Category: Dad

My Hero Could Fly

~ thoughtsatlarge ~ 1 Comment

My kids grew up in the golden age of reading. They started reading chapter books just when the Harry Potter books took over the world. I grew up in the golden age of baseball. And by that, I mean the 1970’s. I grew up in Rhode Island that weigh station stop between Boston and New York. Many older baseball fans, stung by the Boston Braves leaving town, counted themselves as New York Yankee fans. Most of the kids I grew up with were Boston Red Sox fans. I was a Cincinnati Reds fan. Why? It’s a convoluted story of my father liking them as a kid because he followed Corky Valentine, a short-time pitcher for the Reds in the mid-1950s. Anyway, I grew up during the Big Red Machine of the mid-1970s.

I had most of the team in baseball cards. I meticulously considered my All-Star Game ballot long before dangling chads migrated to politics. And Pete Rose was my hero. He was me. He was not gifted athletically or physically. He was not a pitcher. He was aggressive “between the white lines.” And he was on one of the most dominant teams in baseball history. Tony Perez at first base, Joe Morgan at second base. Dave Concepcion at shortstop, Rose at third base, George Foster in left field, Cesar Cedeno in center field, Ken Griffey in right field, and Johnny Bench behind the plate. Believe me when I tell you, I wrote that from memory, as fresh today as it was when I was ten.

As the Fates planned, “my” Reds met my friends’ Red Sox in the 1975 World Series. Before each game, I would lay my baseball cards in their defensive positions on the rug. And while Game 6 almost caused me to drop out of school or seriously consider either homeschooling or the Peace Corps (rather than face my friends), the Reds won Game 7 and the World Series. Rose batted .370 and was named the World Series Most Valuable Player.

The thing about Rose as a player was that he was granted limited physical ability but an insatiable need to win, essentially at any cost. He was Charlie Hustle. Was he a showboat? Maybe, but he backed it up. I wanted to be a better player than I was. But I did love the game. My brother was a much better player than me, and I base that on the fact that he was a pitcher and played in college. I could barely break a window with my “fastball.” My brother once aimed at a kid’s head in Little League because he taunted him. Wrong? Maybe, but the kid didn’t do it again. Being competitive was equated with toughness. We were constantly reminded that we were not tough because we were not city-born. It was (and still is) a driving force to be overcome.

My father coached me and then my brother for many years. I can’t tell you the number of former players on those teams impressed by my father’s post-victory speech. He may have been disappointed in me (usually) or the team’s performance, but he always summarized his talk with, “The most important thing was we won, and they didn’t.” It never failed to bring goosebumps to the team. He was competitive, and so were we. Unfortunately, as my skills waned and were eclipsed by others, his pushing and my anger caused too many rifts. They ended in me withdrawing from baseball and fracturing our relationship for too long. I missed my brother’s college career because of it, and it is a regret I will live with always.

Pete Rose also made mistakes, permanently fracturing his relationship with Major League Baseball. Whether he, in the wake of the steroid era and Draft Kings advertising on MLB.com, deserves to be in the Hall of Fame cannot be settled here in 1,000 words (he does belong). He’s still a baseball fanatic and can tell you he batted .261 against Nolan Ryan for his career, but that one summer day in 1978, he went 4-4 with two doubles on an unseasonably cool July day in Cincinnati. He could tell you it was 71 degrees at game time. Ryan wasn’t supposed to pitch but came back on three days’ rest because… and he could do that with every pitcher and every game over every year of his long career.

Last weekend, my brother had the opportunity to meet Pete Rose at a baseball card show in Boston. In many ways, it culminated a baseball pilgrimage for the Fucile’s.

My dad is gone, and Rose is frail at 82, but he was my baseball hero, the tough hometown boy from Cincinnati. The Reds always were my dad’s favorite team and still are for my brother and me. My hero could fly.

Memories in a Bucket

~ thoughtsatlarge ~ 1 Comment

When I was young, my sister and I were charged with going to the Newport Creamery each night to get my father a pint of Maple Walnut and Walnut Fudge mixed. The bottom half of the pint was Maple Walnut ice cream, and the top half was Walnut Fudge ice cream. We did this most nights. It’s a memory my feeble brain still recalls. My sister is a year younger than me. We lived on the west side of West Main Road in Middletown, Rhode Island. The Newport Creamery was about half a mile away on the east side of West Main Road. Getting there required us to cross West Main Road at dusk or early evening when we were 10 or 12. And we thought nothing of it.

Seeing that road now, both with the volume of traffic and speed at which cars travel, it’s a wonder we saw our teens. And that’s one of the problems with viewing yesterday’s events through today’s lens. When we were younger, speed limits meant something. And while Aquidneck Island was always a tourist spot and Navy town, traffic back then was a fraction of what it is today.

The Newport Creamery holds a special place in my heart. Many an evening, after a Little League, Babe Ruth, American Legion, or High School baseball game, or just on a warm summer evening, “The Creamery” was a welcoming place to celebrate a win or lament a loss. I thought they had the best chocolate chip (and coffee) ice cream. And their Junior Hamburger was my favorite. Two, with a side of fries, please! And then a Turtle Sundae my way (chocolate chip ice cream, hot fudge sauce, caramel sauce, marshmallow topping, whipped cream, and a cherry).

