Personal Traditions: How My Family Celebrates July 4

I've been blogging since late 2004 and taking and posting digital photos since early 2005. So I have about a half-decade of documenting my life now on-line. This morning, I thought I'd take a look at how we -- the Lovely Karen and I and our girls -- celebrate the Fourth of July.

Most years, we spend the Fourth with elements of my family at my folks' place in North Bethany. We often attend the Bethany Beach July 4 Parade, we always lounge on the beach, eat great food and watch Bethany's fireworks show from the beach north of town.

2005
This was the first full year of my flickr/blogger obsession and the July Fourth celebration was just the sort of material I needed. I wrote a longish post about it that simply detailed what is our usual approach:

We spent the fourth with my folks, one of my brothers, and some family friends at Bethany Beach. We went to the Bethany Beach Fourth of July Parade, where I took a mess of photos. We spent the afternoon on the beach at North Bethany. We had a traditional meal of Burgers and Dogs, and eventually went down to the beach to watch the fireworks.

2006
Our 2006 Fourth was much the same. We always enjoy the Nur Temple Little-Car Shriners who turn parts of the Bethany Parade into a little Daytona .500. Later, the weather gave us some headaches:

... we waited for the sun to set and the Bethany fireworks to start. Unfortunately, a large thunderstorm rolled in and put paid to the fireworks show. So we sat and watched lightning from the living room.

2007
We broke tradition somewhat in 2007. Daughter #1 was finishing a lacrosse camp in Westminster, Maryland on July 4 so I spent the day driving out to pick her up and we joined the family for dinner later in North Bethany.

The Fourth was a Saturday that year so I spent the Friday night, after work, in a hotel partway between work and Westminster and finished the trip in the morning. I had stopped in northern New Castle County after work for a partial round of golf with my friend Sandy. The drive out to Westminster took me through some places I had not been before, including a lovely ride through Gunpowder Falls State Park.

2008
We were back to our normal Fourth of July activities in 2008. The parade included lots of politicians. And, oddly, Santa Claus.

We had a primary for the Democratic nomination for Governor that year and I was torn, since both John Carney, then the Lt. Governor, and Jack Markell, then State Treasurer, are great guys. I could cheerfully have supported either of them.

Ultimately, Jack Markell took the nomination and won the Governorship. He's been doing a great job, I think. John Carney is now running for Congress, where he would be a real asset.

2009
The parade was on July 3 in 2009. There were somewhat fewer politicians in the parade, because the elections were over. But this parade is a regular stop for some of our leading elected folks. Tom Carper, now our Senator, is one. I got a sweet shot of him greeting a young constituent.

Since the parade was not on the fourth, Andy and I had a chance to play golf on the morning of the fourth. We played Ocean Resorts, outside of Ocean City. We were back on the beach with our families for an afternoon of sun, dinner, and fireworks.

Somewhere in the last few years, we've added Andy and Lynne and their girls to our Fourth of July gatherings. They fit right in and add a new dimension to the holiday.

2010
This year Andy and I played our golf on the Third. And we included daughter #1's young man, who is visiting from out of state. He's a fine golfer and a good kid. He passed the test of golf-with-the-girlfriend's-dad with flying colors. Not that it was really a test; I just wanted to play some golf.

We're headed out to North Bethany for beach/burgers/fireworks soon. The parade will be tomorrow, for some reason, so I'm not sure if we'll see that this year.

Meanwhile, daughter #1 is starting a new tradition by crafting festive desserts for the family gathering. Among them is this Fourth of July tart which she photographed for me with her cellphone.

It Was Thirty Years Ago Today...

...but Sergeant Pepper had long since retired.

Anyway, this is what I was doing exactly 30 years ago today. It was the final day of my junior year at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda Maryland and The Ramblin' Beach Guys (my old High school band) got permission to play a short set at lunchtime out in "the quad."

From left to right, we were:

• Danny Miller (lead guitar),now a film editor in Hollywood.
• Peter Saal (bass), who only played with us a few times and of whom I have lost track.
• David Halperin (singer), who went on to work on presidential campaigns and in the White house and who is now at the center for American progress.
• John Heilprin (drums), now the AP's United Nations correspondent.
  
