Goodfellows52: A veteran and a fine father

Goodfellows52: A veteran and a fine father: Imagine you are this kid from the Greater Boston area with your heart set on attending college when a letter suddenly...

A veteran and a fine father

Check out this link to a Boston Globe story about my father

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/obituaries/2014/11/26/blasi-longtime-revere-high-baseball-coach-formerly-led-state-coaches-association/xa7uUxaeyfa1jtsHodQ3DK/story.html

Imagine you are this kid from the Greater Boston area with your heart set on attending college when a letter suddenly arrives in the mail from Uncle Sam ordering you to report for duty in 1954.

Albert John Blasi was from an Italian family and grew up in Revere, Mass. He lived for baseball and grew up watching DiMaggio, Williams and Yaz at Fenway Park. He wanted to coach and teach history and loved betting on the ponies. Gambling is like a second sport in Revere, which featured Suffolk Downs thoroughbred racing and the Wonderland Dog Track.

Those two betting establishments were a haven for gamblers like my father, whose other passion was sports.

He and his wife, Louise, attended Ted Williams’ final game of his career on Sept. 28, 1960. I was about six months old. Years later, my mom mentioned their visit to Fenway in passing.

He was drafted by the United States Army in 1954 and was sent to occupied Germany to help the country’s denizens get back on their feet after a brutal war. He served with the Big Red One, which was also known as the First Infantry Division during peacetime. The Fighting First took hell in World War II, landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day.

My father missed serving in the Korean war by a year. I missed serving in Vietnam by a couple of years. We were both lucky but always honored those who picked up a gun in a war.

He became a sharpshooter, but he had no intention of making a career in the service.

His baseball dream came true in Germany. He was playing in a pick-up game on the base when he drove the ball out of the park. A colonel saw him and was so impressed with my father’s baseball skill that the officer instructed the leader of Blasi’s unit to relieve him of certain duties so he could play for the post teams.

I have a picture of him playing catch with his post team at Zeppelin Field in Germany. The field was a rallying point for Hitler's armies. Behind my father is a destroyed swastika.

For the next year, he was living the dream — playing baseball in Germany and skiing in Austria.

He enjoyed lugging around a bat and glove instead of a Browning automatic.

After his two-year stint, he resigned from the Army with great joy. He was a civilian and America’s pastime made him a prisoner of his passion for the game.

My father told me the story about his last day in the Army.

“Anthony, the sergeant said, ‘We all know Al Blasi is leaving us and will miss the army.’ Everyone laughed in my unit.”

He headed home and straight to Suffolk University where he majored in history on the G.I Bill’s dime. He became a devoted teacher and ended up coaching the Revere High School varsity baseball team for 42 years.

He was also devoted to his four children and wife. He was a coach known for his kindness and devotion to his players and community.

To me, he was my dad and somebody I could always count on.

Albert John Blasi died of Alzheimer’s (also known as The Long Goodbye) on Nov. 8, 2014. He served his country, but more importantly, he loved all of us.

There is not a day when I don’t think about my parents — many times with tears in my eyes from a heavy heart.

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NPR’s reporting shines a light in the Upside Down

"Natural disasters are terrifying - that loss of control, this feeling that something is just going to randomly end your life for absolutely no reason is terrifying. But, what scares me is the human reaction to it and how people behave when the rules of civility and society are obliterated." 

— Eli Roth

AUBURN — For two and half days, it felt like we were out of the loop after a nasty Nor’easter sideswiped Maine and left thousands of the state’s denizens groping in the dark the past week.

Just before I watched the lights fade from every room (thank you, Moody Blues), the annoying radio alarm sounded revelry at 6 a.m.

I bounded out of bed and told my annoyed wife that we still had power.

I should have kept my mouth shut.

Five minutes later, I saw a flash of light outside the bedroom window and watched the radio clock and night light go out.

Silence filled the room. 

The neighborhood went dark and I was drowning in anxiety, not knowing where my next cup of coffee would come from in these perilous and dark times.

We felt like we stumbled upon the portal to the Upside Down. I also realized I didn’t possess No. 11’s power turn the frigging electricity back on. 

“Oh damn it,” I said as I reached for the flashlight. More four-letter words followed when I bumped into objects along the way to a pitch-black kitchen.

Cable and Internet were out of action and a dormant coffee maker denied me my morning jolt of caffeine. 

The power was gone. I was unhappy, cold and the sudden quietness was already getting on my nerves.

My wife and I would snipe at each other by candlelight for the next two days. We hung out anywhere we could to get the Internet. We visited the Lewiston Library and drank coffee at Dunkin just for the WiFi. We were like wandering, energy vampires looking to suck up free Internet on somebody else’s dime.

We weren’t overreacting. News stories were breaking that Mueller and his team of lawyers started making arrests in the Russian controversy. We were gleeful that Mueller’s band of merry men were making headway, but we were still on the sidelines with no TV or Internet. 

That’s when we turned to National Public Radio for our news and a chance to cheer on Mueller for getting to the bottom of this mess that our president appears to ignore.

We commandeered our son’s ancient radio, stuck some batteries in the back and listened to “All Things Considered” and an endless stream of NPR stories about Mueller’s fearless exploits.

NPR was like another flashlight in our dark home.

For 60 hours, I lived in the murkiness of the Upside Down. I missed taking a warm shower and brewing a cup of that black gold that jump-started my mornings.

When the sun rose, I got the camera and took pictures of downed trees and power lines. Auburn was a mess and its inhabitants were in a bad mood.

So we waited impatiently as hoards of linemen descended on the Pine Tree State to help put lights back on in New England.

My tour of our wind-swept state was startling. The telephone pole near the end of my street had snapped in two and wires still were connected to the top half of the pole that was resting in the middle of the street.

Mother Nature had done a number on us.

But there was hope — if you believe in hope. Linemen were working on the broken pole for two days. By Wednesday, they were mounting the relays on the top half, and wouldn’t you know it, the power returned in the morning and all was well in my neighborhood by evening.

The TV and Internet came back to life in our home and there was warm water running in the sink to wash the damn dishes.

We were fortunate. There are still over 5,000 people wandering in the dark in Maine. I am sure the level frustration for those Mainers is in the red. 

For us, life was good again and we were grateful to those men who work with electricity and brave danger to put the state of Maine back on line.

And shout-out to NPR for keeping two people informed after two dark days. And with power on, the portal to Upside Down has been closed — for the moment.