Everything That Happened

to me and sometimes to other people

Month: September 2019

Public transport

By

On September 30, 2019

In Army Days, Early days, Family, Romance

Newark trolley, courtesy Al Mankoff’s Trolley Treasures

A few things that happened before I owned a car.

Writing this makes me realize I must really, really hate throwing up; otherwise, why would I write   about it so much? Do I remember every time I ever threw up? It might seem that way, but probably not. Anyway, here it comes…

Trolley car throw-up

Orange slices, courtesy Spangler Candy

My first memory of a public-transit event is toward the end of a trolley ride with my mother. I have eaten most, if not all, of a bag of candy orange slices, and I vomit them into the aisle, which fortunately is made of grooved wood to handle such events. I don’t feel sick beforehand, just surprised and embarrassed after. That orange mess sliding down into the wooden grooves is not a good memory, so I stick to candy spearmint leaves now, they’re green.

Eastern Airlines throw-up

Before my second summer trip to Michigan, my mother asks if I’d like to fly there this time. You bet I would! At about 11 years old, I have never been on a plane, and will fly from Newark to Toledo, which is across the state line from Uncle Bert’s farm in Temperance.

The year before, I went by train, leaving from New York Penn Station, where my mother approached and drafted a pleasant Midwestern couple to more or less keep an eye on me during the trip. They were indeed pleasant, and in the dining car at mealtime the husband explained to me that the money my mother had given me was New Jersey money, and only his Ohio money would be accepted on the train. I argued that he couldn’t possibly be correct, because it said “Federal Reserve” right on the alleged “New Jersey money” in my hand. He said there was more to it than that, and I finally gave in and let him pay for my meal. Thanks for the meal, Mr. Midwesterner, but I’m no rube.

Eastern Airlines junior pilot wings, courtesy bonanza.com

On the plane, the stewardesses are sweet; they know it’s my first time. They give me a set of Junior Pilot wings and tell me where the loo is, but perhaps to avoid the power of suggestion, they don’t mention anything about throw-up bags or the possible need for such a thing. Their mistake. About a half-hour into the flight I throw up, a lot, onto the carpeted aisle as I run to the loo. By the time I get back, it’s all cleaned up and they are still smiling, bless them. When I get to Toledo, I make the mistake of mentioning what happened, and get a ribbing from my cousins.

Sweating with the dance instructors

This one has more to do with waiting for public transportation than using it, but here it is anyway. I was going to call it “Dance Instructors Move into the Bus Stop”, but I didn’t think anyone would get the Jackie Gleason/TV Guide reference anymore.

There’s an Arthur Murray dance studio at the bus stop near my job at Kingsway. On Friday nights, Kingsway doesn’t close until ten o’clock, and sometimes I’ll see two or three Arthur Murray ladies already there when I get to the bus stop. They work until ten o’clock on most nights, not just on Friday; I guess that’s the nature of the dance instruction business. They are nice to look at, but too grown-up and glamorous for 16-year-old me to even think about.

Paid actor, courtesy kinglawoffices.com

A comic whose name I can’t remember said “Minimum wage is what they pay you because they’re not allowed to pay you any less.” When I was at Kingsway, the minimum wage was 75 cents an hour, equivalent to $7.00 an hour now. In my youthful view of economic justice, I consider myself eligible for the  employee five-finger discount, and have made use of it tonight. On top of the underwear I wore when I left the house  this morning is still more underwear, six new crewneck T-shirts. It’s a cold night, maybe 20 degrees, but I am toasty warm. After a while, I start wiping sweat off my face and worry that the ladies will think there is something wrong with me.

Girl on Greyhound

I am on leave and headed somewhere by Greyhound bus. There are other young guys in uniform aboard, one of them in the aisle seat ahead of mine, and at a rest stop I see him chatting up a girl. When we get back on the bus, I see he has persuaded the girl and his seatmate to switch seats, and she is now sitting next to him as they continue to chat.

Greyhound passengers, courtesy Pirelli .com

During the night something wakes me; I don’t know if it was a sound or her breath in my face. In the dim light I look directly into her eyes over the seatback in front. She straddles him, head over his shoulder, working her hips, and we stare into each other’s eyes as they screw.

Years later I wonder, what if I had brought my head forward and locked lips with her while all this was going on? Would it even have been possible, given the geometry of a Greyhound seatback? But, we shouldn’t fact-check  our fantasies. It would be sad to reject a fantasy just because it might be impractical.

I know she would have been into it.