• John Krivit (sometimes bass and mostly singer), who now teaches audio and media technology in colleges around Boston.
• And me (rhythm guitar), now a toiling minor functionary in a small state's government.

According to Danny, who is archivist for this once little-known and now mostly unknown group, we played a short set of rock and punk that day:

• Route 66 (probably The Stones version)
• Rockaway Beach (The Ramones)
• Is She Really Going Out With Him (Joe Jackson and a challenge for a novice guitarist)
• Lip Service/I Remember You (Elvis Costello and ?)
• Surrender (Cheap Trick)
• Imagination (The Stones)
• Hippy Hippy Shake (We probably based ours on the version played by The Razz in those days)
  

I think it's interesting that on two June 20s I am playing a small, supporting role in a performance. Rhythm guitar in 1979 and the briefly on-stage Simon in Stinkin' Rich in 2009.

At Bethany Blues: A Bo Diddley Beat

The Lovely Karen and I went to Bethany Blues last night to see a group of old friends play rockabilly music last night. The show was part of the on-going Sidney's Music Revival, which has brought a variety of acts, mostly blues, to the barbecue restaurant on Route 1 outside of Lewes.

This band is made up (left to right in the photo) of Barry Eli, retired music teacher from Cape Henlopen High School; Ken Schleifer, an active music teacher; Walt Hetfield, a music teacher and fonder of a rock-n-roll summer camp; and Mike Long, about whom I have to admit I know nothing.

Barry, Ken and Walt are our friends entirely through Karen; from her early days as a music therapist and from her playing in various ensembles around the area over the years.

These guys have been playing together for a while. They are less a bar-band though, and more a show band. They have a Buddy Holly tribute show, the rockabilly show we saw last night, and a "sun and surf" show in which they play music from the mid 1960s.

But that doesn't mean they didn't tear it up in the Bethany Blues bar last night. They drew a sizable crowd and they played loud, hard and sweaty. There was music by Buddy Holly, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, Link Wray and many others.

I'm an old rockabilly fan. I came of age during the rockabilly revival of the late 1970s in the Washington DC area. My high school band, the Ramblin' Beach Guys, played a bit of this music, and I was a great fan of Tex Rubinowitz and the Bad Boys. And this music is part of the foundation of so much other great music. Without rockabilly, the Beatles wouldn't be the same, nor would the Grateful Dead and many others. They all cut their teeth on what is, after all, simply straight-ahead rock and roll.

Bragging About My Niece

I have a large family. I am one of seven siblings. Each of us is married with at least two kids. I have nieces and nephews ranging in age from their 30s to their halcyon pre-school days.

I like to brag about them almost as much as I like to brag about Colleen and Christina. You may remember my posts about my nephew Nick and his appearance in the movie Rent.

Today, my sister-in-law Jane sent a link to an article on the web site of Walt Whitman High School about the freshman members of Whitman's swimming team, including our niece Jenna.

The story (Talented freshmen swimmers bring promise to team) starts with a fanciful retelling of the day when a very young Jenna came face to face with destiny:

When six year-old Jenna Mahaffie saw the Merrimack Swim Team after practice, holding their bathing caps and goggles as water dripped off their bodies onto the pavement, she felt an instant connection. What began as a playful visit to the pool turned into something more for Mahaffie, as she decided then and there to join the swim team, marking the beginning of her competitive swimming career.

To her credit, Jenna calls this "exaggerated" and laughs at it. Good for her.

The story goes on to discuss how Jenna is part of a contingent of young swimmers adding strength to Whitman's swim team. She's rather a good swimmer.

It was something of a trip down memory lane for me to read this. I graduated from Whitman in 1980, a few years after Jenna's Dad, my brother Jim. And I swam at Merrimack as a kid. I even attended a few swim team practices there, though that clearly wasn't my sport. (I wonder what was?)

I occurred to me, as well, that Jenna reminds me of a swimmer I knew when I was at Whitman. Shelley was a swimmer and lived next door to a surfer we knew named Murray. One of the guys in my band, the Ramblin' Beach Guys, had kind of a crush on Shelley, so we wrote a doo-wop song called "I'm in Love with Murray's Neighbor."

It was our only sort-of hit. Not that we ever recorded it, or that it was ever heard very widely.

So now, there's Jenna; another Mahaffie wandering the halls of Walt Whitman High.

