12 Days of Mugger - Day 1 (Travel Day)

Families are like fudge ~ Mostly sweet with a few nuts

Our family is from humble roots. My Mom and Mugger’s Mom grew up on Stark Street in South Wilkes-Barre. What some people don’t know is that my Dad and Weiner grew up as next door neighbors on Horton Street a couple blocks away. In fact, I did a Google Earth search and their houses were only 500 yards apart. It’s just funny to think that our family originates from such a small little patch of the world. It doesn’t work that way these days. Today you get your family scattered all over the country like marbles on a tile floor.

In a couple hours I’ll be in a rental car driving through Boulder and into the Rocky Mountains to Estes Park. Over the course of the holiday weekend we’ll get to meet Michelle’s family and see the small patch of the world they call home.

I’ve known Michelle for two years already. I was there when she met the whole family.

It’s been interesting and fun watching her jump into the crazy pool that is our family. She’s moved from the shallow end to the deep end with ease. She now knows that when someone wants to play bean bags in the backyard, it’s likely to mean a double elimination round robin tournament. She knows that if you have tickets to a Penn State game, you will be going to that game even in hurricane weather.

Congratulations Mugger and Michelle. See you in the mountains for a killer party.

Our Folks

12 Days of Mugger ~ Day 2

I remember landing in the middle of the Vegas night.
I remember a wolf pack.
I remember vodka and several cases of sugar-free Red Bull.
I remember a media suite with more square footage than our house.
I remember arguing with a craps dealer and driving cars with big wheels.
I remember steak for breakfast and steak for dinner.
The rest I just pieced together with the pictures...

Mugger's 11 ~ Las Vegas 4-11 from Jim Harris Images on Vimeo.

12 Days of Mugger ~ Day 3

It's Hard to be Saint in the City

Mugger and I were driving back on the Poor’White Parkway. We had two bushels of crabs in the trunk and a couple cases of beer. His deployment date to Afghanistan was still up in the air so we were having what we thought might be a going away party. We were talking about AJ’s bachelor party in New Orleans and how the dates shook out. There were only a couple potential weekends available for New Orelans and I had weddings booked for them. I was disappointed, but at that point I wasn’t able to make the trip.

However, one of my two weddings I had to shoot during the New Orleans weekend broke up just two weeks before the wedding. It was a surprise, but it happens occasionally, though not typically this close to the wedding... Now instead of having a wedding on Friday and Sunday, I only had one on Sunday.

I knew if I told Mugger this I would be on the hook and there would be no way he’d let me miss the Big Easy. Truth is I wanted to go to New Orleans for this bachelor party so bad my liver hurt and as soon as I told Mugger about the fortunate breakup he went to work on me. ‘You can go then!” he said. "Well, I still have the Sunday wedding.” I replied...."You can just leave early Saturday, but you can still go." "Well, I’m a little nervous about flying out the day before one of my jobs, what if something goes wrong with my flight." That could never happen...worst case scenario, you could still drive and make it in 24 hours!!?”

I was in. I was all in. I booked a flight and never missing an opportunity for surprise, we decided not to tell AJ. So I flew in, ate a Fried Oyster Po’Boy sandwich, tooks some pictures and checked into our suite overlooking Bourbon Street. I bought some beer, iced it down, put on some Jazz and waited for the crew.

Great memories that afternoon... The storage capacity for those memories diminished once AJ's Bachelor Party Platoon took hold of The French Quarter. A couple Grenades, followed by a couple Hurricanes and an Absinthe to keep it classy and the next thing I knew I was heading back to the airport two days later and back to work the next morning.

Looking at the pictures, it looks like one of the best weekends I've ever had. I don't know how you can top something like that.....

Tomorrow

Mugger's Bachelor Party

Las Vegas

12 Days of Mugger ~ Day 4

The Blade

Mugger and Aj were the Best Men at my wedding. All wedding activities took place in Philadelphia over a Labor Day weekend. The bachelor party was a booze soaked bowling night with my closest friends, organized and facilitated by my cousins. Since having experienced my cousins bachelor parties in New Orleans and Las Vegas respectively, I now feel that I may have UNDERshot somewhat on my own bachelor party. Nevertheless it was a truly epic night and pound for pound I’m not sure any of us were more stumble-down-drunk in New Orleans or Vegas as we were at that bowling alley after a quick-draw two hour open bar.

