In 1973, I was a proud member of the Eldorado Elementary School Chorus in Spring Valley, New York. Ok, I don’t remember if I was a proud member. Looking back I wonder how I even was in the school chorus. I’m sure they made me do it since I was pretty shy back then and singing wasn’t my bag. Unlike now when I can belt out a tune with the best of them. Sure.

Anyway, I was in Mrs. Mayhew’s 5th grade class and she was the meanest teacher in the school. Time has not softened my view on Mrs. Mayhew. She was intimidating and I truly she believe hated kids. Especially me.  These days teachers have to search students for guns, knives, and drugs. Back then Mrs. Mayhew was on a crusade to eliminate baseball cards from Eldorado Elementary school. That’s right, baseball cards. To her, they were the worst things in the world and she would confiscate them at every opportunity.

On many occasions, she would go into my coat pocket and take away my baseball cards. That’s right, she stole them from my coat pocket! She would rummage through the other kids pockets as well and she would steal our precious cards. Or she would take them out of our desks. Mrs. Mayhew was the baseball card Nazi.

One time she even pulled me off the school bus before it departed the parking lot and looked in my book bag. Yep, baseball cards. She took them.  At recess, she would sneak up behind us and steal our cards. I half expected her to show up at my house, enter my bedroom and take away my cards.  Mrs. Mayhew always took the cards and put them in bags in a big closet in our classroom. Then she would lock the door and our cards were gone forever.

Back to the school chorus. We had our big spring concert on a Friday night. Mom and Dad were there and probably my sister Mary. I can’t definitively recall if Mary was there or not, but she is irrelevant to the story. She’s still pretty much irrelevant. I say that because I hope she reads this story and gets irritated. That’s what brothers do.
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Buffalo, NY is synonymous with great jazz. Oh sure, people hear “Buffalo” and immediately think of chicken wings, but the very restaurant that originated chicken wings, Frank and Teresa’s Anchor Bar, has been known for decades as a place for good jazz. In fact, in many outstanding Buffalo restaurants, such as The Cloister, St. George’s Table, (also known for a time as David’s Table), The Statler Hilton, and dozens of places up and down Delaware, Elmwood, and Main, the food and music were equal draws.

Of course, there were clubs that were known strictly for their fantastic music; food and drink were offered, but the main menu was great talent. Chief among these was The Royal Arms, and in the 60s and 70s top name jazz artists played there. When I first started catching these greats, I was underage, so I always made sure to enter with a group of people, keeping my face averted and pretending to be deep in conversation as I extended my hand with a fake ID.

Inside “The Arms” was a magical music land where I listened to Jerry Mulligan and his band (so many players they overflowed the stage with Mulligan and others performing on floor level), and caught the best piano groups including the George Shearing Quintet and the Ramsey Lewis Trio. Local horn players such as Don Menza, Sam Noto, and Joe Romano, who went on to international fame themselves, often worked with headline talent. I loved listening to Lenny Welch sing a ballad, and John Hendricks scat solo, still flying strong even without Lambert and Ross, (or Bavan). Jackie (Cain) and Roy’s (Kral) vocal gymnastics left me breathless, and Astrid Gilberto, while standing almost painfully stiff with shyness, made beautiful music with a voice that gracefully moved throughout the entire room.

There were so many wonderfully talented artists, but my favorite of all was Mark Murphy. To this day, there is no one more distinctive in style, phrasing, and musical interpretation. I went to see him over and over again, and each time his music was as exciting and new as if catching him for the very first time. Since being a hit in my grammar school for singing a song with nonsense lyrics that my Big Band vocalist dad had taught me, I knew I would be a singer. Once I listened to Mark Murphy, I knew that jazz would be my style.

Many Buffalo club owners were passionate about music and generous in giving young musicians a break. At 16, when not off being a regular high school student or hanging out with my friends, I was singing weekends with the house trio at The Park Lane Restaurant, or being given a big break by Harry Altman of the Town Casino to sing a few songs with Ray Anthony’s Band. Lots of clubs would have jam sessions on Sunday afternoons, and I found the musicians to be just as generous in letting me sit in and learn. It was a thrill to meet and sometimes work with some of the best musicians in the business. The one I wanted to meet most, however, remained too big an idol to me, so whenever Mark Murphy was in town, all I did was sit anonymously in the audience.

