Everything That Happened

to me and sometimes to other people

Category: Family

Brushes with the law

By

On October 15, 2019

In Family, Hanging out, NYPD

These are some police encounters/interactions that I’ve had over the years. I hope this piece doesn’t come off as anti-cop; I’ve had many positive encounters with the police along with the negative ones, which are easier to remember. Society needs cops, and I am the first to call for the water cannon during large-scale bad behavior.

I wish I could say “at least I never got arrested”, but a scam in Clarksville, Tennessee spoiled my record. The cops there were only doing what the town demanded of them:  bringing in more revenue.

Iron Claw Wrist Cuff with leather holster, courtesy liveauctioneers.com)

At about eight years old, I was in Newark Penn Station with my father, who was talking to a cop. I don’t know who initiated the conversation, but I doubt it was my father. More likely, the cop came over because his Spidey-senses spotted a drunk. I didn’t pay any attention to what they were talking about, but while they talked, I studied the cop’s holster and gun, and the other equipment attached to his belt. I asked him what the thing with the handle was for. I don’t remember if he told me, but he did show me, right there in front of my father.

The Iron Claw Wrist Cuff has a locking ratchet; when the handle is pulled up, the claw gets tighter. The only pictures I have seen of the claw in action show it as a come-along restraining device encircling the subject’s wrist. However, the demonstration I received was of an “off-label” use, as a tool of torture. In this usage, the claw is closed on the wrist like a letter C, with one arm of the claw closing down on the upper side, between the radius and ulna bones, and the other arm digging into the pressure point underneath. Try grabbing one wrist with your other hand, fingers on top, tip of the thumb digging in hard underneath. Hurts, doesn’t it? Now imagine that grip made of steel. Oh, and the claw’s  handle can be twisted sideways for increased pain. All in good fun, just showing this kid how it works. Hug your babies tonight, officer. Hope you enjoyed it.

When I was in Cub Scouts, at maybe nine or ten years old, they took our pack on a field trip to the Bloomfield Police Department; it might have been East Orange but I’m pretty sure it was Bloomfield. In particular, I remember they showed us the cells; I believe there was an implied threat there of what could happen if we were not good citizens. They also took our fingerprints, sort of an interesting process to watch back in the days before you could see it done on TV twice a week. They made and retained for themselves a set from each of us. The reason they gave was “In case you get lost”, but what they really meant was either, “In case you are ever so hideously mutilated that you are unrecognizable”, or, more likely, “In case you grow up to burglarize the house of somebody important enough to warrant a full investigation”. A few years later I mentioned the fingerprinting to someone who said, “Oooo, FBI knows who you are now, better not do anything!”, implying that I might be the type to maybe “do something” some day. The army took my fingerprints too, so I guess the FBI has a double set.

One 4th of July, my high-school buddies and I had some firecrackers, nothing big or dangerous, just those little ones about two inches long that come strung together in a pack of 50 and go “bang” loud enough to make anyone who is unprepared jump. We were setting them off on the curb in front of my house, sometimes putting one under a tin can to see how far it would fly. We only had one or two packs, so we lit them one at a time to make them last.

(When we were younger, we lit them with slow-burning “punks”, skinny foot-long sticks of compressed sawdust, but there was no need for punks this year, since at least one of us always had a cigarette going.)

Anyway, one of the neighbors, probably the constant complainers from two doors down, called the police. When they arrived, one cop explained (as if we didn’t know) that fireworks were dangerous and illegal, and that they had to confiscate ours and “destroy” them, that’s the word he used. I have to give them credit – they destroyed our firecrackers right then and there, by driving two doors down the street, lighting the whole string at once, dropping them into the gutter and driving away.

I got a speeding ticket on Park Avenue in East Orange when I was 17; I know I was 17 because one condition to resolve the ticket was that I bring a parent to court so the parent could receive a lecture also. My mother was annoyed at first, but changed her tune when  “The judge looked just like Gregory Peck!”

The Glen Ridge police once gave me a speeding ticket for doing 38 in a 35 zone on my way to work. Glen Ridge didn’t want kids driving crappy old cars through their classy town.

Traffic stop, courtesy law offices of Hart J. Levin

Other classy towns that didn’t want kids driving through were the Caldwells, several towns in North Jersey. We would cruise around the area aimlessly, then maybe stop for burgers. One night we were driving around, four kids in the car, not speeding or anything, when the cops pulled us over. They explained there had been a warehouse break-in and burglary in the next town, and the night watchman had been knocked out. They asked what we were doing in the area and made us get out of the car so they could look us over. There was no search. They were satisfied and let us drive off. Next night, different car, different guys (except for me) out cruising in the same area, stopped by the same two cops. One comes up to the window and explains about a break-in and burglary in the next town, night watchman got knocked out. I asked him if it was the same night watchman that got knocked out the day before. They took a closer look at us, then said to keep moving. No apology was offered, and we didn’t expect one.

My friends and I generally hung out on the corner by Vince’s grocery store. Vince’s  neighbors were mostly our own parents, aunts and uncles, so there were few objections to us being there. Some neighbors did object, though. One of them was Angelo, a special cop who lived on the second floor of the building  next door. He had a new baby, so he was stretched pretty thin, and wanted us to keep the noise down. I don’t think we were ever noisy; it was just conversation; the boombox hadn’t been invented yet.

One day Angelo came out on his porch and shouted down to us to be quiet, adding that he was a cop. I knew he was only a special cop, and muttered “Let’s see your badge”, more as an aside to the group than directly to him. He went back inside, and a moment later was downstairs, walking up to me with a .45 automatic. He cranked the slide and pointed it in my face from about two feet away, saying “THIS is my badge. Now get out of here!” That was a tough argument to counter, so I turned around and started walking home, followed shortly by everyone else. I still remember how big the hole in the front of that thing looked from up close. I don’t know if Angelo ever got hired as a real cop, but I hope not.

When I worked at Foodland, employees were expected to keep an eye out for shoplifters. If we saw someone leaving without paying, we were supposed to intercept them, then bring them back inside to sign a confession form in which they promised never again to enter the store. I didn’t try very hard to catch any, but one Sunday I spotted a particularly egregious case. Right in front of me, without even looking around to see if anyone was watching, a fiftyish woman picked up a chunk of expensive cheese and put it into her purse. I approached her as she was leaving the store, told her I knew what she had taken and asked her to follow me back to the office. (Looking back, I am ashamed of being involved  in this apprehension program. I wasn’t trained as a police officer. If stores have a shoplifting problem, they need a paid security guard walking the aisles to deter it, not employees stopping people outside after it happens .)

She ignored me and kept on walking. Stupidly, I grabbed a nearby clerk and told him to come with me. I didn’t have a plan – we just followed her,  with me occasionally entreating her to come back to the store. So, here’s the picture, a woman of a certain age wearing a Persian-lamb coat is being followed closely down the sidewalk by two young men wearing supermarket whites. My lack of a plan was resolved when a  police car took interest, and after hearing our stories brought all three of us to the police station. After some conflicting explanations, the woman and I were eventually given a court date, a Thursday. When I explained to my bosses where I’d be the next Thursday, they said I’d have to take Thursday as my day off; in other words, they weren’t going to pay for my court time. I said in that case I wouldn’t testify, and they said that was fine. The punchline? My shoplifter turned out to be the aunt of one of the owners.

Driving home from work one Sunday evening, I was pulled over while headed north on Route 9 in Elizabeth. I had a ’51 Lincoln at the time, which at nine years old looked more like a hoodlum car than a luxury one. I had no idea why I was stopped. The officer, an older gent, asked if I knew the speed limit there; I replied 45 and he said no, it’s 35, but you were doing 45 exactly. I think he liked that at least I was observing my own imaginary speed limit, and for extra credit was wearing a white shirt and tie. He let me go with a warning.

One Sunday morning future wife and I were headed down Park Avenue in East Orange. It was early, traffic was light, and I was speeding. From a long block away, I spotted a cop on traffic duty, standing on the corner in front of a church. I tried to slow down, but not soon enough, and he stepped into the road to flag me down. Oddly, he was wearing motorcycle boots and the whole strap-across-the-chest deal, but seemed to be on foot. He walked up to the window and I rolled it down. As soon as the window was down, future wife leaned across me and demanded, “Where’s your motorcycle?” Oh shit, I thought, this isn’t going to end well. He replied something like, “Oh, hi there!”, and went on to explain to her that he had had an accident with his motorcycle, and while he was recuperating he was on traffic duty. “Damn!” I said as we drove away. “You know everybody.”

For the sake of completeness, I’ll mention the NYPD subway cop who refused to give me directions when I asked him the same question, at the same location, two days in a row. His response, “Same as I told you yesterday”, is a perfect example of New York City attitude; it runs deep in the blood and I can’t fault him. In fact, I don’t bear a grudge against anyone mentioned here, except for that one sick bastard who used the iron claw on an 8-year-old.

