Aunt Cele and Uncle Tom Drinan are pictured on their wedding day, October 1940. They're posing outside St. Mary's church in Muskegon.

Cele was the youngest of my dad's four sisters. Cele was the seventh of eight and my dad was the eighth of eight. Dad and Cele were close. Of all the friendly, accommodating Muskegon relatives, it seemed to me that we always stopped at Tom and Cele's first. Tom and Cele had five children Ann, Ellen, Tom, and twins Jim and Kate.

The Drinan cousins are competitive, sharp, and damn good at most things they do. If you were going to game with the Drinans, you needed to pack a lunch--and sometimes a snack. While more times than not a cousin would get smoked by the Drinans, they were gracious winners and the best of people. They still are.

Here are the Drinans who could gather on Thanksgiving 2007. From what I've heard the Drinan Family Olympics, held on Thanksgiving weekend each year, was full of fierce action. I don't know if this picture was taken before or after the events.

My dad and his writing partner, Hod Shewell, wrote a weekly humor column for the Lansing State Journal entitled, "As We See It." The column was composed of about 20 quips on the popular topics of the day.

My dad and Hod were among the thousands who were swept into State of Michigan government jobs when the democrats swept into office with FDR. Dad came to Lansing upon his graduation from high school in 1936 and took a job in the Highway Department's mail room. Hod came to Lansing a few years earlier. Hod met my dad's brother Izzy, and Hod and Izzy took up residence in a bachelor pad in Lansing. My dad met Hod through Hod's friendship with Izzy and their relationship thrived from that point on.

The yellowing newspaper clipping was recently found pinned to a sewing room wall in a Lansing Home. My guess is that the clipping is from circa 1957-59. A friend of mine was helping a friend of his move belongings from his friend's late mother's home. He spotted the clipping on the wall, took a quick look, asked for the clipping and sent it on to me. What's the real story behind the how the clipping? Was it really pinned to a wall of nearly 50 years? Why? Who?

Hod was gentle, loving soul ever armed with a story, a quip, a song, or a smile. If you Google "Hod Shewell," you'll find this: "Humorist Hod Shewell characterized Las Vegas as "The city of fish and chips: Some poor fish is always losing his chips."

Don't squint to hard, here are the lines from the clip above:

• We belong to no organized political party—we’re republicans
  
• Stage hand unionism—the electrician can pound a nail, but is forbidden to use a hammer
  
• Not one of our bills got lost in the holiday shuffle
  
• One man in a thousand is a leader of men; the others follow women
  
• A mother is a person who can find a kid’s coat in the closet that isn’t there
  
• In yourself, anger is righteous indignation, in others—just bad temper
  
• Some people conduct their lives on the cafeteria plan—self service only
  
• Synonym: a word used in place of the word you can’t spell
  
• If a gal doesn’t try to hold her shape, no one else will
  
• Growl all day and you’ll be dog tired at night
  
• Keep your words soft and sweet—you never know when you’ll have to eat them
  
• Some people succeed on a shoestring while others take a lacing
  
• First Alaskan legislation will probably include a slush fund
  
• Last minute holiday haircut—the final clip
  
• Now I just wonder why I got a cuckoo clock for Christmas
  
• When day is done sometimes nothing else is
  
• Inflation: A peculiar method of cutting a dollar without damaging the paper
  
• A few more moons riding down in the lazy west and the world indeed will be waiting for the sunrise
  
• You never know how noisy your neighbors are until your TV breaks down
  
• They tell us that vodka takes your breath away
  
• A diplomat uses people to use people

Enjoy!

I haven't had a bumper sticker on a car since the late 70s when I had one of the few Detroit Lions bumper stickers in PHX. Let's face it: the Lions are consigned to playing the fool's role in a lifelong comedy. However, I can always scan the hard drive of my memory and find Van Patrick's voice telling me that it is a beautiful day for football. Perhaps my Leons bumper sticker did the same for some other Leon fan.

Now, I have one of the few, if not the only, East Lansing Baseball bumper stickers in PHX. I like that. EL Baseball was my last organized sports team. It's special for me. I remember the days fondly. The bumper sticker makes me smile every time I walk up behind it.

It's been some time since the last post and now it's time to belatedly chronicle the last Mongeau (Scottsdale Division adventure. As the banner above tells, Paul, my brother, his son, Mike, and I went to the ASU v. Cal football game, which resulted in a nifty win by the hometown Sun Devils.

It was ASU's homecoming game and since both Paul and I have at least one degree from ASU (Paul has a couple), we feel honor-bound to attend. The Homecoming game comes with a parade, a small, parochial affair composed of entrants who represent the residential, fraternal, and cultural components of the ASU community. It's nothing fancy, but each entrant showers the parade watchers with candy and trinkets, which is Mike's main incentive for attending.

As you can see Mike is fired up and ready to begin gathering the goods as they're tossed from the passing entrants. The parade lasts about an hours, which was plenty of time for Mike to make a substantial haul.

Next, it was on to the part of the Homecoming that required Paul's attendance. Paul is faculty member in the Hugh Downs School of Communication. Yes, that Hugh Downs. Hugh lives in Carefree, an exclusive burb in the boulder-strewn, rolling elevations found in the northern reaches of PHX. The Prime Minister of ASU, Michael Crowe, created an edict whereby all departments at ASU must show their raison d'etre, trade show style for the alumnae to oggle.

For the Mongeaus, this meant that we had to find Paul's department "booth" and hang there to represent. But first, we took a few moments for to get a bit to eat, for Uncle Sam to have a few adult beverages, and for Mike to get some quality time on the Golden Tee video golf machine. After the brief interlude, we were off to academia.

Paul is damn proud of his son, and he should be, but facing his work mates with his brother, who's had a couple of adult beverages, roils his gastric acids. Let's put it this way: he knows from experience. Long story short, Sam was affable. Enough said. You can see Paul breathing a sigh of great relief that Sam didn't go off on some long rant about how post-modernism has spoiled the humanities. However, Sam did try to talk Paul's boss's son into trying throw a plastic pee-wee football and hit Old Main from the front of the Hugh Downs School of Communication's booth. Paul's boss was firmly against the idea, the son thought he could do it. Some discussion ensued. The son didn't try.


Finally, were off to the game. We had unbelievable seats. Paul, Mike and I sat between the 48- 50-yard line five rows below the press box. Our view was spectacular.
The photos from the cell phone don't do the scene justice, so squint and imagine what a wonderful view this is.

The night was capped off by a come-from-behind Sun Devil win, which made the night about as perfect as perfect can be. The fireworks below celebrate another ASU win. (Again, imagination is necessary to fully enjoy the photo.)