In my freshman year of college I joined a piano trio out of New York City, took a leave of absence from studies, and began touring the U.S. and Canada. Buffalo remained my home base and The Cloister became my club of choice whenever I returned home. Most artists of all genres playing Buffalo made it into The Cloister, and it was a kick to perform for and meet everyone from Sergio Mendes to Mary Travers to, yes, wonder of wonders, Mark Murphy. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to speak when finally meeting him, but he is the type of person who makes friends the minute he is introduced. In no time we were talking music, recording, clubs, etc.

There are many good memories of subsequent years, when Mark (yes, I even got comfortable calling him by his first name), and I would be playing clubs down the street from each other in Buffalo, and we would run in to see each other on our breaks. One of these times, Mark came to see me at Gabriel’s Gate and was suffering from a bad cold. We started sharing sore throat remedies, and it hit me that I was actually friends with my idol.

A few years later, when disco was queen, I “quit” music. Mark came to Buffalo and I, naturally, went to hear him. He wouldn’t accept my career move, and simply said that I had to get back to music. He kept nudging me toward sitting in and singing a couple of songs with his group. He knew that once I did, I’d get the passion back, and he was right. Music has undergone many changes in my life since then; today it’s songwriting.

Buffalo and music have also changed greatly, with a only a few places to catch jazz in the city these days. The good news, however, is there are still so many great jazz musicians in Buffalo. In fact, musicians of all styles seem to grow there. The other good news: wherever he sings, Mark Murphy just gets better and better.

I was 18 when I moved out of home for the first time. My own residence was, it is safe to say, not in the most sanitary of areas and the apartment itself was little more than a room with a kitchen and restroom attached. Paint was coming off the walls, water came in through the windows and my upstairs neighbors were growing pot. I look back now and wonder how I coped, especially on nights when my other neighbors would have a blistering domestic row in the lobby.

Yet, despite the many – many! – floors of my first private residence, I loved it. I went from living with my parents in a quiet suburb, in a five-bedroom house that was only a couple of years old, to living in a rough area in an apartment that had so much mold it irritated my asthma. Yet I still loved it, and one of the crowning moments of glory was when the first bill arrived.

Like most kids, I’d had arguments with my father about the amount of time I spent on the phone or watching TV. He always used to shout at me that when I was paying the bills, I could do whatever I wanted, but until then I’d be a bit more careful. I naturally resented this in my early teenage years, and even when I was 18, I still wasn’t quite over it. Hence the excitement when my first electricity bill arrived.

I remember opening it, a massive grin on my face, because now I was paying the bills and I could do what I wanted. I’d reveled in the freedom of not living with my – admittedly fairly strict – parents, but that first bill was the cherry on the top. I studied the bill and was shocked at how low it was; in my naivity I’d assumed the bill would be the same size as the ones my father had waved angrily in my face years before. I gleefully wrote a check and mailed it the same day, brimming with a sense of survival and feeling more adult than ever before.

That night, I was turning the lamps out in the apartment when I realised I could do what I wanted with them. There was no one to yell at me to turn them off; that hadn’t really hit home until I’d had and paid that first bill. I toyed with the idea of leaving them on all night… just because I could. Although I didn’t, the knowledge I could was wonderful, and the memory of that moment still makes me smile.

I’m not into hunting or fishing. I retired from fishing at the age of 14 when I started feeling sorry for the fish. Some people claim fish don’t feel pain. Well, when they are thrashing about with a hook in their mouths, it looks painful to me.
As for hunting, I’ve never tried it. I’m not anti-hunting but I couldn’t shoot a defenseless animal.

Wait a minute. Actually, I have hunted before. Not deer or elk or anything like that. I’m a former hunter of…rats.

When I was a kid in New York, my friends and I would grab our BB guns and ride our bikes to the Bronx River. We would head down a dirt path, through all sorts of overgrown weeds and garbage to a clearing across the water from a sewer pipe. We would then throw eggs and tomatoes across the 40-foot wide stream towards the sewer pipe. Then we would wait.

