K-Town and Sadlack's - A Tribute

I was born in Raleigh, North Carolina on July 22, 1977 at the Old Rex Hospital that once sat at the corner of Wade Avenue and St. Mary's Street. My earliest childhood memories, as long-time readers of my blog may be able to affirm, are saturated with the landmarks and buildings of the capital city that have been around much longer than I. Over the years some of these buildings still stand, some have seen remodels or changed locations entirely; others are long gone. One of my long standing stories that I tend to tell from time to time is that when I first got my license in 1993, against the express instructions from my parents not to do so, I drove straight into downtown Raleigh and began what would become my 20 year run of hanging out at Cup a Joe on Hillsborough Street (And it should come as no surprise, this is where I sit now, writing this to you).

36 years of Hillsborough street... I have many memories... some highlights...

1983, NCSU wins the NCAA championship... my dad, an NCSU Alumni decides he must take his family on a cruise up H-boro to celebrate with his comrades. My mom's car at the time, an ancient royal blue escort, is splashed and coated with red latex paint on the passenger side. In my skewed kid-memory, the streets and everything surrounding is snow-white with toilet paper, anything not covered in TP is on fire.

I persist in begging my parents to take us to “That place with the cherry on top!” ...an ice cream parlor on the corner of Dan Allen called Swanson's(?). I distinctly remember once making the decision to order “bubble gum” ice cream and being furiously irritated as there were actual pieces of gumballs in it and ice cream shouldn't be work.

Riding back towards the fairgrounds from the old Darryl's on the corner of Hboro and Oberlin and my dad points out the prostitutes waiting around at the corner of Chamberlain.

My mom works in her salon on Saturday mornings and dad take my brother and I on his errands to local hardware stores, etc., and we typically stop for lunch at Char-Grill beside the old church and eat our Jr Steakburgers on the tailgate of the truck.

Home from college (ECU) to hang out with friends still in town... They have decided to do acid, I am the DD, as I am too scared to try it. We walk up and down Hillsborough, from the Electric Co Mall to Sadlack's... My friend swears the bricks are full of water and the sky is full of angels.

A quiet Tuesday morning and no one is in Cup but me, a few older guys that seem to live here, and my friend Dawn. Several moments go by with no cars on the road and a lone tumbleweed rolls down the center of Hboro St.

IHOP on the corner of Ashe at 3am with an ex-boyfriend... A homeless man comes in and proceeds to drink all 4 tabletop syrups and lies down on the floor beneath the booth and falls asleep.

Endless hours of Frankenstein pinball at the Fast Fare or Funhouse pinball at the pizza place beside Foundation's Edge.

A gutterpunk named Suede tries to sell us cassette tapes he found in the trash behind Schoolkid's.

My friends have somehow managed to shimmy their way onto the roof of Cupajoe and are throwing jumping jacks from the roof and shooting off roman candles.

And now most of these places are gone. The Comet, The Brewery, Pantana's, to name a few. And now one more to add to the list... Sadlack's. It is a painful loss, but before the doors shut, in true hometown honor-system, Raleigh rallied and sent this quasi-shabby, shitsqualor manor of mayhem and drunken foolishness off to the great dive bar in the sky in ...er.... well... style...? A full week (or so) of what I called “Last Call Rock Shows.” I did my best to show face and throw some more cash in the till before it was all over.

Sadlack's sat at the corner of Enterprise and Hillsborough, across from the iconic NCSU Belltower. In my teens and early 20s Sad's was actually not the place you would hang out... In fact, I was warned against it by my father. My crowd were usually at the Comet or Stingray (later on, everyone migrated to Jackpot and then eventually downtown to Landmark/Neptunes/Captial Club). Sadlack's throughout the 80's and 90's had a pretty rough reputation. And before the Great Remodel a few years back had perhaps the smallest, most terrifying bathrooms I've ever experienced. Being situated only a block or two from all the Ghetto-blaster room-for-rent Shrader properties and around the corner from the blood for cash donation center, the assumption was that Sadlack's was basically the vortex for all the homeless or may-as-well-be-homeless gutterpunks and lost souls. The joke goes that Sad's is where Cup a Joe went after close or that it was the official AA Meeting afterparty. It wasn't until my friends decided to quirkily gentrify (sorta kinda) Maiden Lane (and inadvertently, temporarily all became coke addicts,) did I start half-heartedly wandering up to hang out on the patio. Then the glorious advent of Hopscotch and the convenient fact that I had moved into a duplex near the Rose Garden, within walking distance myself, saw me spending more and more time with Raleigh's own island of misfit toys.

