Dick Martin

He always seemed like a nice guy, and from what I've read about him since his death the other day, my perception apparently was, for once, right on the money.

I particularly remember seeing him on game shows and talk shows and noticing how he would laugh at other comedians. That's not something you always see.

And although I usually pay a bit more attention to the straight men when I'm watching comedy teams (I like watching straight men try to be funny but not too funny as they feed the comic and try to control the pace of the act), Rowan and Martin were an exception. Dan Rowan didn't seem particularly charismatic (I've since read that he wouldn't exactly be a semifinalist in a World's Nicest Man contest), and I was more drawn to Martin's persona -- silly, goofy, the type of guy who could get away with risque material because he was almost a cartoon character. (I suspect you could say something similar about Groucho.)

I also think Dick Martin got one of the biggest laughs ever on "Match Game" with a response that, as I recall, practically incapacitated Gene Rayburn for the better part of a minute.

The question was something like: "Ninety-nine-year-old Mr. Periwinkle married a 22-year-old exotic dancer. They spent their honeymoon blanking."

Martin's response: "Shucking oysters."

Aunt Dorth

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, my Aunt Dorothy died early last month. She hadn't been in the best of health, but we hadn't expected to lose her so soon.

Like my Aunt Helen, Aunt Dorothy was a nun. (My Uncle Bob was a priest.) Aunt Dorth also had a doctorate in music education. I don't know what the salary range is for a professor with a doctorate, but I figure it amounts to a decent chunk of change, especially if the prof has tenure. Aunt Dorth was a teacher at the same college for 38 years and formerly ran its music department. (Before that, she taught at diocesan schools for 12 years.)

Because she was a nun, I believe her salary went to her order. Which, I'm sure, was fine with her. She wasn't in it for the money; the teaching -- her calling, really -- was the main thing. Two contributors to the online guest book accompanying her obituary make it clear that she "really cared about her students and made each feel special." And I'm sure you could find at least 200 other former students (maybe even 2,000) who would echo that sentiment.

I'm sorry to say I never had Aunt Dorth as a teacher. I did take piano lessons for about five years, but my teacher was a nun who had taught Aunt Dorth. After this nun left my school for another assignment, I decided to drop the lessons, and I've always remembered how disappointed my aunt was, though she didn't scold me or otherwise try to give me grief. I think she actually thought I might have a future in music, and although I still think I was right (music remains a favorite hobby, but I wouldn't enjoy having to perform for money, even if I were that good), I still feel a little bad that I disappointed her, and I feel more than a little heartened that she seemed to have so much belief in me.

A few other memories:

Once while she was visiting us, we were going to have hot dogs for dinner. "I like hot dogs, but they don't like me," she said. To literal-minded little me, this seemed absurd. How could hot dogs not like someone? I know better now, much better, and could someone please pass the bicarbonate?

(By the way, to show you how things have changed over the years, until about the mid-1960s, when my aunts came to town for a visit, they couldn't stay overnight with us; my mom had to drive them to the parish convent, a few blocks away. Yet my uncle could always stay overnight. Go figure....)

Until I was about 12, my aunts wore a traditional habit, which meant we kids didn't know what their hair looked like. No big deal, except that we knew (our mom had told us) that Aunt Dorth, who was a very young-acting thirtysomething, had hair that turned white at a very early age. (Whoa! Cue "Twilight Zone" sound effect.) When my aunts switched to a more modern habit, we were prepared for our first view of the fabled hair. But it still took some getting used to....

Aunt Dorth earned her master's degree in Boston. During that time, I think she and some other nuns briefly met JFK. I do know for sure that I would much rather have stood in the middle of an arena and waved five red flags at five different bulls than to so much as imply, in her presence, that Mr. Kennedy's feet had been at least dipped in clay.

But I think the thing I'll always treasure about Aunt Dorth -- something that I'm ashamed to say didn't occur to me while she was alive -- is that our relationship evolved over the years. This doesn't always happen with one's older relatives or family friends, who can sometimes, despite the passage of years, still see you and treat you as if you've never completely reached adulthood.

At the beginning, of course, I was the kid and Dorothy was the aunt. (I still remember how, even in recent years, she enjoyed telling people that I pronounced "Peter and the Wolf" as "Peter and the Wilf.") But after I became an adult (chronologically, at least), she treated me as an adult, which (if this logic isn't too twisted) helped me to become an adult in truth. She was an invaluable confidante -- and friend.

