Tales of the East Coast Part One – Tales of West Paterson

Tales of the East Coast
Part One – Tales of West Paterson
Dedicated to Jean Shepherd
Tales of West Paterson - Back to the Future in West Paterson
Back to the Future Past
By Arthur H Tafero
It’s been over forty-five years since I left this place and moved to Union
City in 1961. I had just graduated the eighth grade of Saint Bonaventure’s
Grammar School in West Paterson, New Jersey in the beginning of June and by
the end of June and we were living in a used house on Ninth Street and
Palisades Avenue in Union City. My father had wanted a house closer to his
workplace in Kearny. I thought this was a really bad idea. I had to spend the
summer making new friends and re-establishing my sports abilities with guys I
didn’t know. But, I knew wherever I went, I wouldn’t forget West Paterson
and the development. Especially the tribe of guys I hung out with and our
mild adventures during the endless summers of our youth. The landmarks,
stores, people and places that were now changed, gone, dead or in some rare
instances were still there. I had driven across the Washington Bridge onto
Route 46 and was headed for my old neighborhood for the first time since
Kennedy was president.
I took the first exit for Paterson that I saw since I had no idea of how to
get there. It led me to Broad Street, a generic name for the primary road
leading into Paterson. It was pretty run down, and I parked to talk to two
older policemen who were directing traffic. I asked them about the old movie
theaters I had usually spent Saturday afternoons with the tribe watching
horrendous science-fiction movies. I asked about the Fabian, the US, and the
Capitol theatres. All places rich in my memory. They had all been torn down.
None of were left, but my memories of them still survived. I quietly asked
about the Majestic theatre, which always showed films that were condemned in
part by the Legion of Decency, thereby making it necessary for eighth-grade
boys on bikes to gain entry to the oversexed “Macumba Love―. We got a
wino to buy tickets and accompany us in for that one. The Legion had put this
film in its worst category, Condemned, not in part, but ENTIRELY CONDEMNED!
The officer quietly remarked that it had lasted the longest, but was torn
down about seven years ago. I thanked the officers and got back in my jalopy.
The scenery picked up as I reached McBride Avenue. There I saw two things
that brought a smile to my face. The Great Waterfalls of Paterson on Spruce
Street by the bridge before you turn left for McBride Avenue. They were still
there and they were still impressive. I’ve always hada soft spot for
waterfalls, but these were one of my favorites. The other sight for sore eyes
I quickly made out as I turned onto McBride Avenue was Libby’s.
Libby’s was a famous Paterson landmark because they served authentic Texas
Weiners. The kind with chopped raw onions and chili. They also had great
burnt fries. I pulled up into a handicapped zone because I knew as soon I ate
two of these I would be eligible for the space. As I entered the eatery, the
smell of the place brought me back forty-five years. It smelled exactly the
same. That wonderful smell of meat sauce and onions permeated the air. I
quickly went back out to the car so I wouldn’t get a ticket and dug right
in. They were both gone in less than five minutes as well as the fries I got
with them. The coke I had was less than half gone so I tossed the rest away
in the garbage. I was full and I could feel the onions and meat sauce working
their strange magic in my body. I reached for the tums and had about six and
then I started the car again.
On the way down Mcbride Avenue, I passed a street called Danforth Avenue. It
seemed very familiar, so I took a left on it. Suddenly, I was in view of
Saint Bonaventure Grammar School and the church one block away. It was now PS
29, a public junior-high school. I spoke with the gray-haired maintenance man
for the school and he told me that he remembered caring for Saint Bon’s,
but the parish couldn’t afford to keep the school open, so it was purchased
by the town. It had been built in 1924 and was a sturdy building.
One of the first things that I noticed was that they had paved the playground
on the side of the school. It had been black gravel when we went there. Boy,
did our little white shirts get filthy playing in that stuff. Most of the
grounds had remained the same. I remembered lost games of touch football and
hockey with crushed milk cartons as the puck and our shoes as the hockey
sticks. There were the little paved steps next to the wall of the school.
