After driving the six hours home from Philly last Sunday, I went over to the high school track … just to give my legs a stretch.
My son got there a few minutes before me, fresh from running some errands.
When we are at the track together, we run separately.
He’s much faster. Keeps track of his times and such.
Me … I just go for the medicine of it.
The track was empty when we arrived, but after a bit I spied a couple walking down the hill. From a distance I recognized a retired teacher from the middle school. I see her walking at the cemetery sometimes too, always with a spring in her step, a smile and a kind word.
All of which she possessed when she taught. Both of our kids had her for reading.
Whenever I see Mrs. Labella my memory goes back to our son’s first year of middle school … when Karry and I signed up for parent teacher conferences.
That was … what? A dozen years ago now? Thirteen?
I say this lovingly, but Peter was a bit of a handful back then … at least from our side of the equation.
Whatever internal motor was responsible for his initiative … revved very low.
Most of his homework got done with Karry’s foot in close proximity to his keister.
His default with most things was to expend the least amount of effort required. He had dual gifts for pushing buttons and refusing to admit any wrongdoings. We often said he would make a great lawyer someday.
He also exercised great agency over his energy and attention, which was often at odds with where the world wished he would direct them.
He was never in any great hurry.
His internal clock just kept time differently.
When we met his middle school teachers for the first time, we expected to come back with homework on what we could do better at home to help him succeed in class.
I’m not sure, but I think Mrs. Labella was first.
Peter wasn’t much of a reader then … or now.
Didn’t inherit my English major genes, though he does have a genuine love for language. He just has always preferred working with his hands. Loves making and fixing things.
Reading and writing? Not so much.
I remember Karry and I bracing for impact when we first walked into Mrs. Labella’s meticulously curated classroom.
We were indeed stunned by what we heard.
She said how wonderful it was having Peter in class.
How well-behaved he was.
How much she appreciated his participation.
We were like, “Um, our son?”
He didn’t even like to read.
We were kind of speechless.
I don’t remember Mrs. Labella’s specific words, just that she saw a light in him … that we were too close to see for ourselves … and reflected it back to us.
I now know that those were the days when we — or at least I — spent way too much time squeezing the parenting handlebars way too tightly.
As Mrs. Labella chatted with us, I remember appreciating being in the presence of a person who’d spent years in the company of 12- and 13-year-olds, who deeply understood the assignment, and who loved the important and sometimes hard thing she got to do … with exactly who she got to do it with.
Someone who commanded respect, took no b.s. … and was comfortable enough in her own skin to give Grace where and when needed.
In other words, someone who was born to be a teacher.
By contrast, I realized that Karry and I were as new to being parents of a middle schooler as Peter was being a middle schooler.
Maybe we were all doing a little better than we gave ourselves credit for, even if we were collectively a little fidgety in our respective chairs.
The rest of his teachers pretty much said the same thing.
Walking out of the school that night, Karry and I joked that maybe we had a budding actor on our hands. Had ‘em all fooled, he did.
We both knew that wasn’t at all true.
The truer thing was that maybe we were in too much of a hurry with our expectations.
That maybe our parenting motors were in need of revving a little slower.
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So … fast forward … to last Sunday at the track.
I waved to Mrs. Labella and her husband when I caught up to them.
As I jogged by, she said she appreciated a piece I’d recently written.
For the record, I’m not sure higher praise exists for a writer than to get a gold star from a middle school reading teacher.
I told her it’s a blessing to have such good things to write about.
I ran on ahead a bit … then felt moved to double-back.
“In the spirit of not assuming,” I said. “That’s my son over there,” pointing Peter out on the other side of the track. “If he didn’t say hello, make sure you say hi when he passes by.”
“I’ll trip him if he doesn’t,” she said … still not an ounce of b.s. in her voice.
I was about three-quarters of the way through my next lap when, up ahead of me, I saw this.
My 25-year-old son and his middle school reading teacher.
It filled my heart full to see that he broke from his pace to walk with them.
Turns out, his internal clock has always understood time just fine.
They took a good full lap together.
I don’t know what they talked about.
Only that they each had a smile and a kind word for the other.
I imagine he told her what he’s doing now.
I imagine that she told him she’s not surprised one bit.
I found myself slowing my pace behind them … careful not to get in the way.
Just grateful for the medicine of it … in no great hurry myself anymore.
“But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down. Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.” — David Foster Wallace, “This is Water,” Commencement Speech to Kenyon College, 2005
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Walked into the post office yesterday morning carrying the hand-written card and extra copy of Dave Eggers’ “The Captain and the Glory” I was sending to a best-friend for his January birthday. After picking out and addressing a padded envelope, I went to take my place in line … just as a mom and her young son were walking in.
