Worth a Thousand

So what if my financial advisor, my dentist, my urologist, and my barber all chose to abandon me for sweet retirement in 2018. BFD

Sandy said, "Why don’t you try this barber in Green Harbor?" I called. They don’t take appointments. What? I try a barber downtown. They have big screen TVs and snappy-looking hair stylists. Guess what? They don’t take appointments either.

For 40 years I would call Yankee Clipper -- cool name if you think about it, for a harbor and ship-building town -- and schedule my appointment with my friend Carol Santacross. A relative changed their name from Santacroce because of the racial bias against Eatalians in Boston at the time. Are you kidding me? Who doesn’t love Italians? Who doesn’t like pasta fagioli?

I am starting to look like Forrest . . . Forrest Gump when he decided to run across the country. OK I will give Green Harbor Barber a shot for the pleasure of cutting my hair and trimming my beard and mustache. I call. No answer. No message on their machine either. I Google. They -- there are two barbers --  open at 10. I arrive at 10. Parked on either side of me are two customers. 10:18 she arrives. She is encumbered by something, but from the tall vehicles on either side of me I cannot see why she is moving so slowly. She unlocks the door and lets her dog enter first.

Cosmetology salons Chapter 61G5-20. "No animals shall be allowed in salon." You can, however, have fish.

Naturally the dog greets me on my entry. "How long until I can get a haircut?” She says she is the only barber.

I try my second choice in downtown Marshfield. It is even worse than I remember. Both stylists are showing off their tattoos. As you remember, Sandy owned a day spa for 17 years. She had hair stylists, massage therapists and estheticians. Each group looks so different. You can actually see the difference and you know who is who. I am in a hair salon and it is obvious to me that I am in a hair salon. I am asked to sign in on their computer. They want my e-mail address and telephone number and they INSIST that it is OK to TEXT me. Not this cowboy. Never. Let's just say it is not a good start for the 73 year old. I type in an incorrect cell phone number. E-mail address? Not today. I am in the chair. Should she do a Number 2 or a Number 1 on me? Do you want a sand filter or a diatomaceous filter? How the hell should I know? I am a pool guy, in for a simple hair cut and beard trim. We decide on a Number 2. 

It seems that this week my hair stylist cracked a tooth while eating or drinking a pomegranate drink. Her dentist is off till next week. “What the fuck," she says. “I will have to drink Jack Daniels over the weekend for the pain." Help me, Dear God, for I am so fucking far out of my league. Whoops, did I say the F-word? How unprofessional of me.
Pomegranate is a wonderful spelling test word.

On the way home, I am kind of itchy from the hair cut. Somehow with Carol I never was. Remember the old days with the hand clippers and the pain they caused?

I catch Sandy in the kitchen. She says, "What happened to you? Your mustache is totally crooked." 

It's true. If I frown, it looks really bad. But if I smile it looks ok.

Later I say "Hi" to my grandson Abel and he says, “Grampa, you look so different."

Kezia took these photos.

Cheyenne, Wyoming

“All my sisters soon were gone, to Denver and Cheyenne” 

From “My Father,” a Judy Collins tune from 1968.

Cheyenne Wyoming has been on my travel list forever to visit. Rhode Island has way more people in it than Wyoming -- Wyoming being our 10th largest state. YAH we saw buffalo along Route 25 and bighorn sheep on the way to Rocky Mountain National Park. Did you go to a national park this year? Why not? 4.5 million people went to Rocky Mountain National Park in 2017. Tom Egan introduced me to Estes a while back. We hiked Bear Lake. And Gettysburg and Moab and Tombstone and Leadville and Yosemite and …

People who lived in Cheyenne:

Wild Bill Hickok

Tom Horn

Bat Masterson

Pat Paulson

The Union Pacific Railroad founded this town. We loved hearing the trains traveling through, especially at night. We stayed at the historic 1911 Plains Hotel. It was not that long ago that the stagecoach ran from here up to Deadwood.

We are just back from visiting Steve and daughter Marnie in Fort Collins, Colorado. It snowed the night before we drove 45 minutes to Cheyenne. Our icy walk from the Plains Hotel to Hacienda Guadalajara Mexican restaurant was freezing in the 13-degree temperature.

We had a few setbacks on the trip. Our computer was out for EIGHT weeks. This blog post was my very first e-mail when we finally got it back. Sandy’s fancy phone died on the first day in Colorado. My simple old phone that people laugh about still works. On Steve’s birthday, I ended up in the hospital with my kidney stones acting up. All of Marnie’s dashboard lights came on. It is amazing that she had no troubles on her and Kerri's 2,000-mile trip out. Even thought all this happened, we still had a sweet time. 