Time Travel: Remembering The Razz

An odd confluence of letters in my RSS reader led me to search this evening for a band I followed as a youngster back in Washington DC. This week's Monday Music entry on the NPR Monitor Mix blog included a video from the Nazz (Tod Rundgren's old group).

Seeing that "a-z-z" reminded me of The Razz, a DC band from back in the late 1970s. The Razz were a hard-rock band -- almost punk -- that played a snarling form of power pop. They put out a series of singles and an extended play (EP) single. I may still have several of these buried somewhere in my archive.

The group included Tommy Keene, who went on to a recording career starting in the 1980s. According to Wikipedia, his music is critically acclaimed but commercially ignored.

I insulted Mr. Keene one evening at a bar in Northern Virginia. I didn't mean to insult him. A group of us were there to see The Razz; we were fans. I was at the time a rhythm guitarist in a high-school garage band (The Ramblin' Beach Guys) and I was impressed by Keene's guitar playing. The group's other guitarist, Bill Craig, was playing a more obvious "lead guitar" role and I approached Keene during a break to tell him how cool it was to see a fellow rhythm guitarist (I was pretty young). He was not amused; he played parts just as complex as the other fellow, he was just less showy. That was my first lesson in the potential complexity in rock music.

That was one of two Razz shows that I remember specifically. I expect I probably also saw them play at the old Psychadeli at some point, but I'm not sure.

The other show that I remember clearly was a concert in November of 1978 at the University of Maryland Student Union. The Razz opened for Rockpile (Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe). Several of my bandmates and I got there very early and snagged a table at the very front of the hall. It was one of those great moments in youth when you are part of just the music you want to hear.

In looking around the web this evening, I also found that some of The Razz folks, including singer Michael Reidy, have recently been performing as The Howling Mad. Thirty years ago, I recall being told that Michael Reidy was a graphic designer and had done the artwork for The Razz' posters and record sleeves. In retrospect, I think it is the case that his graphic work, along with his group's music, influenced my tastes as a young man and is with me today.

OK. This is Weird

Apparently my youth is still out there. It appears to have moved to California.

When I was a youngster, I played guitar in a band called The Ramblin' Beach Guys. We were never famous, beyond a small radius around our high school. But we were loud and fast and fun and being a part of the RBGS, as we called ourselves, was a hoot.

Tonight, I find another young Mike Mahaffie playing guitar in another small band. This Mike is 18 "and goes to some college with a really long name." He plays guitar for The Benefits, out of Campbell, California. The other fellows in the band are all in High School. They list their influences as punk, ska and hardcore. We were similar, though more influenced by the 1960's-era Stones and early punk than by hardcore and punk.

What do they sound like? According to their MySpace profile, The Benefits sound like "a basement of frustraition! [sic]"

It Really is a Small World

The other day I stumbled across an AP story on the Chicago Sun-Times web site that represents one of those odd intersections of interest and personal history.

The story -- Tax breaks rolled out for hybrid-car buyers -- is from January 1 of this year. It is about the new tax breaks for hybrid cars, including the Prius, which I drive.

I found it when I was reviewing Performancing statistics on my blog. I like to see what web-searches have led people to my site.

In this case, I noted that someone had found me by searching Google for John Krivit. That's the name of one of the members of my rock band in high school. That search led someone to an entry I had written back in 2004 about Googling for my old friends from The Ramblin' Beach Guys (RBGs).

Just below that on the search results was a link to the AP story about the Prius tax break. John Krivit is quoted as a Prius owner, which is a fine coincidence. What really freaked me, though, was that the story is by John Heilprin, our old drummer.

Small World, Small World

I recently finished last week's New Yorker magazine. As most New Yorker readers will attest, one is often finishing one edition even as the next is stuffed into the mailbox out front each week.

I was interested to read the magazine's profile of ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin, who as had a part of some of the election '04 kerfuffle. Halperin is publisher of The Note, ABC's influential on-line political tip-sheet.

More importantly (to me), he is also the brother of David Halperin, who was lead singer of the 1970's rock group The Ramblin' Beach Guys (RBG's) and is no mean commentator himself. I had the pleasure of playing guitar with the RBG's during the band's heyday, when we were highly influential among a small cadre of our classmates at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda Maryland.

