JET AIRLINER

Riding along on this big old jet plane
I’ve been thinking about my home

They tell you if you’re gonna crash, right?

I was cured of flight fright by Jay Krugman, who, on a particularly bad flight into Denver, convinced me the odds were just too low.  I might die on the highway, in the bathroom, but my life wasn’t going to end in an airplane crash.

Do Bose Quiet Comfort headphones come with a business class ticket?  Funny how everybody got the memo.  I think it’s word of mouth.  If you want to hear anything on the plane, you’ve got to have ’em.  And everybody with ’em was ENRAPTURED by "The Devil Wears Prada".  Felice said you could understand it just by watching the pictures.  Which I did for a while, until I pulled down my laptop and fired it up and realized I was hooked and pulled the Bose plug from my Mac and drove it into the plane’s system, to hear the hackneyed dialogue of the obvious plot that I was enjoying so much ANYWAY.  I mean no wonder the film was a hit, it wasn’t HIGH CONCEPT!

And after contemplating Meryl Streep’s comment that everybody wants to be like us, rich, powerful and…  They announced we were arriving early.  Hell, you ALWAYS arrive early, unless you’re DREADFULLY late, because they pad the flight plan with so much extra time.

And we’re flying into Queens and we’re about 125 feet above the water/ground and suddenly the plane LURCHES to the right.  I’ve experienced sudden moves like this a mile up, in the clouds, but NOT SO CLOSE TO THE GROUND!

The plane is deathly quiet.  I can see from the window that we weren’t going in the right direction.  And we were going so fucking FAST!

And now we’re dropping.  But we’re still going as fast as we were in the sky.  We’re not floating down, rather we’re bearing right down on the ground.  My eyes started bugging out.  Was this IT?

I didn’t even get to review my life.  Oh, I thought about it for a second, but I was just too freaked out.

And then we were down.  SCREAMING along the runway.  And I’m thinking of all those planes that overshoot their destination, that just can’t stop, and end up in the drink.  The hangars are a blur.  We’re going a couple of hundred miles an hour down the runway.  And just when I was convinced it was over, the engines reversed, and we slowed down.

I couldn’t let it go.  I needed to know.  What exactly HAPPENED?  Did an engine fail?  I planned on quizzing the pilot, as he smiled and said goodbye.  But the cabin door remained closed.  And finally, I just walked off the plane.

MY FATHER’S GUN

From this day on I own my father’s gun
We dug his shallow grave beneath the sun

I took Felice to Jennings Beach.  Where I heard "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena" as I awaited my french fries.  On through Southport to Westport, where we had lunch on Main Street.

And then after being unable to find the school where I went to summer camp when I was nine, we went left on Black Rock Turnpike over Samp Mortar Lake, under the Merritt Parkway, past the reservoir to Aspetuck Valley Farms.  For some Macoun apples and cider donuts.

And on the way back, we stopped in at Sunny Daes and shared some pumpkin ice cream.  And then as we crawled up Black Rock Turnpike, and I pointed out the spot where my father had brokered a deal for the first Friendly’s in town, I realized up at the end of the drag, on top of the hill, he was buried.

I could never go before.  I just couldn’t handle it.  But with Felice by my side I creeped through the open gate and parked my mom’s Lexus.  And after reassuring Felice I knew where his headstone was, I retraced the steps I’d taken thirteen years before, when we’d unveiled his headstone.

And there it was.  Exactly where I remembered it.  Without a day of wear.  The etching in the granite said "LEFSETZ".

So strange to see your own name.

But it didn’t have his first name, no other information.  Then I looked down at my feet and saw a small stone buried in the ground, with his name, and his birthday, and the day of his death.  It said "Loving husband and father."

That he was.

I started talking to him.  Telling him I wished he was still here.  To know that Felice’s father gave her a grand piano for her wedding.  If only he could have met her father…I can see the shiteating grin on his face.  So wide, and lasting so long he wouldn’t even be able to speak.  He’d tell everybody on his travels.  He’d be proud.

I wanted to make my father proud.  Even though I felt he couldn’t understand half of who I was and what I was into.

Tears came to my eyes.  I hadn’t predicted this.

Felice was crying too.

And then I regained my composure and said we were going to go.  Because that’s what he’d do.  He was creeped out by death, he had no time for it.  He’d leave the cemetery immediately, and jump on the phone.

I told him he’d set the family up pretty good.  The money hadn’t run out yet.  And then walked away.

And as I did, I saw the rocks on top of the other headstones.

I should have brought one.  I couldn’t take one from another grave.

I saw a stone wall.  But being New England, I didn’t have to go that far.  In a space where no one had been buried yet, I found a rock.  And one for Felice too.  And we went back to my father and laid them atop his headstone.

MY OLD SCHOOL

And I’m never going back to my old school

And from there we went to the split level I grew up in.  That my mother only moved from two years ago.  There were two Subarus in the driveway, a gray-haired woman even came out to pick up the mail.  But I couldn’t get out of the car.  It was still our house.  I didn’t want to be disabused of this notion.

Then I showed Felice Fairfield Woods.  The school I attended K through 8.

And then after working our way through the project, we were at Andrew Warde High School, home of the MUSTANGS???

It’s the EAGLES!

But when the boomers moved out, before they moved back in and had kids, they’d consolidated the two high schools in town into one.  But now they’d split them up again.  And Warde had reclaimed its name, but not its mascot.  Hell it was like the seventies didn’t even EXIST!  The banners in the gymnasium and the trophies in the case barely went back to the previous century.

Yes, I went in.  For the first time in THIRTY YEARS!

Around the back, by the cafeteria, a door was open.  And on a whim, not being afraid of teacher retribution, we went inside.

I showed Felice my old home room.  Where I took Biology, and Modern European History.  And when she ducked into the handicapped bathroom to pee I strode into the boys’ lavatory to do the same, where I’d gone HUNDREDS OF TIMES BEFORE!

It was EXACTLY THE SAME!  The urinals, the toilets.  THE SAME FIXTURES!  Oh, there were new sinks, but it was like I’d just been there yesterday.

Well, not really.  I no longer felt the tug.  The feeling I had to get out of there before some teacher chided me for walking the halls during class, before I had nightmares about homework due.  On one hand, it was like I’d never even been there.  Which felt good.  Since I had so many bad feelings.  High school sucked.

I showed Felice where the cool kids hung out.  On the radiator in front of the Headmaster’s office (a fancy name for Principal, this was and still is a public school.)

Mrs. Hurley’s room.  Where she had an article about Arlo Guthrie from "Time" tacked to the bulletin board.

To the library, to the auditorium.

And then it hit me.  All the WORK I’d done here, all the PRESSURE!  To get good grades, to get into a good college.  It’s like that was a different person, I could never do it again.

NEW ENGLAND

I’m gonna tell you all about how much I love New England

Do you know this Jonathan Richman song?

Roadrunner!

By time Jonathan got traction I was already living in L.A.

But part of me is still here, in New England.

It’s been decades, but I could slide back in in a second.

But part of me is reluctant.  I belong in Los Angeles, where the most important thing is what kind of car you drive, not where you went to college, not who your parents are.  That’s just phony enough for me.  Everybody’s so into their own trip that they don’t give a shit about you, you’re FREE!

But these are my roots.  And you can never deny your roots.