Parochial School

By

On October 7, 2019

In Family, Religion, School

A statue of Jesus Christ is lowered off the roof of St. John’s School after it toppled during a wind storm on Sept. 19, 2012. – Julio Cortez / AP

A lot of the kids in my neighborhood went to Saint John’s parochial school, not a majority, but enough that they were a danger when they were set free in the afternoon. Local public-school kids  knew to stay out of sight when Saint John’s let out. The St. John’s kids’ spirits were so crushed, and the boys so full of pent-up anger, that anything could happen. The exception to this was the Doheny kids; there were six of them and they could go off at any time, not just after school. Anyone who fought a Doheny kid had to fight all of them. They lived a block away from me, but their house was not on the way to my school, a public school, so I could avoid them.

Saint John’s parochial school, aka Columbus Hall, 1915

St. John’s school took up one corner of St. John’s cemetery. On top of its domed roof was a floodlit statue of Jesus Christ . At night, the statue seemed to float above the dark cemetery, its outstretched arms either comforting or threatening, depending on the state of your conscience.

When I walked home  late at night from my job setting up bowling pins, I encountered a double dose of creepiness. From two blocks away I could see floating Jesus; next I came to the cemetery itself. I walked on the opposite side of the street, because its high, stuccoed walls always seemed to be bulging outward. I knew the level of the earth inside the walls was higher than outside, and that the graves were old, with some burials done at least two caskets deep, so I imagined a great pressure against those walls. It didn’t help that I had been reading a lot of Edgar Allan Poe.

Years later I was doing family research, and someone in the church rectory told me my great-grandmother Bridget owned a family plot there. When I located the plot it was mostly grass and bushes, with very few grave markers, none of them with a family name. I think some fishy stuff goes on  with ownership in these old cemeteries.

My wife went to parochial school, in Pennsylvania. She had a story she told me in private, but I have repeated it so often that I might as well tell it one more time. I call it “The Fart-Detecting Nun”. When my wife was in the early grades of parochial school, Sister heard somebody fart and demanded to know who had done it. When none of the girls confessed, she searched the classroom by sniffing her way up and down each aisle. That’s it, that’s the whole story, it’s not much but I think it’s funny.

Vocal performance in the Crypt of the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart

One last creepy story. When we lived in Newark, we sent my older son to the parochial school at Sacred Heart Cathedral because the Newark public schools were failing. On rainy days, if his class had to travel between the school and the church, they went underground, through the Crypt of the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart, where deceased parish priests and higher ranking members of the clergy were said to “await the Lord’s return” in their marble vaults. My son said it was ‘spooky’.

Three-minute YouTube tour of the crypt – courtesy egermainet

Epilogue

St. John’s parochial school closed in June 2018. The diocese now rents its classroom space to the Orange public school  system.

Bridge shoes

By

On October 5, 2019

In Family, Working

“According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, ironworking is the 7th most dangerous job there is. Exposing individuals to unique workplace hazards and dangers, working as an ironworker requires special protection and gear to guarantee an injury-free shift. So, whether you’re just starting out on your new ironworking job or if you’ve been navigating those steep steel structures for a while now, an optimal work outfit is something you shouldn’t take for granted.” – advice verbatim, courtesy of purposefulfootwear.com

Thorogood 6″ Steel Safety Toe boot, courtesy theunionbootpro.com

“Some folks calls it a sling blade, I call it a kaiser blade.” Some folks call them ironworker boots, my family calls them bridge shoes. They are a must to get work as an apprentice in the Ironworkers Union. Similar to the way my brother got a foothold as an apprentice in the Operating Engineers Union, then over the years advanced to tower crane operator, my mother has asked a favor from one of her business connections at the Newark Athletic Club, and now I have my foot in the door.

Ironworkers looking for work come to the union hiring hall to “shape up”, that is, register as available to go to work. Once the union sends them out on a job, they usually stay on that job until the project is done. Depending on experience and skill, an ironworker might install a fence around a parking lot, or link the steel framework of a bridge or high-rise.

My brother tells me that as a would-be apprentice it’s a good idea to show up at the hall at 6:30 to register, hang around and be seen. He also says, “If they ask you if you’re okay with heights, tell them the truth.” I nod, but later I wonder, What is the truth? I think I’m okay with heights, but do I really know? I climbed that rope in school and wrote my name on the gymnasium ceiling, does that count? I’ve climbed a few ladders and trees, and tarred the railing-free roof of a four-story apartment house, what about those?

At the hall, I hand over a piece of paper introducing me, if that’s the correct word, as a candidate for apprenticeship, and I sign the job register. Seeing that many guys are here already, most looking like they’re settled in for a long wait with coffee and newspapers, I hope there are enough jobs to go around. It turns out there are not; only two guys get sent out today, to a short-term job installing fencing.

I go to the hall every morning for two weeks, but nothing happens for me, or for most of the other guys there. “The nation is in an economic lull”, somebody says, so bad timing on my part. I put my bridge shoes away in case I get a shot at another semi-dangerous, high-paying  job one day. Still not knowing for sure if I’m okay with heights, I turn to the classifieds. Here’s one, “Lunch Truck”.

At the office/assembly line/factory of the lunch truck company, I am given a short tour. On site, they brew gallons of coffee, make and wrap tasty sandwiches, and package Danish pastry and other single-serving sweets. Everything is scrupulously clean, and the ladies wear hairnets to keep it that way. It’s about one o’clock in the afternoon, and there’s just enough time to ride along on one truck’s last circuit of the day. It’s a standard sort of truck, with two swing-out back doors to serve customers when they walk up. Ten-gallon coffee jugs are attached to the inside walls, along with racks of edibles.

Our first stop is a small electronics-assembly plant in Short Hills. The ladies here also sport hairnets, but most of these ladies are young, in their twenties or not much beyond. They’ve apparently been looking for a distraction, they seem very excited about the lunch truck’s arrival. Some of them tuck their hairnets into a pocket before coming outside. They are all smiles and giggles, and a bit flirty when buying their coffee. When we get back to the office I am told if I want the job it’s mine, and to come in at six in the morning tomorrow.

For the next morning’s training run I go out on a different truck with a different driver. This is not the suburban, Short Hills lunch truck route; it’s an industrial area of Newark. Our first stop is at a loading dock on McCarter Highway. We arrive, the customers line up, and we’re in business.

The plastic coffee lids are thin and shallow; they require careful fitting to the cardboard cup. I’m a bit nervous, and after serving a few customers, when I push the lid down over one cup to get a tight seal, I press too hard. The lid gives way, and my thumb goes into the coffee. My customer asks, “Hey, motherfucker, you washing your hands in my coffee?” I don’t know what to do except say I’m sorry and that it’s my first day on the job, and I pick up a new lid and close the cup properly. Of course the right thing to do would have been to start all over with a fresh, unthumbed cup of coffee, but that doesn’t occur to me. It doesn’t occur to my customer either – apparently satisfied by the apology and explanation, he takes his coffee, pays and leaves. This is the only specific event I remember from my first day on the lunch truck. The rest of the day goes better, but food service  is not for me.

The next morning the phone rings at about 6:15 and my mother answers. She wakes me up and tells me the lunch truck outfit is on the phone, they are wondering where I am. Here I pull a dirty trick; instead of coming to the phone, I tell her to tell them I’m not coming in any more. She does, but she is not happy. Remember, this is the woman who made me write a letter of resignation when I quit a job delivering newspapers.

Still trying to avoid going back into the supermarkets, I take a clerk job at a small liquor store near the Lido Theater in Orange. It pays above minimum wage, so that’s something. I get to carry cases of wine, soda and beer upstairs from the cellar, which smells of breakage that happened before I was born. Part of the job is making deliveries using the owner’s personal car, a new and peppy Oldsmobile. There’s more or less a test; he goes out with me on the first few deliveries to make sure I’m a safe and responsible driver. He doesn’t seem to worry about the car after that. I make sure to give it some exercise whenever I can.

Not the same store, but similar. Note cellar door in sidewalk. Courtesy James and Karla Murray Photography, jamesandkarlamurray.blogspot.com

My boss is impressed – I can pull four soda bottles out of the shipping case and put them on the cooler shelf in one motion. Who said setting up bowling pins was not a transferable skill?

I sometimes get tips, but that benefit is more theoretical than real – I deliver mostly to sad drunks in rundown apartment buildings; my clientele need that tip money for their next bottle.

Between the dank cellar and the sad apartments, I decide I don’t want this job anymore, and give my notice. I need some fresh air. What about the army? I hear you can retire with a pension after twenty years.

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.”

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

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.

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.

Children of science

By

On August 28, 2019

In Family, Working

“When you quit school in ninth grade and you’re smart, you spend your life in some small or large way proving yourself” – George Carlin

I interviewed for a lead programmer position at IBM Research, based mainly on some helpful improvements I had made to IBM’s CP-67 operating system when I worked for Continental Insurance. Unlike Carlin, I waited until my high school senior year to drop out.