They also have a milkshake made with iced milk instead of ice cream called an Awful Awful. Despite its off-putting name, it is so called because it is “Awful Big and Awful Good.” The challenge on the menu said if you could drink three, you’d get the fourth free. How could a teenage boy not accept that challenge? And at least once, I got my fourth free Awful Awful. Always vanilla flavored (for me), the marginal return on enjoyment waned dramatically on the second and third, only to rally for the free one. And then I’d walk home feeling the liquid slosh around inside me like my stomach was at high tide during a named storm.

The Creamery also sells half gallons of their ice cream in plastic buckets. Every home in Rhode Island has a few buckets holding various items (buttons or ribbons in the craft area, multiple nails and screws in the garage, marbles and toys in the kid’s room). And if I had access to the photographs in every home, I could find a photo of every child with the bucket on their head. I know I have them of my kids.

The Newport Creamery has had financial troubles in the past decade or so, and while I don’t know what the future holds for any of us, despite heavier and faster traffic than when I was a kid, I hope The Creamery exists for a long time into the future. There are many Awful Awfuls to drink and plastic buckets for kids to wear. And while my sister will argue that Frosty Freez is the iconic summer ice cream stand on “the island,” especially given that she worked there many a summer (and I concede to making a pilgrimage there a few times each summer), The Creamery holds many more memories for me.

No one has a perfect childhood or flawless life. But there are idyllic memories of youth and raising children, and The Creamery holds both for me.

Field of Memories

~ thoughtsatlarge ~ Leave a comment
Newport Historical Society Collections Online

Baseball has the ability to transcend time. Look at that photograph. Can you hear it? Ball meeting bat. Can you feel the contact in your hands? Not the connection of springtime baseball, the shock traveling from your seemingly electrocuted hands through your arms and into your teeth, but the solid contact made only in deepest summer. What position are you playing? Are you the batter? The pitcher? Infield? Outfield? On deck? On the bench? Can you hear the people in the stands? Can you smell the grass during the warm summer months? Look up. Can you see the soft white clouds watching the action as they carelessly pass overhead. That is baseball, and this was Basin Field in Newport, RI, in 1910.

Basin Field has hosted baseball games since the railroads backfilled the area initially used as a drainage area for steam engines. It is one of the oldest baseball fields in the United States and a gem.

Bernardo (Vlardino) Cardines was born in Venafro, Italy on November 15, 1895. After his father emigrated to Providence, Rhode Island, and paid for his son’s transatlantic crossing in 1907, they worked as tailors on Thames Street, eventually living with his aunt and uncle a block from what would become his namesake ballpark. Bernardo registered for service in June 1917, was drafted in April 1918, and was killed in action in France during World War I in September of that same year. Initially buried in France, his remains were exhumed and reburied in his hometown of Venafro at his father’s request, who had returned to Italy. Basin Field was renamed Bernardo Cardines Field in 1936. He may have been watching this game in 1910.

Perhaps it’s the story of the Italian immigrant, who, it is said, played baseball at the YMCA, or maybe it’s that baseball field that lives in my soul. It might be remnants of the recently played Field of Dreams game in Dyersville, Iowa, between my beloved Cincinnati Reds and the Chicago Cubs intertwined with scenes from the movie. It might be the link I share with my late father and brother, knowing we all played at Cardines. It could be that I’m just getting older and find myself warmed by the glow of glory days past, thinking of my teammates and adversaries, games and plays, moments and memories. Maybe it’s memories of watching Sunset League games played under the lights as a kid, knowing the 9 pm horn would sound from the fire station across the street and still jumping out of my skin when it went off. Cardines was the equivalent of Fenway Park or Yankee Stadium as a kid. The dream of eventually playing there was the equivalent of playing in the major leagues.

The photograph above struck me as a handshake reaching across time. The players in that photo are long gone. And yet, we share the experience of playing baseball on the same spot of land in Newport, Rhode Island. I know nothing about them other than they enjoyed the game. And that’s enough for us to be teammates and foes, brothers and friends.

Father’s Day

~ thoughtsatlarge ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday was my 27th Father’s Day; however, it was different from any other because it was also my first as stepdad. It was also the seventh without my father. 

Every job a man takes has its challenges, victories, and defeats; however, none are as humbling, daunting, or rewarding as being a dad. I can, through observation, not experience, assume the same holds for women.

“It probably takes many years of monastic practice to equal the spiritual growth generated by one sleepless night with a sick child.” ― Douglas Abrams.

I have always held that it is better to parent a child rather than be their best friend because, in the end, it is the adult they become that I want to befriend. 

We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.” ― Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Someone once said to be a father is to fail every day. I’m not sure I entirely agree, although there is nothing as humbling as seeing your failures play out against the vision you had of being a parent or witnessing the heartbreak in your child’s eyes.

“It is the most miserable thing to feel ashamed at home.” ― Charles Dickens.

