OOPS FROM THE PAST

When you get to a certain age, it becomes more rewarding to “go back” and revel in times gone by. There's more of it to appreciate and the farther back you go, the easier life was for you so the sweeter the satisfaction. The problem is remembering the things you'd like to enjoy. That's why I love the internet. No matter how fleeting the memory, you can “google” it before it leaves. Since my retirement, I've been able to spend time searching out some of those early swatches that have been so essential in forming the fabric of who I am today. I have found a lot of important people from various stages of my life on Facebook. Friends from my early childhood neighborhoods, elementary school and what was then referred to as Junior High, High School pals from Laurel Crest Prep in Bristol, Ct., friends from the military and my nearly 50 year radio career. A tapestry of all the good stuff that allows me to look at my life from a very gratifying perspective. I went to college for a very short time. The school was in western Pennsylvania about 50 miles south of Pittsburgh in the town of Waynesburg. Thus the name – Waynesburg College. It was a small Presbyterian run college in the corner of Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. There were 31 African Americans and 9 Jews on the campus and, in 1965, the 40 of us were barred from the “greeks” so, a lot of us hung out together. I like to tell people that we had our own fraternity/sorority called the GDI's, God Damn Independents and everyone wanted to come to OUR parties but, we barred them. I don't remember much about the school except hating it immensely, hitchhiking to Pittsburgh a lot to listen to live jazz in the clubs in the culturally iconic Hill District instead of going to geology class and, of course, a few special people. I had a friend named Bo. We would go to the jazz clubs and drink sloe gin and ginger ale. Yeah......I know. I will never forget his philosophy of life. “Fuck it!” He would say, “When I was born, the doctor slapped me and I said – fuck it.” and “If at first you don't succeed – fuck it.” While riding with Bo one afternoon, I noticed that he was driving the wrong way down a one way street and I told him so. He responded with, “Fuck it – I AM going one way.” I couldn't argue with that logic and off we went. I don't know whatever happened to Bo. He's not on Facebook. There was a girl I was crazy about so I will allow her some anonymity. Her mother ran a boarding house for Pitt students and she had a boyfriend at another school. We became friends but I was always a little let down about that boyfriend at the other school. I found her on FB recently and she has done quite well. She became an attorney with a successful practice in Pittsburgh and had a wonderful marriage until her beloved husband passed a few years back. She is having a good life and that's really nice to know. One of my best friends was Dave Smith. At Christmas break, Dave and I went back east together and spent a little time at his mom's house in New York before I headed back to my folks place in Connecticut. I never went back to Waynesburg after that break and I lost track of Dave completely. I was trying to transfer to Uconn but got drafted. The Vietnam war was in full swing in 1966....I was gone. Dave played football for the Waynesburg Yellow Jackets and, as I found out not too long ago, went on to play pro ball. He was drafted by the Steelers as a wide receiver in 1970 and stayed with them until '72 when he went to Houston. He had a pretty impressive record of 109 receptions, 1,457 receiving yards and 7 touchdowns. Then after a year with Kansas city in 1973....HE was gone. I found out that Dave doesn't have a Facebook page so, I googled him. All I could find was his Wiki page which didn't tell me any more than I've just told you and some football cards on the images page. Oh wait, there was this one thing. I was taken to a site called - “The 50 Worst Screw-Ups in Sports History” and at number 46: “Dave Smith's Spike Heard 'round the World - Few remember receiver Dave Smith for his three years of NFL service and 109 receptions. Most do remember him for his performance in the Oct. 18 Monday night game against the Chiefs in '71. After catching a pass from Terry Bradshaw, Smith ran for the end zone, ready to celebrate ferociously. But as he approached the pylon, Smith raised the ball and began to pump his arm losing the pigskin in the process. The rock continued rolling into the end zone. Touchback........ Career defined.” Dave Smith.....my friend.....college football star........potential pro football great........oops!

