Somehow, it’s become MY job to listen to a bunch of cassette tapes that were in my late father’s possession. Mostly, they are pitches by people you’ve never heard of, recommending that folks get involved with one multilevel marketing plan or another, something that my father was susceptible of buying into. But there’s also How To Be An Auctioneer (Dad was the first black auctioneer in the state of North Carolina), a 1983 episode of something called P.M. Magazine (Eddie Murphy’s language offends! John Lennon biopic to be made!) There may be a tape or two in there of his music or writings. Naturally, most of them are unlabeled, or labeled so cryptically as to be meaningless. More than seven years after his death, the day before what would have been his 81st birthday…
Tomorrow, Lydia will be three and a half. So, my father’s birthday is Lydia’s half-birthday, and vice versa. In the Lydia-naming consideration process, which I detailed way back here, it had never occurred to me that my father, Les Green, and my daughter, Lydia Green, had the same first and last initials until Carol started labeling Lydia’s things that she takes to day care LG.
For many of my father’s enterprises, involving music, painting and flowers (in other words, NOT the MLM stuff), he referred to the business as Elgee Arts – LG. So, in one more way, I have this connection between my father and my daughter, even though they never had a chance to meet.
And since I’m taking about him, let me re-request any information about my father’s – Leslie Harold Green – military service from May 1945 to December 1946 in a segregated unit in the European theater, as I described here.
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There’s this 46-year-old Carnegie Mellon professor who is dying. He seems to have a rather good attitude about it, probably better than what mine would be.
ROG