I coulda’ been a rock star!

 It was a cool day on bay in 1959 when preschool alumni and parents met for a day of recreation at the Standard Oil Rod & Gun Club in Richmond, Calif.

I got into a rowboat with three other teen-agers, only one of whom I knew. I chatted with a couple of them as we roamed around an inlet, but one kid, about 14 years old, was silent the whole time.

I guess he was anxious to get to the gym, where there was a piano. Later, I walked in and heard the kind of music I had never heard before, except maybe on a black radio station. It sounded like it was from Louisiana or some place. Puzzled, though kind of enjoying it, I left and went back to talk to the others.

I have looked back on that moment and thought about what might have been. I could have walked up to John Fogerty and expressed my admiration. Or better yet, I could have said, “I can play piano a little myself. Did you bring your guitar? Let’s try a few licks.” But I’m just not like that.

John’s brother, Tom, one of his band mates in Creedence Clearwater Revival, was a classmate of mine at the El Cerrito Preschool in about 1945 (such a long time ago!). His mom and mine became good friends, often talking on the phone. Years later, my mom said his mother complained of all the noise in their garage when the kids practiced music. Well, who’s to say that wasn’t a good investment?

So, imagine my shock when I went into a record store in 1968 and found that Creedence Clearwater Revival’s first album was a smash hit. John went on to be one of the great song writers and singers of his era, with such hits as “Proud Mary” and “Fortunate Son.” You could say that El Cerrito, population 25,000, is more famous for the group than anything else. John is still performing, though he split with his brother Tom (since deceased) and other band members long ago.

Now, what went wrong? Why aren’t I a rock ‘n’ roll star,too? I was too much of an introvert to be part of the rock scene. Would I be deaf and drugged out by now? “You’re already deaf and drugged out on pharmaceuticals anyway,” my wife said, in as wild an exaggeration as I have ever heard.

Instead, I pursued journalism and belatedly music, focusing more on jazz and choral music. After a church solo a few years ago, a friend came up to me and said, “Mike, you are a rock star!”

See? I really did make it!

 

Vision is worse, but I’m still here!

 With these weekly columns, I may come across as a vibrant, active senior with perfect health.

Well, I think I am quite healthy for an 83-year-old, though my wife thinks I complain too much. I don’t have diabetes, heart trouble, disabling cancer or severe mobility problems. I do have one issue: macular degeneration. I thought I would write about it for others who may face the same problem.

In 2018, I took a train for four hours back to Washington to complain to my ophthalmologist about worsening vision. “Just wash your face,” was his response. Huh? He meant to clean the crusting around the eyes caused by blepharitis, which I already knew about. He didn’t examine my retinas because the retina machine was broken.

Several months later, back in Arlington, I went to see him again and this time the machine was fixed. There was a long pause after the exam. “Go right now to the retina doctor two blocks away,” he said. It was 4 p.m. and the retina doctor’s staff had gone home but he sent me anyway.

Wet macular degeneration in my left eye had worsened the vision. There was a 50-50 chance it would also affect my right eye. A few months later, it did.

I got used to the eye injections every month or two. They aren’t as bad as they sound. They don’t hurt after numbing drops. It’s like being at the dentist: I can stand a few minutes of discomfort.

Macular degeneration affects your central vision, the small part that focuses on objects. In the unlikely event my central vision disappeared completely, I would still have decent peripheral vision. Many people’s experiences are different, though.

The condition makes reading difficult for me. I no longer look over print books or magazines or newspapers. I get everything enlarged on an iPad. Or I listen to an audiobook. TV is not a problem.

Technology to get around this is amazing. I use a magnifier app on my phone to look at tiny directions. With the camera on my iPad, I can photograph recipes and read them while cooking. The GPS and self-driving feature on my car find the freeway exit before I can read the sign. (I did pass a recent DMV driving test.)

The worst thing is reading piano music or choral scores. Prism glasses can magnify but are of little help. I have been scanning scores onto my iPad for enlargement On the piano, I play mostly chords anyway and write them in with a magic marker on top of enlarged lyrics that I print out. When I write on my iPad keyboard, I have trouble catching typos when I read an article again. For this column, I have three friends look for them.

The retina doctor at Duke Eye Center says the macular degeneration has stabilized, but it feels like my vision is getting worse. Even stable, the retina ages like the rest of me.

Can it be prevented? I wish I had paid attention when I found out that my father had macular degeneration. I suspect that it contributed to his dementia. If you are diagnosed with early macular degeneration, lutein (found in over-the counter Areds2) is supposed to provide a 25% chance of keeping it from getting worse. Good diet and avoiding bright sunlight are supposed to help.

