Giving thanks for some wonderful memories

“Traditions are our roots and a profile of who we are as individuals and who we are as a family. They are our roots, which give us stability and a sense of belonging - they ground us.” 

                                                                                        — Lidia Bastianich

AUBURN, Maine — A holiday tradition vanished with the death of my father.

But when you are the survivor, you long for the custom that brought you closer together with a parent.

I was fortunate to be raised in Italian neighborhood with nearly a dozen relatives on one street. Thanksgiving meant a stream of cousins and uncles, a smorgasbord of home-made food and booze — particularly fine wine.

There were traditions within traditions and one was rooting for your high school during Turkey Day football games across the state of Massachusetts. 

For nearly 50 years, you would find my father and me at a wind-blown, frozen football field watching Revere High School confront the Winthrop Vikings on a brisk Thanksgiving morning.

Spending a cold morning at Harry Della Russo Stadium or Winthrop’s ocean-side field was the prelude to a dinner for 20 relatives all vying for sumptuous meals and share a shot of Anisette to take the chill out of those football fans returning from the game.

During the games, we lamented about the cold and spent a couple of bucks on hot chocolate. There were adults who were seen reaching inside their jackets for  their flasks filled with rye or brandy.

I envied them. I found hot chocolate didn’t stop the shivers triggered by the biting cold. But a belt of brandy might be just what the doctor ordered in sub-zero temperatures.

Back in the day, the Div. I teams from the Greater Boston Area drew big crowds. The game gave former RHS football players like me a chance to catch up with former classmates as well as hang around my father — Albert John Blasi.

Big Al coached the Revere Patriots baseball team. He believed in supporting the football team and the game gave him the perfect excuse stay out of my mother’s way in the kitchen. My father did not find slaving over a hot oven a palatable way to spend the morning. Making soup or salad was the extent of his culinary skills.

Those talks in the car before we got to the field were precious to me. I watched my dad flip around the AM dial looking for other high school football scores as we raced home for a round of pasta, fish and Turkey.

Thanksgiving Day mornings watching high school football came to a slow stop when age caught up with my dad and the death of his close friend, Robert Marra. My father and Mr. Marra were fixtures in the stands. Both are no longer with us and a tradition disappeared with them.

The memories are sometimes painful, but I know I was lucky to have those significant moments with a father who loved his family and community. Going to a high school game would not be the same without my dad.

Thanksgiving traditions sometimes fade away with time, but those memories of my father standing in the cold watching a game come alive every holiday.

For that, I am thankful.

Garden good to go and going on parade

"I am definitely not the guy who drives to Vegas and stands in the middle of the street drunk with beads around his neck. I'm the guy that's with his family in the backyard holding sparklers."

 James Marsden 

The yard is in full bloom thanks to Mother Nature.

AUBURN, Maine — Thanks to Mother Nature, a sturdy shovel and a neighbor’s industrial tiller, my garden no longer looks like the contents inside a huge pipe that carries sewerage from 43 Massachusetts communities to be treated at Deer Island Waste Water Treatment Plant in Boston.

All that organic table waste, fresh-cut grass and wood ash that I dumped in the garden all fall and winter has now been ground to a pulp by a tiller that handles like a bucking bronco.

The crops are in and I have installed a flower bed that should be featured in “Home and Garden.”

We have already experienced summer-like weather and a chance of a frost has passed in Maine

I have planted tomatoes, summer squash, peppers, cucumbers, spinach and carrots. 

The soil looks good and all systems are go for a good garden — depending on the weather and frigging varmints, of course.

All gardeners and farmers are always at the whim of the weather, but people who like getting their hands dirty also understand weather is our friend no matter how fickle it is.

So now we wait and water our land, hoping the dirt yields vegetables not tainted with pesticides.

The flower garden is teaming with color as Mother Nature to struts her stuff.

I recently read a great piece in National Geographic about how nature and your backyard can relieve up to 30 percent of stress the moment you step foot into a green paradise.

My well-kept yard is a refuge and a quiet spot to read or write.

If I am feeling worn out, a hike or my yard is great way to revive my tired bones and give me piece of mind — and vegetables.

Going on parade

OLD ORCHARD BEACH, Maine — An hour-trip to the coast and stroll along the beach in a refreshing sea breeze does a body good.

Breathing in that salt air and looking out over the water in this seaside community made my Memorial weekend.