The next day was our rehearsal dinner etc and that night I gave some of my closet friends a slip of paper simply saying "Meet in the Lobby tomorrow morning. 9:30 sharp. Don’t Shave." Sometimes when you think of an idea it sounds so great in your head that you could barely contain your own genius-ness. And then when you begin to facilitate that idea and watch it play out, it’s like witnessing a slow train slide off the tracks and into the Deleware River.

This is kind of how this idea was...

At 9:30 on the morning of my wedding, my groomsmen and some friends loaded into a van and drove over to a barber shop in south Philadelphia for a single blade shave. The place was classic old school South Philly and run by a Father and Son since the late 40s. There were 8x10 framed photos of Italian celebratees from the neighborhood and a soundtrack of Philadelphia crooners like Mario Lanza and Bobby Rydell. I called and made all the arrangements and they treated us to some coffee and donuts before lining us up and making us all bleed from our face.

My only act of grace at this point was to go first. I strongly believe now that they brought the old man out of retirement for this gig and they just hoped that the muscle memory would kick in once he picked up his single blade and started scraping away. I figured if anyone was to get slit first it should be me. Mugger was next and watching cautiously as the old man started to nick away at my cheeks and throat. It was the closest and worst shave I ever had. I walked away from the barber chair with enough red-dotted tissue on my chin you’d thought my face just lost a steel cage fencing duel. The worst part was having to sit there now and watch all my friends and family slowly get slaughtered one by one to the upbeat sound of Louis Prima.

I do believe that the old man settled in as I’d hoped he would and the last shaves were much better than his first shaves. Before AJ got up there, I was literally pleading with him not to get shaved. We had this cool experience, it was the ultimate photo OP, but now let’s call it a day. Truth is, nobody really wanted to miss this opportunity to get a single blade shave including AJ. It was like some brutal rite of passage at this point and he took his nicks and scratches with pride,,, just like the rest of us.

At the wedding, we had a photo of Kristen and I with a mat board that our guests could sign. Everyone wrote the niceties you’d expect and wished us luck. Mugger wrote, “Thanks for the shave! I had too much blood anyway!”

12 Days of Mugger - Day 5

Game On!

The fuel that makes the Lawrence Fun Machine run is the board game. If there is even an informal gathering on Hillandale it’s not uncommon for a game of Apples to Apples or Times Up to break out. They must have a Bat Signal-type Spot Light that shines through the Midlothian night because people know and they show up in masses at all hours of the night hoping to get a seat at that kitchen table to show off their clay molding skills in Cranium. Weiner typically makes sure everyone is playing by the rules and even makes the rules 'better' as needed. This is known as Weinerizing and has been a common practice in our family since the early seventies. I don't know what the game closet looks like at the Lawrence House, but there is a lot of Milton Bradley in there...in fact, I was convinced that Milton Bradley used a likeness of Mugger for their last cover of Twister.

In the daylight, it’s badminton, bean bags or bocce. A tradition at my folks place for many years is to play Bocce with wool winter hats. This dates back to when they bought the last Bocce kit, it had a picture on the box of a group of old European men playing Bocce and all of them wearing some type of Eastern European or Italian Hat Wear. So every summer my Mom has to dig out the winter hats so we could play Bocce in the most authentic way possible.

When considering the history of games with Mugger it’s worth mentioning our few attempts at poker. There hasn’t been a lot of play, but the few times we have, it’s usually ended in a tailspin. It's also ended with what could be our finest photo. (See Above) There's also the time we played at his apartment in San Diego. The cards were so hot it was uncanny the first couple hands. Kristen started with 3 of a kind. Then my full-house beat Mugger’s Full House. Then I went all in with 4 Queens only to fall to Mugger’s 4 Aces. It was about this time when we realized we were playing with a Pinochle deck.

12 Days of Mugger - Day 6

Mugger on a Stick

There was a time when Mugger played a lot of Nintendo 64. James Bond’s GoldenEye was his game of choice. A game of espionage and cappin’ a bunch of MoFo’z with any number of weapons of individual destruction.

