The Birthday Crew

I lived under the same roof as my father for just the first fourteen years of my life.  Dad died on May 31, 1981.  He was just fifty-seven years old.   

Margaret and I, for the past ten years, lived with my father-in-law, Joe.  Not too long after he bade farewell far too soon to his beloved Suzy B. in June 2009, he started asking Margaret if we would sell our house and move across town and in with him.  It is the house where Margaret was born and raised.  It is the house where she and the kids were living way back when we started dating in June 1991.  

Living under the same roof as my father-in-law has been an educational experience for me.  He has taught me a lot.  I marvel at his courage.  In the past fifteen years he has buried his mother-in-law, his siblings, and his wife.  Yet, he has endured.  Hell, he has done far more than simply endure.  He has lived.  

Today is Joe’s birthday.  He is ninety years old.  Way back when, in 2018, he celebrated it with Maggie.  She was slightly less than eleven months old and it was the first birthday of his they celebrated together.  

Joe Joe and Maggie - BDay #85

(2018)

Yesterday, we celebrated his 90th birthday with Salli Jo joining us from the NY side of the Hudson, Suzanne, Ryan, and all three of Joe Joe’s Watchung great grandchildren:

Joe, Maggie, Cal & Rylan

(BDay #90 - 2023)

This Fab Four not only posed for photos together, they combined their voices to sing a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday” and their lungs to blow out the candles on the birthday boy’s cake.

Team Candle Power

(BDay #90 - 2023)

Not every day is one on which I get to see these three of my grandchildren blowing out birthday candles with their great grandfather.  Yesterday was such a day.   I am forever grateful. 

-AK

Yes, Ash Can!

This weekend Steve Ashton, Donna Ashton, and their group of Bad-Ash Brewers are celebrating their 3rd Anniversary.  

When you have the courage, the temerity, and frankly the balls to pursue your dream in the face of a pandemic, you automatically become impossibly easy people for whom to root. 

NJ.com (March 2020) 

I have had the great good fortune of knowing Steve Ashton for close to forty-five years.  We first met when I transferred into Wardlaw-Hartridge for 5th grade in September 1977.  We played soccer together in high school.  We graduated from W-H together in 1985.  Then, four years later we graduated together from the University of Colorado, Boulder.  

Having lived in Middlesex Borough for thirty years, when Steve told me he/Donna were going to open their brewery in the space on Lincoln Boulevard formerly occupied by the late but-never-great Demented Brewing, I honestly questioned the wisdom of their decision.  Middlesex Borough is not now - and has not been for quite some time - at the center of economic development.  Trust me.  I have spent enough years logging miles running through its streets to know that a significant percentage of our businesses and commercial endeavors are in fact empty spaces.  

Ashton Brewing opened for business in late March 2020 on a Friday roughly two weeks after Governor Murphy issued the Public Emergency Order that locked New Jersey down in COVID's early days.  To purchase beer, you had to go onto their website, confirm you were of legal drinking age, and then include in your order the make and model of the car in which you were picking up your beer.  No one was permitted inside of the building.  Instead, when you pulled up in your car, your order was delivered to you.  Looking back, it was the best drive-thru window ever! 

I was working remotely back then, which meant that I was only about one mile away from the Brewery on Opening Day.  I was Customer #4.  I bought two growlers (one each of two different types of beer), a chalice, and a car magnet.   

Ashton Brewing Growlers 

(March 2020) 

Margaret and I still have the growlers in our garage. I still have the chalice and the car magnet but the beers were in my belly shortly after I opened the growlers.  Thankfully, in the three years since, Ashton Brewing has just kept making more and more types of great beer, a number of which have also found their way into my belly.

First-ever Ashton Brewing beer 

(March 2020)

Happy 3rd Anniversary, Ashton Brewing and thank you for the Kick-Ash Beers.  Middlesex Borough is better for your being part of its community.  

Cheers! 

-AK 

And Then There Were Five

March 24, 2018 was a Saturday.  How do I know?  I know because it was on that day - five years ago - three weeks after we bade farewell to our beloved Rosalita that Joe, Margaret, and I drove up to Berkeley Heights and Home For Good Dogs Rescue.  It was there that Joe laid his eyes on Sam.  As they say, the rest is history...