GOING DOWN.....AGAIN

I have an “issue” that scares me and I don't know why it happens, where it comes from or what to do about it. The one thing I am sure of is that it happens at some of the most inopportune times. If I knew when it would happen, I would be able to schedule accordingly. Here is what happens – whatever I happen to be doing, I begin to sweat profusely around the head, face and neck area. It's a clammy sweat with big drops, if that makes any sense and it seems to come from nowhere. I then get light headed, short of breath and a bit disoriented. My blood pressure plummets and it's very uncomfortable and feels like what I imagine “slipping away” does. By the time I can find and identify a chair, it's hard to get to it without falling on the floor. That's when my wife will try to lie me down with my feet elevated. She then gives me lots of very salty water in an attempt to raise my blood pressure back to some semblance of a normal level. It usually works but then I will need a few days to recuperate because it feels like I've been hit by a truck from the inside. As I mentioned earlier, it's timing is pathetic. I have had to have an ambulance meet two boats I've been on over the last few years. One time I was on a lake in Texas and the other I was on a fishing boat in Florida. That one, at least, provided some great entertainment for a friend. He and his wife were visiting from Dallas and had never been fishing on a boat. He is from Nigeria, which is partially landlocked and she is from Zimbabwe, also quite a distance from the coast. They couldn't wait to go out on the ocean and fish and I was very excited to be able to treat them to a new adventure. We have a lot of half-day fishing cruises here and I had secured our places on one. We got to our first destination, about 45 minutes from shore and dropped our lines in the water to no avail. We tried a few other spots and were still fishless when I felt the sweat coming on. “NOT NOW,” I screamed to myself. Even though it was a private thought, it was loud enough in my mind that I'm certain those on the other side of the boat heard me. As I started to go down, my friends wife was able to catch me and place my head on her lap as she took my pulse. She is a registered nurse who is in the process of becoming a doctor, so, I at least felt like I was in good hands. She started to panic a little when she had trouble finding the pulse, but eventually she was able to locate a very weak one. Meanwhile, the captain had already radioed in to shore to make sure an ambulance would be waiting at the dock as a police boat raced to meet us. It took 3 men to get me onto the police boat where my friends wife sat, once again with my head in her lap and he stood on the front of the boat as it's pilot gave it full throttle. This was where the fun began. We were going very fast, jumping over our own wake and that of other boats and my friend was giggling like a school girl........he was so excited. He looked down at me and through his laughter said, in his very thick Nigerian accent, “Bob, this is soooo much fun. It's like “Miami Vice” without a gun.” We arrived safely back at the dock where the ambulance was, indeed, waiting for me. I handed my friend my car keys and told him to call my wife and meet me at the hospital. The car, however, was about 6 miles away and after getting a ride back to it, my friend realized that he had no clue where he was or where he needed to go. That didn't matter, though, because he was still on cloud nine from the police boat ride. By the time they had been able to find the hospital, I was doing better and was able to say “You're welcome. I'm really happy that you enjoyed yourself.” As you can see, I will go to any length to show my friends a fun time when they visit us in South Florida. I had another episode just a few nights ago. I had gone downstairs to get some peanut butter toast and, as I was loading the bread into the toaster, the sweat began. Before I knew it, I was trying to identify a chair and make my way to it. My wife came downstairs to see why it was taking so long for the bread to toast and found me, in time to work her salty magic. We got me back upstairs to bed but, around 2am, all that salt had me extremely thirsty. My wife offered to get some water for me, but I protested that I could get down the stairs to get it myself and told her to go back to sleep. That's when my foot slipped on the second step and I tumbled down the stairs, I got to the bottom and to the fridge in record time. The next morning I was, once again, very happy to wake up. Period. I knew it would take a few days to start feeling normal, whatever that is these days, but I couldn't move my left arm more than a couple of inches without extreme pain. I had sprained something on the way down the steps and it decided to rear it's ugly pain the next day. I am tired of these “episodes.” They put a damper on whatever I happen to be doing. It ruins it for me and whoever I happen to be doing it with. The latest has to have been the worst so far, though. I really wanted that peanut butter toast.

