Baby Rose, the Babe and the Brady Bunch

Short takes from a journey through a disorganized mind:

WAIT FOR YOUR LAUGH -- When I was 11, a wonderful television show came on the air. For five seasons, "The Dick Van Dyke Show" was the only show we made an effort to see every week. With the possible exception of the actor who played the kid, everyone else in the cast was marvelous.

I particularly liked Rose Marie as Sally Rogers. I knew nothing about her, especially that she had been in show business since 1926, starting as Baby Rose Marie at the age of 3. And I didn't follow her long enough to know that she continued working until she did a voice job in a Garfield movie in 2013.

She lived to be 94 and died just last year. Thankfully, she participated in a documentary film about her life -- "Wait for Your Laugh" -- that is one of the very best documentaries I have ever seen.

Everyone talks about Mickey Rooney having a career in which he had movie roles in 10 different decades. Rose Marie did 10 decades too, but most her early work was in vaudeville and nightclubs.

After "Dick Van Dyke," she did 14 years sitting above Paul Lynde, and then later she toured as part of 4girls4 with Rosemary Clooney, Helen O'Connell and Margaret Whiting.

So long ago, but things were really happening

It's very strange, but I really wish it could be 1961 again.

Or at least 1962.

I was 11 years old in 1961, and I went to school -- sixth grade the first half of the year -- across the street about half a block up from our house. It was the last year I ever was able to come home for lunch. I had sisters who were 9 and 4, a brother who was 2 and a baby sister who would be born in October.

We were overflowing our home in Huber Heights, Ohio, a three-bedroom ranch house in the oldest part of the largest all-brick housing development in America. It's the part of what's now a city that people refer to scornfully as "Huber-tucky," and you have to understand the Ohio/Kentucky thing to get the joke.

So many stops along the road of a lifetime

In the last year or so, I have found myself thinking about the fact that in less than three years, as long as I am still living in Georgia, I will have liven in four different states for at least 10 years each.

It's sort of uncommon. Most people I know have liven in one or two, and a few have made it to three -- one each for childhood, adulthood and retirement.

But not many people have four.

Home in 1962, Huber Heights, Ohio

I found myself thinking it was kind of cool, that I had not just visited places but had stayed in three and soon four of them for at least 10 years. By contrast, in the middle of my life, the period in which I was establishing my career, I lived in seven different states in a little more than eight years.

My friend Mickey is almost the opposite, although not really by design. He has lived in the Los Angeles area for nearly 42 years, all in a handful of apartments within 20 miles or so of each other.

It isn't as if he has never been anywhere, although the next time he travels outside North America will be the first time. Some people never go anywhere, and others go everywhere. My wonderful grandson Lexington Kastner had circumnavigated the globe by air before he was a year old.

Minnesota trip had more ups than downs

Albanie Yvonne at 3 1/2

The second half of June was pretty eventful this year, although not without some difficulties.

We had been planning for some months to go to Minnesota to attend the wedding/blending ceremony of our daughter Pauline and her new husband, Johnathan Roy.

Each of them brought three children to the new family, a sort of "Brady Bunch" for the 21st century. So our number of grandchildren doubled from three to six just like that.

Things began badly when he missed our flight to Minneapolis, although we were able to get onto another flight less than an hour and a half later. It only cost us an additional $700 or so.

I'm not going to list the other difficulties. I'll just say it was wonderful finally to meet Malachi, Simon and Coen, our three new grandsons, and it is always wonderful to spend time with Madison, Lexington and little Albanie.

Western Minnesota was a revelation too. I think there were 50 lakes within 10 miles of us, some little more than ponds but some that were maybe two steps below Great Lake status. Johnathan's parents live on the shore of Lake Amelia, near Glenwood. It's not huge at 910 acres, but it's 69 feet deep at its deepest point, and the view is really beautiful.

Updating the list of albums that mean a lot to me

This is something I have been thinking about for quite some time. What follows is a list I made for Facebook nine years ago in response to a question asking what 15 albums had the biggest effect on my life growing up.

I fiddled with it a little and decided that an update was in order. Actually just an addition. I'm leaving the original list alone, but expanding the overall list to 24 with the conditions that the additional nine all have to be either from the last nine years or from artists I didn't know before then. The only way artists from before can be included is if they were in a group and now are performing on their own.

So 1-15 are the same, 16-24 are new.

Enjoy:

1. "The Pretender," Jackson Browne -- Before the abuse allegations, before he became obsessed with politics, there was this great 1977 album. Lots of terrific songs -- Linda Paloma, Daddy's Song, Sleep's Dark and Silent Gate -- but it's the title song that still speaks to me 32 years later. "I'm gonna be a happy idiot, and struggle for the legal tender ..."

2. "Buffalo Springfield," Buffalo Springfield -- This 1967 album was the earliest incarnation of guys who would later go on to be some of the biggest stars in rock 'n' roll, foremost Stephen Stills and Neil Young. Others from the group would go on to form Poco, and Jim Messina, who wasn't on this album, would be half of Loggins & Messina. Everybody remembers "For What It's Worth," but other haunting songs like "Mr. Soul" spoke to the angst of the late '60s. The group only did three albums, but their work still sounds fresh.

25 random facts can paint a complete picture

Twenty-five random facts about myself:

1. If one thing truly surprises me when I look back at the first 68 years of my life, it's that probably the thing I did better than anything else was being a dad. I never knew my birth father and when my mother remarried and gave me a dad, I had tremendous conflicts with him from about age 11 on. Not his fault, mine. Kids don't get to make the rules.

2. I can be weird about songs I like, especially when I first discover them. If I've got one on my iPod, I'll keep paging back to the beginning and listen to it five or six times before moving on.

3. Little things can be some of the biggest things. One of the five best moments in my entire life came when my daughter Pauline (technically my stepdaughter), who had always introduced me to her friends as "my stepfather," introduced me as "my dad" at Christmas 2006.

4. I think my kids might be the two best people in the world.

5. I love movies, and they don't always have to be good ones. I've probably seen "Hanover Street," with Harrison Ford and Lesley Anne Down, 25 times. "Think of me when you drink tea."

6. Golf can be so frustrating ... and so amazing. Within the space of 15 minutes, I can practically whiff on one shot and then hit a nearly perfect one. Same ball, same club.

7. My three grandchildren -- Madison Nicole, Lexington Wesley and Albanie Yvonne -- are the greatest proof to me that there is a God.

8. I have never been able to sing.

Here's hoping a long friendship will last a lot longer

All that hair.

I remember it was June 1981, 36 years ago and the end of one of life's journeys for me. A group of us who had worked on our college newspaper together were celebrating the end of it all at the Kings Dominion amusement park north of Richmond, Va.

Five people in a log on a flume ride. Me in the back, two women I had dated, a fraternity brother of mine with whom I never really got along.

And Tara in the front.

Fun fun fun in '81...

I don't remember when Tara Hagenbrock Johnson first appeared in the newspaper offices. I'm pretty sure I was already editor in chief. I spent three years -- six semesters -- working on the paper, and the last year and a half I was running things.

George Mason University was growing fast, and Broadside took a couple of giant steps forward. During my three semesters as editor, we were honored as the best college newspaper in Virginia. Maybe even more significant, in my final semester, we purchased and used the first computer system the paper had.

All those years ago.

My three semesters as editor were coincidentally the first 18 months of my separation from my first wife. A tough time, and I spent a great deal of it dating the most important woman that I didn't marry. She's the one sitting in front of me in the log, and she still means a lot to me.