Tom McMahon

Two Class Reunions in the Past Two Weekends

I've been to two class reunions in the past two weekends -- one for my high school, the other for my jr high (we moved). While there are a number of reasons for classmates not to attend -- money, distance, job, etc -- the classmates who DO attend are the optimists, the Undefeated, the really glad to see ya kind of people. We're 58 years old now, so we're proud/worried/befuddled by our young adult "kids", juggling the needs of the dwindling number of living parents, some divorced, some re-married, some still married to our high school sweethearts, some still working, but many retired. As I've joked, by now we've forgotten who we didn't like in high school. And it doesn't seem to matter if you didn't know someone that well "way back when" -- the common class bond washes away the need for pretense or formality. Everyone is ready to have a good time (and we did) and by now everyone is old enough to have a good story to tell. The "In Memoriam" poster board has more names than last time, and reminds everyone not to take Life for granted, and so we all get together. While I saw many of my high school classmates 5 years ago, I hadn't seen most of my jr high classmates since the last day of 8th grade, the day Bobby Kennedy was shot. Yeah, the years fly by. So here's a toast to all my classmates, and to hoping next time I'll have time to see all those pictures of your grandkids!

Bears Fan Dies While Watching The Bears-Packers Game on TV

That Bears Fan was my cousin Mark Ryan, with whom I shared a birthday. The Facebook message from his brother Mike:

Mark said was not feeling well and was in bed. He had told his son he would watch the Bears game with him so he came downstairs. He fell on the way down the stairs. They helped him up and Mark then lied down on the couch for the game. He had something to drink and said he was feeling better. A few minutes later he stopped breathing. The ambulance got him to the hospital quickly but they were not able to revive him. They do not know what the cause was as of yet. It was his 48th birthday this past Friday. I miss you Mark.

Life is indeed One Mixed Bag, eh?

My 85-Year-Old Father Thanksgiving 2010

My 85-Year-Old Father Thanksgiving 2010

Why I Missed All The Victory Parties Last Night

Right on Election Day I find out The Big Work Project is due on Friday. So after two solid years of suffering under Obama, I won't have the time to savor this election tsunami or to properly rub it in the faces of my friends on the other side. Every time my ship is about to come in, it sinks within sight of the shore.

The 1968 Pattonville Heights Bunter Abend

The 1968 Pattonville Heights Bunter Abend

May 4, 1968, about halfway between the MLK assassination and the RFK assassination. I can still mumble some of the songs.

A Recollection of the Most Unusual Events Occurring To Me and My Family Before and After Thanksgiving 2007 Involving Matters of Life and Death, A Religious Community, and the Biggest Radio Station in the State of Wisconsin

It's kind of an involved story, so I'll tell it step by step:

1. Oct 23, 2007: My 80-year-old Mother develops an aortic dissection. It's kind of like an aneurysm. To find out where it is, they would need to inject dye into her aorta. But that would knock out her already-compromised kidneys, and she doesn't want to be put onto dialysis.
2. They determine that, given these circumstances, nothing can be done.
3. Nov 1, 2007: Mom comes home (Belvidere, IL) under hospice care.
4. Nov 15, 2007: I publish my soon-to-be-(in)famous Coexist Bumper Sticker Parody.
5. Nov 18, 2007: My wife Nancy has a heart attack
6. Nancy gets a stent in her heart
7. But in doing so, they poke a hole somewhere in her abdomen. She loses 2 units of blood.
8. So they put a stent in her abdomen to stop the bleeding there.
9. Her condition stabilizes.
10. But then she develops a pulmonary embolism, and almost dies.
11. All through this I'm working and taking care of Ryan, our wheelchair-bound son who can't walk or talk. And our two daughters too.
12. My parody of the Coexist bumper sticker gets picked up by Milwaukee radio talker Charlie Sykes.
13. Charlie puts it on his blog.
14. The Inter-Faith Coalition of Greater Milwaukee DEMANDS he take it down.
15. He essentially tells them to Stuff It.
16. So now while my Mom's dying and my wife is in the hospital, I get caught up in this kerfluffle.
17. So I respond with this post. 
18. Charlie, in talking about this controversy, mentions my Mom and about Nancy's heart attack.
19. My Dad is very hard-of-hearing.
20. My Dad normally listens to WGN radio out of Chicago.
21. My plan was to tell him about Nancy's heart attack once she got home OK.
22. But this is taking a LOT longer than I thought.
23. You can tell where this is going, I bet.
24. Did I mention my Dad is hard of hearing?
25. So YES, you are correct: My Dad hears about Nancy's heart attack over the radio.
26. December 1, 2007: Nancy comes home after 2 weeks in the hospital.
27. Dad calls, tells Nancy that it's great to have her home.
28. You're way ahead of me.
29. And YES, mentions that he (and all of Milwaukee) heard about her heart attack on the radio.
30. Actually, not just "the radio" but rather WTMJ, the Number 1 Radio Station with the strongest broadcasting signal in the State of Wisconsin.
31. I hadn't gotten around to mentioning this whole thing to Nancy.
32. Oops.
33. December 2, 2007: My Mom passes away at home.
34. Charlie Sykes and his wife send us the nicest bouquet of flowers we're ever received. 
35. Dec 6, 2007: My Mom is buried in the little town of Tonica, Illinois, right next to the farm house where she grew up.
36. The reception is in the Methodist Church where my Grandfather was the pastor 60 years ago.
37. My Dad gets a kick out of telling everyone this radio story.
38. I sit next to my cousin Christie and have a really nice chat with her.
39. March 5, 2007: Almost 3 months to the day we are all back at the same church for my cousin Christie's funeral. She died of a pulmonary embolism.
40. Spring 2007: My Dad finally gets hearing aids!
41. Summer 2007: Having slimmed down during her 2-week hospital ordeal, Nancy kept on training and runs a triathlon during the summer.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving, Everybody!!!

