I was chatting with my dad the other day. I love doing that. Even though we lived in the same house my entire life growing up, I never really felt like I knew him. He worked a lot. But I knew he was a cool, interesting, guy; we just never really talked all that much.
Sometimes when we did talk, I would find out some odd random thing about him. Example of a conversation with dad:
Me: "Blah, blah, blah, talk about school, blah blah blah, did you hear James Brown died?"
Dad: "Oh yeah? I met him once."
Me: "Sure you did."
Dad: "I did."
Me: "Where?"
Dad: "In the bathroom at Richard Nixon's inaugeration."
Me: "Ha ha. Whatever, Dad."
Dad: "I'll show you." [Goes to his room, rummages around a bit, returns, hands me something.] "Here's the program. Look, there's where he signed it."
Me, reading: "Stay cool. James Brown."
Dad: "And here's where Tony Bennett signed."
So the other day he told me a story about my great-great grandfather Herman, who was shanghied while picking up a kitchen stove in Tacoma, Washington. He returned 2 years later. I'll have to post more on that later, I must give up my computer at this time.
But I will quickly say that researching stories of west coast shanghai-ing, I came across a really interesting blog called bldgblog. It's here on blogspot, and the stories are faskinating. You should check it out!
Past Missteps
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Several years ago, when I was much stupider, I briefly interned for a
reasonably well-known agent. I let her know ahead of time that I had a
v...
1 month ago