Now, I know to the untrained eye, (or those unfamiliar with Karla-speak) you may misconstrue that I am talking smack about Sadlack's and those that chose to spend their time there – I'm mostly trying to explain why it took so long for me to warm up to it. And how once I figured out it was basically, second only to Cupajoe for me, Homeroom for Underdogs and how I started aligning myself with them folks. God knows I love an underdog.

The announcement of the closing came so long ago, so long before I left for Costa Rica in fact, that I had almost forgotten it was coming. And it wasn't until the last few weeks, once we officially saw the 3rd-ish incarnation of Schoolkids close beside it, that reality began to sink in. It was really happening. Suddenly things started happening... The Raleigh music scene remembered its rusty roots of afternoon no one shows on the patio, NCSU alumni who spent their sunny Saturday afternoons came out to reminisce, and the same old freakshow drunks who'd been there since the dawn of time were in full force. I made three “official” stopovers.

Dexter Romweber – 12/22/13

Dex, of Flat Duo Jets fame, started off with an early solo set around 6pm. I hadn't 100% planned on this show, but I was in the general vicinity and I was rocking a solo Sunday Funday and didn't quite feel like wandering down to Landmark, so I made a detour and I'm glad I did. Dexter played for a bit, rested a bit and then picked it back up. I saw great friends and got some serious toe-tapping on. Later I snagged his setlist, which was actually written on the back of an old power bill, which seemed almost intrusive but I got his permission to add it to my ever-increasing setlist collection.

Scores from the past couple weeks in the door of my car. This is getting out of control. kinda.

MARTEEEEEEN!

Kenny Roby & Friends – 12/28/13 (aka The Official Shit-Starts-Gettin'-Rowdy show)

Now this was epic. A Saturday night show, packed to the gills with who's who of the long standing Triangle Americana scene and old school Six String Drag fans. This was a two-fisted tallboy show; a-hootin' and a-hollerin', unexpected covers, surprise special guests and encore after encore kinda gig. Easily one of the best shows I've seen since I got back to town. Toe tapping gave way to eventual gratuitous head-bobbing, morphing seamlessly into full scale dancing, eventually seeing us dancing on the tables, then ...aw fuckit, down front, in front of everybody danceparty!!! There was more love and good vibes on that patio than I have seen in a Raleigh crowd... man, you know, I almost said “years” but honestly? I think EVER?

Damn the Man

I ARE FAN

Gettin' Goner With It

Yeah, That happened!!

More shows were scheduled after this one, (including the Backsliders on New Year's Eve that I very briefly stopped in for one last adieu,) but in my heart I knew nothing would ever come as close to this as sheer live show perfection at Sadlack's and I wanted it to be my last memory of the place, not the shambles I knew it would become as the evening wore on and revelers would tear the place to pieces, nuts and bolts, the way they did on the “first” last night of Jackpot when folks were walking past Q's place on Morgan carrying pool sticks and bar stools. My last memory of the night is watching as some friends lit a Chinese fire lantern loose and it floated dreamily into the sky.

photo courtesy of Johnny of House of Swank

photo courtesy of Johnny of House of Swank

photo courtesy of Johnny of House of Swank

January 1, 2014 saw the end of Sadlack's. The facebook page was flooded with love, support and memories. Local publications published tributes and locals took photos of the boarded up windows in memorial to good times gone by.

