Justice Department to let self-confessed criminals go free, gets away with what he want to because we are all to busy washing our hands, and looking for alcohol swabs.

I realize what a dystopian brain-fuck this shit-show really has become, and wondering if that is by design.

There is good news… you have to look for it…

I took some FB flak for posting about the number of survivors from this virus. This is my response to any who disagree:

We could all go jump off bridges and stuff now, I suppose… the news is dark, and horrible, and worse, seemingly, every moment. Please forgive me for trying to share some light.

This is not false hope. People are recovering. People are dying, the deaths, some are horrific, it’s only going to get worse long before it gets better, but still, it’s important, at least to me, to know a large number of people are surviving.

I was talking to a guy the other day. He and his wife have it. They are running low grade fevers and have the cough. He was out in his back yard digging a hole. Before anyone wants to send sanitation squads to eradicate my friend, he’s a farmer, on his own land, an easy two miles from anyone. Oh, and he’s 60 years old.

Not everyone is dying a horrible death. It’s not an instant death sentence. People need to know this side of the story too.

I’m still, thankfully, working every day, the work is different now, but it’s work and I’m grateful for it. I’m exercising every day, the bag, the bike, hiking; eating clean, working on my Mustang, getting outside in the fresh air and sun.

I know, we all know, we could get this tomorrow and it could be bad—very bad—but I’ll not let this define me. I’m trying to live my life as normally as I can, and I’ll take any positivity I can find and hold onto that shit like it was gold.