What Do Hockey and Iconic Architecture Share in Common

By the 1930s, America's greatest architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, was in a slump.  He had disappeared to his singular home and school in Milwaukee, where Taliesin Fellows came to learn design from the Master, a refined philosophy of style that was acutely sensitive to its surroundings and also rejected the European old school that dominated the 19th Century.  In fact, despite being a leader in this design movement and building many structures from that century into the 1920s, Wright had stopped taking commissions, withdrawing perhaps out of burnout, but also because of a handful of personal challenges including scandal (believe it or not, a mass axe murder at Taliesin) and divorce.

By that point, one wonders if Wright himself thought he was finished.

He was almost 68 when in 1935 he was approached by one of his students, Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., the scion of a Pittsburgh, PA retail family, to design a summer retreat for his family near the Appalachian foothills.  They had long held a large, uneven parcel of land there with a lively stream called Bear Run coursing through it.  The rudimentary cabins the Kaufmanns maintained there had deteriorated and an upgrade of some kind was in order.

-- o O o --

This year, my son becomes a teenager.  No longer can I baby him or touch him gently or affectionately, at home much less in public.  The time has arrived for him to be treated like a man, so that, by the time he becomes one, the behaviors are already instinct.  At the same time, my life reaches a mid-century.  My 14 year law partnership is amicably -- but sadly -- dissolving as one partner is given a judgeship.  My neglected health needs attention, and I've been getting by on decades of invincibility.  I have been divorced for five years.


As a History major, I've always minded my past, treating it as an important touchstone.  So, it was with great joy that I received the response to this last minute status on Facebook.

"If any yinz wanna grab a cold, frosty Yuengling, I'm in Steeltown the resta da week, an'nat. "

My son plays violin at a near professional level, and his school orchestra was traveling to Pittsburgh to compete in the National Orchestra Festival.

In response to my Facebook post, my two best friends from Georgetown were going to drop everything to drive down to meet me.  Also, a law school classmate from Notre Dame, whom I knew mostly through Facebook, got a pass from her husband (who knows me not at all) to drive the two hours from Ohio to meet us.

To add to my luck, I learned that same day that, as part of the trip to Pittsburgh, my son's school arranged for a guided tour of nearby Fallingwater, possibly America's most celebrated private residential home.  Thinking they were mostly in Chicago and points west, I didn't even know any important Frank Lloyd Wright structures were in Pennsylvania, much less his greatest masterpiece.

-- o O o --

Kaufmann's Department store made the family who owned it reasonably wealthy.  Not as wealthy as Pittsburgh's steel magnates, like the Carnegies, but close enough.  When the family first showed the property to Wright, they pointed out a beloved waterfall where for years Kafmanns would play and sun and swim.  They hoped their new summer retreat would have a view of it.

The plans were finally revealed months later, in a classic surprise visit to Wisconsin by family patriarch Edgar Kaufmann Sr., in which Taliesin apprentices remember Wright calmly drawing the design he'd had in his head in the final two hours before his arrival.   Kaufmann Sr., who had to be persuaded by his son to commission Wright, was angered to discover that the architect had decided to situate the house atop the rocky waterfall.  During construction, conflict and disagreement continued when Wright subsequently learned that an independent engineering review of his cantilevered design was conducted behind his back at the behest of Kaufmann Sr.  Wright threatened to walk off the project and Kaufmann Sr. relented.  Apparently, to this day, legend has it that the engineering critique remains buried in a stone wall on the property.

Upon completion, the final cost of Fallingwater was $ 155,000.00 in 1937 dollars.  Built of Pittsburgh steel, concrete, and stone quarried on Bear Run land, the family lived and entertained there for the next thirty years.

It is unquestionably a masterpiece, nearly voted the Eighth Wonder of the World (losing to Macchu Pichu), or so the joke goes.  Embodying Wright's tenets of harmony with its environment, organic design, and Asian spatial aesthetics, no words can really describe a visit to Fallingwater without falling short. 

-- o O o --

When we fly out of Honolulu, my ex-wife drives my son and me.  We are friendly.  Supportive of each other.  We are family and always will be.  And yet I feel alone when there's no one to kiss goodbye.  It reminds me of that scene in When Harry Met Sally, where Harry sees Sally lovingly say goodbye to her lover at the airport and he observes, "You're obviously at the beginning of your relationship."

I find myself feeling that way a lot lately.  Ennui.  Cosmic ennui.

The perfect panacea for cosmic ennui, I hope, are the boys from Georgetown, the Jesuit and Thomas the Editor, and the person I shall call The Domer.  The plan is an afternoon of cocktails and laughter in a reasonably hospitable publican's establishment, followed by an Uber ride to the PPG Paints arena for a face off between the Penguins of Pittsburgh and the Lightning of Tampa Bay.



After days of attending orchestra events with my son, his classmates, and their way-too-intense-and-invested parents, Friday comes and I finally break away to meet my friends.  I'm just getting used to the feeling of my son so eagerly shooing me to walk off and leave him with his friends.

