Happy Groundhog Day!

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"...the words would barely be out of his mouth before Brothatime!! would blurt out "She was born in 1902? Wow!" And those words were barely out of HIS mouth before I'd say "We have a queen??!?!!!"), so I would guess around then. He owned a hardware store up in Lowell Massachusetts, which was cool 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 was.

My favorite memory with him 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 staring at 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, along with mornings tuned into WRAR and either answering the morning quiz and calling in, or breathlessly praying that school was canceled for the day thanks to snow (3 flakes would paralyze our county.)  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 every time it's late at night and Telstar comes on.