FINDING MY VOICE

A long time ago, in an artistic landscape far, far away, the life of a successful radio personality could be summed up with those resounding words, “If you love your job, you'll never work a day in your life.” There was a secret ingredient, however, when it came to reaching that level of broadcasting nirvana that we all hoped to attain. Actually, it was no secret. It was a simple as finding ones own voice and hoping that it was unique enough to appeal to the most listeners you possibly could. Ideally, more than whatever “voice” was coming from your competition. That was an era when radio stations were not controlled by major corporations that originate all of their programming out of one studio for hundreds of outlets around the country. It was a time when a local station would hire what they perceived to be the best talent in town only to have the other stations in the area try to top them with bigger and better talent to “knock the king off the mountain.” These were radio legends who inspired those of us who followed as we valiantly, but not always successfully, attempted to be them. It was only when we understood that we had to find our own voices that any semblance of success was attainable. I was fortunate to have made my entree into “the biz” when these giants ruled the airwaves. The thought of becoming like them was burrowing through the minds of all of my peers as we emulated our heroes, not always understanding that we couldn't just turn on a microphone and be them. One of my early influences was Ted Brown who broadcast for more than 40 years on the New York City radio stations WMGM, WNEW and WNBC. I was doing one of my very first radio shows on WRYM in Newington, Ct. and Ted Brown was on WNEW. I would listen to his show, study his delivery and go on the air the following day, doing his material. People would say, “If you missed Ted Brown on Tuesday, listen to Leonard on Wednesday. You'll get the same show.” That's exactly what it was only nowhere near as good. I was learning and had no inkling of who I was. I was most certainly not Ted Brown. I knocked around a bit before I landed in my very first “major market.” It was Philadelphia and I had been hired to be the first “morning man” on a brand new format called “Magic.” The station was WMGK and I was hired on the basis of a somewhat pleasant voice and the ability to read. The pay was insulting and I was told that it was all I would ever make there. It wasn't until I moved across town to station WYSP that I began to find the beginnings of “my voice.” I teamed with an innovative programmer named Sonny Fox who taught be how to entertain. I was no longer doing someone elses show or just reading, I was doing material that we created as the comedy morning team of “Fox & Leonard” and presented to those who chose to tune in every morning. They were almost never sorry about their choice and we enjoyed a pretty good run with a very large following. We did jokes, characters and “bits” designed to amuse and sometimes jar the audience into each new day. It was experimental and great fun while it lasted, but when I moved on as a solo act, I realized that I was no more than “& Leonard” and had no voice of my own. I was now in Chicago, at the time the #2 market in the country and I was trying to get by as one person doing a two man show. It didn't work out so well. Then one day, shortly after I arrived in the Windy City to work at radio giant WLS, I stepped into an elevator and I met the man who showed me just what it meant to have one's own voice. “This is our new FM morning man, Bob Leonard,” said my program director to the third guy in the car for the trip up to the 4th and 5th floors respectively, “Bob, meet our AM morning man, Larry Lujack.” Larry referred to himself as “Superjock” and sported a world-weary and sarcastic style unlike anything I had heard prior. The key to his success, I realized, was that he wasn't trying to be someone else. He was real and he remained true to his own outlook. He opened himself up on the air and, thus, became vulnerable. A trait that average listeners could relate to. He saw things the way he did and never strayed or hesitated to let it be known. His curmudgeonly attitude influenced many radio personalities from coast to coast and through the years. His style helped change the face of personality radio. Larry's work ethic was second to none. He was at the radio station hours before and hours after his daily show......always prepared. He was the crotchety old uncle that, deep down, everybody adored. He was “charming and delightful ole Uncle Lar,” and, here I was, working in the same building with this giant, seeing him and talking with him on a daily basis. Who he was on the air was who he was off the air. At the end of that first chance meeting in the elevator of the Stone Container Building on the corner of Michigan and Wacker, when he found out that I would be on the FM while he was on the AM, he shook my hand and said, “Well, I wish you moderate success.” Once I was able to chisel away the wall that I had surrounded myself with and became real and vulnerable, I found that I too had a bit of an attitude and was kind of curmudgeonly and that, as long as I was truthful, people would listen and enjoy what they heard. That was the attitude that I brought with me to my ¼ century with the ABC radio network. That and, one basic rule - “It's easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission.” In other words, if you have material that you think will work......go for it. I began to emulate Larry Lujack without compromising my own persona. His work ethic inspired me and I found myself creating a lot of material that, although based loosely on what I heard him do, eventually became uniquely me. It was real. Over the course of my time at the network, I was taken to task for sounding “too big city” for our small affiliates with what one program director called, “too much of a New York attitude,” when, in reality, I was merely being me and opening up and sharing myself with the listeners. When I was diagnosed with diabetes, I would test my blood sugar on the air and give prizes to whoever made the closest guess and I would talk about issues that we all had, good and bad, as I experienced them. I had found my radio voice. A voice that took me on the best ride I could possible have imagined my life would take. Radio lost one of it's most influential voices when Larry Lujack passed away in 2013. His unique style became the prototype for a generation of radio personalities to follow and he is sorely missed, but his presence is still evident all these years later. It may seem trite to say and it certainly doesn't seem adequate but.......Thanks, Uncle Lar.

