upfromdysfunction.com

       “…You reach out your hand 
       But you’re all alone, in these
       Time passages….”
                                     Al Stewart

It was just before 1 Sunday as I drove down Cedar. One car ahead was Kraut. In tandem we would pay respects to our friend Arlene—lifelong since Rowland—whose father had just now passed.

The kids tease me. Derisively they’ll comment, count, and note the many funerals I go to. I do attend too many; we all do.

What I didn’t see at thirty (and barely knew at forty) was that death is a part of life. I like bris’s and love weddings. H and I, though, were raised by our parents to support family and friends through each spoke of life’s cycle.

I remember our youth, when aunts, uncles and third/world cousins were dying off. It was the day of men-only pall bearers and our clan, estrogen-laden that it was, did not have a deep bench. As such, when the Woldman boys left town, Hal and I took their slots in the rotation at Berkowitz. Indeed, so often we were called upon that my brother, displaying early brilliance, once took the gray gloves home with him— tucking them in his sport jacket for the next burial.

It was then, as it is now, about our upbringing. Our parents didn’t teach us to hunt or build model airplanes; they didn’t even teach us to budget. No, they only knew what they knew. Our mother, (especially when well), and our father, pretty much always, honored the tenets of friendship and family. As such, their behaviors, even more than words, spoke volumes. That’s why, to this day, if we do nothing else right, my brother and I show up.

“Yeah, Dad,” chides my son, “But you have to admit you go to more funerals than most of your friends.”

Must I again point out the obvious? Living one’s whole life in two square miles..being HERE. That’s why I hit so many. Like Arthur, and Bobby, and Stuart (in summer). We show when Will’s Dad goes and pay condolences for others. It’s what we were taught (all of us), and what we do.

The wheel keeps turning—that’s all. My children read the Jewish News for weddings and births. In the day I did that. Bar Mitzvahs came next, followed again by weddings, (only this time friends’ kids were getting married).

Life was simpler when we all lived forever. The only thing I cared about at thirty was immediate family and the lodge. It was the pink cloud of my life— all horizon. And yes—it was the right place to be…at thirty.

I’m sixty now (62 if you’re counting). On the back nine. David’s gone, and Benny, and others, (not to mention the so few of our parents still left on the course). All too often the news is bad.

We keep paddling–all of us:  Bobby, Art and the handful in town.  We’ve learned, each of us—that death is a part of life, and that life’s about showing up.

It was just before 1 Monday, as I drove down Cedar. My friend Kim had lost her father…

There is a scene in the film “50/50” where the cancer-stricken protagonist is kvetching to his shrink (played by Anna Kendrick). Noting that his dad has Alzheimer’s, he further bemoans daily calls received from his mother—considering her but a well-meaning pain-in-the-ass (and nag).  He awaits the doctor’s sympathy.

“So,” says the Anna Kendrick character, “She has no one to talk to, does she?”

I sat with The Little One, watching the flick…thinking…of Aunt Helen. Recalling a lesson from recovery—that if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change—-I resolved once again to try harder.

                                Act I

As the curtain rises, it is Monday morning, just past 9, on a walk-way directly underneath Lakeside Avenue in downtown Cleveland.  Scurrying through the tunnel, hearing my phone ring, I gazed down. There, glaring like the beacon of a watch tower was the exact sequence of numbers that for years has been used by veterinarians to neuter bulls: 216932…

Buoyed by recent resolution, I chose to pick up.

‘Aunt Helen?”
“WHY DIDN’T YOU CALL ME?”
‘It’s not 9:30. You said never call before 9:30.”
“I SAID 9. WHY DIDN’T YOU CALL?”

(There is something about those without cell phones: they have mental blocks. No matter how often they’re told that if two speak simultaneously neither’s quite heard, they just don’t grasp it. My aunt is no exception. As such, I paused before the security gate, trying to get a word in. Communication, however, stalled).

