ME: Are you having a memorial day celebration today?

NICK: Tomorrow.

ME: What are they going to do there?

NICK: They’re going to have an orchestra of some kind. Music of some kind. Some singing, whatever.

ME: An orchestra and some singing?

NICK: When I say the orchestra, that’s a single. A guy that comes with his guitar or a – this guy tomorrow plays a guitar and has his own keyboard. So then he sings songs, you know, and people are supposed to follow him, you know.

ME: Do they follow him?

NICK: Well we try to sing with him.

ME: Do a lot of people sing?

NICK: Not very many. Not very many, no.

ME: Do you sing along with him? Why don’t you sing, you love to sing.

NICK: Yeah, but my voice is going astray.

ME: Your voice hasn’t gone astray.

NICK: My voice has gone astray, that’s for sure. So I just try to listen. Some of the entertainers that we have here are, are not too enjoyed by me.

ME: Why is that?

NICK: So after I eat, I listen to a song or two then I leave.

ME: Why aren’t they enjoyed by you?

NICK: Well, you know, their voices sometime are real erratic.

ME: LOL.

NICK: And then they’re playin’ songs that I never heard. So that doesn’t sit with me very well. So I get up and leave.

ME: Well I guess that shows them. Okay.

NICK: So then I’d do the same thing for Teddy if Teddy was playing something that I didn’t care for, I’d leave.

ME: I’ll make sure he knows that.

NICK: (LAUGHS)

ME: You’re a tough crowd.

NICK: That rock ‘n’ roll stuff.

ME: You don’t like the rock ‘n’ roll?

NICK: Some of it, you know. That bang crash bang gets on my nerves. I can’t…I can’t… I have trouble hearing, but I sure don’t have trouble hearing them.

ME: (LAUGHS)

NICK: Because I’m holdin’ on to my ears and, not wanting to hear what the hell they’re singing. If that’s what they call singing sometime. But I’m the old man from Steubenville with Dean Martin and Perry Como and all those fellows, you know. So that’s – like Carole King. I like to hear her sing because she sings mellow ballads and that’s what I like.

ME: Got it. I’ll let Carole King know that, too.

NICK: Yeah. But some of those gals that get up there and start screaming on the top of their goddamned lungs and I cover up their ears and I say, “Oh my God I can’t stand it.” They’re supposedly singing, but shouting, screaming. I want to stop right there. Maybe I’m not square. I’m apparently not square.

ME: No, apparently you ARE square.

NICK: Yeah, because they are way out in left field somewhere when I’m still at the home plate.

ME: Well there you go, Father.