One More Good Adventure

That says you’re better off without a wife because “You never have to be wishing when you want to go out fishing, and you never have to ask for the keys.”

Well, from the web site Bits and Pieces I think you can add this one, too…

Last week when I was coming home from a shopping trip a group of my neighbors were sitting on the porch and, as so often happens, they asked me to join them for a while.

One of the first things that came up was the cherry-blueberry cobbler I made for Lleya’s birthday and they wanted to know how to make it. It’s a very simple recipe and, surprisingly enough, I was able to tell them, off of the top of my head, how to make it and I was able to do it in Spanish, too! My neighbor told me that she wanted me to make it for her Mother’s Day party. Well, that’s a way a way yet. Mother’s Day, which is a very big deal here in Panama, isn’t until December 8th.

Then, somehow, the conversation turned to music. I don’t know how that happened since while everyone says I speak Spanish very well, I have to tell them that I speak it better than I hear it. I try not to translate everything I hear, but sometimes I can’t avoid doing that and I end up lagging behind in the conversation. Let me give you an example of what I mean. When someone mentions the river that runs by the house and they say “El Rio” I don’t translate that. El Rio is el rio. It just is and there’s no reason for me to translate it in my head. But I get hung up on the verbs and while I muddle along trying to figure out the translation for a verb tense the conversation has now gone on and I have to rush trying to keep up.

Anyway, one thing I find rather amusing is that the Panamanians are always amazed that I know so many of the popular musicians here and that I really enjoy the musica típica. I mentioned that I’d been to see Samy y Sandra last month and how much I enjoyed watching watching the girls dancing the cumbia.

My neighbor’s sister-in-law, Amelia, said there was going to be a dance program the coming week and asked if I’d like to go. Naturally I said I would, and so, last night, Amelia, her friend, Fela, and her young nephew, Llasmin, and I went to see the 1st International Folkloric Dance Festival sponsored by the Academia José A. Corella. It was to feature dancers from Panama, Costa Rica and Argentina.

The program was supposed to start at 6:30 but the group from Costa Rica was held up at the border so the start of the program was put on hold. But no one who had come to see the show was upset since this is Panama and time here is different than it is in the States. Here, a starting time is simply a suggestion, not something set in stone. So our little group went to a cantina across the street for some refreshments.

The show got underway about an hour and fifteen minutes later and that’s when I learned that my replacement camera sucks. It takes a second or so from the time you press the shutter until the camera reacts and by that time what you’ve wanted to capture has vanished and you’ve got something else. I’m not even going to try and show you the pictures I got. They suck that bad.

Some observations:

The Argentinian men had their version of Gaucho pants, shirts, straw hats and scarves. The women had rather drab, in comparison to the Panamanian, dresses. The first number was a wonderfully executed tango by a young couple. The other dances included a lot of foot stamping by the guys and graceful twirls from the women.

The Panamanian dances were presented by groups of different ages and also represented different regions of the country. There was Caribbean garb from the Bocas del Toro province and then the more traditional Panamanian dances with the women in their Polleras. What I enjoyed the most were the youngsters ranging in age, I’d guess, from about seven to twelve or so. It seemed to me, though, that while the girls were having a great time, the boys were probably either brothers or cousins of the girls and their moms had said, you’re going to dance or else. The older guys, though, were there because they loved to dance. Period.

Also, it’s all about the girls, and it’s all about style and fashion. The pollera is an elaborate dress with about umteen gazillion pleats and fancy decoration. Typically they can take as much as a year or more to make one and they can cost hundreds of dollars. There are several styles. The youngest wear the pollera montuna.

This is an example of the more elaborate polleras

You’ll notice the elaborate hair decorations of the women. They’re called tembleque.

The guys, on the other hand get to wear brown slacks and a plain white shirt and a straw hat. Like I said, it’s all about the girls.

The Costa Rican group finally showed up, but since the show was running long they only did three short numbers. The girls weren’t nearly as elaborately costumed as their Panamanian cousins but their skirts somewhat resembled the pollera skirts though without the decoration.

Both the Panamanian and Costa Rican troupes has live music and they did a wonderful, spirited job of backing up the dancers.

Here’s one of many YouTube videos of the Academía to give you an idea of what the program was like…

As the old saying goes, a wonderful time was had by all.

This is a fact, folks, there’s a new translation of the Bible out and of course, among hard-core Bible-thumpers it’s causing a lot of controversy. . . but I say, if the King James version of the Bible was good enough for Jesus then it’s good enough for me!!!