“WHEN ARE WE GOING SHOPPING?” she said as I said “ 1 o’clock.” as she said “WHEN ARE WE GOING SHOPPING?” as I said “ 1 o’clock.” as she said “WHEN ARE WE GOING SHOPPING?” and then screamed “WHY AREN’T YOU ANSWERING ME? YOU ARE MEAN.”

Finally she went to commercial break.

“I’ll pick you up at 1, Aunt Helen. We always go at one. I was trying to—“
(Click)

Curtain

                                        Act II

The second stanza opens that very day, moments past 1 pm, in a University Heights driveway. The ignition is off.

”Did your brother go to work?”
“Yes”
“How do you know?”
“He told me.’
“When did you last speak with him?”
“As a matter of fact, “ I offered, “I called him on my way over here.” 
“How often do you speak with him?”
“I don’t keep track.’
“Surely you speak to him daily.’
“Surely I don’t,” I responded (which was a sign of growth.  A week prior I might have said “Don’t call me Shirley”).

A minute passed—a moment of thundering silence. Unable to resist—unable to stand prosperity, I spoke:
“Why do you care how often Harold and I speak?”
“Don’t talk to me.”

There was silence as I turned at Wrenford, heading north.  (Well—not total silence.  She reminded me yet again that my brother turns at Green.   “Why don’t you?” she wondered.)   Give the lady credit for a well-crafted inquiry.  Both rhetorical AND sarcastic, she was merely setting the table…

“You should have called me from Chicago. Why didn’t you call?”
“I didn’t call anyone from Chicago, including Harold.”
“I find it hard to believe,” she countered, “That you didn’t call your brother all weekend.’
“I find it hard to believe,’ I re-raised, ‘That you don’t believe me.”

More silence, and in time it softened to quiet.   There’s a difference, you know.  Somehow we always get there.  We were at peace again, she and I.  No longer asking questions for which there were no answers, she spoke poignantly of her parents.

“My mother spoke seven languages. Fluently.”

I knew this; I’ve known so for years.   It mattered not.   Her voice, vibrant and prideful, could not be stilled.  When our father’s sister slips into reminiscence—when she forgets to be caustic—she is elegant.

“Your grandmother loved books.”  “I know,”  I said…”Remember when she found me cutting out pictures of birds?  It was the only time Grandma ever yelled at me.”

We were smiling now—at each other.  Temporal as it was, we were smiling.  Both of us, yes BOTH of us, had someone to talk to.

Curtain

      “God bless my Lucy, baby I love.
      Stand beside her, and guide her
      Through the night, with a light
      From above…”

You could have packed my bags yesterday, after that first half hour. You oould have called the cab and shipped me back to Cleveland. I love Stace and Jace, but the weekend had peaked. In a period of thirty minutes— I repeat—the weekend had peaked.

“Jason’s going to the corner. Do you mind watching Lucy while I lay down?”
(“Are you kidding me?” I thought. “Rest child, sleep, sleep….”)

She handed me, then, my Lucy Hannah.

It’s a funny thing about babies. You hold them; you study them harder than you ever did for a test. Still, you sense damn well that in spite of it all, they don’t know who the hell you are. THEN, in spite of it all, you speak to them, smile at them and even make faces, thinking YOU they’ll remember.

(At least that’s my MO).

I held this jewel. Eyes open, she stared smack dab at her glowing granddad. And I sang. (This too, is my MO). She wouldn’t know my face, I figured, but comfort and warmth she’d feel.

I don’t know where it came from, but right then and there an impromptu parody of “God Bless America” sprang from my lips. Moreover, in those first hours of the morning I knew full well they were going to her heart.

      “…From Ohio, to Indiana,
      Cross the bridge to…
      Chica-a-go…”

I didn’t sing it once, by the way—nor twice. I sang for the half hour. Early on a Saturday, (I hadn’t had coffee), I worried not of the frog in my voice. (Have you HEARD my younger daughter sing? For that matter, have you SEEN the video of little Joey Goodman as his mother sang?)

I sang it in rounds; I sang with interjections: “Just the girls now…just the guys…” I just kept singing.