We would play late until the night falling asleep on the controllers. It was fun and we played with as many as three or four people at a time. The Nintendo 64 console was at least 2 or 3 systems removed from the most current console, but it worked for us. One day I got a box from Mugger shipped UPS to our apartment in Burbank. I opened it up and it was a Nintendo 64 that he bought on Ebay for Kristen and I. It had one game. James Bond GoldenEye. He would typically beat up on us with consistency, even with his skill level set high and ours on low to intermediate,,,,and I think he wanted us to get some practice in before the next marathon. He wanted us to train and push him a little in his pursuit to be the best GoldenEye assassin he could be.

The point of this story relates to a letter and photo we got from Mugger not long after his deployment to Iraq thanking us for the hours of training on the Nintendo 64. You see, he and a Joint Special Operations Unit of specially trained Flight Surgeons had just captured Saddam Hussein and while he couldn’t say much about it or speak for the rest of the Unit, he felt that his skills were only sharpened and refined by the countless hours of late night GoldenEye. So in a small way, Kristen and I (and all of us that played GoldenEye) also assisted in the capture of Saddam Hussein.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, life was moving along as normal as possible when you have a family member stationed overseas. We had our gatherings, reunions and graduations etc, but the Lawrence Family never showed up without their Mugger-on-a-Stick. All group photos where taken with a life size 2 dimensional photo of Mugger’s Face glued on some backboard and taped to a paint mixing stick.

There were concerns that Mugger was going to miss AJ’s wedding last summer when he was called to Afghanistan, but fortunately his deployment was delayed and he was able to be there as AJ’s Best Man.

Not taking any chances though, my Uncle Weiner and AJ started work in the garage on a more advanced Mugger on a Stick. A life size three-dimensional Mugger robot prototype. This robot would serve the same purpose as the Mugger on a stick, but it would be bigger and better and more technological with AJ’s software programming advancements and Weiner’s directorial skills. This Mugger robot would come equipped with a mechanical catapult spring loaded-arm capable of pitching bean bags or bocce balls up to 25 feet in the backyard. It would be able to speak simple Mugger catch phrases like, “Got Crabs” , “Who needs a Natty?” and "Yeah Dad, that would be really neat.”

Truth is we’ve all grown accustomed to Robot Mugger here on the East Coast and we’ll hate to see him shut down once the real Mugger and his new bride move back here. Maybe we’ll teach Robot Mugger to play GoldenEye and send him to Portsmouth with the newlyweds.

12 Dias con Mugger - Dia 7

El Toreo De Tijuana

Once we exhausted all tourist possibilities in San Diego such as The Zoo, Gaslamp, Old Town and Seaport Village there was only one place left to explore…

South of the Border in Tijuana.

We crossed the borderline with much enthusiasm and hit the major Gringo attractions before noon. We had a couple margaritas, been serenaded and crooned by more than a few Mariachi bands… we'd been taken advantage of by retailers and brokers of overpriced souvenirs and merchandise very likely not made in Mexico. We did everything short of getting our Polaroid taken on a donkey.

And that’s when we saw the billboard with all it’s color and inviting-ness.. An advertisement for Bull Fights at the Plaza in downtown Tijuana. It involved leaving the other tourists behind, along with the gratuitously expensive margaritas and getting in cab. It involved a leap of faith and a little bravery…the kind of faith and bravery that you find at the bottom of your fourth margarita glass.

We pulled up to the bullring and the concerned cabbie reluctantly let us out. We purchased our ticket in the shaded part of the stands… it cost a couple extra pesos but we were riding first class south of the border. We settled in and before we knew it, vendors were walking through the stands selling ice cold Coronas for 75 cents. They also sold snacks that were either deep fried meat or vegetables with some peppers and salsa on top. We indulged with whatever was offered and it was all delicious. I even bought a Matador hat.

