Forty-five Years

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It’s been forty-five years since Dad died.

Ten years ago, I wrote Hard to Believe, But Not Hard to Believe on the thirty-fifth anniversary of his death, the gist of that post being that it was hard to believe that it had actually been 35 years since his death. Now, ten years later, it feels like a lifetime.

For one thing, Mum is gone now too, as are all but one of his siblings, and all but one of his in-laws. I’ve written too many memorials over the past couple of years. But mainly, it’s that a lot has happened now, without him. My siblings married, a couple of them had children, and one of those grandchildren is now a mother herself. I’ve been through five jobs, two of them fairly lengthy, and I’ve now moved. He’s been out of the picture for way too long.

Anytime I think of the grandkids and Dad at the same time, I think of what a shame it was that they never knew him — Dad was great with kids. Before he married, he was a surrogate father to his dead brother’s daughters, and he was great with us, and my cousins and many of the kids in the neighborhood.

I would have loved to have gone picture taking with him. Dad was a great photographer, and not fully appreciated within the family. He would put on the occasional slide show of family pictures, but what I didn’t realize fully until after he was gone was that he had a bunch of pictures he didn’t show, because they weren’t people pictures — but they were really good. Dad started letting me use his cameras when I was in high school, but they were both rangefinders, with fixed lenses. I didn’t get my first SLR until the year after he died. I wish I could have gone shooting with him.

When he had the time, Dad loved to paint pictures of ships. Square riggers, especially, and clipper ships in particular. He would go downstairs late at night, put on the old radio, and paint. He started by taking slides of pictures in books, and then he would project the slide onto the blank canvas and trace the outlines. Sometimes I would wake up late at night, and somehow know he was down there — maybe I heard the radio? — and go downstairs and watch. I remember one night, he showed me how he was painting the roundness of a sail. He showed me how he painted the shadows in the corners of the sail, and the brightness in the belly of the sail. And he knew the history of them; I remember one night, his subject was a Black Ball packet ship, and him telling me about them. I remember him mentioning that the lights in the cellar where he was painting were relatively yellow, and that was why the color palette of his paintings was blueish. I was fairly young during the years when he was doing most of his painting, and the memories have grown blurry, but they’re my favorite memories of him.

Dad was a Boston patrolman, and a good one. When I was going through the papers Mum had saved, I found two separate letters of commendation he had received. He liked to help people, and couldn’t abide cruelty.

Dad loved the outdoors, especially the Blue Hills. There was a short-lived mountain bike rental concession near Trailside Museum, and I tried it out. I remember thinking the whole time, God, Dad would have loved this.

It’s been too long without him.

Dad Self-portrait
Dad as young man. Self-portrait in the Blue Hills.

Seashore Trolley Museum

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Saturday I decided to take the motorcycle up to the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, Maine. I decided to go Saturday since it was the middle of the July 4th holiday weekend, and traffic was likely to be less. I decided to take the motorcycle to see if I could handle doing a longer trip. The plan was to take I-95 up, in order to get there as soon as possible, and then take Route 1 a little of the way back. It wasn’t the best trip for a motorcycle, but it was long, but not too long. As it happens, they were celebrating their 86th birthday on Saturday.

This was my second trip to Seashore; I’d gone up Labor Day Weekend of 2004 with Mum tagging along. It’s of particular interest to me because a lot of Boston transit history is there; whenever the MBTA retires a fleet, they generally donate a unit or two to the museum. So they have an original 1924 East Boston Rapid transit car, a 1950’s Orange Line train, a 1963 Red Line train, and Tower C and Northampton Station from the Boston Elevated, a Boeing Light Rail Vehicle, as well as a number of restored trolleys from the early part of the 20th Century from all over the country.

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Uncle Kip

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My cousin just called to let me know her father, my Uncle Kip, had died. He was the last of my mother’s siblings.

Kip d'Entremont
Kip d’Entremont, Christmas Eve

Growing up, Kip was an ever-present presence at our house. Very early on, he was still living there, and after he got married, he was still pretty close by, and eventually moved into a house right around the corner. His schedule was flexible enough, and he was close enough that he could often stop by to visit Mum.

Kip liked to hold court, so to speak. He had a deep booming voice, and he was a raconteur. The only thing was, he… tended… to… speak… very….slowly… and had a good sense of irony, so his stories tended to be involved and take… a… long… time… to… get… to… the… point.

He also loved to sing, and sang, well…decently. At Christmas Eve, my mother would hold a family party, and if someone was there to play it, eventually you would find Kip hanging by the piano singing along.

