Download: Ralph J. Palazzo
- Posted on June 29, 2014
- By Dottie Palazzo
- In the category Family Life
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I love to read Kate Murphy’s “Download” column in The New York Times. Today she wrote about an interview with Dale Chihuly. While reading it I got a great idea. Here goes:
Reading: Ralph reads the comics every day. When I asked which was his favorite, he said, “Oh, that old guy” which turned out to be Crankshaft by Tom Batiuk and Chuck Ayers. He also is a fan of Sue Grafton’s mystery series.
Listening: “Midnight Train to Georgia” by Gladys Knight and Pips. For years that was the only CD in his car. He also loves the music from the film Mamma Mia!
Watching: Bob Barker’s old show, which is now hosted by a Clevelander Drew Carey, The Price is Right. He recently added The Big Bang Theory to his favorites. He watches those two alone.
Following: For this one Dale Chihuly replied, “To be honest, I’m not a tech kind of guy – I still prefer to use a simple flip phone.” Ralph too, except he doesn’t even want a cell phone. We are constantly arguing about that. I don’t want him driving around without a cell phone. What if he got in an accident or got lost! But he does follow his girls – Robin, Grace and Claire – on Facebook.
Eating: His favorite restaurant is Frankie’s on Center Ridge in Westlake. Their Italian Wedding Soup is the best. We go there once or twice a week. He loves the girls who work there, Nancy, Kandi, Chris and Morgan and they like him. Frequently when they ask if there is anything else he would like, he replies, “You could go out and wash the windows on my car.” They never do more than laugh. But maybe we go there so often to wear them down. Ralph, I don’t think that is ever going to happen.
Collecting: Pez dispensers. He has been collecting them for years. But not the candies. He eats them right away. And Native American bear fetishes. He started that collection when I brought a tiny turquoise bear home from a Lynn Andrews retreat in Chicago in the early 1990s. I thought it was mine but turned out to be his. Next time you come to visit, ask him to show you his 50-some bears.
Retracting: This was a Chihuly question about his beautiful yellow and white 1958 Ford Fairlane 500 Skyliner. We don’t have a Ford Fairlane. But that reminded me of one of Ralph’s dreams. Driving on I-90 in Westlake, you pass a three-story building with lots of windows and a bank of garage doors on the ground floor. Every time Ralph sees that building he says we should buy it and turn it into our home. “We could drive our cars into our living room just like Dan Tanna.”
Robin
I have been such a fan of Sue Grafton mysteries for so long that years ago I gave Daddy a couple of the first books for Christmas, I think. A is for Alibi, and B is for something-of-other.
After a little while I asked him if he liked them. He said he was in the middle of the first one, and he had recently been surprised to discern that the main character Kinsey Millhone was a woman. He said that everything about her is so masculine, he just assumed the character was male until one scene when Kinsey grudgingly puts on her one obligatory dress for an occasion, at which point he stopped and thought about it, and concluded Kinsey must be a woman.
I’ve wondered since then several times if he liked the books and kept reading them, and now I know.
Dottie Palazzo
Thanks, Robin, for the comment.
I forgot one thing. Under Watching I should have included that Ralph’s favorite film is Ground Hog Day. That is a good thing since Robin gave it to him two Christmases in a row. Or was it three?