Category: Family

Post about my beloved family.

Cheers From Dryville

December 2, 2024 / Carl Franke / 0 Comments

Never a big drinker, I enjoy ales socially and love supporting local breweries. The buzz after three 6.5% IPA draughts at a bar with friends is a golden moment peak. It’s been a mainstay session.

“Strong Beer / Strong Coffee” lived in my Instagram profile for years. Seasonal beers were irresistible unicorns to behold. Trips to Big Top Beverage led to lengthy stays in the aisles, examining the elaborate case and label designs. Liquor and wine meant nothing to me.

Beer was a social pillar for me since I first cracked open my first Milwaukee’s “Beast” in college. Recently, I wanted to explore what a long period of time would feel like, for my mind and body, with zero booze. I went on and off for a couple years. The longest I went without a sip was 6 months. Big whoop, I know. Here’s some observations:

Better Sleep

Sleep become more even-keeled, deeper, and uninterrupted. Even just 6 hours of sleeps did the trick.

When drunk, the reduced REM sleep and deep sleeps are unattainable. I’d often wake up at 3am and have to watch TV to fall back asleep, or just stare at the ceiling for hours. And then the next day, hungover, I’d be exhausted.

Tightened Stomach?

This was just a bonus, but belly fat reduced rather quickly. What changed? Well, with even a modest buzz, I’d engage in a midnight 4th meal of the day and then feel that I deserved a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich from a heated lamp at Wawa the next day, just to take the edge of. Without this intake, and without the calories of double-IPAs, weight loss just happened.

Fitness Focused

I don’t go to a gym. Swaying free weights in the basement, doing planks and yoga in the family room, and biking around town are enough for me. But while drinking, the next day created those “off” sensations where you couldn’t do anything but watch streaming shows under a blanket. Without the booze, my fitness routine was always welcoming, unhindered.

Work Day Focus

Whether working from home or in the office, the focus throughout the day became better maintained. Any “brain fog” or dire 3pm crashes were no longer there. With sleep quality strengthened, work day attentiveness didn’t drag.

Money Savings

Cases of locally crafted IPAs are expensive. This was a monthly budget line item that I could remove. Whatever your liquor or beer choices are, you’ll save money without having to restock your supply. You’ll also never have to use Uber or Lyft and deal with having to retrieve your car from a vacant parking lot the following day.

Hobbies Accomplished

More attuned all day, I had more dedicated time for hobbies and projects that I was working on around the house. The passions in my life outside of marketing became easily reached and more was accomplished.

Energy & Emotions

The days-long hangover malaise and alcohol-induced mood disruption were not missed. They weren’t there to destroy my energy or alter my emotions. Having Gilbert Syndrome, my hangovers were often devastating.

If you Google the benefits that your organs experience from abstaining from alcohol, it’s nothing but good news. For brain health alone, decisions making is improved, anxiety is reduced, mood swings are lessened, cognitive function is improved. These all felt achieved. But are the enzymes level of my liver increased? No idea.

Face Time

The typical old man bags under my eyes are never going away, but the extended bags, combined with bloodshot blue eyes, were never present. My skin seemed to look a bit healthier as well, but maybe it’s just that gifted shea butter I received? Not sure.

Bar Scene

My initial concern was that I’d be given a hard time for being a teetotaler sipping on a virgin Moscow Mule. But, out and about, nobody cared. Most didn’t even ask what I was drinking. Whether I was out watching the Phillies, at an industry conference, or at my own 50th birthday party, nobody was concerned at what I was drinking or what level of drunkenness I was at. It’s all about being present and having fun together, which leads me to…

Necessary Good Times Elixir?

With so many “crazy nights” tagged over the years, I wondered if alcohol was a necessary component of socializing in a boisterous, crowded bar. Did I need it to be witty and fun? Absolutely not. And I never have issues talking with strangers filter-free, so that 7.8% ABV lubricant isn’t needed. I didn’t require 2 drinks just to calm down or loosen up.

NA Options

I’ve never dabbled with non-alcoholic beers aside from Heineken 0.0 and O’Doul’s Premium, both of which taste awful to me. Athletic Brewing Company, from Connecticut, which you’ll find in big box stores and more often at bars, has two IPAs that actually taste great. I realized that I missed the aromatic smattering of hops such as Citra, Simcoe and Chinook, and these beers allowed me to enjoy the taste and fragrance. My favorite NA beers are from Illinois-based Go Brewing, which boast bold, unique can design.

