There was a time when Reading, Pennsylvania lived as an industry mecca thanks to a railroad that was once the largest corporation in the world. But like so many small towns in the state, it lost its fastball to bigger and bolder ideas from somewhere else. Dantley rode US 422 to the working ghost town dressed in monochrome. Out of the periphery emerged two mountain ranges- Mount Penn to the right and Neversink to the left. The geology of a million years bookending the centuries old stories that still inhabited the city’s bones. He took a right onto Penn Street as the fragments of those glory days blossomed in a skeletal haze of tired granite and oxidized bronze and then he dialed up Amy to let her know he was almost there.
“There’s plenty of parking in front of the building, I’ll meet you downstairs . .”
Amy was a nurse at Reading Hospital. A mid-thirties divorcee with two kids, Dantley had swiped right on Luv Thing, the hottest new dating site according to Drew Barrymore. As he pulled in front of an apartment building that looked as if it had come straight out of a Capra flick, he threw out a cosmic high five to his favorite actress because it was obvious she knew her shit.
His date was hot butter. She stood five foot plenty with a stormy waterfall of dirty blonde hair that fell across her shoulders in the kind of way that made rock songs legendary. She had thick, natural eyebrows, and thank God for that since many of the girls he’d met to this point seemed ready to commit murder for having to pencil the things in. Amy’s lips had pout, which Dantley believed to be a very underappreciated characteristic. And well, from the neck down it was more classic rock song stuff, starting with Bob Seger and moving to Freddie Mercury and finishing with some ZZ Top.
“Hey there handsome,” She said as Dantley removed himself from his midnight blue 1996 Volvo 940 station wagon and pulled her into him for a kiss.
“No first date jitters for you!” She smiled. “And umm . . did you score this ride on one of your antique picking things you talked about in your profile?”
“I’ll have you know this baby has less miles than most cars on the road that are a third of her age. And she provides a silkier spin than Julie Newmar in that catsuit of hers. And yeah, it kinda involved an antique picking thing . . but indirectly,”
“Okay well, save the story until I’m melting into my Martini,”
“Hop in and I’ll show you what the ’90’s sounded like,”
“I was there but thank you for the compliment . .and we’re walking. Willoughby’s is only a couple blocks from here, ”
“We’re walking? In this neighborhood?”
“Excuse you but this is my hood and I’ll protect you, so lose the cynicism, copouts turn me off,”
“Apologies, Bonnie Parker,”
Amy stuck out her arm and Dantley folded it up inside his and they walked as if they’d been doing this for years. She was a peaceful easy feeling of a girl whose sideways glances were clever pieces of mayhem. Small talk with Amy felt like a great big something and Dantley lost himself in it; so much so that before he knew it they were two Martinis deep and digging into their entrees.
” . . and so yeah, I have a boy and a girl, they’re both in middle school. They live with mom and I get them on the weekends . .”
“Love it. Hey, try this,” Amy said as she held out her forkful of lamb chop and arugula.
“Yanno, that is such a brilliant move,” Dantley observed.
“What brilliant? Me?”
“You disarm me with cooties. I mean, I’m not gonna say no,”
“I have no cooties but if I did have cooties, they would be the best damn cooties you ever had, so shush and try this,”
“Mmm, that’s the stuff right there,” Dantley nodded.
“How’s yours?” She winked as he cut a piece of his Saltimbocca for her. He watched her sumptuous lips rein it in and it took all of his self-control right along with it.
“Oh that’s corner pocket!”
“You know it,”
“So you’re a car guy?”
“No I’m not a car guy. I don’t have the patience and I hate getting stuff under my fingernails. I got the Volvo at a storage unit auction,”
“You are so reality TV. How’d they fit it in there?
“It wasn’t part of the sale. I was rummaging through the unit I won and lo and behold, I came across an original Beatles LP. I mean, the chances!”
“How did you turn that into a Volvo?”
“One of the guys I outbid wanted the album and I was nostalgic enough to listen. I’d popped my manual cherry on an ’84 Volvo and this felt like kismet. So I did the plus/minus thing and it came back as an even enough trade so I cashed in my Beatles card,”
“You used your Beatle juice is what you did,”
“Very nice, I’m the dad here and you’re gonna need a permit for that joke, I’m just saying . .”
“Single mom loophole,” She winked.
“So how did you come to be a single mom anyway?”
