Closing Time

It was slightly less than five years ago.  It was a Friday in late March 2020, the 27th.  It was two weeks after Governor Murphy had ordered New Jersey locked down in order to combat and hopefully to slow the spread of COVID-19.  It was on that day that Donna and Steve Ashton and their merry band of brewers opened Ashton Brewing in Middlesex Borough, New Jersey.  

Opening Day in the early, terrifying days of COVID-19 came to pass in a decidedly different way than Ashton Brewing envisioned it would.  Instead of people inside the taproom, sampling fresh pours of their wonderful beers, we the customers arrived in our cars - and stayed in them while Steve, Donna, and their crew handed us what we had ordered on-line.  It is a source of pride for me to say that I was Customer #4.  I bought two growlers of beer, a magnet for my car, and a glass. 

Ashton Brewing has been a value-add to Middlesex Borough in the time that it has graced our little town with its presence from its Lincoln Boulevard location.  Good people making exceptional beer and, also, making a positive contribution to the community in which they operate their business.   Sadly, it has proven not to be enough. 

Tonight, Donna and Steve Ashton shall call “last call” in the Ashton Brewing taproom one final time.  The little brewery that could - and did so at a high level from its first day to its last - is closing its doors forever.  Our little town shall miss them.  I shall miss them.  I shall miss my favorite beer, which is their spectacular Pilsner, Jersey Dreamin’.  

Donna and Steve, thank you for absolutely everything you have done for and have meant to our little town.  You shall be missed and long remembered…and not just for your eminently drinkable varieties of beer.

-AK 

Merry Christmas

However, wherever, and with whomever you spend this Christmas, keep this thought in mind.  If you have at least one person in this world who loves you and whom you love, then you are the proud owner of the best reason to be merry.  

It is easy - far too easy in fact - to focus on the imperfections of this world and its inhabitants.  Were it harder perhaps fewer among us would have turned it into this century’s cottage industry.  Today, just for this one day, may we instead focus on all that is good about this world and our fellow humans - at least the humans who occupy important roles in our day-to-day.

Merry Christmas.

-AK

For Those Who Gave All

Rob wrote what appears below sixteen years ago.  It is absolutely a sentiment worth repeating...

 

Just A Thought

I started thinking in this time of war what this day means. It is for those who didn't come back. They didn't come back to their mothers, their wives or their kids. They stormed beaches, fought and died in foreign countries. All that returned was a box and a folded flag.

I recently attended a Springsteen concert in North Carolina. I traveled by plane through this American land because I could, because I am free - and because of the generosity of some good friends. As Springsteen played a song called "Last to Die" I got emotional. The song asks, "Who'll be the last to die...." presumably in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. It does not matter what you think of the American involvement in these wars. What does matter is that we remember these brave American servicemen and servicewomen.

Meanwhile I am enjoying a Springsteen concert, enjoying a beer and enjoying starting a career with the best government in the world; enjoying freedom. How can I do this? These are my brothers, my peers, guys my age fighting and dying. They volunteered so I didn't have to. They're not coming back to their favorite band, their favorite beer, their families or the state they grew up in.

Their children will not know their fathers. They will know only their sacrifice and some stories their mothers will tell. They sacrificed for someone they will never meet - you and me.

Remember them today.

-RJM

U.S.S. Arizona Memorial

Photo Credit: Robert J. MacMaster 

(c) 2014

-AK

A Day for Cake

 

Rob and Me - Yankee Stadium 2009

The significantly-better looking member of the duo in this now-almost-fifteen-year-old photograph celebrates a birthday today.  I have any number of more recent photographs in which Rob and I are together, but this one has been a favorite of mine from the time it was taken for it was taken while I was doing something I love with someone I love.  The definition of time well-spent.  

It thrills me to no end that Rob has never been burdened, not even for a minute, by being forced to go through life carrying my DNA.   Truthfully, the man he has become has significantly more to to with him than it ever has had to do with me.  My hope is to one day day be as good a man as my son is today.  I have quite a bit of ground to cover, I know.  I reckon I better get started. 

