Tales of the Tarantula Read online

  Copyright © 2019 by Frank Terranella

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Book Layout ©2017 BookDesignTemplates.com

  Cover design by Jordan F.A. D’Amico

  Tales of the Tarantula/Frank Terranella —1st ed.

  ISBN 978-1-54-399018-8

  Contents

  The clock is ticking

  How the draft affected everything

  O Christmas Tree

  What I want for Christmas: A bunch of feel-good, extremely formulaic holiday movies

  Life at the speed of light

  What, me retire?

  New York unplugged – Electroholism revisited

  Sondheim and me

  When newspapers were king

  I believe in the power of serendipity

  I have a doppelganger in Denmark

  Music is in the blood of baby boomers

  Musical chauvinism – And the beat goes on

  The big six-oh!

  Memorial Day memories

  21st century marital infidelity via DVR

  A marriage in Vermont

  A Father’s Day toast to my stepfather

  Baseball bridges generation gaps

  You must remember this – The man behind an icon

  My impending grandfatherhood

  Unpaid interns – the 21st century slave class

  On the road? Try a B&B

  The call of the telephone

  In praise of songs that tell a story

  The beauty of slow travel

  We’ll always have …

  My trip to Turkey: Did Mary actually sleep here?

  The dark side of aging

  In celebration of a musician who made a difference

  Serendipity leads down a path to understanding

  The circle of life

  Beatlemania at 50

  A reunion in Charlotte

  The second time around (revisiting great pleasures)

  Letter to my grandson on the day he is born

  A child is born, a lovely soul is lost

  There’s still time to be an “activist”

  Living in the moment should be the rule

  Travel may be the fountain of youth

  Higher taxes for free healthcare: A quid pro quo I can support

  Weather provides high anxiety out west

  Phoenix sunshine makes it ideal for retirement

  Of aliens, caves and missile testing – The Roswell Triangle

  If only I could take a nap

  Air travel is no longer just for the rich, and we’re all poorer for it

  Baptism and babies are good for a family

  When do you become a “senior citizen”?

  Creativity and youth: An inconvenient truth?

  The five stages of liberal grief

  A trip to Ellis Island – Where America welcomed immigrants

  Getting in touch with my inner NASCAR redneck

  Some things never change and that’s a good thing

  Remembering in the age of smartphones

  My un-bucket list

  Penny candy and PEZ bring me back to childhood

  BFF relationships – A rarity to be nurtured

  Remembering the day I tied the knot

  Well I’ve never been to Spain

  Paying your way

  My one and only favorite song

  Seniors are rich with memories

  A letter to my grandson at his first Christmas

  The older I get, the more I dread winter

  The only thing we have to fear …

  Grandpa explains it all – Bryce’s first birthday

  Politics and religion are like oil and water

  Getting his first sugar high

  A day that will live in infamy

  Remembering a dear friend

  Gone with the wind – And good riddance

  Returning to “Mockingbird”

  There’s a bathroom on the right, and other mistaken lyrics

  Poetry in music from across the pond

  What would Francis Scott Key think?

  A letter to my granddaughter on her birth day

  Sometimes

  City sidewalks, busy sidewalks, it’s Christmas time in the city

  Obama demonstrates how the ghosts of Sandy Hook haunt us

  Here’s to the moderate – An endangered species in America

  Sometimes the pen is mightier than the piano

  Getting past surface appearances to the interior nesting doll

  Time for a national primary

  A musical genius has passed away

  An election regret from 44 years ago

  Diamonds in the Cracker Jack box

  The kindness of strangers

  1776 – My Independence Day tradition

  Here’s to engaging again with other viewpoints

  Protests: No pain, no gain

  … And life goes on

  “Interesting” times require a large dose of hope – and faith in the next generations

  A letter to my granddaughter on her first birthday

  Great songs come from the heart

  Why do so many people hate big cities?

  Another radio legend has left us

  The consent of the governed – What happens when a government doesn’t have it?

  Gray is good

  A wedding from the father of the bride’s perspective

  Finding old friends the new-fashioned way

  Make America nice again

  A reunion in Ottawa

  Harnessing the power of community

  Twins separated by death

  Check out these hidden gems from forgotten Broadway musicals

  Fighting sexual harassment – A plea for unity

  Remembering John Lennon on the anniversary of his death

  The consent of the governed – A closer look

  A Christmas gem you might have missed

  Remembering life with father

  A tale of two Johns

  Americans are raising their voices at last

  Jimmy Hanley – Tin Pan Alley journeyman

  How about a long overdue conversion?

