Maybe my biggest mistake?

I have told you before that my family should own much of California by now after opening a hardware store and bank in the heart of the Gold Rush.

The next generation ran them both into the ground, but property remained, probably acquired from indebted miners. My family quarreled over what to do with it for decades. Hmm, centuries, actually!

Once when I was 2 years old, they gathered to make a deal. I got ahold of the papers and promptly tore them up!

My mother was tired of the endless family bickering. She would give her share away to relatives, but when someone died, she would just inherit it back.

With such a background, you can understand why I wanted to get rid of her house in the same area (Placerville),  after she died during the bottom of the 2008 Great Recession. Others told me to hold on to it until the market rose again. But I sold it anyway. I did not want to be a landlord from 3,000 miles away in Washington, D.C. A California house sold for $200,000? Bet you don’t hear of that anymore!

I had toyed with buying land when I lived in Las Vegas in 1969 and 1970, knowing that it would be valuable some day. But I never got around to it.

Now you know where I am coming from as I tell you about my grandfather, Fred W. Gee, who carefully saved box tops from Fresh cereal in the 1930s.

The deal was: Turn them in to Sunset magazine and you could get a deed for valuable land left by centuries of settlers. My grandfather did that.

Sometime in the 1950s, my father decided to go looking for this land as he packed the family into the car for one of our long Sunday drives.

After a drive of maybe two hours, we found it! It was on the side of a steep hill with no roads, miles from civilization, somewhere north of the Russian River. (I don’t remember how large the parcel was.)

“Worthless,” my father declared, and we went home disappointed.

About 40 years later, after my father died, my mother got a letter asking about this same land. A woman was building something nearby and needed her property.

I agreed to take this project over.

So, like a genius, I told the lady she could have it for free if she would give my mother a subscription to Sunset magazine.

I have always wondered about that property. 

What if . . . ? I still don’t know.

Now I live on a 400-acre plot nowhere near the Gold Rush that has been owned by the same family since 1820. No paperwork, no deals for me!

 

 

 

A shocker at center stage

It was my first spring concert with the Washington Men’s Camerata, at the famous Kennedy Center, no less. I was thrilled walking past signed portraits of famous celebrities who had appeared there over the years.

Two friends from California flew out to see my choral debut there in 2013, Carol Ann Garrick and Nancy Goebner. We posed for a photo at the huge statue of John F. Kennedy. Even our friend, former Sen. Larry Pressler, was there.

Dressed in tuxedos, about 30 to 40 of us enjoyed singing the music from Broadway shows—especially “Maria” from “West Side Story” with great high notes for us first tenors.

Then something even more memorable happened. Another first tenor, Rob Hennings, proposed to his girlfriend, Diana Jean McCord, on stage!

“I did not plan this in advance,” Rob told me last week. “But it was a perfect night. My parents were there, Diana’s parents were there, and I was surrounded by friends.”

The director was Frank Albinder, who could have been a stand-up comic in a second career. An avid Democrat, he would needle some of the Republican Party operatives in the group mercilessly without offending them. It was quite a balancing act.

At intermission, Rob asked the director if he would call Diana up from the audience so he could propose to her. “Frank immediately understood, and I think was excited and happy to call on her,” Rob said.

Diana was reluctant to leave her seat at first but finally yielded. “She is not the kind of person who likes a fuss made over her,” Rob said.

On stage, Rob knelt and took out a ring that he had thought he might use some day. He didn’t ask her directly but inquired if she wanted to start a family. Eventually, she said yes.

Talk about pressure!

The chorus broke into a song, “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” as the audience got more entertainment than it for.

On Jan. 4, 2014, the chorus, including me, sang at the couple’s wedding in Ridgewood, N.J. The couple has a daughter Evelyn, aged 10.

I thought of this terrific incident as I attended the Camerata’s annual sing-along in Washington last month. I had not talked to Rob in years but got ahold of him for this column.

At my first rehearsal, in 2012, I asked a first tenor standing next to me: “Which line are we supposed to sing?”

“Uh, the first line,” he said. “You’ve never sung in a men’s chorus before?”

No, I hadn’t. I may have been the only guy there who hadn’t been in a men’s college’ glee club.