Happy Birthday, Rob, and much love always. 

-AK 

Of Mothers and Sons

I am now as many years old as my father was when he died.   A day at which I have stared from varying distances over the course of the past forty-two-plus years has now arrived.   This lap around the sun, Dad’s last, is one he did not complete.  One hundred sixty-three days into it his race ended.   He died.   For those keeping score at home, July 16, 2024 is one hundred sixty-four days from today.  It is a Tuesday.  

I had intended today to fill this space with my lamentations about this particular birthday.   But then Adele Springsteen died.  Bruce’s mom died on January 31st.   She was ninety-eight.   I care not how old a man you are when your mom dies.  You cry until your eyes sting, your throat burns, and your nose runs on a continuous loop.  You do so because in that moment you are again a little boy and you feel gutted by her loss and the knowledge you shall have no more time with her.  

The death of Adele Springsteen made me think of Mom. June 3, 2024 shall mark seven years since Mom died.  Today?  Today marks the 80th month.   My mother, much as Adele Springsteen was for Bruce, was the great hero of my life.   Speaking of his mother, he said, “She believed that there was good faith, good heart, good hope in all citizens.  She gave the world a lot more credit than perhaps it deserves, but that was her way.”  He could have used those same words to describe Joanie K.  

“The Wish”, which he wrote for his mom, was among the songs he performed during Springsteen on Broadway.   There, he led into the song by telling a simply beautiful story about a favorite memory of his childhood, which was walking home with her from her job.   It would be just the two of them, walking on Freehold’s streets, “And she’d be looking down at me with a look that for me, was like the grace of Mary.  Made me understand for the first time, how good it feels, feel pride in somebody that you love, and who loves you back, ya know.”   

Yes I do, Bruce.  Yes I do.   

-AK

A Day One Hundred Years In The Making

 

Today is the birthday of my father, William P. Kenny, Sr.  Had he lived, he would be 100 years old.  He, of course, did not live to see this day.  Did not even come close in fact.  Missed it by almost forty-three years. 

On my next birthday, I will be the age my father was when he marked his final birthday, which he did on this very day in 1980.  Six-and-one-half months later he was dead.  

He and I had an absurdly difficult relationship during what proved to be the final year of his life.   He was hard on me and I, in turn, was hard on him.  Truth be told, I have been hard on him for the overwhelming majority of the past almost forty-three years.  While I do not write in this space too often, it was here on this very date three years ago where I wrote him the apology it took me forty years to muster up the spine to write. 

Happy Birthday, Dad.  

WPK, Sr. - The Browning School

circa 1964

-AK 

A Feeling of a Place Where We Ache to Go Again

Today is Thanksgiving.  Wherever, however, and with whomever you spend it, it is my most sincere wish for you and yours that it is a peaceful, safe, and happy Thanksgiving.  

For those of us fortunate to spend today in the company of at least some of those people who we love and who love us, let us be mindful that not everyone shares in our good fortune.  Life is hard for most of us but it can be unfairly so for far too many, and tragically it is far too often.  

If you open your eyes this morning and close them tonight in a place where you are loved and a place where you are wanted, then congratulations.  You are home.  Your vow to yourself, to those you love, and to those who love you is to not take that feeling for granted.  Not today.  Not tomorrow.  Not ever.  Work hard today and every day to honor that feeling and, better still, to earn it. 

Appreciate just how precious it is to feel as if you belong.  It possesses the capacity to fill us up more heartily than one's inhalation of turkey and its accompanying side dishes shall ever do.  Experience teaches us all that that feeling - of love, of belonging, of home - is never guaranteed.  Not today.  Not tomorrow.  Not ever.  

Kindness costs nothing.  It is, however, invaluable.  It might just be the beacon that helps someone find his or her way home who otherwise would not have gotten there.  

Happy Thanksgiving.  

-AK