From Wikipedia, edited for length: The Yorktown Heights building, housing the headquarters of IBM Research, is a large crescent-shaped structure consisting of three levels with 40 aisles each, radiating out from the center of the crescent. Due to this construction, none of the offices have windows. The lowest level is partially underground in some areas toward the shorter side of the crescent, which also leads to the employee parking lots. A large overhang protrudes from the front entryway of the building, and faces the visitor parking lot.

I was going to start off by saying “everybody here is a self-serving jerk”. Well, of  course that’s an exaggeration, but there are very few team players in Yorktown. Most people are more interested in advancing their own career.

Thomas J. Watson Research Center

To give you an idea of the attitude at Yorktown, a local doctor visits the site twice a week to do pre-employment physicals. Arriving mid-morning, he always has difficulty finding a spot in the visitor parking lot, and as a courtesy the company installs a “DOCTOR PARKING” sign in the spot closest to the front door. The sign doesn’t improve things for the doctor; the space is always taken when he arrives. One parker, a PhD of course, when questioned responds that he is a doctor, so what’s the problem? In my imagination I see  dozens of proud PhD’s setting their alarms for four o’clock in the morning to get to that spot of honor first. The sign is removed, and a week later replaced by one that says “MEDICAL DOCTOR PARKING”.

Thomas J Watson Sr

Company rules are more relaxed here. At most IBM sites, drinking at lunch would be unthinkable.  Founder T.J. Watson had a strict no-alcohol policy, and that included drinking at home. When our small department first goes out to lunch and the waiter asks “What will you have to drink?”, all eyes go to our manager, we expect him to take the lead, we will follow. He replies “Bottle of Sam Adams, please” and now we are free to have a beer too.

The four of us on our project team usually have lunch together in one of the local restaurants. The other three are various degrees of beer snob; they drink the latest trendy or exotic brews. I usually order a Budweiser just on general principle. When the snobbiest of them mocks my choice, I say “Just because Bud is the most popular beer in the world doesn’t mean it isn’t any good.” He also sneers at the idea of playing the lottery. On my mental list of things to do when I win The Big One is send him a case of Budweiser longnecks. He’s fun to troll.

When I go to the Poughkeepsie site for a week of classes, I am steered to a nearby restaurant frequented by IBMers. I sit alone in a booth wearing my IBM badge, the wearing of which comes as naturally as wearing a wristwatch. I surprise the waitress by ordering a bottle of beer; she smiles as though she’s just seen the cutest puppy ever running around her feet. While I have my lunch, people seem to walk by just to look at me, they see an IBMer daring to have a beer during the working day. They glance at my badge, not to take down my name but to learn what site this rara avis comes from.

If you visit Yorktown, you may hear one or the other of two fictional characters being paged over the PA system, Captain Strang and Mr. Sassoon. Yorktown is more than a computer lab, it’s a wet lab that uses hazardous substances, and accidents happen. An announcement “Captain Strang, aisle 24, level one” means there is a FIRE! in aisle 24, level one, and an internal firefighting squad, or squads, respond. The words “Captain Strang” have an attention-getting bite designed to cut through any absent-minded reverie; say it out loud when you are alone. (Say it out loud three times in front of a mirror and who knows what will happen.)

A page for “Misssster Sassssoooon” mimics the hiss of a gas leak, another site hazard, summoning a squad in protective gear. There are dozens of compressed-gas tanks, large and small, behind the building. One cool thing to watch is a delivery of liquid nitrogen, which creates a stagecraft-like London fog on the parking lot.

In the auditorium there are occasional “brown bag lunches” that anyone can attend. Similar to a TED talk, they feature a presenter knowledgeable in computing or some other science. Today, the presenter is Linus Pauling, who in 1955 won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The doctor is briefing us on research he’s doing in his new area of interest, the structure of the human brain. His experiments require large numbers of cat cortexes, that is, cat brains. A concerned woman questions Pauling closely about how the cats are obtained, how they are treated in life, and how they are put to death.

Mandelbrot pattern

The only famous scientist I ever met personally here is Benoit Mandelbrot, IBM Fellow and father of fractal geometry. One day he steps up to the urinal next to mine and nods in greeting; I nod back.

In many cases a project is  pure research, there is no product and there never will be a product. A newly-minted manager has the temerity to caution a research staff member about stretching his lunch break into two hours on the tennis courts every day. The response is “Yes, but while I’m playing, I’m still thinking.”

There is a basic impracticality to some of what we do here The idea behind  the project I am part of is to prove that eight $200,000 midrange computers can cleverly share a workload and take the place of one $3,000,000 mainframe computer. Once it started becoming clear that yes, yes we can, someone in authority did the basic arithmetic in light of the reality that we are here to make money for IBM, not to save money for the customer. The project was killed. In today’s world I would be sent home with my personal belongings in a cardboard box, but in 1986 I am encouraged to check the internal job listings for another position inside the company.

I find a listing  in Boca Raton that might be a match. I arrange an interview and fly out of LaGuardia on a miserable, slushy January day. When we land in Florida, and I get my first look at the pure lushness of it, I know how Ponce de León must have felt. I admit to myself “I’m probably going to take this job no matter what.”

IBM Boca Raton

People hold high opinions of Yorktown. When my wife and I start looking for a house in Boca, our real-estate agent happens to mention that her husband holds some sort of senior position here in Boca. Later, when she’s alone with my wife, the quiz begins. She tries to guess, where in New York had I worked? Poughkeepsie? Fishkill? She guesses other sites in the Hudson Valley but comes up dry. She finally gives up, and asks the question straight out. When my wife (always my biggest fan) says “Yorktown”, the agent is surprised and dispirited. One-upped, she improvidently volunteers that her husband had always wanted to work there, but couldn’t get an interview.

People in Boca think it odd that anyone would ever leave fabled Yorktown Research. My new friend Rafael asks what it was like working there. He knows I was not happy. I think for a while, then ask if he remembers the smartest kid in his school, and what that person was like? He nods, and I go on. “Okay, imagine there are 2000 people in this room and they went to 2000 different schools. Now imagine that the smartest kid from each of those schools all went to work at the same place.” He understands.

While my family is getting relocated to Boca, our rental apartment and groceries are paid for by the company. After I turn in my first expense voucher, with all supporting documentation, I get a call from a person in accounting, who informs me “We’ll pay for your groceries, but you have to pay for your Heineken yourself.”

 

The One Where I Get a Job in the City

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On August 24, 2019

In Family, NYC, NYPD, Working

I still have my night job at the A&P warehouse so there’s no rush. My resume is pretty good for someone who hasn’t actually worked in computing yet – the 725-hour programming course at Automation Institute gets respect, but it’s not enough to hire me on. Everyone wants experience. I don’t have much luck getting interviews in New Jersey, so I decide to bite the bullet and look for a job in New York City. After a few interviews in run-down offices with computer illiterates who act like they’d be doing me a favor to send me to a potential employer, I strike pay dirt.

It’s April Fool’s Day, 1968 and I am at the classy Robert Half employment agency in midtown Manhattan. In honor of the day, WQXR plays Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks in the background. I have a good interview, and next day get a call that Condé Nast Publishers would like to interview me next week. They, too, are a classy outfit, so classy (I later learn) that they have a special print chain on their printer just to produce that fancy é with an accent in their name.

Graybar Building, 420 Lexington Avenue

My interview with HR (“Personnel” then) goes well; I am all tweeded up in my good suit and overcoat, looking British and carrying a rolled black brolly. Optics out of the way, I next interview with Mr. Harrison, the manager of “the IBM Department”. He sees that I have mad 1401 computer skills, and we hit it off otherwise. He introduces me to Ben, the other programmer, and we three go to lunch.

I am hired. Condé Nast publishes Vogue and Glamour magazines, so there are models and other alluring creatures running loose through the building, but our floor, the 4th, is 100% business. The fashion magic all happens upstairs.

Going home from my first day at work, after I get off the crosstown  shuttle I am confused, and I get directions to the 7th Avenue line from an NYPD police officer. The next day, at the same spot, I am confused again and ask an officer for directions. He answers “Same way I told you yesterday”, and walks away annoyed.

Similar Maruse Padfolio, $135 at Amazon

After a week riding the subway, I retire my bulky attaché case, which tends to get tangled up in other people’s legs, in favor of a $4 generic zippered black leather portfolio I see in a drugstore window. I normally carry it at my side,  but in a really tight subway car I clutch it against my chest like a frightened girl.

If I get close enough to my office window to get the right angle, I can see the the Chrysler Building, with its crowd of Vietnam War protesters.

