Library Bulletin Board Dragons of January 2012(Year of the Dragon)

Here's lookin' at ya!

You know by now I love to do bulletin boards. I love to think about  what they may be and then about  how to make them: what materials to use, the size and shape of them, the message and effect, and finally about the humor possibilities within any given theme. Flat out I’m a nut case for bulletin boards. This dragon features paper stuffed with cotton and then backed on mylar board. I wet some of the paper to help it bend.  He is green and trimmed out  in vibrant blue to highlight the fiery red flames.  The knight is armored in silver-colored single-face flute corrugated board, holding a tin-foil sword representing a forged but roughly hammered out blade. the knight’s chain mail armor is made of an old scroll of metallic material I was later told had been around for ten years un-used.

Recently someone asked me how I come up with my board ideas and that got me thinking.

Looks like we have a visitor.

I’ve done store front windows for my leather business and then for stores I managed in malls for over 21 years. And you know when I did my window fronts for my shop in Silver Springs Florida they had to be effective-they had to sell products. Now for an additional 17 years I’ve been doing bulletin boards for The Alachua County Library District.

It could be a hot time in town tonight.

I like to highlight the different seasons as they roll by. It’s the farmer in me that keeps my focus grounded to weather patterns when it comes to my garden and to my bulletin boards as well. Of course all the yearly celebrations and events make easy targets for bulletin board themes. Basically it’s all good.(Hopefully)

NO one phoned ahead to say this Dragon was coming.....

Sometimes people will see me just looking at an empty board from some distance. I find ideas swirl through imaginary lines I envision upon the board  as I do this. Images appear in my mind and then, if I like them, I try to figure out the best way to convey that image with what I have to deal with in terms of lighting, space and materials.

So this year our Youth services group decided to hit the Chinese New year and Dragons theme in general for bulletin boards and book displays. It’s been a kick!

Even our UF interns jumped into the fire.(This btw an excellent job at glitter lettering)

Check out this board, approx. fifteen feet long and six feet high!

a 15' X 6' bulletin board

Walk right up, but you might feel the heat! The flames come about ten inches off the board.

And of course this year's first dragon still looks on from the other side of our room.

And at last, a bit of information to entice your interest in reading about our friends the Dragons….

Dragons: a curse or a blessing? Thanks to Scot Sterling for setting up this sign for the board.

My all your Dragons be tame, but fly you around too!

Franque

Death of a Pineapple

Trust me-this will all make sense later, sort of.

It most likely is never good when any two-part  relationship starts off with one part being sliced up and then eaten by the other. But I thought this pineapple and me had a good shot at reaching an agreement:  sure the body would be diced up into squares, eaten and in this way lost but then a new life would begin once it’s pineapple top was planted in my backyard.  Right about here is when I learned a lot about pineapples.

Everyone knows a pineapple is lumpy, jagged maybe even prickly on its outside but inside it is through and though yellow. The minute I even thought about cutting this pineapples’ head off I could just feel the resentment building; the pineapple’s firm resolve to remain hesitant about this whole chopping up arrangement filled the air. Pitiful.  It was with absolute horror that I skinned this fruit nearly alive. Oh it fought back alright, sliding back and forth on my cutting board, squashing juice through my fingers and in every respect being quite disagreeable throughout the whole process. But eventually after slicing off side after side and finishing this ghastly deed only the yellow fruit flesh of the pineapple remained .

Skinning a Pineapple.

The eating of this pineapple I don’t remember because gas ripened fruit of any kind has this type of legacy.  I’m just saying the sooner those gas ripened cardboard tasting tomatoes are eaten and forgotten the better. And let’s not leave out those miraculous bananas that turn from green to rotten without ever passing ripe. I still can’t figure that out. Maybe ripe happens in milliseconds when it comes to bananas but enough about those other yellow fruits, we’re talkin’ pineapples here. Still I should add this: if anyone can figure out how to ship unripened fruit around the world but have it taste freshly wonderful when it is bought and eaten I will ask Romney and Newt to give you all of their money, tax deferred of course.

The thing about pineapples is that I live outside of the sub tropical zone and they don’t, not without work that is. Yeah here in Gainesville Florida it is possible to wrestle your pineapple down on the cutting board,  cut your pineapple’s head off, eat it and then plant the cut off green topper in good soil, water it lightly once a week and watch it grow. The pineapple plant is a beautiful plant actually, spreading long  green finger shaped  tubes out from its center in a circular fashion.

