"Zog Nit Keyn Mol" A Quick Note on Casa de Garcia Stogies

I have two (2) guilty pleasures:
1. The final season of Roseanne.
2. Casa de Garcia stogies.
I now realize there are many others...but for the sake of argument, sure, two.

I am in the final third of a House of Gary (CdG) as I type. It is a connecticut wrapped Churchill offering. To get this far, to get this far -- to get this far...

I was a scrawny eleven year-old whose dad, two years earlier had, at long last, sat me down for "the talk." It was not the birds and bees talk. Instead, it was a talk in regards as to why he could no longer continue to coach my Little League baseball squad. His Parkinson's Disease had worsened.

In those two years, he had begun to unravel physically. It was hard to separate fully what was the illness and what was the side-effects of the medications. What was clear, and painfully so, was the unravelling.

We could no longer rely on his ability to use Brooklyn's public transportation, so Dad purchased a 1973 Plymouth Duster. I was born in 1975. 

I was a scrawny eleven year-old, but I repeat myself.

That me is sitting next to Dad, and Dad is driving up the side of a Catskill mountain. I am shotgun. The road winds sharply uphill and I look out my side window to see nothing but sheer cliff drop-off. The Duster is over-heating and my dad is skillfully nursing it along by blasting the heater. It is summer.

Too, the power steering is non-existent. I am unsure if the Duster is equipped with power steering or not -- but either way, we seem to have none. I get a little scared. I taste a little puke. Then, I look over, and Dad is healthy. He isn't rigid, nor is he trembling. He is nursing the car through the Borscht Belt and he is singing bawdy sounding Yiddish tunes. I am safe.

I get to the final third of each House of Gary offering the same way Dad got his '73 Duster safely Upstate and to G-d awful kosher pizza. I nurse.

I massage out faulty rollings. I toothpick clear plugs. I say a little prayer the whole gig don't go ka-plooey. I later found out that Dad did some a' that.

I sing what I recall of those bawdy sounding Yiddish tunes, and Dad is with me -- over a decade and a half after his body found eternal relief. All the while, I do not hear the first shovel of dirt, which I ceremoniously let fall on his pine box casket.

Cigars, even cheap stogies -- especially, it seems, cheap stogies -- sure do take a fella places.

"Zog Nit Keyn Mol."