“The hard way. I was living the dream, like the actual dream. The doting husband, two beautiful boys, the two-story dreamhouse in the suburbs and the big backyard and the pool parties and the kids height chart in the doorway to the kitchen that we painted with crayons and sharpies and once, in a pinch, nail polish . .”
“What happened?”
“My husband came home from work one day and he let me know he lost everything. He was a degenerate gambler, dressed in high stakes until he lost our lives together. Thing is he had been losing our perfect life one sure thing at a time and I never saw it coming. I’ll never forget that moment. I was sitting in the kitchen, sipping on a gin and tonic and he’s telling me it’s gone . . it’s all gone,”
“Shit,”
“So yeah, you realize what a copout cynicism is. Because when really bad shit happens to you, there’s no time to bitch and moan, and there’s no use in trying. All you have is this great big hole of nothing and you have to figure out how you’re going to climb back into something ordinary again. And to this day, I hate fucking gin . .”
“You could be an R-rated life coach. I don’t even know if that’s a thing but if not, I’m looking at Amelia Earhart with a warning label,”
“That’s what I like about you,”
“What? That I’m a dick?”
“You’re the first dude who hasn’t pissed his pants trying to come up with a soliloquy after hearing my story,”
“I can’t piss my pants on demand. I mean, if that’s what you’re into . . I’m willing to learn,”
“Okay you’re a little bit of a dick, yeah . .” She laughed.
They split the check and headed back to Amy’s place, arm in arm as they debated whether Die Hard could be considered a Christmas movie, contemplated Taylor Swift as a government operative and totally agreed that the best Rolling Stones song was none of them.
“I was thinking maybe we could watch some Sopranos back at your place,” Dantley said.
“Love the thought but no. Pop has to drop the boys back off because he’s got a hot date later and he’s at the age where he’s either gonna get laid or die of a massive heart attack and if he’s super lucky, both. And honestly, I’m not ready for strange man introductions. No offense,”
“None taken, I get it . .” Dantley said as he brought her in for a goodnight kiss, after which Amy did a quick recon on his storage unit lottery prize as if she were a county fair judge.
“A Beatles album huh? He saw you coming,” She winked as Dantley watched her move inside the lobby and disappear.
He torched a clove cigarette and took a nice hard pull as he considered his latest chapter. Amy from Reading was attitude and high heels and she possessed that rarest of superpowers: She didn’t give a blessed fuck what anybody else thought of her because she was too busy doing her thing, and she was doing it just fine. He moved inside his ride home and plugged in his playlist.
It felt like a Beatles night.
I Saw Her Standing There- Beatles
Since this will be my last Rundown for a couple weeks, Imma fire up the wayback machine and go back to the time of heroes. As in Heroes of the Week(!), which was what this weekly episode used to dress up in. So I figured, with all the shutdowns and putdowns and takedowns in our daily diet, maybe it’s time to add a little ups. As for that housekeeping note I mentioned, Sunday will be my last post for a week and Cincy is gonna pinch-hit for me in the interim, so do me a solid and be kind to him. Or, you could do me an even bigger solid and give him shit the way I do. Your choice.
It’s been a bad week/month/year for air travel. I’ve made light of this fact a few (many) times, but as the Mayor of Fair Playville, Imma show you the other side today. Delta Airlines is celebrating twenty five years of something called “
The Grahame family business is hockey, and they’re three generations deep in the stuff. Grandfather Ron played goaltender for the Bruins, Kings and Nordiques and his son John followed in his ice skates, playing goalie for the Bruins and Lightning, where he was part of a Stanley Cup winning roster. In fact, John and his mother Charlotte are the first mother-son duo to have their names engraved on the Cup, as mom worked in the Tampa front office. These days, John’s brother is a scout for the Avalanche and his sons (spoiler alert) play junior hockey. It’s the youngest member of this brood I’m highlighting today because 8-year-old Luke’s big idea has helped raise thousands of dollars for underprivileged kids who otherwise wouldn’t be able to play the sport. The idea came to him before he was old enough to join his brothers on the ice, when he remarked “I’m tired of being the rink dude”. And just like that, the 
Manolo Betancur came to America twenty-five years ago with a dream, and all this time later, he’s making them come true for everyone he comes across. Manolo’s Bakery in Charlotte, North Carolina celebrated its 20th anniversary this year, making it the oldest immigrant Latino bakery in the Carolinas and if you ended the story right there, beautiful. Of course, it doesn’t end right there, not even close. The native of Columbia has been donating birthday cakes to the homeless for the past 12 years because he believes everyone deserves a birthday cake. And Manolo, he doesn’t call these people homeless either. He calls them neighbors. He works with the good peeps at Raise You Up Ministries to make sure that his neighbors have their cake and eat it too. Three hundred cakes and still going strong, he still remembers the story that sums up this labor of love best of all. An employee from the non-profit had shared the story of a man who cried when receiving his cake, telling him that it was the first birthday cake he’d ever received.
