Say Uncle

I have always loved music ... I can remember the first song that made an impression on me as 'music' ... I was probably 1 1/2 ... 'Too Old To Cut The Mustard (Any More) ... I used to sing 'Bimbo' when trying to go to sleep ... and apparently I was a big fan of ... 'Its Amore' ... music was just there until for some reason .. years later ..  I locked on to Cliff Richard with, 'Bachelor Boy' .. I bought the single and played it on a portable record player I had .. I think I taped a nickel on the cartridge head to keep the stylus in the grooves ... 

I am sure there were other singles that I purchased ... I don't remember ... everything changed with Ed Sullivan and The Beatles ... music was never the same ... I tried to scrape enough money together to buy the album ... bottle money ... shoveling snow ... that was huge for me being as shy as I was .. music must have emboldened me ... I didn't have enough money ... the big assist came from my father's cousin, Bernard Lundy. 

Bernard was like an uncle to me ... he lived the way we didn't .. a DINK in 1964 .. double income, no kids ... he was living in an apartment on Charlotte street in Saint John, NB, with his wife Arlene .. and I used to visit and stay over some weekends ... it was great ... he had all the gizmos and toys .. all the junk food ... and best of all there was not the bickering and arguing of my mother and father ... nor the old man's brooding presence at the dinner table .. to this day family dinners are hard for me .. and that is understating it by a lot ...

So .. Bernard spotted me the difference in the money I needed to buy 'Beatlemania' .. and as Ben Goldstein's record shop was just around the corner, I walked up there and purchased it .. $4.20 as I remember .. the first album I ever owned.

I still have the actual physical copy of that album .. framed. I played the shit out of that thing .. if I had been smarter then, I would have taken note of the other songwriters on that album and  chased them down  .. but that discovery would come a few years later.

In my life up until university ... up to 18 ... there were three things in my life that gave me joy and peace ... Xmas .... when our household was almost normal for a short period of time ... Bernard, who treated me like the son he never had .. and summer vacation when were off to Nova Scotia to visit my mother's mother ... my real uncle fulfilled Bernard's role when we visited my grandmother but that was once a year ... Bernard was full time ... without him I am not sure I would have known what a life was like other than the one I had ... just being around him made me realize that our household was dysfunctional ... it was not the way most other people lived ... and when I did go to university ... I struggled .... but I realized after 6 years I might be able to stand on my own ... but then the world came crashing down around me ... but .. we'll get there ... 

Xmas is still a big deal for me .. our daughters ... Rhiannon and Sigourney ... they own it now ... back in the day though, I certainly went overboard on it more than once ... it is one of the few times of the year where all the memories are good ... and  I am comfortable in my own skin ... it is a time I can figuratively go home ... and pretend it was like that .... every day of the year ... it reminds me of Bernard who would say the same thing on Xmas day each year .... after the presents were all opened ... 'well ... Xmas is as far away now as it will ever be' ... I knew that all too well ... but .. to me .. it still is .. the most wonderful time of the year ...

Krome Koan - 'Alcohol - the cause and solution to all of life's problems'