Aunt Sweetie

By

On September 26, 2019

In Early days, Family

Drinks in Germany, 1945 – National WW II Museum

After absent-mindedly addressing a lady friend  as‘sweetie’, I thought about my own Aunt Sweetie, a Women’s Army Corps WW II veteran. Her real name was Mary Adeline, and she was my father’s sister.

Her mother was also named Mary Adeline. The family called the mother ‘Addie’, while the daughter was called ‘Sweetie’. While this might seem like a lack of imagination on someone’s part when naming the younger Mary Adeline, it was most likely a sign of love and respect for her mother.

Having straightened that out, at least to my own satisfaction, back to our regular programming…

Aunt Sweetie owned a share in a beach house on the Jersey shore, where she hosted a family get-together that included guests from my mother’s reserved, German side of the family, as well as guests from my father’s more outgoing Irish side.

By the end of the day, we had all come in from the beach and were having a casual meal at a long picnic table, most of us still in bathing suits. The grownups were enjoying some beer.

Just for the hell  of it, Aunt Sweetie put one hand under her arm and performed a short armpit-fart serenade. Those sounds fascinated me; it was a brand new way to make noise. On our ride home, the scandalized German faction spoke of little except Aunt Sweetie’s behavior. As far as I was concerned, I thought she was wonderful, and I couldn’t wait to get home and try it.

Diagram courtesy wikiHow, as “Wikipedia is an encyclopedic reference, not an instruction manual, guidebook, or textbook.”

Pop’s store

By

On September 24, 2019

In Hanging out, History

Up the hill one block from Vince Cucinotta’s store was Pop’s. Pop’s was barely wide enough for a sliding-top cold drinks case and a candy and cigar counter, with room for Pop on one side and a customer on the other. Pop was a sweet old man who resembled Pope John the 23rd of the future, and sold under-the-counter rubbers to kids who were afraid to ask for them at the drugstore. He called us all ‘Dollink‘ in his Greek accent and sold single Trojans for 50 cents each. Trojans then cost 50 cents for a 3-pack in the drug stores, but if you think Pop was getting rich at those prices, remember that his volume was low – nobody ever bought more than one at a time, and in the 1950’s, not very often. A just-in-case Trojan from Pop’s might last all the way through high school.

All that’s left

1945 packaging, adweek.com

“As Thin as a Shadow, As Strong as an Ox!”, courtesy adweek.com

At about 13 years old, I decided it might be a good idea to start smoking. I knew exactly what I wanted to start with, and I knew smoking was wrong, so Pop’s was the place to go. I put ten cents down on the counter, and in my best just-running-an-errand voice said, “My brother wants a stogie”, a stogie being a thin, lumpy, aromatic Italian girl cigar. When I got back to my third floor bedroom, I lit that baby up. I don’t think I inhaled, I just puffed and admired myself in the mirror. In a few minutes, I was dizzy, nauseous and turning green.

I questioned my own memory of  ‘turning green’ there, but thanks to Mike Naughton, via Quora.com, we have the following:

When we feel nauseated part of the initial physiologic response is vasodilation which causes relaxation of our peripheral arteries (face, fingers, and toes). This will make us flush, increase the mucous membrane secretions, and make us feel dizzy or light headed because of the drop in blood pressure. The homeostatic reflexive response is to bring the blood pressure back up by constricting the arteries through release of the “fight or flight” hormones. The face, lips, fingers, and toes then become cool and pale. People with pale complexions will look white(er) or green. Those with darker complexions will appear paler as well, especially in the lips and mucous membranes.

How it was supposed to look

A few troubled teens hung around Pop’s, not serious offenders, but mostly just neighborhood screw-ups who went to vocational school and got into minor scrapes with the law. Kids from Vince’s would walk up the hill occasionally to buy a balsa-wood glider or a rubber from Pop, but the only time I can remember any of Pop’s regulars coming down to our corner was for the annual post-holiday accidental Christmas tree fire.

Pop’s was always grubby and grimy; I don’t think I ever saw a girl or woman venture inside. Certainly my mother never set foot there until Pop retired and the place changed hands. The husband-and-wife new owners made a lot of changes – they washed the windows, they swept the floor, they cleaned the glass display case. However, it soon became clear that they were keeping the water bill down by not flushing the toilet except after Number Two. After patronizing the now-nameless store for a week because it was closer to the house, my mother realized that that faint background piss smell really was piss, and she never went back. She was furious, and said of such economizing, “That’s a Dirty Irish trick.”