Kevin Love is back in the news and he’s doing more of his good thing. The power forward’s impact off the court has proven every bit as impressive as his accomplishments on it. Which is no small thing when you consider he’s an Olympic gold medalist, NBA champion and five time All-Star who’s destined for the Hall some day. He did the rounds this week, sharing the struggles he’s faced with his mental health. There is no woe to his me, however. Instead, Love created a space that helps people just like him. And you. And me. Us. 
Josh Pache is from down undah . . or as Americans refer to it, the place that created Outback Restaurant. Seriously though, it doesn’t matter where the kid hails from. What matters is what he did. The 17-year old found a wad (As in a $3,500 wad) of money outside a convenience store and he’d been saving up for a pickup truck and so of course . . . he turned it in. Daniel McKellar is a local businessman and it was his wad that was found, so needless to say, when he called up the store to inquire as to whether they’d found that wad and they replied with a hell yes (creative license alert), he had to find the selfless individual. He checked surveillance cameras and eventually went to Instagram and before long, he’d found Josh. McKellar gave him $1,000 and when he learned that the kid was saving up for a truck, he gave him a job too. Oh . . and then McKellar started a GoFundMe to provide some giddy to that yup for the truck, and it’s currently sitting pretty at $10,000 because yanno . . good things do in fact happen to good people.
Sean Charles Dunn was found not guilty of assault by a D.C. jury this week. Dunn made headlines in August when he threw a Subway sandwich at a federal law enforcement officer. The jury took several hours to deliberate before finding Dunn not guilty since it was their collective opinion that Dunn simply did what anyone in their right mind would have done by refusing to eat a sandwich made at Subway.
The Trump administration announced plans this week to resume nuclear weapons testing after more than thirty years. For those who pine for winter but don’t want to invest in a new snow blower or snow tires, you’re in luck!
President Trump announced he is very close to ending the longest government shutdown in US history and will be gathering with officials this weekend on the links in order to hammer out some ideas. He is assuring all Americans that “this is the calm before the storm. Or the storm before the calm. Whichever is better, that’s where we are”. When asked for a prediction as to how much longer the shutdown will last, Trump proclaimed “36 holes”.
The World Series matchup between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays garnered the largest global audience for a Fall Classic since 1992 with more than 51 million viewers tuning into Game 7 alone. The series averaged 34 million viewers per game with more than 16 million of those viewers in the US alone. As a result, the NFL announced plans to host games in Japan and Canada that will coincide with each game of the World Series beginning next season.
I was several days old when I learned how Trump had laid siege on the White House. I knew he was in the process of constructing a new ballroom, or arcade . . or McDonald’s, but I had no idea he went all Beirut on the old place. Hollywood directors would be smart to grab some snapshots of this mess for their next disaster flick. And if they’re sweating a possible lawsuit by the administration, they shouldn’t be. The dude has so many suits on the burner, he’ll be long gone before it’s settled. So too will those Hollywood directors. Hell . . so will we.
Elon Musk is officially taking on Wikipedia and I wasn’t aware we needed this to happen but okay. The name of his AI-driven online encyclopedia, which is up and running if you wanna check it out, is Grokipedia. As a semi-professional blog-hound, I had to skim my toe. My first search being Elon Musk (duh!), where I was given 2,461 search results. If ya don’t have carpal tunnel, you’ll get it just scrolling to the bottom of his info page. Which is appreciably longer than Abe Lincoln’s info page, which is the default search for yours truly.
The Hand That Rocks The Cradle was serving up a solid cast for a remake pic and I ain’t gonna lie, I was intrigued as all get out. And then I watched this thing and I was less so, very much less so. And no, I didn’t goof on the movie poster. I just wanted to give props to the 1992 movie, which is the one you should check out if you’ve never seen it.
Be Sorry . . . Less 