FIRED, FIRED EVERYWHERE

I was thinking, recently, about getting fired. I'm not worried about getting fired because I'm retired and I can't get the ax from doing nothing. At least not that I'm aware of. The thought was prompted by a friend's recent blog about being “blown out” of a recent job and the inventive way he handled it. I had a long and relatively distinguished career, but the mere fact that it was in radio came with the understanding that I would be “shown the door” any number of times. The exact number was up in the air, but losing jobs was pretty much a given. Nature of the business, you know. When I read my friends blog, I began to reminisce about some of the ways I had received “the news.” A few were pretty “run of the mill,” but honestly, some were downright innovative. In the late 70's I worked at a very big rock & roll station in Philadelphia where I was proud to have the #1 morning show in the city. It was the first two-man morning show, ever, in rock & roll radio and my partner had recently been sent packing. Since I was only ½ of the morning team, they tried anything they could think of to get me to leave, but I had a family which included a newborn and wasn't about to give up what had become a pretty lucrative position. One day the general manager asked the entire staff to come into his office to view slides of a recent station promotion. This was a guy who would put his arm around my shoulder at station events and parties and declare, “He's like a son to me. He reminds me of me when I was a young, up and coming DJ.” He went out of his way to make me feel special, because I was generating revenue for the station. As they all found seats in his office and huddled in to watch the show, I stepped in and was greeted with, “What are YOU doing here?” from the man who had now taken his arm from my shoulder and was reserving his compliments for the next guy who “reminded him of (himself) blah, blah, blah....” I still didn't get the point until the new program director, who had taken over from my now ex-partner, called me into his office and said, “Close the door.” Jokingly, I asked, “Why are you firing me?” The smile quickly left my face when he responded with, “It's interesting that you should ask that because, yes.....yes I am.” I wasn't really shocked. Stevie Wonder could see THAT coming. I moved to Chicago to work for one of the biggest and most respected radio stations in the country. I was given what I asked for to do the morning show and the GM told me that he was a fan of my show in Philly and was happy that I was there. For the next year and a half, I sat in the morning show chair on the FM side of the station as it changed formats and call letters 3 times. I was hanging on pretty nicely until I was called into the office and told that they were going to begin simulcasting the AM morning show and that I would be moved to overnights. I was used to getting up at 2:30am to go to work but, now I was expected, for the first (and last) time in my career to come in at about the same time that Letterman was going off. It was a challenge but, I told them that, even though they had put me into the graveyard position, they were going to get the best overnight show in the city and things were going well. Until the GM met with one of the bigger “names” in Chicago radio. I questioned him about it and he told me, “It was just lunch. You have nothing to worry about.” A few days later, my phone rang at about 10:30 in the morning. It was the GM and he was very pleasant as he told me that this “name” that he had lunch with had accepted the morning position and that, although it wasn't personal, I was out. I was fired again.......OVER THE PHONE! I was able to land on my feet and, eventually began working at a little start-up that became a huge network. It began as Satellite Music Network and I was privileged to be there from the very beginning. We physically built the studios and experimented with ways to better deliver programming to radio stations worldwide by satellite. It had never been done before and I was the first one to turn on a microphone. We got bigger and better and, as usually happens, sold.....a couple of times. We became the ABC Radio Network and I spent 24 years doing the morning show on my particular format. I must have gotten pretty comfortable because when I was called in to the VP of programming's office on the day I was to start my 25th year and told to clean out my locker, I was a wee bit taken aback. Most people who put in that kind of time get some sort of recognition for their contributions. All I got was a security guard to escort me to the door. My favorite firing, however, came earlier