Local to the Philly area, there is a store in Ardmore, PA called Wallace Dry Goods that holds NA events, such as zero-proof cocktail workshops. They also sell glassware and gift sets, along with NA spirits, beer, cider and wine. This Hosting Essentials mix six-pack lets you try six different brands.

Shame Free

The awful shame of being hungover around my kids no longer existed. And the late night act of coffee and a cake based dessert at a restaurant to help “sober up”, in the hopes of driving home safely, was obviously no longer there either.

Go Brewing makes delicious beers, from IPAs, pilsners, sours, porters, gluten free beers and more.

The Black Sheep & The Black Eel

April 3, 2024 / Carl Franke

The night before was a merry stew. We left Ocean City and cruised to Sea Isle City to roam around some shops, play miniature golf, and then drink it up early at some place called the Dead Dog Saloon. We were there pounding pints quite early in the evening, eating greasy appetizers. Allyson was pregnant, so she was our driver.

The Dead Dog was a step above a dive bar, low key. But after a few beers, I was told by the manager that I had to either wear a collared shirt or vacate the premises. My Jameson Irish Whiskey graphic t-shirt that I remember vividly getting on my 30th birthday was suddenly equivalent to a swastika at 8:00 pm, and it needed to be covered.

Of course, they sold official Dead Dog Saloon polo shirts there, so I bought a white one and wore it sloppily over my t-shirt. I flipped up the collar, buttoned all the buttons, and mocked the notion that a collared shirt was necessary, as if we were in a private country club. I walked around the bar, chatting with others that were also notified and enjoyed my drunken glory.

I awoke early the next morning with a slight headache, but I needed to get up, as I was going on my first deep sea fishing trip with Harry, my father-in-law, and my bro-in-law Ray.

Now, if you angle it right, everyone can be deemed the black sheep of their family, but for me, I felt I always ran a bit blacker.

With my family growing up, my Mom, Dad, and sister were all nurses. We’d sit in the dining room in my late teens and eat saucy lasagna while they talked about blood and bodily fluids, which always led to a shush from me, or I’d just stammer off with my plate to the den.

My sister was a socialite in high school, always throwing parties and going out. I just stayed in my bedroom and reorganized my baseball cards, waiting for the promise of college freedom, watching Friday sitcoms that nobody watched.

During the holidays, my sister, Mom, and Aunt would dance to pop stars, like Bon Jovi, joyously after a glass of wine, as I sat in the corner wishing I could blare the Pixies. They would call me “Jesus” as my stoner long hair, scruffy beard, and flannel effortless wardrobe clashed with the whole look of the family. I didn’t really care, though, but I just felt like an oddball, although mighty comfortable in being just that.

Now, I was married and had joined a whole new family. The in-law dudes (father and three bros), were all heavily into hunting, fishing, home repair, and sports, particularly NHL and NFL. All of those items resulted in a big fat zero of interest for me, so I was quickly lost in their conversations.

Growing up, none of my friends or family hunted, so it was very foreign to me. I’ve never even held a gun, except for the fake one that I often whip out and shoot my cat with. Once you’re in your mid-30s, you know what you want to pursue in life, and you easily check out and dive into what you dig the most. For me, I could care less if I ate another piece of meat for the rest of my life. And, NASCAR and televised sports — it really didn’t matter to me if they all vanished and were replaced by non-stop Cosby Show reruns.

It’s not that I was a black sheep with my newly expanded family; I was a black sheep with the typical Philadelphian male, I suppose. My interests didn’t lay in building additions to a home or car repair. My focus was on HTML5, CSS3, jQuery and building the best web sites possible for modern browsers, as my livelihood depended upon it. My career as a web professional was taking over my life. It was the only way to thrive in that profession. Pixels and code were my building blocks. Coffee and beer were my engine. Writing and music were my release.

So, now here I was, about to embark on an early AM fishing trip with some seasoned deep sea fishery folk. I’ve always been easily car sick as a kid, from the days of my parents driving me around town. I originally thought that my parents were just bad drivers, but they weren’t.

I always preferred to drive. I insisted for the fishing trip and took us to a Wawa for some grub, although I was the only one that seemed to be craving anything. I bought a coffee and a bag of Fritos Corn Chips.