They still existed, though so many had gone co-ed that they had donated their left-over sheet music to the Camerata library. It boasted of having the largest collection of men’s music in the country.

I loved being a first tenor because you got to sing the melody most of the time, just like sopranos.

When I left Washington for South Boston in 2020, the chorus was one of the things I missed most.

 

Revealing my sordid past

 

It’s time—three years after beginning this column. You may know me as a gentle, proper law-abiding citizen who never offends anyone.

Now, it’s time to uncover my history, with a secret I have held on to for years about my criminal past.

It happened in 1954 in El Cerrito, California, a sleepy suburb of San Francisco. While most officers wasted their time on bank holdups, murders or household beatings, one brave policeman decided to attack the real mortal danger in postwar America: Children on bicycles.

After school, other 12-year-old boys were watching Space Patrol on television or shooting rubber bands at their little sisters. I was industriously earning money delivering newspapers on my paper route.

One afternoon in, the dutiful officer ordered me to stop and get off my bike. I did not have a license plate on my bike! And my noisemaker to warn pedestrians was improper. And my light didn’t work. (Why did I need a light? And what good was a license to identify your bike if it could easily be snipped off if it the bike was stolen?)

He wrote out a citation and ordered me to go to court on Saturday. About 20 other children also showed up. Today, there would be parents and lawyers galore, but I didn’t see any of either. Back then, parents never knew or cared what their kids were doing.

A panel of teenage judges sat behind the big table normally used for murder and robbery cases. Did this whole thing stem from a high school civics class’s term project gone mad?

With her gavel, the head judge sentenced me to ….write an essay about bicycle safety.

Afterward, the 20 of us waited in line with our bikes to get licenses, and I remember one kid threatening a fight as we jockeyed for a place in line. By the way, when was the last time you saw 20 children with bicycles?

I don’t recall my 6-year-old sister being prosecuted for her tricycle.

That wasn’t quite the end of my career of crime. I remember shooting at cars once—with a squirt gun. A Korean War veteran wasn’t amused and lectured me about how he didn’t like to be shot at. Good point.

Well, I will admit I don’t remember forgetting to get a license on my car in future years. I found out that the town ended its requirement for bike registration as late as 2014. But my parents, who kept mum during my predicament, told me later that the citation was ridiculous. I agree.

Random thoughts at mid-summer

 Why do I need a knife or scissors to open just about everything anymore? Even the plastic on garlic at the grocery store. (Why does garlic need a plastic wrapper anyway?)

 

In opera, the tenor always gets the girl, but he’s dead by the final act.

 

I am always either stressed or bored. Isn’t there any in between?

 

My favorite line from a pop song: “Every new beginning comes from some other new beginning’s end”(from “Closing Time” by Semisonic).

 

My favorite movie title: “If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium.” It tells you the whole story right there.

 

On my last visit to Washington, D.C., people were uncharacteristically nice wen I had trouble navigating Union Station. It must be because I appear to be old. They weren’t like that when I was younger!

 

Why do I need a password to pay my bill online?

 

Sara was disappointed years ago on Take Your Daughter to Work Day. “Allyou do is talk on the phone and type into a computer,” she complained. “That’s not all I do,” I said. “I also read the newspaper.”

 

ESPN is showing live games of boys’under-14 flag football? I wonder if casinos are sponsoring betting on the games. Which 12-year-old recruit will get a $1 million contract?

 

My dentist once complained that his job requires hurting people. “To make people happy, maybe I should open a candy store downstairs,” he said. I told him, “Then you can fill more teeth as the kids get older. A perpetual money machine.”

 

I was puzzled as a kid after seeing a sign at a coffee shop: “We get too soon old and too late smart.” Now I get it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trying to be a soul singer: And then I went viral!

When you sing or play pop, jazz or gospel music, sometimes you envy African-American musicians who swing so easily.

Ever listen to those British pop groups that had a hard time  imitating Chuck Berry or B.B. King? Or maybe Pat Boone in the 1950s “whitewashing” songs by Little Richard and Fats Domino.