A slice of pizza and a dish full of golden fries in the sun, which finally made an appearance around noon, brightened our day.

But we got word that a Memorial Day parade was heading our way and it would be passing through town.

I hadn’t been to a Memorial Day parade in years. I appreciate Americans who served and paid the ultimate sacrifice with their lives. Parades are just one way to tip our hats to men and women who have defended our nation.

The folks in Old Orchard Beach paid a wonderful tribute to the men and women who served with distinction with a spectacular parade.

The parade also featured a submarine float to honor all those who served in the silent service.

Kudos to Old Orchard Beach for paying tribute to American servicemen and women.

Watching people take time out of the busy schedules to line the streets and salute veterans made me proud.

Beached on the Fourth of July

"When you finally go back to your old home, you find it wasn't the old home you missed but your childhood."

 Sam Ewing 

REVERE, Mass. — A wave of humanity shuffled past us as we sat on a stonewall facing Revere Beach on a humid July 4 night.

This was the place to spend an evening viewing fireworks from across the channel without the hassle of finding a parking space or dealing with a mob of rude people. Swampscot, Lynn, and Nahant were putting on blockbuster displays that could clearly be seen from Revere Beach. 

When we looked to our right of the beach, the town of Winthrop was also lighting up the skies just a few miles away, and yes, you could see Boston's incredible display, too. We watched it all from the comfort of a stonewall as gentle waves lapped the shoreline. There were also local, grand displays of explosives going off across Revere neighborhoods.

No Hatch Memorial Shell on the Charles River for three Mainers who avoid crowd scenes. The Boston Pops and its interpretation of the 1812 Overture by Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky can transform a reluctant Patriot into a flag-waving citizen, but camping out two days to secure a front-row seat is not worth our efforts.

There were thousands of people wandering up and down Revere Beach boulevard as fireworks flashed all around us. Music blared from cars as traffic inched along the strip that is lined with several dives. State police patrolled the dark beach with their four-wheelers to keep the peace.

We were on a mission to seek out cool ocean sea breezes in the stifling city heat. There was a warm southerly breeze off the sandy shore, offering little relief to a sweltering public tempted to immerse themselves in the cool waters of the Atlantic.

A lot has been said and written about America's first public beach, and not all of it has been kind, but I still love the place, its fast food and the people who come from over the Boston area to spend a humid summer day.

The smells and crowds are notorious for triggering memories of the boulevard, which is one the best areas to jog or walk. And then there are beautiful woman who inspire any male runner or walker to go the distance. RHS teens staked their ownership of a stretch of wall that began in front of the MDC police station and ran all to the way Bianchi's Pizza. Kelly's Roast Beef was about a mile a way, but it was always worth the long walk to shell out a week's pay for a clam plate.

I was grateful to my family from Maine for sharing a wonderful July 4 and listening to my countless memories of beach that means so much to people who grew up in this city. We quietly watched the colorful flashes of fireworks up and down the surrounding shoreline on a typical humid night in Revere. There were hundreds of families doing the same.

Revere Beach has undergone so many restorations and transformations over a century. It endured the Blizzard of 1978, and even though the Cony Island of the East has passed into history, it is a part of me that I can't shake. Of course, I miss all those friends and family who once walked along its shoreline.

That's why I can't stay away from the place, especially on the Fourth of July.

Talking turkey about high school football

"Family traditions counter alienation and confusion. They help us define who we are; they provide something steady, reliable and safe in a confusing world." 

                                                              - Susan Lieberman

AUBURN, Maine — High school football was the main course on the Thanksgiving Day menu.

For some reason, the 900-course meal at our grandmother's house took a back seat until we froze our buttocks off watching two high schools butt heads in the early morning cold. 

The game was a social event for citizens who were just getting warmed up for turkey, stuffing and grammy's homemade apple pie.

But the game came first before all good citizens of Revere would indulge at the dinner table.

That was a tradition that lasted for decades. Filling our bellies with turkey was second to watching Revere and Winthrop slap each other around on the field.

The outcome of those two coastal communities slugging it out on the gridiron could be a real sore spot at the dinner table in the afternoon. 

I was a spectator and a participant during those Turkey Day games. I have suffered frostbite on snow-covered fields watching the Patriots roll around in the mud.

There is only one Turkey Day game played in Maine and that is between Portland and Deering. But in my native state of Massachusetts, football games are played across the Bay State.