For the first time in our lives I was holding this pink crystal of joy and the only thing I didn’t want to do more than let her go was to see her cry. All I needed, that moment, was the wide-eyed stare of my little baby.

The clock ran out, of course. It always does.

“How’s she doing?” urged Jason, entering upstage. “She didn’t cry once,” I beamed.

Stacy emerged and together we shared the couch. Lingering, eyes on the prize, we planned the day.

I didn’t matter what we did—at all. I sat there quietly, contently. My grandaughter, you see, now knew me.

      “…God bless my Lucy,
      My baby girl….”

I spent a half hour yesterday at a Roman Catholic service. Yes, this “nice Jewish boy” was at a Mass in Kirtland, Ohio, (a town, I dare say, with more churches than traffic signals). Sitting beside a good friend, prayers were offered for a beautiful baby.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****    
In his day, he says, he announced prize fights. Who knows? He’s a bit of a “Damon Runyan” character; I can see him on Short Vincent.

That was then.

I first heard Mike some time ago, at a meeting. He’d been sober twenty years (give or take), and as I sat through a myriad of comments, his was the voice I heard.

I was in a bad place that night. Eight years into recovery I found myself pressured by the past, afraid….. As my Dad would have said: I didn’t know whether “to shit or go blind.” I just wasn’t functioning.

To this day I can picture the moment. This guy stands up, looking like Spencer Tracy—if Tracy had a Jewish mother—and he shares as if speaking to me. Just to me.

He spoke of fear…of his being “up against it”…and of his faith that God would protect him. He was calm.

Walking from the hall that eve, I was a different man. Emboldened by Mike’s message, his belief…I reinforced mine. That night—that very night—the faith I felt in my head shot down to my heart. It was the signal moment in my life.

Years passed before our paths next crossed. . It was a Friday night on Wilson Mills, and I was “leading” the meeting. Speaking as we do, without notes…just telling my story…I found myself thanking those that had come before me—those that taught me lessons. Mike’s was a name I mentioned.

Years passed. Four, maybe five. It was fall, 2010: I’d developed a new sponsor and the rhythm of my program was changing. Gravitating to men’s meetings, I met more and more guys with depth in sobriety …including Mike.

There was something about his handshake that very first time that said “friend”, and something about his manner that spoke “peace”. Today, two years later, his is the reassuring presence ever reminding me of the lesson first learned in that old hall on Mayfield: that I’m safe in God’s world.

It was not surprising then, what happened last December. Word had filtered; prayers were uttered…and Mike phoned.

“What’s your baby’s name?” he asked.

The card came a few days later. It named the church, the date, and the hour…

Our people: we call it a “Misha Berach”. It’s the traditional prayer for the sick, often made from a pulpit. The Catholics—they speak of “Intentions”. To God it’s all the same.

So there we were, sitting in his church, for my grandchild. Side-by-side.  It was morning—half past eight.  I was a long way from the night I’d first heard him. Mike was a long way from Short Vincent.

There we were, the two of us, at peace in the prime of our lives.

I read this week that the N.F.L. was permitting players to tweet during its Pro Bowl Game. Aside from that specific idiocy (designed, I presume, to further devalue the game), it gave me reason to ponder what might have happened if, indeed, Twitter existed throughout my life.

Excepting the birth of my children, was there an event more pivotal to me than my marriage? As such, it was with a rare twist of fate that I just uncovered the transcript of what might have posted on line lo those many years ago. It proves, yet again, that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

                               Saturday, December 23, 1972

@alanvwieder (15:54) Can’t believe the catch by Franco Harris! Browns’ playoff’s tomorrow. Wonder what time B wants us there for pictures.

@fentonsw (16:44) Arrived at the Howard Johnson’s. Rehearsal dinner in a bit. B getting married means he won’t bug Marilyn to fix him up anymore.
@murraybgalan (17:30) My daughter Harriet loves Bruce—we all do—but how could he not pack a sport jacket for his own rehearsal dinner? Lent him mine!