Paul Anka may have written (and Sinatra crooned) “Regrets, I’ve had a few. But then again, too few to mention.” But I’ll bet everything I own he was not talking about being a father because I have memories/failures/regrets I’ll take to the grave with me that I wish I could erase. Regrets and shame I carry like Marley’s shackles.  

I am wounded. I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” ― Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Fatherhood is more than parenting; it is an obligation to become the person your children need you to be. And while there are regrets (and there may be daily failures), every father is required to get up the next day and try again to be the best he can be.

“I’m very at ease, and I like it. I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older, you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me. I’m rather surprised at who I am, because I’m actually like my dad!” ― David Bowie.

I believe each successive generation takes the parenting process adopted by their parents and tweaks it a bit where perceived injustices existed. Too often, the course correction is understated or overstated, resulting in a perpetual pendulum of adjustments, none of us ever achieving the centerline of success. We judge from afar the parenting of people we see in restaurants or malls, oblivious that the most potent spotlight we wield points inward. However, as children, at least initially, whatever homelife we experience is our “normal,” regardless of how extreme.

Oscar Wilde wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray, “Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older, they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.” We tend to think our parents had the parenting manual denied us. We forget that they were experiencing parenthood at the exact time we were experiencing childhood. There was no dress rehearsal, no second take. 

We never get over our fathers, and we’re not required to. (Irish Proverb)” ― Martin Sheen

There are inevitable disagreements and fissures. And while we can not bequeath our experiences to our children, neither can we be expected to endure repression of our growth from our parents. We must be allowed, as is natural, to fly from the nest. As a parent, then, it is our job to comfort the adult child when they fall and inflame their passion to slam into the next wall in pursuit of their dreams.

“Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement.” ― George Eliot.

This Father’s Day was different for several reasons. My son is now living in Texas, my daughter in Connecticut. My stepdaughters are at home with my wife and me. I spoke with my son via telephone late in the day and, while I missed being with him, as always, I enjoyed the witty conversation. After a year of social distancing, I was able to hug my vaccinated daughter when she joined us for dinner. After such a long time, it felt as if I appreciated a future I’ll never see, and at the same time, it felt like an embrace of generations past. My older stepdaughter gave me an engraved, metal guitar pick that read, “I couldn’t pick a better stepdad.” As the sentimental one in the family, it took everything in me not to break down. My youngest stepdaughter painted me a Father’s Day card with all the attention to detail and love an eleven-year-old can generate. I raised (in no way alone or even as a 50% contributor) two grown children. To become a stepdad now allows me to do the finetuning and course corrections usually reserved for generational levels. Will I make the same mistakes, will I overcorrect? I can only promise to try my best, to enjoy each day, and hope I can have some modicum of effect on the adults my new daughters become. 

I have no right to be this happy. To have two grown children (adults) with whom I want to befriend and two stepdaughters who fill our house with laughter is more than I ever expected at this point in my life. In many ways, I thought my wife’s death was the closing chapter of my life’s mile markers. But life had other plans for me, and when I remarried last December, I allowed my life to continue, allowed myself to be happy again, and it allowed me a chance to see life’s mile markers get posted by all of my children. I don’t have all the answers. Hell, I don’t even know all of the questions. All I can promise all of my children is that I will try; try to understand, try to grow, try to forgive, always to love.

And a special shout out to every single mother working to be both mother and father. That’s a strength I can acknowledge but never know.

Happy Father’s Day!

Imus and Dad

~ thoughtsatlarge ~ Leave a comment
Radio Personality Don Imus (Photo by Deborah Feingold/Corbis via Getty Images)

Controversial? Yes. An asshole, sometimes. An original? Undoubtedly. Don Imus died Friday at the age of 79. And with him, part of my childhood and a link to my father.

You see, in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Imus was on WNBC in New York City. My father would drive my sister and me to school, and he would fiddle with the rotary knob on the car radio until a barely audible signal would emanate from the static din, and the caustic, witty sound of Imus’s voice could be heard. News of the thunderous approach of Moby Worm would alert us that he had found the correct station. Zeroing in on an NYC station from Middletown, RI was no easy feat with the radios of the early ’80s! The preaching from the Right Reverend Dr. Billy Sol Hargis always made me laugh before heading into school. The worst situation was when we would have to get out of the car and enter school before Imus’s bit was done. I was left trying to fill in the blanks and finish the skit on my own.

In the seventh grade, I was disciplined by my homeroom/social studies teacher for not knowing the difference between wit and sarcasm. Maybe that’s one reason I liked listening to Imus. The other was because it was a shared experience with my dad. We laughed together and shared a sense of humor.

I continued listening as Imus moved to WFAN and then MSNBC. His politics changed, as did mine. But he was always able to get the newsmakers of the day to let down their guard and show the humanity behind their polished, over-produced exteriors. I thought of my father every day I listened. I wondered what he thought of the interviews. What he thought of the skits. What he thought of me.

My dad died in 2014. And now Imus is gone. That link is gone. But as I’ve learned over the past few years, I don’t need the “thing” to have the memories. The car is gone. High school is (thankfully) over. My dad is gone. And now Imus is gone. But I’ll always have the memories of those morning rides. Good night, Imus. Say hi to Dad.