Tony's Pizza in downtown Fort Mill burned Saturday morning.
Owner Joseph Randazzo says he thinks he is going to build back, but it's too early to tell.
I understand it being too soon. The fire started around 3 a.m., and it's just about 1 p.m. now.
But he needs to build it back. Not for his own business plan or for its historical value.
No, it's just that I think Tony's Pizza is tied inextricably both to my life in Fort Mill and my marriage.
When I was a' courtin' my wife, many is the time I would drive up to Fort Mill. The first place she took me to lunch in Fort Mill, when I came up on a Friday afternoon, was Tony's Pizza.
She said I had to have the lunch special.
Yumola.
The lunch special. Spaghetti and meatballs and garlic knots.
It might have been that first lunch there, but it was there I met Jeff Updike.
He was having the lunch special. I think, for some odd reason, he did not have the meatballs. There certainly weren't any meatballs on his plate when he invited Patricia to come on over to his table and sit. They were Rotary buddies.
He looked me up and down kind of like he was a big brother checking me out, knowing that Patricia had a new "beau."
I guess he found me worthy enough. At Patricia's prompting, he told me all about about his work with the Nation's Ford Land Trust, a conservancy to protect land in York County. Despite his unredeemable character flaw of being a Clemson fan, I made a friend that day.
That was just the first time I had lunch there, just the first of many fine Fort Mill Township people I met and befriended.
And the special was always so good, I took to ordering an extra meatball.
I branched out just once, and tried the lasagna.
With an extra meatball on the side. I just had to have it.
Yumola.
There are other restaurants in the Township. But Tony's Pizza is just a piece of downtown Fort Mill that needs to be there. Since I ate there with my fiancée who has since become and remains my wife, the two are linked in the back of my mind in some weird way. It is not logical, I admit. But it is what it is in my mind.
If Joe Randazzo and building owner Bayles Mack do not build it back, who knows what will happen to my marriage?
It's not just me. When my brother and sisters came to Fort Mill to meet Patricia, they went downtown. It was lunchtime, late in the week. So they went to Tony's.
They know it too, though they rarely get to downtown Fort Mill when they get here.
So Saturday, May 5, 2007, might end up bring a real sad morning, if the fire marks the end.
It has to come back. I need my lunch special.
And an extra meatball.
Check out the Fort Mill Times breaking news coverage of the fire here.
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Casualties of war: From the first to the 41st
You know who George Buggs is, though you probably don't remember. But I remember.
In 2003, I was the managing editor of The People-Sentinel in Barnwell. When the war broke out, the publisher said we had to do something for the troops. that's it. Something. No explanation or ideas.
i brainstormed with my lone reporter, and we came up with an idea.
Just days into the war in Iraq, a story was foisted on the American public about a little girl from West Virginia in a military convoy gone astray who bravely fought off swarming Iraqis until she ran out of ammo. She was later rescued by a special ops team.
Turned out it wasn't quite true. She was captured, but never fired a shot. She had broken legs It was a cynical attempt to manufacture a heroic symbol. The worst part of it was others were killed in that convoy, but they were ignored, and are, in many ways, still forgotten.
George Edward Buggs was in that same convoy with Jessica Lynch. He might have been in the same vehicle. We'll never know for sure what really happened. But while Jessica Lynch survived and was rescued, George Buggs was one of eight soldiers killed in that action, the first soldier from South Carolina to be killed in either of these latest wars.
Because of what we had done in our paper, we should have been prepared. But Buggs' family had not filled out a little slip of paper nor given us his photo. We had to go find them to get their story.
Over the course of two weeks and three papers, we covered the story of his life and death as well as any paper.
Like a good community paper, we not only wrote stories, but we helped the funeral home with some of the things they needed. We enlarged the few, poor Polaroids the family had, for one thing.
Because he was the first Palmetto State casualty, S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford attended his funeral and spoke at it, hopping down from a stage to give a Palmetto State flag to George Buggs' son.
It was a big event. The death scarred the community a little.
When the war is over, they are supposed to do something special for him and all the men who served.
When the war is over. Some now might call that a cruel joke.
George Buggs was career military. He left behind a wife and a son.