I design and write programs in Autocoder assembler language, lots of them. I must be good at it, because I get a raise. I am particularly proud of this latest one because it works almost immediately, and the output is perfect. It’s an analysis of reader responses to a survey in one of the magazines. I bring the printout to Mr. Harrison, who studies it and says something like “Hey, that’s really good”. Then he adds “Uh, you spelled questionnaire wrong” and chuckles. I laugh too, but it stings a little.

Ben and I and our boss generally stick together. We seldom leave the 4th floor except to get lunch downstairs in the Back Bay restaurant, which is cheaper than it sounds. Every other Friday is payday, when we go up to the 11th floor to pick up our checks.

One payday we start for the 11th floor, just us three in the elevator, when it stops at the 6th. In steps one of the models, not at all self-conscious despite wearing the latest in fashion, a see-through blouse, no bra. The fabric is sheer and her breasts are lovely. Following some instinctive sense of decency, the three of us avert our eyes, and now with heads tilted back we stare at the ceiling in silence until she reaches her destination. She exits and the doors close. As the car begins to move again, we gleefully exclaim in unison “DID YOU SEE THAT?”

Sometimes at lunchtime we walk around midtown, trying not to look like tourists. It’s best not to look up, or stare at anyone. There’s a blind guy who usually stands near our building selling pencils; people drop money into his cup but  don’t take a pencil.

One day Mr. Harrison, Ben and I have lunch with Diane, our IBM Sales Engineer, who is dressed for the times in short skirt and white over-the-knee  boots. The subject turns to commuting and I say I’d love to live in the city, but there’s no way all my family’s stuff would fit in an apartment. Diane says I’d be surprised how much stuff can fit in an apartment, and would I like to see hers? I say something like “Thanks, but I don’t think so” in the politest possible business-neutral way. After lunch, Ben turns to me and says “You’re crazy, man!” Yes, I probably am.

Even the company’s benefits are classy. For the one-year anniversary of their start date, women receive flowers, men receive a boutonniere. These are delivered by flower-shop courier. Each December, everyone gets a half-day off to go Christmas shopping.

“Like walking into an old western saloon”

This December brings a disappointment: the company Christmas party is cancelled due to the Hong Kong flu. Mr. Harrison still wants to have a department Christmas party, and one day around noon we head for the Cattleman steakhouse. We are Mr. Harrison, Ben and I, computer operators Ginny and George, six or eight keypunch girls (‘operators’, sorry) and their leader Marie. We fill a long table in a private room. We will pay for our own drinks and split the rest of the bill. Most of us opt for the prime rib, which is excellent.

The keypunch girls are delightful – we don’t usually see them because they work in their own, noisy room. I know two of them, Susan the long-haired girl from across the river who seems to have a thing going on with the IBM repairman who refuses to wear a white shirt; and Marika, fresh off the boat from Poland, not much English yet, but not much is required to punch names and addresses into cards.

On the way back to the office we break into loose groups and I get separated. I’m a little drunk. The city is beautiful at Christmastime. As I walk by the Pan Am building, I hear music and enter the lobby. A choir is singing Christmas  carols.

Everybody at Condé is nice, the work is rewarding and I love my job, but the commute is getting me down.

Would rather be somewhere else

From my house to work it’s only eight miles as the crow flies, but it’s a 4-seat commute with a lot of walking; even on a good day it takes 50 minutes. Coming in, I take the Newark subway to Newark Penn Station, then the PRR train under the river to New York Penn Station, then the 7th Avenue subway to 42nd Street, then the shuttle over to Grand Central. I get tired  again just typing that in. At each connection there’s a significant walk and sometimes a bit of jostling to get from one conveyance to the next. I start thinking about another hot summer underground.

Beyond the commute, two events help me make up my mind.

      • As I stop-start walk up the crowded stairs from one subway level to another, an aggressive old lady behind me keeps stepping on the back of my shoe; she seems to be trying to actually stand in my footprint. I am carrying a rolled umbrella with a metal tip, and I let it hang down far enough at my side that she runs her instep up under it and backs off.
      • [spacer height=”14px”]A newsstand vendor trying to sell out an earlier edition of the Post puts the late edition with closing stock prices underneath the earlier one. When I ask for a copy of the edition underneath, a reasonable request, he refuses. Not in anger but in a matter-of-fact way, I say “Well, fuck you then.” He replies in the same unemotional tone, “Fuck you too.”

So, I have soft-stabbed an old lady and said “fuck you” to a total stranger. It’s time to get myself out of New York, and also an opportune time to get my family out of Newark. I call an employment agency and ask them to find me a job as far south in Jersey as they can.

About four years later, I am in the city and stop by for a visit. By chance, the operators are running one of my programs. Whenever I see a night view of Manhattan with its million lights and offices, I absurdly tell myself “I made a difference.”

Midtown Manhattan

So far away

By

On August 20, 2019

In Family, History, Working

Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore
It would be so fine to see your face at my door
++++++++++++++++++++ -– Carole King

In a moment of nostalgia, I look on Google Earth for the Continental Insurance data center in Neptune where I worked 35 years ago. The once starkly modern three-story building appears abandoned, its parking lots empty and overgrown. Trying to find a earlier view with any signs of life, I have to go back in the timeline more than twelve years.

I drive past the building to get a closer look, and arrive right after giant demolition machines have begun to chew away at it. Already one corner of the building has been torn away – the third-floor executive offices are gone, now just a ragged hole and a pile of concrete and bent steel. Gone too is my up-and-comer, double-size cubicle location in the corner of the floor below. I think of my lost friends and moving myself and my family around the country chasing the next, better job.

All lost in the moves, me, all, all lost in the moves.

Even moving to another town, let alone another state, we lose something. It’s too bad we can’t all stay and live and love where we were born and not have all this loss.

The big five oh

By

On August 17, 2019

In Family, Health

The year I turned 50, for my birthday I got a ton of crap mail from AARP and everybody else that wanted to make a nickel off my advanced age and vulnerability to illness, death and bad investments. If you’ve made it to 50, you know what I mean.

One mailing in particular ticked me off. I can’t recall the name of the cemetery, so I’ll make one up by borrowing a trope from Seinfeld, let’s call it “The Memorial Gardens of Del Boca Vista”, or DBV for short.

DBV informs me that it’s time to think about my “final arrangements”, and encourages me to select my “final resting place”. They have inside crypts, outside crypts, chapels, gardens, niches inside, niches outside, family rooms, perpetual care. You say you want a rotunda? We’ve got a rotunda! Lock in today’s prices!

Along with the glossy brochure comes a prepaid return postcard to fill out. Among the information it seeks is a multiple-choice section headed “Please check one” that looks something like:

I would like to:
[  ]  take a tour of DBV
[  ]  receive a planning guide about DBV
[  ]  have a representative visit my home and tell me more about DBV

Annoyed, I draw a 4th box, fill in the x, and label it:

[x] have a representative visit my home and give me one last blowjob before I die

I don’t fill in any personal information. I show the postcard to my wife, who worries “What if they find out it’s you?” I tell her “They won’t” and head for the mailbox. Mission accomplished.

But wait, there’s more!

About six weeks later, the phone rings. They have tracked me down, probably because I am the only male on their 50th birthday list who lives in the same zip code as the post office the postcard was returned from.

A woman says “This is Miss so-and-so of DBV. We’re just checking to see if you’ve received our recent brochure in the mail.” There is at least one other person in the room, because I hear stifled laughter in the background. I say “Um, no, I don’t think so.”  Miss so-and-so says “Alright, thank you” and hangs up. My wife says “Who was that?” and I just say “Telemarketer.”

Pennsylvania Avenue

By

On August 15, 2019

In Family, History, Race

When my wife and I first got married, we lived with her sister and mother on Pennsylvania Avenue in Newark. Her sister was about 16, and as she walked to school, boys in passing cars would call out to each other “Mira! Mira!”.

My wife took the bus to work every day, at the Grand Union store in Scotch Plains where she was the bookkeeper. I picked her up every night, and that’s where we bought our groceries. A hundred dollars’ worth of groceries filled the trunk and half the back seat.

At the end of Pennsylvania Avenue was a small, triangular park called Lincoln Park. The park’s claim to fame was that JFK’s motorcade was rerouted past it to counter a threat about traveling on Broad Street. My wife didn’t know Kennedy was in town, but she and our older son got to see him and wave as he drove by.

A little-noted Lincoln Park event months earlier was a battle between blacks and Puerto Ricans. During the fighting, park benches were disassembled and their slats used as lances and clubs. When I saw the fighting from a block away, I thought to myself, “Boy, I’m glad I’m not involved.” The police eventually arrived and broke it up. Helping to  keep the city’s lid on, the newspapers made no mention of the event.

We seldom overslept on holidays, because if there was a parade involved it formed up in front of our house before moving to the main route on Broad Street. We shared our front steps with excited band families and early parade goers.

