notmovingpictures Episode 075: Mini Vacation

If my voice sounds a bit off it's because I'm fighting a cold that was contracted during my trip home to see my family. That's what this episode is about, going back to a familiar place to spend an all too little amount of time with family. That concept seems to be getting more important to me the older that I get.



Opening music: Alloy - Live To See The Day
Closing music: Crocodile Shop - April Reigns

Email: notmovingpictures@gmail.com  Twitter: @notmovingpics
Blog: www.notmovingpictures.blogspot.com

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

I Stood Waiting

I stood waiting in front of the barracks building that housed me and my classmates at Fort Benjamin Harrison. My uncle had told me to be there at a certain time and my cousin would pick me up to bring me to their house for a home cooked meal. If you’ve ever been sent to military training and been away from home you know just how big a deal that is. Of course I bragged to my classmates as I daydreamed about what wonderful food I would be served. They were jealous but in a good natured way. Glad for me but wishing it was them. Just the idea of being around people who had nothing to do with the Army had us all excited. It seemed it was a fortuitous thing to have been assigned here after all.

My uncle, aunt and cousin and I weren’t exactly close, mainly because of the distance between our homes. They lived in Indianapolis, Indiana while I lived in tiny, little Ironton, Ohio. Growing up, if we saw each other more than twice a year it was out of the ordinary. The times we saw each other my cousin and I always did hang out with each other though. Regardless, we were family and they had offered to feed me and let me get away from the post for a few hours. The thought of it all brimmed with the excited aura of what seemed like normal life from before I had joined the military and was engulfed into their way of doing things. So still, I stood waiting in front of the barracks.

After a time doubts began to slip into my brain, after all, my cousin should have been here by now. To counter those thoughts I came up with possible reasons for the delay. Perhaps traffic was excessively bad or maybe he had to work late. Maybe they really didn’t want to see me. Wait, no, I couldn’t think like that. He was now more than an half an hour overdue so I went inside and tried to call their house to see if the plans had changed. There was no answer. I walked back outside as my anxiety level slowly ratcheted higher and higher. Time went by. After more than an hour had passed since the original agreed upon time, once again I went inside to attempt to call them. Once again, no answer. I walked back outside where I stood waiting.

What a sad, pitiful sight I must have been. This lonely scarecrow waiting and waiting as his faith in family slowed slipped away. More than two hours had passed before I finally gave up my last shred of hope and dignity and I slowly shuffled back inside. I tried calling one more time. The result was the same, no answer. My classmates were asking why I hadn’t gone and all I could do was hang my head and mumble “I don’t know.” The rest of the day I spent by myself, withdrawn and disappointed. No longer standing out front waiting but waiting inside my head. That’s the day I learned that the idea of extended family was overrated and not to be trusted. I never did call them again for the rest of my time in training at Fort Ben Harrison. As a matter of fact I never spoke with them even at the funerals that came later. I guess I gave up waiting.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

Father And Son Comic Book Day

My son turns seven at the end of the month so I thought it was about time to introduce him to the time honored tradition known as the comic book shop. He loves to read (takes after me) and he loves superhero movies like The Avengers and Spiderman so it seemed like a foregone conclusion that I should help to facilitate the connection for him. So off we went to The Comic Empire located here in Tulsa. We found a few cheap Marvel ones and a Sonic The Hedgehog and another whose name escapes me at the moment. We were just looking for something to get him started. I got The Walking Dead volume 19 as well as a few Judge Dredd issues from the 80s.

Truthfully I am out of my depth with comics. I read them a lot when I was a kid but that was a long time ago. A really long time ago. In the last five years or so I have gone to the library and read The Walking Dead volumes 1-18 and whatever they have by Kevin Smith. Tulsa County has a really good library system. I'll have to take my time getting back into this because I need to educate myself. Collecting comics isn't really something I'm interested in doing. I only want to acquire stuff that I'll  to read multiple times, basically I'll just like I do with books.