  Blame it on the Supreme Court

  Naming names in popular songs

  Zero tolerance makes zero sense

  A product of the contentious ‘60s still speaks to us

  Using Christianity as an excuse for bigotry

  The last days of Americo Consolatore

  Keep your dreams alive

  Anatomy of a song: “Deacon Blues”

  Last of the Red Hot Mamas lives on

  The “Good Christmas Tape” turns 40

  A visit from a ghost of Christmas past

  Here’s to a merry bifurcated Christmas

  Fiction: Christmas in hard times

  Seeking beautiful places on the road

  Celebrating a momentous anniversary that few people ever see

  Harnessing the power of a unified community

  Paging through memories of nights in the theatre

  Escape from the money pit

  An extra special Father’s Day

  I’m still here!

  Some thoughts on choosing leaders

  Why I’m a card-carrying member of the ACLU

  Embarki
ng on a “hair raising” adventure

  A weekend with echoes of the 1960s

  Imagining some quality time with mom at her favorite place

  Grandmoms more active than they used to be

  Paying tribute to the best of Broadway

  Three days of peace and music

  A look at a 1972 song that is still sadly relevant

  The Feast: The next generation

  The circle of life is demonstrated once again

  For my family.

  Thanks for providing me with an endless supply of things to write about, and the love to give me the confidence to let others read it.

  Foreword

  This book collects articles I have written over the past seven years. They have been a momentous seven years, and they have provided lots of things to write about. For example, in those seven years, my son got married, my daughter got married, my two grandchildren were born (and another one is on the way), my mother and stepfather died, I traveled to all 50 states as well as most of Southern Europe, I lost 50 pounds (and gained back 20), I celebrated my 40th wedding anniversary, and I sold my house and moved to a townhouse. All these things became subjects for my writing.

  But why write? The short answer is because I’m a writer. I started writing when I was 13 and I have been doing it ever since. If you’re a writer, writing is how you express yourself. A dancer dances, a singer sings, a writer writes. So when I have something on my mind, I write about it. Years ago I would write long letters to friends and family. And then I wrote professionally for newspapers for a while. But these days, with a worldwide audience available with a simple post on an internet blog, that’s where I write. You can find me online at www.tumblr.com/blog/frankterranella.

  So why “Tales of the Tarantula”? That’s easy. Back in high school I had a teacher who was an Irish Christian Brother named Brother Howe. He was an amazing guy who liked to joke around in class and was beloved by all his students. When he would call attendance every day, he made a point of mangling everyone’s name on purpose. When he came to my name on the first day of school he said, “Is the tarantula here? Is Frank Tarantula with us?” And that was it. I was Tarantula for every day after that.

  I hope you enjoy my “Tales” of life in the 21st Century, and my take on the world we live in. The variety of my interests is broad enough that I think you will find at least some of the topics interesting and even enjoyable. As a writer, if I can give readers a chuckle here and there and an occasional tear, I will be happy. But no matter what, I will keep writing, because that’s what writers do.

  September 2019

  Montclair, New Jersey

  The clock is ticking

  October 2012

  As I rapidly approach the end of my fifties I find that I have a different sense of my mortality than people younger than me do. Younger adults don’t think much about dying (except to fear it) because the odds are they’ve never been very sick. But I actually think that facing the fact that you will not live forever is very healthy and helps you live a better, fuller and happier life.

  You may recall the longstanding soap opera Days of Our Lives that begins with the words “Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.” Well, the average life span of a Baby Boomer is about 30,000 days. If you’ve reached age 50, you’ve used up 18,250 of them. By the end of your fifties, you’ve used up 21,900. If you’re lucky, there have been a lot of good days in there. But just as the hourglass runs out, so do the days of our lives. But most people don’t want to face that reality. That is, until they get sick, really sick.

  About 12 years ago, I got really sick. It started with a heart attack, which is one of the most effective ways for the Grim Reaper to get your attention. And just in case I didn’t get the message, five years later I developed testicular cancer, followed five years after that by prostate cancer. I was lucky in that the heart attack was minor (my clogged arteries were unblocked by angioplasty) and the cancers I had happen to be the ones with the highest survival rate if caught early – as they were. So the bottom line is that I’m fine now. But I also have been forced to face my mortality.

  Surprisingly, I have found this to be a very positive development. I now know more certainly than I did that my days on this planet are limited. My vacation plans are now influenced if not governed by my bucket list. Younger people go around never contemplating kicking the bucket. We all are guilty of that when we’re young. We postpone good things like sailing the Mediterranean until some amorphous time called “retirement.” I now know better.

