BS: To be read on the day

Subject: BS: To be read on the day
From: Frivolous Sal
Date: 30 Sep 07 - 12:36 AM

A certain gentleman of my acquaintance will turn seventy-five next week, and will throw the requisite "Hoot" on Friday, October 5th. If some members of this group would come up with useful readings, or what-not, I will see that it gets to the gathering.
Come one and all!

Subject: RE: BS: To be read on the day
From: Frivolous Sal
Date: 30 Sep 07 - 12:38 AM

Of all the persons alive
Only some reach seventy-five
To get to that state
Without being 'late"
Takes stubbornness, Gumption and Drive



When Richard's birthday is due
Much of Seattle says, "who?"
Old Hippies and bums
Raise up their thumbs
And call him a part of the crew

Subject: RE: BS: To be read on the day
From: GUEST,FnkLeRoi
Date: 30 Sep 07 - 02:43 AM

A toast to my Dad, the only living Irishman who cannot drink beer. A hard worker (just ask him!), who luckily married well.

I do not remember the first time I met my Dad. I only found out later that he missed my birth, by minutes, due to having to go to a job interview. He won the job despite his 41 years due to my "It's A Boy!" sticker, or so I have been told. I do not remember getting a thank you at the time either.

Did you know that my son, Connor, has his hair? Don't think so?, look at some old pictures, you'll see. Blonde, curly, and crazed. Connor loves his Bito, maybe not as much as black olives but Bito understands these things. Did you know that he used to eat black olives like they were candy? Here are some pictures of the 2:
Fun With Bito

In 1993 I told my Dad that when the roof was replaced, if he still lived there and helped with it I would pay for it. The roof was guaranteed for 40 years, that bill will be coming up in 26 years. According to my bank, the roof had better last 80 years.

Here's to my Dad!, may we all our spouses work as hard as his, and may we learn to be as stoic about our hardships.

Patrick

Subject: RE: BS: To be read on the day
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 30 Sep 07 - 05:00 AM

Lewis Carroll
        
You Are Old, Father William

       "You are old, father William," the young man said,
          "And your hair has become very white;
       And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
          Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

       "In my youth," father William replied to his son,
          "I feared it might injure the brain;
       But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
          Why, I do it again and again."

       "You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
          And you have grown most uncommonly fat;
       Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door--
          Pray what is the reason for that?"

       "In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
          "I kept all my limbs very supple
       By the use of this ointment - one shilling a box--
          Allow me to sell you a couple?"

       "You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
          For anything tougher than suet;
       Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak--
          Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

       "In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
          And argued each case with my wife;
       And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
          Has lasted the rest of my life."

       "You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
          That your eye was as steady as ever;
       Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose--
          What made you so awfully clever?"

       "I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
          Said his father. "Don't give yourself airs!
       Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
          Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs.

Subject: RE: BS: To be read on the day
From: van lingle
Date: 30 Sep 07 - 05:36 AM

From the DT a song that Pete Seeger is associated with called My Get Up and Go Has Got Up and Went. First verse:

How do I know my youth is all spent?
My get up and go has got up and went.
In spite of it all I'm able to grin,
And think of the places my get up has been.

Subject: RE: BS: To be read on the day
From: Deckman
Date: 30 Sep 07 - 10:45 AM

We've been enjoying the posting to this thread. A 75'th birthday is indeed some kind of an achomplishment. Especially knowing "HIM" as I do. Really, look at it: surviving the wars; errant husbands and wives; untold stages (and damned well left untold); and too many friends to even begin to remember.

We will be there for this party. I would post something more appropriate here on MC, but I don't know how to display 75 naked dancing ladies on-line. But we'll bring them with us to the gathering! (be forwarned Dick). CHEERS, Bob(deckman)Nelson

Subject: RE: BS: To be read on the day
From: Peace
Date: 30 Sep 07 - 12:37 PM

Check out the thread entitled "Songs about getting really old." I'll refresh it.

Subject: RE: BS: To be read on the day
From: Don Firth
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 10:04 PM

Hi, Mehitabel,

Sorry I didn't get this to you sooner. I've been racking my brain trying to come up with some bit of writing for Dick's birthday (the BEEG SEVEN-FIVE), then it occurred to me that I already had something.