Worth carrying in and out.

Eventually, and there in lies the rub, the plant will send up an interesting flower of sorts and then bingo, it grows a pineapple you can eat! I’ve actually grown some the size super-store Sams sells but mostly they have been the size of what we would call a small pineapple.

See??? Really yellow is really ripe on the plant.

And the taste of an actually ripe pineapple is beyond what you are trying to imagine now. You may not have known all this but I know of several other creatures that do.

First off the rub part: pineapples are persnickety in that they take two years to grow and fruit- this is a lot of plant watching time. But like I say the eating makes it all worth while, that is if you get to eat the fruit. See the trouble is this “good eating” is not a secret. Here’s a list of just a few others who might like to help you eat your pineapple.

1) Squirrels

2) Possums

3)ants

4)some snakes

5) birds love to peck them

6)other rodents of any type dressed in disguise (see I told you that header picture would make sense)

7) Neighbors

8) your children

9) any relatives that know about them, and

10) more squirrels.

So it’s easy to see you can’t just shoot everyone and everything that might be helping you watch your pineapples grow for two years. Some people put up mesh cages around their pineapples to keep critters out of them but have you ever watched The Great Escape? The word about tunnels didn’t take long to get around the animal kingdom either. Case in point the biggest pineapple I ever grew had just turned golden brown and yellow (not like any you’ve seen in stores) as I ventured out one morning to pick it. Those claws marks dug deep into the far side of the pineapple, the side out of view from my house, really threw me for a loop that day. I’m not a murderer at heart , except for that one moment, well okay, those feeling may have lasted longer.

We are charged with safe guarding our animal kingdom and letting our fellow mankind live. Never have these two responsibilities been more challenged than they are by the mutilation or death of a pineapple you’ve grown for two years. Those cute little squirrels I watch eat my bird seed quickly look more like  potential pelts upon any wall or trash can if a pineapple death is involved.  Wild life loses its mystic qualities and earns some pesky mongrel dog adjectives. And as for people when it comes to stolen pineapples it goes like this: that inept, useless boondoggle of a fence America wasted it’s time building across the Texan desert is looking more and more like a good idea.

In short I guess the unexpected death of the pineapple I’d made my agreement with was  somehow good for me. Maybe it toughened me up inside, maybe I’ll enjoy the fruits of my labor agreements more now when they do work out. This is all fine, but don’t  try to tell my stomach this, that won’t work.  My last pineapple fiasco hasn’t helped much either. After one and half years, after making it through a record low temperature last winter, my biggest pineapple bit the dust during our only hard freeze this year. Meanwhile I’m busy watching my other seven pineapples grow but I don’t like the look some of our squirrels have been giving me lately…

Franque

A True American Debate

Check and balances that is. There is a lot of talk cause talk is cheap, but still talk can be misleading or informative. NO where do words slip better from a slide of mouth than they do in the political arena.  Such a plethora of double speak examples abound  in the political sphere it’d take several lifetimes of personal thought to sift through the mountain of it to find the most meaningful examples. Fortunately groups like factcheck.org or other sites focused left or right are available for anyone to look at and read the interesting blusterous misdirection spoken by politicians (Remember a bunch of Baboons is called a congress of baboons).

One ferris wheel of thought I laugh at is circling in the news now-a-days. You’ll recognize it; it goes like this: President Obama has no political savvy, he can’t get anything done! Or like this: President Obama hasn’t kept his promises. That’s funny, as in a congress of baboons funny.  Why? Here’s the deal in numerous nut shells. (Sorry about that).

The question that should be asked any Republican currently running to get  his party’s nomination is simply put like this:  what would you do if the opposing party said within one week after your election that their main agenda is to make sure you don’t get re-elected? What would you do if the opposing party’s most influential speakers proclaimed they wanted you out of office and would not back any of your platforms. But even worse, what would you do if every bill you sponsored and supported was nearly 100% opposed and voted against by every opposing party member every time? How would you then get anything done if this were the case? Maybe you think these questions are slanted to support President Obama’s successes and failures during his first three years of office. But I say this IS the question each Republican Primary suspect, oops, err, candidate should answer in the next debate.

