Ramblin' with Roger

Posts Tagged ‘Les Green’

I was listening to my favorite podcast not hosted by Arthur. It is a music podcast, which should be no surprise. The second tune in the set was a song called Passing Through. I went to the website to see to whom it was attributed as the original artist of the song, and it said Leonard Cohen. I said to myself – I often talk to myself – “There is NO WAY that song was originally done by Leonard Cohen.”

My certitude came from the fact that my late father used to sing that song when he performed in my hometown of Binghamton back in the 1960s. While I didn’t know all of the specific origins, I did know that his song selection was established in the late 1950s and early 1960s from albums by people such as Woody Guthrie, Harry Belafonte, Odetta and Pete Seeger. Cohen came into prominence as a singer/songwriter later in the 1960s.

I thought maybe it was a song Read the rest of this entry »

My parents were married on March 12, 1950 in Binghamton,NY. I always found that very convenient to remember; I would often say that I was their early third anniversary present.

When their 50th anniversary was coming up – in 2000 (easy math!) – my sisters and I were trying to plan a surprise party at my parents’ church in Charlotte, NC. The only trouble was that there was an occasional conflict with the date, which was a Sunday. It turns out that my father was ALSO planning a surprise anniversary party at the church, for my mother. Once we were apprised of that fact, we gave up trying to surprise them both and concentrated on her.

So my sister flew in from San Diego, and my parents-in-law, my wife and I drove down from upstate New York, staying at a local hotel. My father did most of the decorations of the room at the church. my father needed to rest more often than he did just months before Read the rest of this entry »

One of my sisters discovered this March 18, 2005 interview with my mother’s first cousin, my first cousin once removed, Frances Beal this autumn, conducted by Loretta Ross. Fran is about 12 years younger than my mother and 13 years older than I am. Her kids are about a dozen years younger than my sisters and I. Her late mother, Charlotte Yates, was my beloved great aunt.

Her politics are far more liberal than mine. She, I suspect, would eschew the term “liberal” altogether, in favor of “radical”. What is truly interesting about the piece though, from my specific POV, is her retelling of her history, which invariably overlaps with mine.

BEAL: OK. I was born in a relatively small city, upstate New York, called Binghamton, New York , as was I. In school they used to tell us, Bing bought a ham and it weighed a ton: that’s how to spell Binghamton…
Read the rest of this entry »

My father would have been 84 tomorrow. There’s a guy, Ray, who was my friend from second to ninth grade. He went to a different high school, and moved to the Finger Lakes region of New York State. However, I was in his wedding in October 1976, and I got to escort his mother, who was the Den mother of our Cub Scout troop, down the aisle.

“The Crocodile Song” Read the rest of this entry »

When we were growing up, we lived on the first floor of a small two-story house, which was owned by my maternal grandmother; my paternal grandparents lived upstairs. On our floor was the master bedroom and kitchen in the back; the parlor, bathroom and another bedroom in the middle; and the living room in the front.

I had two younger sisters, so they eventually slept in bunkbeds in the second bedroom. To make a room for me Read the rest of this entry »

When I married Carol Powell on May 15, 1999, it was not only a blending of families, it was a mixing of family sizes. My family is very small, while hers is ginormous. Since both of my parents were only children, and all of my grandparents, by that point, were deceased, this was pretty much it on my side of the ledger: (L-R) my niece Rebecca, her mother/my sister Leslie, Carol, me, my mother Trudy, my late father Les, my niece Alexandria, and her mother/my sister Marcia.

Whereas my new wife had LOTS of relatives. My mother-in-law had seven siblings, my father-in-law two. My wife had three brothers and over 30 first cousins. I, of course, had no first cousins since I had no uncles or aunts. Read the rest of this entry »

Rescuing a bird

Hmm. I said to myself, “Self, do I really want to do this?” I had a whole ‘nother blogpost planned for today. but it IS the anniversary of the death of my father, Les Green. Moreover, it’s the 10th anniversary this very day. You know how those round numbers often hold special significance.

Top picture: Oui, c’est moi de l’enfant.

And I suppose maybe that’s what he thought. Read the rest of this entry »