I'm writing a sort of "memoir" or set of reminiscences about the folk music scene in Seattle and the folks who inhabited it, and lo! I dug up the following ( I think Dick might get a snort out of it):

        The old storefront on lower Brooklyn Avenue—the one where Sandy Paton's "going-back-to-points East" party had been held—had not actually been used as a store for some years. It had become a living space. It possessed the necessary sanitary facilities, but not many amenities, so its various tenants usually didn't stay long. The area was residential, but the storefront was a separate building somewhat isolated from nearby occupied housing, so it often functioned as a weekend party pad. During the middle and late Fifties, it developed into another venue for hoots.
        To be honest, I'm not too sure that some of the bashes held there really fell into what we normally referred to as hoots. A Friday or Saturday night rarely passed without some kind of party there. They were usually populated by folk singers looking for somewhere to sing, along with others who were just looking for a party. Fortunately, both groups were fairly compatible.
        Over a period of a couple years, vast quantities of beer and jug wine were consumed. As the night progressed, the atmosphere in the big room turned blue with cigarette smoke. Yet most of us are still alive (Cough! Wheeze!) and with a few exceptions, I can't recall anyone getting all that drunk. Considering the events of a decade later, it may seem amazing that at no time were illegal drugs ever in evidence. For a bunch of wild-eyed students, musicians, poets, and folk singers engaged in an orgy of singing and guitar-playing, following generations would have probably found most of us boringly straight-arrow.
        Some monumental singing went on there, often late into the night. I remember one evening when a big bunch of us, including Dick Gibbons, Moose, and God knows who all else got rolling on What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor. We started making up verses. It was pretty easy to do because all you had to do was make up one line. There were enough of us participating so that by the time our turn came up again, we could be well prepared. Predictably, as the song progressed (if that's the right word) each verse got raunchier than the last. We kept it going for well over half an hour. Too bad nobody had a tape recorder going.
        Then again, maybe it's just as well.
        One of the storefront's temporary inhabitants was Richard Patrick Gibbons. I first met Dick Gibbons in the Husky Union Building cafeteria around 1950 or '51 when he was about eighteen and going through his Chicago gangster phase (No, I'm not going to try to explain that). We ran into each other fairly often. He was attending the U. of W., but took a couple years out when the military snatched him and sent him off to Korea.
        I didn't know quite how to take Dick when we first met. He told stories of wild adventures he had been involved in—far too many adventures, I thought, for someone no older than he was. His yarns were only semi-plausible, but he told them with flair and humor. Rather than recounting deeds of firm-jawed heroism, he was almost self-deprecating as he described his part in these escapades. He was a highly entertaining raconteur. Always a sucker for a good story, I would sit and listen, fascinated, while his tales unfolded. Nevertheless, I had little doubt that he was cranking out more baloney than Oscar Mayer ever dreamed possible.
        Then it happened. I met some of his companions on these adventures. It turns out that the stories he had told were true.
        Mostly.
        The art of the skilled narrator is to know what to emphasize and what to leave out. It comes as no surprise that among his myriad occupations, he is a writer. He has written magazine articles, a lot of poetry, and, I believe, two novels.
        Dick's interests were (and are) protean. I was aware that he knew quite a bit about folk music even before I met Claire and Walt and became involved myself. He was not really a performing folk singer as such, but unlike many city folkies who tried to create the impression that they had traveled the country 'round, hopping freight trains and working in mines, Dick actually did these things. In fact, while working in a mine in Montana (I think it was Montana), a woman in a bar told him a story that captured his imagination. He took it and turned it into a song-poem, them cobbled up a tune for it. Among the people he sang it for was Tom Paxton. Paxton subsequently recorded it on his "Ain't That News?" album. It's called Sully's Pail.

© Copyright, Don Firth, 2007

Happy birthday, Dick! How about we go for another seventy-five!??

Don

Subject: RE: BS: To be read on the day
From: old moose
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 02:29 AM

I've penned a screed which I will not post on accounta I'm going to read it at the bash on Friday. Simce Don Firth won't be there I sent it to him and others who know Dick but won't be th
ere either. I'm pretty sure Dick doesn't read e-mail (Hela does)and so I don't believe he reads mud cat either, but on the off chance I'm reserving the buffuoonery till friday. I'll post it here just before the hoot so that those who don't get to RPG's for the event can console thensekves at no being trapped and forced to listen. They can delete it right here with no effort. elmoose

Subject: RE: BS: To be read on the day
From: Don Firth
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 10:45 PM

I love it! It verges on epic poetry!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: To be read on the day
From: old moose
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 12:09 AM

So here it is, one day after the party For a captive audience the folks were vey kind. I heard no audible booing.   I felt awkward though I had neither feathers or wings, nobody was alowed to flee to the loo and the food was indoors, not like we do it in summer, and everyone stated put. I want to thank Don Firth for his praise, and all those who listened so well and all those whom read it here.
                         old moose      
   


       The Blithering Idiot Speaks
Good friends, if I may make that assumption,
(you choose which is the assumption)
I have noticed, on past occasions, your toleration
Of blithering idiots who chose to stand before you
And read aloud, what ever they chose to write.

