Our second consecutive summer drought is ending abruptly this weekend. When it rains in the north there is a cooling period after the front moves through. It began raining Friday afternoon and when I left the office at 8:00 P.M. Friday night it was a lot like stepping into a sauna. There was a Nor’easter that barreled through here Mother’s Day and it was the worst storm in 46 years. Just a couple thousand feet away that day the bay surrounded some of my neighbor’s homes and the wind whipped and I reprised my life as a reporter and took my Marantz down the street interviewing people waiting it out. A day later it was sunny and it hasn’t rained much since.

Pardon me for being long winded. I’m taking stock. I’ve been at this place a year now and I set this as a milepost in order to prove I could move far away and break some old attachments. Bernie Aiello wrote me today and asked if I missed Central New York. Bernie is a retired TV executive, having worked in Buffalo, Portland, Maine and Syracuse. We used to get together for breakfast at an out of the way place called the Valley Inn outside Marcellus, New York.

Yes. I miss friends and family but I don’t miss Upstate New York. It isn’t the same. The trees and lakes are very pretty but my parents are gone and most of my old friends moved and some died. Like a Chekhov novel it was a wonderful way of life and then vanished so quickly there wasn’t time to take stock. Monday afternoon I took Alaine-Marie to Syracuse and a visit to a bookstore. I hadn’t felt melancholic all weekend but that trip moved me. On the drive home we stopped at the McDonald’s in Fairmount, New York and grabbed some chicken wraps. I’m not a big McDonald’s guy but when my daughter was little it was a common stop for the toys. When her Grandma Colley died I picked my little girl up from school and drove to a McDonald’s in nearby Auburn, New York and over fries told her the news. I broke down and she sat silently and didn’t speak until much later in the day.

Labor Day we also drove through Marcellus on the way back to camp. And I detoured through the park. It was next door for us for 4 years and many an afternoon I pushed a little girl on a swing or we walked the dog. Marcellus Park is in many ways my vision of what Heaven must be. Tall trees, a trout stream and trails and I’d made plans to someday be buried not far away in St. Francis Xavier Cemetery. It’s on a hill overlooking the village and a statue of Jesus, arms outstretched, looks over the folks below. Monday night we went to the field days a few miles away in Skaneateles, New York and as I watched the fireworks I was already thinking about another day on-air in Delaware.

Friends and family tell me I need to be “there” for my little girl. She’ll turn 15 in December. She’s still vacillating about a move here. I watched her with her friends at the field days and saw nothing but joy. She stays with her surviving grandparents as her mother is many years now out of the picture. Is this ideal? Of course it isn’t but I’m also responsible for her support and after I was dismissed at WFBL (Thanks, Hillary) I couldn’t find much gainful employment in a place globalization passed by. So I’m here listening as the heavy rain falls in Long Neck. It will storm through much of the weekend. I’m told it rained most of the summer in Upstate New York but during my four nights away Labor Day Weekend the sun did nothing but rise, shine and then set.

The last twelve months have also been rewarding. The people at work and the people listening are overwhelmingly fine and decent human beings. They love God and their families and their country. Aside from my little girl not much is available 365 miles to my north. She at least is surrounded by two half siblings, loving grandparents and so many, many friends.

When she was little she would fall and sometimes cry but after the age of six she never displayed much emotion. Doctors were later concerned she bottled up her thoughts. Tuesday morning was a gut-wrenching affair. She didn’t appear to be listening when I told her I was leaving. Finally she came outside and watched me load the car and then when I said goodbye she stood some 50 feet away and was silent. It’s when I walked over to her and hugged her and she broke into tears. Then she followed me to the car and leaned her head against my chest and sobbed. All I could do was explain all things will pass. And that I missed her and that she was the most important person in my world.

You’ll have to excuse me if I show no compassion for Mrs. Clinton or my former radio employers. Or if I’ve a short fuse with sociopaths in politics and those who spread lies before God and community. Or if I’m blunt and have so little time for the Pabulum spewed by the politically correct.

What I’m now going to tell you isn’t a talk radio topic and it’s a rare insight into my personal life and a major cause for my beliefs about living. When my daughter was 8 she was the victim of child-abduction by a crazed human being. It didn’t dawn on me until tonight that when we ate at McDonald’s Monday we were at the same plaza where police found her wandering a week later. My close friend, Onondaga County Sheriff’s Department Sergeant Bob Burns, drove me to pick her up. Her hair was changed and she wore strange clothes but she rushed smiling into my arms.

God commands me to forgive. He doesn’t tell me to be weak or to apologize for what I believe.

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