Kip grew up with two sisters, and my Dad became the brother he never had, and when Dad died, he made a point of telling me so. He was devoted to his wife Joanna, and they had over 60 years together.

His son-in-law was telling me this past Saturday that Kip was like a “burnt marshmallow” — crusty on the outside, and a softie on the inside. For example, he didn’t much care for his daughter’s cat, and wasn’t too upset when it disappeared on the Cape, but when he got a call that it had been found, he immediately made the two hour trip to the Cape to pick up his little girl’s pet.

Several of my O’Hara uncles liked to tease, and as an introverted and awkward child, I was an easy target. I really didn’t like it, and tried to avoid them when I could. Kip, on the other hand, never had a mean streak in him. While he certainly had a good sense of humor, I don’t recall him ever teasing or making fun of me. He laughed with you, not at you. He was my favorite uncle (with Tom a very close second).

While he was a lifelong and staunch Republican, I can’t recall him ever manifesting the kind of nastiness so in vogue with the current Republican party. And he was active in local government. He helped out at the polls, and served on the Canton Finance Committee for several years.

Kip wore his heart on his sleeve, especially as he got older (something I find myself doing more of myself). My sister asked him to officiate at her wedding, which touched him greatly. He was so touched in fact, that he kept welling up as he was officiating, and my sister’s friend, who was acting a minister, had to put her hand on his shoulder to steady him.

Kip and Joanna shared a lot of our family vacations with us. The two families would overlap weeks at the Cape to give each family more time. Eventually they decided to move there full time. Kip and Joanna both loved the Cape, and Kip ended up becoming an early morning regular at the Hole-In-One coffee shop.

Kip, my brother Brian, Joanna at Nauset Beach

I don’t have many one-on-one memories of him–we interacted mostly at large get-togethers or when he would drop in to see Mum– but we did go in to see the Big Dig together. Several months before the tunnel opened, they allowed walking tours to go in and see it. Kip came by a week or so before, and I mentioned the upcoming tour to him, and asked if he’d be interested. So we went in, and I think he enjoyed himself.

Kip at the entrance to the Big Dig

As time went on, we saw less of them, since they were now on the Cape and we were still in the Boston area. Still, it was good to see them, whenever I could, and I made a point of swinging by their house when I was on the Cape.

The past few years have not been great ones for Kip — both he and Joanna developed health problems that I don’t need to get into, but he had a long, active life, filled with friends, family and his beloved Joanna.

Goodbye, House

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I had a particularly bad commute into work this morning. I’ve been getting used to driving the stick, but heavy traffic is just not fun, and I got stopped on an uphill ramp getting onto the Pike, and started rolling backwards when it was time to move again. By the time I got to the top of the overpass, I could smell the clutch burning, and when I got stopped again on an uphill at the Newton Corner offramp, I nearly had a panic attack. And then I got to the office, looked at my phone, and found out that our buyers wanted to close early, this Friday. Great, the one day I can’t take care of little things, and I need to attend to closing out accounts.

One of the things I needed to take care of was closing the account for the oil and getting a read of the amount of oil we’re leaving behind, so I called Fawcett Energy, our oil company. (Aside — they’ve been great to work with over the years). They told me they don’t send someone out to read the oil tank, and that I needed to stop by the house and read the gauge myself.

Gradually, I settled down, but as the day progressed, I started feeling waves of sadness. This would be my last time in this house.

This house has been in the family since it was built in 1940. My mother grew up there, and after my grandfather was widowed and remarried, my parents moved back there. Up until last September, it was the only home I’d ever had in all my remembered life.

That house has been the scene of numerous family get-togethers, Christmas Eves, cookouts, and birthday parties. I spent hours in the gardens, planting, weeding and digging over the soil, I had my darkroom there, getting me interested in photography. I’ve always taken pride that it’s been in the family that long.

When it came time to make a decision about where to live after Mum died, I vacillated. Part of me wanted to stay there. But it just wasn’t the same without her, and I was rattling around in an empty house. More significantly, the house needs a lot of repairs. My grandfather had added on to the dining room in the fifties, but that was about it. It needs a lot of attention, more than I can give it at my stage of life. So I started looking, but it wasn’t until I started looking at condos that I could see myself living somewhere else. My brother Tom actually found this place for me, and I moved in September.

Up until today, I’ve been surprisingly OK with leaving the house behind. This place is a lot newer and in much better shape. But something about the finality of passing papers hit me today, and as I pulled into the driveway for the last time, I started crying.