After Sandy’s phone gets fixed, we are canceling our home phone. Maybe that will stop all the robocalls during dinner.

Marnie and Steve’s townhouse is spacious and warm in Fort Collins. They are enjoying being together after first meeting 30 years ago. They actually -- years ago -- rode Big Wheels together in the neighborhood. ycmtstuff u  Spacious is an excellent spelling word.

 I did NOT miss the computer but I did miss Google.

Gracias to all you joga people who showed Marnie so much love on her big adventure and on her CD release party.

So we are home. St. Augustine is up next, in Florida, for Marnie’s next yoga retreat. Then the Berkshires this spring, followed by Corfu, Greece, in Septembre. 

The Egans built a home next to ours in 1980. Son Paul Egan gets married to Danielle in Novembre, in Pennsylani,a so we are working on that. He still calls me Uncle Bob and I love it.

52 days set for Mexico vacation in the spring. Three couples are joining us. Are you one of them?

Nearly all of these facts are true. I would NEVER lie to you mi amor.

FUN photo below of Sandy packing for home at Maria del Mar “Cabanas” on Isla Mujeres, Mexico, taken 100 years ago. Gracias Clara. Our first trip here was in 1988. Did I ever tell you the story on how and why?  ja ja

su servidor, 

Roberto Francisco Tocino

And She Will Smile Every Time

A first class old fashion showman -- that is how I characterize Lyle Lovett. His grande band played at the South Shore Music Circus in Cohasset, Massachusetts last night. It can be stifling hot inside the tent in the round, but it had rained all afternoon to cool things down a bit on the South Shore, and during the show, a breeze would come through now and then. Stifling is a good spelling word. Does Lyle polish his own, up-to-the-knees cowboy boots? 

Do you know anyone named Lyle? I actually grew up with Lyle Jelley. Joanne was his older sister and Jamie was the younger brother. They moved to Zylonite from Pownal, Vermont. The family owned a rest home, as they called them back then, on Old Columbia Street. My Russian grandfather Walter Lemanski did time there. In high school, I dated Judy Pikul. Dad played football with Walter Kriple. Rosa met Joe LaRosa and they married. Now she is Rosa LaRosa.

I swore off concerts like this years ago because of the patrons with their cell phones and drunken behavior, talking, dancing in the aisles, and standing through most of the show. That sounds like a Cajun dance hall that we love so much. Not sure why I agreed to last night, but I did. I went with no expectations. For me that is a good thing.

2018 - 1967 = 51 years that we have been going there. The Cowsills, Frankie Valli, The 5th Dimension, Frankie Avaloni, Bobby Ryderelli and Fabian Forte, Art Garfunkel, Neil Sedaka, Judy Collins, the Everly Brothers, Susan Tedeschi, Diana Ross, Tony Bennedeto, Willie, Boz Scaggs a few times, and the Beatles Show, to name only a few. Scary.

Oh my god! I forgot Chuck Berry. Chuck came down the aisle to open his show and our friend Maggie said, OUT LOUD, “I didn’t know he was black."

Why was it such a special night? Let me count the ways.

A stage that rotates. No cell phones, no standing during the show, no intermission, no second-rate warm-up group,  musica from a mandolin, steel guitar and a fiddle. David Greely once said the difference between and fiddle and a violin is you can spill beer on a fiddle. Even though it was warm, the whole band was dressed in nice, expensive black suits. They all wore ties. They had nice haircuts. They mentioned Texas quite a bit. But Lyle calls it Tegsas. Remember the bands from the 50s? Grown ups and professionals. Nice. An aisle seat for me. We never had to stand up once during the two and a half hour show to let people by. The third row in front of us certainly did, but in our ninth row we did not. One year a ritzy Cohasset couple came in late to their front row seats, disrupting the show. The entertainer stopped and said to them, “Can I get you anything? A glass of wine, some popcorn . . . a watch?"

Lyle Lovett has developed his own performing style. Not unlike Leonard or Bruce or even Elvis. I don’t know of any band like his. Do you? He has a terrific sense of humor. At one point they had a technical problem. To give the crew time to repair it, he told a story about a show that they did in Oregon. During the show, one of their buses caught on fire. The Oregon fans thought that it was part of the show. He paused made a face and dryly said, "Portland!"

“ Steamin' greasy plate of enchiladas, . . . with ice tea and a waitress, and she will smile every time.” He forgot one of my favorites but thats okay.  He named it "This Old Porch."

