The Story of Aught

Don "Aught" Palen
&
His famous blue jacket

A big, stocky man
Six foot plus
A fine athlete in baseball and tennis...
Maybe not golf

A genius at music trivia
He can trace session musicians
At least 6 groups back
With no effort 

An extraordinary collector of albums
He has a good sized, two story home
Where at least half the space,
(The entire upstairs?)
Including a big chunk of garage is taken up
With vinyl, tapes, cd’s, posters and on and on

It has to be one of the largest
Most comprehensive
Collections in existence

He also has a good size (some would say great) heart
He looks for and emphasizes positive features
In every person he meets
He is a sentimentalist of the first degree
Who clings to 'the way we were' with steadfast devotion

Of course he has some eccentricities, as do most of us
His include a propensity to tell or email a joke
(... and yes Virginia, some are extremely lame, moldy, or both)
Every time he communicates with someone

Hanging out with some Texas pals

Be they friend or foe

A Schenectady raised patriot
He served a full career in the US Air Force Medical Service Corps
Rising from the enlisted ranks to become a Lieutenant Colonel

He has a propensity to wear
An (antique?) blue sport coat
With a hue we most often see
On an Easter egg
He also once sported a mullet
Long after the rest of his hair
Had bid him a fond adieu'.

He has a well deserved reputation for wearing outrageous outfits
On golf courses
His standard is set on this objective...
The more conservative the golf course
The more outrageous his outfit
Likely an old carry over from military "Shock and awe" strategy
He failed to learn in Squadron Officer School

Finally, and after living in Texas
So close to the border for so many years
He shaved his head

Collaborating with Lady Gaga

I believe he did this in an effort
To resemble a rare breed
A Mexican Hairless
And blend in better
But I have not been able to confirm this on Snopes,
Truth or Fiction, or Urban Legends

When he played baseball
And he played it well
He favored a double "00" as his uniform number
Another sign that he wasn't planning to take anything too serious

Recalling this some years ago
Right at the turn of the century, 2,000 in fact
I nicknamed him "Double Aught"
Later shortened simply to "Aught"
You see the connection right?

You can find Aught in some unlikely places today
Such as in performance with Lady Gaga
With certain cowboys

Having a frosty with the Pope of Texas

And with other Texas folks
Including the Pope of Texas
Okay, okay... he's the Pope
Of the rest of the world too

Aught's actual name is
Don Palen
An extraordinarily good man
He is married to a wonderful lady,
Andrea
I'm guessing close to 50 years
The two of them together
Andrea is also from the Schenectady area

Aught has two great sons
One; Sean, an MS, and former inner city math teacher (a hero of mine)
The other; Mark, a PhD and professor at Exeter (another hero of mine)

Aught is my brother...from another Mother