Three days later, one of my dear friends, Carole, celebrated her birthday with her husband, friends, and family. Early the next day we learned the terrible news that Matt, her husband, her truest love and longest friend, our friend, our love, had passed away tragically, unexpectedly... I had been, as I tend to do, procrastinating with writing this "tribute to Sadlack's" post, (perhaps waiting for the flood of other media outlet articles to fade out,) but in the wake of this devastating news I knew that the best thing I could do for myself and perhaps for my friends who are hurting as much as I am for these two people who have touched so many lives in such a deep and loving way, was to dedicate this post to them. As with what has been the case with the majority of the posts found in this blog, I sit here holding back tears, spewing catharsis. 

Carole has been a deeply important person in my life for many years, floating in and out like a guardian angel when I am my deeply saddest and most lost; seemingly knowing exactly what to say and the right way to say it to pull me out of wherever it is my soul is trying to retreat. Not to say that I am some deeply enigmatic and nihilistic soul with no way through my crabby crustacean shell, but the universe (G-d? Who knows anymore?) has always found a way to set such transcendental and casually rational souls such as Carole into my path. One of my fondest memories is a random evening when she and Blinker showed up at Jackpot in full clown regalia after I had just barely met her and she enveloped me in one of the warmest and best hugs I can recall in real life, as if she had known and loved me her whole life.

Matt was someone I met when I staarted to meet Raleigh Kids outside of high school overflow. I had started spending my time with the notorious Rob Roy and he spent lots of time with this group of folks that circled around the kids Jenny (Wood!), Chris, Nancy (Brown!) and Matt, (who we called K-town, as he was from Kinston). Rob called him his “lawyer” ...Matt once posed as his attorney to get him out of a traffic ticket ages ago (this may have been a joke, but we still called him K-Town: Attorney at Law for years.) Time passed, folks moved on, “cliques” faded, merged, melted into one... I'd find myself at parties with crews of folks I'd never pick out of a lineup to know each other. I'd be on Bart's stoop on Chamberlain with hippies, punks, hipsters, art fags and sorority girls and I never knew how we all knew each other, but it was there that K-town came back into my life and Carole became a life-preserver and one of my soul's strongest advocates.

I am having trouble keeping it together now, as I am writing this in public and it's not in my best interest to break down at Cupajoe, so I will end this by saying that not since losing our dear friend Sean “Old School” Johnson a few years back, has my soul ached so badly for the loss of a friend. I have no comforting words for Carole or their family at the moment, (as I am stuck somewhere between the extreme anger/helpless grief phase myself,) and I don't ask you for yours. I would just ask that whoever you are, whether or not you know these two beautiful people, that you take a moment to revel in their love and feel blessed to know that such people like this existed on this planet in your lifetime. And if you get a moment, send a loving burst of hope and comfort to Carole, the kids, and their family.

Services for Matt will be this Saturday afternoon, the 11th, with a reception to follow at their home. Feel free to contact me at karlaanne@gmail If you would like to coordinate carpooling or need directions.


Donations for the family can be made here.

The Beatles - Yellow Submarine

I promise you this; you will never ride in a car with me and let a Beatles song come on the radio where I don’t explain their significance in my musical education. I will nearly always explain the same things: The Beatles taught me to sing. I am completely incapable of hearing or singing along with any Beatles song and not singing the harmony. The Beatles explained the execution of harmony before I even understood what it meant. Then, if you’re really lucky and I’m feeling chatty, I may go into the story of my childhood Saturday mornings with you.

My dad is a total Technophile. Or, he mostly was, now he’s just a slow-paced retiree with a golf addiction (we still love him) but he still has that 80s-esque yuppie compulsion to have the newest gadgets. I can remember when the first VCR came into our house. It was one of those gigantic ancient bad boys that was the size of a small coffee table. This was also back in the day before the production companies had released the licensing on cassettes, so very few places actually *sold* VCR tapes, only rented them. Of which, until I was older there was only one place that actually rented them; it was called Video1 in South Hills Mall; I think its part of a bridal shop now. But the point is, back when tapes were still scarce, they were purchasable, but viciously expensive; $80? $75? … a lot. Dad bought a few. I remember kinda feeling like hot shit because not only did my family have a VCR but we actually had TAPES. Dad bought the most random things… Patton, first of all (his favorite movie), Teen Wolf (what? Why?) And Yellow Submarine. Also Tommy got in there somehow at some point. Of course. (Reminder to self to write a post about Tommy.)

