This past Tuesday, my daughter Emma graduated from Parkland High School. Fifty one years ago. I graduated from Slatington High School. The two ceremonies could not have been more different. I know that is partly generational and partly the huge difference in the size of the graduating class.

On a hot summer evening, in June of 1970, I and my 120 fellow classmates walked, from the school, to Alumni Field. We took our seats on bleachers set up on the football field. It was really hot, but at least it wasn’t raining. We listened to the guest speaker talk about how depressing some of our popular music was. Then we listened to our salutatorian, Patty Daubenspeck, give her speech. That was followed by our valedictorian, Maryann Everett, delivering hers. We collected our diplomas. Thank you, Mr. Kemp. Our hats were thrown into the night air and off we went to the Slatington Moose Clubhouse for our graduation dance. Good times!

This past Tuesday, Emma and her just under 1000 classmates gathered in the halls of Allentown’s PPL Center and gradually filled the gym floor with red and grey graduation caps and gowns. The PPL Center technology was in full force as each graduate’s name made its way around the hall on the electronic banner that surrounds the gym. Also on the Jumbotron, each graduate’s senior picture and name were broadcast to the crowd. There was no guest speaker. There is no longer a valedictorian nor a salutatorian. Instead there was a class speaker, a senior woman with a 4.85 GPA, headed to MIT, and who is also a published author. That was followed by a few quick speeches by school officials and the passing out of diplomas. The distribution of diplomas took about 90 minutes. One graduate did a backflip on stage. Emma did not know who it was, the disadvantage of a large class. Hats were thrown in the air, of course! The processional began and the graduates were to meet their parent at the corner of 7th and Linden. Good times!

You can see the difference in the two ceremonies. But, do you know what was exactly the same? The excitement for what lies ahead. The memories of thirteen years of public education. The sense of an end and a beginning. The realization that this may be the last time that you may see most of these people. The epiphany that we are adults now and that our next milestones may be college graduations, discharges from the armed forces, or first full time jobs. After that, marriages, children, and grandchildren. Divorces, deaths, and retirements.

Whether it is looking at my classmates next to me in 1970 or looking at Emma and her thousand fellow graduates, my heart fills with the wonder of life. What is in store for each of these human beings? My heart fills with love and the hope that each one of them has a wonderful life. I can think how far I have come in those 51 years. It has had its ups and downs, but you know what? I wouldn’t have wanted to miss a second of it. Good luck to all of the 2021 graduates! And to my fellow graduates, I miss you all. see you at the next reunion!

I always try to come up with a catchy title that will bring people in. In my last post I said that I would be writing about my biological nephews. I tried to come up with a clever way to include nephews in the title. I opted to go with the three most famous nephews that I know, the nephews of Donald Duck!

My nephews look nothing like the Ducks. They don’t wear matching clothes nor do any of them have feathers. And I am happy to report, as far as I know, none of them walk around pants-less!

I have five nephews. Each one of my four siblings had at least one boy child. My oldest brother, Don, had two. Unfortunately it is these two, Derek and Doug that I know almost nothing about. They grew up in California and Oklahoma. I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen them in my life. Here is what I do know. They are both married to lovely women, who give me some insight into their lives through Facebook. I wish I knew them better.

That leaves the three nephews that I grew up with. Keith, Chris, and Jim. They are all ten to fifteen years younger than I am. My best memory of all of them together comes from the annual George Touch Football Game every New Years Day on my brother Gary’s slanted yard/field in Walnutport.

Keith is my oldest nephew. He is my only sister’s second child. I can remember spending lots of time with him when I visited my sister. We never spent time alone because he always had his imaginary friend, Booger, with him. Today we play lots of Words with Friends. He wins ninety percent of the games!

The first time I met Jim was when he was a newborn. I walked from my uptown confirmation class to their downtown home on Chestnut Street. I didn’t know, at that time, that a few years later I would be a big brother to him as I moved into their home after my mom died. Interestingly, he and I took a guided walking tour of Slatington recently and we walked past that Chestnut Street home. I told him that house is very special to me because it is where I lost my virginity! We had a good laugh over that.