While waiting to load the charter boat, I crunched down the chips and pounded the coffee and I felt, well, shitty, but at least more awake. Soon we were on the boat. I felt glad that I had finally joined Harry in one of these journeys, as he was always asking me to come along. Maybe it was the long lost missing link of my life that I needed, I thought.

The charter boat filled up with about forty people and we all hung along the railings as the engine chugged us out deeper into the ocean. The deep sea fishing poles seemed simple enough, as you just dropped your baited hook into the water.

Eventually the boat stopped, as if we had reached a precise destination. With the engine off, the boat instantly started rocking heavily with the wind and water, pushing the horizon up and down and jostling instant nausea into my system, as if something was jarred in my brain and I could no longer focus.

I darted to the men’s room, the one tiny men’s room on the boat, and vomited heavily the full yellow corn chip mush into the toilet — well, as much as I could into the toilet. My extended arms held onto the walls for support, as I would have fallen over otherwise. I tried to clean up the mess the best I could and then proceeded back out.

Harry had a baited pole ready for me and immediately knew I had yacked, pointing out that I was pale and unstable looking.

“Yeah, I got it out of me,” I said, grabbing hold of the pole. I was proud that I had made it to the toilet on time, getting it out of my system and ready to catch some bluefish, tuna, weakfish, flounder — anything. Maybe we could grill it up later, I thought.

We all hovered over the railing looking down at the water. But then it hit me again. The nausea was instant and relentless. I threw up into the water, leaving a trace of vomit alongside the boat, holding tight to my pole. Holy fuck is this embarrassing, I thought. Chunks of puke lined my sweatshirt as I couldn’t help but act like a 17-year-old girl that did shots of whiskey for the first time and was ruining the party for all.

Suddenly, I felt tension on my line and knew that I was either catching a fish or a heavy piece of debris. Harry noticed I was fading out and helped me reel in the sucker as I could barely hold onto the rod.

Out of the water wriggled a testy slimy black eel, about four feet long. One of the crewmen came over and told me to just pull it in and I dropped it on the deck. The damn thing writhed around relentlessly. It was like a massive piece of black licorice that had come alive, trying to slap us all in the face. The crewman held it down with gloved hands and then pounded several times on the eel’s head with a mallet. Blood spurted around the deck and it eventually relaxed. The crewman tossed the eel back into the sea and then cleaned up the mess with a mop and bucket.

Now the nausea that had overcome me, leagues above any flu or hangover barf scene that I had ever experienced. With the flu, you may vomit for twenty minutes, but then you fall back asleep for hours. This was a non-stop assault that I couldn’t escape. In fact the vomiting part was actually the better part, allowing me to attain temporary relief. The waiting in between gags was the hell.

I wandered around the boat trying to find a sweet spot of relief, but such a location didn’t exist. I tried to smile at the people happily fishing, acting like was ambling towards a destination. I went into the dining area where I heard they were selling Dramamine. I bought a couple pills and swallowed them down. Some old fella chuckled and told me the pills needed to be taken hours before getting on the boat. “Those will just make you sleepy at this point.”

I sat in a booth for four by myself, gripping the table, and tried to focus on the horizon. It didn’t work at all. Also seated were a couple other seasick guys. I saw one dude vomit and I immediately gagged and tossed up some more onto the floor. Liquid chunky orange goo cascaded back and forth…and back and forth…sliding back and forth on the floor. One kid was about eye level with a trash can and stuck his whole head inside of it to yack.

Just a little over three more hours of this, I thought, holding onto the railing toward the end of the boat. Nobody was around there. Harry came over eating some scrambled eggs from the kitchen as the wind blew towards him. I warned him that I was about to hurl and that the wind might blow it towards his face. He got out of the way, letting me know that he was being easy on me. He described how he originally wanted to shove bait into his mouth and talk to me.

I already felt like a douche because my chest and back were sunburned from trying a new “spray” sunscreen. It was like cooking spray, but didn’t work on my pasty skin at all, leaving a large red spot on my chest and stomach that resembled Pangaea.

Finally we were headed back to the dock. I was happy to hear the engine roaring and seeing us zip evenly across the ocean. At the dock, I stepped onto the deck and slipped and fell. I laughed at myself and got back up. What the fuck did I care, really? Nobody had caught one single fish. It was just the black eel and me, bloodied and butchered.

