TomFlannery.com

It’s been a while since I wrote a song based on historical events. But this one was by request….made by good people. I hope I did it justice.

Mud Run Disaster, 1888 Carbon County PA. 66 people died when one train ran into the back of the other.

Mud Run

I don’t want to remember
the things that I saw there
but when I close my eyes
I still smell her singed hair
she said “stay with me sir..
just until I die…
promise you’ll hold your lover close
in the bed where you lie..”

That small band playing
“Nearer My God to Thee”
but even the Lord missed the signal
and the world fell in on me
Did you ever see a scalding
did you ever hear a fire
did you ever sense a train
or live through a funeral pyre

At Mud Run…I never heard of it before
twisted track was my ceiling
the roof was my floor
at Mud Run
it was something like a war
it was something like a war

It’s old bones I’ve become
a ghost trapped in time
tried to drive it away
by drinking away what’s mine
now I got these tremors
like rumblin’ down a track
passing the point of no return
and always looking back

At Mud Run…I never heard of it before
twisted track was my ceiling
the roof was my floor
at Mud Run
it was something like a war
it was something like a war

I’m getting old. Saturday night and me and the wife shared a pizza at a place filled with burping teenagers saying “dude” over and over again. We were home by 8:30. After checking in on some college scores, I curled up in bed with a new one volume history of Gettysburg, and was asleep before the late news started.

The worst part was that I enjoyed myself immensely. That’s the part that makes me feel old.

Pete Townshend wrote the lines “hope I die before I get old” when he was 20. These days he’s pushing 70, as rich as Croesus, with a much younger girl at his side, and musically is revered like few others. He may have meant it then, but I suspect he’s sorta glad things worked out differently.

Townshend’s music has probably saved my life about 86 times. For me music is not simply life-affirming. In my teens I could listen to records like “Tommy” and “Quadrophenia”…..both incoherent narratives, and they made sense. Townshend was writing these things specifically to fit into my head.

I never felt like I knew him. I felt like he knew me.

It was always that kind of relationship.

We’ve both grown old together….and honestly it’s not so bad.

Sure things hurt that didn’t used to hurt. Sure things that used to be black or brown are now grey. We need glasses now. And our ears ain’t so good. (Lucky all we need to do there is turn up the volume. One thing that cannot be compromised is volume.) We’ve added a few pounds. Crow’s feet. We embraced technology…..and now we’re kinda back-tracking. I like the feel of a legal pad and pen more than a keyboard again.

But it doesn’t take as much anymore. The feeling of crisp fall air……or the explosion of fall colors….these things can literally turn a bad day into a good one. Sitting on my front porch when the night is quiet. Tinkering on an acoustic guitar. My dog curled up next to me on the couch. My cat sitting over my left shoulder. My wife catching me looking at her the way I used to look at her. Knowing the kids are tucked in and safe. A close game on TV. A cold drink. Breaking Bad on Netflix, A great book.

In 1884 Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote “in our youth our hearts were touched with fire”. Ollie spoke the truth. We needed that stimulation. We needed that urging, The concept of growing old when we were 20 was bizarre. I worshiped my father, but I could never imagine being like him. It’s this mind set that allowed Townshend to write “My Generation” and mean it. And for me to hear it say, “yea, me too”.

But those days are gone. I’m still not comparable to my father. He was a much better man than I’ll ever be. But I’d like nothing better than to keep trying. And that’s going to take time. And that’s going to mean getting even older.

So then onward. There is much to do. There is time to be savored. I don’t want my heart touched with fire anymore. Perhaps simply kept warm. I want more early nights. More stolen glances. More music. More legal pads and more pens.

I hope to grow old before I die. With Pete.

In a bit…

–tf

Bad things always seem to happen to good people. Of course, good things happen to bad people all the time too, but we don’t take much notice of that. I think because it’s more common. “Often” becomes the norm….which is why we notice teenagers behaving nicely more than we do teenagers behaving badly. And why we take note of bad weather at the beach but the blue sky and hot sun are un-remarked upon.

One rarely gets the whole story, which is another way of saying we generally only hear one side. It would be nice if this weren’t so but so goes the world. We make do and make assumptions. And it’s at times like these that you’d better not have a reputation for being one of those bad people with seemingly incessant luck. If we haven’t heard your side, we don’t want it. If we have, we don’t believe it.