Today is the 8th Annual Gary Philbrick Memorial Scholarship Golf Tournament being held at the Olde Barnstable Fairgrounds Golf Course in Marston Mills on Cape Cod. It’s going to be a good day for a golf tournament. The forecast is for a sunny but windy day with a high of around 77°F.

Gary Philbrick was the pro at the course from the day it opened until his life was cut short at the age of 55 after losing his battle with cancer in 2005. He was also my brother and I miss him.

Gary was the middle brother of a brood of seven boys. He was one of those rare people for whom it would be difficult to find someone who would have anything bad to say about him. He was really a “people person.”

Gary loved sports from an early age and he was good at them. He was an All-Star Little League catcher and excelled at tennis in high school but his real love was golf.

He went to a small college in Ohio for part of a semester when he got out of high school. As he told it, he and some friends went out one night and really tied one on. He said, “it was the weirdest thing. I blacked out, and when I woke up I was in a rubber room and dad was looking at me through a tiny window. I thought it was some kind of a dream but it was all too real. I’d been expelled and on the whole ride from Ohio to Orleans dad didn’t say a single word. It was a very long ride. For the next couple of weeks every time I’d come down for breakfast, mom would burst into tears. After a couple of weeks they sat me down at the kitchen table and said, ‘well, now that you’ve ruined your life and embarrassed us so we can never face our friends again, what to you intend on doing?'”

“I’m going to play golf,” I said.

“‘Don’t get smart with us, young man,’ they said. ‘We’re not talking about what you want to do today, we’re talking about what you’re going to do with the rest of your life.’

“Play golf,” was his answer and that’s what he did.

He apprenticed at a country club in Connecticut in the summers and came down to Florida in the winters in the late ’60s to attend the PGA school. He and I also caddied together in several of the LPGA tournaments back then. Let me tell you, those ladies bags are heavy.

When he received his PGA club pro membership he returned to the Cape and was the pro at the Dunphy’s Resort Hotel and golf course in Hyannis where he reigned for a decade or so before taking over the Cranberry Valley course in Yarmouth for several years. He then became the first pro at the Olde Barnstable Fairgrounds course.

He was the Vice President of the New England Professional Golfers Association from 1992-96, President of the Cape Cod Chapter of the N.E.P.G.A. in 1984, ’85 and ’87. He was the director of the Doreen Grace Fund Golf Tournament for the Foundation of Brain Injury Research 1985-94. and on the Board of the Cape Cod Golf Association. He received several awards including Golf Professional of the Year in 1993 and 1996 and the National Golf Founders Achievement Award in 1993, ’94 and ’95. In 2002 he was awarded the prestigious Bill Strausbaugh Club Relations Award by the New England Section, PGA, “For Untiring and Distinguished Service to Golf Facilties and to Fellow PGA Members in the Field of Employment and Club Relations.”

He met, and married a young nurse who worked at the Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Dianne Ruest.

They had three great kids, Ian, Lindsay and Tracy. I’d say they were great kids even if they weren’t my nieces and nephew. They inherited all the best traits of their parents.

Gary was a great father. I don’t know what his parenting techniques were, but I vividly remember an incident from a family reunion years ago. We were at the dinner table. Gary was sitting at the head of the table. I was to his left and Tracy, the youngest, then about five years old, was on his right. Tracy got a little fussy about something. I don’t think anyone else noticed it. I don’t remember what it was she did or said but I do remember that Gary quietly said, simply, “Remember what we talked about.” And that ended it.

He and Dianne loved to dance. They took ballroom classes and one room of their house was cleared of furniture so they could spend evenings dancing together.

If there was any doubt how popular Gary was it was dispelled at his wake. On a bitterly cold February evening hundreds, literally hundreds, of people stood shivering in a line outside the funeral home before they could get inside to pay their respects. And golfers still come to his resting place and leave signed golf balls in a hat beside his marker.

The 2005 Cape Cod Open was dedicated to his memory and each year there’s fierce competition at the Open to win the coveted Gary Philbrick Trophy for low-scoring professional golfer.

The Gary Philbrick Memorial Scholarship was established to assist college students who wish to have a career on the links.

http://www.capecodpga.com/GaryPhilbrick.php#recipients

Gary Philbrick was my brother. I was always proud of him and I miss him very much, especially today.