"I'm gonna head down to your lobby and mill around like Julia Roberts," the Domer messages on Facebook.  She has a way of being familiar and chummy, and yet she refuses to engage in cellphone texting with me and the Georgetown boys.  Too cozy.  I love that.  She and I were like ships passing in the night in Law School, sharing mutual drinking pals and seeing each other at every social event, yet probably never saying a single word to each other.  I was in the Slow Learner's class, as Notre Dame's Prof. Charlie Rice quipped, and she, not.  And yet, even then, I knew that she would be great fun to down beers and take in a hockey game with.  I was not wrong.

I knew that this cocktail of people would work, otherwise I never would've stirred it in the first place. I've already painted enough of a portrait of Thomas, but the Jesuit deserves a bit more attention.  As I've said before, he comes from the Eisenhower era.   Unchallenged as our spiritual and moral center, around which Thomas and I whizzed and sparked around like electrons.  The Jesuit was my guide through things literary and Catholic.  He came from Buffalo and had a major league throwing arm.  To that point in my life the Jesuit was probably the smartest person I knew.

And I was right.  The Domer fit right in.  Joke for joke, story for story,  entendre for entendre, we entertained each other, running our fingers over the sometimes-pebbled, sometimes-polished texture of our fifty year long lives. We compared child raising notes, even Thomas, who was later to the parenting game than even I was.  That night I went to a hockey game and a conversation broke out.

It was just what I needed.

-- oOo --

Over the years, people quipped that Wright and the Kaufmanns should have named the summer home Spreadingmildew.  I've read that when owners of Frank Lloyd Wright homes meet each other, the first thing they ask is "how many leaks does your roof have".  Walking through Fallingwater, especially as I did during the tour with my son's orchestra at the end of February, the spaces were cave-like and dank.  Spectacular views out, yes.  Beautiful built in furniture, yes.  But cozy?  Not exactly.

No matter, though.  Perfection needn't be perfect.

It was still the most sublime space I'd ever stood in.  Ample sunlight made for wonderful shadows everywhere.  Generous glimpses of the nature outside from every spot inside.  Rainfall shower heads in every bath, over a half-century before rainfall shower heads were even a thing.

In 1968, the Kaufmanns left the property in the hands of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, so that accomplished middle school string musicians could experience it for posterity.  In 1981, a comprehensive report was written by an expert museum auditor on what could be improved at Fallingwater.  This experienced curator recognized the pricelessness of the property and its contents (all of its furniture, after all, had been designed by Wright), and recommended numerous ways to improve preservation in the midst of daily tours.  The report was shared with Kaufmann Jr., then in his seventies.  Kaufmann, like Wright before him and the engineer's report, rejected it outright.  He commented to the WPC Director that Fallingwater was a summer retreat to his family, a place where his family sent discardable things too beloved to discard.  They felt no instinct to put these things behind glass.

-- oOo --

I tried to get Thomas and the Jesuit and the Domer on the list for that afternoon's private tour of Fallingwater, but there wasn't room.  The Domer would rise early the next morning after the hockey game to be home in time to find her husband embarking on yet another ambitious home improvement project.  No wonder she got the pass.  "Next time, mai tais in Waikiki," she said, and I'm pretty sure she meant it.

Thomas and the Jesuit were really interested in the house but they had roughly ten hours of driving between them to their respective homes in Brooklyn and Buffalo.

Our orchestra group jumped on the tour bus that had taken us around Pittsburgh all week and we set out for the foothills.  We enjoyed lunch in Ohiopyle, a speck of a town that existed only to guide river rafts in the summer and feed Fallingwater tourists.  On the final leg of our drive to Bear Run, the Juicy Lucy I ordered put me to sleep as I listened to Steely Dan's "My Old School" from a playlist I had created just for my reunion with those three.

-- oOo --

To gain an initial view of Fallingwater, one follows the original driveway several hundred yards downhill.  The house appears dramatically from within an obscuring thicket of trees.  As I was walking down this drive, I easily picked out Thomas and the Jesuit, who had decided to take an earlier tour, hoping also to catch me upon my arrival.

We exchanged brief comments about the tour and the house and the drive, laughing like we always do.  We hugged and I continued down the hill and they up.  It was less than three minutes.

Perfection need not always be perfect.

A Life in a Drive

I can't help but feel a little bit intrusive today.  I was given the privilege of doing something highly personal with another man's dearest.  It's not what you think.  Or, if you hang around here much, it's exactly what you think.

I was granted the high honor of taking a friend's father's classic 1966 MGB Roadster on a Sunday drive.  I have to confess that I all but invited myself to this party, made it seem like it was her idea, but, as I like to coyly admit, "I am not completely without artifice."  Sure she needed help burning off the better part of half a tank of gas before shipping it off to the mainland, but was I just a bit too eager to help?  Did I take advantage of someone who doesn't know how to drive stick?  Again?

