EVERYWHERE 2013

My older brother and I went everywhere with our parents. QWith our younger siblings too. We drove from Hingham to Maine, Watchic Pond to Boston, Falmouth Foresides to the South Shore. There were thousands of trips with my mother and father. Nowadays Frunk and I live far apart. We haven't been in a car together for over ten years, but we speak several times a month and this afternoon I phoned Frunk to wish him a Happy Father's Day.

"Happy? You know what I did this weekend?"

"I spoke with your son." Franka was moving from Philadelphia to Boston before hitting the road to LA. He wanted to be a TV writer.

"Friday night I drove down to Phillie. I loaded the U-Haul truck with Franka's things. We left at 5. I got home around midnight." Frunka's house was on a hill above the Neponset River. The old mansion was ten times larger than my apartment in Fort Greene.

"And you dropped off the truck in the morning?" I had called his son on Friday. I could have gone to help, instead last night I lay in bed listening to the Stanley Cup finals on WBZ. Their announcers painted better picture than the TV guys.

"No such luck. We unloaded most of his things on the Cape. I'm just entering the U-Haul parking lot to drop off the truck and then I'm going to the house here before driving to Boston in the morning, so ask me how my weekend was?"

"The Bruins won by a goal in overtime." I was deflecting his slapshot question.

"I listened to it on the radio in the truck." More than likely on I95.

"Did you drive alone?" It was a silly question.

"My wife and son were in the Lexus." Frunka was a lawyer. He had settled a good case in April. The car was a birthday present to himself. He deserved it.

"At least you had peace and quiet." Marshall McLuhan had said that driving a car was one of the few times man was alone in the modern age.

"No, they called me every five minutes to ask where we were."

"Nice." I was really happy I hadn't helped him.

"How was your Father's Day?"

"I'm drinking a beer.

"Paradise."

"Hope you get there soon."

"Not a chance. I'm taking my son out to dinner, so all I'll get for Father's Day is another bill."

"It goes with the territory." Tomorrow I was sending money to Fenway in Thailand. His teeth are rotting fast and he's only five years-old. I love my son.

"I can't wait for a client to ask how was my weekend."

"I bet you can't." Telling him that I was about to take a hot bath was too cruel and drink another beer while listening to acid rock from the 60s was too cruel, but Franka was with his son Frunka. I wished him a good night and hung up.

I was alone in Fort Greene.

Fenway was on the other side of the world.

My everywheres have shrunk to one place and I'll get to that everywhere one day.

Sooner hopefully more than later.

December 13, 1978 - East Village - Journal

I was born in Boston.

Raised on Falmouth Foresides
And the South Shore.
In 1976
I left for good.
New York bound,
Two years now
Yet I miss New England

The White Mountains
The Maine Coast
Old Orchard Beach,
Portland's Eastern Promenade
The two old schooners rotting off Wicassett

Decaying river towns;
Lowell, Manchester, Saco, Chicopee, White River Junction
Beaches,
Nantasket, Wollaston, Horseneck Beach, Truro,
Cape Ann, Gloucester, Marblehead, the Beverly Salem Bridge

Lobstah, fried clams, Italian Sandwiches, and damned Chowdah.

From Lake Champlain across the Green Mountains
To the Connecticut River

Over the White Mountains
On the The Kancamagus Highway

Down to Newport and Across the Block Island.
New England. Oh New England.

Bridgeport, New Haven, New London.
We are not New York.

South of Boston

The Blue Hills
Swimming in the Quincy Quarries,
Tramping to the top of Chickatawbut
At 517 feet to the east
Big Blue to the west
635 feet.
Nothing taller from Key West to Mount Cadillac in Acadia
Just Blue Hill Tower
The hills of my youth
Of my teen years
Sex with Linda Imhoff
Long-legged
Shaven clean
Twenty -six
Us
Naked in the back seat of a VW
Possible
Not Easy
But possible
At Eighteen atop Rattlesnake Hill.
No forests
Fifteen generation trees
Stone farm walls
Tumbled by the frost
Bog ponds and swamps
My home town.
Forever New England.

Starry Nights for UFOs

As a child of the 1960s I lived in the suburbs south of Boston. Summer nights were filled with silence; no cars, no voices, no music. Every house was a tomb and I would steal from the house to our back yard. The grass was shorn short by constant mowing. The stubs were painful to my feet, but I would spread a blanket on the ground, strip off my pajamas and lie on the lawn, looking to the sky.

My soul sought not the mystery of God in the celestial night, but an aberration in the galactic traffic.

"Oh, Mr. Spaceman, won't you please take me away."

