You Know We’ll Have A Good Time Then

Well, since it’s so much easier to get your family to respond to interviews than authors and musicians, Item Five returns today. Today’s victim is my dad. He’s got a good story which I’ll get to in a minute. I remember when I was around ten years old I found his high school yearbook in a closet of our house and I started leafing through it. Each of the students from the 1964 class at Clinton High had a small blurb written about them. When I found his picture, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the blurb. I wish I had it here so I could type it verbatim, but it was along the lines of “good looking Dean can always be seen walking the halls at an extremely leisurely pace.” (Dad, if you have this somewhere, it might be a good idea to post the actual blurb in a comment, because it’s awesome).

He was born in 1946, the first year of the baby boomers, and grew up in Massachusetts his entire life. After his time in the army, he was a mechanic and then managed an ice arena. After that, somewhere in 80-81, he joined the computer company NEC and spent almost 20 years there in the corporate world. He and my mom moved up to New Hampshire when my dad got a job up there, but he, much like a lot of people when the bubble burst, got downsized rather quickly. Now, for the past couple of years, he’s back in the rink business, managing the Ice Den Arena in Hooksett, NH, a pretty new facility with some of the best ice you’ll find. It truly warms my heart to know that my dad is happy doing what he does for a living. That is so important. I wish he’d work less hours……but I digress.

Anyway, dad is a pretty laid back guy. Except when he yells at the dogs (and they usually deserve it). Funny thing, too: all my life when I play hockey I could never hear anybody in the crowd who was watching or yelling. Anyone whose ever played sports probably knows this feeling – you’re so focused on what’s going on that everything else in that environment is silent. When the whistle blows, you can hear stuff, but when the game is on – silence. Except for one voice – my dad’s. I could always hear him. A lot of the time, especially if I was dogging it, it was a simple word like “SKATE!” Funny, huh?

By the way, my parents, thankfully, never were the types to push me, punish me for playing bad, or MAKE me play any sports I didn’t want to play. They gave up a LOT for both me and my sister (a very competitive figure skater) and to that we owe them a debt of positively immeasurable gratitude. You don’t really realize this until you’re much older and think back to how many freezing cold 6:50am youth hockey games they woke up for and drove me to. Those times and the figure skating competitions are some of the most amazing memories of childhood one can have.

Say hello to dad……

1. What is your earliest childhood memory?

About age 4 on Florence St. in Jamaica Plain, MA. I was playing and fell into a thorn bush and got a thorn stuck in the palm of my hand. It’s actually still there because, according to my mother, I would not let her take it out.

2. What did your parents do for work?
My father was a butcher and chef his entire life, and Mom worked in a factory that made flashlights and batteries (Ray-O-Vac)

3. Tell me something you did in high school that you regret or aren’t particularly proud of.
Screwed around so badly in my Freshman & Sophomore years that I barely made it through both. My freshman year I gained 0 points, my sophomore year 30 points, where you needed to maintain 40 points a year to graduate. Finally smartened up my Junior & Senior years with 65 points each year. Actually made the Honor Roll my Senior year! [Jeff note: this sounds vaguely familiar to me……I hope I can halt this tradition with my impending arrivals!]

4. Is there any advice either of your parents gave you that has stuck with you for whatever reason? If so, what was it?
Always be polite and respectful to your elders.

5. Do you remember what your first impression of Mom was or the very first thing she said to you?
WOW! Why had I never seen this girl before? She was with her friend and I asked them if they wanted to go for a ride. Eventually her friend left when she found her boyfriend and I took Mom home. Then I asked to see her again, and the rest is history.

6. You went to Vietnam. Looking back, how do you view that time (i.e., wish you hadn’t gone, just a part of life, etc etc)?
I actually looked forward to going; thought is was the macho thing to do. Once there though, getting shot became real – not like in the movies. It was part of being a soldier and what they trained you for. I had some good times as well as bad.

7. Do you remember precisely what was going through your mind when you landed back in the U.S. after your tour in Vietnam was done?
Thank God it was over and I could go back to what it was like before I left. Obviously a pipe dream.

8. Tell an amusing story you remember about me as a young child
You and the neighbors kids (Dan & Dave) watching each other pee in the woods behind our house.

9. How did I start playing hockey? Did you ask me if I wanted to try it? How did I react initially?
I was managing a hockey rink in Lancaster and enrolled you in a Learn to Skate Program. You reacted like most kids did – you held onto the boards and walked/skated around the rink several times.