I did also have an ulterior motive to going to the comic book store. I've had a story idea running around in my head for a while now and at first I thought of writing it as a movie script but lately I've been entertaining the idea of making it a comic book. Problem is, I don't know any artists that have experience and/or interest in doing something like this. I had a good conversation with the owner of the store and found out from him that while there seems to be a lot of writers in this area there is also a dearth of artists. Still, I think it's a good idea and I'm going to try and see where it can take me. At the very least I can gain some knowledge about the whole process. Maybe the next time I get to go to Peru I can find some artists there because that's where this story will take place.

Afterwards we ended up going to the movie theater to see what was showing. As it turns out Captain America: The Winter Soldier just came out yesterday so we ended up spending way too much money to see it in 3D. I will say however that the seats at the AMC theater were pretty awesome even though we were in the front row. Basically it's rows of recliners attached to each other so it's like watching the movie with the comforts of home (and a lot more people). We had a pretty good time to say the least. Then it was off to get something to eat where my son could play and I could use free wi-fi to write this. All in all it was a pretty good time for a father/son hang out day. Every time we have one I try to do something different, the last time was laser tag and with summer coming I foresee more outdoor types of things.

However I also get the idea that going to the comic book store will be something that we'll be sharing fairly regularly. Some of my fondest memories from childhood were walking from the 9th street projects in Ironton, Ohio to the downtown bookstore where I could buy and trade comics. It was a more innocent (some might say ignorant) period in my life. Those days can never come back but I can take every opportunity to make this time in my sons life as good as it can get. Making these trips to the hallowed ground of the local comic book store is one of the best ways to do that that I can think of. Who knows, maybe later in the summer I'll also actually be able to make the pilgrimage to Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash in Red Bank, NJ. A boy can dream can't he?

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

notmovingpictures Episode 020: Road Trips Past And Future?

Episode 19 was the reunion of the four who went to see Journey in 1983 and we didn't even talk about the concert. Tommy and Don rectify that in this episode as they try to search their fading memories for details. Then our dastardly duo go on to talk about the future of road trips as bands get older and eventually will stop touring. Just who is left to warrant a drive of four to seven hours in our ongoing quest to see the bands and know new cities? Listen and find our answers, feeble though they may be.



Opening Music: Alloy - Live To See The Day
Closing Music: Journey - Line Of Fire

Email: notmovingpictures@gmail.com Twitter: @notmovingpics
Blog: www.notmovingpictures.blogspot.com

Older episodes can also be found @ www.archive.org, just search for notmovingpictures.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

The Art Of Cowardly Fighting

Recently while in Sunday School I had a memory of a kid I knew when I was young. It's been over twenty-five years since I've seen him and as a result I no longer remember his name. For the sake of the story let's just call him Greg. Greg didn't live in my apartment building but did live on the same block as me in the projects. We were friendly off and on over a period of a few years but not exactly friends if that makes sense. As a matter of fact, the last memory I have of him was a fight between me and his younger brother and subsequently me and him but that's another story entirely.

On this particular day when we were about ten years old during a period of friendship we happened to be standing outside on the block talking. Greg had this bad habit of running his mouth to other people but unfortunately for him he had absolutely no ability to defend himself. For whatever reason there was he would start calling another kid names, saying bad things about his family and what he would do to the kid. Since he couldn't back any of his smack talk up whenever it came to physical violence (which with boys at that age it invariably will do) Greg usually wound up taking a beating. I recall on one occasion a boy we'll call Mike (can't remember his name either) came running up to Greg and started punching him out of the blue. It seems Greg had been mouthy with Mike in school where Mike couldn't do anything about it but now out in the open he had found his opportunity for revenge.

Greg immediately dropped into a fetal position and covered up as best he could while Mike pounded away on him. Eventually Mike tired of this and figuring that his need for revenge was sated he stopped pummeling Greg and told him he'd gotten what he deserved. Mike let him up and told him in great detail what he would do to him the next time he dared to talk to him the way he had before. Greg kept his head down and started to walk away sniffling but when he had gone about thirty to forty feet he started a vicious, nasty, verbal assault on Mike the likes of which I had never heard before. Greg took off running with Mike in hot pursuit but he only got a short distance before Mike caught him and the whole scene repeated itself.