@jackieselzer (20:50) Party room at HJ’s. Met Bruce’s Ohio people. Wondering if his friend Dick has girlfriend. Wish his law school friend would stop bugging me.

@benselzer (23:00) Nice night. Kids seem happy. Just wish Jackie would settle down and stop seeing George from Third Street.
@lilselzer (23:20) Just home from dinner…exhausted. Can you believe the minute we walked in the house Jackie got a call from that Jessica Fuhrman!
@brucefromcleve (23:45) Just left my Dad’s room. Told him how much I loved SRS. Meant it.

                               Sunday, December 24, 1972

@alanvwieder (12:15) Goddam Fenton woke me five minutes ago. Says pictures are at 4. Oh well—with Miami undefeated the game should be boring.
@RFatherInHeaven (14:15) Meeting Bruce in coffee shop at half. Will offer him my station wagon in case he wants to change mind.
@brucefromcleve (14:55) Had “last supper” with Dad. Told me to bail if I had doubts. I said I didn’t. He said “just as well—you’d disappoint a lot of people that drove across the country.”
@alanvwieder (15:45) Browns leading undefeated Dolphins in playoffs. Cannot believe I have to leave for Bogart’s wedding! This is absolute bullshit.
@marcwalter (16:05) Browns lost. Some guy with transistor radio told Wieder and he threw his yarmulke. Mr. Selzer saw.
@groovyone (17:30) Checkin’ out the chicks in north Jersey. Can’t believe the B’s getting married. The hot one from the rehearsal dinner is giving me the eye.
@brucefromcleve (18:21) Am under chuppah. Why aren’t her friends smiling?
@RFatherInHeaven (18:55) Can’t believe my son let that schmuck Sam Levinson do the Motzi!
@elainelerner (19:20)  Reception beautiful. I wonder if people think Harriet looks better than me.
@harrietbogart (19:21)  Reception beautiful. Why is Albert’s ex staring at me?
@benselzer   (20:10)  Party over. Bruce’s usher Wieder wanted to talk sports with me. I told him to put his shoes and socks back on.  @joelselzer  (20:15)  In car on way home.  Bruce must be happy.  Didn’t call me “Harry” once.  

@erniefanwick (20:20)  Niece just married kid in law school. Told him to think about tax law—the wave of the future. I don’t think he’ll listen.
@YourAuntHelen (11:13) Lovely evening ended. Ma is exhausted. I told her not to do the Hora. Driving back in AM with Albert &Harriet. Hope Harold remembers we have shopping Monday.

@TheJerseyGirl (23:58) In the bathroom at our room at the Marriott. OMG—OMG—he really was a virgin!

Cleveland is gray. Always. Walking alone, even in these best of times, is dreary.  Day or night it feels like 4 PM.

It occurred to me just yesterday that what I need is a buddy. On a gray January weekend, with nothing to do and plenty time to do it in, I needed a “go-to” pal—someone to just hang with.

It is a function of time and circumstance, but most of the guys I know are in relationships. For some it’s a first marriage–perhaps it’s a second. Others, (so they confide), trudge in  less-than-passionate partnerships, content with “companionship”.  As such, the pool of would-be sidekicks is limited.

What I need is a Cosmo Kramer…you know: that always accessible pal across the hall whom if you need a wingman, whatever the activity…he’s down with it. Was there ever a time in nine seasons that Kramer rejected an invitation?

“Kramer, you want to go to the airport?”
“Sure.”

“Kramer, you want to go steal a dog?”
“I’m in.”

“Hey Kramer, you want to—”
“Giddyup!”

No, I don’t need someone to talk to. I’ve plenty of friends—good friends—and always an ear if required. They’ve got wives though; they’re busy.

Andy Taylor had Barney and even Chandler had Joey. I need a buddy.

Max, of course, would be perfect. (Note to Lucy: You’re still too young). A sports fan, albeit Yankee, he’s easy to get along with and never complains. Indeed, his regular naptimes would allow me to slot him in for either mornings or afternoons and still leave my evenings open for activity. It would be win-win. If only he lived in town…or could drive.

