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My Musical Journey – The British Invasion Begins

  My Musical Journey – The British Invasion Begins I turned 14 in early 1963. I spent most of the summer of 1963 at the beach, generally Crescent Beach. That was the town beach where the kids my age went. There was sort of a regular crowd of kids there, in fact we kind of took over the beach. Eddie and I would hitch to or have one of our mothers drive us to the beach any non-rainy day we were free. We almost always hitched home. We were too young to have a regular summer job at this point so we were free most days. I cut a few neighbors lawns for extra cash. Eddie caddied at one of the country clubs in town. I tried that too but I was so thin that I was either selected late in the day or not at all so I stopped. I did not have or want a paper-route but I did sub for a couple of friends when they went out of town on vacation with their families. At the beach there were always transistor radios playing. The one song I particularly remember from that summer is Stevie Won...
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My Musical Journey – The Lull Before "The British Invasion"

  My Musical Journey – The Lull Before "The British Invasion" I attended Memorial Junior High School in the fall of 1961. In the years 1961 through the end of 1963 much of the pop music was coming from the Brill Building (Don Kirshner) and also from Phil Spector. These were my junior high years. Songs from this time period were dominated by songs about love and boy/girl relationships and they could get pretty sappy. For example: We got songs like “Roses are Red” and “Blue Velvet”, “Soldier Boy”, “Bobby's Girl”, “Sealed With a Kiss”, “I Will Follow Him”, “I Love How You Love Me”, “Where The Boys Are”, and who can forget, even though many of us would like to, “Hey Paula” by Paul and Paula. Yuk! I liked high energy songs and/or something with a bit of an edge. Where were these songs? I n junior high I started making a whole new set of friends. I pretty much stopped hanging out with most of my grade school friends except for both Joe and Jimmy who both lived nea...
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My Musical Journey – Rock-n-Roll, Sort Of....

  My Musical Journey – Rock-n-Roll, Sort Of.... Me and my sister sitting at my Grandmother's piano at her house in ~ 55/56 I n 1960 I was 11 when I entered the 6 th grade. That year for Christmas I got a phonograph. Now I could play my music whenever I wanted and didn't have to hear my father complain about it. Less than 2 months after Christmas I turned 12. I continued to play the trombone in the 6 th grade in the school band but the trombone is not an instrument associated with Rock-n-Roll and also not one generally played by itself. As such, I was not planning to continue playing after 6 th .grade. I was asked to join the junior high school band when I started 7 th grade but I turned them down. S ometime while I was in 6 th grade a piano arrived. It came from my grandparents (mom). It was the piano my mother learned to play on. We now had a piano sitting right in our living room. That drew my interest and I started to fool around on it doing things like...
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My Musical Journey – The Beginning

My Musical Journey – The Beginning Tommy Dorsey M usic has always been a significant part of who I am. I enjoyed listening to music at an early age. My father had been a jazz trombone player as a young person. My mom played the piano. My only aunt (had no uncles) loved jazz and classical music and played in an orchestra. Music was often being played in our house either on my parents' hi-fi or on the radio. Neither of my grandparents played much music, I don't remember hearing any music at either of their houses. The lone exception was they watched the Guy Lombardo show. What Guy Lombardo is probably most known for is hosting the New Year's Eve specials on TV for many years. If you are from Long Island, like me, you may know him from the Jones Beach Theater where he and his band were essentially the house band for the musical shows that were put on there. I never cared for or paid much attention to Guy Lombardo and his band, “The Royal Canadians”. M y dad had ...
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Summing Up

  Summing Up I started writing this blog about 9 years ago. I'm not sure how much more I am going to write so I am writing this as sort of a summing up piece. However, I am thinking of possibly writing additional posts about my musical journey since music has been so important to me. We'll see, but for right now I'm thinking this will at least be the end of this portion of the “Warrin with an I” memoir. . I will turn 77 shortly. Other than chronic back issues that I've had from time to time since my late 30's, I'm lucky to be in pretty good health. A sciatica condition kept me down this past summer and as a consequence I am a little out of shape but I have started back doing gyro and swimming so I'm working on that. Even with my back issues I managed to show up for the “No Kings” protests, one of them in New York City and one of them I mostly sat on a wall due to my aforementioned sciatica issue... M y last blog post was on my work career - ...
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Retirement: It's a Real Thing