I was thinking on this on and off today. It made more sense in my head, believe me…but then again what thoughts don’t?. We’ve become so fragmented from each other. It breeds fear and pettiness. We smile at each other and then mutter imprecations when out of earshot. At the risk of sounding sexist I’ll say that girls seem better (or worse perhaps) at this than guys. I’ve heard girls verbally scratch each others eyeballs out to others, and then 10 minutes later they’re together laughing like sorority sisters. It makes for good water cooler chatter but it’s a bit repugnant nonetheless. Guy are generally too lazy to pretend to like someone. To steal a Twainism…it’s the difference between lightning and the lightning bug I suppose. One of the main problems of disagreeable persons is their sheer numbers.

So that’s that. The week is almost done and soon we can pull the car into the garage and not have to pull it out again the next morning. We can study our couches and watch football and late-season baseball and that sport where people drive around in circles really fast and try not to crash. We can pretend we’re normal by acting normal. We can fit in by embracing isolation. And if we get really bored we can head out to the local boozer and drink until we throw-up. At least people are honest when they’re drunk. For better or worse. Ever see 2 drunk people who hated each other pretend they didn’t? Me neither.

I must choose the appropriate mood music for the evening….so if you’ll excuse me. The days are getting shorter. That makes no sense at all…”days” being the same 86,400 seconds no matter the month….but it’s the norm to say the says are somehow shortened when the leaves turn. I suspect you’ll allow me to say it. If only so we can pretend to get along.

In a bit..

–tf

Both came to me today.

This morning I noticed the trees are starting to turn. The most beautiful time of year is upon us. I instinctively reached for my phone to grab a picture, forgetting that I haven’t had a phone for 2 weeks….since dropping it in a cup of Diet Coke with ice. So the photo will have to live on in my memory (it looked something like this pic but not the same). Someday I may get another phone, although there is something quite liberating about not having one, In truth it’s not much more than a tracking device you willingly carry everywhere you go, ensuring you’ll have zero privacy…..thanks to…..well….you. We needn’t worry about the NSA. They can just sit back and watch us spy on each other and read all about it on facebook and twitter.

Later in the day it came to me that if me and my friends live a full life, perhaps to 70 and beyond, this is what we’re going to have to get through. .

Bob Dylan is gonna die. Neil Young. Mick and Keith (well maybe not Keith). Sir Paul McCartney. Pete and Roger. Randy Newman. The guys in Los Lobos. Ray and Dave Davies. Chuck Berry. Jerry Lee Lewis. Little Richard. BB King. Fats.Tom Petty. Bruce Springsteen. It’s gonna be like losing Elvis…..over and over and over again, We’ve never been without these people. They changed the world, and they’re not faded pictures in dusty photo albums. Most of them are probably out there on some stage right now, playing music. They have never not been with us. When they pass, then what? It’s gonna be like trees in the fall going from green to winter bare. No more colors.

It was a scary thought and I wasn’t sure where it had come from. We are going to lose them all. I remember Elvis dying. And John Lennon of course. And then Kurt Cobain…..which affected me more than I ever thought it would. I cried when I heard the news. I was alone. I never cried in front of anyone, because there was no one in my life at that time that could have understood what losing him meant to me. All these years later there’s still no one.

Nothing lasts forever except a great song. Even the fall is temporary.

They are not going to burn out. They are not going to fade away. They’re just gonna go like the rest of us. Time is gonna run out. What do we do then?

Enjoy the explosion of colors. With a great soundtrack.

In a bit…

–tf

My Mother lost her brother last week. Donald Loftus died at the age of 89. His last few years were not easy ones. If there was justice in the world they would have been,

He enlisted to serve in WWII at the age of 16….although family legend has it that he was really 15 and got away with it because he was so earnest. Regardless, he was a child. When I as 15 I had to be home before it got dark. Donald was given a rifle and sent to the Philippines.

He was captured by the Japanese and somehow survived the Bataan Death March, He spent the remainder of the war in a POW camp, where he was subjected to unspeakable cruelties. War crimes. Horrors that no amount of time could possibly erase. At the end of the war when he was liberated he weighed 88 pounds.