There was mail in the mailbox — mostly junk mail, but one piece addressed to the new owners. I got the key out of the lockbox and went in, leaving the mail on the counter. I walked around the house, and went into my old bedroom one last time. I looked at the dining room bay that my grandfather had built, and looked at the warm dining room floor that I’d helped my father sand when I was in 8th grade. And I cried some more.

I went downstairs, got a picture of the oil gauge, and took one more look at the workbench. And then it was time to leave.

After stopping to pick up groceries (and buy myself a treat), I got home, here. I walked into the kitchen, with its (semi) modern appliances and current construction, I reassured myself: I’d made the right decision.

The new owners are a young couple, looking to start a family. Hopefully, they have the time ahead of them to bring the old house up to date, and make it their home. I wish them all the best.

The house in 1940, shortly after it was built.
The house in 1940, shortly after it was built.

Old Voicemails

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I decided to go through my old voicemails this evening. I don’t tend to do this very often, so I had a lot of junk there.

The oldest messages were from my mother, back in 2018. Still hale and healthy, she was calling on a Saturday night, probably from the Cape, wondering when I was going to arrive. Then a few more, at various intervals, asking where I was, or if I was going to be home for supper. I miss hearing her normal voice — for the last couple of years of her life, she just didn’t sound like herself; most of the affect had left her voice.

The we get into the period when I was taking care of her. Calls from Home Instead, scheduling home health aide coverage. Calls from various therapists, either letting me know they were on the way, or letting me know about her condition. More calls from Home Instead, usually calling to let me know of coverage problems as she needed more help, and they struggled with pandemic coverage.

Then we move into a period of calls from Cornerstone — usually calls from the nurse or the director letting me know of problems that had cropped up. I have to hand it to them, they were good about keeping on top of their residents, and communicating issues. And finally, calls from the Ellis dietician and nurses.

That was a long period of my life, and I don’t miss it at all, and I deleted most of those messages.

In between, there was a call from my Aunt Diane, and a couple from my Uncle Tom, both wanting at various times to set up visits with my mother. Both are now gone, and I’ve kept those messages.

Strange how short little routine messages can become keepsakes of loved ones who aren’t here anymore.

Jeep Wrangler

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I first started thinking about getting a Jeep since shortly after I got back from Bonaire in 2018. The rental truck I had down there was a stick shift, and after struggling with it a little, I started to enjoy it, and when I got back, I started looking. Jeeps were one of the few vehicles around that still came in manual transmissions. As I started looking at them, they looked more and more fun, and I started looking at them more seriously. In the summer of 2019, I took an overnight trip to Martha’s Vineyard, partly to be able to rent a Jeep, to see if I’d like it. I wasn’t able to rent a stick shift, but I was able to rent a two door soft top and liked it, and started to think more seriously about one.

Then life stepped in. The situation at appScatter became tenuous; we went weeks without getting paid — obviously not the best time to be thinking about buying a car. Then Mum had her series of strokes, and taking care of her became the priority.

In the meantime, I spent a lot of time with the Jeep configurator, trying to figure out what I wanted. I knew I wanted a manual transmission. I wanted to get a stick shift while I still could, since they’re increasingly uncommon. Initially, I thought I wanted a two door model, until I got a closer look at one at an Auto Show, and saw how little storage space they had. Basically, there was room for a cooler behind the rear seat. In addition, while I would have liked to have a soft top, I knew I needed a hard top because of the kayak. I looked at the various trim levels, and decided a Sport S was probably the best version for me. It had a few extra amenities over the base Sport model, and I didn’t want the extra plushness of the Sahara, or need the added ruggedness of the Rubicon. So I would play with the configurator, choose the features I wanted, click search– and invariably I would find that nobody had the configuration I wanted. Usually, it was the transmission that was unavailable.

I kept looking at new Jeeps, and not finding what I wanted for a few years — not that I was looking too seriously, because I still had my hands full in other areas, but the fact that I wasn’t finding what I wanted meant I wasn’t pushing too hard, either. Finally I did a web search for manual transmission Jeep, and found that what I was looking for was available on the used market.

I started looking more seriously the end of last year. The Element was starting to become more expensive to maintain. I put nearly $4000 into it last October, and then another $1600 in December. Right around Christmastime, I saw a nice blue Wrangler with shockingly low mileage on CarMax that had the features I was looking for… in Maryland. It would cost about $200 to have it shipped here. I looked at it, and looked at it, and couldn’t quite bring myself to pull the trigger, until one evening, I looked, and it wasn’t available anymore. Damn.