Margaret, Joe, Sam and I

Home For Good Dogs Rescue 

(March 24, 2018)

She was just twelve weeks old when Joe chose her on that Saturday afternoon five years ago.  We have been lucky to have her.  She is an integral part of our family.  Frankly, to me she has proven to be more than man's best friend.  She has proven to be indispensable.  Anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that with few exceptions, I prefer Sam's company to that of most humans.  Whether it is our nightly (and eight-to-ten times every Saturday and Sunday) Dingo sessions or our regular runs, Sam is critically important to my mental health.  And during COVID lockdown, her importance was not just to my mental health, but to that of our whole household.

Front Porch Photo 

(2020) 

Five years already.  The time has passed in an eyeblink.  Too fast in fact.  Here's to today and every day with our best girl.  

Sam I Am and Yours Truly 

(March 5, 2023) 

-AK

  

Checks, Reality and Otherwise

 As it turns out, he is not the only sufferer.  Also, he is not wrong...

However, wherever, and with whomever you spend your St. Patrick's Day, be careful out there.  And whether you are Irish every day or merely Irish for the day, today being St. Patrick's Day is not an excuse to be a drunken asshole.  It is that whole "keeping the do what makes you happy thing in check"  thing in action.  

-AK 

The Ballad of the Less-Deserving

For more than forty years, I have been the beneficiary - and an undeserving one - of a decidedly one-sided friendship.  It has been my pleasure and privilege that Jill Sorger Molee has called me a friend during these past four-plus decades.  In a world in which good people often appear to be in scant supply, she is one of the best I know.  

Today is her birthday.  May it bring her every happiness, all of which she deserves. 

-AK 

 

The Rhyme of Crime

 

Shame on Alex Murdaugh.  Not merely for murdering his wife and his younger son.  Not merely for an extended period of time during which he apparently reflexively lied to his law partners, to his clients, and to the world at large while stealing from all of them.    

Shame on him for being ignorant of history.  Had he been even remotely aware of it, he would have realized that his plan ("Murder my wife [and child] in an effort to forestall financial ruin") was not just an asinine plan, it was not even an original one.   And of all the playbooks out of which to steal a page, he opted for Robert Marshall's.   Idiot.  

Robert Marshall, from Toms River, New Jersey, was Alex Murdaugh thirty-seven years earlier.   The late, infamous Mr. Marshall is arguably less despicable than Mr. Murdaugh if for no reason other than Mr. Marshall orchestrated only the murder of his wife, Maria.  Unlike Mr. Murdaugh, Mr. Marshall did not also murder his son for good measure.  

Perhaps as he spends the rest of his days in prison, Alex Murdaugh will take advantage of his time to catch up on his reading.  He might want to start with Joe McGinniss' Blind Faith.  It is available as a paperback on Amazon for $7.99.  If he has a Prime account, he can order it with free, next-day shipping.  

Then again, I reckon where he is hanging out his shingle these days, time is no longer of the essence. 

-AK 

Maternal Magic

 

My mother was an extraordinary human.  Her faith in her fellow man and her unceasing insistence on seeing the good, even in the worst of people and during the worst of times, never left her.   She desired to find the good in all that surrounded her, even when there was no ascertainable good to be found.   Hers was a gift that I, her youngest child, do not share.   

Whether I had it once and have had it drained from me by life itself or never was imbued with it, I know not.  At this point in the dance, the back half of my sixth decade, it matters not.  

Whether it is the weather or something non-meteorological, my mood has been something decidedly south of upbeat these past several weeks.  Better said, it has been more decidedly south of upbeat than usual.  To borrow a line from the Poet Laureate of Freehold, at my most ebullient, “I ain’t nobody’s bargain.”   

Yesterday morning, I hustled off to the office before sunrise as usual, wallowing in the self-pity associated with the feeling of watching something significant slip further and further out of reach, and expecting it to be even more so by day’s end.   But then, something decidedly unexpected happened.  The situation became not more desperate but less so, although just how much less desperate remains to be seen.  

Today marks sixty-nine months to the day since Mom died.   Even slightly less than six years since she left this world, her magic is still very much in it.   And now, as always, she has shared it with me even though my right to benefit from it is now, as always, debatable at best.  

-AK