Years on the 7s #5: 1987, 1997, 2007

Details from the years 1987, 1997 and 2007 won't readily come to mind without some assistance. Dates of vacations and physical ailments are fuzzy.

For instance, did we spend that week at Sandals resort in Antigua in 2007 or 2008? Was it 1997 or another year when I had to forego booze for an entire North by Northwest Music Conference because I was taking antibiotics to recover from diverticulitis?  

To do 1987 justice, I'll need to go to Buffalo News microfilm to figure out everything I was doing, since the online archives cut off at 1988. Gusto is my diary, but the high points go like this:

Monica and I buy our second house together – a big Victorian single built in 1891 on a corner lot at 429 Richmond Ave. I've driven past it for years and never noticed it behind the two big trees in the front yard. It's in wonderful condition and the price is right. $107,000. In June, we move in.

We can afford it because of the rents we generate from our old house – a four-unit place that we've had since 1979 five blocks away at 180 Richmond. There we tried our hand at landscaping and made the place into a San Francisco-style painted lady, startling the neighbors when we turned it pumpkin orange with deep red highlights.
Second-floor tenant Joe Ciminese comes to me in July to complain about the marijuana plant growing under our old kitchen window in the side yard. Don't know where it came from – I didn't plant it – but it's a beauty. I dig it up and nurse it to sticky-bud maturity on the garage roof at 429, but it turns out not to be very potent.

I'm still driving my troublesome white 1979 diesel VW Rabbit, the last car I acquire brand new until 2016. It's on its fifth engine and its fifth radio/cassette player. It attracts thieves even after I put an alarm in it,

For landlording, there's a pickup truck, a ratty grey 1979 Dodge half-ton without a tailgate that I got cheap at a repo auction. My friend Kim Ziegler, who put a few extra dents in it, called it the "fuck truck."

Monica, if I recall correctly, has a perfectly respectable 1980 Honda Accord and is working for Computer Task Group as a contractor. They have great parties.

It's the year of Prince's "Sign 'O' the Times" and U2's "Joshua Tree" and R.E.M.'s single, "It's the End of the World as We Know It." I'm pre-recording a half-hour show about current music for WBFO-FM, the NPR station. It airs Friday nights. 

And on my desk in the Features Department at The Buffalo News, I have a big honking Sony multi-tasking tuner/record player/cassette player and dubbing deck, on which I review new releases when I'm working late into the night. (Every Thursday night, for instance, I proofread every word in Gusto to weed out the typographical errors.) This may also be the year that I'm finally obliged to add a Sony Discman player to combination. 

1997

For this one, the best jog of the memory will be that year's little black DayMinder notebook. Without looking at it, here's the best of what I recall.

Still have the rental property at 180 Richmond. It's where I put all my gardening efforts. The house at 429 Richmond doesn't get any sun.

I'm golfing a lot, primarily with friends Bob and Pat Riley and a foursome that includes the actor Richard Hummert, his brother-in-law Tony Harasimowicz and Kavinoky Theatre director David Lamb. We hop around to a lot of different courses, but our favorite spot is the Niagara Golf Club outside Niagara Falls, Ont.

What am I driving? This may be that time when I don't have a car at all, just that white 1989 Dodge D-50 pickup truck, another cheapo repo, but nicer.  

No longer the rock critic at The Buffalo News, no longer recording weekly items for WBFO, but still deeply involved in the biz via my little music-related company, Hot Wings Entertainment, which I set up after I stopped working with Ani DiFranco in 1994.

This year sees the release of the second Alison Pipitone CD on the Hot Wings label, "Down to Money." I get her a showcase in the North by Northeast Music Conference in Toronto.

I attend South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, for the fifth straight year, having started there in 1992 with Ani DiFranco. Carl Perkins is the keynote speaker.

For the Folk Alliance conference in Toronto, I run a showcase for upstate New York artists, some from Buffalo, some from Rochester, in a hotel room in conference headquarters in the Westin Harbor Castle. Biggest thrill is when Pete Seeger stops by to listen.

2007

Another year that needs a look at the DayMinder, but this much is for sure. I'm 65 and retirement is out of the question. It's a year of fiscal distress. The reason? I've been unwisely helping out my contractor friend, Michael Foglia, who assisted with repairs at our rental property until we sold it in 2001 and continues at our current place.

Michael is a house painter with a keen eye for custom colors, which is why we hooked up with him. A couple of his houses appear in the third edition of "Painted Ladies." He's also a hard luck case.

His tools get stolen. He needs money to finish a job. He's gotten stiffed by a customer. Someone is ailing in his family – his two kids, their spouses and their kids all live with him. His electricity is getting shut off. He's in trouble with the taxman. I loan him anywhere from a couple hundred bucks to a couple thousand every week or two. Over the years, it's added up.

        I do it by borrowing from my credit cards, banking on Michael's promise that he'll get paid six figures by the rich dentist he's working for on Lincoln Parkway. And in these pre-global financial crisis days when fresh credit card offers show up in the mail every week, I tap into new ones to keep up with the old ones.

I also go that route for personal emergencies. In 2006, when the air conditioning broke in my 1990 Toyota Corolla, I pay for my next ride, a 2000 Toyota RAV-4, the only decent car I can find for less than five figures after searching for two months, with a cash advance from a card.

By this point, I have more than two dozen of them. The minimum monthly payments are $1,000 more than my take-home pay. I can't afford South by Southwest this year and skip it for the first time since 2000. Same for the Folk Alliance conference. I'm dead in the water.

Nor can I afford to go golfing as much anymore. I've taken up duplicate bridge, a much less expensive pastime that doesn't depend on the weather. I'm playing almost every day and piling up master points.

Meanwhile, there is the passing of one of my more colorful Buffalo News colleagues, Lonnie Hudkins, a talkative 80-year-old Texan with CIA connections who knew who really killed JFK.

Lonnie also was Olaf Fub, longtime custodian of a random notes column called "Reporters' Notebook," which had been passed around the newsroom before he took it over in the late 1980s.
It looks like it will die with him, but there's such an outpouring of support and affection at his wake that managing editor Margaret Sullivan has a change of heart.  

So there's a new Olaf Fub. Me.

I keep the format and brighten it up. I look for pithy lead-off quotes. I give the items about chicken dinners and other fundraisers a feature-y tweak. I sprinkle local celebrities and friends into the happy birthday wishes. The column revives. I start enjoying my alternative identity. I sign my email responses "Olaf Jr."