Game day, 10 a.m.

Thursday mornings began with an 8 a.m., wake-up call from my frantic father — a sports fanatic who coached high school baseball for over 40 years.  You can find him on the couch with his face buried in the sports pages each morning.

Then came a round of phone calls to see who would be attending the game. We usually traveled with the Marras. Robert Marra was a music teacher, classical violinist and a man who studied the scoreboard page like a sheet from Mozart's music.

We piled into one car and sped off to the game. The crowds were huge. There were no distractions like cell phones. Nobody looked down but up at a game played by a bunch of tough kids who represented their community.

My dad and Mr. Marra would eventually unite with athletic director Silvio Cella, a former RHS football coach who ran his program like a U.S. Marine because he was a Marine who served in the Pacific during World War II.  All three men served their country. Cella and Marra both fought in World War II and my dad served during the occupation of Germany.

I played for coach Cella for three years. He was tough, but football is rough game, and if you don't enjoy being hit or knocking the other the guy to the ground, then play a more civilized sport like baseball or golf.

For two hours, we stood in the cold. The Patriots and Vikings traded blows before we finally began thinking about a warm meal and a hot cup of coffee

Time has the final say

I can't remember the last time my father and I attended a Revere football game. He is now 80 years old and he fighting his own battle with Alzheimer's.  

The disease is winning and the tradition of attending a turkey day game has vanished along with so many people I have loved.

All traditions are swept away by time, and there is not a damn thing any one of us can do about it.

Cronus (Titan god of time) always comes out on top.

I believe it was about 10 years ago when my father and I stopped going to the Turkey Day games. Mr. Marra and Mr. Cella sadly are no longer with us. And the loss our mother has slowed us all down.

But I know if I dwell in the past, I will lose the future, and that future is my son and wife.

No matter what lies ahead, I still have them, and many of my immediate family members, and that is helluva a lot to be thankful on this day.

Can't thank them enough

Mom and son getting ready for Halloween.

"To grow old is to lose everything," 

- the opening line to a poem called "Affirmation," which was written 

by poet Donald Hall

AUBURN, Mass. — Money is tight, the world is a damn mess, our leaders don't know what day it is, and there is a pile of snow on my front lawn that is really pissing me off, and yet, I do have a lot to be thankful for as I pass the peas and gnaw on a turkey leg this Thanksgiving.

And while Mother Nature's hit-and-run tactics are befuddling and the cold is closing in, I am lucky there will be a hot meal on the table and my healthy son and wife will be seated next me as we enjoy my sister's fine cooking and the company of her wonderful children.

I am older and I have lost a handful people along the way, and the holidays have a way of triggering those strong and sad memories of family members and friends who will not be present at our feast this Thanksgiving.

And it really hurts, especially since Terri and I buried our mothers last year. That pain never goes away, but when I see my wife and son laughing and enjoying good food, it makes me realize why I am still here, and I don't plan on going anywhere.

For years, my dad and I would spend Thanksgiving mornings watching Revere and Winthrop knock heads on the gridiron while my mom was multi-tasking over a hot stove long before anyone knew what the hell multi-tasking was. She was cooking turkey, potatoes, carrots and stuffing while father and son were freezing their butts off at Paul Revere Stadium.

I am older now and now I am doing the cooking. My dad and I no longer attend Thanksgiving Day football games because he is older. My mother is gone.

I miss those moments and those people who meant so much to me.

But I know I am helpless when the Grim Reaper snatches another friend or relative from this life.

For years, there were nearly 15 relatives living next to my house. It was like one giant block party on McClure Street during the holidays. Each Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve, I would move from house to house, enjoying my grandmother's or aunts' culinary delights and making sure I shared a glass of wine at each stop.

Like me, the street has changed and all I have are fond memories. Those homes are no longer occupied by my grandmother, Aunt Minnie, B.J. and Eddie Murano, and the Grossos. 

Before Anthony came along, my wife and I excitedly packed up the car and headed from Maine to Massachusetts to see my relatives during the holidays. The aunts would hand Terri small gifts while I sampled the wine and food and listened to my uncle, who was a top-notch pilot during World War II and Korea, talk about his combat experiences.

But I am older now and they are a part of my past. I understand change is inevitable, but there is pain that comes with change.

But one thing that will never change is my love and appreciation for my wife and son, and immediate family.

And they are the reasons why I give thanks on this day.