Les Green Archives - Page 15 of 20

Grandmother Agatha Green, found at last

Her greatest contribution to my development was that she taught me how to play canasta.

When my parents moved downstairs at 5 Gaines Street, Binghamton, NY, my paternal grandparents, McKinley and Agatha (nee Walker) Green moved upstairs. Her name, BTW, was pronounced a-GATH-a, not AG-a-tha. Yes, it is I who she is holding.

Grandma Green was almost certainly my first Sunday school teacher at Trinity A.M.E. Zion Church, only a couple of short blocks from our home. She had a certain refinement and bearing. While my maternal grandmother would nag me, this grandma gave me the parameters she expected, and I pretty much did it.
It’s rather like some Bill Cosby routine. Grandma Williams was Cos’ mom, “Go to bed, because it’s important for…blah, blah.” Grandma Green was like Cos’ dad: “Go to bed.” OK, grandma.

Of course, I visited her and Pop (my grandfather) virtually every day. One time when I was three, I fell down the flight of stairs from their dwelling to mine. To this day, the hair will grow on an area of chin, just below my lower lip. (Also odd: two of my co-workers fell down flights of steps when THEY were three.)

She was the eldest child of some half dozen kids, and I recall when her father died; I was around 7, so it would have been about 1960. He was this little tyrant, even at his advanced age, and all of his kids were afraid of him, though he was nice to my father and to me.

Red threes

Her greatest contribution to my development was that, when I was six or seven, she taught me how to play the card game Canasta. It’s an arcane game, but I learned to love it. I then taught my great aunt, my mother’s Aunt Deana, how to play. I’ve been playing cards ever since, though the last time I played canasta was against my high school girlfriend’s father over four decades ago.

Then suddenly, at the age of 62, she died. I no longer know from what, though I assume now it was a heart attack. I remember going to the funeral, and the burial. What I don’t recall is ever going to her gravesite afterward, even though her husband and her son lived in the area.

Floral Park

In fact, I pretty much couldn’t remember precisely WHERE she was buried until my niece came across Paul R. at Find A Grave, who is “retired so I have time to walk through the cemeteries and take pictures. In mid-July 2010 I started a project to record as many memorials for the cemeteries in my county (Broome, NY) with pictures that I could.” He added this record on 10/29/2010. She’s buried in Floral Park Cemetery in Johnson City, the village adjacent to Binghamton, and within walking distance of the house that the family moved to in 1972.
Thanks, Paul R. You’ve cleared up part of a family mystery.

When I went to Binghamton in mid-July, my family went to Section M and found the headstone. It was next to a newly-dug grave of her sister-in-law, Jesse Walker, who had died a few days earlier. The SIL was known as “Earl’s Jesse”; my grandmother had a sister named Jesse Walker, and so their brother Earl’s wife got the odd appellation.

Dreaming about my dad and my daughter

It’s now 13 years since my dad died.

les green.garden — \”Got big-time swagger,\” sister Marcia proclaimed.

About five months ago, I dreamed that my father had ordered a bunch of nondescript raw materials in long, brown cardboard boxes. He was convinced that would resell them and make himself rich.

At some point, he decided that we (he, my daughter, and I) had to drive into Canada. “Dad,” I said, “I don’t have my passport. Or Lydia’s.” He did not have his either if he had one at all. He starts schmoozing with the border guard, while I’m filing through my wallet hoping that maybe I had SOME paperwork that would be satisfactory. The odd thing is that he described his granddaughter as his daughter.

Of course, as I’ve noted, my father and my daughter never met on this plane, though my daughter once told me that she DID meet my father, while she was up in heaven waiting to be born.

That said, much of the dream was basically true. He could drive a tractor-trailer, he always had get-rich schemes but was often lazy with the details, and he could often charm people.

It’s now 13 years since my dad died, and he’s still in my dreams.
***
Coincidentally, back in October 2011, Melanie wrote about HER dad dying 13 years before. “Many people feel that’s long enough to be sad about it… It’s like we’re supposed to have some on/off switch on our biological clocks that automatically turns the hurt and the caring off after an acceptable number of hours, minutes, and seconds have passed. It’s not like that.”

Of magpies: WWII black veterans edition

I wrote a blog post, in part, about an Ebony article from October 1946 about black GIs in Germany after World War II, of which my father was one.

Dustbury noted that he and I have something in common: we are both magpies. As he put it: “The Eurasian magpie… is wicked smart, especially for a bird… I am not quite sure how “magpie” became a descriptor for humans who flit from topic to topic unless it has to do with the bird’s tendency to be attracted to Shiny Things, but I’m pretty sure I fit that description, and I have several readers who seem to do likewise.”