Toscano cigars, courtesy Mr.kombrig

Balsa wood glider, courtesy kelvin.com

Credo, more or less

By

On September 20, 2019

In Musings, Religion, School, Teachers

My father was a Catholic, nominally. I don’t think he ever went to church as an adult. One of my aunts said when he did go to Mass as a child, he always managed to avoid the collection plate.

Similarly, my mother was a Protestant, nominally. I don’t think she ever went to church as an adult either. Her way of staying right with the Lord may have been simply to make sure I attended Sunday School. She accomplished this by finding neighbors who attended a nearby Protestant church and were willing to give me a ride each Sunday. She didn’t seem  fussy about which flavor of Protestant services I attended; I remember Methodist, Presbyterian and Baptist, depending on where we were living. Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Eick, pronounced “Ike”, of Linwood Place, for giving me a weekly ride to the Washington Street Baptist Church in your rumble-seated car, and for sometimes treating me to a second breakfast if I showed up for my ride too early.

Full immersion baptism, Chestnut Mountain Church, Flowery Branch, Georgia

I was baptized a Catholic at the age of one month, so even if the rules about who gets into Heaven are as stringent as I’ve heard from some Catholic sources, I remain eligible. In the Baptist church, baptism (full-immersion, y’all, Acts 8:38, Mark 1:5) is reserved for those “able to make a mature confession of faith”; most baptisms I’ve seen were of young people in their early teens or a little younger; certainly mature enough .

Somehow, the Baptists never got around to baptizing me; that’s probably just as well, because there are some doctrinal problems with being baptized twice; your mileage may vary. The closest I have come to professing the Baptist faith openly was having “BAPTIST” stamped on my army dog tags, along with my blood type, “O”.

Soon after I opened my first checking account, a  local radio station aired a feature story about an orphanage in Kearney (next to Newark) burning down, and soliciting contributions to rebuild. The fire sounded pretty devastating, and I had once written a book report on Oliver Twist, so I was ripe. I broke out my new checkbook and wrote Sacred Heart Orphanage of Kearney a check for something like five or ten dollars, not a trivial sum then. When my first bank statement arrived, I asked my mother to help me understand it. As we reviewed the half-dozen or so cashed checks, we came to the one to Sacred Heart, and she said “What’s this?!” I relayed the whole burnt-down orphanage story, which only seemed to anger her. Raising her voice just a little, she said “The Pope doesn’t need your money.” End of discussion.

I married a woman who was raised Catholic; this never posed a problem because she was not a churchgoer either. Back when Catholics were forbidden to eat meat on Friday, she ignored the rule; the only time it ever came up was once when we were out shopping – she said “It won’t feel right to eat meat on Good Friday”, and I said “Okay, let’s get fish then.” We started both our kids along the Catholic path of confirmation and first communion, because that way they can make up their own minds later on, right?

During a confirmation ceremony, the officiating bishop asks the candidates several questions from a predefined list. The kids get advance coaching in the questions and the correct answers from adult volunteers; those kids who have not attended parochial school find the questions and concepts more difficult. Despite my protests, I got volunteered into coaching my older son. To keep my own conscience clear while still following the study guide, my practice questions took the form “Now, if the bishop asks you ‘How does the Holy Spirit help us?’, what are you going to say?” On the day of the ceremony, I got some holy water sprinkled in my face as the bishop’s procession entered the church. It didn’t burn, so I guess that approach was okay.

Imagine this seven years older, green and much less shiny

One thing I did in high school was definitely a Bad Thing, religion-wise, as was confirmed by Miss Riley, our world history teacher. I had a ’47 Pontiac, and in the morning I might pick up a few friends, then, once at school, if I was not planning to stick around, ask “Who’s going in?”. Those remaining in the car would drive around aimlessly with me for the rest of the day, or at least until it was time for me to go to work. I was not at all familiar with the ceremonies of the Catholic Church, and one Ash Wednesday my friends wanted to get their ashes applied before school. I drove around town under their direction, but the churches all had long lines. Some of them decided to get out and line up anyway, leaving just me and one passenger. Knowing that the only excuse to arrive late to school that day was to enter through the attendance office with ashes on our foreheads, I suggested using the ashes in the car’s ashtray. I don’t recall whether my passenger joined in or not, but I decorated my forehead with a smudge similar to those I had seen walking the streets all morning and entered the school without difficulty. I should have thought to wash off the ashes as soon as I got past the attendance office, but did not. When I got to world history class, Miss Riley, who had attended this very high school with my mother and knew her well, took one look at my smudge and squawked “YOU’RE NOT CATHOLIC!”. She didn’t know, of course, that my ashes were fake; that would have been so much worse; she was angry at my assumed (by her) decision to present myself to a priest as Catholic to obtain an excuse to be late to school. She told me I should be ashamed, and to wash my face and think very hard about what I’d done. I was ashamed, or at least I am now, for disrespecting someone else’s religion; I did wash my face; and I do continue to think about religion, although not so hard any more.

