Planes, Trains and 18 Wheelers

I loved "Planes, Trains and Automobiles," the 1987 comedy starring Steve Martin and John Candy. My son, Owen, has loved trains for many years, and recently has become enamored of plane spotting. But I think at 12 he's a little young to watch this R-rated film.

I thought of the movie after watching Owen over the last several days bounce out of the house with his camera every time he hears a plane overhead. He snaps pictures, and then zooms in on the screen to see what type of plane, and what carrier. If he can't tell, he can always check the radar app on his phone. It's pretty amazing how technology has made easy what surely used to be an exercise in futility, as plane spotters would have to buy trade magazines, visit the public library to check through Encyclopedia Brittanicas, hack into air traffic control or spend loads of money on telephoto lenses for their cameras.

Owen and I have traveled to South Boston's Castle Island a few times in recent weeks to watch planes take off and land at Logan Airport. The planes are so low, you can almost hear people complaining about having to turn off their electronic devices.

And of course the two of us have traveled countless miles on Boston's subway system over the last several years, and driven far and wide so he can take pictures and videos of commuter, Amtrak and freight trains.

Sometimes I wonder, "How can he enjoy looking at the same planes and trains over and over?" Then I harken back to when I was his age, and obsessed with semi trucks and boogie vans.

Here's how I described my fascination with 18-wheelers in the road trip memoir I've been working on for the past two years:

I knew Peterbilts from Kenworths, Macks from Internationals. I liked conventionals better than cabovers. During my bus ride to junior high school every day my heart skipped a beat when I saw the gleaming red-white-and-blue tractor with the double sleeper sitting in the parking lot of a factory in the center of my town.

I would ride my bike, sometimes alone, other times with my buddy Pat and his younger brother Bryan, about half a mile to the main drag through my hometown and anxiously wait for big rigs to drive by. When I spotted one, I'd give the signal for the driver to blow his air horn, and whoop it up whenever they complied.

Spotting trucks was my favorite game while on family road trips.

One time, I had my mother drive me about 10 miles into Granby, so I could take a picture of a Peterbilt that I'd noticed on a previous drive. Here's the picture:

I still keep an eye out for big trucks when I'm on the highway.

Around this time, ages 11-13, I discovered custom vans. I bought magazines and ogled the tricked-out rides (and bikini babes), and looked for boogie vans wherever I went. Connecticut's Farmington Valley wasn't exactly a hotbed of vintage vans with waterbeds, wet bars, fur-covered steering wheels and murals straight off the cover of Heavy Metal magazine, but I saw a few here and there.

On a family trip out West in 1977, when I was 12, I snapped the picture below in Salt Lake City.

I guess it's no surprise that in 1988, when I was almost 23 and nearly a year out of college, I bought a van with my buddy Andy. We got it into running shape, but didn't have the money to remodel the inside to look a celebrity's living room, or hire somebody to paint a scantily clad Amazon riding a war steed on the side.

We slapped a Grateful Dead sticker on the front before picking up my friends Pete and John and going on a four-month road trip.

I got rid of the van a long time ago. The Greater Boston area, where I've lived for the past 20+ years, is thin on old custom vans, unlike Southern California. But I still love seeing an old boogie van, or watching Fu Manchu fans' homemade videos once in a while to rekindle my passion.

Yesterday, one of my neighbors asked Owen if he wanted to be a pilot or train engineer when he grows up. He said he wasn't sure. Chances are he won't be either of those things, but I'd put odds on the fact that he'll have a passion for planes and trains for the rest of his life.

Mmmm...Leftovers

I'm excited for HBO's new series, "The Leftovers":

When I first heard of Tom Perrotta's book, which the series is based on, I thought it odd that the author of spot-on high-school popularity contest spoof "Election" and suburban parenting-and-affairs story "Little Children" was taking on Christianity's Rapture fantasy.

Those who believe in the Rapture are certain that Jesus Christ will return to Earth, and deliver Christian believers to Heaven. Those left behind, as it were, will face the end of times, the story goes.

The concept has gotten a huge marketing boost in recent years with the "Left Behind" book series. Nicolas Cage stars in the movie created from that series, which hits theaters in October:

My wife read Perrotta's book last year and highly recommended it, although she didn't tell me much about the story. I finally got around to it last month, and was expecting it to have more of a relationship to Christianity than it does. The book has about as much to do with the Rapture as Justin Bieber does with maturity.