I was raised on the musical. My dad, in addition to being a Motown junky and a classic rock aficionado, was also inexplicably very into musicals… this is one of those million reasons why I always joke that my dad is gay. (Ps my dad is actually the antithesis of gay; he just has very funny things like this about him that I love to pick on him for.) (Ps again – I don’t know how I just made this connection, but this fact about my dad is most likely the predominate reason why I went to college for Musical Theater Performance. Durr.) So there was a big portion of the record collection I gleaned from my dad that was Rogers and Hammerstein and Andrew Lloyd Webber stocked. I listened to Jesus Christ Superstar and Tommy more than just about any other records in that collection. I’m not even sure if you would consider Yellow Submarine a musical (I would) or just a really long music video.

Of the vinyl I inadvertently hoarded away from my dad, there are 2 albums I am most emotionally connected to. The red and blue albums. The “best of”s I suppose. I used to sit in the floor turning those albums over and over again, watching the boys age before my eyes. Dad had sat down and recorded most of his vinyl, these albums included, onto cassette tape, and these tapes were probably played more on those Saturday mornings that any other one thing. My brother and I would ride around with Pop on these Saturdays singing our hearts out and I felt in my soul that harmonizing was the right thing to do; no one explained to me how or why to do it. (This was my Mozart playing thirds moment, I suppose?) It is impossible for me to listen to any Beatles song without singing the harmony. I joke that the Beatles taught me to sing.

I went today to see the new biopic about John Lennon, Nowhere Boy, in the theater. It was pretty spot on and was shot in all the right places. It was basically the telling of John’s childhood/early teens up until Hamburg. (Digression: it really amused me that there were so many people in the audience who didn’t know his story? Growing up with Aunt Mimi and that his mom died after being hit with a car? The gasping horror emitted by the majority of the audience made me kinda roll my eyes a bit… I wanted to be like, “people. Why are you here? Did you not know this shit already? Spoiler alert. Duh.”) As I stated in my facebook status update, I really only got weepy at the end, as the credit rolled there was a slideshow of childhood pictures, leading up the Quarrymen, which included babyfaced pictures of Paul and George. (I will have no hesitation telling you George is my favorite Beatle. Inside and out, I love that man on an atmospheric level. Missed forever… xoxo) so yeah, I forget that people don’t get as ‘involved’ with their favorite artists; needing to know entire biographies and meanings to certain songs. Also, having spent such a significant amount of time in Liverpool (story for later?) It was really cool to relive these places that I saw in the film again.

I have struggled off and on with my dedication/admiration of John Lennon. Yes, there are a bazillion reasons to love him, but there are those 2 or 3 little things that he did in his life that make me snarl a little. This movie helped humanize a little more of those things that bugged the crap of me about him, so that’s good. Also the boy playing him in the movie was so balistically hot, especially towards the end with those big ole black frame glasses and pea coat (so much how I like my men. [Plus beard. Obvs.])

This blog post has inadvertently become every discussion about the Beatles my brother and I have ever had. Of which there have been infinite. If my brother was guest blogging he would then have a terrible opinion about his favorite album/song and then I would force him for the bajillionth time to listen to the b-side of Abbey Road (you cannot deny it. None of you. Don’t make me make you listen.) Brother would then tell me for 200th time that he can never really tell which Beatle is singing and he would have to be dead to me for a while.

There is a new multimedia experience I am trying to add to this whole blog situation. I made a terrible quality video of me singing. Mostly this is to give you insight to my all day/everyday. Yeah, I know it’s dumb to drive around with headphones, but I just can’t get it loud enough without. I cannot listen to a song I know without singing alone. Especially in the car. I am a car singer extraordinaire.

My favorite part of this video at the end is when I am talking to another driver who is making poor decisions. Lol at the constant turn signal noise. I crack myself up. Enjoy.

