It was BIG alright!
When I woke up Kryha said “Those poor Japanese people” and here it was eight or so days later and we are still captivated by the news. But when it is the first thing you say when you wake up then you know it was such an intense, earth moving event that you become consumed by it….well at least I was. It is the opposite – “does – G(g)od – really – exist” – thought. What I mean by that is this: “Why them?” Aren’t the Japs supposed to humble, quiet and clean? Free of crime? Spiritual?” If G(g)od really does exist then why would he wallop them with the triple-header? Tonight was the biggest moon in eighteen years. I thought of Richard and Clara. How close their dead bodies were. How I wanted to be by them. I imagined laying down on the grass spread out. Reaching for their bones. Reaching for the life that they lived. The Trolly cars, the horse shit on main street. Chicken dinner with the Hartmann’s The woman with the beautiful big brown eyes, mother of fifteen children. Burying two little infants (I will find them one day too!) and what about all the heartache, that they experienced? It all means nothing now. They had the world on their shoulders and now they are buried in it. This hustling-bustling time bomb of a planet. I would see Joshua and Jonathan tomorrow, BUT today, a day before the Big Moon, I would visit Richard and Clara. Swiftly through the sky blue windy day. (one day before Big Moon. In German dreams and tongue, I travel through time on slow moving elephants. Into the sands of time, the hourglass of past memories, into the streets of Jersey City.
Only In America can you come home from such a busy day and pop some popcorn in the microwave oven, sit down and watch a war, live on television, and then they cut over to a nuclear disaster (they are finding trace amounts of radiation in Seattle Washington) There are people over there that have been buried underneath the rubble for a week and they are uncovering them alive. If you want to know what it is like to get swept away by a tsunami, then you should watch the first ten minuets of Clint Eastwoods (directed by) movie,
The Hereafter Although, it is nothing like the first ten minuets of
“Saving Private Ryan” it has the same effect. It blows your mind!
PHOTOS THAT MAKE YOU THINK
In March 2011’s photo’s I only now just noted that there is one thing similar to all the photos for that month. I took every single photo. Do you think I will ever run out of photos that make you think? Maybe when all the photos are grabbed off my laptop it may mean only three things: 1. I have run out of photos and I am desperate. 2. I am just a lazy bastard and didn’t have time to scan, clean and color correct. OR 3. I am still waiting for help from the family in the form of emails and/or snail mail scans.
In Feb 2011 photos that make you think there is a photo of one of the scariest moments in my life. In the Summer of 1975 I was sent to California to visit the Jones’. The Jones’ were our nephews and niece from our fathers side of the family. Our father had a sister named Geraldine. She married Robert “Jay” Jones. They had three children: Robert, (Jaybird) Diane and Dennis. We used to be very close with them as children (for those very few of us who can remember) Jay Jones was a professional soilder and “worked” as a soilder in south Jersey. Dad used to take us down there alot. His sister Geraldine, was a shrieking manic-depressant that yelled and cried a lot. She was a very good woman, though. She also had another child, much older than the others named David, I think out of wedlock that eventually became some kind of manager for Dads fabric store in Westfield.
"Jaybird" Jones poses with me pool-side July 1975. He reeked of reefer and mistrust.
In my Summer trip to California I met all the Jones’ for what would probably be the last time in my life. My aunt Geraldine loved to take photos but she was lousy at it.
I hated being there in California that Summer. I was told it would only be “a week or two” but it turned into the whole Summer. I wil never forget that lie. Mom drove me to Newark airport very drunk and late. The plane ride was my first and it was amazing to me. To look down at the clouds, toy cars and toy cities it is only then that you realize just how bug The United States of America is!! (2,825 miles)
I wanted to be home. Summers were magical back then. The side-street gang may have been fading, Bill Brunner may have moved away for all eternity but there was no school, no work and long hot days. Mc, Gitts, Beds, and the others were all playing baseball, football and hunting for unexploded fireworks on the streets July 5th.
In this photo Jaybird had me! His arm around my neck. Aunt Gerry ready to snap a photo and I just knew he was gonna throw me in the pool and the sound of “cheese”.
I was a very awkward fifteen year old boy. I was as skinny as a stick. I had a uncontrollable mop of yellow hair, pimples all over, I had two huge front teeth that were chipped (I didn’t smile for 18 years until I had them fixed myself) I was lost without my father, my mother was always drunk, I had zero self-confidence, I had just completed my freshman year in an all-boys Catholic High School that was an absolute nightmare, I didn’t know what was going on inside my body or outside my body. My penis had become an uncontrollable monster connected to me like an evil twin. I was confused, very lonely, young, dumb and full of ……
Jaybird never threw me in the pool but now thirty-six years later I am looking for him. On Facebook. In people searches, obituaries, web browses… I have been trying to find this part of our family for as long as the internet has been around. The biggest obstacle that I have faced is their last name:
JONES. (this is the third most common name in the United States behind Brown and Williams)
The “TAG” words in this blog, I have discovered are VERY powerful. They are openly exposed (and
very quickly I might add) to search engines all over. I have randomly added our cousins the Jones’ to many of the blog posts in the hopes that maybe one day they may “google” themselves and find us. So far nothing. No sign of any Jones’ anywhere. Come out, come out, where ever you are!
Why America is so Damn Fat getting fatter.
It all began about eight or nine years ago when fast food establishments ended their CASH ONLY policy and started accepting credit cards. WORSE THAN THAT, they suddenly started their “We are open LATE” routine. Not just until midnight but two or three o’clock in the morning. Have you ever driven past the drive thru of a McDonalds at ONE AM in the morning and seen seven or eight cars waiting for deep fried fat and hamburger meat on a sesame seed bun?? Is it dinner time? NO! It’s let’s have ANOTHER fat drenched meal before bedtime!!!
WHY do we CARRY ON like nothing happened?
Am I the only one that still feels a sense of dread and doom over the loss of 15,000 human beings and counting in Japan?? That there is STILL a NUCLEAR TIME BOMB on the edge of the ocean some where in the world. Life still goes on. We work. We go to school. We play. We turn on the news and Japan isn’t the headlines anymore, sometimes not even the second page. Mothers are still driving their cars, loaded with their young innocent children into lakes. People are still getting blown-up beyond recognition in third world countries, the economy is still sinking like a Western sunset into the sea…people are still killing people, with guns, their cars, bats, knives and poison. Life goes on.
WHERE IS THE HAPPY NEWS?
HEADLINES:
Father
Doesn’t Leave Family
or
Women Completes Rehab rejoins family to tears and hugs
or
Family Buys A Home
or
Man Donates HALF his Savings to Charity
or
Woman Opens Door For Crippled Woman at WalMart
Westfield was my second childhood. We knew the back alleys and mom and pop stores like the back of our hands. It still remains a charming town but has lost it’s innocence as everything does when you grow up. The smell of 