It didn’t take long for some giant New York sewer rats to emerge. They would be sniffing around the debris and the new food items that had recently arrived.  Then four or five of us knuckleheads would pick out a specific rat, aim and shoot at the same time. The rat that was hit would usually jump in the air and then scamper back into the sewer pipe. We would be joyous and laugh hysterically at hitting the rat. Unfortunately, we rarely killed any rats. Those things are tougher than a $3 dollar steak. Or Mrs. Mayhew, my fifth grade teacher.

My rat hunting career came to a close one overcast summer day. As usual, we targeted a rat to pepper with BB’s. We shot a particularly large rat and it barely moved. The angry rat made direct eye contact with me. For a few seconds I was paralyzed by fear. Nothing on this planet scares me more than rats. After locking eyes, the rat dove into the water. It was coming after me. I jumped on my bike and raced out of there. Lance Armstrong would have been proud.

Lessons were learned that day. If you shoot a rat use something more powerful than a BB gun. And always have a getaway plan.

Head to downtown New Orleans and you are bound to see a rather curious line forming outside of a dilapidated old brick building. Visitors waiting in line don’t seem to mind; after all, they are about to receive the greatest po-boys in the city. Mother’s Restaurant is well known throughout the Big Easy for their exceptional cooking. Tourists are always a bit confused at first–all this fuss for a hole in the wall establishment with little seating? But one bite of their overstuffed and dripping roast beef debris po-boy and the secrets of the universe seem to unfold before your eyes. Okay, so maybe its not quite that good, but it’s the closest thing I’ve experienced.

Located on the corner of Poydras and Tchoupitoulas (Chop-a-TOO-lis) street, Mother’s is nestled in the heart of the Central Business District a few blocks from the mighty Mississippi River. Originally established in 1938, few things about Mother’s have changed. You don’t go to Mother’s for the ambiance, and you certainly don’t go there for a dining experience. In fact, Mother’s only has a handful of crowded tables and bar stools. You do go there, however, for the food. Patrons eagerly gobble down shrimp Po-boys and jambalaya and wash them down with ice cold Barq’s root beer (or Dixie beer if there’s a Saints game at the Superdome). If you linger a little too long over your plate, you are bound to have new guests breathing over your shoulder, waiting to take your place and begin their meal.

What makes Mother’s so unique is their resistance to change, even in today’s fast-paced society. One would naturally assume that as their popularity grew, so would their establishment, but Mother’s refuses to change, expand, and compromise the very sandwiches that made them famous. They continue to do things the way they’ve always done things and really, you can’t argue with the results.

In every town there is a restaurant like Mother’s—an establishment dedicated to good food and tradition. Most of them are hole in the wall places that are legendary to locals and a few observant tourists. But if you are ever in a city (New Orleans included) and you see a line curling around a rundown restaurant, take my advice–that is where you should eat.

We all came from families of no less than four children and upwards to eight. We were bound together like a gang of warriors whose territory smelled like grass, melted asphalt, Double Bubble chewing gum, dirt, chlordane, and sweaty kids. There was always steady din of kid clatter that never let up; it was background noise, which became a soothing lullaby to newborns birthed into our world.

That was a time when red PF Flyers were the footwear of choice that insured that any race you were running in would deliver victory. It was standard fare on a kid infested street in East Meadow, NY, to see six street urchins standing in a line getting ready-set to go. On Eighth Street were no less than 150 children between the ages of two and twelve. We spent the summers performing in self-produced plays, riding rusty bikes with baseball cards clothes pinned to the spokes, swinging like Tarzan from the branches of large oak trees, playing kick-ball, ring-a-levio, and tag from when the sun came up, until the night-cap round of Pied Piper ice cream at 9:00 pm. Our block was a world unto its own; going around the corner could be likened to traveling from Staten Island to Brooklyn today. If you ventured to Lancaster Street for instance, the territory was as unfamiliar as being in a foreign country.