Once more Mike let Greg up and once more he walked away before starting another verbal assault. Mike chased him down again and bashed him as best he could, given Greg's fetal position. This scene repeated itself several more times before Greg finally made it to the safety of his home (or Mike just tired of using him as a human punching bag) whichever came first. Greg had suffered a very public beating but had never stopped running his mouth once he had gained some sort of relative safety. Mike had shown that he could dominate Greg but could not stop him from running his mouth, no matter how many times he beat him down. It's hard to say whose will was more indomitable.

What's could all of this possibly have to do with Church you say? Our lesson was about a leader who refused to make an oath that he would war no more even though he and his men were trapped and could not win. They faced complete destruction and still he would not give in. Greg was very much like that leader. He put himself in a bad situation of his own making and talked about what he would do but ultimately would not fight back and defend himself. Behind his verbal smokescreen he was a coward and could not face his own demons. Not once did he stand up for himself, not once did he attempt to throw a single punch. Instead he chose to transfer those demons to others in what I can only surmise was an effort to deflect the pain he felt inside. As a result he ended up having pain on the outside fighting a war he could never win.

Greg could not bring himself to capitulate nor could he learn from his mistakes. At the very least he should have realized that the smart thing to do was get a little more distance between Mike and himself before opening his mouth again, but he could not even do that. I don't know if it was pride, stupidity or good old fashioned craziness which drove him. At the time I didn't know whether I should admire or pity him and even now I still can't say for sure how I feel. His behavior puzzled me then as it does now. If you won't defend yourself then perhaps it's better to just keep your mouth shut. If he never learned from his mistakes and dealt with those demons he might still be stuck in the same revolving door pattern he developed all those years ago. For his sake I really hope that's not the case. It would be rather sad at his age to still be living a life as a cowardly fighter.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

My (Lack) Of Vision

Somewhere around the age of eight or nine years old was the time when the terrible news was handed down to me. My vision had deteriorated to the point that I now needed glasses. My mother was raising three children with no help from our father, back then a person could seemingly disappear and never have to worry about being made to actually contribute to the raising of his children. Apparently my father did this with more than one woman too (see my earlier story about my father for all of the details). Since my mother was raising us on the salary of a secretary she had to have some assistance and soon we were living in the projects of Ironton and on food stamps. I personally viewed the food stamps as a shameful thing which came back on me at a much later date.

Another program (state, county, federal?) that we were eligible for was one that through which I could get my glasses for free. The only catch was that there were only three styles of frames to choose from. The first was ugly and was sure to get you insulted and ridiculed by your friends. The second was uglier and was sure to get you insulted, ridiculed and possibly beaten up by strangers. The third was the ugliest and was sure to get you insulted, ridiculed and beaten up by everybody. Guess which ones I would invariably choose? Back then before the many technological advances that we have today my lenses were very thick, attesting to how poor my eyesight actually was, and very large which meant that the frames had to be sturdy enough to hold the lenses in place properly.

Here I am as a cute, normal kid before glasses

And here I am a few years later looking nerdly with glasses

Nowadays even though my vision is far worse the lenses are much thinner and I can wear wireframes if I so desire. Not so back then. So there I was at a young lad at a tender age with poor self confidence and a bad self image and I had to wear these ugly frames with huge lenses that dwarfed my face and that would certainly not mix well at all later when puberty set in. The shy sensitive person that I was now became an instant nerd in the publics opinion simply with the addition of glasses. Life was never the same in more ways than one.

The best time for me was the brief period that I was able to wear contact lenses while in college. For the first time since I was a young child I could actually see out of my whole eyes clearly without the curse of my vision being limited by the outline of the frames. No, it was total freedom, until dust blew into my eyes that is. Still, it was very liberating. Later in life my eyes would change and now they dry out very easily so contacts are pretty much not an option anymore for me. As I said earlier though technology did bring me lighter and better glasses that don't take up my whole face so I've got that going for me.

Unfortunately I don't know if I've ever felt like a single pair of glasses that I've had ever really suited me or just looked good on me. It's probably just all in my head, which can be a dangerous place to be. The thing I want to know is, after a lifetime of watching Star Trek and other sci-fi shows, where's the technology that can simply and quickly fix your vision? And the flying cars, where are the flying cars we were promised? That never came to be. Sure there's expensive laser treatment that might be able to fix your vision but that's just not the same. Come on scientists, work on this. Invent something like Bones used and let's get this vision thing licked once and for all. And get me that flying car, stat.