We didn’t know the rules of the Bull Fight, but what started out so beautiful and majestic ended with a dead bull bleeding to death and being pulled out of the ring by a chain hitched to a tractor. It was a little rough and for a minute or two we all sat there with our jaws dropped, pondering our new cultural experience. It was exciting and brutal, but there was nowhere else in Tijuana (or San Diego) where someone was going to continually bring us 75 cent Coronas, so we settled in. Some of us rooted for the Matador, some of us rooted for the Bull.

12 Days of Mugger - Day 8

Go West Young Vagabonds

In 2000 Kristen and I packed our stuff and moved out to California. I was going to be famous teleprompter-operator in Hollywood and Kristen would begin work for the Red Cross for whom she’s still with today. We lived in Burbank for several months before we heard that Mugger was being stationed out in San Diego to continue his pursuit of medicine. By this time, Kristen and I had Zero friends between us on the west coast, so we were beside ourselves with excitement to have some family nearby.

By the time it was all over we would wear out I-5 from San Diego to LA and vice versa. I still remember the first visit from Mugger to our little apartment in Burbank. With the exception of a few pub crawl visits to State College and graduations etc, we really hadn’t spent much quality time together since we were kids and I think I detailed what type of quality time that was in the earlier posts. Just before Mugger’s visit Kristen was making a grocery store run to Ralphs and asked me what he liked to eat. I told her he seemed to like fruit roll ups from what I remember.

We were new still new to LA so we explored much of the city together with Mugs. Malibu, Santa Monica, Universal Studios and any number of dive bars and pubs from Pasadena to North Hollywood.

An Officer & a Gentleman

Same could be said for San Diego. We’d take turns visiting each other on the weekends. The Navy put him up in a little place in San Deigo’s Motel Mile called The Vagabond Inn. It wasn’t much to look at, but this was over ten years ago and we were coming from a little one-bedroom apartment in Burbank, so it might as well have been The Ritz. We had a pool, Captain Morgan, a hot tub and an unlimited ice supply. We really needed nothing else. For about a year or two we were tourists in our own towns. A couple cans of Tecate with lime and a fruit roll up and we were the Kings of California. The final two photos below are of our infamous reenactment of An Officer & a Gentleman. The one shot is me asking Kristen if she ‘wants Jets?!!’ The other is obviously the final scene when Richard Gere whisks Debra Winger from her factory job to end the movie. The Vagabond Inn had cable, but clearly we didn’t need it…

The Grasshopper - Day 9

Buy me a Grasshopper Good Buddy?

I’m certain that within these high school and college years the best Mugger stories could be told, but the truth is we didn’t see each other much. Once the Lawrence Ankle-Biting Caravan moved south to Richmond it was only the occasional holiday that I saw my cousins. When I went to college, it wasn’t even that.

Looking at this picture to the right, I’m guessing by Mugger’s Theo Huxtable sweater and my combination of Hugo Boss sport coat and thrift shop t-shirt, it may have been early to mid-nineties. (93 or 94 maybe.) I don’t remember the reason for the gathering or the picture being taken, but apparently it was a rare enough occasion that someone though of snapping a photograph.

(On an unrelated fashion note, I still have that sport coat, much to my wife’s chagrin, …and Mugger has since donated all his Huxtable sweaters to his Father, who enjoys them thoroughly to this day.)

Like I said, I have little to no stories of Mugger’s High School exploits, but I’m sure AJ and the Midlothian crowd could fill in some gaps whilst we’re in Estes Park next week.

One story Mugger and I often tell is our first drink out together after he turned 21. I’ve only ever told this story aloud and it relies heavily on the pitch and vocal punch line, but we’ll see how it translates to the written word…

There were a number of places in South Wilkes-Barre I could have taken Mugger for a couple drinks to celebrate his 21^st birthday, but one of the more unique places was a little joint that our grandfather used to hang out at….it was called Boris’ Café. The kind of place where they changed the drapes from red to white in the spring and the old fellas tending bar wore tuxedo shirts and bow ties. It had its regular clientele and the median age was about 65-75 years old.

There was no place like it. It was South Wilkes-Barre meets Goodfellas and you could get a draft beer for 25 cents. 35 for the good stuff. I knew Mugger would get a kick out this place and since they knew our family, we were unlikely to be killed. We took a seat at the bar and settled in and ordered a couple drafts. We made our way to the drink-menu on the bar, which didn’t exceed a buck and a half for the most exotic mixed drinks.