When I heard how Buggs used to love to take his son to the movies, I was tempted, so tempted, to fill that void. I love movies, after all.
I wasn't to stay much longer in Barnwell, it turned out. But my heart went out to the son, the wife, Buggs' parents, and the community.
At that time, I didn't understand why a boy was left without a father, a mother without a son, a wife without a husband. A few months later, another young man died, an Allendale County native.
Orenthal Smith was his name. He was the fourth South Carolinian killed in the war. I sat down in my office and talked for a while with his mother and sister. We got the reaction of friends, family,
I remember having again the thoughts. Why?
It is more than three years later. I'm in another community, and I have to retrace some of my old steps to tell a story that I've told in some ways before.
Spc. D. Logan Tinsley is apparently the 41st person from South Carolina to die in this war. But he is the first from Chester County.
He is the first war zone casualty involving a Chester County man since the Vietnam War, his ROTC instructor said. So the county might not fully be prepared for this. We don't know what will happen to the community. His mother doesn't even know for sure when his body will be brought home.
I talked to my mother the other day. It was Christmas after all. I don't know in what context it came up, but at one point, she said she believes in miracles. Her faith is a tower. Mine isn't even the straw hut blown down by the big bad wolf.
But I flash back, sitting in a crowded school gym and at the graveside with the family of the first man from our state killed in this war, I remember sitting there with the family of the fourth, in my office, talking about a lost loved one. And here I am again, sitting in the home of the 41st young man killed in this war.
I don't know why and can't fathom why this happens.
But I hope my mother is right, that there are miracles. I pray Logan Tinsley will be the last from South Carolina to die in this war.
But it will take a miracle.
In 2003, I was the managing editor of The People-Sentinel in Barnwell. When the war broke out, the publisher said we had to do something for the troops. that's it. Something. No explanation or ideas.
i brainstormed with my lone reporter, and we came up with an idea.
Just days into the war in Iraq, a story was foisted on the American public about a little girl from West Virginia in a military convoy gone astray who bravely fought off swarming Iraqis until she ran out of ammo. She was later rescued by a special ops team.
Turned out it wasn't quite true. She was captured, but never fired a shot. She had broken legs It was a cynical attempt to manufacture a heroic symbol. The worst part of it was others were killed in that convoy, but they were ignored, and are, in many ways, still forgotten.
George Edward Buggs was in that same convoy with Jessica Lynch. He might have been in the same vehicle. We'll never know for sure what really happened. But while Jessica Lynch survived and was rescued, George Buggs was one of eight soldiers killed in that action, the first soldier from South Carolina to be killed in either of these latest wars.
Because of what we had done in our paper, we should have been prepared. But Buggs' family had not filled out a little slip of paper nor given us his photo. We had to go find them to get their story.
Over the course of two weeks and three papers, we covered the story of his life and death as well as any paper.
Like a good community paper, we not only wrote stories, but we helped the funeral home with some of the things they needed. We enlarged the few, poor Polaroids the family had, for one thing.
Because he was the first Palmetto State casualty, S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford attended his funeral and spoke at it, hopping down from a stage to give a Palmetto State flag to George Buggs' son.
It was a big event. The death scarred the community a little.
When the war is over, they are supposed to do something special for him and all the men who served.
When the war is over. Some now might call that a cruel joke.
George Buggs was career military. He left behind a wife and a son.
When I heard how Buggs used to love to take his son to the movies, I was tempted, so tempted, to fill that void. I love movies, after all.
I wasn't to stay much longer in Barnwell, it turned out. But my heart went out to the son, the wife, Buggs' parents, and the community.
At that time, I didn't understand why a boy was left without a father, a mother without a son, a wife without a husband. A few months later, another young man died, an Allendale County native.
Orenthal Smith was his name. He was the fourth South Carolinian killed in the war. I sat down in my office and talked for a while with his mother and sister. We got the reaction of friends, family,
I remember having again the thoughts. Why?
It is more than three years later. I'm in another community, and I have to retrace some of my old steps to tell a story that I've told in some ways before.
Spc. D. Logan Tinsley is apparently the 41st person from South Carolina to die in this war. But he is the first from Chester County.
