Raisin in the Pun

I know I’m going to shed a tear tonight. I feel myself welling up already and I’ve been thinking about this day since I heard the news that Dick Clark died. Dick Clark was New Year’s Eve to me. I watched Dick Clark on New Year’s Eve ever since my parents allowed me to stay up and watch the celebration at the age of twelve in 1970. As a teenager, no matter what slamming party my friends and I were at, at 11:45 the party stopped and all eyes were focused on the TV, Dick Clark and the big ball that was about to drop to welcome in the New Year. Millions of other party guests, club hoppers and just plain folks sitting in front of the TV were tuned in all over America to watch Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rocking Eve. In my twenties, I would be at a nightclub or house party and the same thing would occur. All activity would stop until Mr. Clark said “Happy New Year.” It didn’t matter to me that people in other parts of the world either had celebrated or were preparing to celebrate the Ne...

I often think of my hometown of Berkeley, California; living on Berkeley Way up the street from the Glass Lot Baseball Field. We called it the Glass Lot because it was, to the casual observer a vacant lot of cement, broken glass and occasionally a junked car where winos, addicts and the homeless disposed of their bottles and other trash on a nightly basis. It was also where we played Baseball in the spring, summer, and early fall despite the hazards of broken glass and leftover cement that were remnants of a multi-storied parking lot razed long before I was born.  The “preseason” usually started in February or at the latest, the first week of March.   Preseason was never planned. Or even discussed. Everyone instinctively knew the day and time the preseason would begin and we would put on our usual baseball attire; jeans, long sleeve t-shirt, Hi-Top Chuck Taylors, baseball cap and enter the Glass Lot and go through the ritual of choosing sides to play the first basebal...