1912 - That Was The Year That Was

1912 was quite the momentous year, was it not?

On the obvious downside, as we were mightily reminded in the months leading up to the anniversary of her April sinking, it was in 1912 that The Titanic weighed anchor and headed out on its night to remember.

On the upside, the first Cherry Blossom Festival was held that year in Washington, DC.

For those who relish good eating, 1912 also saw the invention of the Life Saver (first flavor: Pep-o-Mint) and the Oreo which, with the possible exception of the Girl Scout Thin Mint, has got to be the best mass-produced cookie ever. (I say this, although I really did love those Nabisco coconut chocolate chip cookies that seem to have fallen out of the market at some point when I wasn’t looking.)

Closer to home, Leon Leonwood Bean started selling his hunting boots, which are still for sale, I believe, along with all sorts of other never-in-style-never-out-of-style gear. (As I sit here writing, I’m wearing an L.L. Bean tee-shirt and a pair of khaki cropped pants. I’m also asking myself where I put the $10 L.L. Bean thank-you coupon that I came across last week. The one that expires today. The kind that’s not like the ones that get recorded to your personal L.L. Bean account…) Ay-ah.

Even closer to home, the Red Line opened, spiriting commuters between Boston and Cambridge. I commuted on the Red Line for years, a most excellent way to to-and-fro work. Even with crowded cars and not- infrequent train delays, commuting on the Red Line was easy on the mind and the body.

Of course, as we have been amply reminded since last year, 1912 is also the year of the opening of Fenway Park, a.k.a. “America’s Most Beloved Ballpark.” We were in Rome for the actual 100th anniversary celebration at which, I believe, the Olde Towne Team was unceremoniously drubbed by the Yankees. But, in the run up to the opening of baseball season, it was difficult to avoid mentions of (and merchandise pushing around) Fenway’s 100th. Fortunately, the hoopla has died down quite a bit. Unfortunately, some of the hoopla die-down is no doubt tied to the incredibly poor performance of this year’s cellar-dwelling edition of the Red Sox. At the rate they’re going, they will go down as “The Least Beloved Team to Play in America’s Most Beloved Ballpark.” Which, as any long-time Red Sox fan can tell you, is really saying something.

Speaking of Red Sox fandom, the closest to home momentous event of 1912 was the birth of long-time, long-suffering Red Sox fan Albert Thomas Rogers.

Today, in fact, we would have celebrated his 100th birthday. Although, if he’d lived, my father would most likely be dead already, there were a couple of folks in his family who made it to great old age. My grandmother died a few week short of her 97th birthday, and two of Nanny’s siblings, Roseanne and Pat, both lived well into their nineties.

But longevity was not in the hand my father drew, and he was dead of kidney disease at 58.

There was much that I could say about my father, but once I get going there’ll be no stopping the stories.  So I’ll end it by saying that he was very smart, very funny, a great story-teller, temperamental, hard-working, irreverent, very Irish, very Catholic, nobody’s ass-kisser, nobody’s fool, proud, competitive, kind-hearted, generous, athletic, lover of a velvet-green-front-lawn, sweet-toother, clothes-horse, and a wonderfully devoted [insert Al’s relationship to you here: son, husband, father, brother, uncle, cousin, in-law, friend, colleague…]

Over forty years after his death, I still miss him, and can still and always draw comfort from knowing that he loved me.

In pictures, my father is almost always looking at the person he’s with. He is glancing sideways at my mother as if he was the luckiest guy on earth because she just said ‘yes;’ he is smiling down on his kids as they talk to the neighbor who’s playing the world’s most fake Santa Claus. (You really can’t be an unpadded beanpole and carry it off.) The look on his face is a mixture of love, pride, and absolute delight in knowing that, once those kids are in bed, he’ll be laughing about Jack McGinn’s Santa cameo.

I hope I’m not simplifying my father – he was certainly a complex man - in any way by saying that what he most wanted out of life was to be a good [insert Al’s relationship to you here: son, husband, father, brother, uncle, cousin, in-law, friend, colleague…]

Hey, Dad, you did it.

On the 100th anniversary of your birth, here’s to you.