He is the first war zone casualty involving a Chester County man since the Vietnam War, his ROTC instructor said. So the county might not fully be prepared for this. We don't know what will happen to the community. His mother doesn't even know for sure when his body will be brought home.
I talked to my mother the other day. It was Christmas after all. I don't know in what context it came up, but at one point, she said she believes in miracles. Her faith is a tower. Mine isn't even the straw hut blown down by the big bad wolf.
But I flash back, sitting in a crowded school gym and at the graveside with the family of the first man from our state killed in this war, I remember sitting there with the family of the fourth, in my office, talking about a lost loved one. And here I am again, sitting in the home of the 41st young man killed in this war.
I don't know why and can't fathom why this happens.
But I hope my mother is right, that there are miracles. I pray Logan Tinsley will be the last from South Carolina to die in this war.
But it will take a miracle.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Friday, September 29, 2006
D is for Dad, D is also for ????
(Click on the title for a link to pics.)
D is for Daddy, but D is also for ????
There aren't too many books about being a Dad. They have plenty about the baby, plenty about motherhood, pregnancy galore. Breast-feeding, etc.
But they don't give you the secrets, if there are any, to being a dad.
My son was born Friday, Sept. 22. I was expecting a girl, and when they held him up for me to see, I kept waiting for them to say what it is, so I could "announce it."
My wife signed the birth plan and assigned me the task of announcing the sex and cutting the cord. I actually would have liked to pass on the latter, but after the entire delivery process, cutting the cord was a piece of pie.
While the doctor holds up the baby, I realize she was waiting for me to say what I was looking at. Announcing the sex means announcing it, apparently, to the doctor and nurses, who, having seen more of these things than I ever have or will, ought to know better and not need my help.
To be honest, though they said my son came out pretty clean, I wasn't sure what I was looking at. I was thinking that might be part of the umbilical chord, because it was a little darker than the rest of his skin.
"It's a boy," I said. But it was more of a question than an announcement.
I had been expecting a girl. Why, I don't know. Just some feelings here and there. We had a boy's name picked out from the get go, but I thought for sure when we decided to name her, in part, and call her after my Aunt Kathleen, that a girl was coming.
I read Bill Cosby's "Fatherhood." It's some of his routines, watered down substantially, and the lessons, at least so far, aren't all that revealing. Not bad. Just not a sermon on the mount or the wisdom of Solomon.
The only thing that has surprised me so far was the amount of driving.
When Patricia went into labor, she decided to stay home about five hours past the point where I was ready to go. We drove to CMC-Pineville at 4 a.m.
Patricia told me after I drove great, calmly, coolly. Not my usual style at all.
She did say at one point during the drive, as a contraction hit, "Could you at least drive the speed limit?"
I was, at the time, at the limit.
I punched it.
I had worried about going to the hospital on 485 at around 4 of the clock, concerned about traffic.
In the afternoon, that is. If you are having a baby, 4 in the morning is a much better drive time on the Outer Loop. It was so clear that, I didn't have to stay between the lines, technically.
I drove out to get her a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger the day after the delivery.
Drove the baby home the day after that.
That night, we needed the proper kind of bottle, one with a low-flow nipple. They said Target carried them, so I assumed that Wal-Mart would have the brand. No such luck.
They used to have them, but no longer.
Timing is the family curse.
So after driving to Wal-Mart in Rock Hill, I head on out to Super Target in Lake Wylie. They had just closed. A store worker outside said to try, they were closing, not closed. I went in, but the security guard told me they were closed.
Timing is the family curse.
I tried the Super Wal-Mart on 49 and 485. No such luck.
My wife called. They had the brand at the CVS a half mile from our house. When I get there, it wasn't the right size/age nipple. But I got it anyway. About 50 miles right there.
The following Monday, I drove to go shopping. The following Tuesday, I drove to the pediatrician. The following Wednesday, drove to the lactation consultant.
The following Thursday, drove with my brother to get a late lunch for the visiting family.
My lovely bride is not allowed to pick up anything heavier than the baby, so the car seat and the baby are, by definition, heavier. So I have to take them everywhere.
The following Friday, and I went to get a new phone because our old one burned out and we need something that works. Can't have just two phones in the house with people sometimes calling around the clock.