  Before my heart attack I was in a job that I did for the money. After my heart attack I looked for a job that I would enjoy and I found it. With the likelihood of less than 10,000 days to go in this lifetime, I have planned vacations in my 50s that allowed me to visit every state in the continental United States. I have ticked off bucket list stops like the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park.

  I think that if we all knew the exact date when we were going to die we would not waste time doing things that are unimportant like watching sitcoms. While everyone places different values on activities, I think we all would set different priorities if we knew we had a year to live. I am a two-time cancer survivor, and I know that cancer will get me eventually. The obituary pages are a testament to its ability to cut short lives. That knowledge provides a certain clarity of purpose and urgency of execution. My 401(k) is less important than my desire to experience all that life offers.

  George Burns, who lived to be 100, is quoted as saying “If I knew I was going to live so long, I would have taken better care of myself.” I think the converse of that is “If I knew I was going to live so short a time, I would have taken better care to live life to the fullest.” With most of the sand in the bottom half of the hourglass, we post-50 men and women have a better sense of this than our younger friends and family. And that’s a good thing. I just booked that Mediterranean cruise.

  How the draft affected everything

  October 2012

  I was looking for something in a drawer in my bedroom recently and came across a relic from the 1970s – my draft card. It occurs to me that the Baby Boomer generation is in a unique position when it comes to military service. While we were the last generation of men in recent times who were saddled with compulsory military service, most of us didn’t serve. So we are unlike our fathers who mostly did serve, and unlike our sons who never experienced the threat of compulsory service.

  I think that every man my age remembers going down to the Draft Board and registering. Those of us who were more fortunate were able to claim college or other exemptions. The less fortunate got their induction letters and were sent to war.

  And then there was the lottery! There were lotteries held every year from 1969 to 1975 (although no one was drafted after 1973). Before that, the U.S. simply drafted the oldest man first. But beginning in 1969, the order of induction for people born in the same year was determined by a lottery based on your birthday. So for example in 1972, the year they picked inductees born in 1953, people born on March 6 got called first.

  I remember watching on television at the Student Center at my college as they picked the numbers in Washington. It’s hard to imagine a more tension-filled scene. There we were, a bunch of 18-year-olds waiting for word on the future of our lives. There was constant talk during this time about doing away with college exemptions. So having a low lottery number was seen as guaranteeing that you were going to Vietnam (and even as a death sentence by some more hysterical guys). A friend of mine in this group at the Student Center heard his birthday called as number 008. He began to sob and a few days later, rather than wait for induction into the Army, he enlisted in Navy ROTC. I was one of the lucky ones. My number was 234. I’ll bet that you can ask any man who participated in one of these draft lotteries and they could tell you today what their number was 40 years ago.

  The point of this is to show that men of my generation faced a l
ot of the stress of anticipation of military service. In fact, since compulsory military service was non-stop from World War II until 1973, all Baby Boomer boys were brought up with the certainty that they would be in the military some day. Everybody served. In fact, one of the most pleasant surprises of my life was the end of the draft. It literally changed the course of the lives of every young man in the United States.

  By contrast, my son merely had to register for the draft. I think he may have done it online! It was completely stress-free because there was no chance of being compelled to serve. He could enlist if he wanted, but that was up to him.

  It’s certainly true that old men wage war with the lives of young men. It’s always been that way and always will be. So my perspective on military service is different now than it was when I was younger and I was the one who would be called to serve. While I don’t want our young men and women (yes, it must be women now as well) to have to go to war, I do think that compulsory public service is a good idea. I think that the lucky break that many Baby Boomers got in not having to serve their country resulted in a stunted sense of community and laid the ground for all of us being labeled the “me generation.” But that’s a discussion for another day.

  O Christmas Tree

  December 2012

  All through my childhood, my parents had a small artificial Christmas tree that they put on a table. Santa put our presents under the table. Then when I was 14, our artificial Christmas tree went up for what would be the last time. A week after Christmas my father died. The artificial tree was still up of course and many of the horrible memories of my father’s death and the aftermath had that Christmas tree in the background. So it was not a difficult decision for my mother to throw out the tree soon afterward. The next Christmas we got our first real Christmas tree. It was a gorgeous blue spruce whose top scraped the ceiling in our living room. I can still remember the beautiful smell. It was all totally new to our house. It was fresh and alive, just like we were. My mother, brother and I had a wonderful time picking it out, setting it up and even tending to the water in the base. It was a terrific Christmas. And then, a few days after Christmas, our cat Willy, for whom the tree was as new as it was for us, could no longer contain himself. He climbed the tree right to the top and it promptly tipped over. Instead of being angry, we simply laughed at the startled tabby. And we had real Christmas trees every year after that.