Donald with my wife Karla

When he received his back pay (for his time as a prisoner), he used it to send his parents to Florida on a vacation. I never knew he did this. His eldest son mentioned it in a gorgeous eulogy he gave today at the funeral. I’m sure Donald has friends for 30 or 40 or 50 years who never knew he was a POW either. The Greatest Generation didn’t feel the need to talk about the things they’d done, or the things that had been done to them. Or the fact that they sent their parents on what may have been the only vacation of their lives. Never has a generation been more aptly named. Donald was once asked to lead folks in the Pledge of Allegiance and at once grew suspicious. “Why me?” he asked. “Because we wanted a war hero” he was told. “Well, go find one then”, Donald said. And that was that.

Parks and highways are named after crooked politicians. “Welcome to” signs for small towns tout them as “home of” somebody who could throw a football or baseball. We built marble statues of high school football coaches and granite busts of actors. Nobody names anything for quiet, heroic men like Donald Loftus. There will be no statues. No marble busts. He’ll live on in the memories of his 7 children and his 23 grandchildren. My Mom and her brother Frankie are the last 2 Loftus siblings. Two out of thirteen. He lives on with them. And us nieces and nephews. And the many friends he made. He lives on with us. But still, I can’t help but think he’s getting shortchanged. He’d certainly disagree with me. The last thing he’d want is somebody making a fuss over him. He never believed what he did was extraordinary. His country needed him and he went. His parents and his brothers and sisters needed him and he survived hell to get back home to them. His wife and children needed him, and there’s nothing more heroic than being a good husband and father.

If that’s not somebody worthy of recognition I’m not sure who is.

There’s a picture our family has. Somebody sent it to my father in the mail years ago. It was published in “Stars and Stripes” during the war. The Red Cross was allowed into POW camps, where they could collect names and serial numbers of the prisoners and send postcards home to the families. It meant “your son is still alive”. That’s all. No other details were permitted.

Something about this photo haunted my father. The men were lined up…and in the front row was a boy. He looked like a mascot. They all stared impassively into the camera. These men were all in their early 20s….but looked much older. Haunted. Emaciated. But not without a certain dignity. And this boy….his eyes burned. Like the men behind him he didn’t look mean. He didn’t look defeated. He didn’t even look defiant. I want to find some sort of flowery word here…but nothing is coming. He looked tough. I’ll settle for that.

My Dad thought it was Donald. It was the equivalent of a needle in a haystack. How many prisoners? How many photos? Everybody tried to talk him out of it. Dad was as stubborn as a Loftus (he married one after all) and kept writing letters. To the Army. To all sorts of government agencies. It took years. But finally. The men in the picture were identified. The boy in front was 16 years old. It was Donald Loftus. POW. The picture was taken at Christmas time. A propaganda attempt by the Japanese.

I was in the room when my Dad showed Donald that picture. It was maybe 20 years ago. Maybe less. It felt like I was intruding so I left. I have no idea what my Uncle said after seeing the photo. I never asked him about it. I never asked my Dad about it either. I regret that now.

What a moment that must have been. Two of the greatest generation…sharing a moment in time. And one saying, for sure, something like, “it was no big deal Joe. Have I told you about my latest grandchild? He’s gonna be a ringer…”

Men like this just can’t be replaced. The world seems a lesser place without them in it.

If you’re in that room with them, don’t walk out.

In a bit..

–tf

I don’t know if I have ADD or not. It’s a relatively new term. Attention Deficit Disorder. They used to just call you “fucked up” and be done with it. These days they want everything to be treated with a pill….and before they can prescribe a pill they need to name names.

Whatever. I get bored easy. I don’t mind saying it. I hate to repeat myself. I write songs mostly. It’s pretty much the only thing I’m good at. I’ve written hundreds of them. Mostly just for me to sing with a lone guitar. But sometimes (like my record “Teen Angst and the Green Flannel“) I’m wanting them loud. Sometimes I’m telling stories and sometimes I just pining for something or someone that ain’t mine. Sometimes I got something specific to say, and sometimes I’m not sure what I’m saying until I say it. But the truth is I’m much happier with a guitar in my hand than without one.