  Retirement: It's a Real Thing I am not someone who looks too far into the future. In my day to day life I don't really think about anything that isn't coming up in the current week. I'm pretty much a day to day person. Our 1 st trip to France we stayed in Provence for a week. All the little towns in Provence have once a week markets and each town has them on different days. The locals seemed to go to a nearby market each day where they would pick up what they needed for the day's food. We did the same while we were there and that planning one day at a time agreed with me. A s I got into my 40s suddenly the idea of me actually retiring became a real thing. Up to that point retirement had been something that was way in the future and not anything I thought too much about. I looked back remembering my first job working for someone. I was 15. It was a summer that went into fall working at a Farm Stand in Syosset on Long Island. It was a large farm sta...
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CDCR – The Lockout

CDCR – The Lockout I 'd been working at CDCR for over a year on a big project to re-write their offender tracking system. We were working with a contractor, TRW. The CDCR brass and the TRW managers looked to be in conflict and it was affecting the whole project team. Lately our tasks seemed to be mostly about collecting information on what had already been done or not done. Doing actual development seemed to move to the back burner. I arrived at the office around 7:30 on a Thursday morning and while attempting to enter the parking lot I was stopped by security personnel. They informed me that I needed to turn around and go back home and I should not return to work until I was told to do so. I asked when this might happen? Their reply was they didn't know. It would probably be within a couple of days and they emphasized I should not return until someone contacted me. The contracting personnel were let in but they were all being escorted by security. They were wa...
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How To Get Promoted Working for the State

  How To Get Promoted Working for the State Me at home around that time but has nothing to do with the story I had been spoiled. During my whole working career, up to this point, I had always been promoted without ever asking or even inquiring for one. Even when I was working a summer job when I was a kid back in New York I had been asked to be acting manager of a toy department for E.J. Korvette even though there were other, older permanent employees in the department at the time. When the manager left it was me they asked to temporarily replace him. In the Air Force promotions were strictly based on time, grade and reviews. I worked a summer in a bakery factory where they had planned to promote me to the lead position when I returned the following summer. After the Air force I worked 6 months for a lighting and lamp parts distributor. I drove their delivery truck. When the owner had to be out for a few months for surgery he asked me to take over managing the warehous...
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Heads Up Curtis Park, We're Looking At You:

Heads Up Curtis Park, We're Looking At You: Our House on Portola  I t was 1997. In '97 Bill Clinton was starting his second term as President. The Dow Jones climbed over 7000 for the first time. It was the year of the 1 st Harry Potter book (The Philosopher's Stone). It was also the year Princess Diana died in a car accident. Movie of the year? - Titanic. I was now working for the State of California in the Department of Corrections (CDCR) and our project had recently relocated to the old Aerojet complex out in Rancho Cordova. That year Kris and I accepted that children were not going to be in our future. While we liked our house in Rocklin, we never felt that we quite fit in there. We were always going down to Sacramento so we decided to get the heck out of Rocklin and Placer County. We began to look at homes in Sacramento proper. We liked midtown and so initially looked for a place there. Each time we found a house we liked it had hardly any yard for our...
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Working at The Department of Corrections, CDCR

  Working at The Department of Corrections, CDCR T he week after our 21 day marathon I was invited to a meeting to define the valid values for the system's gender field. At the time I thought “We need a meeting for this? Well at least it will be quick.” When I got to the meeting I learned that they had already had 3 prior meetings on this. I was in my 40's and I knew about transitioning but I was under the impression that at any point in time one was either male of female. Of course this was 30 years ago, well before those crazy Democrats discovered how to change someone's gender in a single school day. No matter how you feel about the Democrats you got to admit that's a pretty awesome accomplishment. Back in the “old days” transitioning required a series of operations as well as injections and supplements. Hence, there was a question of where in the process did the transition actually happen. Maybe a little like the when does life start type of issue. W h...
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