Back at the beach house, my wife and I decided to go out to eat at some Italian place down the street. We sat at a table outside and dipped bread in olive oil and watched a fender bender occur, right in front of us. Everyone was fine. A cop showed up. Traffic built up. Waitresses brought out entrees. Fresh water with lemon. Peppered cheese. Prodding jokes. Focused eyes, a goofball back on firm land where he belonged.

What Happens After You Save Someone’s Life?

November 11, 2023 / Carl Franke

My Dad Raymond D. Franke saved Air Force Brigadier General William W. Spruance’s life back in 1961, pulling him out of a swamp as he sank badly burned. I never researched the General until now, but it altered the course of his life’s mission:

“After surviving a near-fatal crash as a passenger in a T-33 aircraft in 1961, resulting in extensive burns, he began a lifelong and legendary safety mission that took him to dozens of bases in the U.S. and around the world to make over 2,000 presentations on flying safety and crash survival. He was the first reserve officer awarded the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal for one of his three trips to Vietnam when he gave 100 presentations to over 10,000 people, at 58 bases, in 60 days.”
166th Airlift Wing

You can read the full story here.

Ewok Adventures

July 27, 2022 / Carl Franke

In 2007, I created a stop motion animation at my house in Fishtown starring an Ewok action figure that I had since 1983, simply titled Ewok!

The video starts with the Ewok being buried in the backyard. He resurfaces, finds his way to the back door and enters the home. A couple of Jamaican toys greet him and are delighted to dance with him. But the majority of toys and household objects are trying to destroy him.

In a fight to save his renewed life, the Ewok battles a potato scrubber, an egg slicer, a swordsman, a dart board, a possessed TV and more. After drinking a bottle of Yuengling Lager, and charmed by one of the home’s human inhabitants, the Ewok continues the fight but is trapped by a large multi-legged monster covered in blue lights.

Luckily, the Ewok’s old friends (Dr. Evil from Austin Powers and President George Washington) come to the rescue. They then celebrate by lighting Snakes, a classic entry level firework, on the back patio. The Snakes char the Ewok’s face, but he survives.

Inspired by this video, 14 years later, my son Wesley made a sequel called Ewok 2. (He also made several others.) Below are both videos. Check ’em out!

Ewok

Ewok 2: By Wesley Franke

Ewok! later inspired my wife Melissa to create our wedding invitations. She had never even seen one Star Wars movie but was suddenly asking for more old action figures that were in a basement shoebox. As Wesley became a Star Wars fan, Melissa has now seen Episodes I – IX.

Carl & Melissa’s Wedding

July 25, 2022 / Carl Franke

Melissa and I got married in July 2009. I’m so glad we hired a videographer to look back on that amazing day at Glen Foerd Mansion in Philadelphia.

Santa Plexiglass Blues

December 13, 2021 / Carl Franke

Here’s a music video of Wes and Simone singing “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” with me on the Spire Studio. The video contains clips from the Ambler Holiday Parade, Longwood Gardens and decorating our Christmas tree. Speaking of which, we had to return our tree this year after it stopped drinking water after a couple days. We had to remove all of the ornaments and get a new one. The sellers at the North Penn VFW were cool about it and didn’t charge us for the second one.

The kiddos and I also recorded a rendition of “Jingle Bells” on the Spire Studio. This music video features some photos of many Franke Christmas pasts over the years.

We’ve been taking our kids to the Willow Grove Mall Santa since Wes was five months old. Last year, Santa had plexiglass in front of him due to COVID. It was nice to see that removed this year.

The days of playing at Challenges Arcade and buying 8-bit Nintendo and Sega Master System games at Babbages and Electronics Boutique are long gone, but the mall still has that stank of perfume mixed with Cinnabon cinnamon and buttery Auntie Anne’s pretzels. It sticks to your pores.

Honeymoon Adventure Island

July 25, 2021 / Carl Franke

As Melissa and I are now married for 12 years, here’s a true story about how our honeymoon in Aruba ended.

Newlyweds in a foreign country, we had engaged in everything else that the Occidental Grand Aruba resort had to offer. We figured it was time to do up a casino, to roll the dice a bit.