The problem with that is that I often move onto the Next Thing, less out of boredom, but the need to find something mentally Shiny, I suppose. Intellectually, at least, the phrase “Jack of all trades, master of none” is pretty true of me. I know very few things in depth, but I know a little about a lot of things.

Sometimes, people have suggested that I ought to focus this blog on one or two topics. There’s only one reason why I don’t: I don’t wanna. But it is interesting that people look to me for whatever expertise I might have.

When I stopped working at FantaCo, the comic book store in Albany, in 1988, and subsequently quit collecting comics, I figured that was the closed chapter of my life. Yet I find myself working on a FantaCo bibliography this month.

A few years ago, I wrote a blog post, in part, about an Ebony article from October 1946 about black GIs in Germany after World War II, of which my father (pictured above) was one. A German documentary filmmaker wanted a high-resolution scan of the story, and thanks to a Facebook request, I was able to get one.

Incidentally, one of my sisters is convinced that one of the guys pictured on this page of the Ebony story is my father. I’m not entirely convinced. What do you think?

In any case, even though I’m not an expert at much of anything, I can be rather useful.

Go Where You Wanna Go

I had to work REALLY hard NOT to change the lyrics to ‘with whomever’.

Roger.Leslie — Roger and Leslie, Corning Glass Works

For her 12th birthday, my sister Leslie received her own guitar. With some assistance from my father, a largely self-taught player, she became quite competent with it in about a month. And that really became the birth of the Green Family Singers, when the three of us used to sing around Binghamton, NY together from 1966 to 1971. The program initially was a variation of what my father had been singing by himself. We would sing harmony on some choruses or responses, for instance, though there were a number of pieces that were three-part harmony throughout.

Leslie and I pretty much stole Hole in the Bucket from my father’s repertoire, though. It was much more dramatic with the two of us than him doing both voices. Leslie always sang the Beatles ‘ song Yesterday. And Leslie and I, in our only other nod to then-contemporary music, sang Go Where You Wanna Go. We first heard it on a Mamas and Papas album and listened to it a lot. Here’s their version, which was a 1996 album cut. This is the version by The 5th Dimension, their first hit single, getting up to #16 on the Billboard charts in 1967.

You gotta go where you wanna go,
Do what you wanna do
With whoever you wanna do it with.
You gotta go where you wanna go,
And do what you wanna do
With whoever you wanna do it with.

I had to work REALLY hard NOT to change the lyrics to ‘with whomever’.

Leslie was in Albany for my 50th birthday party, and at some point near the end of the evening, we sang “Go Where You Wanna Go.” In re: some conversation we had earlier this year, my advice to my dear sister is for her to go where she wants to go.

Happy birthday, Leslie. Love you.

ARA: Influences and historical conversations

We’ll have Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Edison, and Andrew Carnegie.

Dear Lisa says Okay, I’ll play:
Who (living or dead) has had the most influence on your life?

I’d have to say my father. He turned me on to music, which was always in the house. He had a thing for social justice. His moodiness was something I tried to avoid in myself, not always successfully. He could be an unfocused dreamer, something I can be guilty of as well.

If you could go back in time and have a conversation with someone, who would it be? My apologies if you’ve already answered these questions before!

Well, I have, so I’ve decided to change it. I want a conversation with FOUR people, together, in the summer of 1910. We’ll have Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), who would be 21, and Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1947), who would turn 41 in the fall, and Thomas Edison (1847-1931), who would be 63, and Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), who would turn 75 in the fall.

I’d be interested to see what the other three would have to say to young Adolf: Gandhi about non-violence, Edison about creativity, Carnegie about going from being a robber baron to a philanthropist who built libraries.
***
Tom the Mayor asked:

Have you ever lost your temper with your wife? Or your daughter?

My wife and I almost never fight. We disagree, but not all that often. The last time I remember getting REALLY angry with her, and it was several years ago, was when she was in a conversation in our house with someone else. I piped in with a point, and she said, to the other person, that I had gotten said point from some specific Sunday morning talk show. After the guest left, about a half-hour later, I exploded that I don’t parrot what I see on a given talk show but take in from a variety of sources and develop my viewpoints. THAT ticked me off.

The Daughter is very sensitive; just ask her. When she was younger, just being disappointed with something she did was enough to launch her into tears. Later, when I had to prod her into doing something – doing her homework, cleaning her room – I would use my calmest firm voice, yet she’d start crying, adding “You KNOW I’m sensitive!” which actually made me laugh inside.

So, I’d say I would get agitated with her sometimes, at which point, I will take a timeout from her. To be fair to me, my wife has experienced similar things; sometimes, SHE’S the “bad” parent. Now when The Daughter writes about it, she may have a different take, but that will be HER blog.
***
A question in my spam folder:

What do you consider the best security defend agency in the country? thanks!

A well-informed populace.