An Odd Little House 3 Doors Down From Our Old House on Crane Avenue in Hazel Crest Where We Lived 50 Years Ago

An Odd Little House 3 Doors Down From Our Old House on Crane Avenue in Hazel Crest Where We Lived 50 Years Ago

Have you ever seen such a small house with so many windows?

Our Old House on Crane Avenue in Hazel Crest Where We Lived 50 Years Ago

Our Old House on Crane Avenue in Hazel Crest Where We Lived 50 Years Ago

A Google Maps/Virtual Painter production

An Apprenticeship With A Master Plumber

An excerpt from Esquire:

You ask yourself, "What is a pipe? What purpose does it serve?" So muses Tom McMahon, master plumber of Croton-on-Hudson, New York, instructing a new disciple at the dawn of a new day. His beard is white, his head smooth as an egg, his face sweet and mournful as an old dog. He's sixty years old, and he's been fixing things all his life. He fixed cars in high school and the Army decorated him for fixing things in Korea, then he came home and got a job fixing forklifts at the GM plant down in Tarrytown and ended up as night-shift maintenance supervisor at the paint shop, striking out on his own back in 1988. He's the kind of master craftsman — if you're lucky, there's one in your town — who gets hired for the tough jobs, like replumbing an old hotel into dozens of independent heat zones or re-creating the giant pipes of the steam era for a local millionaire's private steam museum. So he's been thinking about this question his entire life.

"The pipe makes civilization possible," he says.

By separating the waste from the potable water, he explains, the pipe allows people to live together in large groups without dying of dysentery. And the Latin word for lead, which is what the Romans used for pipes, is plumbum. So the plumber, when you think about it, is the foundation for a whole host of miracles. "Put it this way, my daughter, working for ten dollars or twelve dollars an hour in a nursing home, working on her associate's degree, she can walk through the door of her apartment and command it to be light and dark. She can command it to be hot or cold. She can go into the kitchen and command sanitary water to come forth at whatever temperature she likes and dismiss it at her pleasure. She can go into this unit and you can keep food cold for days. You go to this unit and you can command your food to be hot. A king! with all his troops! a hundred years ago couldn't do that."

Finding stuff like this is why I Google my name every day.

The Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota, Formerly The Rochester State Hospital: Home of Many Famous Incarcerated Celebrities. And I Used To Live Across The Street From It.

The Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota, Formerly The Rochester State Hospital: Home of Many Famous Incarcerated Celebrities. And I Used To Live Across The Street From It.

It's been the home away from home for televangelist Jim Bakker, perennial presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, Sotheby's chairman A. Alfred Taubman, and may soon be the home of Bernie Madoff. Up the road 100 miles or so from where ex-Enron CEO Jeff Skilling spends his time these days. 

When we lived there in the late seventies it was still the Rochester State Hospital. And yes, we literally lived across the street, in the Edelweiss Apartments. Those old state hospitals have a lot of mysterious history.