Come to think of it, the last time I had a real “buddy” it was Michael. Those were the days when he was still the only child and we’d go—just the two of us—to Bagel Nosh on Mayfield. He’d sit there in a wooden highchair and gum a giant bagel overflowing with creamed cheese as I’d sit face buried in the morning’s sports section. Years later the restaurant’s gone, my son’s left town, and the paper: it’s not worth reading.

Yeah, I need a buddy. Not one of my encumbered friends that calls sporadically, when he can sneak out of the house. No, I need someone I can count on…someone that can maybe play cards, enjoys nonsense, and likes sports. Is that so much to ask?

It’ll be a temporary job, at best. I’ve got Max, you see, and Lucy in the pipeline. Neither, though, will drive ‘til sixteen. That’s a lot of weekends from now.

In the meantime I’ll wait. The days are getting longer now and in the distance I hear spring.

Giddyup!

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”.
                                                         Maya Angelou

They buried Abraham Monday. He was 86.

It was the fall of ’75, and with my father down-state, Fenton and Ermine sponsored me into the Knights Of Pythias. Excited, elated, feeling I’d finally arrived, I joined not only the fraternal order so revered by our dad, but an assembly founded on the principle of friendship. It was there that I first met “Al”.

Certain people you notice right away. He had a warmth, a twinkle in his eye, and always wearing black, he walked—No he strode— with a quiet confidence that made his friends feel safe. How lucky was I to be among them!

We had a special bond. Twice my age when our paths first crossed, he was not only a friend, but a father figure. I loved him. Like my Dad, his was a world of black and white; there was no gray. If Al liked you, he LIKED you; if he was your friend, he was not only your friend, but he’d fall on his sword for you.

As life went on—three dozen years, to be exact—-our dynamic never changed. He was a friend, a father figure, and quite often, a confidant. He’d say in but few words what others couldn’t convey in a paragraph.

It was always the same—

Bumping into each other, perhaps at Jack’s, his face would light up, he’d thrust out his arm…and just when I’d think the hand-shake was over, he’d pull me in and kiss me on the cheek.

If my weight was down, if my tie was straight, it would be “It’s good to see you…your Dad would be proud ….” Then, turning to his wife, he’d proclaim the obvious: “Nayome! Did you see who’s here?” “Yes, Al…I see,” she’d reply. Always.

If my weight was up, it’d be different. Glaring, he’d take the back of his hand, tap me twice on the stomach, and muse: “Uh huh…Uh huh.”

He was a man of passion, whether beaming as he watched me win, or staring as I dropped the ball. He’d look at me—sometimes with pride, sometimes with his “You’re better than that” wince—but always with love. Above all else, though, he was a man of incredible loyalty, asking only honesty in return.

“Don’t give me no booshit now,” he’d admonish. (I never did).

I sat in the front row, reflecting…grief tempered by gratitude. Memories flooded my mind, memories of a most beautiful man. I smiled, though. Tears hit my cheek but I smiled, and remembered:

He’d pulled me aside oh so often over the years.…

Like the time of my first lodge dinner dance: “Do you have a place to sit?” he asked. Or when I became an officer, and needed a tuxedo. “I want you to go to my friend,” he insisted. Or the question he’d shoot me in salad days and beyond: “How’s things with you?” All of them—each of the inquiries—was always followed by his same disclaimer: “And don’t give me no booshit now!”

The chapel emptied slowly Monday. Family and friends said goodbye not only to a man they loved, but to a true, chivalric knight— a man whose armor truly would always shine.

Sisyphus, according to Greek mythology, was condemned to an eternity rolling a rock toward the top of the mountain. Each time he’d approach the apex, it would roll back down.

Three men spoke in the deep end of Beachwood’s Pool. It was 1990. Standing (both literally and figuratively)stationary,  they solved all problems of the world but theirs. Each, whether he knew it or not, was the elephant in the living room. Each, whether he knew it or not, was in a crisis of self-worth. Surrounded by the privacy of water, they’d found the one safe place to talk.