Written and Published by Don Leach.May not be used without permission from the author.

The Girl That I Didn't Understand

In late 1991 I re-enlisted in the Army and got to choose my next duty station. The Presidio in San Francisco was available and it was very tempting for a variety of reasons but ultimately I chose Walter Reed Army Medical Center because it was reasonably close to my hometown and my family whom I had not seen a great deal of ever since I first joined the Army. In February of 1992 I left Ft Hood and traveled home for some leave time. The trip itself was quite a story but instead of that I want to talk about someone that I came to refer to as the girl that I didn't understand.

While at home I went out with my younger sister Karen to a bar in Ironton, our hometown. Karen is very different from me. Where I am more reserved and uncomfortable in public she is the exact opposite and can go into a room without knowing anybody and you would swear that she knew every single person in the room. That was the case on this night. We spent some time there and after a while she was standing at the bar and I went up there as well when I noticed this blond girl standing to my left. She was attractive and was mouthing the words to a song playing on the jukebox and staring straight at me.

This had never happened to me before (and hasn't since). I did the classic movie thing of looking behind me to see if there was someone else standing there that she was singing to but there wasn't anybody there. I looked directly into her eyes, pointed to myself and asked her "Me?" She nodded the affirmative. This was foreign territory for me and I wasn't sure what I should do. I mean girls just did not come on to me, ever. I realized that if I let this opportunity pass me by then I'd never let myself live it down so I slid over next to her and started talking.

As I said earlier I've never been comfortable in public settings, especially social ones. I don't like going to places where there are a lot of people, I just feel like I don't belong there. However, she was attractive and I was lonely and was trying to get over the breakup of my marriage so in I went. We talked for some time and I ended up giving her a ride home. Don't get all excited here, nothing happened more than a few moments of intense kissing and then she was gone. We arranged to go on a proper date (to the same bar) and while I enjoyed her company I was not having an overwhelmingly good time as my social anxieties were in full effect. At some point she started playing pool with a guy that she knew and was a friend of one of her friends.

She came up to me and wanted to ask if it was okay if he gave her a ride to her friends house. I'm not exactly a dummy so I knew what was going on, this guy was the type that she was attracted to on a very basic level and she finally had a chance at him. The thing is, even though I was angry that she wanted to ditch out of our date I felt I had no real say in this. This was only our first date, I didn't "own" her, so who was I to say anything. I told her that much and as they piled into his car I spun my tires on the gravel and got out of there, angry at how I had been screwed over again by life and vowed that I'd never talk to her again.

The next day she called me and although I didn't really want to talk to her I did but I tried to be short with my answers. She didn't take the hint though and wanted to meet me at the Ashland mall after she got off of work. Against my better judgment I agreed and at the food court we talked and before I knew it everything was okay, so long as either one of us didn't speak of the night before. If we ignored it then it didn't really happen I guess. We talked about Washington D.C. and how she loved it there and that she'd like to visit me once I got settled in and she could get the time off. A few days later I was on my way to report to my duty station and although I did think of her a little I was pretty busy getting used to my new routine.

A few weeks passed by when I had a knock on my barracks door. There was a phone call for me and you guessed it, it was her. She was coming to town on the next Friday and wanted to see me which did wonders for my mood. I offered to pick her up at the train station but she said her friends were picking her up and that she'd call me as soon as she got to their place so that we could arrange a meeting as soon as possible. All day Friday I was anxious, I couldn't wait for the workday to end. After it did I stayed in my room waiting for the phone call. After more than enough time had passed I started going out to the CQ desk (Charge of Quarters) and asked if there was a message for me. Nothing. I kept checking with them every twenty to thirty minutes and I'm sure they were sick of the sight of me before long.