My wife and I went to the Mosque Theater, now Newark Symphony Hall, to see Nina Simone. We were shown to the balcony and seated there with the other white people, 20 or 30 of us. We didn’t care, she was fantastic.

My wife has read about a cooling summer drink called “The Pimm’s Cup”, which oddly enough requires 3/4 cup of Pimm’s #1 liqueur. She asks me to pick some up, and next day I stop at S. Klein On The Square, which has a liquor department. I ask the help for a bottle of “Pimm’s Cup”, having to repeat myself twice. They chortle, this is a new one on them, and they keep repeating back and forth “Pimp’s Cup, Pimp’s Cup” until they find one.

There was a small fire in the rooming house across the street. Even before  the fire trucks arrived, the residents were outside on folding chairs, watching a ballgame on their rabbit-eared TV, an extension cord plugged into the vestibule of the church next door.

Our neighbor dies and while the family is at the funeral his house is robbed. The neighborhood is changing.

An imperfect man

By

On August 14, 2019

In Early days, Family, Health

So, here’s the deal with my father. He was a union housepainter, paper hanger and sometime bartender. He was a working drunk who eventually let everyone down. He had a barfly girlfriend named Millie with whom he had a bastard child. In the polite euphemism  common among amateur genealogists seeking disappeared fathers and uncles, he “left the family”, his wife and two sons, in about 1944.

His half-sister, my Aunt Frances, made room in her home for my mother and me; his sister, my Aunt Elizabeth, made room for my brother. I think they felt a family guilt for what he had done. His sisters still loved him, and if they spoke of him at all, they mentioned his terrific sense of humor.

Although habitual drunkenness is said to be a genetic predisposition among the Irish, I don’t think genetics are a good excuse. I think habitual drunkenness is a character flaw, a weakness that can be overcome by power of will, or nowadays by psychiatric treatment. You’ll probably see a mix of love, anger and disappointment in what I’ve written here.

He was born in 1903 in the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York City, in a tenement two blocks behind Lincoln Center before there was a Lincoln Center. I don’t know anything about his early life, but as poor Irish, I’m sure it was not  easy.

His father’s given name was Bernard, and he lost out to my mother when he wanted to honor the Irish tradition of naming me after my grandfather. Although on paper he lost that fight, at home or away he never called me anything but Barney. His own name was George, but only his sisters called him George. All his friends, and my mother too, called him Pardo. Where that name came from or what it meant is lost to the ages.

He worked for Haas, a big painting contractor, and was a rabid union man. My Uncle Jim, Aunt Frances’s husband, had a successful one-man, one-panel-truck, non-union painting and decorating business. My father called him “Your scabby uncle Jim”, notwithstanding that my mother and I were living under Uncle Jim’s roof at the time.

He could be hurtful: my brother went to vocational school, which my father for no good reason called “dummy school”.

He was generous with money, and I once heard my mother say that while he was buying “drinks for the house” his family was being shortchanged. I always think of that, and say “Nothing for me, thanks” when some stranger in a bar wants to be a bigshot.

Here are a few memories from when my parents were still together:

One Sunday morning I sit on his lap helping to hold the paper while he reads aloud The Katzenjammer Kids comic page, speaking the words of Hans, Fritz, Mama and der Captain in a vaudevillian German accent. He is laughing and delightful; this is my happiest childhood memory. But my mother is not amused, she keeps trying to tone him down, I never understood why. Maybe he was still drunk?

He has a loud argument with an air raid warden who claims he can see light leaking from an upstairs window during a WWII blackout. My mother somehow settles it before the authorities need to be called.

I am playing a block away from our house one afternoon when I see my white-shirted father walking up the block to go to his bartending job. I chase after him, hysterical because he hasn’t said goodbye. When I catch up, it isn’t him, he hasn’t left, but I cry even harder.

I open the front door to a salesman who asks to speak to “your mommy”; I inform him that she’s in bed with my daddy. The grownups find this story very amusing, not sure why at the time.

After he left us, he would sometimes arrange with my mother to take me for a day or so:

He and one of his buddies made a deal with the absentee owner of a house at the shore. They would paint it in exchange for a week’s free stay during the summer. I stayed with them for the few days they were painting. When the owner stopped by, she saw me helping to paint and asked if I was working hard. I repeated the expression I had heard them use many times, “Just slappin’ it on”. While we were there my father took me grocery shopping. Already a slave to radio advertising,  I begged him to buy Cheerios; he said I wouldn’t like them but I argued and nagged and insisted, and we came back with Cheerios. The next morning, he served me a bowl of Cheerios and milk and they were nasty, just plain cardboard, nothing like the honey-nut stuff you spoiled kids have today. Giving credit where credit is due, he didn’t make me eat them.

When I was about eight, we went driving in the country with his girlfriend and her two kids, a boy about six and a girl about four, me generally ignoring the three of them. We stopped at a roadside custard stand with a few metal chairs in front. I was still ignoring them when I heard the boy shout “Mom! Sissie’s peeing!” I look over and Sissie is standing atop a chair, urine running down her bare legs and all over the seat. I take a close look at Sissie for the first time and, even to my own young eyes, she has what we recognize today as acute Down syndrome. Much later in life I realize that Sissie, who was eventually placed in the Vineland Training School, is my half-sister. When two drunks make a baby, it may not turn out well.

He would bring me with him to a favored workingman’s bar that had a free lunch, an elaborate spread of cold cuts and just about everything else. To drink, he favored boilermakers, which is a shot of whisky followed immediately by a glass of beer. I usually drank sarsaparilla.

He had lots of friends and acquaintances in the bars. Once he introduced me to a friend the right side of whose face looked like a lopsided, swollen strawberry. He later explained that the friend was a mustard gas victim from WWI. Oh, I see. On the bright side, another friend would salt the phone booth coin returns with nickels, then say, “Hey Barney, why don’t you go see if anybody forgot their change?”

He and some of his painter buddies shared a double room in a workingman’s hotel in downtown Newark.

My tasks  at the hotel were to go to the diner next door and pick up takeout coffee, or to buy cigarettes. A cigarette purchase consisted of simply putting a quarter into the machine and pulling a knob, usually the one under the Chesterfields. Each pack of cigarettes included a few pennies sealed inside the wrapper as change from the purchase. These pennies were treated as a nuisance  and tossed into a soup bowl kept on the windowsill.

When the painters go off to work in the morning, I am left to my own devices. I’m sure my mother knew very little about what went on when I stayed with my father, and she never quizzed me about whether his girlfriend was present (she usually wasn’t) or any other aspect of my visits. I was pretty much what they call today a free-range child. Unsupervised children were not uncommon then.

I would take a handful of pennies from the bowl and bring them to the game arcade a block or two away on Mulberry Street. The hotel room was on perhaps the fourth floor, directly above a green canvas awning. The awning had a swoop to it, and a penny properly dropped would shoot out into the street. I made a mistake in timing once and hit a car as it was coming by; the driver got out, looked up and cursed me. I guess he had seen me leaning out the window from up the block.

One night the painters  put down a blanket in the next room and shoot craps. My father has to tell them to watch  the language.

At the Painters Union annual picnic (his girlfriend is there), I take it upon myself to set up pins on the outdoor skittles-bowling lane. It is fun and I am good at it. Later I help out by running cups of beer and sarsaparilla between the outdoor bar and the table. I discover I like the taste of beer and get my first buzz on.

At the lunch counter in Newark Penn Station one morning, my father passes out and ends up on the floor. There are two firemen sitting on the other side of the U-shaped counter. I go to get them but they won’t help. Maybe they knew something I didn’t?  After a while he revives on his own.

On a different day in the station, I get my arm trapped fooling around with the meshing bars of an exit turnstile. A mechanic sets me free.

One day we go to a tailor shop, where I am fitted for a suit. I get to pick it, and I choose a traditional style, in gray. The deal includes a hat, and  I go with a Jack-Lemmon-style  businessman model. When I get home my mother likes the suit,  and says that the color is called “salt and pepper”, which to me sounds kind  of dumb. She checks the label, and says “Hmm, reprocessed wool”, which years later I learn is thought to be of inferior quality. I wear the suit next day to Sunday School, where I  get ragged on for being overdressed, but mostly I get ragged on for the hat. I never wear it again.

Somewhere around this time he brings me to an indoor three-ring circus, maybe at Madison Square  Garden.  We are only four rows back from the action. There’s a clown with a bucking donkey, and part of his act is challenging anyone in the audience to ride the donkey. I stand up to volunteer, but my father puts the kibosh on that idea. Maybe it’s because I’m wearing my suit.

The circus sells pet “chameleons”, really  just anole lizards that they  collect during the off season in Florida. As sold, the creature has a thin chain around his neck that attaches to your clothing, then he just uses his native abilities to stay stuck to wherever you put him. My mother was not thrilled.