It's a good thing I filled up the tank in my car when I went to the first Wal-Mart.
But the price of gas had not yet dipped below $2 a gallon.
Timing.
So I'm a Dad, trying to figure it out.
I knew the D would be for Dad.
But D is also, apparently, for driving.
D is for Daddy, but D is also for ????
There aren't too many books about being a Dad. They have plenty about the baby, plenty about motherhood, pregnancy galore. Breast-feeding, etc.
But they don't give you the secrets, if there are any, to being a dad.
My son was born Friday, Sept. 22. I was expecting a girl, and when they held him up for me to see, I kept waiting for them to say what it is, so I could "announce it."
My wife signed the birth plan and assigned me the task of announcing the sex and cutting the cord. I actually would have liked to pass on the latter, but after the entire delivery process, cutting the cord was a piece of pie.
While the doctor holds up the baby, I realize she was waiting for me to say what I was looking at. Announcing the sex means announcing it, apparently, to the doctor and nurses, who, having seen more of these things than I ever have or will, ought to know better and not need my help.
To be honest, though they said my son came out pretty clean, I wasn't sure what I was looking at. I was thinking that might be part of the umbilical chord, because it was a little darker than the rest of his skin.
"It's a boy," I said. But it was more of a question than an announcement.
I had been expecting a girl. Why, I don't know. Just some feelings here and there. We had a boy's name picked out from the get go, but I thought for sure when we decided to name her, in part, and call her after my Aunt Kathleen, that a girl was coming.
I read Bill Cosby's "Fatherhood." It's some of his routines, watered down substantially, and the lessons, at least so far, aren't all that revealing. Not bad. Just not a sermon on the mount or the wisdom of Solomon.
The only thing that has surprised me so far was the amount of driving.
When Patricia went into labor, she decided to stay home about five hours past the point where I was ready to go. We drove to CMC-Pineville at 4 a.m.
Patricia told me after I drove great, calmly, coolly. Not my usual style at all.
She did say at one point during the drive, as a contraction hit, "Could you at least drive the speed limit?"
I was, at the time, at the limit.
I punched it.
I had worried about going to the hospital on 485 at around 4 of the clock, concerned about traffic.
In the afternoon, that is. If you are having a baby, 4 in the morning is a much better drive time on the Outer Loop. It was so clear that, I didn't have to stay between the lines, technically.
I drove out to get her a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger the day after the delivery.
Drove the baby home the day after that.
That night, we needed the proper kind of bottle, one with a low-flow nipple. They said Target carried them, so I assumed that Wal-Mart would have the brand. No such luck.
They used to have them, but no longer.
Timing is the family curse.
So after driving to Wal-Mart in Rock Hill, I head on out to Super Target in Lake Wylie. They had just closed. A store worker outside said to try, they were closing, not closed. I went in, but the security guard told me they were closed.
Timing is the family curse.
I tried the Super Wal-Mart on 49 and 485. No such luck.
My wife called. They had the brand at the CVS a half mile from our house. When I get there, it wasn't the right size/age nipple. But I got it anyway. About 50 miles right there.
The following Monday, I drove to go shopping. The following Tuesday, I drove to the pediatrician. The following Wednesday, drove to the lactation consultant.
The following Thursday, drove with my brother to get a late lunch for the visiting family.
My lovely bride is not allowed to pick up anything heavier than the baby, so the car seat and the baby are, by definition, heavier. So I have to take them everywhere.
The following Friday, and I went to get a new phone because our old one burned out and we need something that works. Can't have just two phones in the house with people sometimes calling around the clock.
It's a good thing I filled up the tank in my car when I went to the first Wal-Mart.
But the price of gas had not yet dipped below $2 a gallon.
Timing.
So I'm a Dad, trying to figure it out.
I knew the D would be for Dad.
But D is also, apparently, for driving.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Saw 'World Trade Center'
You can click above or click here to read about my reaction.
I'm trying to get a photo into the column, but it's giving me fits.
I'm trying to get a photo into the column, but it's giving me fits.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
THAT Day
Everyone has to talk about it today, 9/11.
Where were you on 9/11.