What would any Republican  currently hoping to run for President do if once they were elected every Democrat voted against everything he proposed?

But there is another circus in town that is free to watch right now as well. It is called the Republican Primary. I have to laugh that Romney is under attack by fellow Republicans for having made millions by using the free market and for buying businesses that went  bankrupt to his gain!( Look up How Romney made his money).  The trouble here is the guys calling foul are all supposed to be members of the “We believe in the free market” crap shoot gang. So now that Romney has the lead all of a sudden earning money over the laid off bodies of working Americans is some sort of crime? Give me a break. I mean is it a free market at all costs as Republicans all claim it should be or not? Or is it just the brutal face of the de-regulated market in some cases is too disturbing to look at ,perhaps too uncomfortable to sleep with,  and that we do as a civilized society need at least some Government regulation? But blow-me- down that would be talking and walking the democratic talk and walk. This is just what every other Republican Presidential Primary candidate has done just this  past week by criticizing Romney for putting his money-making skills to use!

And I don’t bring this up because the Bush administration did more with the prescription  drug bill alone to expand the government than any liberal administration has  been able to do in the forty-three years since Lyndon Johnson gave us Medicare.  And I do not bring this up because the Republican fantasy of a regulation-free life has given us  the greatest economic crash since the Depression. And certainly I do not bring this up because of  the 31,000 people who may die each year because we refuse to regulate guns, since  nobody in the pro-life party gives a damn about that.
Read more on this dated 2008 article but an interesting one none-the-less: http://www.esquire.com/the-side/richardson-report/republican-party-strategy-post-election-111808#ixzz1hn27gfEl

No! I only bring this up because it is true that the Republican representative bloc vowed to vote against President Obama and to make him a one term President before he even had presented one single bill to congress. How fuzzy American Feeling is that? See not so much.

There hasn’t been a check and balance in Congress since this Democratic President took office. All the so-called centralists should look to this and figure out who really stepped away from our true American debate and system of government.

Franque23

(  Often I bat thoughts around with my wife and some hits on my blog reflect these conversations. I try to always keep an open ear whenever she speaks cause as per my blog The Wonderful World of Women the world would be a better place if men had done this sort of listening from our beginnings….just saying. But currently the Republican Female Primary candidate wasn’t up to snuff. )

1st Library Bulletin Board of 2012

Flights of Fantasy 2012....

( click on picture to enlarge) First up on this bulletin board was the large swirling planet at the upper right . It features a reflective back which gives the planet back lighting making it seem to put out an energy field as you look at the board and walk our room.

This Dragon means business!

Next up was the dragon. I had fun using the textured paper and hand cutting the pieces for the face, a technique best used by co-worker John Jack, but more about John later on.

This squirrel needs a diaper! Have a nice trip!

The Squirrel is a constant companion to my bulletin boards. Here animal rights activists may have cause for concern.

Just horsin' around with Fantasy. Glitter this, glitter that.

The Pegasus fuels so many imaginations. To begin with a horse of any kind is a neat creature indeed. Add wings to it and we’re off to the races!  Anyone will  tell you I’m a fool for glitter of any kind. And to think: I could have grown up some day!

Here’s to your favorite dreams, fantasies and wishes. May they all come true as mine often do on my bulletin boards.

Hello to 2012. And oh–John Jack will be adding Mary Poppins and a man riding a magic carpet in the upper left hand corner  of this board soon. Next up for me is a huge bulletin board featuring a castle, knight and fire-breathing dragon. It is the year of the Dragon. Pictures of that one will be coming soon!

Franque23

I work for The Alachau County Library District….

Make a Promise.

Life for my family back in 1987 was quite different than it is for us in 2012. Back then our children still fit in three car seats all lined up  in the back seat as we drove on down to Grandpa’s and Grandma’s house for Christmas break. We called their house the big House as the one we lived in could easily fit inside of it. Visits there always gave me good afternoon times to nap as my children would be kept busy rattling their grandparent’s noggin. And when that entertainment was finished sea shells, endless waves and sky ocean blue horizons awaited our footfalls just three blocks away .