That leaves Chris, my brother Gary’s son. My favorite memory of him was a competitive one. I once had a picnic at my house and set up the most elaborate croquet course ever. It was filled with obstacles and he just loved it. As I recall, he was the most competitive guy in our touch football games too.

That’s my little journey into nephew-hood. Like with my nieces, I love them all, and wish we could have more time together. Thanks for indulging my look back at family. I realize most of you know none of these people! But I bet most of you also have nieces and nephews. Maybe today is a good day to reach out and tell them you love them.

I was chastised, at a recent family gathering, for never writing about my nieces and nephews in my blog. This came from my oldest niece, Lori. She’s responsible for the quote in the title. She is only six years younger than I am. We spent a lot of time together and would always end up doing girly things, like playing dishes. But, we did have a lot of fun. I was in touch with my feminine side even back then.

I have seven biological nieces. By that, I mean that they are the daughters of my siblings. I don’t mean to slight my nephews’ wives. They are my nieces as well. Noah Webster told me this. See, I research before I write!

My first niece was born when I was six and by the time I graduated from high school all seven had been born. Because I was a young uncle, we were all pretty close. Today, almost half of them are in their sixties like me. The others aren’t far behind.

I wanted to try to honor each niece with a special memory of me with them. That was difficult, and I have some, but they aren’t necessarily the kind of memories that would show up in a Hallmark card. For Lori, it has to be playing dishes or walking with her mom to a little corner store in Lehighton when I spent a week there each summer. Thinking about Lori’s sister, Jill, brought up a more recent memory. She was the one who noticed that my daughter Emma’s name spelled backward can be pronounced like my deceased daughter Amy’s name. Kim and I share a birthday and yes, May babies are the best! I can remember Kelly and me, when she was about four, doing a little routine to The Who’s “I Can See For Miles”. I’m sure she has no recollection of that! A memory of Kerri is also more recent, maybe 25 years ago. I can recall us singing karaoke to The Turtles “Happy Together” at a holiday gathering.

I saved Debbie and Karen for last because, for a short time, they were little sisters as well. When my mom died in 1968, my dad and I moved into their home. I can remember Deb and I fighting over A-treat Orange Soda. I can remember Karen eating a glass Christmas tree ornament! I can remember all of us sliding cookies down the dining room table trying to get as close to the end without them falling off. Who needed video games for entertainment?! They also teamed up to eavesdrop on me and my girlfriend by listening through the heat register. I found out, recently, that they also sneaked into my room and read my cleverly folded love notes! Grrrrr!

I love all of my nieces. I am immensely proud of them. They are all beautiful (George genes) and smart and independent women. My only wish is that we were as close today as we were when we were all growing up. But that is life. We all move into our worlds at different speeds and in different directions.

Next post, my five biological nephews!

Today I am 69 years old. I still find it very hard to believe. That is a lot of years and the next birthday is the big 70. I don’t feel 69. I’m pretty healthy and active. I don’t act 69. I don’t only listen to Classic Rock radio and I am a big fan of Tiktok. I don’t look 69. At least that is what people say, but maybe they are just being nice. I will admit I do feel old when one thing occurs. If I am on the floor, and have to get up to standing. Wow, then I feel 89.

I think attitude is the key to not feeling your age. My attitude is that of the little boy who grew up in Slatington. In fact, that little boy is inside of me every single waking moment. I am still that little five year old who fished, off the 7th Street Bridge, with his dad on opening day of trout season. Sadly, the bridge and the dad are both long gone.

I’m still the nine year old boy who would spread out his baseball cards on his porch on Dowell Street and try to sell them to strangers passing by. I would never have sold my Mickey Mantle cards. He was my idol.

I’m still that ten year old sledding crazily down Shooky’s path, and over the railroad tracks, at the end of Willow Avenue. What a great gang of kids were there, from Dowell Street, North Street, and Willow Avenue. There should have been a name for us.

I’m still the kid in junior high walking down Second Street, past the Lutheran and UCC churches, in my jacket and tie, looking forward to the Saturday night dance in the junior high cafeteria. Then walking home to our second floor, Second Street apartment. My mom would ask me who I danced with. She died just two years later.