Mindful of the intrusion, I made sure I was respectful of its owner, my friend's father.  Bill bought this little British Racing Green roadster, brand new in 1966.  It rolled off the lot in Ann Arbor, Michigan, if there even was a dealer back then.  I doubt it.  It could very well have just been an importer or broker.  Even in its heyday, MG hardly enjoyed much of a market share in the U.S.

This little convertible remained with Bill for the rest of his life, right up until January 2015.  Besides Michigan, Bill and the MGB were on the East Coast, probably Maryland, DC, and Florida.  Eventually, Bill's skill set with the technical aspects of Navy nuclear submarines brought him to Honolulu, HI (and probably explains their time in Virginia Beach and Cape Kennedy as well), and of course, the MGB accompanied him.

As I drove the little roadster today, I made sure to keep Bill respectfully on my mind.  He took great care of this little sports car, and, on my watch, I would too.  I'd never driven such an old foreign car before, and I was ever watchful of the various problems for which these vehicles were known.  Overheating.  Leaking.  Rattling apart.  I made sure on a couple occasions to park the roadster to let it cool in the hot sunday afternoon.  Under the shade of a huge banyan in Waimanalo, we popped the hood and took in the gorgeous little convertible.  But not because we had to.

No gremlins ever appeared, as Bill seems to have left this car in fine fettle.  And his daughter has cared for it lovingly in this difficult time, until she hands it off to Bill's friend in Ohio, who already cares for two other MGs.  While we drove, she shared a few memories of her dad with me.  They were bittersweet, of course, but I hope she enjoyed the drive as much as I did.  She did joke that she was her father's "other child," this car being her more beloved sibling.  No, you weren't, and it wasn't.

I realize I learned very little about Bill, and yet in driving his little MG, I feel I know a lot because I know that, for some people, a car is more than a car.  The clutch was tight and firm, the H-pattern shifter felt like I would guess it was meant to feel.  Perhaps the dash was blemished and shopworn, but the gauges were clear and all appeared to work properly.  The seats, while well used, were firm and supportive and uncharacteristically tear-free.  I felt like I was steering with a hula hoop, but lock to lock, it was solid.  Before ignition, I made sure to inspect things under the hood, and I observed no leaks, and fresh rubber connecting all the oily and sparky bits.  The rear vinyl backlight, despite it's age, was clear.  The engine ran - forgive me for the overused simile - like a sewing machine.  It wasn't very confidence inspiring when I wanted to overtake other traffic, but that wasn't Bill's fault.

It's paint job wasn't perfect by any stretch, but it was most certainly British Racing Green, and it was satisfying to be seen in it.  I caught people on the road admiring us as they passed (rarely did we do the passing).  This was no car show queen.  Appearance was important, but not that important.  This was an engineer's car.  This was a car lover's car.  This was a driver's car.  This was a father's car, a father like me.  This was the car of a man who knew how to enjoy himself.  Bill kept this car to enjoy the drive, and I hope he doesn't mind that I got to enjoy it for myself.

I tried to be, first and foremost, respectful.

"Oh no, Mr. Tate, he can't shoot!"

I can't believe that this blog -- about fathers, fatherhood, and especially now, for me, fathering alone -- has never ever considered Atticus Finch.  A widowed man who is a calm influence, letting his kids kick up a joyful, curious swirl around him.  A man who instructs not by lecture but by example.  A man who blesses his children with both his involvement as well as his absence.  A man whose character is revealed before his children's eyes over three summers in Maycomb, Alabama.

Here is my favorite scene of revelation, as portrayed in the Oscar winning 1962 movie:



So although Harper Lee's story is widely recognized as a meditation on American race relations, for me it is also about how to be a father (and, to a lesser extent, how to be a lawyer).  As part of my Canon, I keep a First Edition Library reproduction in my office, but I never refer to it.  It is only a touchstone, but like my law partner once said, it's a story he never wanted to end.  Fathering is a work in progress, and if one can keep examples like Atticus Finch in one's sights - even when one's glasses slip every now and then - the target will be hit often enough.

Father Son Time

There are 32 years between my dad and me.  He was a childhood survivor of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during World War II, and I was destined to be a self-absorbed '80s punk rock preppie.  I had everything and he started with very little.  Yet because of his force of personality he imprinted me with a love of cars and aircraft, a handiness with firearms, a readiness for conflict, a facility towards tenderness, and an inclination towards forging deep relationships only.

I don't think he ever understood the skateboarding, the aggressive drums and guitars, the comic books, or the foul language, but I also know he let me be what I wanted, within gentle parameters.  It's what makes me stand aside scratching my head as I watch my son chart his own way.