Eventually I gave up and sank into my bed as I allowed all of the negative thoughts to swarm over me. The big question was why? Why do any of this if she had no real interest in me. Why call me at all if she didn't intend to follow through? Why call if she wasn't sure she'd even have time to see me? Was she ever interested in me or was this all just a big game to her? It's possible that she lost my number or that there was some kind of accident (the train didn't crash, I checked) but the best I could surmise was that I was her backup plan and she didn't end up needing me. The only thing that was clear was that my already fragile ego was at an all time low and didn't look to be improving anytime soon. No answers were forthcoming as I never heard from her again and that's how I came to call her the girl that I didn't understand.

Written and published by Don Leach

Losing It In School (No, Sadly Not That Way)..............

During my entire time spent in the secondary educational system I can only recall vomiting while in school one time. Then again, it only took that one time for it to prove to be more than memorable. If my memory serves me well (and it probably doesn't) this lone instance of regurgitation occurred in my freshman year of high school at Ironton High School. In those days there was one girls and boys bathroom for each floor and they were located on opposite ends of the floor. It was just my luck that my class was on the wrong end on this fateful day.

I've always had this strange knowledge early on of the fact that I was going to puke and as I sat in my English class I felt my discomfort growing with each minute that went by. There was no doubt in my mind that I was going to hurl and soon. Still, for some odd reason I didn't make my way to the boys restroom with haste. Perhaps I was in denial despite my knowledge or maybe I was trying to convince myself that I could hold it all in until after the class was over. Whatever the reason there I sat in with my hand covering my mouth waiting. Until I could no longer sit that is.


The point of no return came and I realized that the choice was to move now and take a chance of making it in time or to continue to sit and blow chunks all over my desk. With that thought in mind I jumped out of my seat and quickly walked to the door. I didn't bother to say anything to my teacher because I knew that if I opened my mouth something other than words would come out. Instead I made my way into the hallway and started the long march to relief. The further the distance I covered the faster I began to walk and still it seemed as if somehow all of the laws of physics were being broken and the distance was magically increasing instead of decreasing.

Luckily nobody attempted to stop me for if they had then they would have been witness to my sick spilling forth, perhaps on them. Finally I turned the corner and now nearly running with my hand still over my mouth I covered the last twenty feet or so and turned the last corner to make it to the doorway of the bathroom where I instantly and violently lost all control of my body and projectile vomited as if I were a character in a horror movie. Inside the doorway there was a wall that formed a short walkway that led you into the bathroom proper without anybody outside being able to look inside. That walkway was now covered in a watery film that was spreading evenly across the floor. Unbelievably I had not a drop on me.

Doing the only thing that made sense to me at this point I tiptoed into the bathroom and went to the sink where I washed off my face and rinsed out my mouth and then looked around to see if I could find a mop. There were none to be found. The mess was far too large to tackle with the thin and tiny paper towels available and besides, if I were to kneel down to attempt to clean it up then the smell would have sadly made it happen all over again. Instead I tiptoed my way back out the door and carefully looked around to see if anyone had noticed the insanity that had just gone down.

For once I was in luck as the hallway was still clear so I silently made my way back towards the classroom. On the way I met a classmate who had been sent to make sure I was okay. The teacher had been around for awhile and knew that when I had left so quickly that there was a good reason for it. I told my classmate about all that had happened and he was naturally pretty grossed out by the tale. We returned to our class and the rest of the time went along fairly quietly without any other excitement yet I still sat there nervously, afraid that at any moment now the door would burst open and the janitor would point at me telling everyone what I had done. I said a silent prayer that I would not be embarrassed in front of the whole class.

The bell rang and like everyone else I went off to my next class and tried to forget what had happened. Later in the day my classmate that had been sent to check on me informed me that his next class had been on that side of the building and was close to the bathroom when another boy ran past him into the bathroom only to make contact with what I had left behind. He went sliding into the wall and almost fell down. A little shaken and not sure why he had slid he continued on into the restroom never knowing how close he had come to rolling around on the floor covered in my putrid heavings. I didn't even try to find out after that if anybody else had any problems going into the bathroom that day. Sometimes it's better to be ignorant of what's going on around you, for your own sanity.