in my career when I was doing an afternoon drive show on a small station in a very small town in Connecticut. The station was so small that they sold most of their time slots. Early in the morning and in the evening, just before sign off, was “The New England Polka Express with Cousin Stan.” Middays was “La Voz Latino Americana (The Voice of Latin America) with Walter & Omar.” Then came Pastor Wendell from the Farmington Avenue Baptist Church and an hour of soliciting enough funds to keep up the payments on his Cadillac and his mansion in West Hartford. I would come on in the afternoon for 4 hours of “easy listening” music that was programmed to be as non offensive as possible with such core artists as Doris Day, Al Martino, The Clebanoff Strings and Mantovani. I had recently been offered a job at a bigger station in a bigger town and had gotten wind of my impending doom. Apparently someone took offense when, while running the controls for the pastor's noon show, I became fed up with his hypocrisy and, instead of his theme music, I played “Sympathy for the Devil” behind his parting words. The cloud was now over my head and I knew it. This was going to be my last show. So, instead of a particular Mitch Miller tune, I put Jethro Tull's “Aqualung” on the turntable, put the needle on the very first track, turned on the microphone, got in my car and drove home listening to the station. Just hearing what came out of the GM's mouth as he scratched the record to get it off the air far was more entertaining than anything else I had done on the air to date. Hell,after that little stunt, I would have hired me based on creativity alone.

EASILY AMUSED.......IN BULK

I get sort of a perverse pleasure when shopping at a bulk warehouse store like Sam’s Club or Costco. Now, I can’t speak for Sam’s, but, I like to make a “Costco run” every couple of weeks or so. It’s a way to replenish our pantry and to replenish my enthusiasm for life. It’s really very invigorating To me, it’s tantamount to that IKEA commercial where the woman looks at her receipt and does a mad dash through the parking lot screaming “Start the car…..start the car,” giving a final, enthusiastic “Woo hoo” as her husband drives away, completely confused. Looking at my receipt from Costco as I lug in boxes and boxes from the car brings me back to that pseudo-satisfying feeling from back in the 60’s that I had gotten one over on “The Man.” It’s a sense of pride that one gets when coming out of a negotiation with more than you had in mind when you went in. I have five kids, so, there was a time when going to Costco or Sam's was justified by virtue of the fact that we went through all the stuff I would bring home in about two days. With growing kids, food certainly seems to evaporate when they come within a few feet of it. But, my kids are grown and have moved on. There are two of us in the house now and we really have no use for an entire crate of peaches or a box containing twelve thousand stalks of asparagus. Even if the produce is out of season here, it may not be in Chile or Mozambique. And yet, I buy it. I figure that even if more than half of them go bad, I’ve really only paid for about a half a dozen peaches or a couple of servings of asparagus anyway, so, I’ve gotten away with something and a poor farmer in Chile or Mozambique has had all of his backbreaking labor justified. Someone just paid, what to him, is probably a year’s wages, even if it IS a literal “pittance” to us. After all, where else will you find an entire crate of peaches for $5.99 It’s not just food. My wife asked me to get some dish washing gel. She pays about $5.00 for a 75 ounce container of name brand gel. Not that much, but, at Costco, they had a 125 ounce container of the name dish washing gel for under $9.00. Now, here is where the deal gets really sweet. Right next to it was the Costco brand. There were two 125 ounce containers of the gel for $8.00. I know that this should last us for about a year and a half. I am tempted to knock on the neighbors doors and ask if they have any dishes they need washed. Paper towels are another incredible savings. A case of 12 mega rolls of a name brand, very absorbent paper towel is only about $11.00. The 12 mega rolls give you the same amount of paper towels as 20 regular rolls. I need to start spilling more. After all, we have plenty of absorbency at our fingertips and I’d hate to see it go unused. Now we still do plenty of shopping at our local grocery store. I suppose it’s because of convenience and familiarity as much as anything else, but, I can truly say that I’ve never walked out of a Publix and had the urge to yell, “Start the car, start the car.”