Those were halcyon days…wasted. Consumed by the angst of declining marriages, we stood in five feet of mutual sainthood, decrying the voids in our lives. One of us longed for love, another … money. Me? I craved acceptance. We laughed at others and pitied ourselves.

The marriages, of course, flat-lined. As such, in time our paths divided. Barry became a serial monogamist and discovered that the more he chased, the less love he found. He’s somewhat evaporated, calling usually for favors.

Ed’s run finally ended, yet he survives. Mellowed by time, he is more the man today than he ever was in his days of limousines and bar tabs. Indeed, my friend opens up now, sharing life’s vulnerabilities with a candor he never could “in the day”.

I, perhaps, was the luckiest. First to stumble (to the outside world), I may have been the first to stand up. Somewhere along the way the blame game ceased. Somewhere along the way I became accountable. Somewhere along the way I found acceptance…with myself.

Haven’t been to the pool since marriage—Beachwood’s, that is. A part of my past, though, for better or worse, the lesson remains: if you don’t want to be stationary in life, if you don’t want to be the elephant in the living room….you have to get out of the water.

There’s a bottle cap in the console of my car—a gift from my friend Bill. The underside, which I keep facing up, reads “I am looking at the problem”.

Our father used to tell us how he loved when his boys played together. I never quite understood what the big deal was.

Al Bogart was a first-generation American. Living in one house from birth through high school, he attended and married a girl from Glenville. She too saw life through one neighborhood. It was a simpler world then— less mobile, but surrounded by family.

By the 50’s our parents moved. Post-war’s boom saw whites flee east. As a result of a handshake deal made at the corner of Ninth and “Short” Vincent, the Italians head up Mayfield while the Jews took Cedar. (This created, of course, a temporary problem. Moneyed MOT, already “in the Heights”, were being displaced. As such, they fled even further, making right turns at every conceivable intersection).

This sounds like a joke, but it’s not. It was the beginning of the end of small neighborhoods and to my Dad, not necessarily progress. “It used to be I could ride the streetcar to see all my relatives,” he rued. Would he ever have imagined in June of ’55 that his grandchildren would live airfare away? Crossing Warrensville was one thing, but state lines quite another.

The apple fell not far from the tree. It never occurred to me, that fateful day I said YES to The Jersey Girl, that our kids would leave town. Ever.

Even as they did.

In an ironic twist proving once again that God indeed has a sense of humor, two of my Ohio-bred kids went east, one went west…and the EX, (with family all over the eastern seaboard), stayed put. (Are you kidding me?)

I was comforted then, when just this weekend, cousins met in Chicago. Just this weekend, for the first time ever: under one roof: Max and Lucy. Resting in Cleveland, I’d missed it for health concerns. As such, I thrilled as pictures went viral and yet, REALLY, it shouldn’t have to be this way.

“How’s everyone getting along?” I inquired by phone.
“It’s great, Dad,” said Stacy.
“Wish I was there.”
“I know, Dad.”

I’m not alone. Some have it worse. Indeed, friends have children overseas or across the Mississippi—(“Third World” to me). I don’t complain. I’ve accepted, rather, that it’s their world, not mine. I get it.

Mid-weekend, another photo hit Facebook. Captioned “Sophia and Max’s 1st Date”, it caught my eye and my heart.

…And thoughts: I know Sophia’s parents, AND grandparents. Indeed, her paternal great-grandmother was my leader in Cub Scouts. All of us, yes ALL of us: within walking distance…”in the day”.

I would give up my cell phone, my internet and even the thought of ever having another pepperoni pizza at Geraci’s if my kids lived here. I’d agree to wear my seat belt, smile at Aunt Helen and even let the ex keep my dog if it would help.

It won’t.

Streetcars are no more; the offspring—they’re all gone…and Adam: his tail wags elsewhere.

The toothpaste is out of the tube. Forever.

I went to my brother’s house Sunday. Together we sat, watching old reruns of “Sgt. Bilko,”…laughing. High above us, between hands of his gin game, our father looked down smiling. His boys were playing together, and nothing made him happier.