I saw it happen. The second plane that is. I wasn't there, but I was watching on television when the second plane hit.
I heard about the first plane from a radio show in on WDOG in Allendale, S.C.
I was actually going to be to work on that day early. I was out the door, almost, when I heard Carl talk about the first plane.
I had Dish Network then. Instead of local network channels, I lived in the coolest of the cool, network feeds from New York City AND the West Coast.
I happened to have CNN on when it hit.
We are at war, I thought to myself. I didn't have a clue with whom, and I didn't think it would be particularly a wise thought thunk only by me. But I said it that second.
Then i started worrying about my cousins who lived in New York City. They were in the Bronx and Yonkers and generally didn't get that far down into Manhattan, but they were close and I was not.
So I worried.
The worry kind of created one of the stupidest thoughts I ever had in my career as a newspaper. I wasn't thinking straight. I went into work, got down to doing the paper, but actually said, at one point, this isn't a local story.
I was given a virtual kick in the butt. On top of a lot of other things, my editor was leaving that week, so I knew my news staff was going from three, with me and him, to two, with me and one other. My work load was going up in a week anyway, but I had a lot of distractions.
Add in the fact that the World Trade Center was my favorite place to go to in the city. No, I wasn't thinking straight for a second.
By the time the towers started falling, I was in high gear. I actually got a tip from a source in the National Guard that they were planning to mobilize, and I think we had a great lead.
I went home, got my own pictures of the towers and Lower Manhattan and used them to illustrate our coverage. Another paper in our company had an AP picture on its front page.
I considered it theft. I had my own pictures, a scoop. I used a picture my father had once bought of Lower Manhattan and used it to make a cartoon. I wrote an editorial cribbing from FDR's Pearl Harbor declaration of war. We had a picture of people watching the coverage at a local restaurant, my favorite hangout in Barnwell, Anthony's. I didn't even mind, as I normally might have, that our ad manager was there in the shot, from the back.
We got our paper out on time, as we did, most of the time.
And I went home. I talked to my girlfriend, now my wife. Talked to my folks throughout the day.
But on that day, I knew how it would end. Me, in front of the television, watching too too much coverage, and wondering what had happened and who had done this.
In my editortal, I warned against making leaps to judgment. When the federal building in Oklahoma had been bombed, people remembering the first strike at the World Trade Center, had assumed it was again Arab terrorists. How wrong they were then. I didn't say it wasn't, but I just wanted Americans to wait until we knew who had done it before we started unleashing what I call a righteous rage.
Some who took that to mean I thought it wasn't Arab terrorists were wrong to assume I said that. But, if so, how wrong I was.
I was flipping back from the major networks to the local news feeds and I was amazed how some of the local New York stations were doing what I thought was better jobs than the major networks.
Chuck Scarborough, an anchor who had been in New York City when I moved to South Carolina, was one I remember watching. The local New York Superstations had some amazing stuff.
One station, I don't remember which, had a scoop citing unnamed FBI sources. Another had something about the airports remaining closed. I can't remember it all, I just remember the local guys were doing a better job covering the disaster than the big boys.
Granted, a "local" station in New York City is a different animal than a local affiliate newscast in Charlotte or Columbia or Greenville-Spartanburg. But it was what it was.
I had rage, but nowhere to direct it.
I went to bed, eventually. There was nothing else to be done.
I woke up into a different world. The one we are in now.
Some would say it is a more frightening world, but they aren't as right as they intend.
Hate is rampant. Some of it is hate directed at us by what is now called "Islamo-fascists." I know the people that term refers to, but I think the term is meaningless.
Since 9/11, however, the hate that frightens me has been in this country, with our own people directing it at others among us. Hearing a call for profiling and how "profiling" is a good thing is just part of it.
The partisan rancor in our halls of government to me says this isn't the same country I grew up in. American people condoning torture, that's just not the America I grew up in. A person I considered a friend believes, apparently, that we ought to be cutting off as many heads as our enemy. More.
I don't want to be the person who gives that command to our troops.
I still have faith that we can win this war. But not if we adopt the ways of our enemy.
A principle that is discarded when times get tough was never a principle. It was just an empty platitude to make one think he or she is better than he or she is in reality.