I’m still grateful I don’t have much else wrong. On birthdays, my favorite song is “I’m Still Here!”

 

 

 

Regrets after a high school buddy dies

When one of your best high school  friends dies, what do you think? First of all, you ask: Why was it him and not me?

And then there are regrets: Why didn’t I keep in touch for 67 years? Why didn’t I value his friendship when we were kids?

Barr Rosenberg was no ordinary friend: He was a genius who became one of the country’s leading stock prognosticators but whose success led to a crushing downfall 17 years ago

Known as the “accountant of risk,” Barr invented a method in the 1970s of looking at more than a stock’s value—but how it was balanced by the rest of the market and the rest of the portfolio. He started a company, Barra Inc., which became enormously successful.

But just before the 2008 stock market crash, one of his forecast models was faulty, He waited too long to inform his investors, and they sued over their losses. The Securities and Exchange Commission banned him for life from stock trading. In his final years, he stuck to yoga and meditation with his wife  (since deceased) and  Tibetan culture before dying in February at age 82. He had been teaching these mindful practices since 1979.

 I felt that he made an honest mistake at a time when stocks were terribly shaky. What if the market had gone up?

As a teen, he contributed a lot to me:

—We played touch football and basketball at his nearby home in El Cerrito, Calif.

—He and his father, one of the leading American authorities on Shakespeare, took me with them three times to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

—He exposed me to intellectual friends and ideas I might never have experienced otherwise.

—He persuaded me to become his El Cerrito High School debate partner from 1957 to 1958, getting me versed in such arcane subjects as farm price supports and foreign aid policy. If you know me, I don’t come across as an argumentative debater.

What did I give him? When word got out that he had scarlet fever, our algebra teacher asked me in class how he was doing. “I don’t know,” I said. “He is kind of a pest.”

I guess it was hard to admit I was a close friend with a guy who was not particularly popular in school. He obviously had a very high IQ. I should have been flattered that such a brain wanted to hang out with me.

Thank you, Barr, for your impact on my life. I am pleased with your successes and hope you found comfort in your troubled later years.

Performing with a local legend

I wanted a female singer to join me in a funny song about growing old for the annual “Sunday Funnies” show put on by seniors in Clarksville.

Out of the blue, I got an unexpected volunteer: Nancy Barden, age 91, who retired from the “Double Nickel Players” several years ago.

What a prize! Dare I call Nancy the “grande dame” of Clarksville? With a “lifelong love affair with the stage,”  Nancy helped revive the Halifax County Little Theatre with Dot Crews in 1962 and directed seven plays and performed in 12 in Clarksville. On a smaller scale, it was like pulling Meryl Streep or Elizabeth Taylor out of retirement.

“Here I am again, unable to let it go and once again saying, ‘This is the last time.’ Nancy told me.

 

The song, “No Time at All,” from the 1972 musical “Pippin” is about an older woman advising a young man about the perils of aging. She is supposed to be 66, which was 25 years younger than Nancy!

 

I have to say our practices together were a bit rocky at first. I recorded a piano track for us to sing against, and we both had trouble getting in sync.

 

She didn’t want to sing such lines as  “I won’t date a man who’ll call me Granny,” so we took them out.

 

I couldn’t memorize any piano music by the time I reached 35, so we were quite challenged in recalling the words. Well, so are the actors in the hilarious Sunday Funnies skits, who have to rehearse a lot more than younger performers.

 

Nancy got discouraged despite her pedigreee. “I had about six solos in ‘Anything Goes’ but I think I have reached my level of incompetency now.”

 

But this is show business! By showtime, on May 4, things seemed to come together. In front of 250 people, we sang, “Oh, it’s time to keep living…for spring will turn to fall in just no time at all.“

 

Then it was her turn: “Now, I've known the fears of 91years I've had troubles and tears by the score. But the only thing I'd trade them for is 92 years more!”

 

She spoke rather than sang some of the lines, but she looked like she meant every word. The crowd loved it.  Flowers were presented. A former high school student of hers came up and congratulated her.

 

I got to perform with a local legend. What a thrill!

 

Here’s to 92 years more!

Talking to lakes and cemeteries Am I nuts?

I was thrilled to get a summer job as a busboy at my favorite place in the world—Lake Tahoe—in June, 1960.

What a life, residing in a cabin amid pine trees beside an enormous lake surrounded by spectacular mountains.