Thoughts

Back in the day, my wife and I liked to explore old cemeteries. While admiring the statuary and mausoleum architecture of a Catholic cemetery in Westchester, we noticed off at one side two rows of tiny headstones. There were maybe 30 or 40 in all, each very close to the next, and marked with numbers instead of names. We wondered what that was all about, and one day my wife called to ask. The woman who answered asked her in turn “Are you Catholic, dear?”. Getting an affirmative, she explained that section was the unconsecrated part of the cemetery, and those were graves of unbaptized babies and stillbirths. I don’t know what we expected, but that made us sad.

Church dogma then said the unborn and unbaptized were consigned to Limbo., which Encyclopedia Britannica defines as “Limbo, in Roman Catholic theology, the border place between heaven and hell where dwell those souls who, though not condemned to punishment, are deprived of the joy of eternal existence with God in heaven.”

However, according to Wikipedia, “Recent Catholic theological speculation tends to stress the hope, although not the certainty, that these infants may attain heaven instead of the state of Limbo.” So that’s at least something.

The editor of the syndicated newspaper column The Ethicist once responded to a question from a lapsed-Catholic-gone-atheist reader who had been pressed into service as a pallbearer in a Catholic funeral ceremony. The main point of his response was “Your participation in the service was not hypocrisy; it was an act of compassion and affection for your family. To join in some parts of the service does not require you to join in every part.” I commented to the editor:

I liked what you wrote in your “pallbearer” segment. As a non-Catholic married into a large Catholic family, I have been in that situation several times. The trick when participating in any Catholic ceremony is to finagle things so as to never be seated in the first row. One can then take the cue from others to stand, sit, or slide forward in lieu of kneeling – without seeming disrespectful, and optionally without praying.

There is a bumper sticker that  says “God is who, evolution is how”, an attractive simplification. The real truth may be so deep and complex that no human has yet even imagined it.

Plainfield Courier-News, Nov 1, 1958

Alice Smeaton – teacher, ballroom dancer

By

On September 18, 2019

In History, Teachers

Our teacher, Miss Smeaton, got married! She was our fourth- grade teacher at Franklin School in East Orange. The kids all loved her, but none of them loved her more than I did.

One Monday morning she walked into our classroom a few minutes late. She looked so happy! She wrote a strange name on the blackboard: “Mrs. Niedenstein”. She told us she was married now, and that was her new name. She wrote it one more time up in a corner of the board so it wouldn’t get erased. She said some things about how nice her new husband was, and added that she was very happy, as if we couldn’t tell.

The class was quiet, and maybe a little confused at this change to their worldview. Speaking for myself, I think I was a bit jealous: would this interfere with my own relationship with the graceful Miss Smeaton? Actually, nothing changed for anyone – if anything, Miss Smeaton, I mean Mrs. Niedenstein, was nicer than ever. However, fourth grade came to an end, and we went on to fifth grade, with a teacher whose name I don’t recall, then on to sixth.

Part way through sixth grade, my family moved from East Orange to Orange, about a mile and a half between houses. Orange had more school days off than East Orange, and I used those extra days to visit Miss Smeaton in her classroom, where she found work for me tutoring a couple of the slower students. Can you imagine such a thing today? Those visits ended when the school year ended, and I never saw Miss Smeaton again.

Writing this 70 years later, I wondered how old she was when she married. Sadly, the way such research usually starts is with a look through the obituaries, and I found one for her husband and one for her. I also found something oddly affecting – I learned that her first name was Alice. I had never thought of Miss Smeaton as having a first name at all.

She and Norman were both about 40 when they married; probably his war service had put their lives on hold, like many others. After they retired, they lived in Ocean Grove for 24 years. Norman died there at 85, and Alice moved to Florida to be near her relatives. She died there at 95.

Kids never think of their teachers as having a life outside teaching, and I guess I’m no exception; I was surprised, and pleased, to read that “she was an accomplished ballroom dancer and won numerous awards in dancing competitions.”