So being an idiot, I have chosen to blither a while,
And test your patience on this occasion when
Richard Patrick Gibbons is bemoaning the last
Of his seventy fifth year of life and dreading the
Start of the seventy sixth, while I am ending the
Seventy sixth and beginning the seventy seventh.

Old friend, (both meanings are intended)
A gala fete, such as this, is held
Not so much in celebration of our lives
As a celebration of the continuation of our memories..
Which gives me an occasion to recall the words
Of an unconscious poet of my acquaintance
of superior years and perhaps wisdom, who wrote,
"I can remember when I was a real person",

Whatever her occasion was, some have occurred to me
and so that line ran right through me. Surely, you have stood, as I have,
And watched some comely lady barely glace
And step to the side and pass as though you
Were some kind of unexpected post in the path.

I don't know which is worse, being so readily ignorable,
Or see them as they see your glance and wonder whether
To have you tossed in vile durance as a common ogler.

I can remember, when dressed to our nines,
You like some sleek black clad hood from the hill,
And me in a brown checked jacket like s second rate pimp
From the seedy corners of Fremont could stand
In the stag line at the Four Stop, or The Trianon, or the Spanish Castle,
Or some such low dancing dive and need only smile,
And slide away to dance and drink and maybe more

You can remember. And the remembrance is all,
But does what we recall bear quite as much semblance of fact
As we wish it to? Old friend,
I've talked to my brothers when both were alive
And they told me tales which they swore were true
And I would have sworn not. Friend of my youth,
And now my old age, does that occur to you? Do you
Recognize yourself in you brothers' and sister's tales?
It little matters. Neither you nor I have ever let a little
Matter of fact spoil a good tale.   An old quote occurs to me-=
The Icelandic principle I believe it's called—
"it is impossible to exaggerate the unimportance of everything."

Hesiod, that old crank from the age of Virgil and et cet.
Wrote the definitive poem on old age—one line
I'll give to saffron this disquisition-
"only a fool stays to test the rigors of old age,"

Then, "since we are mortals, we are fools,"
Let us march in Mark Twain's parade, fools
As well as cowards. Past our three score and ten.
Since we can't drink beer any more, you, old fellow,
Can't even have neer beer, because you can't have brewers yeast,
While I am allowed that, despite diabetes, because of the hops,
Which are good for that condition, let us raise our mugs
In our toast with whatever libation suits us most

You, with water I suppose, since even wine has
a little residue of fermentation, and I with coffee,
which has, over the years, stunted my growth.
And since the remembrance is all, let me
Remain as green in your remembrance,
As you remain in mine. And as proof,
If any were needed, that we do indeed march
In the Missourian's ages long parade, and,
Since there's yet some paper on this page,

I'll tell a little tale, green even yet, some fifty years
Later, in your memory. It was a dark and cold night,
Not a twentieth of a mile from the Salmon River
Tongue of the Great Bear ice field, where we were
Sitting in the glare of the Coleman lamp
When we heard some noises from our garbage dump,
Not far from our door. Were we wise, and say,
"oh,well" and leave the door shut? Things that go
"Bump in the night", seldom come indoors unless invited.

Not us. you opened the door. What we saw was
Two little red eyes, red from the glare of our lantern,
And four others, closer to the ground. Then somebody
Said something, though we didn't speak the language,
That translated, in our ears, as.
"Shut the goddammed door! Can't you see that the light
Bothers the eyes of my cubs?"

Did we remember that we had a lever action 44/40
Fully loaded right at the door? Did we even think of contesting the ground?
No, no. I was afraid of pissing her off and I think you might have been also,
Cause you slammed that door, I doused the glim,
And we held that door firmly and put a two by four across it.
As if that would have done any good..
We didn't go out till morning, when our bladders were about to burst

Thus, with banners flying, affirming our right to leading positions
In Mr. Clemens' eternal march. The folly part we illustrated
by opening the door in the first place.
Howsomever, our mothers had trained us right. We closed the door
When we were told to and kept in the light

And now at last, I've come to an end,
"Thank god," sigh all in unison, whether they believe, or not.
And raise my coffee mug, by now lukewarm. And say,
"Here's to you, Richard Patrick, may all your tales and
your poems, never, as I have done, bore your audiences"

                      el Moose

amd there it is.I hope youv'e had the leisure to peruse it and don't count it a waste of time that you have.
.