We are exactly alike yet so different.  It's precisely why when we did something together, father and son, it was always rare, bitter and sweet, and indelible in my mind.  I remember him taking me to see an aviation movie when I was 8.  I remember him grimacing when I confided in him that I thought I had a girlfriend at the age of 13 (I was wrong, but he let me figure it out on my own).  I remember him taking me to see the Blue Angels.  I remember him sitting through some ridiculous Japanese superhero stageshow that came into town.  I remember going with him to the Academy of Sciences Museum at Golden Gate Park while my mom sat in a medical seminar.  I remember getting a Tad's Steak with him in Midtown, because it was what he did when he was still flying.

And I remember going to the Hawaii Raceway Park in 1971 in a rented Chevy Camaro to do some laps.  I had a pink plastic F-104 Starfighter in the pocket of the shorts he and mom brought back for me from Amsterdam.  I was wearing Chuck Taylor knock-offs from Manila.  See?

Incidentally, I think he's none too please with how close I am to the dirt.  Sorry, Dad.  Love you.

Caine's Arcade

If you were ever a little boy, this video will thrill you. If you are a father, it is mandatory viewing.

The lesson I took away from this video is, as a father, it behooves me to enable my son to follow his dreams, act out his wishes, pursue his pursuits. That's what Caine's dad did for him when he gave him the majority of the frontage of his auto parts store in East L.A., so that Caine could build his own game arcade out of old cardboard and odds and ends.

The coda to this, and by far the least important part of the story, is that over $100,000.00 so far has been raised on line because of this arcade. It will go towards Caine's college fund and other scholarships. Read the entire story at www.cainesarcade.com.

Ride of a Lifetime

My son and I went over to my parents for our weekly dinner together day before yesterday. As we were stepping out of my truck in the driveway of the home I grew up in, my parents’ neighbor, George, roared around the corner in a sparkling blue convertible.

Now I’d heard about this convertible. George, a wildly successful eye surgeon, had a long-standing relationship with a local luxury car dealer. In the past few years we’d seen a parade of fine automobiles roll into his house next door; Maserati, Rolls Royce, Bentley. Cars that stood out even in my parents’ already wealthy neighborhood, where Benzes, Bimmers, and Lexii were the norm. But I had turned my nose up at all of them, until today.

I had heard that George’s Bentley GT Continental was in the shoppe and they’d given him a Ferrari as a loaner. This was it, gaudily rolling up my parents’ hill.

He had obviously spotted my son and me right away. Without hesitation, he skipped the turn into his house and pulled into our driveway, the engine from Maranello howling despite its idle. Equally without hesitation I blurted “I want a ride”, not caring how forward I sounded. I had never ever been in one of these before.

“Of course, Benjie. That’s why I pulled in here!”

And so it happened that I found myself in the passenger seat of the Ferrari California, a 450 hp, retractable hardtop, V8 beauty, with my son sitting in the small backseat behind me. George was resplendent in a loden sport coat, driving mocs, black-framed Ray Ban Aviators, and a Breitling for Bentley watch. The interior was also well appointed in leather, creamy in both color and touch.

The center stack boasted an LCD monitor and no gear lever, given the shift paddles on the steering column. There were cool gauges and switches everywhere, including those on the steering wheel, which reminded one of those found on F1 cars. We roared around the neighborhood, experiencing the motivation of 8 angry cylinders as we charged up to 60 in 6 seconds. He took us to the Waialae Country Club, the site of the recent Sony Open, less than a mile away, just to drive through the porte cochere, so the smart set could catch a glimpse of us.

Not taking his Ray Bans off the road, he exclaimed to me over the engine bellow, “You know, Benjie, they tell me I can buy this very car for $ XXX,000.00. What do you think?” He knew me as a serious car enthusiast. I thought, “Well played Mr. Luxury Car Salesman.” Nevertheless, I strongly encouraged him to make the purchase, especially with “I’d let you drive it but I can’t; it’s a loaner” still ringing in my ears. He considered my response and visibly inched perceptibly closer to Ferrari ownership.

Clearly, George was enjoying his time with this car.

Now George is more family than neighbor and I was thrilled to see him in the context of this little episode. Thrilled. He and his family moved in next door to us 25 years ago, and their son, about 10 years younger than me, went to my prep school and then on to Notre Dame, as I had, and later enrolled in law school. Like their son was to me, George and his wife were better than a decade younger than my parents, and had clearly invested all of their best wishes for their son. Augusto was their pride and joy.

So in 2006 when Augusto passed away unexpectedly, the lives of George and his wife completely fell apart. They’ve spent the past five years trying to put it back together. Given their character, faith, and beliefs, they have most certainly succeeded in the reconstruction. But from the perception that comes from daily next-door interaction, we know that it will always be incomplete.

It was nice to see George play with this car and realistically imagine what it would be like to own what for many is the pinnacle of sports motoring. Whether he follows through with the transaction or not, I liked the idea of George considering the possibility. It was not a mood I had seen him in for years.

At one point during the short drive, George turned to my son in back. He was more engrossed in his Harry Potter book than this ride of a lifetime. “Timmy, is this car wild or tame?” George floored the pedal to punctuate the question. My son, 7 y.o. and not yet past such invidious comparisons, smartly answered “WILD!”