So, here’s to you, Alice Smeaton Niedenstein, ballroom dancer. I hope your last days were peaceful and happy.

5-27-2002 legacy.com

9-4-1992, Asbury Park Press

Franklin School, now the Whitney Houston Academy

Cats v. Smithee Family

By

On September 12, 2019

In Family

When I was growing up, we generally had a cat in the house. I don’t know where we got them or to which of us they belonged; if a cat can “belong” to anyone, probably to my grandmother. I mentioned elsewhere that I “convinced my grandmother not to throw the cat out the window”, so it’s probably a good idea to explain that, so you don’t think she was crazy.

My grandmother lived with us, “us” being me, my brother and our mother, as long as I can remember. After my father left, my mother went back to work, taking the bus to Newark every day, starting from when I was about seven. I give her much credit, it was a struggle for her, but we always had a roof over our heads and coal in the bin, and I never went to bed hungry.

With my mother at work, Grandma became my de facto “caregiver”, a good word, but one that  always sounds to me like Newspeak. I often argued with her about small things, sometimes just to have an argument. Once, exasperated by my logic, she told me I’d make a good lawyer,  and that was not meant as a compliment. She made my school bag lunches, usually a sandwich on white bread of Spam, or deviled ham, or if I wasn’t lucky, olive loaf. Those are the only ones I remember, there must have been others.

Hobo sign, courtesy subversify.com

Behind our house on Berkeley Avenue was a sort of service alley, and one day a hobo came to our back door to ask for something to eat. Grandma gave him a glass of milk and made him a sandwich to eat on the back porch. He thanked her kindly and left. In a while she sent me to see if he had written anything on the back gate. He had drawn a crude cat, which I later found out tells other hoboes “A kind-hearted woman lives here”. A practical woman too, she had me wash it off.

One day while playing with our first cat, a gray-and-black tabby like #1 above (not the actual cats, heh), I decided his whiskers were unnecessary and cut them off, leaving about a half-inch. The cat did not object, and we continued to play. That night, after my mother had been home for a while, she asked “What’s wrong with the cat?”, and after a moment or two figured it out. It turns out that cat whiskers do have a purpose; as it was explained to me that night, they tell a cat whether he can fit through a narrow space.

(I’ll interject here that to my knowledge, neither of our cats had a gender or a name; they were referred to simply as “the cat”.)

My brother left a large paper grocery bag lying open in the middle of the living room. Cat number two (see #2 above), an orange tiger-striped tabby, spotted the bag, circled it, then went inside to take a nap. My brother said “Watch this”, grabbed the bag, closed it, and shook it vigorously. When he set the bag down again, the cat burst out of the top and headed for the other end of the house. After a while, the cat returned, circled the bag, and got back in. Cats are either adventurous or dumb; my vote is for adventurous.

One evening there was a family discussion about how cats are always able to land on their feet after a fall (pretty much true). Perhaps looking to start an argument with my grandmother, I said that seemed unlikely. In rebuttal, she picked up cat #2, walked over to our second-floor window, and said “Watch.” I yelled “NO, GRANDMA!” and ran over to save the cat. She laughed and set the cat down on the floor. Maybe she’s where I get my sense of humor.

As will happen, Grandma got older, and the family got her her own caregiver, a longtime family friend, a sweet woman named Laura who stayed with us when my mother was at work. After a while, Grandma went to live with Aunt Mabel, who could stay with her all day; next came the nursing home; then she died.

When I went back to school after the funeral, the girl who sat next to me in Latin II, Filomena, asked in her haughty way where I had been for three days. When I told her, after a second or two she burst into tears. She had never considered the possibility of losing her Nana.

Fort Dix, about 1951. Aunt Mabel, brother Dick, Mom, Grandma, me

Pep talk

By

On September 9, 2019

In Advice, History, NYC

Woman Holding a Fruit, Paul Gauguin

In the tiled passageways connecting New York City subway lines are colorful posters advertising businesses and products. One endorses The New School, a progressive university in Manhattan with a goal of supporting continuing education. Above a lush Gauguin painting, it counsels “IT’S NOT TOO LATE”, and reminds  commuters that “At 35, Paul Gauguin was a stockbroker.” In the margin, someone has written “At 35, Mozart was dead.”

Conservation

By

On September 9, 2019

In Family, Health, Working

Courtesy filtercorp

When I worked at the Foodland in Elizabeth, there was a Greek lunch counter across the street; I was there at least once a day. I don’t normally pay that much attention to how things are cooked, but the tub, or container, or whatever you call it, of hot oil for French fries was right in front of me, and I noticed the oil got a little darker each day, then started over fresh on Fridays.

