Happy Birfday

Every Groundhog Day I'm reminded of my grandfather, as this was his birthday. I have no idea what year he was born, but my grandma was born in 1902 (or, as my father would say, "The year after Queen Victoria died), so I would guess round there. He owned a hardware store up in Lowell Massachusetts, which was great cause every coupla years we'd go up to visit and he'd give us hockey sticks from his store. Which were great...until we'd get back to VA, where it would be 100 degrees and we'd be reminded that we have no idea what the fuck hockey is. My favorite memory of him though is one time when I was in 3rd grade, he was down visiting, and he drove me into town. We ended up at Peoples, I don't know what he was buying, but we were standing in line and my young buck eyes landed on...PLAYBOY!!!!! Instinctively my little horny mitts grabbed it and started peeping into it, lost in my own world. After what seemed like an hour but what I'm sure was actually 12 seconds I realized what i was doing, looked up and...Grandpa was watching me. Oh shit, I thought. He's gonna take me into the parking lot and bury me under the asphalt. I slipped the mag back and awaited for the end of my all-too-brief life when I looked up at him and...he winked, laughed and said "dont worry, I wont tell your father." YES!!! But the day got even better, when in a spur-of-the-moment let's bond together moment he reached out and grabbed a radio and bought it for me. Awesome. i loved that radio, even christianing it with a GI Joe sticker on top. I made it through a few years of the stupid Q94 morning zoo and all those early 80's hits, holding up my tape recorder to the speaker and patiently waiting for one of my new cuts to come on so I could record it and many mornings tuned to WRAR, either answering the morning quiz and calling in, or breathlessly praying that school was cancelled for the day thanks to snow (3 flakes would paralyze our county, which drove my mother bananas, her coming from Lowell where apparently the snow could reach 60 feet high and they'd still go to school.) But the real prize came when I found Extra 104 up in DC, and the world of 50/60s music was opened to me in one fell swoop. i was astounded as right there on one station came "Wipeout!" and "Stand by Me" and "Have I The Right", one after another. I bonded with friends over our love of "real" rock and roll, and stayed up as late as possible soaking it in. All that stuff sounded better when it was dark anyways. I'm not saying I woulda never found this music had my Grandpa not bought me that radio in my Playboy haze, but I'll always feel that connection with him everytime it's late at night and "Just My imagination" comes on.

On a side note, his funeral was the first one I had been to (I was 11) and was my introduction to what an "Irish wake" is. I can still see my father trying to stifle his laughter when my brother asked him why everybody in the back was laughing so much, and what's in that bottle they're passing around?