I’m still that high school boy who, looking back, knows he could have been a better student. But boy did he have fun. He liked girls, and sports, and the cafeteria food. Anyone remember meat potato burgers, sometimes called porcupine meatballs? He still thinks fondly of his 120, Class of 1970 , classmates. He still drives by that high school building from time to time, nostalgic for all of those good times.

Here I am, a 69 year old man, with a soul of a growing boy. It’s just the way I want to be. I hope I feel the same at 79 and 89 and dare I say it 99. I’m still that boy who likes to jump in puddles. I’m still that boy who loves sports, and women, and right now I am thinking about a delicious meat potato burger. Happy Birthday to me!!

I spent some time in Slatington Memorial Park the other day. What a nice job they did with that site! It’s a memorial to all those, from the Slatington area, who served in this nation’s armed forces. It is a beautiful little park, right on Main Street. A great place for quiet reflection.

It is also the site of some of the best memories from my childhood. On this little site was my sprawling, and grand, Slatington Junior High School. 7th and 8th grades.

It was here that our district’s five elementary schools converged. We would stay converged, like a small family of 121, through high school graduation. We shared lockers in 7th grade. I shared with Chris Green. We remain friends, though distant, to this day.

In this building I learned to dance. In the basement were Saturday night dances. I am not a good dancer, but back then I looked for the opportunity to slow dance with a certain girl. Paul Anka’s “Put Your Head on My Shoulder” was the best for slow dancing.

This was 1965, 1966, and 1967. Revolution in pop culture was all around us. But here in Slatington, boys had to wear ties and jackets for Thursday assembly programs. This led to dress code fights when we got to high school.

This grand and sprawling building had no gym. We had to walk about a block, in all kinds of weather, to Smith Hall for gym and shop classes and band instrument instruction. Sadly, Smith Hall is no longer with us either.

I have lots of wonderful memories of the junior high building and my junior high days. I think this particular memory, from junior high, sums up my feelings about growing up small town. Sitting in Owen Roberts’s Social Studies class on the second floor. Mr. Roberts is having a conversation, out the window, with Charlie Carlton the roofer. Mr. Carlton is working on the roof of the Baptist Church across the street. Of course they knew each other. This is the charm of small town life. Like Andy Griffith’s Mayberry, like Father Knows Best’s Springfield, and like Beaver’s Mayfield, Slatington is my hometown and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

If you are ever passing through Slatington, people do tend to just pass through, take five minutes and stop at this park. It is a gem.

Are you now thinking of the old department store chain that brought Sunday shopping to the Lehigh Valley? Nope. They were from Harrison. These two guys are men I worked with about thirty years ago at a Pfizer pigments plant in Easton.

I am thinking of them today because I answered a Facebook question “What is wrong with society today?”. I answered greed and lack of empathy. I left off one item that I would usually include, and that is too much machismo.

That brings me back to the two guys from Easton. They were maintenance supervisors in the Engineering Department. I am going to use their names because I am sure they have both passed away long ago. Ed Miller and Bill Keller. They were both very irascible, cranky, and difficult to deal with. They both ruled their departments with fear and intimidation and bullying. I had to deal with both of them often. Sometimes they needed something from me, but more often I needed something from them. Bill used to yell at me and ask why I can’t do more by myself. Ed used to call me a “gebrone”, which is Italian for I’m not sure what, but surely not something good. Trying times for this gentle, sensitive male. But I made it through.

Then, over a few years, something changed. I had to work with them much more often and spent a lot of time with them one on one. I learned something very valuable from that time of change. What I learned is that sometimes bluster and bullying is just a cover up for insecurities. Yes, Bill and Ed had feelings too. I am a good listener and I am sure that is why they both opened up to me. But I learned that Bill spent a great deal of time worrying about his wife’s health. Ed was devastated when he got demoted, but he was more hurt by the fact that his two former assistants stopped talking to him. Ed and Bill were both very human, hiding behind all that macho manly man crap.

I guess the real lesson is that none of us are entirely who we present to the world. We are all much more complicated than that. When we have to deal with people that we don’t particularly like, it is best to try to understand them and figure out what is beneath that mask. You may be surprised to find something totally unexpected. So here is to Ed and Bill and to the lesson they taught me many years ago. On a side note, that pigments plant is now being torn down. Buildings may go, but lessons remain.