They used that fresh Friday oil all week, that’s why it kept getting darker. After a week, they used it to cook their Friday fish special. When I told my wife about this, she said “That’s disgusting.” I couldn’t say, I never ordered the fish special.

Sergeants

By

On September 8, 2019

In Army Days, Scams

I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

In our busload of newly-sworn recruits, most have volunteered for the draft, to get their military obligation over with and move on with their lives. I have signed up mainly out of boredom, and once thought I might even put in 20 years and retire. Our training sergeants immediately begin working to break us down and resocialize us to army life, starting with the bus trip from the reception center to our new home in the E-company barracks. Sergeant Santiago is our host on the bus ride; he is a  bantam-weight tyrant who does his best to terrorize us.

Civilian operating floor buffer, courtesy rentequip.org

After keeping our platoon awake until four in the morning hand-waxing the barracks floor to prepare for an inspection, our cadre of trainers have an idea – if we each pitch in $2, we can buy a used electric floor- buffer from a place they know of in town. They can get it right now; we can owe them until payday. We’re all for it of course, we don’t want to go through that again, and we buy a buffer that’s probably been sold to a dozen earlier training cycles.

courtesy thecmp.org

We learn to march, salute, and fire the M1 rifle, good fun that last one. However, I a become a victim of “M1 thumb”, a painful but temporary disfigurement.

Loading the M1 Garand rifle, courtesy m1-garand-rifle.com

During basic training we are out in the field for a week, sleeping in tents. During drill one rainy day, a few of us sneak off into a tent. Sergeant Johnson rips open the tent flap and threatens us with court martial and prison for “buggin’ out” of duty.

While drinking watered-down beer at the Post Exchange, we hear that one of our sergeants, a lifer, has just signed up for three more years. Since he seems otherwise normal, we ask him why. He asks where else could he get drunk and lose all his money every month, yet still have a place to sleep and three meals a day?

Our oldest sergeant is a grizzled Korean War vet. Overseeing our cleaning of the latrine, he spots a recruit trying to clean a toilet bowl while standing as far away from it as possible – with his scrub-brush extended, he looks like he’s fencing. His battle is with one particularly stubborn fleck of matter stuck tight to the porcelain. The sergeant reaches in and scrapes it off with his thumbnail. To the groans around him, he rhetorically asks, “Did j’ever see a pile of rotting corpses?”

Some of us go on to Advanced Infantry Training, AIT, and a new set of sergeants and officers.

Sergeant Kolikowski gets word from home that his brother has been murdered. He goes to the battalion armory and signs out a M1911 .45 caliber pistol. He’s gone for a week, then returns and checks the weapon back in. Nothing is ever said about his absence.

We are taught to use the bayonet in offense and defense, no rules, kill or be killed. We drive it into a dummy, we pivot our rifles to bring a butt stroke to a dummy chin, we thrust and parry. Sergeant Doherty doesn’t think I’m trying hard enough; he braces himself and shouts in my face, “Come on Smithee, try to kill me!” It’s hard to say why, but caught up in all the make-believe bloodshed, I make a genuine effort to kill him by stabbing him in the face. He’s prepared and fast enough to move out of the way, but it’s close, very close; he is surprised  and calls for a smoke break.

A few days later, he tells me I’m going on a work detail with him. Several of our barracks’ light bulbs are burned out, and it’s not easy to get replacements for such things in the army. Our mission is to drive a borrowed Jeep over to a currently vacant barracks and remove its light bulbs. Despite what his name would suggest, Sergeant Doherty is black, and I think my presence is partly to inoculate him from suspicion when visiting an empty barracks. Or, maybe he just wants the company, I don’t know. We stride in looking like we are on official army business; we gather a good number of bulbs; we leave. Mission accomplished.

One day our company commander gathers 20 or so recruits into what we might today call a focus group. It is surprisingly touchy-feely, and at one point he asks if there are any problems he should know about. It’s not like me to pass up an opportunity to complain, and I raise my hand and say there are two problems I know about, a small one and a larger one. I give the trivial one first – during breakfast, the sugar dispensers run out and don’t get refilled, so the second half of the company to arrive has no sugar for their coffee. The larger problem is that we are not getting enough to eat; half the time we leave the mess hall still hungry. He asks if anybody else feels the same way; almost every hand goes up. Looking angry, he promises to look into it.