When I am about ten he calls my mother to invite me to a Yankees game. The trip is sponsored by the Eagles, an Elks-like social club for people of the Polish persuasion. I think most of his buddies in the painters union are Poles, e.g. his friend “Stash”, so he’s probably an honorary member. The day before the Yankees trip, he picks me up at home (probably using Stash’s car, he never owned one as far as I know) and we go to his room across the street from the Eagles lodge. There is a trundle bed for me. Millie comes by, then later his landlady.  When I am  introduced to the landlady, she says “I bet you’re happy to see your Aunt Millie.” I am both astounded and insulted, and say “SHE’S NOT MY AUNT.” Maybe I have confirmed something the landlady already suspected?

The next day the Eagles load up their chartered bus. Late arrivals make for a late start, then traffic is bad and we run into long stretches where the bus doesn’t move at all. There is beer on board, and after a while the call goes up for a bathroom break. The driver pulls over as far as he can and everyone gets out. My memory of  this is of 10 or 12 men leaning with one hand against the right side of bus, taking a wide stance, feet well back, as they piss in concert against the bus or half-under it. To anyone who doesn’t know better, it looks like they are trying to push the bus over on its side.

When we finally arrive at Yankee Stadium it’s the 7th inning.

Once we are seated, I discard any notion of catching a foul ball, for our deck is deep under an even higher deck, and we are far back from the third-base line. In fact we are more just on the third-base side of the park. We are seated in two rows, me in the second, where I observe. There is more beer, and the Eagles pass pint bottles of whisky or such back and forth. I have a hotdog, soda, Crackerjack and a souvenir program. All-in-all, it’s a dismal experience.

He phoned my mother one more time to invite me somewhere a few months after the Yankee Stadium fiasco. That day had been sort of a last straw for me and I said “No” and never saw him again until he was dead.

My brother maintained a relationship with him to some degree, occasionally running into him in Bloomfield.

One Saturday afternoon years later, I had been out of the house for several hours when my wife received a phone call from Newark City Hospital. They wanted to know what she wanted done with Mr. Smithee’s body. My wife hadn’t thought about my father in years, and it took a few frightened moments to establish that the deceased Mr. Smithee was not me, but my father. His body had been in the morgue for a week.

Cause of death? He got mugged, or fell down his apartment stairs, or maybe a little of both, I don’t remember. In the big picture I guess it doesn’t matter.

Over the years, my mother had kept up  a small death-benefit policy from Prudential. Our Bloomfield relatives handled the arrangements. It was the same funeral home Uncle Jim was buried from.

For the funeral director I set aside clean underwear and socks, a shirt and tie, and my second-best suit. It was the least I could do.

There wasn’t much of a turnout except for his family.

Sorry for your loss

By

On August 13, 2019

In Family

Like Tony Soprano’s mother Livia, I read the newspaper obituaries daily. I use a method that saves me some time, because I’m not going to read every one. Referring to the columns in the box at the top of the page, and working from right to left, here’s my method.

  • The “Arrangements” column lists the funeral homes. I don’t want anyone to die ever, but there’s one small funeral home I sort of root for. I like to see it listed once in a while because it means they’re still in business. They’ve done a nice job handling the arrangements for some of my close friends and family members, and it’s good to know they’re still there.
  • I scan the “Age” column next. It’s sad to see young people listed. If they are under, say, 30, it’s extra sad. I read these to get an idea of how they died. Sometimes it takes some reading between the lines; dying at home is a clue. It seems to me that over the last year or two there are far fewer overdose deaths, so kids are getting the news.
  • Next, I scan the “Name” column – no relatives or close friends, so that’s good. Hmm, that one sounds familiar. Let me think.
      • friend of a friend?
      • somebody I know from the neighborhood?
      • that guy from work?
      • the lady who runs that store?
      • somebody from grade school?

Finally, I scan the actual obituary pages, but I don’t read every one. If you want me to read yours, put a picture, or have a weird name. For ladies, the photo from your high school yearbook or wearing your WAC cap is nice. For men, the one in your class A uniform, or the one holding up that prize-winning fish.

See you there!

Gentleman farmer

By

On August 8, 2019

In Early days, Family, Religion

My uncle Bert (Herbert, actually) Becker lived in Temperance, Michigan, farm country just across the state line from Toledo, Ohio. He worked as a pattern maker and draftsman in the auto industry and was a car lover who had owned a Stanley Steamer in his youth. He was a good man who was like a father to me.  I  miss him and think it’s sad that he had to leave New Jersey to seek his fortune.

A gentleman farmer, he had a house on eight-and-a-half acres of land and raised chickens as a hobby. The warm eggs were collected from the  nests each morning by his daughters. They sold some, and Bert brought some to work.

Bert Becker

I was invited to stay with Bert and his family over two happy summers. My mother tried to give him money for the expense of feeding me, but he refused it.

His only son Herbie was born with Down syndrome, a disability I didn’t recognize until later. I thought he was just a person without a lot to say, not too swift and with thick glasses. When he did speak, he was hard to understand. He had three older sisters. They knew how to sew, and made their own clothes. As far as I know, their dressmaking wasn’t a money-saving thing, it was a country, small-town craft thing, and perfectly ordinary – they  probably took sewing in high school . I think a high point for them was choosing from the local feed store’s 100-pound patterned-cloth chickenfeed bags whichever designs would make the prettiest blouses. I remember Uncle Bert lifting and pulling the heavy bags, shifting them around to get to the ones they wanted.

Unlike Bert, his wife Evelyn was Catholic, a woman of Irish background who raised their kids Catholic as well. Virginia, the oldest, was in training to become a nun until her order sent her home after she contracted tuberculosis before final vows. That pretty much did it for Bert with the Church. Virginia got well, and she and her sister Charlotte became nurses, often working in the same hospital and vacationing together. Naomi, the youngest girl, became a teacher.

Herbie had a friend from one farm away named Alec, who was about 14, the same age as Herbie. I was probably four years younger. Thinking back, Alec may have been just a bit limited also, but he drew fantastically detailed and lifelike pencil studies of animals and birds. One evening Herbie and Alec invited me to come along while they looked in windows, I guess a regular practice for them. I went along but not enthusiastically. I was worried we’d be caught, and we didn’t get to see anything anyway.

We spent a lot of time together walking around the “neighborhood”, really just other farms. One day I noticed something different about some barbed wire we had just come up to, the barbs were longer and sharper than what I’d seen before. I mentioned this just as I touched the point of one, getting a healthy shock. My tour guides thought this was hilarious. Fun fact: electrified fences can be recognized by the white porcelain insulators holding them to the fence posts.

One excursion that I won’t forget was a visit to a nearby farm that raised pigs, on Castration Day. I think I may have been brought there by my pals for shock value as much as for my education. The castration procedure is quick, but to this city boy even years later seems astoundingly cruel. A young pig is caught, held down, his back legs spread and his ‘gear’ vigorously cleaned with a stiff paint brush and pink antiseptic from a bucket. The testicles are squeezed together, sliced off with a straight razor and dropped into the bucket. The wound is then repainted with the pink antiseptic and the pig released. No anesthetic is involved, and the pig squeals/screams from the moment it’s caught. I asked one of the young guys involved the reason for the procedure; the answer was it makes the pig get fatter and be better behaved.

At night on Dean Road it was pitch black and dead quiet except for the crickets  and frogs. I slept on the living room couch. The rare times a car passed by it could be heard coming from far up the road, then its lights seen through the screen door. The traffic was so light and random it was hard to get used to.  My hosts didn’t seem to have many books, at least not in the living room, the only one I remember was a hardbound illustrated medical book of chicken diseases.

Bert’s (healthy) chicken yard was maybe 30 feet by 30, with the coop where the chickens roost at night at one side, and in the center a long-unused outhouse.  When Bert and Evelyn had friends over who had never visited before, if they asked for the bathroom Bert would walk them out to the chicken-yard gate with a flashlight to see how far they would go before stopping. Just out of curiosity I used the outhouse once, it was smelly.

I had brought my cap pistol and holster along. Chickens wandered loose in the yard alongside the house, pecking the ground for insects and whatever looked interesting. I would walk up behind one, take aim and pop off a cap or two. After a while one rooster took exception to being a regular target and spurred me in the leg. My pants were heavy enough that I didn’t need stitches, but he did draw blood. A couple of weeks later Evelyn was planning a chicken dinner and Bert asked if had any thoughts on the subject. I pointed out my attacker and Bert caught him, then trussed him up so he couldn’t move. Bert was a civilized man, and didn’t like loose chickens running around spraying blood after their heads were chopped off. I asked if I could do the honors. Bert nodded, stroked the bird gently for a moment, then stretched him out on the tree stump execution block. I managed only one or two  timid taps of the hatchet before Bert said “Give me that.”

There’s a lot more to a chicken dinner than killing a chicken, and I felt somehow deflated and maybe a little sad watching his innards be removed, then his carcass soaked in scalding water so the girls could more easily pull out his feathers, a tedious task. When we had Sunday dinner, I ate some, but not as much as I normally would.