Just as "The Sopranos" was less about the Mafia than it was about screwed-up mobsters, "The Leftovers" isn't really about the disappearance of millions of people around the world, but rather about how the remaining 98% of humanity deal with this shocking event.

I'll be done with this excellent book by the end of this week. Then I'll start reading as much press as I can and watching trailers to get myself psyched up for the HBO series.

Perrotta is co-writing the 10 episodes with Damon Lindelof of "Lost" fame. The series stars Justin Theroux, Liv Tyler and a bunch of people I don't know.

I loved the movie adaptation of "Election"; I never read the book. I liked the movie of "Little Children," but enjoyed the book more. "The Leftovers" is so rich and detailed and has so many wonderful characters, I've got high hopes for HBO's treatment. I hope I'm not let down.

Message In a Concertina

(My dad, Richard Brigham -- 1929-2014)

I'm neither religious nor spiritual, but when my father passed away a month ago today, I came to understand why people believe in heaven. Honestly, I don't know what I believe, but I experienced a moment a few days after my dad's death that stopped me short and made me give hard thought to the afterlife.

My father was unconscious for the last three days of his life. During that time, my mother, sister, brother and I talked to him (giving him updates on the Red Sox and UConn basketball, telling we loved him, recounting old stories) and also sang to him. We sang an old song that we'd grown up on, called "Skinamarinky Dinky Dink," many times.

But it was my mother's beautiful rendition of "True Love," a song written by Cole Porter in 1956 and made popular by Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly in "High Society," that I found the most touching. The song was popular during the time that my parents were dating, and it was the closest thing they had to a wedding song.

My mother sang it several times to my father while he was in the hospital. She didn't remember all the words, but did recall the most important ones:

While I give to you and you give to me

True love, true love

So on and on it will always be

True love, true love

In the days following my dad's death, my mother, sister, brother and I began planning a memorial service. Four days after his passing, my sister emailed a YouTube clip of the song "True Love," featuring Crosby and Kelly from "High Society." We knew we had to include the song in the service in some fashion.

Here's the clip:

You'll notice that Crosby is playing a small accordion, called a concertina. About an hour after I watched the video that Thursday, I went for a walk. I needed to clear my head a bit after what had been several long, stressful, painful and sad days.

I walked, as usual, along the path that runs next to the Charles River through Newton, Watertown, Waltham and other area towns. I came to a road crossing, and decided that, rather than proceed on the path as I always do, that I could walk along the road, crossing the river on a bridge.

Just a few seconds after diverting onto this new route, I passed a young guy wearing a backpack and playing...a concertina.

Never in my life had I seen anybody playing a concertina while walking down the street. And I'd certainly never seen this guy before on my walks. Why did I change course from my usual walk? I can't say. After I passed the guy, I turned and looked to make sure I wasn't seeing things. Sure enough, he was continuing on his way, unaware that he'd played a part in not only making my day, but also in sending me off into cosmic wonderings.

I took this experience the only way I could: as a sign from my dad that he was OK, wherever he was (and, as I told my kids, wherever he was, he was surely enjoying plenty of desserts). My brother, sister and mother have all experienced their own signs from my father. Mine involved music, which is such a huge and important part of my life.

I think about my dad all the time, and sometimes talk to him. I don't know if I'll have another experience like I did with the concertina, but I know that, as my nearly 12-year-old son, Owen told me, "You can always talk to Big Gramps."

Adding Up New Music

The mini-bio on Emily Jane Powers' Bandcamp page used to say something along the lines of, "Emily Jane Powers is a Chicago indie pop artist who plays guitar, violin, keys, drums, and sings. She also teaches math." I loved that. Nowadays, the second sentence reads, "While she incorporates aspects of 60s pop, folk, and punk into her music, she has never looked to any influence but herself for a sense of direction."

The first recording of hers I heard was a cover of The Ramones' "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker." I forget where I downloaded it from, but wherever it was, they credited the song to "Yellow Mica Recordings." Whereas the original bops along with Wall of Sound cheeriness, Powers' version has a melancholy edge honed sharply with acoustic guitar, piano and strings.

