Vichy Water – Author's Blog Just another WordPress weblog

 

 A thousand feet from my grandmother’s kitchen, where sumptuous fresh potato salad always waited, was an old Revolutionary War era farm house; General Washington was rumored to have slept there for one night. At the rear, adjacent to a vacant lot overrun by wild perhaps poisonous weeds, was supposedly an obscured entrance to a cave beneath the house.(built to help General Washington escape or hideout) Unfortunately for me, local urchins convinced me it was haunted; enough of a deterrent to last for decades. My loss; I can’t imagine all the rich history that waited in that dark dank cave. Years later, the farm house was restored but never found its just national historical place. Up until ten years ago I used to drive by my grandmother’s  house, adjacent to an active railroad trestle, and I’d just sit in the car and stare down memories of 24/7 potato salad and a brave neat loving woman from the old country.

 It was July third, ten years ago and I was heading home through Plainfield, but the house was gone; nothing was left except a patch of tired brown grass. I’ve never been back to Plainfield, angry that they took away my memories on the day before July fourth. A few July third’s before that, I was rushed to the hospital for jaw surgery; a few weeks prior, I was playing night tennis in Baltimore after having spent the day at the Vietnam War Memorial. After a lethal drop shot, barely clearing the net, my knees gave out valiantly and the energy of my body falling, concentrated on my chin, breaking both mandibles. A few weeks elapsed before correct diagnosis and hospital surgery in an attempt to redirect the healing process of my mandibles. This means, I was wired shut for two months. No talking, no tuna fish (solid food), no communication except grunting and signage to my ‘Clara Barton’ wife. Alas, somehow it was the best two communicative months of our marriage (up to then). Despite these two somewhat negative personal launches into our country’s birthday, July Fourth is pure patriotic magic for me.

 My last few blogs I’ve been talking about Asbury Park, New Jersey, a real Jersey shore town that has undergone a renaissance from the blight of the sixties to become a place of youthful exuberance and musical expression; truly a place where the music lives. Last few weeks, I’ve been there regularly; perhaps a delayed reaction to not having gone to ‘Woodstock’ in 1969.

  My hair was short for 1969 standards. I was out the door, running to a waiting car heading to Yasgur’s Farm in Bethel, New York for three days of fun, peace and rock music. A door handle within reach, suddenly my fiancé calls out from our co-inhabited apartment, warning me that if I go to ‘Woodstock,’ she wouldn’t be there when I got back. So I went back and spent three more years with her and regretted every August not having been at that festival of a lifetime. (I could’ve also saved three years. Maybe) Much input swirls around my streams of consciousness; awareness of youth gone by, recapturing youth, refusing to move on, which means not acting my age. But Virginia, you know what, I know there is a Santa Claus, and actually I am acting and thinking my age. If there’s substance to living to 150 years old, which I’ve been blogging and plotting; then I’m still a youngster by those chronological standards. Where am I going with this?  Two weeks ago I was visiting my son in his new apartment in Brooklyn and we saw on- line that ‘Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes’ were doing a live concert at the legendary ‘The Stone Pony‘ in Asbury Park over the Fourth of July Weekend.

 We looked at each other, smiled and knew we were going to that concert; a young father and son thing to do. I was going to the ‘Stone Pony‘ for my first time. Where have I been all these years, Joe DiMaggio?  I’m a late bloomer; accepted and lived with. Rather than do a long history of ‘The Stone Pony‘ here’s a history link: http://www.stoneponyonline.com/info/history.html

 Appropriate to spend part of July Fourth there; I think of George Washington, that old farm house in Plainfield, where he slept one night and ‘The Stone Pony’ a Jersey shore ‘house’ which is to world musical history as Washington is to our country’s history. Cirrus clouds told us perfect weather. A parking deck attendant told us it’s free tonight. A local bar served up a Cajun shrimp dish on a bed of warm spicy grits. “What’s a grit?” my son chimed in, perfectly imitating Joe Pesci in ‘My Cousin Vinny.’

 Excitement grew; it was near 8pm and ‘Southside Johnny’ concert starting time. Walking towards the beach and ‘The Pony,’ it was great to be alive, knowing you’re young (because of the exercise, 40 supplements a day and mental determination and attitude) and you’re hanging with your best friend (son).

 A few blocks down, on the right was a lively vacant lot; a group of people formed a drum circle and played, so we listened for a while, deeply inhaling Asbury’s musical salt ocean air. Then I looked across the street at the back of an old green house. A young teen was playing a guitar by the back steps next to two huge urban paintings. Indeed this was a revived Asbury Park, the place where music lives.

 From a distance, we saw the towering edifice of the ‘The Stone Pony’ summer stage and our walking pace accelerated. Thousands of people were as close to the stage as they could get. For me, the thrill of being in a place of rock history, was like the first time waiting to see Santa Claus at ‘Bamberger’s in Newark. All too frequently, I looked around at demographics and realized I was among the oldest but really as young as anybody else gyrating to ‘Southside Johnny.’ Damn. I was there and loving every minute. My son and I were busy high-fiving. It was great to be young and alive.

