Tuck's Tales

Who knows what is real and not real about Michael Jackson.  His legacy will forever be clouded by allegations of child abuse.  Did money and celebrity buy him out of those circumstances?  Maybe and don’t think for a minute that I am poo pooing something as heinous as child abuse, I’m not.

Still the way I want to remember him is in much the same way as Elvis, not fat and drug induced but singin and swingin.  I was raised in my early days on the king of rock and roll and then later I loved Jackson’s music and his performances that inspired me to dance.  While most kids my age were HDAU in a chevy engine compartment I was at the disco trying to sport some moves.

Michael Jackson is my age and his death shakes my usually stable psyche, no one should die at 50 especially someone who physically (looked that good) seemed in shape.  I know he had some health issues but I wasn’t ready for him to die.

My wife and daughter were tore up at his death and my heart definitely hurt when I heard the news.  No, I wont remember him as a wonderful humanitarian, but I will remember him as a great entertainer with  amazing talent.

No matter how Joe, and Al and the rest of the leeches try to wreck my memory; no matter the inevitable fight for anything of worth, kids etc .  I will remember him through his music and video.
At least now the guy can get some sleep.

       A Life Well Lived

       A great story by Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers

      large and small and president of NBC News. In 1997, he won the

      Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. It is well worth reading, and a

      few good chuckles are guaranteed.

 

         My father never drove a car. Well, that’s not quite right. I

      should say I never saw him drive a car.

 

         He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last

      car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.

 

         “In those days,” he told me when he was in his 90s, “to drive a

      car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your

      feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through

      life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it.”

 

         At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed

      in:”Oh, bull—-!” she said. “He hit a horse.”

 

         “Well,” my father said, “there was that, too.”

 

         So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The

      Neighbors all had cars — the Kollingses next door had a green 1941

      Dodge, the VanLaninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth , the

      Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford — but we had none.

 

         My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines, would take the

      streetcar to work and, often as not, walks the 3 miles home. If he

      took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the

      three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him and walk home together.

 

         My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and

      sometimes, at dinner, we’d ask how come all the neighbors had cars

      but we had none. “No one in the family drives,” my mother would

      explain, and that was that.

 

         But, sometimes, my father would say, “But as soon as one of you

      boys turns 16, we’ll get one.” It was as if he wasn’t sure which one

      of us would turn 16 first.

 

         But, sure enough, my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951

      my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the

      parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown.

 

         It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts,

      loaded with everything, and, since my parents didn’t drive, it more

      or less became my brother’s car.

 

         Having a car but not being able to drive didn’t bother my father,

      but it didn’t make sense to my mother.

 

         So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach

      her to drive. She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I

      learned to drive the following year and where, a generation later, I

      took my two sons to practice driving. The cemetery probably was my

      father’s idea. “Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery?” I remember

      him saying more than once.

 

         For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the

      Driver in the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of

      Direction, but he loaded up on maps — though they seldom left the

      city limits — and appointed himself navigator. It seemed to work.

 

         Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout

      Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement

      that didn’t seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of

      marriage.

 

         (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)

 

         He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next

      20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin’s

      Church.  She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would

      wait in the back until he saw which of the parish’s two priests was

      on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go

      out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the

      service and walking her home.

 

         If it was the assistant pastor, he’d take just a 1-mile walk and

      then head back to the church. He called the priests “Father Fast” and

      “Father Slow.”

 

         After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother

      whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If

      she were going to the beauty parlor, he’d sit in the car and read, or

      go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine

      running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio. In the

      evening, then, when I’d stop by, he’d explain: “The Cubs lost again.

      The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on

      first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored.”

 

         If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry

      the bags out — and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream. As I

      said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she

      was 88 and still driving, he said to me, “Do you want to know the

      secret of a long life?”

 

         “I guess so,” I said, knowing it probably would be something

      bizarre.

 

         “No left turns,” he said.

 

         “What?” I asked.

 

         “No left turns,” he repeated. “Several years ago, your mother and

      I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in

      happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic.

 

         As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your

      depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again

      to make a left turn.”

 

         “What?” I said again.

 

         “No left turns,” he said. “Think about it. Three rights are the

      same as a left, and that’s a lot safer.  So we always make three

      rights.”

 

         “You’re kidding!” I said, and I turned to my mother for support

         “No,” she said, “your father is right. We make three rights. It

      works.”

         But then she added: “Except when your father loses count.”

 

         I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I

      started laughing.

 

         “Loses count?” I asked.

 

         “Yes,” my father admitted, “that sometimes happens. But it’s not a

      problem. You just make seven rights, and you’re okay again.”

 

         I couldn’t resist. “Do you ever go for 11?” I asked.

 

         “No,” he said ” If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call

      it a bad day.  Besides, nothing in life is so important it can’t be

      put off another day or another week.”

         My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me

      her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in

      1999, when she was 90.

 

         She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the next

      year, at 102.

 

         They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and

      bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother

      and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom — the

      house had never had one. My father would have died then and there if

      he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the

      house.)

 

         He continued to walk daily — he had me get him a treadmill when

      he was 101 because he was afraid he’d fall on the icy sidewalks but

      wanted to keep exercising — and he was of sound mind and sound body

      until the moment he died.

 

         One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I

      had to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all

      three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual

      wide-ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in

      the news.

 

         A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, “You know, Mike, the

      first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred.” At one

      point in our drive that Saturday, he said, “You know, I’m probably

      not going to live much longer.”

 

         “You’re probably right,” I said.

 

         “Why would you say that?” He countered, somewhat irritated.

 

         “Because you’re 102 years old,” I said.

 

         “Yes,” he said, “you’re right.” He stayed in bed all the next day.

 

         That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with

      him through the night.

 

         He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing

      us look gloomy, he said:

         “I would like to make an announcement. No one in this room is dead

      yet”

 

         An hour or so later, he spoke his last words:

 

         “I want you to know,” he said, clearly and lucidly, “that I am in

      no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as

      anyone on this earth could ever have.”

 

         A short time later, he died.

 

         I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I’ve wondered now

      and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived

      so long.

 

         I can’t figure out if it was because he walked through life,

         Or because he quit taking left turns. “

 

         Life is too short to wake up with regrets.  So love the people who

      treat you right.  Forget about the one’s who don’t.  Believe

      everything happens for a reason.  If you get a chance, take it. & If

      it changes your life, let it. Nobody said life would be easy, they

      just promised it would most likely be worth it.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of bird flu, and terrorist attacks, are we sure this  is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?’

Check this out!  If you have not seen the first one well you just need to get out more…