The ethnicity of the tribe was mainly Irish Catholic and Italian.  Those nationalities made up the bulk of the herd, sprinkled with an occasional German here and there. I remember the oddity of a British family that moved in, which caused quite a stir for days. The family from Liverpool became instant celebrities. In our crowd, they were the nearest thing to an actual Beatle that any of us would ever encounter; in fact, in our eyes their oldest son became our own personal Paul McCartney.
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There aren’t too many things that I loved as a child that I still love today, but there is one thing that comes quickly to mind, and that is baseball.  My entire life has revolved around baseball, and each long winter day that passes brings me closer to another season.  This season will be different for me though. The Yankees will be playing in a brand spanking new billion-dollar stadium.  It is said all good things must pass and that is certainly true in this case.  Some of my fondest memories in life took place in the big ballpark in the Bronx.  Maybe my fondest Yankee Stadium memory occurred in the early 70’s when my dad took me to a game.

Back then, I used to bring my glove to each game hoping against hope to catch a baseball. This particular afternoon we were sitting, as usual, in the lower level of the right field stands.  In the latter innings, my favorite player, Bobby Murcer, came up for the Yankees in a key spot.  My dad told me, “Get ready, he’s gonna hit one out here.”

Sure enough, on the very first pitch Bobby ripped a liner to right. It was a long drive that sailed over the right fielder’s head and kept going. The ball banged off a wooden chair about five rows in front of me. I scampered as fast as I could after the ball, heart pounding with excitement. I would love to say I grabbed the ball and it is sitting on a shelf in my home. But that wasn’t the case. An older guy beat me to the home run ball, and my disappointment has lasted a lifetime.

To this day I can close my eyes and remember how big and colorful Yankee Stadium was. I can vividly remember the chills that ran through my body when my dad would ask, “Want to go to the game today?” I never said no.

My final trip to Yankee Stadium was last July, a couple of days after my mom’s funeral. I thought about all the times I was in Yankee Stadium with my mom and dad. Both are gone now. So is Bobby Murcer, who passed just a couple of weeks after my mom. Yankee Stadium is awaiting the wrecking ball.

Baseball is about memories of not just the games, but the people you care about most. It is about family, friends, and the players on the field. It truly is a beautiful, time-tested sport that is more than just a game. It is life. At least for me it is.

I’m looking forward to the upcoming season and watching games on TV from the new Yankee Stadium. I’m also anxious to visit the new park. Maybe I’ll even like it. But it can never replace the original stadium..

Somewhere outside of Bear Valley, California, nestled in the Sierra foothills, is the Moaning Cavern. This colorful limestone cavern is so massive that the Statue of Liberty could easily fit inside of it. Tourists are welcomed to take guided tours down the 100 ft spiraling staircase, or if they are a bit more adventurous, they can rappel 165 feet down the inside of the cavern by rope. “No previous experience is necessary to find your inner spelunker!”

When I read these words in the California Guide Book, I was hooked. This is exactly the kind of experience I dreamt about when I first moved to California. I knew that my friends back in Alabama would be so impressed, as if my experience would earn me some long coveted Girl Scout badge.

Regardless of my reasons, my husband and I drove down towards Bear Valley and prepared for our adventure. When we first arrived, I was excited and trembling with anticipation, but that quickly turned to fear as I browsed the long list of injuries they were not responsible for–broken extremities, paralysis, death. I began to scrutinize the gear, the ropes and the staff with the intensity of an operating room nurse. How diligent were they at testing this material? Were there ever any injuries? Is the guy securing my harness stoned or do his eyes always look that way?

I pushed my fear down into a small cavity inside of my gut and began my decent into the small dark tunnel. At first it was a bit claustrophobic, but soon I began to ease up. This wasn’t so bad, I told myself and then I saw the light. Moaning Caverns suddenly opened before me and my fear turned to panic. As I backed over the ledge, I realized that I would have to dangle on my harness a full 165 ft in the air. My feet were frozen, glued to the tunnel floor. The line started to back up as I sat motionless, but try as I might I couldn’t make my feet budge. The tourists on the ground were like small ants and a paralyzing fear shot up my legs and spine.
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