Kris Kehr is a friend of mine. Musicians aren’t normal. We move around a lot and aren’t very good at day to day things like keeping in touch. So the fact that Kris and I have seen each other probably 3 times in 13 years isn’t that big a deal. We drop each other notes and listen to each others songs and sometimes are in the same zip code at the same time and sing some songs together. We’ve got some things in common.  He’s a monster talent with a minimal ego….a Neil Young and Dylan freak who can pick up a broom and make music out of it. He’s also a brand new father with a heart of gold. Sleep deprived, in other words. Perfect pickings.

We’ve decided to write some songs together. And make a record. There’s no rules or timeline. We just agreed that it sounded like a good idea and started exchanging ideas. He sends me lyrics. I send him lyrics. He puts mine to music. I put his to music. We each have little recording studios in our basements. I send him demos. He sends me demos. In the meantime he’s incredibly busy with other things and so am I. But we make time for each other because that’s what friends do. Music is in his blood. It’s what makes up my veins. The fact that each of us has to deal with other things is a bit of a nuisance, but bills must be paid and all that stuff.

One of the songs we’ve co-written is called “Daddy’s Old Guitar” and Kris has already made it part of his solo shows. Kehr has a repertoire of about a million songs so to crack his set list ain’t easy. I’m proud of it.

Neither of us has any idea where this ride is gonna take us. We may write 10 songs. We may write 50. We may talk daily. We may talk once every 6 months. We live 90 miles away from each other. I’ve got 2 daughters to his one. The days of jumping in the car and conversing the old fashioned way are long gone. In truth we’re both old but won’t admit it. We’re both a little weary but that ain’t nothing a distortion pedal or a great hook can’t hold at bay….at least for a while. He’s a Deadhead. I’m a Drive-By Truckers devotee. We both passionately believe that if music can’t fix what ails you than what ails you ain’t worth fixing.

You got a better idea about how guitar players should spend their spare time, I’m all ears.

In a bit…

–tf

I think about my late father a lot. Every few years I re-read Roger Kahn’s “The Boys of Summer”. It makes me smile.

Kahn’s book is in the baseball section of stores. But it’s so much more.

It’s the story of fathers and sons…..of newspapers and newspapermen, of living with staggering gifts when you’re young, and seeing those gifts disappear before you reach middle-age. Thus, it;’s a story of aging, gracefully perhaps, but often flat out against your will.

It was my Dad’s favorite book. The Brooklyn Dodger’s were his favorite team. Pee Wee Reese was his favorite player. As I type these words I’m wearing my vintage Brooklyn cap and my Pee Wee dark gray away jersey. I’m thinking of Ebbets Field and Flatbush Avenue and Billy Cox at third base trapping grounders between his small glove and the dirt, like a man trapping a bug. I’m thinking of Snider desperately trying to hang in there against southpaws. I’m thinking of the peculiar genius of manager Charlie Dressen inspiring his troops in the 8th inning….”keep it close, I’ll think of something”. He often would, Oh but these Dodgers drove Charlie mad some days…”I wish they wuz all Reese’s and Robinson’s” is how he summed it up.

Jackie. The only man who could have done what he did. As much a pioneer as Martin Luther King. Just happened to be the most exciting ballplayer who ever lived. Could beat you with his bat, his glove, his legs, his mouth, or his fists. And he did it all while facing down America’s original sin. Died young. Hair turned white. His burden killed him in the end. But he opened the door, and it can never be closed. He belongs on the side of a mountain.

And Pee Wee. The southerner who grew up with racism ingrained in his DNA. But Pee Wee was a strong man, and strong men could flush out such things with their own common decency. And so one day on the field deep in the south, with Robinson being subjected to the most vile abuse small minds could muster, Pee Wee wanders over to second base and puts his arm around Jackie, his friend. The southern boys went crazy….calling Pee Wee “nigger lover” and worse. But that was that. A turning point. Robinson wasn’t alone anymore.