If you ask a little kid to draw a forest, he or she will probably draw a solid block, or long row, of evergreen trees. If you ask an adult to draw a forest, it will be similar, but with a wider variety of trees. Maybe a poplar or an elm. Maybe. In either case, neither really looks like a forest.

I spend a lot of time in the woods these days. The woods are far from a collection of standing, upright, trees. I am always amazed how many fallen trees are out there in the forest. One day I even saw one falling, after a very rainy day. It was an amazing sight and sound. Those fallen trees are an important part of forest life. They provide a place for animals to hide. Their rotting trunks provide nutrients to the soil. A healthy forest has lots of fallen trees. A healthy forest also has lots of ground cover and bushes. I always laugh when a TV show or movie is set in a forest. They are almost pristine, more like a forest planted by Georgia Pacific or International Paper, soon to be cut down.

These thoughts of the woods got me thinking about our own lives and how they are similar to a forest. Hiking in the woods is great for introspection and self reflection!

Our lives that we present to the world, are a lot like those forest pictures drawn by kids. Perfect, all lined up, the perfect colors of green and brown. The lives we present to the world are often idealistic and focused on the positive. Not that there is anything wrong with that!

Our real lives, though, are filled with fallen trees. And, exactly like a forest, those fallen trees are good for us. Those fallen trees represent our bad choices, our losses, and the traumas of everyday life. Those bad choices leave us with valuable lessons. Our losses leave us with valuable memories and sometimes are a call to live our lives differently. Those everyday traumas, the stuff in life that is just plain hard, are like fallen trees and ground cover as they are with us all the time.

We need to be challenged in our lives. We need to suffer losses. Life needs to be difficult. Without that we would not appreciate the good things in our lives, like the trees standing straight and tall. They are straight and tall because of what has happened all around them.

Life, like the deep dark woods, is a crazy, inconsistent, jumble. It is filled with contradictions and jubilation. It is wonderful.

The next time you are near a forest, take a really good look inside. You are looking at your own life.

Yes. I can drive stick shift. I haven’t driven stick in decades, but I think I could pull it off if I had to. I mean, If there were a group of zombies coming after me and the only way to get away was to drive a standard shift car, I’d put in the clutch, put it in first and slowly pull away. That’s the only scenario I see where I would willingly drive stick again.

I learned to drive on a stick shift car. Not only was it stick shift, but it was a 1956 DeSoto tank of a car. My dad’s car. Learning to drive was torture. The stalling. The grinding of gears. The stop signs on hills! Lots of my friends, especially those who were into cars, would extol the virtues, and the fun, of driving stick. Not fun for me. Ever. But I have had a few interesting run ins with the “four on the floor” or the “three on a tree”.

Having to stop on a hill, for a stop sign or a stoplight, was my greatest fear. It remains so today, even if zombies were chasing me. There is apparently an art to pulling out on a hill without having your car drift backward into the front end of the car behind you. I am not an artist. And though I never did hit the car behind me I sure came close. Back in the 80s, I needed a car and didn’t have a lot of money. Buying a standard instead of an automatic was a lot cheaper. I can do this I told myself. I bought the Oldsmobile Firenza. The very first weekend that I owned the car, I found myself in stick shift on a hill hell. There I was on the Hess’s parking deck spirally ramp in lots of slow moving traffic. Just remembering this, I can still smell my clutch smoking!

Another time I had to drive a big stake body truck, stick shift of course, from Pfizer Easton to Pfizer Slatington. Before I began the trip I began to calculate all of the stoplights I may encounter on Route 248 and how many of them are on hills. By the time I got to the light in Berlinsville, I knew just how slow I could go to get there just as the light turned green! Now that is an art in itself.

The only time driving stick was a good thing was when it got me a trip to France. Apparently all rental cars in France are stick shift. My boss couldn’t drive stick so….”Denny, you’re going to France!” It worked out well. The France I was driving in, Paris to Limoges, was extremely flat. Fourth gear all the way. I’m so thankful that our plant wasn’t somewhere in the French Alps!

