OPINION

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AROUND THE BLUHMIN’ TOWN Shop wisely and calmly this holiday season

BY JUDY BLUHM Peoria Times Columnist

How was your Black Friday? If you were one of the brave souls who headed out to shop, I hope you survived the ordeal. It may be the season of giving, but the spending happens first. So many presents to buy and so little money.

Hmm, what are we to do? Evidently keep shopping, because the average American will spend about $1,000 on Christmas presents this year! Guess inflation will not deflate us!

Hey, the approaching holidays don’t have to be so stressful! We should be happy to give — and receive — a basket of homemade cookies. Well, that’s if we baked cookies. Actually, I do bake cookies, but with a husband and many grandkids who like my cookies, there will never be any hope of me giving a basket to anyone.

My grandmother used to bake fruitcakes and give them to family and friends. A proper English woman, plus a teetotaler, she put enough rum in those cakes to get a family of four tipsy. One bite of grandma’s cake, which was hard as a brick, and it could make your head spin. I recently read that a fruitcake — one that is well fermented — can last in a tin for more than 40 years and still be edible. For the gift that might last a lifetime, perhaps I’ll start my own little tradition of baking fruitcakes. Oh, if you get one from me, please don’t eat and drive.

So, back to shopping. Sometimes Black Friday enhances bad behavior. A woman in Scottsdale was arrested for going to a crowded mall with a large pin. Evidently, she was jabbing other shoppers in a department store with a 2-inch hatpin when she wanted them to move out of her way. People were screaming in pain, running for their lives. Yikes! Hopefully, that outrageous behavior will never happen in our little corner of the world.

Getting past the shopping, the season of magic is here. There is so much more to the holidays than simply packages under a tree.

Of course, those packages do matter, especially if you have children or grandkids who are busy making their wish lists. I used to get little handwritten requests from the grandboys with items like, “truck, ball, power ranger” scrawled on festive note paper. Now I get a text that says things like “camping, fishing or biking gear.” I used to love getting their lists. Now I just run (with my wallet) and hide when I see their texts.

Dear readers, shop wisely and calmly. Bake a fruitcake. Perhaps I will dig up my grandmother’s recipe and rekindle an old tradition. Like my grandma, I’ll taste test everything (a few times) before I mix in the ingredients. Only the best for my friends! So, if you get a little loaf, wrapped carefully in brown paper, please do not confuse this heavy object with a brick, although it could be used as a doorstop. I promise, just one little bite and you’ll discover the “happy” in holidays. PT

Judy Bluhm is a writer and a local Realtor. Have a story or a comment? Email Judy at judy@judybluhm.com.

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A historic day a 5-year-old will never forget

BY J.D. HAYWORTH Peoria Times Columnist

It has come and gone again, that day remembered from so long ago. And with each passing year, the date stirs memories of what was and what might have been.

It was a warm day for Nov. 22, 1963. The 5-year-old yearned for snow.

The boy had been brought by his mother to the home of his maternal grandparents following his half day of kindergarten at the Jack & Jill Nursery.

The boy sat down directly in front of his grandparents’ black-and-white TV set to watch the early afternoon fare on the newest channel available.

Midway through a program, a bulletin from ABC News interrupted the show: “Here is a special bulletin from Dallas, Texas: Three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade today in Downtown Dallas.”

The boy sat transfixed, pondering the news he had just heard. Perhaps it was the process of wrapping his 5-year-old brain around the disturbing development. Whatever the reason, it would take three additional bulletins and the introduction of a strange new word to the kindergartener’s vocabulary before he sought out his grandmother.

“Nanny, President Kennedy’s been ass-uh-ass-sass…shot!”

His grandmother fixed a steely gaze on her eldest grandchild. Gone was the indulgent smile that heretofore softened her features; it had been replaced by a cold stare that unnerved the 5-year-old to a greater extent than the news he had heard in the network bulletins.

“John David, you shouldn’t make up stories like that… What a horrible thing to say!”

“I’m not making it up, Nanny… The news is on TV… Come watch with me!”