Rooster spurs

Me in Michigan. The hat came with the house

The invisible fist of Picatinny

By

On August 7, 2019

In Family, Working

Imagine one day you’re just walking along minding your own business, not a care in the world, when someone runs up silently behind you and shoves you so hard that you start falling forward and have to break into a run so you don’t land on your face.

One day in the fall of 1961 I’m driving down the main road in Mount Freedom, minding my own business, not a care in the world as set down above, when I feel a giant shove and my truck lurches forward. There’s no sound of a crash, nobody ran into me. I slow down, check my mirrors, there’s no one near me. It seems that the Picatinny Arsenal munitions plant, eight miles away, has blown up yet again; this time the blast is moderate, killing only one and injuring sixteen. I never thought driving a bakery truck could be so dangerous.

Best job ever

By

On August 7, 2019

In Family, Religion, Working

I got into the wholesale bakery business by answering a newspaper ad after I was fired from Foodland for telling the manager it was stupid to wait until closing time to collect the carts from the parking lot. In my supermarket days I had watched different bakery route guys operate, and it seemed like a job I might like. I applied, and although I was only 21, they liked my supermarket experience and I was in. I trained by going out on an existing route with a supervisor. An unspoken part of the first day on the job, for him, was observing whether the new hire could shift gears and steer a bakery truck without crashing or falling out the always-open door.

That day it was raining and still dark when we left the garage. After a few blocks, we approached a red light where there was stopped a mobile construction crane, no lights on, its long boom lowered to windshield height and taking up 40 feet of road behind it. When I came to a gentle stop behind the boom, the supervisor sighed, as if to say “Why is this guy stopping way back here?” Then he realized I hadn’t smeared us both against the unseen boom of the unlit crane, sighed a different kind of sigh and settled down on his wire-basket seat.

As the most-recently-hired driver/salesman, I had the least seniority, and thus ended up with the least desirable route. Its sales volume was low, meaning low commissions, and it was the longest, at about 120 miles through Morris County and parts of Essex. Some guys made little jokes about how long it was, but I had always loved driving and to me that was  a plus. The route  was also green and scenic; one ride-along boss came back claiming to have seen a bear chasing an Indian.

Drivers were required to be members of the Teamster’s Union, so after paying an initiation fee I became a dues-paying, union-book-carrying Teamster.

Local 37, baby

Back at the garage one afternoon, I was surprised to see  Pete,  the crook and my friend from Kingsway Markets. He has had a sales route here for a while. We shake hands and he says in a low voice “Tips are good here, Paulie, tips are good.” Seeing us talking, the bosses are surprised and probably a little disappointed in me that I know Pete, about whom they have their suspicions. Later, one casually asks how I know Pete, and seems reassured when I say simply that we both worked at the Kingsway supermarket  in East Orange.

Morris County was just then entering a boom phase, with new housing developments, apartments and supermarkets springing up all over. No thanks to me, my route became one of the best in the garage. The company even gave me a bigger truck.

During the Cold War, Nike anti-aircraft missile bases were sprinkled about the U.S. to defend against Russian attack. The Nike base in Livingston NJ became one of my stops, with a not-very-profitable standing order of 12 loaves of bread every other day. The base was surrounded by cyclone fence and razor wire, with a guardhouse at the gate. The procedure to enter was: halt, greet the guard,  wait for the gate to open, drive through.

One morning the gate was standing open and I could see that the guard was asleep. It was  still dark. I tapped the horn lightly, then again, with no response. I waited for a while, then drove slowly up the hill to the mess hall. As soon as I got there, the mess sergeant came up  to me in his chef’s whites and said “If you ever come through that gate again without permission you will be shot.” I didn’t see any point in making trouble for anyone by explaining why I had done that, so I remained silent. Later that day, I calculated the sales commission on 12 loaves of bread three times a week, not much. The base was a bit away from the rest of the route, eating up my valuable time  and the company’s gasoline. I decided not to go there anymore.

A customer in Rockaway wants a loaf of fancy, rich butter bread, which I don’t normally carry, once a month, on the Friday before the first Sunday of the next month. It will be cut into neat cubes and used for Holy Communion in his (likely Baptist) church. I need to order my stuff one day in advance, and it’s hard to remember to check whether tomorrow will be the Friday before the first Sunday of the next month. I am a monthly disappointment to my customer; each Friday before the first Sunday of the next month, he shakes his head in sad resignation and I say I am sorry, which I genuinely am.

Sometimes I disappoint my bosses instead of the customers. One supervisor hears of a store in Mendham, according to him “just a turn of the wheel” off my route, that would like to sell Dugan products. At home I check a map and see it’s about eight miles off my route, let’s see, 8 miles  times 2  at 30 mph, that’s 32 minutes –  how am I supposed to add this store of unknown sales potential to my route and still get home at three o’clock in the afternoon? I am a creature of habit, and for the next few days I forget to go to my theoretical new stop and the bosses stop bringing it up.

People sometimes order specially-made cakes but change  their mind. Then the driver has to bring it back to the garage. There’s a raffle; anyone interested can buy a chance for a dollar. I win this time, and proudly bring home  a sheet cake inscribed “Happy Birthday Jazzelle”.

One day I finish my route early and decide to stop home for lunch before going back to the garage. After my truck has been parked in front of the house for an hour, a nosy neighbor begins to suspect the house-to-house, retail Dugan man has something going on with my wife. She sends her child to our door to snoop, saying her mother’s been waiting to pay her bill. My truck is way bigger than his, so the whole notion is absurd.

All good things must come to an end, and in 1966, Dugan Brothers, “Bakers for the Home Since 1878”, is raped  taken advantage of in a leveraged-buyout scheme, and soon thereafter files for bankruptcy and shuts down. My kids are sad – I won’t be home at three in the afternoon any more.

Once I took my older guy out on the route with me. It was a few days before Christmas and my customers treated him like  a king. He still remembers that day, and calls that job the best job ever.

A Day at the Opera

By

On August 1, 2019

In Family, Music, NYC, Religion, Teachers

In grades seven and eight I had a science teacher that I really liked and admired, Mr. Fischer. He knew I liked science and science-fiction books, and was open to such classroom questions as, if light is really particles (turns out it isn’t), can it be used to push a spaceship along, even just a little bit? The atomic bomb and the possibility of atomic energy were also hot subjects in our classroom. Mr. Fischer was a bachelor, with a slight lisp and some fussy behaviors. Given what we know, or think we know, today, he was probably gay. Mr. Fischer was good friends with our music teacher Miss Barnett, who had season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera.

Miss Barnett offered Mr. Fischer a pair of tickets to see Aida, and he asked me if I wanted to go. My mom said fine with her, and off we went one Saturday on the bus to New York. On the way, we saw acres of empty steel drums stacked up in the meadowlands along the bus route. It later turned out they were not empty, as most of the world probably thought, and had been leaking toxic goo into the North Jersey soil for years.

We arrived at the Met, still in the original building at 39th Street, and climbed to our seats. This is not meant as a complaint about the tickets, but we were in real nosebleed territory, the highest section in the house. The section was so steep that when I looked around, I was peering straight between the knees of the old lady behind me. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the whole outing and thought the opera was fantastic. I know now that some people think Aida is bombastic, but what did I know then, kids love bombast.

Aida. Metropolitan Opera, 2014

Now, here’s what I think happened next, deduced by putting together two and two and based on the available evidence,

One Mr. Grady, who lived two doors down from us on Rayburn Terrace, was the janitor at Cleveland Street School. He was a devout Catholic who went to Mass every morning; he carried a rosary in his back pocket and could be seen fingering it from time to time. Mr. Grady hated Mr. Fischer for the predictable reasons, and had gotten wind of our opera excursion.  Mr. Grady put a bug in my mother’s ear that perhaps Mr. Fischer was leading her son astray, and she should beware. My mother then confided in her boss, Mr.Edwards, with whom she was on friendly terms and maybe just a little bit office-romancy – Mr. Edwards would sometimes drive her home at night so she wouldn’t have to take the bus.  Perhaps her bookish son was being groomed as a Friend of Dorothy? Mr. Edwards considered the issue and came up with an idea.

Next, the only tangible evidence I have of all this speculation.

My mother came home from work one day and said “Mr. Edwards thought you might like this calendar.” Indeed I would, for it was probably the most risqué pinup calendar then available, Vargas Girls in provocative poses and showing as much skin as was legal.  “Um, thanks!” I had never been given anything by Mr. Edwards before.

After a decent interval I was upstairs, the staples were out and my top six picks were on the wall alongside the Honor Roll certificates. I was cured.