My dad was a ferocious grower of anything that would, and I don’t mean like toe fungus and stuff. He grew flowers or anything eatable. Heck, he would cultivate a fence post if enough soil built up on the top of it. So it was no wonder their retirement home was surrounded by single and double hibiscus of many colors, that  Jasmine filled hedges lined the front windows while a Norfolk pine, a royal palm as well as a gigantic magnolia highlighted the circular front driveway. But I loved their backyard the most. Here my mom had added her interest in the exotic by planting numerous Hawaiian flowering plants placed so they skirted the perimeter of the backyard. The middle of the backyard featured a vegetable garden and no less than four different kinds of orange trees.  In fact, these oranges had the habit of tasting so good you could almost say we drove four hours down to my parent’s sub-tropical home just to eat those delicious fresh fruits! It was during one of these daily orange picking frenzies that I learned an important lesson in life.

It was way too early in the morning when my two walkers and one hip rider made it clear it was time to pick more oranges!

“But what about the ten you all ate yesterday?”  I foolishly asked.

Out to the lawn we ran with a ladder, we opened our orange sacks in hopes of getting fatter.  Away to the backyard we flew like a flash, I even forgot diapers we were in such a dash. I as the guardian and the children all a glow, gave us all a luster of moonlight reflecting off snow.When what to my blood-shot eyes should appear, but so many ripe oranges I knew we had nothing to fear.

For now the captions are not posting so: Hey who can spot the oranges? Kelly waits to pick as mom watches by. 

It was then I realized this was a wonderful time and a wonderful gift from my dad; I was so thankful he’d planted these trees as he had. I stepped back and took in the scene. My children were learning where food comes from and being connected to the earth without even know this teaching was going on. I couldn’t thank my dad enough. It was right there and then that  I made a promise to myself.

again another caption:  Even off season the orange trees drew our attention. Here Drew plays, I seem to be sawing dead branches and Mom watches on.

I promised myself I’d grow oranges just as my father did so my children’s children could have this same learning experience. And I looked forward to growing enough oranges to eat that my grandchildren would also be at risk of inadvertently turning into an orange, just as I told my children was the case back then. I had no idea how much this promise would mean to me later on.

I’m lucky I made this promise to myself, though in truth, I just barely kept it. I lived in Micanopy for many years, and my friend Greg mentioned I should plant some orange trees, but I didn’t listen. I was too busy with other life obstacles to bother with planting for a yield that might be as much as four years out. I did have an extensive garden, but my promise to myself to grow orange trees had been all but forgotten. It was not until many years later, in a new home, that I began to diligently plant orange trees that grew in numbers just as my grand children did. The race was on.

I wrapped my trees year after year to protect them from the few harsh nights we get in Northern Florida; I  ran lights out to them for heat. My promise had come back to push me onward, cold night after night, year after year. Now several of our trees are  fifteen feet tall while others are still growing. The cold weather reeks havoc on the potential crops here, but with enough trees planted of varying varieties it seems something manages to come through with a crop if the others don’t.

It will be my 3rd year of crops, and this year my grandchildren will turn 4, 3 and 1. Yes, we pick together and I stand by with glee. No greater Christmas present than this promise I had made almost 23 years ago could I have given back to me. It is as if a dream I had has come home to roost.  No one enjoys those oranges more than me, except for my grandchildren that is. They devour the oranges,(I’m thinking my daughter really never feeds them), and my grandchildren love calling the small unripe oranges “peek-a-boo” oranges cause they are so hard to spot on the trees as they grow.  Even my electric fences and shot-gun blasts haven’t kept my grandkids away from the fruit.

So here it is in a sack: make a promise to yourself from now until then. Keep it in your mind’s eye; the joy of your promise will start right then. Work to keep your promise doable but distant. Think of what might come true if you remain so to yourself; pick something you know is out there and really hope you will do. It may take years for your promise to unfold like mine did but whatever. You will be the creator, strength and tether of your promise. You will have to count on you.

Some will call it a New Year’s Resolution, but those don’t run as deep. This will be a promise made from your heart, one in time you know you will keep. Find your promise for your time to come.

Happy New Year.

Here is a picture of my promise kept-my two Grandsons pick oranges with me.!

I’ll be writing more next year: that’s a promise.