I don’t think there were 2 baseball men my Dad admired more than Jackie and Pee Wee. And my Dad loved Brooklyn. Talked to me about those afternoons, when for 65 cents you could sit in the grandstand and watch Furillo throw from deep right field to third base……with no bounce. The ball on a line….like a 300 foot fastball. Or Campy hit the ball a mile with that squat, weightlifter’s body that seemed impervious to….well anything. Rex Barney on the mound. He might throw a no hitter and strike out 10 or last 2 innings and walk 6. It was said he pitched like the plate was high and outside. But it was said he could throw as fast as Feller too.

I know why he loved the Dodgers. I know why he loved Kahn’s classic book. My father was the most decent man I knew. He was my Pee Wee. My Jackie.

And I’ll never stop missing him…

In a bit..

–tf

There’s always been a part of me that enjoys reading about baseball more than actually watching baseball. I’ve got stacks of baseball books. Everything from the history of the Brooklyn Dodgers to an exhausting 300 page tome written about a single game (Good game though….the 75 World Series classic when Fisk hit the home run to end it in the wee wee hours). I’ve read every word Roger Angell and Roger Kahn have ever scribbled. Great writers both, their talents so undeniable they would have undoubtedly been literary giants regardless of what they chose to write about. The fact that both men chose baseball says a lot about how epically human and endlessly fascinating the game is. (If the 2 Roger’s don’t wind up in the Hall of Fame I’ll be stunned, although Gil Hodges isn’t in so there’s no accounting for taste)

Yet there’s part of the game itself that sometimes seems almost too leisurely. Your eyes can start to glaze over watching batters stepping in and out of the box, dressing and undressing themselves between every pitch, which is thrown by a pitcher who feels the need to step off the rubber and rub the ball like an un-hatched egg every 60 seconds. Long gone are the days of the 2 hour game. Long gone are the days of a pitcher finishing what he started. Long gone are the days when a guy would hit a home run and simply put his head down and run the bases, as opposed to admiring his own handiwork as if he’s never seen anything like it. Ever. Long gone are the days when a pitcher could throw inside without some .220 hitter taking umbrage and charging the mound. Long gone are the days you could buy a beer and a hotdog for less than the cost of a new hardcover novel. Three hour games are common. Four hour games are not that rare. Baseball players only need to worry about playing baseball. The rest of us have work in the morning.

Plus there’s always the sneaking suspicion that what you’re watching has been chemically altered. The greatest ballplayer I ever saw was Barry Bonds. Then we all discovered we weren’t really watching Barry Bonds at all. And they all came tumbling down. McGwire. Sosa. Clemens. Rafael Palmeiro and his infamous wagging finger. Now everyone is a suspect.

But still we come back. We somehow convince ourselves that it won’t happen again, or that it’s not still happening now. Or both. Or maybe we just don’t care. Hell, wasn’t that McGwire/Sosa duel heartwarming stuff? Didn’t watching Clemens throw harder at 40 than he did at 20 make you feel like a lazy ass? How many gym memberships did Roger inspire? Who remembers the 2011 National League MVP anyway?

Still, the history hooks us and won’t let go. I actually remember Willie Mays with the Mets. I grew up with Pete Rose and Johnny Bench and George Brett and Carl Yastremski and Bucky Dent breaking the hearts of New England in that one game play-off…..a game that I saw as a kid because it started in the late afternoon….TV ad revenue be damned. Imagine that? I nearly caught a Mike Schmidt home run ball in my first ever game, more thrilling because I was about 450 feet away in the upper deck of left field. In flight the ball looked as if it was shot out of a cannon.  I don’t think I’ve ever been more awed in my life. A few years later I saw Schmidt hit a fly ball that conked off the roof of the AstroDome. I was non-plussed. I’d been watching him bludgeon the houses on Waveland Avenue when he visited the Cubs and Wrigley field for a long time by then. These guys seemed capable of anything. So what if I got to meet Mike Schmidt after he retired (at a golf tournament….he could hit it a country mile by the way….but mostly crooked) and the guy turned out to be aloof and arrogant. Being in the heads of countless grown-up 10 years old might make one cranky after a while. Especially after surviving Philly fans.

What is it that I want from this game? What do they players owe me for my allegiance?

Fall is in the air. I’ve accumulated a summer’s worth of patience. It’s time to start watching baseball again.

In a bit…

–tf

Got a major project in the works. Stay tuned…..