These were the ones we flipped cards other than Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle
in games of farsies and toppsies. Farsies was purely a skill game and went
slowly because you only flipped one card at a time. Also, there was a
distinct pecking order of who could beat who in farsies so the game lost
favor after awhile. But topsies was a different story. You flipped cards all
over the place; it appeared as if skill had very little to do with winning.
As soon as someone’s card landed on top of someone else’s, you won all
the cards flipped. It was truly a form of addictive gambling. You could win
or lose a hundred cards during your lunch period depending on your luck. Of
course the really good flippers would waste about five or six throws in
topsies and then flip like it was farsies. Only the good flippers could
consistently get the cards next to the wall. But still the game had lots of
upsets. The nuns didn’t mind farsies, but they would get upset if they
caught us playing toppsies. I guess it was too much like Bingo.
Halfway around the building was a recessed area that was perfect for playing
three flies up or a form of baseball. If the ball was caught off the wall it
was an out. If you made it hit the ground (it had to travel at least ten feet)
after ten feet it was a single. If somebody in the outfield dropped any flies
it was a double and if you hit it all the way the opposite wall and it
bounced off without anyone catching it, it was a home run. You could never
reach the wall on a fly unless you were playing with a Spaulding rubber ball.
All the cheap balls made for lousy games. The Spaulding balls made for very
exciting games. Of course the worst feeling of all was to hit the sweet spot
on the indentation of the wall and have the ball go about twenty feet up the
other side of the wall, bounce off and get caught for an out. It was almost
like a game of jai-alai the way we were able to catch and throw those balls.
I entered the building and took a half-hearted shot of one of the classrooms,
but they were nothing like the ones we were in. I walked the block or so down
to the church and was curious about the inside. The church seemed so much
smaller than I remembered it. Actually, everything seemed so much smaller
than I remembered it. Everything seemed like it was built in miniature. I
remember skipping mass one Sunday because the Yankee doubleheader started at
twelve and I would miss an hour or so of the first game. I had to see or hear
every inning of every game or my life would have been ruined. After a while,
I found skipping mass to be quite pleasant, so I did it every week in the
eighth grade until we moved to Union City. I’ve never been to a mass since
except for Christmas or some special occasion.
It was time for me to leave the church and the school grounds, but I noticed
that Tom’s candy store on the corner was gone. In its place was a modest,
new stucco one-family We had gone to that candy store for almost seven years,
getting our sandwiches and baseball cards on a regular basis. Tony always had
plenty of baseball cards in stock and did a brisk business. Sometimes we
would skip lunch or spend our bus money on baseball cards. One kid had
actually spent his tuition his mother had sent him with to school with in an
envelope on baseball cards. Somehow, he never got caught.
I remembered all the Sunday masses I had gone to and the breakfasts at the
hall they had once a month down from the church. The food was wretched, but
at least it was free. Most of the time, we didn’t eat the breakfasts at the
hall because my father was quite picky about his pastries. We usually left
the eight o’clock mass a little early to beat everyone else to this little
grocery store on McBride avenue, The Dolly Madison Ice Cream Store. God! how
my father loved those Boston Custard Cream doughnuts! They were crispy on the
outside and had nothing but filling on the inside. Almost no dough at all. If
you bit into one without the proper respect, you were guaranteed to get cream
all over your Sunday best. It was important to get to this place before nine
o’clock because the hungry hordes were on their way and would wipe out the
modest offering of fifty or sixty doughnuts in less than one hour. My father
deftly parked in front of a hydrant next to the diner and ran into the place.
He ran back out almost as fast with a wild gleam in his eye and said “They
only had ten left, but I got’em all.!― Usually he bought a dozen and we
had four each. My petite mother would down two in five minutes and I would
eat all four of mine and scheme of ways to get one of my mother’s other two.