And at some point I hope to tell you about my Uncle Bob.

How green were our stamp books

Not far from where I live, one of the city's main drags leads into a part of the city that used to be a village until it decided to merge with the larger entity decades ago.

But this area's business district is still there and runs the better part of a mile. When I was a kid it had a couple of drugstores (one with a soda fountain), a bakery, at least a couple of banks, a bowling alley and other assorted stores.

Over the years the businesses have come and gone. A few years ago, the bowling alley was felled by a very big ball that didn't have three finger holes. Nothing has replaced it. A building across the street seems headed for the wreckers, too.

A few years ago, a health insurance company established itself near the beginning of the business district. It wound up taking up most of a whole block, displacing a long-standing pizza shop, though a used-book store remains defiantly, and incongruously, in the middle of the block. The insurance company did a lot of remodeling, and it now appears to be doing some more. (Re-remodeling, you might say.)

I mention this because as I was walking across the street from the insurance company a week or two ago, I noticed that the workers, in removing the older but newer facade, had uncovered part of an even older sign that dates to when I was a kid.

At first I didn't recognize the sign because all I could see was:

AMPS

It took a moment for me to figure out what the rest of the sign must say, but I finally got it, and when I walked in that neighborhood yesterday, the crew had done more work and my guess was confirmed:

GREEN STAMPS S&H GREEN STAMPS

It used to be a redemption center, where you could bring your books of Green Stamps and get stuff. My brother Michael remembers getting a bicycle there.

I can remember my mother spending evenings pasting those stamps into books. But I can't remember anything we got with them.

I also can't remember when Green Stamps disappeared, but all of a sudden they weren't around anymore. (At one point, a rival company had something called Plaid Stamps. I suspect they didn't quite catch on.) And it's been years since I've heard of a "redemption center." Kind of has an existential feel to it now, like a place you'd go for absolution. ("Shrives R Us!")

I myself never collected Green Stamps. Instead, I collected Raleigh cigarette coupons.

I should make it clear that I've never smoked, but my uncle did, and he'd give me the coupons. I even sent away for a catalog of stuff I could get with them.

I finally decided it would be neat if I could get my mother a Munsey Toaster-Broiler. (At least I think that's what it was called.) So after collecting enough coupons, I sent them in and got the contraption. And presented it to my mother. Whose response, as I recall, was lukewarm. (My first hint that women don't like getting appliances as gifts. Glad I learned it early.)

I don't recall that my mother ever used this modern wonder much, except maybe to please me. As she pointed out, you could indeed make toast with the thing -- if you put the bread on the thing's tray, put it inside the thing, turned the thing on and, after a certain point, pulled the tray out and turned the bread over. More labor-intensive than your average toaster, I guess, though maybe safer, especially if you were my uncle, who was known to have risked electrocution at least once by sticking a fork in our pop-up bread warmer.

Nowadays I suppose the closest thing we have to Green Stamps and cigarette coupons are the bonus points we get for running up our credit card bills. And we don't even have to send in for the catalog; it comes to your home unbidden. Right now I have my eye on a radio/stereo that looks like an old-time radio.

As far as I can tell, it doesn't broil anything or make toast, but you can't have everything....

47 years later, a mystery solved

I suppose I should finally come right out and confess: I have a tin ear.

I don't mean a tin ear for music; actually I can play piano by ear fairly well, for an amateur. (OK, maybe a rank amateur.)

What I have a tin ear for is lyrics. Perhaps you've heard of the term "mondegreen," describing what happens when someone mishears a lyric -- for example, when "Gladly the cross I'd bear" becomes "Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear."

I don't mishear lyrics all that often, but (to paraphrase Fiorello LaGuardia) when I do, it's a beaut.

Many years ago there was a song called "Sad, Sweet Dreamer." Somehow I heard this as, "Hey, Mickey Mouse." Don't ask me how.

Anyway, when I was a kid in the early '60s, one of my favorite shows was "Top Cat." Here's how I heard the lyrics:

Top Cat!
The most effectual Top Cat!
Who's intellectual close friends get to call him T.C.
Crow biting is worth it to please!

Of course that fourth line makes absolutely no sense. And I knew it didn't. At one point I thought "crow biting" might be "law abiding," but that wasn't much (if any) of an improvement.