I have listened to The Ramones' "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker" countless times, so I loved the fact that someone had taken a song I knew so well, a song that's a major part of the punk rock canon, and turned it on its head. Powers'version popped up on my iPod enough times, I finally decided I needed to find out who this woman was.

A quick Google search gave me, as always, what I needed. Since then, I've downloaded two of Powers' many albums, and plan to listen to the others and grab at least two more. She's prolific, that's for sure. She has 10 albums available on her Bandcamp page, recorded over the past dozen years.

Her music is sometimes sweet and simple like the Mamas and Papas (those are the ones I like), sometimes a bit too freak-folkish for me, like, I don't know, whoever is annoying in that scene. Overall, though, I like her aesthetic and DIY attitude.

Here are a few samples:

Dani from EJP on Vimeo.

"What Makes You" by Emily Jane Powers from Look Sessions on Vimeo.

Powers shares a sensibility with other women whose music I've found myself drawn to in recent years: She & Him (a duo featuring actress Zooey Deschanel), Arthur & Yu (a male/female duo that no longer exists) and First Aid Kit (a sister act from Sweden).

I'm not sure where this new musical leaning comes from. Don't get me wrong, I still rock out, still thrive on playing air guitar to The Descendents' Milo Goes to College album:

And I spend a lot of time listening to neo-twangy stuff like Lydia Loveless:

There's something about the harmonies, the longing in their voices, the deceptive simplicity of the music that gets me with artists like Powers, She & Him and First Aid Kit. It all goes back to Nancy Sinatra, I guess. I listened to her quite a bit during my 1988 road trip, and while I don't listen to her much any more, I always like hearing "These Boots Were Made for Walkin'" or "Sugar Town" when they pop up on my iPod.

The math just adds up for me.

Saying Goodbye to Uncle Bill

This past Saturday I went to my Uncle Bill's memorial service. There were times in recent years when, unless I was talking about my dad's family, I forgot about my uncle.

Growing up, I saw my dad's older brother, George, and his family regularly. And today, although we're all grown and have gone our various ways, some with kids, others without, a big group of us cousins gathers at least once a year.

Bill never had kids, and lived in Rochester, New Hampshire, about three hours from where most of the rest of us lived. He visited us in Connecticut on rare occasions, and kept his distance in other ways, too.

I knew very little about him. Random images float in my head, but they are like Viewmaster slides. I load a picture of Bill in my head, mention it to someone in my family, and then someone flips the switch and the picture changes.

"No," they say, "he had the Winnebago in Simsbury, not at Grandma Jo's house."

He was a crew-cutted mystery, a pot-bellied ghost. I remember a picture of him with a flat-top haircut, big sideburns, an orange blazer and thick, black glasses (similar to the ones I wear). I thought he looked cool. But I haven't seen that photo in years, and sometimes I wonder if I made it up in my head.

I saw him at my grandmother's funeral in 1989, and he looked much as I'd remembered him, but very different in so many ways than his brothers. Sure, he was tall and dark-haired, but where my dad and George wore jackets and ties, George donned jeans, a checked shirt and a big belt buckle. He looked like a trucker, which he was. Or at least I thought he was, until I learned otherwise at his service.

I know he was a firefighter in Rochester, as well as a bus driver.

Last summer I drove my parents to Rochester to see Bill. He'd been sick with Alzheimer's for quite some time, and his wife, Mary Lou, had to put him in a nursing home. She told my dad that Bill was deteriorating both physically and mentally, and might not have much more time.

Our visit went as well as could be expected. None of us had seen Bill in 24 years. He spoke only in a low whisper, and only to Mary Lou. She knew what he wanted and could understand what little he said, or interpret his gestures. We watched the Red Sox on TV and made small talk with each other and with Mary Lou.

One of Mary Lou's granddaughters accompanied her to the nursing home. After our visit, the five of us went to lunch. I really liked Mary Lou. She was tough, smart and easy to talk to.

Since that visit, I have thought about Bill a bit more than usual.

I thought that back in 1989 I could've made an effort to see him in Rochester. At the time, I was living a short distance away, in Dover, NH. I worked for a few months at a local factory, and discovered that my boss knew my uncle from the fire department.