Lyle talked about his 29-year-old guitar. The man who made it originally was from Scituate, Massachusetts, where he made wooden boats. He was at this show and it was his birthday. Please file this under ycmtstuff u.

Sandy and I bumped into four joga couples from daughter Marnie's retreats. We missed you. Were you there?

After the show, we found a bar that had heard about mescal sours and even knew how to make them. Sea salted & spiced rim and everything.  Jen the bartender introduced us also to cucumber margaritas. Yum.

Two hours later. on our way home, at midnight we bumped into Lyle's two large buses heading south on Route 3A. You can’t make this stuff up. Instead of heading up Route 123 to Assinippi at the rotary, they took Pine Street in Marshfield up to Union and then probably went south on Route 3 towards the Cape Cod Melody tent in Hyannis, and to their next show which is tonight.

We went straight. I am pretty sure it was Lyle who waved to us as they drove up Pine Street.

Thanks for tuning in to our world. No need to reply. Just nod if you enjoyed my blog.

Sea-Ment

I was 13 years old in 1958. I had a job working for Rene Comeau Trucking. In Adams we pronounced the French name "Rainey," but thinking back 60 years, properly he should have been called Renee as in “Don’t walk away Renee.” But his nickname was Smokey. 

There were Comeaus forced out of Acadia by an English general whose house still stands in Marshfield from 1699. Adams was a manly town and you would not call a man a girl's name. You also would never wear a tie into Chick's Café. Unless you wanted trouble. Mr. Comeau would have been appropriate. Mr. Comeau owned the trucking company that hauled the limestone products from New England Lime Company on Route 8, Howland Avenue. Rene always drove a beautiful Cadillac. That's when Cadillacs were Cadillacs. He had pure white hair and a permanent smile. Nice fella. Mom waited on him at Eileen’s Dairy Bar in the Italian Zylonite section of Adams. Eileen's lunches were wholesome and awesome and there was a lot of limestone covered parking lot in which to park your big tractor trailer rig. Mom got me the job to keep me out of trouble. The $15 a trip, 15-hour round trip to NYC wasn’t bad either.

So Rolland the tractor trailer driver and I are at a dock at 7am in Brooklyn -- it is in New York City kind of -- unloading 100 pound bags of limestone dust. At the end of that particular dock stood the Statue of Liberty. Quite a sight for someone who had never been out of the Hoosac Valley. We would handcart it to the end of the trailer box and unload it onto a wooden pallet. The handcart took seven 100-lb. bags. Then a forklift operator would pick it up and bring it to a ship. Not all of it left the country. A lot of it went to line the ball fields of the old Yankee Stadium. No wonder that almost everyone in Adams was a Yankees fan. Some went into toothpaste, and the rest to animal feed. 

So around the corner comes the fork lift operator. To my total surprise, he is a black man. Possibly the very first one I ever saw.  He is well dressed, and his handsome smile shows some silver or gold teeth. He hollers out to us, “What you boys got in dem bags -- sea-ment?"

Why do I remember this so well?  It probably is the reason why today I am in the sea-ment business. And that's the truth. I am sure of it. Besides I would never lie to you, mi amore. Never.

- Bobby Bacon

30 Right Whales

April 22: The right whales did not come last year. But they are here yesterday and today. Just cruising our Atlantic Ocean coast of Brant Rock with their mouths wide open fishing. The Brant Rock section of Marshfield is named for the Brant ducks that live here. Seagulls are flying all around them, catching what the whales miss. An airplane from the Boston Aquarium is keeping track of them and actually took a count. 

Boaters from Greene’s Harbour are out taking photos. These whales can grow to be 59 feet long. That is two telephone pole lengths, end to end. Green Harbor is named after the first mate of some ship that was called Mayflower. He was called William Greene in 1620. For 10 points, who was the captain of that ship? 

You do not even need binoculars they are blowing water as they travel and are easy to spot. 

The right whales know to come now, before our Massachusetts fishermen set their lobster traps, which the whales know they can become entangled in. Some kind of ducks follow them also. Brant Rock has hundreds of people observing from the seawalls. 

In March, this section of town was hit by waves that were twice the height of the beachfront homes. The photos made the national news. A few of those homes are totally missing now. But everyone is smiling today. It is finally a beautiful sunny mid 50’s day. Boston’s ocean water temperature is 43. Nantucket Sound is registering 45.

Marnie and Sandy were interviewed  and photographed by the Patriot Ledger News out of Quincy.

“ Here comes summer. Well go swimming every day. Here comes summer. Meet the gang  at Joe’s Cafe" (1958)