10. If you had to pick one bad thing I did growing up as the worst/stupidist thing I’ve done, what would it be?
Coming home drunk one night and talking to your mother on the phone from one of the extensions in the house. [Jeff note: this classic situation warrants further explanation, because it’s a great story. It was New Years Eve and I was home on break from college. Maybe 1991 about to turn 1992. I went out with some friends to a party at Marty Reisner’s house in Clinton. My parents had also gone out – I don’t remember where. Strangely enough, I got home first that night. And yes, I was drunk. One of the things I did whenever I was drunk was stay up for as long as possible and drink lots of water – it usually quelled or at least abbreviated the hangover. So I’m sitting in the living room, watching television and I notice my parents car pull in about 1:30am-ish, into the garage and then………..the phone rings! I picked up the phone upstairs and I hear my mother’s voice. Odd, because their car had just pulled into the garage….hmmmmm. I thought for a brief second that maybe my mother was somewhere else and my dad came home early. So the conversation went on for a minute in a very confusing manner with me trying to figure out where she was and she was trying to figure out where I was. Well, it turned out my mother, who was walking in from the car, picked up the phone downstairs at the same time I did. All this time, the person on the other end of the line was dead silent. We still laugh heartily about this story today and I’ll always wonder who that was who called…….

11. What was the last thing you laughed really hard at?
Lewis Black’s stand up show last year.

12. Is there anything you find yourself doing where you stop and say “damn, I’m just like my father!”
Work too many hours.

13. You recently hit the big 60. Do you find yourself thinking more about the past or the future?
I think more about the past, since that’s where all the memories are. Can’t do much to control the future, so I just let it happen.

14. Now you can ask me a question. Go ahead. I’ll answer it.
What do you think about late at night when you can’t get to sleep. (Other than your upcoming fatherhood)
Jeff Answers: Well, that hasn’t been a problem AT ALL lately because of our new King bed! Heh heh. Anyway, I think a lot about legacy. Mine, to be specific. I seem to have a never-ending tug-of-war in my mind between staying the course with a comfortable paycheck and good job (which is very important, especially with two little robots on the way) and eventually doing something that will make a pronounced and positive difference in people’s lives. I have no idea what that is yet, but when I’m retired and I look back, I’m going to need to see that I’ve done something constructive that helped the less fortunate or something that was a material contribution to society. It might very well be as simple as passing that onto my own children. Time will tell.

Thanks Dad! I think we all know who’s next………..

Heartwarming…….

Yesterday, for whatever reason, a childhood story popped into my head. I was in seventh grade. Just about every day, all the neighborhood kids would come home from school, get on our bikes and cruise around the neighborhood. We didn’t really cause much trouble, but we would explore the woods, crawl into drainage pipes to find out where they went and how long they were, play some kind of sport, just……whatever. One day three or four of us were just walking around in the woods and we decided to grab a bunch of rocks, put them in a circle and light a fire. Oh, you think you know where this is going, but no, we did not burn the woods down. That came about a year later and we didn’t burn them down, per say, but it did require a visit from the fire department. But I digress.

Anyway, near the rocks was what looked like a pile of old books and I went over there and picked them up and began leafing through them. They were school textbooks and they looked old and ragged. I thought “hmmmm…..these are clearly crappy old books, we should burn ’em.” But I used my, ahem, “better judgement” and didn’t. Instead, I ripped them up. All of them. A more messy solution, but certainly the safer option. After about 15 minutes, the fire was out and we all went home.

It wasn’t more than twenty minutes after I got home that there was a loud and vociferous commotion outside the house. I looked outside and saw one of the older local kids with his friend from Clinton High School. Oops. Apparently those books (which, in my defense, looked like they had been sitting in the woods for years) were current books being used in the Clinton school system. Oops. I had ripped up some poor kids textbooks. And he wasn’t happy. At all.

I did what any 7th grader would do in this situation, when looking down the barrel of an extremely agitated high schooler – I pretended I wasn’t home. Just sat in my room and listened to the commotion, knowing eventually it would end. And it did.

I don’t recall if I ever saw the kid again. So, Dennis Ashe, I apologize. But Clinton needed to update their books.