Alien abduction was a better fate than suffering pubescence in the suburbs, yet no flying saucers snatched my body. I was stranded on Earth along with billions of other humans. None of us were going to the stars, for our solar system is located on the most remote edge of the Milky Way.

Think as distant from New York as Great Slave Lake.

Spaceships warp past Earth without deccelerting. Our planet isn't on the Inter-Galactic Guide. A cosmic billboard on the Moon WINE AND DINE AT EARTH might help trade with the passing aliens, however Earthlings are stuck on the planet, especially after President Nixon had NASA abandon a Mars landing, colonization of the Moon, or a permanent orbital station in favor of Space Shuttles.

From that moment on I felt we were alone, despite claims to the contrary by Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell that UFOs regularly visit this blue planet and not only the cow-mutilators of Wyoming.

His conversations with old-timers from Roswell strengthened his own experiences in Space and Edgar Mitchell was convinced that NASA and the Pentagon have been vigorously prevented the truth from reaching a public more interested in potato chips than UFOs.

"Is there life outside of Earth?"

The Colonel thought so, although my late father considered billions spent on NASA a waste. He was an electrical engineer. He loved my mother. She only wanted to go to Cape Cod in the summer and that desitnation was good enough for him as well.

"There's nothing out there?"

No go-go bars for sure or romantic lakes or no marching bands.

Tubas take up too much room in a spaceship, although I once saw a tuba on a Star Trek episode.

The former astronaut also says that the three crafts once hovering over Phoenix were not ours. They were from another planet and not Mars either. Someplace much farther away and we can't even estimate that distance with our pea brains, but I no longer want to go to the stars.

I have four kids.

A three loving daughters and two busy boys.

Plus two grandchildren.

Those are my aliens, for ET are us.

Children from future.

EVERYWHERE by Peter Nolan Smith

My older brother and I went everywhere with our parents. We drove from Hingham to Maine, Watchic Pond to Boston, Falmouth Foresides to the South Shore. There were thousands of trips with my mother and father. Nowadays Frunk and I live far apart. We haven't been in a car together for over ten years, but we speak several times a month and several years ago I phoned Frunk to wish him a Happy Father's Day.

"Happy? You know what I did this weekend?"

"I spoke with your son." Franka was moving from Philadelphia to Boston before hitting the road to LA. He wanted to be a TV writer.

"Friday night I drove down to Phillie. I loaded the U-Haul truck with Franka's things. We left at 5. I got home around midnight." Frunka's house was on a hill above the Neponset River. The old mansion was ten times larger than my apartment in Fort Greene.

"And you dropped off the truck in the morning?" I had called his son on Friday. I could have gone to help, instead last night I lay in bed listening to the Stanley Cup finals on WBZ. Their announcers painted better picture than the TV guys.

"No such luck. We unloaded most of his things on the Cape. I'm just entering the U-Haul parking lot to drop off the truck and then I'm going to the house here before driving to Boston in the morning, so ask me how my weekend was?"

Our father would have done the same thing for us. He liked to drive.

"The Bruins won by a goal in overtime." I deflected his slapshot question.

"I listened to it on the radio in the truck." More than likely on I95.

"Did you drive alone?" It was a silly question.

"My wife and son were in the Lexus." Frunka had settled a good case in April. The car was a birthday present to himself. He deserved it.

"At least you had peace and quiet." Marshall McLuhan had said that driving a car was one of the few times man was alone in the modern age.

"No, they called me every five minutes to ask where we were."

"Nice." I was really happy I hadn't helped him.

"How was your Father's Day?"

"I'm drinking a beer.

"Paradise."

"Hope you get there soon."

"Not a chance. I'm taking my son out to dinner, so all I'll get for Father's Day is another bill."

"It goes with the territory." Tomorrow I was sending money to Fenway in Thailand. His teeth are rotting fast and he's only five years-old. I loved my son.

"I can't wait for a client to ask how was my weekend."

"I bet you can't." Telling him that I was about to take a hot bath was too cruel and drink another beer while listening to acid rock from the 60s was too cruel, but Franka was with his son Frunka. I wished him a good night and hung up.

I was alone in Clinton Hill.

Fenway was on the other side of the world.

My everywheres have shrunk to one place and I'll get to my other everywheres one day.

Sooner hopefully more than later for this father, because with Fenway every day is Father's Day.

WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN

Summer ended in 1966 on a Cape beach with me dancing with a girl on the last day of our vacations. WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN played on a radio. Her father beeped the horn. She kissed me and ran to the car. The back of station wagon was packed high. I never saw her wave goodbye, but her kiss lived forever.

Soulful as the song.

Foto of me, my brother and mother. Harwichport 1966.

To hear Percy Sledge's WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN, go to the following URL.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lp7FtJXp7k