So if you ever see me driving down the street and you see me stalling a lot and hear a grinding sound coming from my car, you’d better run! Zombies are on the way!

When I turned fifteen I was about three weeks from the end of my freshman year at Slatington High School. It was part of the wonder years, perhaps THE wonder year. Not driving for another year, no major romantic relationships, and no part time jobs. Trigonometry had not hit me yet and Algebra was almost over. The Vietnam draft was still a few years away. All that would come later. My mom was still alive. She would be for another year. What a wonderful time! So much possibility. A long life ahead.

Fifteen. Why am I thinking about fifteen and not sixteen or eighteen twenty-one, more milestone birthdays? I blame TikTok. Yes, TikTok. It is the holder of obscure songs that I have long forgotten. In this case it is Five for Fighting’s “100 Years”. The lyrics in this song are wonderful. Do you remember it? Check it out on Spotify. The premise is that at fifteen there is so much time left. The singer checks in at various points in life and the thread going through it is that time goes quickly. His last check in is at age 99 where he is hoping for just one more moment. The chorus of the song, though, is about being fifteen. Let me share, at the risk of breaking copyright laws!

“Fifteen, there’s still time for you

Time to buy and time to lose

Fifteen, there’s never a wish better than this

When you only got a hundred years to live”

I have a birthday coming up next month (yes, May babies are the best). Maybe that is why this song hit me as it did. I wish I was fifteen. But not fifteen in today’s world. Fifteen in 1967. Truly the wonder years. Fifteen in 1967, the Summer of Love.

Before I close this post, I’d like to give a little shout out to Taylor Swift. She wrote about being fifteen, as well as anyone I know, in her song “Fifteen”. I think it should be required listening for every early teen girl. Parents should discuss it with them. Teachers should teach it in school. “Cause when you’re fifteen, Somebody tells you they love you You’re gonna believe them”. There’s a little taste.

So there are some of my thoughts on being fifteen. Five for Fighting and Taylor Swift say it much better. But wow, the wonder years are truly wonderful. They become more wonderful as I age, hoping for just more moments.

I’m not talking about fame nor fortune. Well, maybe fortune in an indirect way. But certainly not fame. I’m writing about industrial odors. Seems like a weird topic for a spring Sunday. But I saw a post on Facebook asking me to pick my two favorite fragrances from a list of twelve. They were things like newly mown grass, freshly brewed coffee, or opening a bag of chips. All nice smells. That triggered a memory of a childhood smell from the nearby zinc smelter in Palmerton, a town just north of Slatington. That smell wasn’t so nice. So please indulge me as I touch on four industrial smells from my life. One bad, two good, and one neutral.

The bad is the aforementioned zinc smelter in Palmerton. My sister lived in Lehighton, so when we visited her we had to drive past that zinc smelter. “Put the windows up”! It was a thick sulphury smell. I don’t know how hundreds of people worked there. The smelter no longer exists. They can now grow grass in Palmerton!

Anyone been to Hershey? There is a sweet smelling town. Chocolate made the town and chocolate made the town’s air smell just great! If we are going to die from air pollution, Hershey would be the place to do it.

I used to work at the Pfizer pigments plant in Easton. Driving there, from Slatington, you knew you were close when the aroma of fresh baked bread arrived in your car. No, it sure wasn’t Pfizer. It was the Schaible’s (?) bakery, making thousands of loaves of bread every single morning. So nice!

For eight years, I worked for Minerals Technologies. We were building small chemical plants on the sites of paper mills all over the United States, and later all over the world. Here is a pretty common thing about paper mills. They are usually in a town in the middle of nowhere and they are typically the only industry in that town. Every one of those towns smells like cooking cabbage. You could be lost and you could find your way to that town just by the smell. I listed this one as a neutral odor. It wasn’t at first. But I guess, just like the people who live in those towns, I got used to the smell and grew to like it.

Weird topic, I know. They say the sense of smell is the greatest sense for stirring memories. I guess that is true for me! One thing I am glad of is that my hometown really didn’t have an industrial odor. We quarried slate, manufactured lamps, made clothing and silk. All pretty fragrance free. How about where you have lived your life? Any fragrance memories stirred?