So, when another one became available, I had it shipped up to Norwood, took it out for a rather lurchy test drive…and decided to buy it. It’s a 2021 four door Sport S Unlimited. The color is “granite”, meaning a nearly black dark gray.

It’s really nice. It’s a former fleet car, so that while it’s a 2021, it had under 23,000 miles on it. The body was clean, and the interior was in nice shape. It has CarPlay, and a lot of other computerized systems. And, it’s a stick shift.

So how has it been, getting used to driving a manual? It’s been a process. When I was test driving it, the salesman took me out onto the nearly empty roads around Vanderbilt avenue to get used to it. Driving it home was nerve-wracking. It was just before rush hour, and one of the first things I had to do was go uphill in stop and go traffic on Dean Street in Norwood to get to I-95. Somehow I managed to get up that hill, and then home in stop and go highway traffic. But after getting home, I just had to take it out again that night after supper.

The first week or so was rough. I was having real trouble finding first gear, because I was grabbing the stick under the ring that unlocks reverse. It was also hard to get used to starting up from a start. Like everyone learning a manual transmission, I stalled out a bit, or would unintentionally peel out from a start. I took it down the Cape the first weekend, and ended up in a little cul-de-sac in Wellfleet. I could smell the clutch burning as I was riding the clutch trying to ooze out and get turned around.

I feel like it’s starting to come together though. I’m starting to get the hang of starting up from a start, though, to be honest, I’m still nervous on starting up on an uphill, especially if there is someone close behind me. I spent some time practicing on an uphill on Sunday. It’s been a shock to me to realize how much shifting is necessary.

Driving a stick gamifies driving. I keep score on myself. That was a good shift, this one was really smooth, oops, I peeled out of that stop, or I shifted into third when I meant to shift to first, or worst of all, I stalled out. I had to drive over to Braintree this morning, in heavy-ish traffic, through a bunch of traffic lights (a lot of them red) and it went pretty well. I’m definitely gaining smoothness and confidence, though hopefully, not so much that I get myself in over my head.

Still, I’ve been finding reasons to go for drives after work. It’s starting to become fun to drive. And during the day, I’ll look out my office window down at the driveway and smile.

I have a Jeep.

Happy New Year

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Happy New Year! I went into First Night last night, mainly for the Pipes and Pops concert at the Old South Church. I took in the parade and early fireworks as well. The parade was noticeably shorter than parades of old; it didn’t help that I couldn’t get a spot at the edge of the street so I didn’t have a good view. The ice sculptures were a shadow of what they were a decade ago.

I’m hoping this year will be one of settling in and consolidation. Last year was a year of major transitions — getting used to the new normal without Mum, deciding to move, finding a new place, and then moving. I’ve been living with the instability of not being sure where I’m going to live for at least five years now, and it’s nice to have it settled, at least for a while, I do need to get a couple more pieces of furniture, and get some of my photos up on the walls.

I’m going to have to spend some time looking for a new car soon. I’d like to replace this car while I’m still working, and it’s also starting to get expensive to operate. I spent over $3000 on it in October to deal with overheating; last Friday I started getting a check engine light, had it serviced, and found it had bad spark plugs and a leaky axle seal to the tune of $1600. It’s noticeable more peppy after being serviced, but we’re at the point where I’m spending as much on repairs as I would on car payments.

We’ve had to spend time settling my mother’s estate and dealing with that crap. Fortunately, it’s mostly done at this point. We had a clean-out company empty the old house on Friday; next step is to sell it. Hopefully, that will be done in a few months, and this transitional period will be over.

I’m looking forward to having more free time again, now that I’m not having to take care of Mum or maintain the old house. I’m hoping to be in shape for diving this year. I’m looking forward to spending more time on the kayak, the bicycle and the motorcycle this year. There are some other things I’m considering too.

Here’s to 2025.

Making of a Christmas Card: The Early Cards

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I’ve been making my own Christmas cards since 1997, but my 2013 card was the first card I documented here on the blog, and it started an annual tradition I’ve kept up each year since.

There were a couple of reasons I started posting with that card. First, the blog was relatively new at that point. More importantly, that card was a particularly difficult one; I still remember the feeling of being completely stumped for days regarding the subject matter, and the difficulties I had trying to execute the idea once I came up with it, and how ultimately, it came out much better than I hoped for. So I posted about it, patterning the title based on Theodore White’s The Making of the President 19xx series. And I’ve been writing about each card since.

That card had 14 predecessors, though, and I thought it might be fun to look back at them and describe how they came about.

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