And there we were, two forever OnceWereBachelors, wordlessly appreciating life and what we have and what we have lost.

Chevrolet: "My Dad's Car"

Lately, I've been seeing the shorter version of this video aired as a Chevy commercial, especially during this season's NCAA and NFL football broadcasts. I found it compelling but assumed it was a typical dramatization. Perhaps even entirely fictional.

Today, I stumbled on the long version, and was quickly disabused of the idea that these were actors fawning over a Chevy Impala rented from a Hollywood rolling stock lot. In a variety of ways, it reminds me that I shouldn't be so cynical.

Evidently, the footage we are treated to is the actual reunification of owner and car. The owner's family knew what was going on but he was told they were doing a piece on multi-generational families. Thoughts about how Chevy was brought in for such a photo-op and how they had the good fortune to have such an eloquent extemporaneous narrator leave my mind as I wonder what I would do for the ones I love.

Hip Scenes From the Summer

We're well into our version of Fall in Honolulu. The leaves are turning, it's getting nippier, and the chimneys are starting to ... oh, who am I kidding. Climatologically speaking, nothing changes here in the tropics. But you no longer have as much free, purposeless time in the Fall. Your sense of adventure drops by a measure. The grim task of heading into the holidays seems to be thrust upon us earlier and is taken up with less gusto each year.

Sooner than one expects, one becomes nostalgic for the days of summer. Here are some of my favorite memories from 2011:

We spent a lot of time camping in tents.

Luckily, not all of them were too far into the wilderness.

I managed to photograph many great cars. Some were at local rallies:

Others I found parked:

And many I snapped on the fly in traffic:

I returned to a fantastic destination for new memories. I hope they last:

I finally got the Mid-Life Crisis safety checked and back on the road:

Saw some great scenes with my son:

In fact, I spent a lot of time watching him grow up, which, like autumn, is thrust upon me way too quickly.

I Hate to Admit This

Twenty five years ago, I was an arrogant high schooler who thought he knew everything about everything. I knew that nobody over 30 could ever be reasoned with, that nothing good ever came out of my school, and that I would never come back to Honolulu to live. And I knew that quality music was never broadcast over the commercial airwaves. Back then, when I drove a 20 year old Ford Mustang with a factory radio, broadcast was all I could get, because I was loathe to cut into the original dash to install an aftermarket cassette player. I was forced to listen to the local "album-oriented rock" station. I scoffed at most music that I heard. Even this song. Especially this song.

I remember this song playing over and over my senior year and I thought I hated it. But it was the right song for that time in life. And I found it hard to ignore.

Don Henley crafted a perfect song when he wrote and recorded The Boys of Summer, and I was too immature to acknowledge it for over a decade, maybe more. It's a song full of ghosts and loss. The snare is unwilling to let go and the music that drapes around the lyrics is translucent, like lace on a closed coffin. It is adolescent and worldly at the same time.

Now I'm 42, loving life in Honolulu, and I am proud that my kindergartener son has started at my alma mater.Top: My son strolling the same walkways I walked on his first day of kindergarten. He's preppy in the RL Polo, pegged cargoes, blue argyles, and skechers loafers. And Speed Racer backpack.
Bottom: His homeroom, with Ms. G, who was there when I was.

He is in for thirteen years there, and I am just over the moon that he got accepted and wanted to go there. Hopefully, by the time he graduates he's more mature than I was as a senior so he doesn't miss some universal truths that I missed.

Go here for the original video, which can't be embedded out of YouTube.

The End of Summer Raid

August. Even when you live in the land of the Endless Summer, summer is gonna end. Bookended by Memorial Day and Labor Day, for my family it is a glorious stretch of beach outings, barbecues, unscheduled days off, camp outs, and various larks. This season, so far, we had four days at a fabulous beach house on the quiet windward side of the island, a camping trip complete with huge illegal bonfire and meteorite-like marshmallows, numerous evenings at the King Kamehameha Club, lots of surfing, and goodness knows what else.

To do all of that, you've got to have your kit together, ready to bring it, just like the Long Range Desert Group brung it to the Afrika Corps. Swiftly. Confidently. Effectively. Definitively. The Rat Patrol was already on re-run rotation when I discovered it as an eight year old. I have never been more enamored of a television show I rarely saw. This was back in the early '70s, when regularly scheduled programming hardly was. Some afternoons I would turn on the TV, tune the rabbit ears and there it would happen to be. The Rat Patrol. Sgt. Troy, prissy Sgt. Moffitt, Hitch, and Tully, cresting dunes at high speed in the greatest TV vehicles ever broadcast, a pair of G.I. jeeps mounted with .50 cal. belt-fed machine guns, all trained at the halftracks and "panzers" of Capt. Dietrich, the honorable Prussian.