Before joining her grandson in front of the television, his grandmother sought out someone she regarded as a more credible source. She called his grandfather, who confirmed the news, saying he had heard about it on the radio playing in his store.

When she joined her grandson to watch the coverage, Nanny wondered aloud: “Well, I guess that means Johnson is now the president.”

The 5-year-old was clueless about the Constitution. Who is Johnson… And why is he now president? Nanny explained that there is a vice president who becomes president if the chief executive dies in office. Because that had just happened, a man named Lyndon Baines Johnson was now president of the United States.

We know the world changed that day. For the kindergartener, the impromptu civics lesson from his grandmother sparked an interest in government that grew to parallel his interest in broadcasting.

Nanny would not live to see her grandson elected to Congress; she was called to her heavenly home less than five years later, at age 63… the current age of her firstborn grandchild.

And that grandchild, the author of this column, acknowledges that he is now 17 years older than John F. Kennedy was when he was taken from us on that November day in Dallas.

A day that a 5-year-old would never forget. PT

J.D. Hayworth worked as a sportscaster at Channel 10, Phoenix, from 1987 until 1994 and represented Arizona in Congress from 1995-2007.

Forlorn phone calls that will never be answered

BY DAVID LEIBOWITZ Peoria Times Columnist

All his life, 75 years, my father was careful with his money, so he would be appalled by the waste. He never liked to spend a dollar, not when he could save a buck. My dad passed away in March, though, which means the decision isn’t his to make anymore.

So the phone stays on, even though there’s no one left to answer it. The line rings four times before it passes over to voicemail.

The message is a perfect metaphor for my father: Short, economical, nothing needless. He must have recorded the greeting a decade ago, when he and my mother finally decided to get rid of the ancient answering machine they’d had since time immemorial. The phone company must have sent them a coupon.

It’s just two sentences.

“Hi, this is Harvey,” he says. “Go ahead and leave a message.”

So I do. Even though I’m well aware that no one will ever get back to me.

Sometimes I tell my dad about my day: what’s going on at work, which clients have which problems, how I’m hitting the golf ball, how I’m doing on my diet. Other times I tell him which moments sparked memories of him and my mom. Usually it’s a song on the radio. My parents loved music from the ’60s and ’70s: Crosby, Stills and Nash; the Beatles; John Denver.

When I called last week, it was brought on by a song: “Black Water” by the Doobie Brothers.

It was a hit in the spring 1975, about the time I turned 10. I know this because that was the spring break my parents packed my brother and I into their Volkswagen Beetle and drove us from New York to Florida to go to Disneyworld.

That was back when no one booed at the Hall of Presidents and before they cut out the sexist portions of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride. We spent days packed into the VW, 2,000 miles in each direction, a family of four cramped and too crabby to play license plate bingo. The Doobies played on an endless loop as the FM stations faded in and out. But it was all worth it for the e-ticket rides: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the Haunted Mansion, the Jungle Cruise.

My father was 30 then, a paint factory worker with a wife and two kids in elementary school. Whatever childhood dreams he’d had for himself — All-Star basketball player for the Knicks, law school, airline pilot — were never going to come true.

I imagine he knew it. He owned an old Super 8 movie camera and he shot lots of footage of his sons and his wife, but not much of himself. My father was always present, though, never the focal point, always right off-screen, circling around us at the edges.

Sometimes when I call his phone number now, I wonder aloud about how that made him feel, why my father’s life so rarely seemed to be about him, at least to the people it was about. He doesn’t answer, of course. My father always was a man of few words. He spent them the way he spent his paychecks: Like there was never quite enough to go around.

My voicemails to dad’s old number always end with me telling him “I love you.” It was the way we always ended our phone calls back when he was alive. It was a sentence he said with conviction, like it mattered to him, and I never doubted it.

Maybe that’s why I still call, even now, even with no one there to answer.

To hear his voice. Always there, always nearby. Even from heaven. PT

David Leibowitz has called the Valley home since 1995. Contact david@leibowitzsolo.com.