The boy, maybe eight, was carrying a package at least half as tall as he was. Could barely peek over its top. Based on the way he was waddling, the contents had some heft.
Carrying the lighter of our respective loads, I let ‘em go in front of me.
The post office people behind the counter were in the process of switching shifts — logging in and out and whatnot — so our patience was, um, appreciated.
Mom asked the boy if wanted to put the package down while they waited.
“I’m holding it,” he said, defiantly, standing on one leg for a sec so he could adjust his grip.
I smiled at such innocence.
Obviously, his first time waiting in line at the post office.
Within a few seconds he was grunting.
Mom moved her suggestion from the interrogative to the imperative.
He remained a stubborn helper.
However, his strength timed out before the glacial logging in process.
He put the box down.
Looked around and noticed the floor-standing carousel of gift cards strategically placed near where the line begins.
Asked Mom if he could have a dollar for a Roblox gift card.
Upon which she proceeded to explain the business concept of disintermediation to her child.
Told him it was ‘cheaper’ to just purchase credits from the site, rather than going through a middle man.
She wasn’t merely patient. She was generous.
You could tell they spent a lot of time together for how easy their conversation was.
Reminded me how much I enjoyed conversing with our kids when they were young.
How much I learned from the way their minds worked.
“Thank you for your patience, can I help the next customer?”
The son cupped his hands back under the box.
Hoisted.
Waddled over to the counter and heaved it up there himself.
“I see you brought your helper,” said the freshly logged-in counter person.
“She can’t lift with her one arm, so I have to carry things,” said the boy, carrying the conversation as responsibly as he did the box.
Over the next couple minutes of the transaction, the adults left space for the boy’s participation.
He complemented the clerk on her gift cards, relaying how he wanted a dollar one, but his Mom said it was better to buy credits online.
“Have you ever gotten a gift card before?” the clerk asked, as she processed the postage for the box.
“Yes,” he said. “Sometimes my Mom gets me one … when I do good things.”
I inferred from the small sample size I was witnessing that he had a few credits in the bank.
Meanwhile, a line began to form behind me, headed by a white-haired, tightly-coated, tightly-lipped older woman.
Who was out of both stamps and patience.
As the boy elucidated on his upcoming birthday and that one time he was late for football practice, the woman’s huffs under her breath were oddly comparable to the boy’s grunts under the box.
I made smiling ‘what-are-you-going-to-do?’ eye-contact with her a couple times to give her frustration a chance to froth over.
She returned a couple huffy head shakes and an unsmiling eye roll.
In these moments I like to remind myself that the exact same experience is experienced differently by the folks experiencing it.
The reasons for a tightly-coated elder’s impatience can be just as valid as a Mom’s inexhaustible well.
The post office can sure test both.
Sandwiched in between — both me and time standing still — I saw life flash in front of me.
And over my shoulder.
Before me … a Mom doing her best to teach her boy how the world’s supposed to work, while protecting him from how it actually does with her one good arm.
Behind me … the world’s grumpy restlessness to just get on with it.
“Thanks for your patience … Can I help the next person in line?”
I waited an extra second so I could watch the boy reach for his Mom’s hand as they left the counter.
What to the world looks like an eight-year-old’s obliviousness to time … the 55-year-old knows is, in fact, the keenest appreciation.
Was saddened to learn of the recent passings of a couple humans who were both significant figures in my musical growings up … Bob Mascia and Ralph Bill. Sending love and condolences to their families and to all that loved them and will miss them.
They both influenced a ton of young musicians, having both served as band directors at Brownsville High School. I believe Bob may have actually followed Ralph in the role.
I was not one of their band students.
And I only really knew them for a fraction of my life, which was even a smaller fraction of theirs. But though I hadn’t seen either in decades, knowing them was — and will always remain — meaningful.
As does the fact that I’m writing this on an otherwise nameless summer Sunday afternoon.
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I was 13 years old and standing in the kitchen after school one day while Mom was getting dinner ready.
When Dad came home from Sherwin Williams, walked in the kitchen and promptly informed me — outta nowhere — that he’d signed me up for drum lessons. And that he’d already met with the teacher, and made it clear that I was to learn all styles of music, “not just rock,” (I can still hear Dad’s voice emphasizing those words) … including waltzes, bossa novas, cha-chas, rhumbas, tangos, and of course, jazz and swing.
The specificity with which he relayed his expectations made it all feel like a foregone conclusion. But I was an agreeable kid, and drums were cool … so my reaction was along the lines of, “Ok.”