All that pre-teen adrenaline certainly contributed to my choice of family summer vehicle: the crew cab with surf racks, in desert tan. Capable of transporting all the equipment you need to whatever outdoor destination you've chosen for your tribe of family, friends, and law partners.

I got mine mere months after my son was born. Turned in the two door pick-up after my wife rightfully cut my head off for trying to stuff my son's baby-seat into the rear "Xtra Cab". Sideways. I've never looked back (well maybe a little. That old truck would've taken me to hell and back). This crew cab has since dutifully carried my family through five summers, and I fully expect my son to drive it a dozen years from now.  I dubbed it "Warthog", because to me it is reminiscent of the indefatigable Fairchild A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft, basically a flying rat patrol jeep.



So with roughly two weeks left in August, I've still got hunting coming up, and then beach cabins for the Labor Day weekend. And I still haven't had to mount the fifty cals in the back.

Someday, this summer's gonna end. And when it does, hopefully it ends like an episode of Rat Patrol.

Bottom pic: The Crew Cab, laden wih surfboard, pole tent, folding tent, 3 coolers of food and alcohol, Weber grill, beach toys, water guns, barbecue gear, dry goods, 40 lbs. charcoal, and son sitting safely in the backseat.

I Told You It Was Red

Found another picture of my dad's 1955 T-Bird removable hardtop in red. He was always very particular in pointing out to me that the '55, being the first of the breed, was its purest model, without the long rear bumper and ornate spare tire cover of the '56 or the silly and pointless tailfins of the '57. Don't even mention to him the models that came after, which had back seats.

I never saw that car. Dad was 27 then. Already uncompromising. As if he ever wasn't. A few years later I came along, born with a Mustang in the garage, the first of its breed too.

OnceWereBachelors Careers: International Airline Pilot

When you're a bachelor airline pilot flying international routes, you've literally got the whole planet stretched out before you. Possibilities are endless. Your life is a William Holden movie unfolding. You leave home, go someplace exotic, mingle, and return refreshed. When you get married and have children, as my father eventually did, not much really changes except now you miss home, you return to your wife, and you make sure you've got toys in your flight bag for the kids to rifle through in your den.

Before I was in preschool, my father flew routes between Manila, Honolulu, San Francisco, New York, and London for Philippine Airlines. Back in the late Sixties at PAL, that meant Douglas DC-8s. Flying to the States enabled my father to keep his hot American cars, as well as those of his race-car-driver pals, excellently equipped with Goodyear tires he had loaded in the cargo holds of his planes. Corvettes. T-Birds. Mustangs. PAL would send him to flight training with KLM in Amsterdam. That's where he acquired his French aviator sunglasses, Harris tweeds, pegged pants, and Florsheim shoes. The gold Rolex Day-Date Oyster Perpetual he also acquired while travelling, I believe in Hong Kong.

For the PAL pilots back then, Hawaii was a significant touchstone, a waypoint in more ways than navigation. Investments were made here. Real estate. Life insurance policies. Friendships. And of course it was so very much like Manila. So when airline management got chintzy with the pilots, and a strike they organized collapsed because of scabs who crossed the line, my father resigned from PAL, packed up his whole OnceWereBachelor life, and moved us all to Honolulu. He traded the large Metro Manila home with the den and bar and the maids and houseboy for a small cottage on hospital grounds where my mother became a resident physician, a profession she barely needed to practice while dad flew the endless skies.

My father considered a few options, the least promising of which was American International Airline Pilot. Something about quotas for non-American-trained flyers, despite the fact that KLM training was top of the industry back then. Next least promising was bartender. My father has never been very talkative or hospitable and smoky places make him irritable. Eventually, he settled on life insurance, which he turned into a nearly thirty-year second career. He barely looked back during those three decades. Once I asked him if he regretted ever leaving PAL. Without hesitation he scoffed at the thought and pointed out that if he hadn't he doubted he would have a lawyer son or a surgeon daughter. I tend to agree. Privileged Manila Kid is a dicey upbringing to have, but I digress.

Selling life insurance sure wasn't the same as world travel, hands at the controls, thousands of pounds of thrust at your command. So it is not lost on me that this was one of many, many sacrifices that my father made for the better of our family. In this day and age, where I myself espouse quality of life, insisting that I couldn't work at a job I was unhappy doing, my father's sacrifice is even more remarkable.

This is barely the story of my father, really. I mentioned the maids and houseboy? In this new, non-airline pilot life, dad did most of the feeding and cleaning and grocery shopping and bill paying, while mom built her medical practice. He drove us to and from school. And he sold life insurance with great success.

Dad's in his early seventies now, and thanks to grandchildren, I truly believe he's getting younger and younger. He hasn't worked in years. When they can pry themselves away from our kids my parents travel often, mostly to Madrid and Manila, anywhere we have family. But for the sake of my dad, even though he retired from Equitable Life, I like to think of him as a former airline pilot and I always will.