12 months of Vargas Girls

Library card

By

On August 1, 2019

In Family, Music, Theft

 I was a good customer of the Orange Public Library. Usually the first thing I’d do when I arrived was head over to the reference room and take Gray’s Anatomy off the shelf, then find a seat where no one could see what I was studying. It was the already ancient 1905 edition of Gray’s, all black-and-white hand-drawn, scrupulous and scary illustrations of the various parts of the human anatomy, especially the lady parts. It was a well-worn, thick book, and if you set it down on its spine, it would fall open automatically to the V’s.

The non-fiction, or what I thought of as the Dewey Decimal part of the library, was at the back of the building, spread over  three levels connected by metal stairs. The floors between levels were of heavy, translucent glass and as much as you might strain and imagine, you couldn’t see anything of the people walking on the level directly above your head except the bottom of their shoes.

The library had a collection of classical music on 33-and-a-third LP albums; symphonies and operas.  German/English side-by-side opera librettos were available, so I could sing along in my living room until someone came home. My mother had no interest in opera of any flavor, but on Saturday afternoons we’d listen to the Philharmonic radio broadcast on NBC together.

There seemed no limit to the information available in the library. Here I sought out the recipe for gunpowder, and while browsing randomly stumbled upon a book about witchcraft. When I took the book home, I found that one page contained about 20 hexagrams that could Make Things Happen. One of them, if stared at long enough, would turn the starer into a werewolf. That didn’t seem like such a great idea for anyone, so I averted my eyes and tore out the page. I balled it up and threw it into a sewer next day on my way to school. Just a small public service.

After I got interested in building models I stole a thin volume called “How to Make a Ship in a Bottle”. That might be the first thing I ever stole. When my brother saw me reading it, he said “How to take a shit in a bottle” and laughed, and I got mad. I never did make a ship in a bottle, it looked pretty complicated.

 

Stickler Memorial Library, Orange, NJ, early 1900s. It’s still there, kids

Stuff My Mother Threw Out

By

On July 31, 2019

In Family

This is my version of the story everyone seems to have, Stuff My Mother Threw Out. My family moved from 224 Rayburn Terrace in Orange, right next door to number 222, when I was about 14 . This was during the time of the Korean War, and my brother knew he was being drafted.

A while after the move, I discovered all my military stuff was missing: my German spiked  helmet from WW I, my copy of the WW2 Aircraft Spotter’s Guide including photos and instant-identification silhouettes of every American, German and Japanese fighter plane and bomber, some random bullets, a dummy hand grenade, and my uncle George’s WWII uniform insignia and medals.

I understand why, but I miss them.

1915 Prussian Pickelhaube, ima-usa.com

WW2 Aircraft Spotter’s Guide

A favourite aunt

By

On July 31, 2019

In Family

At the onset of World War I, my Aunt Alice’s family in England sent her here, at age 15, to live with relatives to avoid the bombing and anticipated invasion of England by the Hun. Here she met and fell in love with my Uncle Rob Becker, a horse-and-wagon milkman and professional golfer who for a while was good enough to be on the tour with Bobby Jones. After they married, Uncle Rob entertained Aunt Alice inexpensively by bringing her on the tour to watch him play, something she wasn’t crazy about. After his golf game stopped earning a living, he went back on the milk wagon for the next 25 or 30 years.

Looking back, Aunt Alice was probably the most cultured woman I ever met. I think my Uncle Bert et al. thought she was putting on airs when she broke out the candelabra for Bert’s annual visit from Michigan (Bert would move it off the table “so we can all see better”), but she wasn’t being snooty, she was just being the way she was.

Alice Becker

During their marriage, Aunt Alice developed lung problems that brought her to the specialty hospital on High Street, where she was operated on. I stopped by to see her on my way home from school, and she was thrilled to have a visitor. Her operation had been a success and she was feeling fine. I later overheard one adult confiding to another that the “mass” in one lung had turned out to be an unfinished twin.

When Uncle Rob’s company eventually sold their dairy farm to real-estate developers, he retired and became a school-crossing guard. After a few accidents driving, his children forced him to give up his license. He said at the time “Well, that’s it, my life is over.” But it wasn’t.

Their son Robert Becker Jr., aka Bobby, also a milkman, was in the infantry during WWII but happily came home from  Europe unscathed. Upon his return, his much-hated-by-the-family wife Vera told him, in effect, “If you think I’m going to stay married to a milkman, you’re crazy.” So, Bobby went back to school, worked hard, got  rich and became a genuine big kahuna in the insurance industry. In fact, his portrait still hangs in the boardroom of the  insurance company he built. True story, kids. Stay in school.

Highly detailed

By

On July 31, 2019

In Family

I am usually the first to grab my family’s copy of Life magazine. As touted on this week’s cover, the next-to-last page is a black-and-white photograph remarkable for the time, the first crisp, highly-detailed aerial view of the North Pole, or maybe the South Pole, I forget. It shows a complex, craggy and absolutely featureless mass of ice and snow. A bit off from the center, I draw a tiny barber pole.

While my brother reads the magazine that night, I watch. When he gets to that page, he studies it for a long while. He stares and stares and says half-aloud, “Hey…”. Once he realizes, he is annoyed, but laughs.

At the Met

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On July 29, 2019

In Family, NYC

Temple of Dendur

One Sunday in March, I drive into New York City with my young family to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There is nowhere nearby to park, so I drop my family at the side entrance and keep looking. I work my way across town, still no luck. At a parking lot with a “full” sign posted I get an inspiration and show the attendant a ten dollar bill. He agrees that there is just enough room for one more car, and I walk back to the museum to catch up with my family. While we are in the Arms and Armor room admiring Henry the VIII’s steel codpiece, we hear the noise of a brass band out on Fifth Avenue. We have forgotten it is Saint Patrick’s Day!

We step out onto the museum’s broad front steps. Many people are here already, watching the remaining groups and bands organize and warm up before they march off to connect with the  parade’s main body. The groups nearest us are at a momentary standstill. One man standing near us on the steps incessantly blows a green plastic horn. Blat. Blat. Blat. Finally, from half a block away, we hear “HEY YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKER, STOP BLOWIN’ THAT HORN!” Our step-mate pauses to consider, tucks the horn under his arm and departs.

The following day, the New York Times features a photo of Ed Koch at the parade, wearing a tweed cap and cable-knit sweater. Hizzoner is shouting at someone out of frame, his hand to his mouth like a megaphone, probably just repeating his catchphrase “How’m I doing?” demand. I entertain  myself by  giving him a  felt-tip word balloon of the demand we heard yesterday.

Bucky Bug

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On July 26, 2019

In Family, NYC

One day during the summer my mother takes me on a bus trip to New York City to visit her cousin. I don’t think I was ever in the city before that. As soon as we get out of the bus on Eighth Avenue, I am impressed by the rich stink, not the garbage-and-urine city stink we know today, but the honest, heavy stink of cows and massive amounts of cow shit. We are at the block-long cattle pens of the West Side stockyards, in the city’s slaughterhouse district. My mother half-apologizes for the stink and we start walking east. After a few blocks the air freshens and we go into an Automat, the fast-food restaurant of the day. At the change booth my mother pushes two dollar bills over to a bored clerk and a brass chute delivers a shower of nickels.

There are walls of sandwiches, pies and much more, each on its own clean plate and behind its own swing-up glass door. Drop enough nickels into a slot, turn the knob, lift the door, slide out your choice. Coffee is a nickel – grab an empty cup, insert your nickel, turn slowly the S-shaped arm to dispense an exact cupful. We grab a table for four, sitting across from each other. Very soon a man approaches and asks “Is this seat taken?”. It isn’t, we say, and he takes the seat between us. Unlike myself, my mother seems unfazed by this strange event. There is minimal but cordial conversation. We finish, say goodbye to our new friend and leave. The Automat did not expect its customers to bus their tables.

We head eastward to Third Avenue, home of the Third Avenue Elevated, sort of an above-ground subway line. When we get to our cousin’s building, it stands facing the El and about fifty feet from the tracks. Her apartment is on the third floor and the windows are open. I remember our cousin apologizing for the train noise but it really didn’t seem so bad after a while.

After the ladies get settled in the kitchen, I go back to the front room. Trains come by in one direction or the other every five minutes or so. I am old enough to read and I lie on the carpet by the window and read my Bucky Bug comic.

Automat, Berenice Abbott

 

So I’ve been told

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On June 24, 2019

In Early days, Family

My parents lived in Bloomfield, NJ but I was born in Saint Michael’s Hospital in Newark. My last name looks Italian (has a vowel on the end), but we are of traditional pale German-Irish stock. When the time came to bring baby Paul home from the hospital, my mother was highly indignant when “They tried to give me a little Italian baby!”. I am satisfied any other attempts also failed, for I look pretty much like my brother.

A couple of other things I was told but don’t actually remember: once I got out of the house naked and walked pretty far down Olive Street before anybody noticed. Once I pulled a chest of drawers over on myself but my brother heard it fall and got me out from under there. Thanks, bro.

 

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