We weren’t gamblers, but we were drunk after hours at the piano bar across the street, where the singer made fun of my fedora and called me Michael Jackson, and where I insisted on eating a Whopper at a neighboring Burger King to see if they tasted the same as in America.

So, my beautiful wife Melissa and I ambled into the casino, which was attached to the vast resort lobby, where a country western band was playing of all acts, and put a quarter into one of the simple slot machines.

Instant jackpot! $300 worth of coins came spitting out. I scurried off to grab a plastic cup before the coins overflowed the bin.

Melissa celebrates winning in the casino.

We cashed in and went to bed. We needed a good night’s sleep. For the next day, we were ditching the resort strips and going on an ATV tour with a group of people to see the northern rugged part of Aruba.

All of those touristy pamphlets that inundated every passageway had finally seeped into our sense of adventure. Another poolside day with piña coladas seemed boring at this point. The resort life was relaxing, but the relentless chilled out Thievery Corporation playing through the global speakers was just too perfect.

Marcos was waiting for us bright and early the next day, standing outside with his black SUV. He seemed a bit tired like us, as he opened the door so that we could sit in the back. He handed us a clipboard with release forms and we signed away as he said that it would “just be us two today”.

Aruba changes really fast once you leave the boulevards of resort strips. We were soon in a cramped suburban style neighborhood, where dirt and sand replaced the typical areas of grass. Marcos stopped at a house and we got out. He went into the garage and rolled out two ATVs and started analyzing the tires.

“Ya ever driven one of these before?” Marcos asked.

“Nope…Never have. But I see them in my neighborhood a lot,” I said.

The thought of me driving an ATV seemed unfaithful to my hatred of them. Outside my front door in Fishtown, young punks (and even guys in their 40s) would cruise around town, circling blocks, driving through stop signs, and annoying the fuck out of everybody, sometimes going the wrong way down a one-way street, sometimes on sidewalks. The louder the better it seemed. It was illegal to drive them, but cops did nothing as it was too dangerous to chase them.

I had some crafty plans though. Lay down a spike strip or perhaps clothesline them with, well, an actual clothesline as they drove by. That would do them in. Then there was shooting out their big targeted tires with a gun from my rooftop, but that would result in a blowout and some kid’s cranium on a windshield, and making more of a mess wasn’t the goal. Plus, I didn’t own or shoot a gun.

What was so lame about these punks and their “All Terrain Vehicles” is that they never left the asphalt roads of Fishtown. I knew the deafening roar of the engine echoing between the buildings was their goal, to frighten people and show everyone that they were tough and all that stupid masculine bullshit, but try enjoying listening to Billie Holiday in your living room with that roar constantly invading your mindset, and you’ll want to destroy them too. Any kid with a few hundred bucks could go to Pep Boys and get a Baja Motorsports 90cc ride, or work on their uncle’s hooptie and make it sound like Tyrannosaurus Rex is farting non-stop down the avenue. It’s a Fishtown plague.

And now here I was, about to hop on an ATV with Melissa clutching my waist and actually take on many terrains, as the vehicle intended. Marcos hooked us up with helmets and gave an instructional on the thumb accelerator and brakes.

Off we went! First, around town on the streets and then onto a sandy and pebbly road that slowly inclined towards Alto Vista Chapel, a tiny colorful building overlooking the north shore, where local Catholics make a pilgrimage to every Good Friday. We got off and investigated and took photos while the quiet Marcos quickly became bubbly and excited, full of information.

We then cruised down dunes and along the coast and checked out natural bridges made of rock formations, the Bushiribana Gold Mine Ruins, and a cool permanent art installation made solely of debris and trash that had washed ashore.

Melissa looking around before we head back on ATV.

Marcos continually led the way, as we stayed a safe distance behind, tearing through seaside cliffs as mid-afternoon quickly approached. Without my sunglasses, I would have been blinded, as the sandy cloud of Marcos in front of me was tough enough to deal with.

After a couple hours into our tour, we were almost at the grand destination, which was the Natural Pool, a pool of seawater surrounded by rock and volcanic stone circles. It was the ultimate reward for the adventurist, as the only way to get there was via an ATV or a 4-wheel drive vehicle. We had seen the photos of it everywhere and were ready to sit in the postcard image of it.

Melissa taking photos on ATV tour toward Conchi Natural Pool.