Franque

PS last November 2010 my wife posted a video of me picking oranges in our yard with my Grandkids…couldn’t find it to add here and of course I will if I find it…..but promise kept-it’s a great feeling.

Merry Christmas

We work hard at the Library to help everyone we can to find whatever it is they need or want to find.  We love the questions, but much more we love finding the answers…. Merry Christmas.

Below on this years bulletin board I decided to stay in Florida, and not plaster my scenes with snow. Hello we don’t get much in Northern Florida,,but actually last year I did see a snow flurry which I describe to others as a squall–it’s all relative. But no, we didn’t need snow plows:-)

Enjoy–I thought to place a snake and turtle in this as they are so dramatic  thematically in literature-and to show we all can get along in Peace. The Orangutan says he’s had enough…the wizard says he can to do it. The squirrel as always just wants to read about nuts.

We gather together to give Joy to the World. It doesn't matter what angle you take....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

we're all together and in the same world

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Say hello to the snake and the turtle......

 

 

This is just one wish we have for you.

 

And may your travels always be smooth and on downward roads only with the wind at your back and the sun on your face.

 

Many blessing to all of you.

 

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays….

 

Franque

 

 

 

The Morning that Wasn’t

There’s no way any of it can be true but my alarm didn’t go off this morning. I still have time to make it to work, if I hurry. And the one thing about alarm clocks is they should never have been invented, and this line is from a book I’m working on, but that’s another blog……

There are usually a million things to do every morning besides getting dressed. First and foremost I get the coffee pot perking just as  our pet mafia of two starts leaning on me. My cat, Hide, is an orange stealthily wicked and claw accurate top dog type of cat and my dog ,Toby Toes as I call him, knows to keep his distance from Hide. Toby is part Basenji and one constant sweet expression of love and faithfulness on a daily basis. Never-the-less we are talking bowl time right now for both of them or I could get hurt. The the outside bird bath and feeder will have to wait; I’ve no time to lose this morning.

I’ve artfully crafted my use of time wisely and find I slip on my sneakers and make it out the door with moments to spare. This is when I step on that darn banana peel just off our walk as I cut through the flower garden,  just barely stopping my slide into the dirt.  Trouble is my car is locked as always, but I’ve left my keys inside the house. I quickly walk back to our front door where I take my sneaks off. There’s no sense trackin’ dirt in the house and having my wife kill me for it after all these years.

Now if I was anyone but someone like me I might need a new invention to find my keys, one that lets you program a series of items most often lost in the fray of living into to it so when you press a button that lost item your are looking for sounds off like a cell phone might. Follow the beeps and find your keys. ( Aunt Dona this is my answer to your quest for inventive ideas from family members). But I work in a library so beyond what I don’t keep in place everything else is, like my keys that are hanging right where I  left them last night.  I get to the door, sit on the stoop to whip on my sneaks while dodging my dog’s licking tongue. Anytime I get my head down to his level he reminds me I need a washing. I’m up and off to the car, keys in hand.

This is exactly when I see a fly saucer type thing go flying over-head in the sky but I”ve no time to follow that.

Once inside my car I notice a distinct odor coming from somewhere very near me. I look around, sniff a time or two, and note I really do smell bad. I could win wars with my body odor. Odd. That’s when I look around again to see the smelly,brown banana peel I stepped on really has very  little do to with a banana at all, but more likely it is a present left by a neighbor’s good intentioned dog.  I’m not sure what I look like as I scrape and drag the sole of my left sneaker across the lawn over and over as I make my way back to the house. There that should do it; I take off my sneaks and rush into the house.

Fortunately I’ve more than one pair of black sneakers. Picking them up I decide I might as well pour myself a quick cup of coffee to take along with me as I drive to work. I’m a bit late already and I need a creature comfort for the road. Thing is I would be better off now if I’d been paying attention to that coffee cup as I backed out of our driveway. Chins don’t drink coffee: this is a fact. I almost laugh thinking about my open mouth being three inches above my pouring coffee cup, almost that is until the hot coffee baptizes my lap. Can I sue myself is the question. I’m thinking probably not, even in today’s world of miraculous lawyerese. I pull back up our drive, whip out the car door and head to the house.