There was no chance of getting any from my father. You had a better chance of
getting money out of a bank on Sunday in the fifties. Sometimes I would tell
my mother she was putting on a little weight and then I popped the question
and sometimes I got lucky. Other times I just begged like a pathetic wounded
animal until she finally gave in. The Dolly Madison store had been replaced
by a spanking brand new Dunking Doughnuts franchise. I stopped in and got a
Boston Cream donut, but was grossly disappointed, so I threw it away after a
few bites.
I drove the car back down to McBride Avenue, drove on and noticed a familiar
fork in the road. I knew if I took the left prong, I would be in the
development in less than a minute or so, but I took the right prong. I did
that for two reasons: I wanted to put off the excitement of seeing the old
development for as long as I could so I could enjoy the anticipation and I
also wanted to see some other familiar spots that were off to the right. For
example, the Acme and the liquor store were no longer there. There was a
small, modern strip mall with a bank and some small shops, instead. I was
running out of film, so I parked in the mall and went to one of the small
shops to help the local economy. I knew it would be more expensive than
Eckhard’s or JVC, but I bought a camera, anyway. As I was leaving the store,
I saw a grey-haired fireman coming in. He had his West Paterson Volunteer
Fire Department Tee-Shirt on. I just had to pigeon-hole him and ask a few
questions.
So I introduced myself and said I was writing a small article on West
Paterson in the fifties and he was more than willing to fill in some of the
spaces. I learned that the old Acme, and for that matter, the entire block
had burned down in a terrific fire in the early 70s. All the physical
evidence of Pat Howard’s and my crime of bottle heisting had been
permanently removed. The fellow went on to tell me that some of the places
that burned down still did businesses out of trailers for a while and that
the liquor store was the last one to leave. I imagined that a new plan to
heist bottles from a trailer would have been much more difficult than the
operation we had executed over those many years ago. I enquired about a few
guys I knew had been in the Volunteer Fire Department in the 60s, but none of
the names rang a bell with him.
As I left the new shopping center, I remembered the pagan school that was
down the street a few more blocks. It was the Gilmour Elementary school and
it was still there. All of the Protestant and less than enthusiastic Catholic
parents sent our boy tribe friends there. It was such a shame they were all
going to hell, like sister had told us. We couldn’t understand how the
Catholic kids who went to Gilmour would be saved and the Protestant kids
would go to hell, when we absolutely knew that some of the Protestant kids
were a lot better behaved than some of the Catholic kids in Gilmour. In 1958,
the town had built a brand new school behind the old one called Memorial
School. Across from Memorial School was the spanking brand new Boys and Girls
club of West Paterson. We only got to enjoy it for two years, before we moved
on to High School, but it was very cool to have your own indoor gym to play
ball and a game room to boot. Memorial still looked pretty new, but the Boys
and Girls Club looked like an old relic; which it actually was, but I’m
sure the kids still enjoyed it.
I decided it was time to go back and take that left fork. I had already used
one roll of film, but now I had new ammunition. They had made some
improvements to the hairpin turn that was required to get into the
development. Now you had to go up a small private road to get onto Mount
Pleasant Avenue, the base road of the development. From there on, it felt
like I was in the Twilight Zone. I hadn’t been to these streets in almost
fifty years. I saw the signpost up ahead. I had entered Williams Drive. I
parked the car for a second at the base of Williams Drive. That’s where the
old playground used to be. It was still there, except the baskets had nets.
We had never had nets, that was a luxury. There was a chain link fence that
cut off the steep hill down to the road and the McBride stores. We used to
stumble down those steep hills to get to the acme quicker. We also used to
lose a lot of baseballs in the vegetation that used to be there. It was all
gone now. We wouldn’t need Larry Schoenfeld to find any balls here, you
could see every nook and cranny.