The final stretch was of rocky terrain void of any path to follow. I kept a firm eye on Marcos up ahead, but at the same time focused on traversing the boulders and sporadic cactus. Use of the thumb accelerator became a game of exact precision as our body weight and my steering maneuvered us around the masses of tan stone.

Suddenly, I hit a stone that the tires couldn’t pass and found my body lunging forward through the air over the right side of the ATV. Melissa shrieked something to gain my attention. Control was completely lost,

I landed hard on my right side, scraping up my forearms, legs, and hip. I think I had hit my head as well, but the massive helmet saved me there. The wind was knocked out of me a bit, but the thick stench of gasoline startled my senses and I realized that the ATV was now upside down and partially on my body. I was able to slither out of it and stand up. Melissa was sitting a ways back on a boulder, holding her knee. Marcos was clambering over the rocks towards us while repeating “What happened? What did you do?”

And that’s when I started thinking…Exactly!…What the HELL am I doing? Why am I in some remote part of Aruba, far from any hospital or road, risking our lives after just getting married? Why are we now bleeding from our limbs in the scorching sun, far from our hotel? What kind of imbecile and irresponsible act is this?

One of Melissa’s knees was clearly in a lot of pain. We weren’t quite sure what the extent of our physical damage was. At first, I just wanted to turn around, but Marcos, who positioned the banged up ATV back into place, pointed out that we were quite close to the Natural Pool. I was worried that the ATV was destroyed and not able to be driven, but it was just fine.

Onward, we headed as I grew paranoid with every slight maneuver I had to make. Blood bubbled from scattered scrapes on my forearm as the bumpy ride tossed pain into my aching hip. Tiny pebbles were embedded in my skin. Immense fear grew over me as I thumbed the gear ever so slightly.

When we finally reached the Natural Pool area, we were greeted with a makeshift parking area and a series of stone steps to descend down. This wasn’t in the postcard! Marcos waited at the top as Melissa and I inched our way down the steps void of any bannister. This motion was especially difficult for Melissa and her damaged knee.

The color of the serene water in the Natural Pool was turquoise, surrounded by spiny rocks that you had to hop on to get to the water. Closer to the pool, the rocks were slippery with black crabs of all sizes wandering on them. Melissa and I looked at each other with disorientation and moved our bodies into the water, wondering if any bones on our bodies were broken.

An excited family was in the pool speaking Dutch, splashing about with their blond hair. I saw that they had taken a 4×4 Jeep here. Well, that was smart, I thought.

Melissa and I treaded water, wondering how deep it went, and let the salt water clean our wounds with a slight sting. The massive waves crashed onto the rocks and poured into the Natural Pool. As the waves retreated back to the ocean, anything in its grasp could easily be sucked out to sea. We were told that these waves were so bad the previous day that the Natural Pool was closed.

On the long drive back to Marcos’s ATV garage, we ran into a clashing rally on the streets for one of the Aruban political parties. The general election was coming up in September. Yellow and green flags mixed with angry chants through megaphones made for an awkward getaway, as we had to drive on sidewalks that could barely fit the width of the ATV. The crowds were thick with the Papiamento language of the Caribbean, and here we were, a couple of tourists just dying to get back to our all-you-can-drink pool bar.

Finally at the hotel, and stripped of our clothes, we saw how bruised and battered we were…and could barely move without pain. We had one day left at the resort. So, we headed poolside and sat in the lounge chairs.

A girl came over next to me, positioned herself on a lounge chair, and started reading a book. I couldn’t help noticing her right leg was gnarled up with fresh wounds. I caught her eye and said, “ATV accident?”

“No…Jet skiing…” she said. “Just flew into some rocks. Had to get adventurous!”

At night, Melissa and I got drunk and went to one of the attached resort clubs where they were having a massive karaoke session, equipped with wireless microphones and a big stage.

One of the waitresses saw my arm and asked, “ATV accident?”

“Yep…Had to get adventurous.”

“Ahh, yeah, those things are more dangerous than they look.”

I eventually sang “Proud Mary” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, grinning through the pain, as our honeymoon came to an end. The season of the buzzing Fishtown ATVs was at its peak and awaiting my return back on Memphis Street.

Tooch

February 25, 2020 / Carl Franke

The last week of 2007…

A neighborhood Fishtown friend ran a kitten rescue out of her home. She had a litter of orange and white cats.