And here is where we made our wrong turn. Both of us being still pretty young and mostly college beer drinkers at that time, we didn’t know our mixed drinks. We looked through the extended menu and for some uneducated reason settled on ordering two Grasshoppers. We had never heard of this drink. The bartender was a man that looked like he retired 25 years earlier. His name was Fast Eddie. This is not an embellishment, that was his name and he couldn’t hear worth a crap. That or he just couldn’t believe what these two young men were ordering before him. He took our order and quickly returned with two of the most girly green frosty drinks that could have been available on that bar top menu we studied so thoroughly.

We tasted our minty green crème de menthe cocktails as the embarrassment started to settle in. They were both cold and refreshing, but we just wanted them to disappear just the same.

It was about this time that a punchy tough looking dude stumbled into the bar. He was a local boxer from the area named Billy Murratto and went by the ring name Lightning Billy Murratto (this name is an embellishment by the way). This dude looked like he was hit in the face with a Toyota. He was looking for funding and some sponsorship for his next fight at the Scranton CYC and he was bending everyone’s ear at the bar. We didn’t understand a word the pug was saying and that was half the entertainment, as he sounded like a combination of Leon Spinks meets Lou Ferrigno, but he was fascinating and that’s when we took our eyes off of the prize. Instead of concentrating on making our Grasshoppers go away, we watched and listened to Lightning Murratto make his way down the bar. Some folks were giving him a couple bucks for his under-card bout just to move him along. As he got to us he was still slurring some gibberish about needing some extra cash to train etc, but it was all so hard to decipher….and then Lightning looked down at the bar-top inquisitively, eyebrow raised and in a voice that was as crystal clear and baritone as a Radio DJ, he pointed at our Grasshoppers and said, “What the F#@K is that?”

Whatever money we saved on our budget mixed drinks we ultimately gave away to Lightning Billy just to make him leave us alone, but the humiliating knockout punch was already delivered. We chugged the rest of our grasshoppers, nibbled on our fresh mint sprig garnish and moved on to the next whiskey bar. Our Grandfather Trevor would not have been proud of us that evening at Boris’ Café. We have never had another Grasshopper drink since that night.

Keep Your Eye on the Ball - Day 10

The Rise of the Ankle-Biters

I was the eldest kid in the family by a couple years. I didn’t belong in the smoke filled mushroom-clouded kitchen of the grown ups playing cards and drinking beer topped with black pepper. I didn’t want to be upstairs with now expanding pack of sibling and cousin agitators.

My Dad, at about this time started referring to this little mob as the ankle-biters and the primary ‘game’ I remember playing with my sister and cousins was called ‘Kill Jimmy.’ Anyone with kids or nieces or nephews know a variation of this game. It involves a closed bedroom door and a bunch of kids trying to kill each other by any means necessary. When an occasional dresser would fall or someone would cry in pain or hurt feelings there would be a disapproving voice at the bottom of the stairs followed by a short intermission.

Kill Jimmy was fun but it often spilled out of the house and could spontaneously commence at any given moment. In general, there is a complete unawareness that little people can cause pain to bigger people. I know this better now that I have an infant that touches me oh so gently on the face with her fingers and then follows it with an attempted fishhook through my lower lip.

One afternoon in Mountaintop when the ankle-biters were in their prime my Dad was taking us through the fundamentals of Wiffle Ball when young Mugger approached bearing the skinny yellow officially-licensed wiffleball bat. The bat was about as tall as him, but he was a wily coordinated dude even back then. He choked up on the bat as instructed, raised it above his shoulders, established his target and swung as hard as he could. By the time he was working through his follow-through, he had hit me in the groin about as hard as he could with the bat. Before I folded, I grabbed his face and threw him as far as I could. Before Mugger even hit the grass, my Dad grabbed my face and tossed me as far as he could. I think the lesson was to pick on someone your own size, or something like that, but after being double ambushed by both parties, big and small the moral of that lesson has always been lost on me.

This was Mugger’s (and my own) earliest known combat training.

Tomorrow

The Formative Years