In 2008, I joined a gospel-style choir called Mosaic Harmony, made up at least two-thirds of white people at a Unitarian church in Oakton, VA. The lively leader, David North, who was also a pastor, inspired us wonderfully with music taken from the black religious tradition. But he struggled mightily to get us to clap and sway back and forth the way real gospel choirs did effortlessly. “Clap your hands like you mean it,” he might have said.

As a wanna-be singer and pianist myself, I am challenged in the same way when I take on the music of Motown, Ella Fitzgerald or do-wop groups like the Stylistics.

So it was with great trepidation that I took the song “A House Is Not a Home” to Gil Baskerville, a local music teacher, to unleash my inner Luther Vandross.

I did not realize that Gil, a former band teacher at Halifax County High School, had seen the late Luther Vandross sing four times and had won a contest himself long ago for singing the same song.

“I’ve never heard it done like a Broadway standard before,” he said, as I sang and played it on piano as written by Burt Bacharach for the musical “Promises, Promises.” “If you want to sound like Luther, don’t belt it out. Drag out the song into almost a whisper,” he said.

I tried , but I just couldn’t hold my breath long enough. “How would you sing it to your wife? I’ll bet you wouldn’t shout it in her ear,” he said. “Think of the lyrics, how you are sad and want her back. Almost in tears.”

“I would never sing to her like that,” I said.

“Nobody really would. We just pretend,” he joked.

I couldn’t stop laughing

We played videos over and over of the great Luther belting out the song, crying and lamenting his lost love.

We kept trying repeatedly. I just couldn’t get it.

“I think you did a good job at singing it as a jazz standard,” Gil said finally. Yes, I agreed. I will stick with that.

I sadly made a momentous decision: I am not Luther Vandross!

I was astonished to see that a video I made of the song has gotten 1,200 views already on YouTube in one week! If you want to see my song, click here.

Gil teaches guitar, horns, piano, vocals  and most instruments at his studio in South Boston, at 830 Wilborn Ave. His wife, Marlene, teaches piano there too.

Besides individual adults and children  he has been teaching home-schoolers in groups at his studio. A long-time saxophone player, Baskerville plays in the soul-oriented band, NuSoul.

Navigating the flood of 2025

 “Mike, our car has only 23 miles of electric charge left,” Pickett told me on the phone. “That’s not enough to get home with U.S. 501 shut down.”

So began a family adventure to get her back during a week of serious flooding in Halifax County. About five inches of rain fell in our area in one night, and the main artery from South Boston to Durham, N.C. was closed on July 7. Several motorists had to be rescued in the county.

After the rain stopped, the GPS was useless in finding alternate routes to the Mayo power plant in North Carolina, where our Tesla was parked with Pickett inside. The GPS didn’t really know which of many roads were blocked by flooding.

So, I got out an old-fashioned Halifax County paper map and followed the route suggested by someone on Facebook:  Go north from Cluster Springs to South Boston, east to Midway and south pastVirgilina, then follow Highway 49.

Rather than go alone in our pickup truck, I persuaded my daughter Sara and her 8 and 10-year-old children to go with us in their car. The kids were bored and wanted to go some place interesting, but the ride was uneventful.

I’m glad the drive didn’t last over a half-hour. It was terribly hot, and Pickett didn’t use the air conditioning, which would have run down the charge even more. After we arrived, she got into the back seat with two very restless and squirming children for the return home.

Two days in a row she drove back down to the flood scene at Hyco River, three miles south of Cluster Springs, to see if the route was open yet.

Pickett suggested I ride my e-bike down U.S. 501 while the route was closed. There is always too much traffic but not this time on Thursday. I whizzed the 3 miles to the scene, only to find the road open! I posted my scoop on Facebook and turned around quickly to get home before the traffic from North Carolina picked up.

We drove back down once more, and Pickett took the Tesla back home, with six miles of charge left.

I still love our electric car, but I sure wish there were more charging stations.

 

 

From stage fright to stage bows

 You have heard of “stage moms,” who drive their kids mercilessly to become theatrical stars. I just realized I am a “stage grandpa.”

“We’ve got to find summer camps for the kids,” my wife told me as two grandchildren and their mom prepared to spend at least two months with us.

All are staying at in our little house next door while the dad is working a new job in Rock Hill, S.C., and the family prepares to sell a house in Christiansburg, VA andbuy another.

