John Madden, Rain and Resurrection
April 17th, 2009 by Bill ColleyJohn Madden is on my TV tonight. Oh, sure, he’s all over TV. I came home after work and flipped on the NFL Channel, which is offering a retrospective of the Oakland Raiders 1976 season. All the details I remember so well it’s just like it happened yesterday. Then I see the bad haircuts and the men wearing checked pants. Yeah, it was long ago. President Ford was in The White House; my parents were alive and younger than I am right now.
I’ve been on the telephone tonight with my buddy, Walt. He’s a veteran of the network news wars but gave it up for life at the beach. This morning I told The Redhead about a job posting for a talk show host in a much larger city. She suggested I could seek the job if I could find some way to do it from home. I’ll take her over any work at WCCO, WBZ or WABC. This represents at this late stage in my life a radical departure from my old M.O. It was always job first then relationships second. She changed my motivation.
My daughter was here for much of the week. She got introduced to The Long Neck Diner on Saturday night. It’s where she ordered the teriyaki. Odd choice at a Greek owned diner. Then we came home to watch The Ten Commandments. For a 15 year old this great film looks cheesy when it comes to special effects and she thought the acting over-the-top.
Easter afternoon was a very special time. We picked up The Redhead and drove to Ocean City. A portrait artist at the convention center did a pencil drawing of my daughter. He also does oil portraits but there are only so many hours in a day, right? What surprised me was that the amusement parks were open Easter Sunday. It has been a long time since my daughter shared an amusement ride with me. It’s going to be even longer. I watched the two most important women in my life share the rides. I’m O.K. with that but it was cold along the beach. The sun warmed the sand but it was windy and just 50 degrees and my hands got cold along the boardwalk. It made it difficult to purchase ride tickets. Or as The Redhead tells me it’s just my usual penny pinching. I keep telling her it’s how I was raised.
Sunday was chilly but our only cloudless day. By Tuesday it was cold and rainy and it stayed that way until Thursday morning. Wednesday afternoon I took my once little girl to Hazelton, Pennsylvania where she met other family for the rest of her weeklong vacation. The clouds broke just south of town and it was warmer on the Pocono Mountain topside than it was along the lower reaches of Delmarva. Despite the rain I don’t regret a few days with my daughter. My need to make a living separated us but she’s of the age where she can choose where she would like to live. Maybe a day will come when I’m in old age and she’s near. There was a time when she was younger and she didn’t talk much about what troubled her and now we talk freely. It’s usually long distance but on short notice my employer gave me some time this week to spend freely. It’s nice and rare in our modern economy to be treated so well. It’s also why I like going to work.
When I first moved here I was talking one day after mass with Father Dan. It was a warm late autumn day and we were standing in the sun when he introduced me to some other members of the parish. A man asked me how I liked living in paradise. Having spent my childhood in the Allegheny foothills and most of my adult life in The Finger Lakes I thought it a strange question. Then The Redhead arrived and now Easter with my daughter offers another meaning.
Walt is just one of several friends here. I’ve a neighbor named George Parish. He serves as our County Clerk of the Peace and like Walt is a Washington refugee. Last week he reminded me about an old Andy Griffith episode. Andy turns down an offer in Raleigh to maintain his quality of small town life. Let the record state as a boy it was my favorite TV show and long before John Madden.
April 17th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Mr. Bill…the Long Neck Diner is Turkish owned, not Greek. When it first opened I, too, thought it might be Greek until after my partner and I dined there a couple of times and came to know one of the owners, learned otherwise (I didn’t ask…we got to talking about soccer and soccer teams is how I learned their origins).
Secondly, I’ve been reading your posts mentioning The Redhead and would like to say I am happy that in this new place, for you, you have someone who seems certainly to enhance your life and happiness here. It’s a wonderful thing…especially that she is a Redhead. Just one more comment…as obvious as you make your recent contentment, happiness and comfort to your life, think about that when you throw cold water on other members of this community who wish nothing more than to enjoy the same thing…for the same reasons as I’m sure you do. Yet the naysayers among your followers adamantly wish to deny. I sincerely wish you more of the happiness you are enjoying…perhaps you might think about why it doesn’t “seem right, proper or moral” for others.
Maybe you will allow this comment to go through, unlike others which you have not.