Major Lance - Um Um Um Um Um Um

I have several families. My nuclear; my mom, dad, brother, niece and I. (we are the only ones of us around for hours in any direction.) My extended; the ones sprinkled through Mount Airy and Galax - my aunts, uncles, cousins and remaining grandparents. The hyper-extended; the few floaters in Detroit, Virginia, SC and even Germany. Then the surrogate families… since my brother and I grew up so “far away” from our other kin, we were adopted into a few other groups, we were raised by villages… 1) Our church and 2) my dad’s coworker world. This song makes me think of #2 (although my church family is a huge part of who I am, even though I no longer associate myself with this church – a post for another time, I’m already mentally preparing for it).

The 80s in Raleigh was a much different place than it is now. I grew up off Lake Wheeler road, (an area eaten alive with subdivisions and strip malls now,) but the house my father built, at the end of the cul-de-sac still remains. I find myself sometimes driving by, it’s not too far from my home now… about halfway between where I live inside the beltline and my parents’ home in Apex. Driving down that little unlined back road beneath the loblolly pines and puttering past the split level ranch homes of that neighborhood really does something to me. I time travel every time. I am kissing a boy for the first time, (Chris) after he pops a wheelie off a plank of plywood propped on a cinderblock in his back yard. I am learning to ride my bike, albeit pathetically, while the whole neighborhood watches me crash. I hear pine needles crunching beneath my Zips. I smell dogwoods and lumber while my dad builds the freestanding garage... But one of the strongest memories I have of that house are the block parties.

Does anyone even have block parties anymore? Does penny candy still exist? I can understand that my niece may never know what a VHS tape or a rotary phone is; I got that. But trick or treating without fear? Banana seat bicycles and realistic toy guns without the orange cap in them? (My God, did you ever think they would stop selling Jell-o Pudding Pops? They did! They are gone! You will never eat another REAL Jell-o Pudding Pop!) Wandering off deep into the woods to explore for hours with the promise to be home by dark and never explaining where you’ve been… can kids even do that now? That was the majority of me and my brother’s “play time” as kids… just… walking off into the woods... Exploring. We would walk for miles up into strangers’ back yards and then just… wander back. Stick fighting; jumping creeks… are there even any creeks left in the 27606? Lake Wheeler is 1/3 the size it was when I was a kid. We didn’t have shows the glorified teen pregnancy much less even understand the concept of reality TV… we watched The Dukes of Hazzard and the Muppet Show and we went to bed.

My dad began working for this company almost 40 years ago. Rather than go into his entire history of employment, I will tell you he worked his way up through college, starting as a surveyor and ending up in upper management when he finally retired a few months ago. My dad got me my current job, where I worked 2 stories below him for the past 6 years, with him and the extended family I grew up with. I loved working with my dad and these guys. I wish he was still here. Dad basically created the department he later became responsible for. The men who created this section with him worked with him (some are still here) from day one. These men (and women) became my dad’s best friends and one of my surrogate families. They would always throw Christmas parties together, we kids all graduated kind-of around the same time (I was younger than most,) and we all played together. One of the best parties the group would throw, and the ones that stick out the most are the annual pig-pickins.

Please remember, this is going back a lot of years for me, so while my details may not be 100% accurate, the feelings of these memories are flawless. The smell of the pig cooking, the crispness of the fall air as they day would come to a close… Chocolate Chess Pie, my mother’s laughter, vinegar, my dad in flannel with a big full red beard, my second dads; Jim and Scotty teasing me and encouraging my shenanigans, showoffs and general attention seeking behaviour; and the music. Always the music. Dad would pull out his full Kenwood stereo and set up the vinyl. Mostly Carolina Beach music, Motown and a little classic rock thrown in. I sometimes wonder who has listened to my dad’s vinyl more now… me or him. How many times can a child listen to Steppenwolf’s ‘68 self titled first album and be normal? Is it ‘normal’ for an 8 year old girl to know all the words to The Pusher? (ps - in case it is not blazingly apparent... i was perhaps the coolest kid ever.) Dad would test me, play “name that tune” to entertain his friends. I’ve mentioned it before, when my parents would punish me, they wouldn’t send me to my room or ground me, they would take away my music… Hell. On. Earth.