So I signed up our 10-year-old granddaughter Aria into a two-week theater camp to perform the musical “Frozen Jr.” run by the Clarksville Community Players.

She agreed to go but she seemed unhappy as she went through 10 recordings of her audition song.

Pickett told friends that Aria had stage fright and would probably be a stage hand. “No!” I shouted. “She will be an actress, a singer and a dancer.”You’ve heard this before: “I’m going to make you a star.” (Maybe from the musical “Gypsy.”)

Aria carpooled with Frankie, a neighbor with his own stage parents, every day for two weeks at the Clarksville Fine Arts Center.

“I’m tired,” I kept hearing after the six and seven-hour rehearsals. If she was having a good time, I sure couldn’t tell.

Word got around in our extended family about our granddaughter’s premiere. Four other grandchildren from California were going to be in town also with their parents, and they planned to come too.

I bought 11 tickets! On opening night there was a full house to see the fabulous sets, costumes and performances by kids who had been practicing just 10 days at the Clarksville Fine Arts Center.

Aria was not the star, I’ll admit. But she smiled as she danced and sang vigorously with the others.

After her dad presented her with flowers, I asked her what she thought. “I like theater! I want to be in their show next year!” 

“I thought you had stage fright,” I said. Brimming with confidence, she answered: “Oh, no. Not anymore.” Aria is hooked!

Meanwhile, Aria’s brother had no interest at all in camps of any kind. Bryce, age 8, rejected all of them and instead listened to funny videos on his mom’s mobile phone. Until….

Lance, his dad, has suddenly taken an interest in golf. His work colleagues play it in South Carolina, and it’s good for business.

Lance learned the same thing I did when I became an avid skier. If you want to go off and do a sport, get your kids interested. Then you can say, “I’mdoing it for the family.”

So Lance showed Bryce “Happy Gilmore,” a movie about a boy who took up golf. “I want to go to a golf camp,” Bryce said.

“Around here?” His grandmother Pickett said. “Not likely.”

But then a miracle happened. I got on the Internet, typed in “Golf camps, South Boston, Virginia” and up popped” Greens Folly golf camp for kids, June 23 through 26.”

I was amazed that he was the only kid of 20 there who didn’t own his own clubs. But Green’s Folly loaned him some, and he thrived at chipping, driving and putting.

“It’s my favorite sport!” He told me later. His sister wants to join him in the next golf camp July 21-24. Inspired, five grandchildren and their parents went to the course’s driving range with me the day before the musical show. Three went the next day.

What could be better? Stage grandpa working with Coach Dad!

What I like

These are a few of my favorite things:

Local site for tourists: Cage sculpture garden.

South Boston dinner restaurants: Molasses Grill, Paco’s.

South Boston lunch restaurants: Wendy’s,

Southern Plenty, Shangrila-la, Applebee’s.

Clarksville restaurants: Los Banditos,  BridgewaterBar & Grill, Cooper’s Landing.

Durham restaurants: Mirachi’s Indian Kitchen and Bar, Bleu Olive.

Danville restaurants: Moon River Thai, Rustic Barn (west of town)

TV News; None. I get too rattled watching it.

Radio stations: WNCU 90.1 (jazz) WHLF 95.3 (local and 80s), VBN (classical 90.1), WCPE  (Classical 89.7.)

Pop band: Steely Dan

Rock song: “Gimmie Shelter,” Rolling Stones.

Jazz standard: “On Green Dolphin Street”

Dessert: Key line pie

Fruit: Bananas.

Steaks: Medium rare.

Cereal: Wheat Chex, All Bran

Vegetable: Beets

Clothier: L.L. Bean

Month: October

Pro teams: Washington Commanders, WashingtonNationals, Golden State Warriors, Carolina Hurricanes.

Participant sport: Cycling. 

College teams: California, Duke, North Carolina

Holiday: Thanksgiving

Beer: Dogfish Head

Wine: Blue Dog wine

TV show: Law & Order

Recent movie: “Wicked”

Old movie: “North by Northwest”

Coffee: Peet’s, Starbucks.

Time of day: 6 a.m. (I write my columns then.)