Excerpt from The Accidental Rock Star

If I could go back to the beginning, what would I see? A photo of my father when he was young – before his life got too thick to turn around. It was taken in the late ‘30’s, before there were any lines and wrinkles on his face. He had combed his wavy, blonde hair back from his forehead, and it reflected the stage lights with the same luster as the saxophone in the background and the silver microphone stand he held gently. He wore a black suit and tie, a white collared shirt, and a serious brow.

There are other photos. Way back, is what I call it. Photos from Way Back. More black and whites, hand tinted, little girls in stiff dresses and stiff smiles. They used to sit around the house in little frames like very polite guests. They would just sit and watch and listen to our lives, to my childhood, and never say a word.
When I was very young, my father would take me down to the cellar, sit me on top of a very tall bar stool in front of his beloved work bench, and talk to me about life.

The workbench was his pride and joy – his private place. All of my father’s tools were hung on hooks above his workbench. The wall behind the bench was painted red save the white outlines of each tool, so everyone would know exactly where the tools went and when a particular tool was missing. My father had a framed cartoon hanging on the wall. It was a frowning man squeezed into a box hugging his knees. The caption read, “People are no Damned Good!”

The radio was painted green and always played the kind of music my father had grown up with – big band music, crooners, mooners, Bing and Franky. His make believe ballroom. We listened to the radio. My father would drink highballs and expound to me about life.

“Son, this is America! When you grow up, you can be anything you want to be!” He would tell me how my great grandfather came from Holland to find a better life. He had worked hard to bring his brothers over to America one by one – all eleven of them.

As he drank more, he would talk more, and his stories turned to his youth and how much better everything used to be. “Why, you could swim down and eat the watercress right out of the bottom of the Passaic River.” Just as everyone in his generation, he was always looking and hoping for a better future, but it seemed that nothing could outdo the past – the Way Back.