There is very little Shag music I can hear now-a-days and not think of these pig pickins. Where I don’t think of that little ranch house and the smell of the pig cooking and the taste of the sweet iced tea. I hope I can give my own non-existent children experiences like this one day. Or, at least my niece. These songs, Major Lance, the Temptations, Wilson Pickett, the Drifters, the Coasters, the Platters, and the Four Tops – these songs are the ones that bring me back with the strongest intensity to the innocence and childhood euphoria of Swiftbrook Circle. Much like Hank Williams, Sr and roy are the strongest connection to my mom for me; This music, the deep swinging soul of the Southern black man, this will always bring me back to my daddy.



FYI – my dad is the whitest man on earth. My family feeds on irony, whether they recognize it or not.

Roy Orbison - Indian Wedding

(note: minimal linkage in this post as it is a little too intense and i don't want distractions)




Most of my childhood memories until the age of, well, until I wasn’t technically a child anymore, are centered on my father. I am a daddy’s girl, this is well known. My dad is without a doubt my best friend. When shit goes down, when I have a funny story or something amazing happens, I call Pop first. This, however, isn’t intended to say I have no memories of my mother during my childhood or that her love or presence in my life is diminished in any way. It’s complicated. It took a lot of therapy for me to work it all out. Sometimes I think I have it all figured out, Sometimes I don’t, most times I assume it doesn’t really matter too much at this point. We are all who we’re going to be now.

When I think back on the things that stick out the most to me as child, the largest memories; vacations, Saturday errand runs, playing in the woods, etc… there is a large unexplainable gap where I always thought my mother should be. (NOTE: There is a part of me that hesitates to explain my mother in this light, because words cannot fully express how much I love and truly admire her now, but I am comforted in the fact that there is literally no actual connection between this blog, my true identity, and therefore her identity. Best thing about mom, really, and best trait I got from her is that she literally wouldn’t give a shit if you knew anyway. She knows who she is and doesn’t care what you think of her. My mom is life’s biggest mystery to me. I don’t know if I’ll ever fully understand her.)

My mother slept through the majority of my childhood, as I can recall. I may be wrong. My memory may be skewed. I am entirely open to the possibility that I have over-exaggerated this fact. But to my best recollection my mom was not present. She only worked at the shop Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Somehow, even having the majority of the week with her and then having a year or two of just me and her together while my brother had started school still eludes me. I know now that she was suffering from a deep depression. Mom was severely overweight until the early 2000s. Now she is thin and gorgeous, after much work, a hysterectomy, and a lot of self actualization. I am extremely proud of her, but back then I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t play with us and got so angry when we were loud or destructive.

I spent a lot of time in my early teens and 20s acting out against my mom. She was “against” me. Everything I seemed to say and do was somehow the exact opposite of what she wanted from me and what she expected. I still am not sure if I was simply rebelling against her or if that’s just the way things turned out. I know that it doesn’t matter now, the past is the past, but I think about some of the things we would argue about back then (and sometimes even now) and try to piece together who she is. There are aspects of her personality that I know I have so clearly adopted. One of the biggest jokes in my family is that I spent the first 30 years of my life looking just like my dad and suddenly now my mother and I could be sisters.

My father and my mother are so complete opposites from each other I wonder sometimes how they even spoke to one another after their first date. Quickest explanation: dad is very extroverted and needs a lot of attention and reassurance (he was an only child); mom couldn’t care less if she didn’t speak to another human being that she wasn’t related to for the rest of her life (she is the youngest of 8.) I spent the majority of my life trying to be the opposite of everything that my mom was; misanthropic, quiet, a loner, and quick to anger (I now know I misread anger for her passion and intensity.) Now in the past few years I feel her coming out in me. That fierce dedication and love for family, the passion for creativity and beauty, the revelry in quietness, the irritation at interruption, and the need for solitude; I am honored to have this part of her.