I do not want to lose this war. We can win it by being the great people we have always been. We can fight the war as strongly as we need to fight it, without succumbing to the temptation to do evil ourselves.
But I do not want to win by bcoming less than we were. So I'm willing to risk losing this war on that score.
It is the eve of 9/11's fifth anniversary. Some day, I hope to remember that it united us a second time. It united us then. But we are divided now.
I can't think any more on it.
My wife and I are about two weeks away from bringing a child into this dangerous world. I pray to God that we are bringing him, her, into a world where being an American means you are thought of as the good guys.
God bless those who died, and God bless America.
Where were you on 9/11.
I saw it happen. The second plane that is. I wasn't there, but I was watching on television when the second plane hit.
I heard about the first plane from a radio show in on WDOG in Allendale, S.C.
I was actually going to be to work on that day early. I was out the door, almost, when I heard Carl talk about the first plane.
I had Dish Network then. Instead of local network channels, I lived in the coolest of the cool, network feeds from New York City AND the West Coast.
I happened to have CNN on when it hit.
We are at war, I thought to myself. I didn't have a clue with whom, and I didn't think it would be particularly a wise thought thunk only by me. But I said it that second.
Then i started worrying about my cousins who lived in New York City. They were in the Bronx and Yonkers and generally didn't get that far down into Manhattan, but they were close and I was not.
So I worried.
The worry kind of created one of the stupidest thoughts I ever had in my career as a newspaper. I wasn't thinking straight. I went into work, got down to doing the paper, but actually said, at one point, this isn't a local story.
I was given a virtual kick in the butt. On top of a lot of other things, my editor was leaving that week, so I knew my news staff was going from three, with me and him, to two, with me and one other. My work load was going up in a week anyway, but I had a lot of distractions.
Add in the fact that the World Trade Center was my favorite place to go to in the city. No, I wasn't thinking straight for a second.
By the time the towers started falling, I was in high gear. I actually got a tip from a source in the National Guard that they were planning to mobilize, and I think we had a great lead.
I went home, got my own pictures of the towers and Lower Manhattan and used them to illustrate our coverage. Another paper in our company had an AP picture on its front page.
I considered it theft. I had my own pictures, a scoop. I used a picture my father had once bought of Lower Manhattan and used it to make a cartoon. I wrote an editorial cribbing from FDR's Pearl Harbor declaration of war. We had a picture of people watching the coverage at a local restaurant, my favorite hangout in Barnwell, Anthony's. I didn't even mind, as I normally might have, that our ad manager was there in the shot, from the back.
We got our paper out on time, as we did, most of the time.
And I went home. I talked to my girlfriend, now my wife. Talked to my folks throughout the day.
But on that day, I knew how it would end. Me, in front of the television, watching too too much coverage, and wondering what had happened and who had done this.
In my editortal, I warned against making leaps to judgment. When the federal building in Oklahoma had been bombed, people remembering the first strike at the World Trade Center, had assumed it was again Arab terrorists. How wrong they were then. I didn't say it wasn't, but I just wanted Americans to wait until we knew who had done it before we started unleashing what I call a righteous rage.
Some who took that to mean I thought it wasn't Arab terrorists were wrong to assume I said that. But, if so, how wrong I was.
I was flipping back from the major networks to the local news feeds and I was amazed how some of the local New York stations were doing what I thought was better jobs than the major networks.
Chuck Scarborough, an anchor who had been in New York City when I moved to South Carolina, was one I remember watching. The local New York Superstations had some amazing stuff.
One station, I don't remember which, had a scoop citing unnamed FBI sources. Another had something about the airports remaining closed. I can't remember it all, I just remember the local guys were doing a better job covering the disaster than the big boys.
Granted, a "local" station in New York City is a different animal than a local affiliate newscast in Charlotte or Columbia or Greenville-Spartanburg. But it was what it was.
I had rage, but nowhere to direct it.
I went to bed, eventually. There was nothing else to be done.
I woke up into a different world. The one we are in now.
Some would say it is a more frightening world, but they aren't as right as they intend.
Hate is rampant. Some of it is hate directed at us by what is now called "Islamo-fascists." I know the people that term refers to, but I think the term is meaningless.