But the beginning did not go well at Zephyr Cove Lodge. I broke so many glasses that the chef insisted I must be working for the glass manufacturer. My boss was horrified at my scruffy clothes and wrinkled shirts. Then a waiter hit me in the face with a a wet table-cleaning cloth. “Dirty!” He yelled.

How to cope? I got the good idea to go down to the beach at sunset and sit on a log and tell the lake about my troubles.

There was a bright moon, reflected on the blue waters. The mountains, still with some snow, were beautiful.

And I talked. I told the lake all my worries and asked what to do.

I was praying and didn’t even realize it.

I was tempted to return home in defeat, but good things happened. My parents mailed me some new white shirts. The same chef loaned me a couple of white “bus jackets.” I got better at the job. The experienced waiter, kind of apologetically, called me “the best busboy I have ever seen.” I worked there for two more summers as the head busboy and returned to ski for many years after.

Over time, I have been occasionally able to find a quiet place to reflect. When my mother, at age 65, had surgery for very serious colon cancer, I spent time at the chapel in the hospital at Placerville, Calif. Chapels are a quiet place in the midst of suffering, pain and death.

My mother made it to 98, and after she died, I visited the cemetery and talked to my deceased relatives. “Aunt Adele, remember those fun card games we used to play?”“Uncle Fred, I loved those letters you used to send me.” I think they liked me.

I thought of these experiences just a few weeks ago, when I was in the midst of a temporary health problem. Depressed, suddenly I decided to walk only a few steps to the graveyard of Pickett’s family members dating to theearly 1800s. Sometimes I have felt their presence when I have cleared weeds or mowed the lawn around them. 

I never met any of these people. But I talked to them anyway. They assured me that things would be all right, and they were.

They also liked me - most of them, anyway. Some day I will join them there. I felt welcomed. And loved.

What;s this? A Diva in my household?

My wife, Pickett, was notorious for being unable to carry a tune. She would sing loudly and proudly off key at church and at the preschool she ran for many years.

 

So it was a surprise, maybe even a shock, when she told me a few weeks ago that she wanted to sing a duet with me at a parlor gathering we had with musical friends.

 

“I want to do that song you guys sang (at the Broadway choral concert in Danville), ‘Anything You Can Do, I can Do Better.’”

But how do I put this to her. “Pickett, we may have some trouble with the…uh…pitch.”

“I want to take voice lessons,” she said. “Oh, really? Wow!” I said. “Sure.”

 

We called Toni Howell, a local voice teacher who lives In Turbeville who had heard Pickett sing in church.

She agreed to take Pickett on, though she couldn’t promise any miracles. Yes, it would require a miracle.

 

Well, it was a miracle! I went with Pickett to her first lesson. Toni tried a few things and then gave a little half-shriek and told Pickett to try to match it.

 

“What?” I thought. “That’s too high for Pickett,” who talks with a fairly deep voice. But she nailed it!

 

Pretty soon Pickett was copying a lot, though not all, of Toni’s pitches. I heard a voice I had never heard before except maybe when she was laughing at a TV show. Could it be? She was a soprano!

 

We did the song together. She needed a lot of reminders to get back in tune, but most of it was pretty close. Toni reminded us that it takes lots of practice to sing in pitch. You can’t really learn it all in one or two lessons.

 

Back at home, I felt like Professor Henry Higgins working with Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady.” “I think she’s got it. By George, she’s got it.”

 

Now how were we going to sing this together in public? The karaoke tracks were too fast. I needed to play piano as accompaniment. We tried that. But if I was plugging away, staring at the keys, she was staring at me, yelling,“Yes I can!” And I would be mumbling, without confidence, “No you can’t.” In front of any audience, she would win the argument hands down.

 

To defend my manhood, I had to memorize the piano music and stare back at her when I sang. Can’t let my gender down!

 

The outcome was hilarious. Pickett was quite animated screaming her parts whileI just sort of reacted defensively.  Sort of typical of our relationship!  And probably the way the song is meant to be, as Ethel Merman did it.  Our friends loved it. I can’t say, though, that Pickett was always on pitch.

 

It was especially memorable because I ha started the day in the emergency room to treat a leg infection but found out the infection was gone.

 

I recommend that other couples try this song, from the musical “Annie Get Your Gun” in1946. It is a terrific way for two people to work out their issues! When you get into a disagreement, just break into this song and laugh.

 

You will be able to see our version on YouTube by searching for the channel, Pickett Craddock and Mike  Doan or clicking on the video https://youtu.be/h7OYfoEcMUM?si=EjoEx7cIN4ODNGf6