The park had a little post with a placard: Theodore May Memorial Park. He had
been in our eighth grade class, but he didn’t hang around with the boy
tribe. He had seemed to be a quiet, serious fellow. He must have been killed
prematurely in some war or other catastrophe. I thought it would have been
much more appropriate to have the park named after Hatchie Van Weston, who we
knew for sure always played with the boy tribe in that playground for many
years. But I let that thought go as I noticed the streets of Williams Drive
were lined with large, strong trees. When we lived in these houses, there
were no trees lining the street, there were nothing but tiny little seedlings
that had been recently planted. It was good to know that West Paterson
hadn’t gotten rid of all their trees.
As I drove very slowly up the block, I noticed that all the families I had
known had either died off or moved. I guess we had all moved or died off in
one way or the other. As the children of the development had gotten older,
they went off to colleges or to work in surrounding cities. The development
was not a place for second generation families. It was a place for first
generation families. It was a place for kids and struggling parents, not for
emerging adults. No doubt, there must have been a few houses with the
original families, but I didn’t see any of them. Only the Van Weston house
at the end of the first block on Williams Drive looked like it might still be
inhabited by the original owners. I was too fainthearted to knock on the door
and check for sure. I wouldn’t have known what to say if either Davy or his
father met me at the door. I took a right past the Van Weston house and I
slowed down as I noticed the Topozzi house and the Delphino house next to it.
I was saddened to see there were no trees in back of the Topozzi house. There
was nothing but other streets and other houses. Where had all the woods gone?
Did they cut them ALL down? It appeared as if they had.
I continued to drive until I got to Overmount Avenue. This was the block that
my first girlfriend, Barbara Barnier lived on. I guess you would have to say
she wasn’t a girl friend in a classic sense, but she was the first girl I
had taken on a date and she was very cute and a lot of fun. But her house was
down the hill on Overmount. I turned upward, further up the gradual hill and
passed what had been the Klump house, Prince house and the Zambrano house;
none of which were still there as far as I could see. I continued up the
block until I reached Morley Drive and then I took a left. This was the
street where my best friend of over twenty years had lived on. I was supposed
to be the best man at his wedding, but I had to run off to New York in 1973
to avoid being whacked by a bookie. I never saw Doug again. As I approached
his house on Morley Drive, I got that fainthearted feeling again and just
continued to drive past after I took a quick picture. The house had a garage
now that it didn’t have before and there were no more woods in the back of
Doug’s old house. I really hope that his life turned out the way he wanted
it to. He had been a good friend. I went to the end of Morley Drive and was
pleasantly surprised to see woods at the end of the block, just like it was
forty-five years ago.
I parked the car and went right into the woods on the path I had used so many
times so many years ago. This time, I didn’t get to walk ten yards into the
woods until I came out into a new school that had been built fairly recently.
It was for the new wave of parents and kids of the development. I walked the
few yards back out of the patch of woods and went back to the car, a bit
disappointed. The woods were almost all gone. These were more like tree
gardens than woods. I drove back past Jackie Shaw’s old house, Doug’s
house. Jim Kingsley’s house and Bobby Bettell’s house. I took a left at
Overmount avenue and continued up the steep hill. I went past the Westmount
Country Club and the large, expensive houses that were connected to them. I
felt no attachment to either of these Johnny Come Lately pieces of West
Paterson real estate. They had helped to ruin the ambience of Garret Mountain
which was at the top of Overmount Avenue. I had remembered Garret Mountain to
be a beautiful refuge of nature where we would fly kites on endless meadows,
skate on the large, picturesque lake and take in the breathtaking view of
Paterson over a thousand feet below us in the valley.
You could still see the view of Paterson, a thousand feet below in the valley,
just as long as you had a few million dollars. There were nothing but ugly,
gigantic mansions which all looked alike and dominated the top of Garret
Mountain. You could see them from as far away as Paterson. I had noticed them
driving in from Spruce Street near the falls and taking the left on McBride
Avenue. I didn’t take any special notice of them then, but now I realized
what they actually were. The replacements of the mountain refuge I had grown
up in. I would not want to live there now. That was the first thought that
went through my mind as I drove through these pretentious dwellings. It was
time for me to drive back down the mountain and get back onto Mount Pleasant
Avenue on the way to Route 46 East.