I take off my sneaks yet again by the front door and slip inside.  While getting on new jeans I’ve a couple of more questions: why are jeans made so thin now-a-days and worse yet, why is underwear thin also? So I could take a shower, but that would make me way late for work. At this point it occurs to me I’d be better off calling in sick than explaining I’d stepped in dog poop and celebrated it by pouring hot coffee on myself. Hmmmm…..Pants on I’m down and out the door in a flash. Sneaks on and headed to my car I still have hope of making it to work during the same day as scheduled.

I turn my car key and recognize a familiar odor is wafting through the air. Heck yeah-it’s the same smell I wish I hadn’t smelled the last time my nose sent me a message. Someone else really needs to be me right now, I’m too busy for it. My right sneaker looks good but alas, lifting the left one is not perfect unless I’m in the septic business- the only way any of this could smell like money. Say hello to putting back on the wrong sneakers! This about does it. I call myself every name I can think of:  Oh dash er all, dancing prancing what a vixen’, why dadgcomet for the love of cupid I’m a dunder donner taking a blitzen of rude offed happenstance, not to mention dog poop. I slap my hand down on the car dash and roll out my car door, though really this is when I hit the floor.

Say what? I sit up awake. I don’t work today! Why that’s right! It’s Christmas for Christ Sake!!! The alarm is set to not go off at all.  I’ve no children now, at least none living at home who are small. So it was all a stinkin’ dream waking me up just to say, Ho hoHo ho…now get up and be thankful you can start over today.

Merry Christmas; Season’s Best.  And NO I’m not done writing this year-this was just a test.

Franque

Recollections By Choice.

It's a fun line up..L to R=.Uncle John, Uncle Bernard, Grandpa Franque, Uncle Roland and my dad Max..

There’s no time like the present to recall the past.  Memories still exist within all of us no matter if we are riding on Vonnegut’s train of time and able to go back and forth on it as we like or freely stuck in Zen’s be here now realization: there is only the ever-present moment. Perhaps observation and then a memory of what we saw has always been our best means of survival.  This could be why we do both constantly just as Zen says: we gather all that glitters in our mind like crows, no matter how uncomfortable our nest get with all that stuff in it.

I say that first guy who  decided after watching 400 people before him step off a cliff and fall screaming through the air that he’d rather climb down it instead was a genius.  But memories can haunt or heal the soul and mind equally as well. The keen idea is to be selective about what and when we remember anything. There’s the rub: how to choose what we recall?

This is in part the crew responsible for all the trouble I may have caused you years later-Merry Christmas.

Actually scientists say what we recall is not so accurately fixed to the brass pallet of reality as we think. Any cop can tell you the eye-witness can be a most unreliable  plumb line to the truth.  Maybe playwright Aeschylus  had it all wrapped up back around 500 BC when he wrote: ” Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times.” And 2000 years more recently a wonderful storyteller of the south, Kathryn Tucker Windham,  spoke out to us when she reminded her readers that Happiness can not be earned or achieved. She said happiness is only a choice.

Dad taught me how to fish---:-)

So maybe what we remember, good or bad,  is just about the choices we make. This is why I never look in the mirror first thing in the morning: I want to stay on that I’m as young as I feel, nothing can bring me down, everyday is a new day, look out world here I come plateau ride I spent last night trying to get on. I mean if the past is just our imagination, maybe the present is too? This is where that famous tack comes in to play.

Any mountain climber can tell you they can sit on a mountain but not on a tack. So it can be the little things in life that ground a person to reality after all.

“Ouch! that tack hurt, and I remember sitting on it and I still feel it too-it all happened just as remembered.”

So as much as I’d love to jump into the vast vat of philosophical theories about time, memory, feelings and choice I might rather sit on its edge and take a moment to ponder a bit.  I’m certain tomorrow will come if I get to live long enough to see it and my past is just a memory. I’m gonna make my memories good ones no matter what. I hope you do too.  This seems reasonable enough, although an event  like 9/11 can certainly seem to turn this cow of choice on its head.  But even some good may have come out of that: the world woke up and now stands together to fight against ruthless behaviors with regard to a sense of justice, whether it is being done by dictators or civilians.

I remember Dad looking like this.

Dad like all his brothers fought in WW 2

Flat-out if a bucket of manure spills on my head I am going to remember how that may be what made me miss my train later that day which made me never catch up to where I would have been otherwise and this is why I missed making that plan that went down perhaps ten years later.  Who knows right? Most memories can be cleaned up one way or another to shine up to being at least doable ones.