We adopted a male, one that was animated and looked at us often.

At home where we lived in sin, Melissa named him Santucci in about 30 seconds, named after our favorite pizzeria.

“We can call him Tooch.”

Hanging out with Tooch at our Fishtown house on NYE 2007. Tooch had been living with us for just a few days.

I proposed to Melissa days later at the Moshulu on NYE. She said yes.

Tooch’s middle name was Rambo.

He was a true house cat and never tried to sneak out. We put him on a leash in our little yard, just so show him the outside world, but he was more annoyed than anything.

He watched Netflix DVDs with us, sitting on our laps or like a gargoyle on the sofa’s edge.

He played with a turquoise sequin belt and a fluorescent pink scratch pad.

We gave him a bath once and it was the angriest he’d ever been. I swore he’d claw me to pieces.

Tooch didn’t really like the freedom of the great outdoors. We left the door open accidentally for hours and he never ran out.

He wore a collar for a few days, but almost strangled himself trying to get it off.

I was trying to record percussion instruments and he kept jumping up near the microphone. I decided to record his purring and meowing and made “Happy Tooch“.

He had a lot of nicknames: Tooch MaLooch, Tooch Master General, TuLaRooch.

He knocked down a wine bottle one night and bloodied his nose a bit.

His tail was rather long.

He always hid from my parents. I think he was scared of my Dad’s laugh.

He was a scaredy cat of sorts. If you farted, he’d run out of the room, sometimes so fast that his claws couldn’t gain traction.

He slept along our legs in bed and sometimes nibbled on our toes.

He liked to be petted, but not on the stomach. Under his chin was his favorite.

His hunting instincts made him a moth’s worse nightmare. He thrust his body to attack shadows.

He was the homestead captain of the house, always there, ready to lay on laps.

He lost a lot of whiskers once, getting them singed by a candle.

His white hair stuck to my navy pea coat from just walking by him.

Melissa took amazing photos of him jumping in the air and made a t-shirt for me out of an image.

We didn’t know his exact birthday, so we chose Halloween as it was around that time.

I sense he liked holidays and festive wrappings to play with. Santa gave him stocking stuffers and he was included in Melissa’s holiday postcards.

When we moved to Glenside, he stayed in our office for weeks before slowly making his way through the much bigger house.

He scratched up the brown leather sofa pretty bad on one side, but was rather good to our stuff.

He knew what was going on in the basement.

He jumped through swaying plexiglass entry doors.

He only ate hard dry food. He never ate moist food. We gave him grilled branzino from Zahav once and he wouldn’t touch it. Cheese, milk, nothing.

He didn’t like to leave the house. When dropping him off at family or friends for vacation, he usually hid behind major appliances.

He hated going to the vet. If you touched his travel bag, he’d hide in a section that we couldn’t reach in the basement. We had to get him in a room first.

He liked to stick his paws under the bathroom door while you were sitting on the toilet.

If his food bowl was missing just enough to show the bottom, he’d meow until we filled it. We called this the “bald spot”.

He started having issues with going to the bathroom and wasn’t using the box anymore.

He made puddles on our wood burning stove hearth.

He strained and wailed when going. Sometimes he was fine.

Vets recommended Miralax, herbal treatments, organic moist food from Whole Foods, but nothing helped.

It was disgusting but we grew used to it, for almost two years.

He frothed at the mouth and howled one day, clearly in immense pain.

Melissa took him to the vet, just a 5 minute drive away. He didn’t fight it.

He was analyzed and treated for about 6 hours.

Surgery was an option, but not a guaranteed outcome.

We decided that it was best to end the pain and say goodbye.

We sat in a room with him for 20 minutes and talked to him, petted him, while he sat on an ottoman. He was sedated but knew who we were.

He wanted to sit on Melissa’s lap, so she let him.

We told stories of him and teared up.

He was soon put to sleep.

We drove home and put him in his favorite blue chair. It was upright and had a soft velvet feel.

We then all went out to the nearest Santucci’s restaurant for dinner, a surreal day.

The next day, we buried him in the backyard in an area that we planned to have a flower garden.

He brought tremendous joy for over 12 years to our family.

He was the 3rd member, always there to connect eyes and help me relax, always there to jump on my lap and stop be from being frantic, so that I could stay put and watch the birds out the window.