I revisited this vital question the other day while I was listening to Shokus Internet Radio, which I highly recommend and which you can find here. The station often plays tunes from old TV shows, and on this particular evening the "Top Cat" theme was featured.

As I again puzzled over that last line, it occurred to me that the lyrics might be posted online somewhere.

And it turns out that they are.

And the real lyrics are:

Top Cat!
The most effectual Top Cat!
Who's intellectual close friends get to call him T.C.
Providing it's with dignity!

So the mystery is finally solved. But I dunno ... still sounds like "crow biting" to me....

Aunt Helen

I'm standing in front of our house; I'm perhaps 6 years old.

My Aunt Helen is sitting on the porch, reading.

Standing next to me is a younger playmate, whom I'll call Willy.

I am trying to introduce Willy to my Aunt Helen.

"Willy," I say, "say hello to my Aunt Helen."

Willy says nothing. He's nervous, he's fidgety and he's probably scared, perhaps in part because the woman on the porch is wearing a nun's habit, and he's not used to dealing with that.

Being perhaps 6 years old, I don't exactly pick up on this.

But Aunt Helen does.

"Willy," I say, "say hello to my Aunt Helen."

Nothing.

"Aunt Helen," I say, "say hello to my friend Willy."

She gives him a big smile. "Hello, Willy!"

"Willy," I say, "say hello to my Aunt Helen."

Still nothing.

This goes on for maybe five minutes in the same absurd way. At least I hope it was only five minutes. But I'm sure it goes on long enough to give Samuel Beckett the heebie-jeebies.

But not my Aunt Helen. She goes along, and she is obviously willing to keep going along for however long it takes.

And somehow I think this story, which my aunt loved to recount in later years, pretty much summarizes the way she was.

Kind. Practical. Patient.

A born teacher, whether the subject was the niceties of business law or how to tie your shoes.

When she died, she had been a nun for about 70 years, a span that included the changes that resulted from Vatican II.

(Actually, she wasn't really my aunt but my great-aunt, a distinction we kids -- there were six of us -- usually didn't make. She was my grandmother's sister, about 18 years younger.)

Of my two aunts (Aunt Dorothy was a nun, too), she was the more conservative. At first she didn't like the idea of switching to the "new habit" (which would eventually become "no habit at all"), but she eventually went along with it and even embraced it; I remember thinking it was kind of cute when, in the late 1960s, my aunts would compare notes on the best places to shop for clothes.

And when my godmother, a very conservative Catholic, showed up at my mother's funeral in the early '80s, Aunt Helen pretty much told her, "You probably want to see me back in the habit, but it ain't gonna happen, so deal with it."

Of course, she didn't use those exact words....

In addition to shopping for clothes, there was something else she learned later in life: how to drive.

Then again, my mother would probably take issue with the word "learned." And perhaps someday I will tell the tale of a car journey that she, Aunt Helen, Uncle Bob, my brother Michael and I embarked on together. Michael and I are the sole remaining survivors of this trek, which I lovingly refer to as the "Death Trip to Oswego."

Unlike my Aunt Dorothy, who was a college professor, Aunt Helen taught high school business classes. I don't know that she ever received an award for teaching, unless you count the number of former students who kept in touch with her.

And who, I would venture to guess, still use the skills she taught them.

Kind. Practical. Patient.

For someone who took a vow of poverty, that's an especially rich legacy.

The past passes by

They are all gone now: Aunt Helen, Aunt Dorth and Uncle Bob.

My two aunts were nuns; my uncle, a priest. An informal holy trinity, you might say.

Unk died in 1974, Aunt Helen passed away in 2004 and Aunt Dorth left us earlier this month.

A cousin from Dorth and Bob's generation lives in California, and an older cousin lives in Canada, but although we've all been on good terms we're far apart and rarely in touch, so, practically speaking, my aunts and uncle were the last links to my family's past, the last people who could, for example, tell you what it was to live in this neighborhood -- and in the very house in which I'm writing this -- 70 or even 80 years ago.

My mom died 25 years ago and my dad passed away almost three years ago, but somehow it's only now that I'm really beginning to feel like an orphan.

I'll be writing more about my aunts and uncle soon.

I promise I'll write to them every day

Having just purchased a new pair of sneakers, I was heading toward the store's exit when I was confronted with this overhead sign:

SEE YOU SOON.
THE SHOES ALREADY MISS YOU.