THE POSTCARD

I’m not sure if it was the perfect irony, a brilliantly crafted plan or the result of psychic phenomena, but I got a strange bit of mail recently. It was a couple of days after I got out of the hospital after turning blue again. I have a tendency of doing that every so often. I think it averages out to about once every year and a quarter. The doctors still can’t pinpoint the problem, but we may have it narrowed down to some outside stimuli interacting with my daily meds causing what some professionals might call: bad juju. At least that’s the diagnosis from my wife, who we lovingly refer to as Dr. Mom, so, you see, it’s coming from a very reliable and trustworthy source. The mail came in an envelope that stated, in bold letters: “Free Pre-Paid Cremation! Details Inside.” On the inside of the envelope was a postcard, of sorts. It said that I could get a $300 reimbursement on my cremation service, free grave space (which is not very much if you’re cremated. A small hole should do it.), a free granite or marble headstone or bronze marker (not very big in conjunction with the size of the hole.) and spouse benefits, whatever they may be. Then came the kicker on this side of the card: “Cemetery Space is Limited”…whoa, I know we are getting older, but, if this is true, we must be dropping like flies., I’d like to know how they knew I was a veteran and had just come home from another leg of the “Bob Leonard Blue Tour.” Does someone hang out at hospitals, looking for older looking guys in Vietnam Veteran hats? Hey, it’s not that farfetched. Look at New York City. There must be at least a thousand stories in the Naked City about people who pick up the paper and head straight to the obits so they can find a rent-controlled apartment. When you think about it, it’s deviantly brilliant. Jerry Seinfeld even did an episode about it. I can hear the guy now as he calls his boss: “Hey, we got a live one, Manny. I’ll get his name and address to you but you better get the stuff in the mail to him pretty quickly……He’s blue.” I had the info within two days. I probably would have gotten it even sooner, but, on the first day, my daughter’s car was parked within 15 feet of the mailbox and we didn’t get a delivery, but that’s a story for better left for another time. I can’t really put too much credence into the psychic phenomenon theory. If someone is THAT psychic, they’re time would probably be better spent helping the police solve crimes. That would certainly make a better TV show than a psychic who knows, through some strange, unexplainable happenstance, that a Vietnam Veteran is getting older and then uses that power sell whatever it is they were trying to sell. Honestly, I’ve searched the card on the front and back and can’t find anything for sale. Everything seems to be free. On the back of the card, towards the end of all this free stuff, it says, again in bold letters: “Return the Reply Slip TODAY.” This is where I make the conscious decision to go with the irony theory. I’d hate to think that in a case like this, someone knows something I don’t.