"You uncle is Frig'em Brigham?" he asked when I told him Bill worked as a firefighter in Rochester.

I shied away from asking him about that nickname, and what my uncle was like. I felt weird because I didn't know my own flesh and blood. I have a feeling that if I'd reached out to my uncle, given him a call or driven up to the fire station, we would've had a few laughs over cans of beer.

I suspect he told more than a few dirty jokes in his life. He could've told me how to fix stuff, because none of the Simsbury Brigham are particularly adept mechanically.

I didn't know what to expect at the memorial service. My parents rode up with one of my cousins, and my sister and two other cousins arrived separately. Only my parents and I had met Mary Lou before.

I suspected the Rochester Fire Department would be represented at the service, but I couldn't have imagined how big a presence they were. Before my arrival, apparently, a long line of firefighters paid their respects. Outside the chapel the department parked the truck that my uncle had driven when he was on the job (he retired in the late '80s). They put black and purple bunting on the truck, and boots, a helmet and coat that I believe belonged to my uncle.

The department put a display at the front of the chapel featuring my uncle's uniform, two silver-bladed axes, his honorable discharges from the Navy and Army Reserve, and his urn. Firefighters took turns standing at attention at the front of the chapel until the service started.

During the service the department's chaplain offered words of comfort to the gathering, and read a letter that Mary Lou wrote. It was all very moving.

Near the end of the service came the part that really got me, though. Two young Navy men in uniform approached the front of the chapel, saluted Bill's urn while "Taps" played, and then unfurled the triangular American flag that lay on the table. Once the flag was unrolled, they showed it to the congregation, and then methodically folded it back into its three-corner shape.

They then presented it to Mary Lou, and offered these words:

"On behalf of the President of the United States, the United States Navy, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one's honorable and faithful service."

The minister spoke of Bill's service to his country and to the people of Rochester, including the children he took to and from school during his many years driving a bus. Others spoke of his good humor and great ways with his stepchildren and grandchildren.

It felt strange to hear these words about somebody who I barely knew, but I felt it connected us just a little bit.

My immediate family and I stuck out like sore thumbs at the service. My dad and my cousin John wore suits; I had a nice pair of pants and a button-down shirt. My mother, sister and two cousins were dressed nicely as well.

Everyone else in attendance was in jeans, sweatshirts, fleece jackets, leather jackets, etc. I knew this was how it would be, because I knew that Rochester was a blue collar town, and my uncle was a blue collar guy. But once we broke the ice a bit with a few folks, things felt OK. Nobody seemed to hold a grudge that Mary Lou put my family in the reserved pews at the front of the chapel.

The delicate new bond between us was solidified a little more when the guy who looked most menacing -- leather jacket, black boots, neck tattoos, ear tattoos, scruffy beard -- told my dad he liked his cane, which is black with a silver snake head for a handle.

"My grandfather had one like that," the guy said. "His had a cobra for a handle, and you could pull it out and it was a sword." We laughed at that, and it felt pretty good.

Imprinting Press

When our cat, Cosmo, died in March 2011, we talked about getting another not long after. More recently, as Amelia has continue to ask about fish, a dog or a cat, we considered getting two kittens.

Well, nearly three years later, we finally adopted a new pet.

Her name is Lily, and she's very cute and sweet and seems to be fitting right in. If the shelter had another girl cat around the same age, we might have adopted her as well.

The kids love her, of course, and Beth and I are happy to have a new furry friend. We had Cosmo for more than 15 years, and he was a great pet. I don't even mind resuming litter box and feeding duties.

We brought Lily home Monday afternoon, after picking her out at the MSPCA the previous Saturday. As instructed, we closed her into a small room with her litter box, food, toys and some blankets so she would have some time to get used to her new home. Once during the evening she escaped our basement bathroom, so once we captured her, we blocked the door so she could just chill out overnight.

I got up early the next morning and sprung her so she could roam around the house for an hour or so before the kids woke up. For much of the rest of Tuesday I didn't see her. Mid-afternoon, I found her in the unfinished half of our basement, behind an old table stacked up with stuff.

Over the next few days she began to come out of her shell -- sleeping under and atop beds, cuddling on laps during evening TV time, playing with her toys a little bit.

As of last night, she's in full-out imprinting mode -- trying to make her mark on us and the house in many ways.