Here I’ll mention something I saw once when on KP (kitchen police: cleanup and other grunt work), and didn’t give any thought. A civilian truck pulls up behind the mess hall and the cooks load on 8 or 10 bulk food items; a case of canned peaches is one that sticks in my mind.

In a few days there’s plenty of food, more than plenty, the servings overload our trays. The scam that scammed too deeply has been ended. As I dump almost half a chicken into the garbage can, the mess sergeant asks me sarcastically if I’m getting enough to eat.

 

6,350,400 cans of beer on the wall…

By

On September 3, 2019

In Family, History, NYC, NYPD, School, Working

My mother had connections with New Jersey politicians and businessmen through her position at the Newark Athletic Club. Among them were the officers of People’s Express Trucking, and she got me a summer job with People’s the year I turned 17. Once, she had thought she might get me an appointment to West Point through the same connections, but that dream disappeared when I started screwing up in high school.

As background, problems at Schlitz’s Milwaukee brewery have impacted production, and the company is shipping, by rail, a few million empty beer cans for filling. The role of People’s Express is to get the cans off the freight cars, onto trailer trucks, and then to the local brewery. My role, and that of several other youths, is to do the actual work.

International Harvester, Cars-from-UK.com

The first day, we meet with our crew chief at the People’s Express offices on Raymond Boulevard. Three of us will drive an International Harvester pickup truck daily to the railroad yards in Williamsburg, Brooklyn; the others will drive in with the crew chief in his car. I volunteer to drive the truck,  I’ve had my license for almost three months now, I like driving and have lots of confidence. (I was unaware that by law one must be 18 to drive in New York City, the issue never came up.)

The Williamsburg rail yards are about 15 miles away: across the Jersey swamplands, through the Holland Tunnel, across lower Manhattan, over the Williamsburg Bridge, then on through Brooklyn to the yards.

Red and green together mean yellow

Traffic lights in Manhattan come in two colors , red and green. If the red comes on during a green, that’s the same as a yellow, act accordingly. The system worked fine; I don’t know why they changed it.

The Williamsburg bridge is old and narrow, it was built for horse-and-buggy traffic. It’s difficult to drive through the tighter spots without scraping a running-board; I do that about once a week.

On the return trip to Newark, the traffic is generally worse.

Canal Street across Manhattan is always stop and go;, when it’s bad we seem to tie for speed with the pedestrians. One day we are neck-and-neck with a gorgeous woman walking with a man, they get ahead, we get ahead, as we breathe teenage sighs and make comments among ourselves about her ass. Uh-oh, he’s heard us! He walks up to the passenger window. What if he has a knife?!  He speaks… “Would you boys like to fock her?” Relieved, we explain that no, we have to get back to Newark.

One day we are stuck inside the Holland tunnel for so long that we unzip and piss into the vents along the curb.

In the rail yards, freight cars are jockeyed around to align their center doors with our work platform. There are 48 empty 12-ounce Schlitz cans in each cardboard case. After we build a pallet of 35 cases (seven tiers, five cases per tier, 3 x 2 then 2 x 3, alternating), we use a pallet jack to get it into a trailer, 28 pallets per trailer; lather, rinse, repeat, it isn’t rocket science. I think we filled about three trailers a day.

Not beer, but you get the idea

We fall into a routine; on our morning break we have grape soda and pastries or pie. At lunch, we buy sandwiches and more grape soda, or beer, then sit on the end of an East River dock to look over at the Manhattan skyline or watch what floats by. A visitor from England once said about the East River, “All you Americans seem to do is defecate, fornicate, and eat oranges.” I would have said bananas.

We are sometimes drunk. The college guy has a ‘bit’ he does, I guess it’s a fraternity thing. He stands in the middle of Kent Avenue, drops his pants, and shouts “I KNOW ABOUT THAT, LADY, BUT WHAT ABOUT THIS?” Near the end of the summer he falls out of a freight car and breaks his arm.

Our truck has an on-the-floor gear shift, nothing new to me, but I’ve been using it wrong. Believing it’s a standard H pattern, I think I am shifting 1-2-3, 1-2-3 like normal people do, when actually I’ve been shifting 2-3-4, 2-3-4 for two weeks. So far, I’ve never needed reverse. One day they send me to get something at the hardware store. I park behind someone, and when I try to back up to leave, what is reverse for normal H people is actually low-low for me, and I keep creeping up on the car ahead. I finally go back inside and ask for help. The guy behind the counter comes out to show me, and I learn that I also have to push the stick down at the same time to get over and down to R. Ohh, I say, thanks! When I get back to the yards no one is the wiser.