 Then I thought about my father who took us to Asbury Park on weekends to boardwalk concessions. When he was fifty, as I recollected, while listening to ‘Southside Johnny’ and occasionally being tapped on the shoulder, asking me to move slightly right or left (I’m nearly 6′ 6″), my father resigned himself to old artery hardening age, and spent the next forty years of his life waiting for it to end, sitting in a chair in front of a television. Curse remote control in later years; it kept him motionless in his chair. Two weeks before, I went whitewater rafting with my son. During the intermission, I went inside and checked out ambience of purist music history; yeah, I ‘goose-bumped.’

 As the second set began, security cleared a path just in front of me as Steven Van Zandt (E Street band) and actor and raconteur Steve Schirripa walked by. Van Zandt jumped on stage for a bunch of songs with Southside Johnny. Pure magic all around, everywhere the eye could see. Pure lessons of life; to palpate and participate, to “be the ball” as ‘Ty Webb’ said in ‘Caddyshack.’  My son won a texting contest and back stage we met most of the band. I remember Winston Zeddemore in ‘Ghostbusters’ proclaiming, “I love this city.”(New York) I do too and Asbury Park, the magical ‘The Stone Pony’ and my generation of baby boomers who ‘refused’ then and now.

 Earlier I talked about my potato salad producing grandmother, who suffered from diabetes. The number of diabetics worldwide has more than doubled the last 30 years, jumping to an estimated 347 million people. Part of the increase is due to rising obesity rates. I wonder about all our obese kids here in America who won’t figure into the stats yet; they’re too young. Treatments are not great for diabetes. I’ve been working hard to avoid it as all four of my grandparents had it; a smoking gun to my furrowed contemplative brow. Massive exercise, supplements, magnesium, mental attitude again, may be helping me stay far away. I like to say, I’m not in the mood for it. I’m thinking about the older generation again, now disappearing; the old picture albums of ten people sitting around a table with flowers, dressed in finery, a small container filled with complementary cigarettes; all long gone now; distant memories and foreboding awareness. Back when they had the temerity to put cigarettes and engraved matches on tables in the catering hall, if you had a heart attack, the doctors told you to rest up for a few months then take it easy for the rest of your life. Today, a revolutionary approach tells you a few days after said heart attack, to start working out on a treadmill or bike, massively. The heart is a muscle; it wants work, just like the nine million Americans unemployed. I wonder, being an independent voter, if the other party does everything they can to better our living standards or do they do everything they can to derail and unseat the sitting President, in that quest for power, sacrificing American citizen’s good and welfare?  Sometimes I think it’s awfully obvious; a ‘Moonstruck’ slap to all our oblivious faces.

 Back on the absurdities (of modern life) ranch, I just read about the death of a Harley- Davidson biker near Syracuse, New York. He was riding, protesting the law requiring wearing helmets for biking. If he had a helmet when he went flying over his handlebars, he would’ve lived.

  I’m getting tired of hearing about Exxon-Mobil and accidents. Hundreds of barrels of crude oil spilled into Montana’s Yellowstone River after an ExxonMobil pipeline beneath the riverbed ruptured, sending a plume 25 miles downstream and forcing temporary evacuations. Facebook is valued at $100 billion (it’s just data and a members list). Delta Airlines is worth $ 8 billion and Groupon who refused to sell out last year to Google for $6 billion is at $25 billion now. And an eyeglass (letter Z) on-line company is advertising a complete frame and lens for $6.95. What does that say? And I love the Utah guy who paid a $25 disputed medical bill in pennies and was cited for disorderly conduct, a fine five times the bill.

 Two days ago, July Fourth, I was on the beach at the Jersey shore, alternating time sitting in a beached chair under a beach umbrella listening to my ipod music, (folk, opera, rock, new age) with sitting on a nice rocky horror jetty, talking to this neat group of gregarious seagulls and finally walking ocean side for a few blocks to the other jetty of my mind. As my mind does often, it fires away. The other day, I watched the finals of men’s and women’s Wimbledon tennis.

  Fifteen years ago, I sat in the grandstand court at the US Open for the first week, seven days in a row and watched for twelve hours a day. I knew the rankings and pairings by heart. Fifty years ago, I knew the batting averages and team standings of the whole National League. On the beach of my mind Monday, I realized I knew only a handful of current tennis players and haven’t watched any television baseball yet since the last few games of the World Series last October and I haven’t been to the US Open, other than the Finals, in those ten or fifteen years. But I was at ‘The Stone Pony’ on Saturday for a rock concert so maybe, on this second day after the Fourth of July, in a year of my youth and expanded vital lung capacity and cerebral sharpness, I might plan a trip to Wimbledon next year or the US Open later this summer or Yankee Stadium or get back soon to the ‘Pony’ after all, the converse may be true to “you’re not getting any younger.” But maybe I am, in my mind, going back to the Jersey shore and not Carolina. Happy Sixth of July.

 

 

CONTACT INFO:

website:   http://vichywater.net

email:  earthood@gmail.com

Facebook:  Cal Schwartz

Twitter: Earthood

BOOK TRAILER(Vichy Water):     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj2ko9gcC_M

 LINKS TO JERSEY SHORE TOURISM:

 http://www.visitthejerseyshore.com/

 check out Jersey Shore Icon contest.

  LINKS TO JERSEY SHORE VACATION RENTALS:

 http://shorevacations.wordpress.com/