In my teens we would fight incessantly. My hair, my room, the choices I made for my future, the way I dressed, my grades; I thought she was just being impossible back then, now I know that need for the ones you love to do better than they are doing. I know that on a very deep familial and personal level. I can remember when I was first learning to drive and we were riding in her white Volvo back from church and we were being vicious with each other. I said something spiteful and teenager-y like “you don’t care about me, you just want me to be as miserable as you.” or something. God knows. She stuck her finger in my face and screamed at me to never say something like that again. That there was no one on this earth she loved more and that she would fight the devil himself for me. I’ve never forgotten it. I literally think about that moment all the time as being one of the first moments I truly felt what love was, beyond the normal every day shit you take for granted from your family…

Digression (because I’m a very rambly/long winded mood today): I often think that this moment defined a lot of who I am and what I believe now. Perhaps so much of my belief in love as a living breathing thing is tied to my faith and devotion to my family. I know I have this deeply compulsory need inside me for reassurance and feedback. I need to know I am not fucking up at every turn. Sometimes I need to know that mom still feels that way. Or dad, even though he’s never said it and I know he feels it. Also, even, from my brother. Mom taught me about the ferocity of true love; willing to fight through hell for someone because you can and you will. Mom and Jesus both taught me that for the sake of the truest love, there is no greater gift than to die fighting for someone you love. I (luckily?) somehow learned to translate this ferocity outside of my family. This moment with my mother in the car is what taught me that for true love to exist, you need someone who will face hell for you without the promise of ever turning back. So far I’ve only found this through a very select set of people. And I know in my heart, when I say I am looking for “the one” or the man I will marry, I am looking for the man who will lay down everything and defend me; always have my back, loyalty beyond all my stupid mistakes and poor decisions; just like family. This is why I want to be married. I want someone who has CHOSEN to be my family, someone who has chosen to face the devil for me. That is a love *almost* more powerful than blood to me. Sometimes I think about how close I was once to being married and I wonder if I let that chance for that kind of love slip through my fingers. Then I think about friends that have been through divorce; to tie yourself to someone to that level of intensity to be betrayed by circumstance or your own heart. How do you survive it? How do you divorce your own mom? (It’s almost the same level to me.) Sometimes I think I am so ready for it, for that kind of love and loyalty to someone. Sometimes I can’t imagine why anyone would ever be that crazy or vulnerable as to tie themselves to my level of love. Sometimes I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t.

…end of digression, back to memory:

…Not to say there are no memories of my mom at all in my early childhood. They are there, but for some reason I mostly remember being ignored until I was irritating enough to be punished. I do not want to paint my mother in any sort of negative light, but I am only speaking the truth. She knows all this. She was there. I can remember strange beautiful moments with her in the old house… lying in bed in the dark while she drew circles and infinity symbols in the air with the lit end of her cigarette (she quit smoking when I was still young.) I remember her driving me to piano lessons, taking care of me when I was sick, climbing out of the pool and running to her for change for the snack stand. This song brings up one of my very favorite memories of my mother.

In the living room of the old house, the ceilings were white with large oak beams leading to an A-line point in the center. Along the wall behind the laundry room was the entertainment center, which I spent many an hour lying in front of the Kenwood with my father’s records and headphones. Across from the TV were two corduroy, cornflower blue lay-z-boy recliners. I can’t remember a time when these twin recliners weren’t worn on the arms and I’ll never forget the springy pop and click-click-click they would make when you opened the footrest and tilted them back. They sat in front a large bay window that looked out of the front yard. The bay window had a small window seat, large enough for tchotkes, one of which was a conch shell as large as my, then, head.

Mom always sang. Both of my parents taught me a deep and reverent respect and love for music. They both sang all the time. Dad sang along with the radio, mom dad not. Mom would specifically turn off the radio at home or in the car to sing to us. Mostly old honky-tonk like Hank Williams or Ernest Tubb, but sometimes and more often than not, she would sing Roy. There is rarely a time I hear a Roy Orbison song and don’t think of my mother singing me to sleep with it. This song specifically was one of her favorites.