Happy Father's Day, Dad. There will never be enough of them in my lifetime and yours together for me to be able to express my love and gratitude to you.

Top: My dad in the right seat of a DC-8 cockpit.
Bottom: My dad and his red 1955 T-Bird.

Two Wheels Good, Redux

My bicycle is 20 years old this year. In 1989, mountain biking was a fledgling sport done mostly by hippies in Northern California, not the billion dollar industry it is today. One of the cool bikes back then was the all aluminum Cannondale - a fat tubed, light-weight hard charger. Still an elite bike today, in the Eighties they intimidated. They looked purpose built, unlike the other ones manufactured by Specialized, Trek, or Giant. Those were still great bikes, but with the thin chrome-moly tubing, they still looked like paperboy ten speeds. My friend with the Honda Passport had one, and I wanted one too. Problem was they were pricey.Then one day, I was flipping through the latest spring L.L. Bean catalog and noticed they had branded bikes, and their top of the line looked an awful lot like a Cannondale. Turns out it was, and, with slightly downgraded components, it was priced right for this unemployed college senior. Even better, it wasn't badged as a Cannondale but with the familiar L.L. logo. Back then for me, going brand-less - the road less travelled - was my kind of trip. I still haven't seen another like it. It was the largest credit card purchase I made to date and arrived a week later in screaming red, with yellow accents. I assembled it myself in the front room of our rowhouse on Dent Place. First thing that went on it was a bat-signal sticker (before Batman was cool I stress) for its huge down-tube.

I took it everywhere, and unlike my skateboarding, I was pretty fearless with it, both on trails and in D.C. traffic. I took it to law school and enjoyed the quietude of riding through the deep woods on newly fallen Midwestern snow in truly freezing cold. It always lived indoors in those years, enjoying a favored place against a wall either in a dorm room or an apartment. When it got too caked in mud I just threw it into a bathtub and showered it down.

I brought it home to Honolulu and, sadly, I let it sit for many months until the months became years. Once, following a long distance canoe race, I pedaled it halfway around the island alongside a friend. But for the most part it stayed hidden in storage, at my parents' house, receptacle of all things old and mine. It still has the tires I put on it when I was in South Bend.Recently, my five year old was given a great BMX bicycle, also red, by his grandparents. It's great. It's not one of those kiddie-fied pseudo-bikes from Wal-Mart made by Red Chinese for Fisher-Price with pictures of Dora the Explora all over it and hard rubber tires. Toys. It's an honest to goodness machine, scaled down to my son's size, made by Redline in Washington State. It's got real brakes, tube tires, and anodized rims. We ride together now. Mostly at a nearby elementary school, or a park that has a mild hill he likes to pedal up then charge back down. Or he follows me around the big block that his preschool is on. We go 'round and 'round and 'round.So here's to my 20 year old and my 5 year old. What a time I've had and will continue to have. I think I'll go out and get some new tires for the older one, and a bat-signal sticker for the younger one.

The Green Rat

Drinkin' and Dronin' posted an entry comprised of Life Magazine Steve McQueen candids. One image in particular captured my attention. Mr. McQueen climbing into his 1950s era Jaguar XKSS in BRG (aka British Racing Green), somewhere in Hollywood.

Now, I don't know squat about Brit sports cars other than the usual mythology (they have bad electrical, leak both oil and rain, and are some of the most beautiful rolling stock ever hand-hammered), so I did some research and came up with more background on the King of Cool's car. The XKSS was a street version of Jaguar's D-type racer. When the D-type started to get outclassed in races, no one wanted them, so the Coventry factory took the remaining examples (over 20 of them), and re-specced them for the road, by adding a full-width windscreen, a passenger seat and door, modifying the exhaust, and removing the vertical single tailfin. These modifications not withstanding, the XKSS was essentially a road-going race car. McQueen loved his, chassis #713, so much that he bought it twice. He affectionately named it "the Green Rat".

I found some nice images of the detailing of #713 from Motor Trend magazine, including the custom cubbyhole for McQueen's everpresent Persol sunglasses and the wood and steel vintage racing steering wheel.

Imagine that man and that car at that time in that town. Technically, he was married then (to international model Neile McQueen) and had a son, Chad, but I figure this is about as far from being OnceABachelor as you can be yet still qualify as one.

King Kamehameha Club

We've spent a princely sum on my son's swimming lessons these past three years, and he's only now feeling comfortable in the water. Money well spent, though. Proof? Here's a cool video of my son doing the armed side-stroke in the pool of the fictional King Kamehameha Club, the same club that retired Navy Seal turned P.I. Thomas Magnum belonged to.


When I was in high school, Magnum fever was everywhere in Honolulu. Their studio was a few blocks from my home in Diamond Head, Tom Selleck lived even closer, and around town we would frequently see the film trucks, T.C.'s helicopter, and occasionally, the red Ferrari 308, sometimes laden with camera scaffolding. Larry Manetti ("Rick") rented videos at the same store I did and Larry Hillerman ("Higgins") lived in a friend's condo. Good times.