We work six days a week and when the loadings seem to get behind, we are asked to come in on a Sunday. People’s Express manager Mr. Bruno drives up in his top-of-the-line baby-blue Cadillac to help us, parking  next to our platform. He’s wearing sandals and some sort of crotchless wrap-around terry loincloth, and that is all. Every time he bends over,  his nuts hang out. Two NYPD officers arrive, they see Mr. Bruno’s outfit and look at one another. They are here on a blue-law complaint, non-emergency labor is not allowed on Sunday. Mr. Bruno tries to talk them out of it, but oddly enough gets no respect; we pick up and go home.

We finally run out of empty cans, but there is still some summer left. People’s is nice enough to transfer the crew to the Continental Can Company, which I guess is some sort of sister company that shares directors with People’s. Continental Can, whose logo of three nested C’s can be found everywhere, is located in Paterson, New Jersey. Here, we are introduced to the Steam Jenny.

Part 2: My summer of Jenny

Modern pressure cleaner, used. Courtesy Auctions International

 

A 1950s-era steam jenny burns kerosene to boil water to make steam to clean dirty trucks and whatever else. It’s dangerous, and if you don’t get burned by steam, or knocked off your ladder by the nozzle kickback, it might blow up because you neglected some element of its care and feeding. Attention, attention must be paid to such a machine; this is drummed into our heads over and over by a wizened yard worker who seems genuinely afraid of the thing. Jeez, we get it, enough! Maybe he’s seen some steam-jenny carnage in his day.

We train by using the jenny to blast steam up and down the sides of a particularly dirty trailer; we use a housepainter’s ladder to get on top and clean there too. The company finds enough jenny work for us to last out the summer; we are careful, and somehow we survive.

From Google, top answer to steam jenny safety tips

People also ask

Can a pressure washer cut your finger off?

Because he received near immediate treatment at the emergency room he was able to keep his index finger, although some of its function was lost. It doesn’t matter if the fluid is water, grease or paint – all can cause permanent damage and even amputation when injected at high pressure.

Through the summer, we have been paid as grown men; we even get  time-and-a-half for overtime. Those paychecks spoil me for going back to school: why return to pointless boredom when I can be earning money instead? I don’t attend school very much during my senior year, and I drop out towards the end. I do stop in to pick up my yearbook, though, and years later I have an observant visitor who wonders why no one ever signed it. That’s a long story, I say.

How I fought Hitler

By

On September 1, 2019

In Early days, History, School

4.2.7

When I was born the war hadn’t started yet, but Hitler was already well known and widely hated. Fighting him would come naturally, even to little kids. Fortunately, after the war ended, Hitler was forgotten, and his name never mentioned again.

Here’s how I did it.

How I fought Hitler – Starting when I was in kindergarten or maybe first grade, we won the war by bringing in peach pits and tin cans. As the teachers explained it, peach pits were baked into charcoal and used in gas mask filters; tin cans were melted down into tanks. After both ends of the can were cut off and placed inside, I got to flatten my family’s tin cans by jumping onto them off a kitchen chair. Back then, cans were made of tin-plated steel, not the cheesy aluminum they use today. In my teen years, it was a benchmark  of strength to be able to fold a beer can in half with just one hand.

The U.S. paid for the war by selling war bonds. They sold for $18.75, and could be cashed in for $25.00 ten years later (that’s 2.9%). War savings stamps were sold as a way for kids to participate in the war as well. At my school, we were each given a booklet to be filled with 10-cent war savings stamps, with the goal of saving up enough to trade in for a war bond one day. I don’t recall the exact stamp-buying procedure, but if you showed up without your dime on the scheduled buy-and-paste day, teacher was not happy.

How I fought Hitler, part 2 – Here is a link to my recollections of the day the war was over, along with some other early childhood memories. Apologies for some rough language further on, but that Happened too.

How I fought Hitler, part 3 – I didn’t find out about this last way until 25 years afterwards. After my first son was old enough to be toilet trained, I asked my mother if she had any ideas on the ‘when’ and ‘how’. When the subject of ‘aiming’ came up, she became uncomfortable – she had always disapproved of the method, but admitted that when training me, my father had made it a game by having me pretend Hitler was in the toilet.

Nimm das, mein Führer!

Enough said.

Austrian war bonds ad, WW I

 

 

 

 

 

Thinking ’bout an invasion

 

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