Remember doing jigsaw puzzles? They’d tell you to form the borders first and work from the outside, in. A mosaic of my life would be the same. There’d be four sides: birth, family, friends, and rebirth. There’d be a boatload of oddly shaped pieces to fit; and there’d be Bobby, the synapse to it all. Sixty-three this week, he remains, to this day, a link to my every yesterday, today and tomorrow.

I close my eyes.

It is 1962: In the breakthrough year of junior high and a world outside Rowland, no one had Bob’s game. As young and innocent as we were, Bobby feigned street smarts. Wied and I shot hoops in the cocoon of his garage; Snyder, meanwhile, was the shooting star, and talked to girls.

It is ’72: There’s Bob, with Stuart in New York. Sharing a half-house in Queens, they’re selling magazines for my Dad, banking money for impending marriages. The transition from frat boy couldn’t have been easy. Bobby thrived.

And ’82. It’s the doorstep of my mother’s home. There he stood. We’d had an issue in the years just past; he could have opted out. Still, there stood Bob; in the middle of the day, middle of the week he’d come alone…to pay respects.

I picture yet the bowling days on Cedar and trophy days of Sol’s Boys. He was there. I’ll admit now, for the first time ever, that my first new car was due to Bob. As much as Al Bogart revered Chrysler products, in summer ’69 I pushed back. If Snyder had a Mustang, I’d drive one too. ‘Couldn’t tell my Dad, though—not that. Nothing against Bob, but the old man would have shot right back “If your friend Bobby would jump off a bridge, would you do it too?” (after which he’d have purchased a Plymouth).

The pieces of my life wouldn’t quite fit without my friend. 

It’s 1992, the fall. Clinton has just been elected and late one Saturday afternoon we’ve convened in Fenton’s basement.

“Get over here,” Stuart had called me. “Snyder has an idea.”
(This was seen, no doubt, as a seminal event).

“The baby boomers are taking over the world,” Bob announced.
(This was his idea?)
“So?”
“We can do a radio show!”

And then he got it done. Within weeks he’d marched us into meetings with decision-makers at Cleveland’s three talk stations, guiding us to broadcast. “The Fabulous Boomer Boys” would debut Tuesdays at 7 and run two-plus years. When kicked to the curb in ’95 it was airing drive-time, five mornings per week. (Note: Historians point to our longevity as further proof that AM radio has died).

These were by now my ugly days. Isolating in a world growing smaller, I feared the phone and, but for calls from Stuart, rarely answered.

“Bob’s worried about you,” he’d say, time and again. “Bob’s worried about you.”

Time passed. By the century’s turn I’d been sober a few years. Bobby, who like others, had seen me at my worst, championed my recovery. His concern, though, remained.

Answering calls now, I’d hear his voice:

“You OK, B? Don’t bullshit me now.” Over time he noticed the BS was gone. Indeed, I heard the difference in his voice as he saw a difference in me. Maybe it was 2002—I don’t know. Somewhere along the way he stopped asking; he knew.

Somewhere along the line, further, Stuey moved south. Perhaps it was then—I don’t know—but my bond with Bob grew stronger.

Perhaps it was then—I don’t know—that I realized another common thread between us. We’re both, in our own ways, dreamers. Bobby’s passion was radio. He left it professionally in the 80’s and I sense he still breathes it. Me? I love the arts. Once a Theater major in Columbus, sometimes I too look back…and wonder.

This week I had health issues, all of which resolved. Bobby called, like others. Suddenly, though, it was déjà vue all over again, (only without the middle man).

“B, I’m worried about you. You gotta lose weight.”
“I know.”
“Don’t just tell me that. You have to do it.”

It wasn’t long ago, perhaps a year: Alan and I were talking ‘bout Bob.
“You like him,” mused Wied, “You really like him.” Speaking to the apparent depth of my feelings, perhaps he understated.

I love my friend Robert George. Truly…and with good reason:

He is one of my core friends, a part of my yesterday, today, and tomorrow