So here’s to memories and to some great photos of them.

Mom and Aunt Lola. Aunt Lola could take 5 hours making spaghetti sauce but it was out of this world when done.

Franque

Me and My Guitar and Family too.

First serious guitar in it's first gold color...It was me and my guitar all the time back then

I practiced guitar every chance I got. To begin with it was a challenge set out before me to keep up with my friend Pete who, as it turns out, was a natural-born musician, one meant to stay in the field of music as he has to this day. First the chords had to be learned, and then how to play them effectively and then how to move from one to another without my dog falling asleep at my feet in between chord changes.

Heck, I shut my bedroom door and let it rip. I worked a matching funds deal up with my parents as I recall, buying my guitar and then my first amp with their help. The amp was  a small Gibson amp which I remember as having amazingly nice terrible tones. ( cost 90 bucks) Amps back then ran on tubes, like old tvs used to, so I had strings, amp tubes, and tons of guitar polish, paint and finger picks to buy.  Basically this new music world introduced me to a real need for an ongoing supply of money. But maybe even more than that, this music world gave me a sense of power and direction.

I never once thought about my parents as I wailed away on my guitar in my room, unless they were knocking  at my door telling me to turn down my amp, or that  it was just too late to be playing.  It is a miracle in fact  my parents didn’t have me hauled off to Siberia gladly paying for  all shipping charges.  But in truth in all those years of me grotesquely banging out chords I couldn’t play and plodding along from one mistake to another, my parents rarely complained.

My great parents who put up with me and my attached guitar

This is again where God’s sense of humor comes into play.

This is a picture of my guitar playing son; the apple fell right next to the tree.

God is still smiling.

Yeah I got all those years of me blowing my parents out of their house back in spades when MY son began to pick up the guitar. Heck I was learning the Beatles back then when I grew up; my son was learning heavy metal. My music had comparatively the likeness of a gnat yelling while my son’s music  was most like a congress of baboons announcing that 3 AM is not really too late to be playing. ( And I only use baboons instead of herd of elephants here because I just love that the term for a bunch of baboons is called a congress of baboons-like in our congress, but anyway…..) So yes my life has kept God laughin’ for sure.

My shadow always had me and my guitar in it.  I dreamed big and very well. If school had given tests on the music of our day I would have earned a four-year scholarship at any school of my chosing. Some guys liked to wash their cars; I liked to repaint my guitar from silver, gold, red and then finally to black. But all this guitar playing  practice work wouldn’t go unused.

There’s no doubt my interest in guitar playing helped me through those high school years by providing a point to endless hours of  effort on my part and by encouraging me to dream big, to imagine myself making it into the big time. Later on it would help me find my way through college and then my guitar playing would again be source of endless hours of entertainment or torture, it all depended upon one’s point of view, as my own family grew up.

typical family gathering with music, dancing and singing...

But my kids and I rocked it out, just as my mom did for all of us as we grew up. Sometimes, perhaps much to my parent’s chagrin, I got to  jam it up at their place once more and even got to rock it out with my Mom and other relatives.  As Shakespeare wrote: “All are punished”, this was my point of view on the  matter. No one anywhere was safe from my guitar playing and singing self.

I sat down for every occasion......

There are really three of us in this picture (this pic. posted in an earlier blog)I played for just about every family affair

Mom played her wonderful organ music, I hit the guitar, Father-in-law Howard sang while my wife's mom listened.

Here’s to lots of music, lots of good times to recall over the holidays and to plenty of great times ahead…

Franque

College Music

(This is post #6 of my musical career.)

My Freshman roommate in college was a music major from the get go. I’d  heard early on that this was the hardest major to take at our college. This is why I majored in English-though you might not know it from these blogs. Let’s face it-I can’t think of a word I haven’t misspelled. Anyway my roommate practiced scales and read music history while  I read the existentialists and played guitar.

I didn’t publically play guitar much around school during my Freshman year, I was too busy almost flunking out. Oh there was a coffee-house gig or two and constant practice at night, but nothing major happened around town. The Beatles were breaking every record in the books and my neck was getting severely twisted from all the girl watching I seemed prone to do. This was the year I first discovered girls could think and talk at ballistic speeds while my mind sank into Play Boy pin-ups. Music still ran inside of me most minutes of each day, but little of it ran out of me other than the tapes.