I can remember very vividly being around 4 years old, having been sick (I had thrown up I think,) and mom was holding me in her lap in the recliner to the right of the window, rocking us back and forth. I was wearing a cotton nightgown and clutching my favorite blankie. No TV or radio was on; it was a bright sunny day. Mom sang this song. Mom doesn’t have the best voice but she is always in tune. There is a weight and throaty-ness to it that makes it one of my very favorite voices to hear. I wonder one day if she would let me record her singing this song.

Unfortunately I know there will come a day I will need it very badly.


PS - here is another quick story about Roy.

Three Dog Night - Eli's Coming

The a-typical gender roles and overall dynamic in my family is weird. Most families are weird. I consider mine the weirdest, but probably because I’m in it.

A little overview before the story.

My dad is more like my mom. My mom is very dude-like. My dad is the homemaker. Despite the fact that up until he retired a month or two ago and made 4 times what mom makes, he was still the housewife. He cooks, cleans, does laundry, etc. still finds time to build porches and paint the house, all that good stuff. Mom, still works whatever hours she wants (she owns her own business) is very misanthropic. Has no friends, doesn’t want any friends. Growing up in such a large family, mom would now rather spend the rest of her life alone and quiet. Dad was an only child and craves love and attention at all times.

Growing up mom worked Saturday mornings. I can remember times before I started going to school (pre-kindergarten) where mom would do things with us (movies, swimming, etc), but what I most remember about growing up is my Saturdays with dad. Throughout the 80s, my dad drove a little Toyota truck and every Saturday morning my brother and I would pile up in the truck and fight over who got stuck in the middle while dad ran errands.

In the house I spent the early 80s in off Lake Wheeler road, (the house my engineer dad and his buddies actually built,) dad was forever building and home-improving. One of the biggest projects I can remember is the stand alone garage and workshop he and a friend built over one summer. The majority of our Saturday errands were trips to lumberyards and home improvement stores. Back in these days there was about 2 different home improvement stores in Raleigh and neither were big chains. One I remember very clearly was off capital blvd and is now a u-store-it kinda place. The day would always lead us to one fast food establishment or the other, sitting on the tailgate of the truck eating lunch. certain places will always stick out to me; the Hardee’s off Walnut Street in Cary. Arby’s on Hillsborough Street. Char-grill on Hillsborough. Although I have probably eaten at these same crap shops 1000 times since, I still think of dad, Kyle and I and being little and the grey Toyota truck.

There are 2 consistencies about these Saturday morning errands. A) Fighting over who got stuck sitting in the middle and the consequential ‘punch-bug’ fights that would ensue and B) my dad’s cassettes. Dad was always a music/vinyl junky. I owe my entire musical obsession to him. I owe to those Saturdays the fact that I can harmonize with the Beatles. It was on these errands dad would teach us all about his music. Tell us stories about each song (sound familiar?) some of my aural memories are recollections of my fathers’ memories (Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit and Viet Nam flashbacks, for example.) These Saturdays are when I remember my brother and I fighting over who could name that tune in the shortest amount of time. Couldn’t have been older than 6 or 7, we moved from the Lake Wheeler house to Apex in 1985.

One particular errand I can remember was pitching granite rocks that dad found via a rogue pile of off Beryl Road near the arboretum. I’m sure he was driving along and saw this big pile of scrap granite and hatched a plot. He was forever stopping to pick stuff off the side of the road. Pocket knives, hard hats, paint buckets, forever having a use for them somewhere. So one Saturday we drove out to the rock pile and spent the day loading the truck and driving back to the Lake Wheeler house and filling in our old sand box (which ran the entire length and breadth of the back porch of this house) with these rocks. It took a few trips. I remember complaining a lot.

I can’t tell you whether this song ever played on that particular day or not. But it’s one of dad’s favorites. I can’t hear this song without hearing my dad singing along. There are a million songs like this, for some reason this one sticks out. Most Three Dog Night, Beatles, Steppenwolf, Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, etc… songs are the same way. It was hard to pick just one, but I chose this one. Ironically my best friend had a son 4 years ago and named him Eli. I have meant to tell her specifically why that name meant something to me so many times and it has somehow slipped my mind until now. Every time I hear his name I think about Saturday mornings with my dad and brother and that little grey truck.