Since 9/11, however, the hate that frightens me has been in this country, with our own people directing it at others among us. Hearing a call for profiling and how "profiling" is a good thing is just part of it.
The partisan rancor in our halls of government to me says this isn't the same country I grew up in. American people condoning torture, that's just not the America I grew up in. A person I considered a friend believes, apparently, that we ought to be cutting off as many heads as our enemy. More.
I don't want to be the person who gives that command to our troops.
I still have faith that we can win this war. But not if we adopt the ways of our enemy.
A principle that is discarded when times get tough was never a principle. It was just an empty platitude to make one think he or she is better than he or she is in reality.
I do not want to lose this war. We can win it by being the great people we have always been. We can fight the war as strongly as we need to fight it, without succumbing to the temptation to do evil ourselves.
But I do not want to win by bcoming less than we were. So I'm willing to risk losing this war on that score.
It is the eve of 9/11's fifth anniversary. Some day, I hope to remember that it united us a second time. It united us then. But we are divided now.
I can't think any more on it.
My wife and I are about two weeks away from bringing a child into this dangerous world. I pray to God that we are bringing him, her, into a world where being an American means you are thought of as the good guys.
God bless those who died, and God bless America.
Saturday, July 1, 2006
A Deb, A Dad -- Li'l ole me?
It's about three months ahead of the real important date.
It didn't happen at a ball or a cotillion.
And I'm a dude.
But I had my public "debut" last week.
As a Dad, not a deb.
I got "father-to-be" cards and some stuff for Father's Day. I was told I had to wear one gift from my mom and dad and sister Catherine for my "debut."
No, it was not a dress. But outerwear, to be sure. A package deal -- baseball cap, T-shirt and thick elastic wristband band that all say, "All-American Dad."
It is a bit unfortunate that my public "debut" as a dad comes three months and some change before the birth of Baby Guilfoyle, but I don't control my sisters, sister-in-law and mother, and they had a shower for my wife and me and baby-to-be.
Dutiful me, hen-pecked me, pistol-whipped-if-I-don't-play-along me showed up in "costume" and there I was, for the social circle of Mom and my sisters in the necropolis of Spartanburg, full on display.
I know how to wear a hat and T-shirt. After a couple of goes, I even put on the rubber band correctly.
I've got that down. I think I've also got it down how to be a "daddy."
That's the easy part. But as it gets closer and closer (you can track it here, btw) I begin to wonder if I can be a father. There's a difference, a big one, in my book.
A dad can be fun to have around. He'll play and tickle and make a baby laugh. A father is someone who from the beginning can mold a child into a good person.
My dad, Bud, is a role model for my aspirations here. Both a dad and a father to me.
Sometimes I think I can't take care of myself, let alone my wife, let alone our two dogs.
But Patricia fell in the tub the other day. I heard a thump and a bit of a screech. All who know me would be surprised at how fast I got up the stairs. She's got a bruise on her arm and had a few sniffles I couldn't do much about.
But I got there.
I do know I'm more likely to be the one who will wake up if the baby cries at night. When the doggies bark their heads off with a sudden urge to go outside , it's me who almost always hears it first, and usually me who does the nightly duty there.
She, on the other hand, can sleep through anything. I remember she planned a romantic Valentine's Day. And it started out romantic. Our movie and dinner date she booked included a stay at a hotel room.
But I had somehow caught a NASTY bug. At about 9 a.m. the next day, she woke up and found me in the bathroom.
She was a trifle shocked to learn I had been up all night, erupting like Mount St. Helens. I'm not sure. I got drunk enough that I know you can puke out your nose. I didn't know you could puke out your ears until that hell night.
I actually whimpered for help once or twice while she slept on. I know it was a bug because I got a call later the next day to come take care of her. She was having the same symptoms.
I am sure I'll be the one to wake up for our child. I know that I'll probably have to poke her ribs to get her up to handle the serious stuff, and in the early stages, probably the routine stuff. I hope it isn't always the case.
But I'll be the one who wakes up (if I'm not already awake).
If that sounds like not much, and possibly petty, please understand. It's the only thing I've got to go on with some certainty that says I'm going to play an important part in the early care of this child.