TO SLEEP – PERCHANCE

Sleep and I have a very tenuous relationship. We haven't seen eye to eye for many years. Being in my mid–late 60's (no need to be too precise), I figured it was time to try and locate the root of my problem, so I decided to do some research. “Why not?” I thought. “I'm awake anyway.” The journey took me back a few generations in my own family. My great grandfather, who we knew as grandfather, a name given him by my mother, his granddaughter, rarely ever slept. Tales have been handed down about how he would sit up all night long, translating volumes from English to Russian to Hebrew to Yiddish and back again. He didn't even speak all of those languages, but at 3am, in a little room in his house, who the hell knew? He was an old man and we all believed him. “Grandfather, what are all these squiggly lines?” I would ask whenever I would visit and snoop around where I didn't belong. “Oh, that's Mark Twain's “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court” in Russian,” he would say. Or, that's Mark Twain's “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court” in Hebrew.” We lived in Connecticut and that made it much easier for me to swallow. In fact it, at 8 years old, I bought it....hook, line and sinker. The fact that it was nothing escaped me completely. He was suffering from insomnia and spent the late night/early morning hours doodling. His son, my grandfather, who I also referred to as Grandfather, couldn't sleep either. He would try, as the original Grandfather had, to nod off into dreamland, but spent most of his 89 years sitting awake, reading manuscripts that his father had translated from English to Russian to Hebrew to Yiddish and back again. It never occurred to him that there was really nothing written on these pages but a bunch of squiggly lines that his father had passed off as languages that existed outside the borders of Connecticut. My grandfather was an extremely bright man who, apparently always believed what his father told him, proving that intelligence and gullibility can, indeed, coexist. He must have read Twain's “A Connecticut Yankee.....” hundreds of times in myriad nondescript languages. The fact that he was really just reading gibberish never took away from his enjoyment of this wonderful tale. My father didn't sleep either and he was from an entirely different family than the aforementioned father and son grandfather team. We aren't sure if his father suffered from insomnia. He died young and never had the opportunity to walk around in a sleep deprived haze during the day. The theory is that my father married into the issue and knew what he was getting into when he met my mother, who also suffers this dreaded malady. She figures, after doing all the appropriate math, that she has slept a total of two to three weeks in her 87 years. It looks as though the trait is less a treatable disease than it is a genetic condition. My brother doesn't sleep any better than any of the other family members who are so well acquainted with the night. Even as a little boy, he would wander around our bedroom in the dark, bumping into things, eventually nodding off standing straight up with his head leaning on a dresser. I know because I would lay awake in bed watching him in the hopes that this late night entertainment would help send me off into dreamland. Every once in a while it would work and I have a faint memory of waking up refreshed after a good two or three hour slumber. It was rare, but, if I remember correctly, quite a treat. As for me.....I am no different from the rest of the “kin folk,” but I have a routine. It seems to me that I once read somewhere that routines can make you sleepy. My wife has to get up very early to work, so she goes to bed at about 10pm. That's when I get out my laptop, plug in the headphones and watch 50's TV shows in the hopes that they will put me to sleep. They normally don't. It seems that I always have to see how the Lone Ranger and Tonto get the bad guys in these episodes that I have seen over and over for the past 60 years. You'd think I'd remember how they did it. At about 1am, I turn off the computer and turn over and close my eyes. By 2:15 or so, I have to get up to pee and I can't go back to sleep, so I go downstairs and turn on the TV, where I can usually find an old episode of The Lone Ranger or two. When I realize that I just watched it a couple of hours earlier and I remember how they rounded up the Cavendish gang, I try my hand at translating Mark Twain's “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court” in the time tested tradition of my now long departed family members. I suppose I can call the marks that I am making on the paper in my wee hours stupor any language that I want. I just hope my kids will buy it when they are grown and wide awake in the middle of the night, so they can enjoy the fruits of Mark Twain's and my labors and appreciate what their elders have, so lovingly handed down to them.