It got me thinking ("where are we now?") and googling...

David, as linked above, is involved with the Center for American Progress. He was also a part of the Dean campaign and worked for a time at the White House and on Capitol Hill.

Our drummer was John Heilprin. I've been thinking about John lately; partly because of the confusion between Halperin and Heilprin that we always dealt with and partly because, as I spoke with a colleague recently about helping kids choose colleges, I reminisced about John and my week-long college-visit road trip through New England our senior year of high school. John's a reporter now. The most recent work I've found suggests he's working for the Associated Press.

Danny Miller played lead guitar. I think Danny became a film editor. I haven't been able to track him as well as I'd like.

John Krivit played bass, then switched to singing and playing a little guitar. I knew that John had owned a recording studio in Massachusetts for a while. My latest search finds him on the faculty of The New England Institute of Art. Or maybe on the faculty of Bay State College. Maybe both?

Our bassist was Steve Stavros. Of Steve, I have found nothing so far. There was also Gene Mage (I think that was the name) who played occasional saxaphone. A quick Google turned up this guy. He feels like the Gene I remember; he was a go-getter. But that was a long time ago and Gene was only partly a part of the band.

So that's what I've found out, so far. Now, if any of these fellows use Google Alerts to capture mentions of their names (and the Google spiders crawl through this blog) , maybe I'll hear something and will update this memory.

Some People Just Can't Stay Out of the News

I think I had honestly started to forget about Bobby Jacobs, one-time wunderkind head of a local sports tournament that collapsed into scandal some years ago. Well, he's back and facing charges of harassment, according to a story on the WBOC web site: Former Basketball Tournament Director Arrested for Stalking.

Troopers say they were called in to investigate after letters were sent to the Cape Henlopen School District accusing a teacher of inappropriate misconduct with students. They say the letters continued not only to the school district but also to Wesley College in Dover, accusing a coach of similar misconduct. In addition, troopers say letters were sent to Legislative Hall accusing a department secretary in similar behavior.

Their investigation found the letters questionable and likely from a fictitious source. They also noted that all three of those targeted were once involved with the group that had oversight of the Slam Dunk to the Beach basketball tournament:

All three individuals, according to police, who were accused of the misconduct , were once involved with the Delaware Interscholastic Athletic Association. The organization was formerly known as the Delaware Scholastic Secondary Athletic Association. This organization oversaw the "Slam Dunk to the Beach Tournament" which Jacobs was the director.

The Slam Dunk tournament was a local institution for some years, but after a time started to look a little fishy to me. Eventually, it fell apart after questions started to arise regarding scholarships that were promised but not delivered. Mr. Jacobs abruptly canceled the 2004 event and was on the run for several years, hiding in Florida before being brought back to Delaware to face charges.

Police traced the letters back to their origins, found evidence linking them to Jacobs, searched his home and found even more evidence on his computer.

The result? More charges against Bobby Jacobs, and we once again have to follow this guys sad sack story.

Update: The Dover Post story on this includes a clarifying detail:

The three individuals allegedly targeted by the letters had helped police in their investigation of the Jacob’s misappropriating Slam Dunk funds after he cancelled the 2004 tourney and dropped out of sight. He was charged with theft and jailed for two years after his capture by U.S. marshals in Miami.

(A tip of the hat to twitterer @oceanviewde for leading me to this story)

Second Golf Game of 2008

I almost broke 100! I scored a 102 on the par-72 course at the Naples Beach Hotel and Golf Club in Florida. Had I not had a complete blow-up on the par-5 14th, I might have done it.

It turns out that using the 5-iron, which looks remarkably like the sand wedge when you are flustered (5 vs. S) , in a green-side bunker is a bad idea. When you've already hit a tree, the water hazard, and a half-submerged log that bounced your ball right back at you, on the same hole, these things happen.

I was playing in my walking sneakers and with rental clubs (very nice clubs), but had a wonderful time (except for the 15th) I played the first nine with a dad teaching his 15-year old the game. I played the second nine with an older gent who plays that course regularly and either his son or son-in-law. These guys were playing very well and they helped me raise my game a bit, I think.

The course was built in the late 1920s and has been redesigned a few times since. It is mature and tree-lined and, though flat, fairly challenging. And nice folks, too.