Published by Don Leach

A Brief History Of My Father And His Wives

I spoke with my older sister earlier in the week and for some reason she and my mother are trying to determine how many children my father had and with whom. Mind you, both of my sisters and I are in our forties now and our father died back in 1999 so I wasn't really sure why they wanted to do this at this point in time but who am I to disagree? I guess it's something about mapping out our complete genealogy or an attempt to understand him a little better. Either way, as it turned out our conversation did unearth an item or two for each of us that we did not previously know so it did turn out to bear fruit in that way. The thing about my father though is that he was a habitual liar, whether it was about large things or small, and that makes it difficult to decide exactly what he said was true and what was false. What is certain to me is that he always needed a woman in his life in the time that I knew him, no matter where he was, and he didn't normally go a long time without one.

Let's begin with hopefully where it all started. First he was married to my mother and they had three children of which I am the middle one. My older sister is Teresa and my younger is Karen. We all grew up in Ironton, Ohio, a rather small town in the southeastern part of the state. During their marriage he was away in the military some of the time so I suppose it is possible that he had children out of wedlock in Germany or Vietnam. Who can say? Shortly after Karen was born he had a daughter with a woman named Irene and this was in Pennsylvania. None of us know what his daughters name is. While I lived with my father here in Tulsa he did inform me one day while we were talking about the past that he had gone to Mexico to get a not so legal quickie divorce from my mother and then later had to do it again in the states. Perhaps this was so that he could be with this woman "legally" in his or her mind.

Wife number three was Maryann, also in Pennsylvania, this time in the northeastern part of the state. With her he had Mary Katherine and then twin sons Tim and Tom. Interestingly, again while I was living with him in Tulsa he told me when Maryann had found him (much as my mother had) towards the end of 1986 that he was unaware that she had been pregnant with the twins when he had left her. Now she was having difficulty with her sons (she had an older son as well from a previous relationship) and dad ended up moving back to help with them. More on this later.

Next up was a lady by the name of Elizabeth who had been a nun previously (no idea if dad had anything to do with that or not) and they had a son named Michael in Missouri. I do remember my father talking about living in Jefferson City amongst other places in that state. The only thing I know about Michael is that he was killed in a car accident when he was seventeen.

My father had not been in communication with us nor had he been a part of our lives when my mother found him sometime around 1981. He was living in Enid, Ok and both of my sisters as well as myself came to live with him at one point or another but I am the only one that stayed. In Enid dad was married to Jo and although she was a rather strange woman I think now that she really tried but it couldn't have been easy taking in us and my cousin Larry as well as his friend Rich. At any point, dad decided to leave her and take up with a lady he worked with named Pam, who was also married. This would end up being the last job that I ever saw my father work other than being in the National Guard. Pam ended up being not so very stable (mentally) herself and she and I had issues that I am sure helped to put a strain on their marriage. Plus she was nuts.

Dad briefly left her and took up with a lady about five years older than me (I was about nineteen at the time) whom we moved in with. Unfortunately her car was hit by a truck that ran a red light and she lapsed into a coma and later died. Dad had no choice other than to return to Pam until he could find something or someone else. Around this time I wrote some lyrics about Pam that show how I felt about her. They started with the line "She's a witch she's a bitch" so you can see I didn't try to sugarcoat it at all. There was also a lady named Della while I was away in college that I don't believe he ever was involved with other than to string her along and use her to his advantage. That's my impression at least. She deserved better because she was a very nice lady.

I had joined the National Guard as well and left school so that I could go away to training. When I returned dad was living by himself in Tulsa and I stayed with him while trying to make up my mind about college. It was at this time that Maryann found him and told him about the problems that she was having. I had decided to stay out of school and return home to be around my mother and sisters and shortly after I left he moved to Pennsylvania to help Maryann with their children. As you can guess, at some point they got married again and wife number three became wife number seven.

There is a substantial gap in time between Elizabeth and Jo and my father never really spoke much of that time to me so I guess anything is possible. The final best guess tally that we know of is seven marriages (to six ladies) and eight children. The man could definitely talk to women and seemingly was never without one for very long. Perhaps we'll never know what his reasons were, what he was feeling, what caused all of these relationships to fail and all of these children to not know their father for much of their formative years if at all. I do know that wife number three and seven didn't want us to know much about them. She even asked my father's twin sister to not tell us that he had died. We found out from another aunt and Teresa and I showed up anyway, much to her chagrin.