Pete and I  went to different colleges which put a kink in our creative musical enterprises. Distance slowed us down but never stopped our music. We would send double and triple tracked tapes of our newest songs back and forth regularly. The judging, cutting and re-working of our songs between us still continued.  Phrases I wrote like: ” I came upon a friend by a roadside tree, hanging there for all to see,” and ” Little lady give a gentle touch to dim a luster’s glow, to the power of some candle light or the touch of the new fallen snow,” still all wrap around my mind at times some 40 years later. But mostly I lived that year as a no-brainer, as in living without one. The best way to say it is I had a bad case of women on my mind.

Then I met Rich Grubb-no really, that is his name. He had a smooth Frank Sinatra like voice, but didn’t play guitar much.   We hit it off  as two ne’er-do-wells guys caught within a world of college intelligentsia, though there was a world of difference between our thinkings. Looking back now it seems to me Richard was extremely intellectually talented but he didn’t give a crap about repeating what the teachers wanted him to learn. Me, on the other hand, wanted to do well grade wise but I hadn’t yet learned how to study. Oh I’d done very well in high school but I found  Gettysburg college was not high school. This all meant Rich and I spent many afternoons singing them away in echoing stairwells of our dormitory.   GOTTA GET A MESSAGE TO YOU, by the BeeGees was one of our early on going favorites to sing.

Now  Richard’s dad and mom had a place in Ocean City Maryland, an ocean side town that had but one main  strip of places running from its main street up to the newly built Bobby Bakers Carousel. http://carouselcuo.com/about%20us.htm This new place in town was to become key in my life as Bobby Bounds owned its liquor license and knew Rich Grubb’s parents as well. Rich and I got busy pulling together musicians we knew who might fit together to form a band that could play at the Carousel  during the summer coming up, but of course, there was an audition to do…

And I should mention here this link below  is a mind-blowing informational piece about Bobby Baker containing information  I had no idea what-so-ever about as I worked to be on his stage……trust me,-if you have the time, take a look at all of this. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbakerB.htm

But this is how show business is, even on the small side of it, powerful arms reach into it, pushing and pulling, trying to work  their will into it. We were a six-man band of twenty youngish year-olds ready to rock.

We learned through our Bobby Bounds connection that Bobby Baker loved the song UP  UP AND AWAY, so this became our band’s theme song. We heard Bobby Baker had once worked in the Senate (see link above for the low down there) so we named ourselves The Senators. Next thing  I knew we were set up in a downtown garage in Ocean City Maryland with Bobby Baker standing in front of us as we sang-UP UP AND AWAY. It worked; we were hired to sing 9-2AM five nights a week in the main lounge and dance floor plus Saturday afternoon on the beach patio.  The gig gave us housing, food, the house pool to swim in after our sets -until we screwed that up by being too loud at 3 AM- plus money. Not bad.

To get ready for the job there were  time tables to make, amps, matching outfits and instruments to buy. I had recently bought a ES355 Gibson Stereo Gold Plated Guitar (BB Kings style guitar) which was perfect for my role as the rythymth guy and back up singer.

Taken Just before I set off for Ocean City-me with a 355s stereo gibson guitar and Aunt.

But our keyboard player wanted to play Electric piano and Harpsichord at the same time so we had to buy those.  Pete and I pulled our High School Drummer Gene into the mix-he played a mean latin beat but wipe-out always got him…..actually this isn’t true. It became our custom to play Louie Louie at the end of our night ( You know as in ‘We gotta go now”)and then Wipe Out (as in ‘We’re totally wiped out after 5 hours under the lights) if any people were still standing. One day we decided to add some itching powered down Gene’s shirt just before our final song-that’s when he threw his sticks on to the dance floor and ran off stage. Funny.

We heard some of our shoulder rubbing neighbors  might have been in the mafia-but we all flew under the rador and, as my dad always said to do, we kept our noses clean. Our worst enemy was our pranking selves  and maybe some of our best of times were those late night munchies and watching the Bar piano guy buy six orders of fried onion rings and eat them all. But that’s for later.

Franque.