Bob was my drum teacher. He graduated high school with my older sister Missy (she reminded me that Bob played the lead in the high school musical their senior year – The Music Man — while she played piano).
At the time of Dad’s kitchen conversation, Bob was playing steady in a local rock band and filling in with a few others, including the group my Dad played with — Sammy Bill’s Orchestra.
Gave drum lessons on the side downtown at Ellis’ Music Store.
First thing I learned?
Drums don’t start cool.
I got a pair of sticks and a rubber pad the size of a piece of Texas Toast.
Was informed that I had to learn snare drum before I’d be allowed anywhere near a set. For my parents, it was like a stay of execution.
Bob taught me how to read music, how to count quarter notes, eighths and sixteenths, what triplets were, how to bounce my sticks for open rolls. Graduated me to Charles Wilcoxin’s rudiments … paradiddles, drags and ruffs, and rolls of every dynamic, shape and size: fives, sevens, nines, seventeens, with an odd eleven and thirteen thrown in for good measure(s).
I was always somewhere between good and bad, never quite religious in my practicing.
But I stuck with it.
And a couple years into lessons, Dad surprised with the best Christmas present I’d ever receive — a set of Pearl drums from Ellis’.
I began alternating my weekly lessons with Bob between set and snare.
I remember my very first lesson on set, Bob teaching me the building blocks of how to assemble a couple basic beats.
Eighth notes on the hi-hat with my left hand (I’m a lefty), backbeat on two and four with my right on the snare, opening the high hat with my right foot on the ‘and’ of one and closing it on ‘two.’ Gave me two variations for the bass drum — four on the floor, and an alternate where the kick drum hit on “one” and “three-and.”
I still remember the exhilaration of the first time getting all four limbs to hold a groove.
It was a teenager’s equivalent of pedaling a bike under your own power for the first time. The inexpressible freedom that comes from being responsible for your own locomotion in the world. I can tell you the feeling’s the same whether the locomotion is physical or sonic. The Big Bang it was to me.
At last, drums were cool.
Occasionally I’d arrive a few minutes early for my Saturday morning lesson, climb to the top of the steps and find Bob just messing around on the kit.
Oh, was he a monster.
Every time I heard him play, from the first time to whenever the last may have been, I was in awe.
Got to hear him play once with Sam’s band. Though he held back for the kind of dance music they performed, he still couldn’t help overflowing the banks with his prowess.
It’s hard to keep a Ferrari tame.
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Fast forward to the summer after ninth grade.
I was in the kitchen on an otherwise nameless Sunday afternoon, Mom fixing an early dinner since Dad had a gig that night. They played every third Sunday at the Moose in Perryopolis, three easy hours for an always appreciative crowd. Dad always loved that gig.
It had rained all afternoon, torrential summer thunderstorms … the kind that percussively pummeled and waterfalled rain on the aluminum awning on our tiny front porch.
The phone rang and I remember walking from the kitchen to answer it. It was Sam, calling to let my Dad know that the Moose had lost power from the storms and that the gig was cancelled.
I remember Dad being bummed, but also relieved to get his Sunday night back so he could prep for work the next day.
About 45 minutes later, we were eating dinner at the table when the phone rang again. It was Sam calling back to say that the power had come back on at the Moose … so the gig was on.
So Dad resumed his gig-prep ritual, getting a shower, doing his teeth (which took a good 30-45 minutes. I’m not sure there was ever a trumpet player more meticulous about his teeth), laying out his suit, his mute bag, etc.
No big deal.
Until the phone rang for a third time. Sam again. He’d gotten a hold of everyone except Bob. In the age before cel phones, when answering machines were still a novelty, you either got a hold of someone or you didn’t. Sam figured that Bob must’ve gone out to eat or something after learning that the gig was off.
“Tell Pete to get ready, just in case Bob doesn’t call me back,” Sam told my Dad.
Upon which I promptly started freaking out.
I’d tagged along on a couple of my Dad’s gigs, had listened to a couple cassette tapes of the band he’d given me, so I wasn’t completely unfamiliar with the music. But my drums had never left my practice room. I didn’t even have cases for them. I remember taking them apart that afternoon for the first time, afraid I wouldn’t remember how they went back together. When I wasn’t freaking out, I was praying that Sam would call back saying he’d gotten a hold of Bob.
Alas, a fourth call never came.
The rain had long since stopped by the time Mac came to pick us up. I remember carrying my cymbal stands out one by one, gingerly laying them down in the back of his Chevy Suburban, covering them with blankets so they wouldn’t be tempted to roll.