There is no relationship between the different groups of children and it's doubtful there ever will be. Nor do I expect that we'll find out a great deal of information about Michael or the girl that he had with Irene. Anything is possible in this era of instant access but I have to ask myself if it's worth the trouble. If it were to happen I feel that it would have to be something in order to help one of us come to terms with why our lives were the way they were. Otherwise it would just be opening old wounds. Personally, I think it would be worth it to help even one of us. Maybe we'll see, Teresa can be pretty tenacious when she wants to be so I can't discount her finding out any news. That's about it, to the best of my rapidly faltering memory.

Published by Don Leach

Mom Comes For A Birthday Visit

Earlier this week my mother left to return to her home in Ohio after spending a week with us. She came in for my four year old son’s birthday which was the first time for her to do so. The last time she saw him was almost two years ago. All the other grandkids grew up in the same area and indeed still live there today but I’ve always been the one in the family to roam and unfortunately that means we live quite a bit of distance from each other. It was good to see her but I knew that the week was all about her and my son spending time together, that was the most important thing and they both loved the time they had. To be certain all of us need to make a better effort at seeing each other more often and the past week showed us how important it is for my son Johnny.

He needs to see his relatives as often as possible so I’m already thinking about trying to fly back home later in the year, at least for a week or so if I can. After that we need to find a way to save the money it will cost for us to go back to Peru and visit my wife’s family there. To make that happen costs quite a bit of money and I’ve been racking my brain trying to come up with a way to procure the funds but so far nothing has come to fruition, especially since I don’t foresee a future for myself as a bank robber or thief. Too much bad karma there if you ask me.

So instead I try and call once a week and I’d like to get everyone on Skype so that we could all do a video conference and at least see each other as well but it’s like pulling teeth to get anyone to listen to me. I mean it’s free as long as you’ve got an internet connection. Doesn’t get much better than that does it? I’m not really a phone person and I’ve never been one to call very much. When I was single I would call maybe once a month or so if they were lucky, okay really my family usually would call me and I rarely was the one to call. Gotta be honest with myself since it is my blog.

As we get older it becomes clearer to me how much more important it is to talk about things now because honestly we don’t know how much time we have left in this world. Personally I don’t want to leave something to chance on the hopes that I can always talk about it later. In the past my motto was why talk about something today when I can put it off until tomorrow but that just doesn’t cut it anymore. All it took was having a kid for me to realize that.


Published by Don Leach

Yearbook Day Was The Worst Time Of The Year

A few days ago as I had finished my shower and was drying off (I know it's a scary thought) and I started thinking about how one of the worst times for me back when I was in high school was at the end of the year when the yearbooks came out. Now I don't recall how I got to that unusual point because normally I'll just have a thought that reminds me of something and that leads to a similar thought and the next thing you know I'm miles away from where I started out and I'm thinking about something bizarre. Like on this day.

The day that Yearbooks (or rather Annuals in some places) were given out was quite stressful to me. Frankly put I was horrified about the thought of going around the school asking a load of people that didn't really know or like me to sign my book. Then there was the unlikely scenario that people would ask me to do likewise. I've mentioned on this blog before that I had absolutely zero self confidence in myself and really believed that there was nothing about me for people to like. I was too different, too far from "normal" for the vast majority of my classmates to understand. Plus, I had moved around and attended three different schools in a year and a half's time so that made it especially hard for me to have had a chance to make friends or even acquaintances.

I considered myself extremely lucky to have one good friend, one or two somewhat friends and then perhaps a few other people who knew me by name. That was a best case scenario. So there I would be, sweating over who I would ask to sign my yearbook. It was easier to know who I wouldn't ask. Anybody popular or a high level athlete or a cheerleader was out. They weren't even in consideration because the thought of one of them deigning to sign my yearbook was ludicrous. Then there were the students who weren't quite at that level, who hung around the popular kids in the hopes that they might be thought of as cool by association. Out. The students who thought I was in a different grade? Out. Foreign exchange students? Maybe, if they didn't have a full grasp on the English language although usually they did.