Random

  • Saw The Departed over the weekend. A must see! Great cat-and-mouse storyline and despite it’s length (2.5 hours), it keeps you invested every minute. It doesn’t feel like a 2.5 hour movie. The whole cast was great. Probably a smart move casting Damon and Wahlberg, they got the accents pretty good. Others did their best, but I’ve yet to see a movie where everyone gets the accent right. I guess it’s impossible.
  • I think I’m going through a down period with Son Volt. Their new album hasn’t hit me yet. It probably will at some point soon, but right now I’m not feeling it.
  • Went to my first Bruins game of the season on Saturday afternoon, against the New York Rangers. I think half the building was Ranger fans! I could swear the roar for the Rangers goal late in the third period was louder than the Bruins crowd after their goal. I tell you what, for those of us who grew up with the Neely-Bourque-Moog era Bruins when they were making the playoffs automatically each season, these last ten years have been difficult to stomach. I suspect if you grew up in the Orr-Espo-Sanderson era, it hurts even worse. To see them only filling half the building most nights is sad, but deserved. A nice scoreboard ain’t selling tickets.
  • Went to a friend’s house yesterday and saw Apple TV. Three words: I’m getting one. I also got to the play the Nintendo Wii for the first time – what a trip! It takes time to get used to those controllers, but they are a stroke of genius. I wish you could have witnessed my friend’s girlfriend laughing hysterically at us as we sat on the coach, boxing each other. My arms got tired!
  • We recently bought a new bedroom set and upgraded from a queen to a king. What a difference! I feel like I’m sleeping in one of those crazy-awesome hotel beds now. Sweet. It was a gift to ourselves since we’re on the cusp of not being allowed to sleep in it much (see: twins).

Item Five: Is Only A Motion Away

Long time readers might be wondering whatever happened to my interview series called “Item Five.” Well, nothing happened to it, really. When I have time, I’ve continued to reach out to musicians, authors, etc and most of the time they seem eager to participate. So I send them a list of questions to answer and I then don’t hear from them again. That’s the way it goes sometimes. It just so happens that the last 3 interviews I’ve set up have gone unanswered. Sigh.

So……what’s a robot to do? Well, that’s an easy one. Call on someone that you know will respond and answer questions. Because you know where they live.

You call on your own mother. It’s actually harder to come up with a list of questions for your own mother than it is to come up with questions for someone you’ve never met. Isn’t that kind of weird? Anyway, my mother was born in Florida as Karen Zorn, but only stayed there a relatively short time before moving up to Massachusetts. She grew up in Sterling, MA (next town over from Lancaster, where we grew up) and she has a sister and two brothers. Both brothers, sadly, passed away within about 5 years of each other (1985, 1990).

When you hear things like “the apple doesn’t fall from the tree,” you know they are oft-used adages, but damn, that shit is true. The Zorn side of the family has a pretty unique sense of humor, largely on the biting/sarcastic side, which is something I have in spades. I won’t go into much detail, but some of our family get togethers on the Zorn side are stuff of legend.

So without further ado, say hello to my mom, won’t you?

1. What is your earliest childhood memory?

Digging for China in our back yard (Mom told us to)

2. What did your parents do for work?
Gracie worked in a factory and Mel, well, he had many jobs.

3. Tell me something you did in high school that you regret or aren’t particularly proud of.
We skipped school and sat in the woods smoking and hungry.

4. Is there any advice either of your parents gave you that has stuck with you for whatever reason? If so, what was it?
Gracie always said, “never say your children would never do that, because they could.”

5. Do you remember what your first impression of Dad was or the very first thing he said to you?
I thought Dad was a handsome dude. He said “Do you want a ride home??”

6. Did you have other names picked for me? How did you decide on Jeff?
No, you were Jeff from the start. [Jeff note: my mother once told me years ago that they were considering naming me Zachary. When I followed up on this question, she said “I was only teasing you“]

7. Tell an amusing story about me as a young child
I always loved the birthday card you made for dad. It said ” Happy Birthday Dad, too bad you’re so old!!!”

8. How were you feeling on my very first day of school?
Because you and your sister were always excited about going to school, I was excited to see you go (very excited).

9. If you can remember any of my Halloween costumes, which one do you think was the best?
I really don’t remember your costumes!!!

10. If you had to pick one bad thing I did growing up as the worst/stupidist thing I’ve done, what would it be?
Your freshman year in high school, need I say more?? [Jeff note: no, you need not say more. But I will. Freshman year in high school was a 100% disaster for me. My adjustment to high school was a rock road, particularly in the field of academics. There were a few F’s and I got booted from the hockey team, so I missed the last seven games of the season. In most cases, it was me being a little punk. Tidbit: in the four quarters of Physical Science, my grades were D, D, F and F. I was failing the class going into the final. I spent HOURS in my room studying for the final, combing the book (probably for the first time). I scored an 89 on the final and passed the class with a D. To this day, I hate science.]

11. What was the last thing you laughed really hard at?
I laugh a lot, but Olivia [granddaughter] can really make me laugh with some of her comments!!!

12. I got my penchant of reading the newspaper every day from you. Where did you get it from?
I really don’t know, my parents were not really big newspaper people, my desire must have come from within…

13. You’re coming up on a big birthday – do you find yourself thinking more about the past or the future?
Both, I love thinking about the past and I look forward to the future.

Thanks for being a good sport, Mom.