She tried numerous times to get under the covers with Beth and me once we were in bed. We kept picking her up and either putting her on the floor, or on to of the covers. She got under once when we were both asleep, and I promptly evicted her. I wouldn't mind her sleeping under there -- Cosmo used to do it -- but she was kicking around like she thought it was her litter box. We don't want to have to buy Kitty Depends for her.

Other times during the night she snuggled up to my neck, something Cosmo never did. I was awake for a while because of her extracurricular activities, but that's OK.

This morning she took her imprinting tactics to a different place: the breakfast table.

Thinking me distracted by the newspaper, Lily kept approaching my cereal bowl and attempting to dip her head into my granola. When I shooed her away, she promptly stuck her cute little head toward my OJ glass. After several vollies back and forth, I scooped her up and put her on the floor. She hopped back up, I put her back down. Ad infinitum.

I know this is standard cat business, but we never dealt with it with Cosmo. He wasn't a food grubber.

Upon arriving home from volunteering at the National Archives Friday afternoon, I was greeted practically at the door by Lily, which is nice but I would have liked it if she'd brought my slippers and a tumbler of Scotch.

As I type this she's sitting in my lap after, once again, several attempts on my part to get her to stop stalking me. She's very cute, so I can't get mad at her. I assume as she gets used to all of us and our house, she'll stop being quite so needy.

In the meantime, I'll just have to keep using the lint brush to get her white and black hairs off my dark sweaters.

The Devil Didn't Make Me Do It

Earlier this week I made a list of writing projects that I want to complete in the next few years. Top of the list is my first children's picture book, which is moving along well with an illustrator and the backing of the MBTA, the folks who run Boston's subway system (see January 29, 2014, "Kidding Around").

At the bottom of the list I wrote this:

WHITE DEVIL JOHN SCREENPLAY

MAYBE….

I've never written a screenplay. I have, however, written a few plays. Last March I read an article in the Boston Globe about a Boston gangster known as White Devil John, and immediately I thought, "Talk about a movie-ready name!"

Here's the part of the Globe story I threw into a Word document with an eye toward developing a story based on this case:

They called him Bac Guai John or “White Devil John,” and he was their enforcer.

John Willis was a white man from Dorchester, yet, according to court records, he quietly emerged as a leader among Chinatown’s Asian gangs, historically known for insulating themselves from outsiders.

He had been introduced to the neighborhood’s underworld when he was about 12 years old, learned to speak Cantonese and was essentially adopted by a Chinese family, according to federal prosecutors. From there, they say, he followed the leaders of the violent and once-powerful Ping On Gang, launching a career that spanned more than two decades.

[In federal court he pleaded guilty] to an indictment that painted him as the nexus among low-level Asian gangs that ran rackets in Chinatown, including drug dealing, gambling and prostitution.

After reacquainting myself with this story today, I searched online to see if there were any updates on White Devil John. Turns out, I can erase this idea from my project list.

A book is already in the works, and has been sold to a publisher. Rights for TV, film and a graphic novel have also been sold.

So who's behind the project?

Boston sports reporter turned news anchor Bob Halloran, that's who.

Halloran is a very likable guy who, it turns out, is much more than a good news reader and clever wordsmith when reporting on Boston's teams. He's written at least five books, covering topics ranging from Whitey Bulger and Steve "The Rifleman" Flemmi, to "Irish" Mickey Ward (Halloran served as a consultant on "The Fighter") and the Red Sox.

Working with White Devil John himself -- John Willis -- Halloran has written a non-fiction, true crime tale tailor-made for the big screen (James Gray has been hired to write and direct; Gray's credits include "The Immigrants," "We Own the Night" and "The Lost City of Z," which is in pre-production and is based on a great book I read a few years ago).

Here's part of the blurb from Publisher's Marketplace:

"Still a teenager, John took a job as a bouncer at a club near Fenway Park. After coming to the aid of a young Chinese man named Woping (John Jo in English), John had a friend he would forever call his brother. He was taken in by John Jo's family. He learned to speak Cantonese, grew fond of the Chinese culture of honor, family and Buddhism, and went to work for the Chinese Mob in Boston's Chinatown."

The book will be published by BenBella Books in the spring of 2015.