For the most part that left the usual suspects of the losers, geeks, nerds and other forgotten loners that just didn't fit in. Unfortunately it didn't include the sluts although years later you normally found out that they really were more chaste than any other girl in school. Damn those high schools boys and their rumors! Well, from that group I would choose the the ones that didn't terrify or frighten me too much and chance a request for their autographs. I was happy if I got signatures on the front and back pages. I thought that at least that way it would look better years later to anyone going through my yearbooks. They might actually think that I was somewhat well known and popular.

Now those yearbooks sit in a box at the bottom of a closet and are rarely brought out and looked at and I could care less who did or did not sign them. They're just a reminder of days long gone past that time has shown weren't really all that important at all. My "permanent record" didn't follow me nor did 99% of those that purported to like or dislike me. That's the way it is for almost everyone I'm sure, we were just too young and stupid to realize it.

Published by Don Leach

Wednesday Week - Why

Back in January 1987 I moved back home to Ironton, Ohio from Tulsa, Oklahoma. I had originally moved to Oklahoma to live with my dad while in the middle of my junior year of high school at the end of 1981 and after attending college on and off for a few years I decided it was time to be around my mother and sisters for awhile. That didn't last long as by the end of May I had already enlisted in U.S. Army's delayed entry program and would be sent off to training in November. Of course that's not why I'm posting this. Anyway, I had heard the song "Why" by the group Wednesday Week most likely on MTV (back then they did play music videos) and one day I drove up to a record store in Huntington, WV which was about a 20 minute drive away and the only place I could find anything decent musically in the area. While looking around in a 99 cent bin I found a promotional cassette copy of the bands first full length album, What We Had.



I couldn't believe my luck since there was no other way I would have found this in that area of the country. You would have to have lived there at the time to understand. In other cities you could just go to a record store and get things that were different, not part of the mainstream, but not in that Tri-State area. So the band went through a very large amount of players and after their second release the cassette only No Going Back the band broke up in 1990. Eight years later the classic lineup reunited and they continue to play live shows in Los Angeles. You can find more info on them here. I've always liked this song, the band was part of the paisley movement but at the time I heard more of the rock and country mixture that I liked so well. That's what drew me to this song and still does.

12 Inch Singles # 2 AND Night Tracks or Night Flight?

I can tell that I'm getting old. Earlier I was thinking about a certain video from the early 80s and how I remembered watching it on a particular channel before I had ever laid eyes on MTV. Somehow I remembered that it was on the WTBS show Night Tracks around my sophomore year in high school however as I decided to do some fact checking before posting (a rare thing) and I found that it cannot have happened that way. The above mentioned show didn't air until 1989 which was about 7 years too late. I knew I had seen this video (and many others) on a show that aired on Fridays and Saturdays in the evenings but couldn't figure out what it was. At first top 40 or top 40 aspiring mainstream videos would be shown and as it got later in the evening you would see edgier, more alternative videos from artists like Devo, Iggy Pop and so forth. This was my favorite time to watch. Forget all of the mainstream garbage that was being pushed my way, no I went in for the different, unique and well, just downright odd groups. You have to know, I lived in a small town (pop. roughly 12,000) named Ironton in southeastern Ohio and wasn't near a larger city where you could get exposed to different kinds of music. I graduated high school in 1983 (in a different state) but attended my 20th high school reunion in Ironton and most of the people wanted to listen to disco so that should be all the explanation you need about what living in that place was like. Still, it was better than the town that I ended up graduating from.

At any rate the band I was thinking about was The English Beat and the video was for the song "Save It For Later." It was so immensely different than the music on local radio or what I heard anybody else listening to that it made a distinct impression on me and to this day it stills brings a smile to my face when I hear it.



Now after doing some actual research I think the show was actually Night Flight on the USA network and since the name is so similar I'm sure you can understand my confusion. It started in 1982 (my sophomore year) a few months before MTV aired and from all accounts it seems like it should be the one. Of course I also used to hear groups on the tv show Fridays which got called a rip off of Saturday Night Live but it didn't matter to me. They featured artists playing in a live setting like The Jim Carroll Band, The Plasmatics, Devo and so on that Saturday Night Live would never touch. Of course, that's another story.