When we were done loading the truck, Mac commented, “They look like dead bodies.”
Not the encouragement I was looking for.
When we got to the Moose, Dad helped me set things back up and bought me a Pepsi to calm my nerves. Sam loaned me an oversized tux jacket, and a gratuitously large, velvet, clip-on black bow tie that wore crooked.
I’ll never forget his only instruction to me, which he delivered with his signature calmness: “As long as you begin and end with the rest of the band, you’ll be fine.”
By the time everybody tuned up and gathered on the bandstand, I was in full panic. I gave my full attention to Sam’s every word and gesture, locking into the tempos as he counted off the tunes.
But once a tune shoved off from shore, one person became my life preserver — Ralph, Sam’s son, who played keyboard. I hyper-focused on Ralph’s left hand, which he used to play the bass lines. Ralph’s left hand told me everything I needed to know about each tune … whether it was a foxtrot, a jump tune, a bossa nova, cha-cha … on down the line.
I remember little else about that evening other than surviving the longest three hours of my life … thanks to a constant stream of advice and encouragement from Alice (our singer) and the guys in the band.
When it was over, I gratefully collected their smiles and handshakes, and then collected myself before turning my full attention to trying to remember how to tear my drums back down. Then Sam came over to me. Asked me to put out my hand.
Into which he put $25 … my share of the evening’s take.
I still can vividly recall my 15-year-old self’s feeling of surprise and exhilaration as I stared at the money in my hand. It felt like a million bucks to me.
In that humble transaction, I went from being a scared-shi*tless 15-year-old to being a professional musician.
I remember Bob making a point of that during my next lesson.
“No, I’m not,” I tried to quickly dismiss.
“You were paid for your services … that makes you a professional,” Bob informed me, setting the record straight.
Sam paying me was only the second most significant thing he did that night, though.
He asked if I’d be his regular drummer.
He said he was looking for someone who could make all the gigs. Bob sometimes played with other groups, forcing Sam to find subs. He wanted someone steady.
I can tell you with 100% certainty that there was nothing in my performance that evening that earned me the invitation. And I never grew to be more than one-tenth the drummer Bob was. But I never gave Sam a chance to reconsider his offer.
And, you know what? Bob never said a single word about my displacing him.
So, for the next 13 years, I got to share a bandstand with my Dad.
And with Ralph, too.
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When I think of Ralph, I think of how much fun he had while playing music. When his hands weren’t on the keys, he kept the band in stitches telling jokes. From the moment we’d arrive at a hall through set-up. Between sets. While we were tearing down and loading up. How he loved making people laugh.
And, oh how he loved good food, too. The more unpretentious the surroundings, the better, as far as he was concerned. I can still hear Ralph saying, “You can’t eat atmosphere,” a line that I still quote to this day whenever I find myself enjoying delicious food in less than fancy surroundings. I credit Ralph every time I quote him.
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As I was driving Route 40 towards Brownsville a couple Wednesday’s ago to pay respects at Ralph’s visitation, I found myself thinking of all the New Year’s Eve gigs we played together. After playing Auld Lang Syne at midnight, the band would stand up and we’d shake hands. I always set my drums up next to Ralph’s keyboard, so Ralph’s was usually the first hand I’d shake in the new year. I can say as I write this I now consider that an honor.
When I got to the funeral home, I spent a few minutes looking at the old photos they had placed around the room, mostly of Ralph’s life in music and love of family. There were a couple pictures of Sam’s old bands, one from the very early days, and a later one from when we played together. Sam in the front row in his white tux, Ralph smiling from behind the keyboard. Dad in the middle of the trumpet section, and me in crooked bow tie and glorious mullet.
“So many of them are gone, now,” Ralph’s wife Hillary said of the photo, when I offered my condolences. “Sam, now Ralph, your Dad … Roger … Diz.”
It’d been about 25 years since we’d last seen each other. Hillary used to come on some of the gigs. I invited Karry on a couple New Year’s Eves and they’d keep each other company.
“I remember the first time you played,” Hillary recalled. “You wrapped your drums in blankets.”
I told her that Ralph’s left hand was pretty much responsible for getting me through that first gig. And how much I treasured those times.
On my way out, I signed the registry, taking note of the names of some of the guys I was fortunate enough to play with all those years ago.
I didn’t stay long.
Just long enough to be reminded of days of Auld Lang Syne, and what good days those were.
Learning of Bob’s passing barely a week later … I was reminded that none of those days would have even been possible without Bob’s presence in my life … and his absence one rainy Sunday afternoon.
Letters for Maggie 