I'm old-fashioned enough that I don't think I should take the "courses" they have for parents these days. Nurse sister Catherine demands I sign up for baby CPR. I see the value in that.
But as for the more intangible part of being a father. no course at a hospital is going to be better than the 40 years I've spent watching Bud be Bud.
Since I am, as described above, dutiful me, hen-pecked me, pistol-whipped-if-I-don't-play-along me, I imagine there's a course or two that I'll be taking anyway, with the wife. But I log my formal objection herewith, and I'll probably treat them like kindergarten through my second year of college.
Wake me when it's over.
Anyway, I had my debut. Three months before Baby Guilfoyle is due to arrive, people know I'm on the verge of daddyhood.
Li'l ole me. Who'd have ever thought I had it in me?
It didn't happen at a ball or a cotillion.
And I'm a dude.
But I had my public "debut" last week.
As a Dad, not a deb.
I got "father-to-be" cards and some stuff for Father's Day. I was told I had to wear one gift from my mom and dad and sister Catherine for my "debut."
No, it was not a dress. But outerwear, to be sure. A package deal -- baseball cap, T-shirt and thick elastic wristband band that all say, "All-American Dad."
Dutiful me, hen-pecked me, pistol-whipped-if-I-don't-play-along me showed up in "costume" and there I was, for the social circle of Mom and my sisters in the necropolis of Spartanburg, full on display.
I know how to wear a hat and T-shirt. After a couple of goes, I even put on the rubber band correctly.
I've got that down. I think I've also got it down how to be a "daddy."
That's the easy part. But as it gets closer and closer (you can track it here, btw) I begin to wonder if I can be a father. There's a difference, a big one, in my book.
A dad can be fun to have around. He'll play and tickle and make a baby laugh. A father is someone who from the beginning can mold a child into a good person.
My dad, Bud, is a role model for my aspirations here. Both a dad and a father to me.
Sometimes I think I can't take care of myself, let alone my wife, let alone our two dogs.
But Patricia fell in the tub the other day. I heard a thump and a bit of a screech. All who know me would be surprised at how fast I got up the stairs. She's got a bruise on her arm and had a few sniffles I couldn't do much about.
But I got there.
I do know I'm more likely to be the one who will wake up if the baby cries at night. When the doggies bark their heads off with a sudden urge to go outside , it's me who almost always hears it first, and usually me who does the nightly duty there.
She, on the other hand, can sleep through anything. I remember she planned a romantic Valentine's Day. And it started out romantic. Our movie and dinner date she booked included a stay at a hotel room.
But I had somehow caught a NASTY bug. At about 9 a.m. the next day, she woke up and found me in the bathroom.
She was a trifle shocked to learn I had been up all night, erupting like Mount St. Helens. I'm not sure. I got drunk enough that I know you can puke out your nose. I didn't know you could puke out your ears until that hell night.
I actually whimpered for help once or twice while she slept on. I know it was a bug because I got a call later the next day to come take care of her. She was having the same symptoms.
I am sure I'll be the one to wake up for our child. I know that I'll probably have to poke her ribs to get her up to handle the serious stuff, and in the early stages, probably the routine stuff. I hope it isn't always the case.
But I'll be the one who wakes up (if I'm not already awake).
If that sounds like not much, and possibly petty, please understand. It's the only thing I've got to go on with some certainty that says I'm going to play an important part in the early care of this child.
I'm old-fashioned enough that I don't think I should take the "courses" they have for parents these days. Nurse sister Catherine demands I sign up for baby CPR. I see the value in that.
But as for the more intangible part of being a father. no course at a hospital is going to be better than the 40 years I've spent watching Bud be Bud.
Since I am, as described above, dutiful me, hen-pecked me, pistol-whipped-if-I-don't-play-along me, I imagine there's a course or two that I'll be taking anyway, with the wife. But I log my formal objection herewith, and I'll probably treat them like kindergarten through my second year of college.
Wake me when it's over.
Anyway, I had my debut. Three months before Baby Guilfoyle is due to arrive, people know I'm on the verge of daddyhood.
Li'l ole me. Who'd have ever thought I had it in me?
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