We didn't join the "King Kam", as Magnum called it, because he was a member, though. We joined so my son would have a readily accessible pool for his use, with a large sunken bar not five steps away from which dear old dad could keep an eagle eye. They serve everything from Guinness and Sam Adams to above-average trop cocktails (word to the wise: avoid the martini, it ain't that kind of place) and local-style finger food (sashimi, garlic steaks). You can go from cannonballs with your kid to mai tais with the mates as the sun sets and the waves lap at the sea wall nearby.

Life is good when you're a OnceABachelor who belongs to a private club on the beach and a son who can swim laden with weapons.

Bring Lawyers Guns & Money, the Shit Has Hit the Fan

If you don't already know, I'm an attorney - a combat attorney, to be precise. It helps that my partners are my most trusted friends, but it also helps to get away to discharge firearms with them. We do this several times a year on the Island of Lanai, where we go after deer or mouflon sheep, which are similar to bighorn. Also after Thanksgiving, we institute what we call the No Fly Zone, a high-spirited bird hunt with game as wide ranging as pheasant, grouse, and pigeon.

This year we changed it up and went to the Kenai Peninsula in southern Alaska for a moose hunt and salmon fish. To put it bluntly, we collectively threw up a brick, shooting no moose and catching no salmon worth keeping. But we sure did achieve our goals: maximum fun far from the nerve-jangling courtrooms. We ranged far and wide for moose, even finagling a hot tip from a local as to where best to find them. The tip proved honest as we spotted lots of moose and caribou, but none that were legal to harvest. We also bent lots of fishing rods and reeled in lots of pink salmon, but this late in the season and that far from salt water, they weren't particularly grill-worthy. We were after the silver salmon, which were very rare indeed but prized for their tasty flesh at this time of season. This OnceABachelor did manage an amazing feat: hooking a 30lb king salmon, also out of season, which I had to return to the fast running river on which our cabin was located.

The cabin itself was the vacation home of an Anchorage attorney who generously loaned it to us for a week, through his aunt, who is married to the friend of one of our party. She gamely stayed with us to act as den mother, doing the cooking and cleaning. This turned out to be a good stroke of luck because she was able to coordinate the emergency tow with heavy equipment when our rental 4-wheel-drive got stuck 12 miles from the main road in a bog. If it wasn't for her, we might have been forced to spend the night in 40 degree weather or walk out in the dark.

Additional thanks go to Clint from Sterling Towing for bringing his impressive flatbed tow vehicle out through the mud and rain and then driving it backwards up two slick hills to tie up to our truck at 1:00 a.m.

And permeating the whole trip was the possible encounter with Alaskan brown bears. Everywhere we went we were grimly reminded by the locals of the increase in bear encounters, sightings, and attacks. The week we arrived in fact, a brown bear found its way into traffic in downtown Anchorage (near the courthouse, ironically) where it was struck by a car. Joggers and hikers have been mauled. Because of this sobering reality, Alaskans more often than not can be found armed. We spotted joggers wearing holsters, and people walking their dogs with rifles slung on their backs. No one looked twice when one of us walked into a Home Depot wearing his .357 on his hip. Luckily, we saw no browns, although I did spot two black bears. My partner even took a shot at one from an impossibly long range on Skyline Trail after a harrowing hike one mile up.

So my son was thrilled to hear about all of the guns we brought along, and peppered me with questions during each phone call home. He was uncontrollably curious when he saw my gun case loaded into the back of mom's vehicle when she picked me up at the airport. Once at home, he insisted that I identify each weapon and describe it in detail. This is Uncle Jeff's 30-06 with variable scope, this is Uncle Rick's magnum, which he calls the Hog (and which we fired in a redneck "holler" out in the woods). And this is daddy's trusty 30-30 lever action, which is not big enough for hunting in Alaska but plenty good for personal protection there. It is black and brown and has a thumb operated hammer, just like the "practice" gun I brought home for you from the Sportsmen's Warehouse in Anchorage. You can imagine how happy he was to be given this gun, especially when I pulled it out of the same gun case that transported all the grown-up weapons. And you can also imagine how much I look forward to teaching him proper firearms safety with it. No joke.

Incidentally, think twice about leaving your wife and son for a 10 day trip. It had better be worth it, because you will miss them uncontrollably.

Images from top to bottom: (1) an Alaskan Amber ale on the back deck of our cabin; (2) moose cow in Soldotna, AK at a popular though undisclosed hunting spot; (3) the same herdlet of caribou we spotted 2 mornings in a row; (4) spincasting psychiatrist on the Russian River (he'd rather be fly casting, but TSA broke that rod); (5) fishing off our own backyard; (6) flatbed towtruck belonging to Sterling Towing, off road on Mystery Creek after midnight; (7) spotting from our truck before hiking in; (8) target practice with the Hog in Soldotna; (9) my son with his new practice gun.