I was getting more and more disappointed at the rape of the woods and of
Garret Mountain. I wanted to keep those memories in my mind. The longer that
I stayed here, the faster those memories would begin to fade.
I was a getting a little hungry by this time as it was approaching suppertime.
Nostalgia really whets your appetite. So as I lolled down Route 46 East, I
remembered that the best hot dogs in New Jersey (and most likely the country)
were served at Callahan’s on the side of the highway I was currently
driving on. And even though I still had indigestion from the two beauties
that I had consumed at Libby’s, I did not fail to stop at Callahan’s on
the highway near Clifton. I took a picture of the place from the outside and
then ridiculously took pictures of a jumbo dog with everything on it; one of
two I ordered with a bottle of Miller Beer. I figured I would be sffering
from the Libby dogs anyway, so I might as well go completely to hell with
myself. I could go back to the gym and my decent regimen again starting
tomorrow. I used to feel badly about being one of the first of the boy tribes
to leave West Paterson. Ronny had actually been the first. I felt badly that
I was not going to be going to Passaic Valley High School and be hanging out
with my old friends. I am sure my life would have turned out quite
differently had I stayed.
But now it became apparent that ALL of us had left the development to find
our way in the world. It just took a little longer for others than myself. We
moved to different towns, cities, states and even other countries. You could
always take the boy out of West Paterson, but you could never take the West
Paterson out of the boy. We will always be members of the boy tribes until we
die. It doesn’t matter where we all live now. Because when you no longer
have yesterday or today, you have to put your faith in tomorrow. Thomas Wolfe
was not totally right; sometimes you can go back home for a little while. In
fact, I just spotted my favorite tree that is still there down the playground.
I used to fall asleep under that tree sometimes during the summer. It’s
summer now. I think I might just take a short nap there. It looks so very
inviting. Just a few minutes…..just a few….just a.
Tales of West Paterson - Welcome to West Paterson
Are you really that sixty-year-old person in that sixty-year-old body? Or do
you secretly enjoy looking at old baseball cards and comic books from the
fifties? Do you occasionally reminisce about TV shows from the fifties or the
old neighborhood where kids used to physically play with each other instead
of machines? If you said yes to any of these, then let’s go back; back to
the days of three television channels (if you were lucky). Back to the days
before there were computers, video games or cell phones. Back to a place
called “The Development―. People who moved there came from the
surrounding cities in Northern New Jersey. My parents were among those people.
Welcome to West Paterson.
Using the GI Bill, our fathers plunked down $9,500 for a split-level house on
Williams Drive, Overmount Avenue, or Morley Drive in Great Notch Village in
Little Falls, New Jersey in 1953. To the outside world, this place was known
as West Paterson. Most of us were six or seven years old and ready for the
second grade. Our mothers either enrolled us into the local public school or
into Saint Bonaventure Grammar School which was about two miles or so away
from the development and closer to Paterson proper. Our earliest memories are
the strong smells of a brand new house. It was that newly fresh-painted smell
of the walls and smell of freshly cut wood. It was the smell of the country
air in the summertime, instead of the dirty streets of cities from whence
many of us had come. It was the smell of newness and possibility in the air.
It is amazing what you can remember from the time you were seven. This is not
a coming-of-age book. We had very little interest in becoming teenagers or
adults. We were very happy with things the way they were at twelve. What
could be better than playing ball every day? What could be better than
swimming at the reservoir or riding your bike every day and hanging out in
the woods with your friends? Not much. Some modern-day people might think
that we were deprived because we had no computers, internet, cell-phones,
air-conditioning, cable-tv, video games or organized sports. But they would
be about as far off-base as Eugene Timmins was when he got picked off one day.
Nothing compares to the carefree days we spent in West Paterson; you can keep
adulthood. In the late 1960s, I used to listen to Jean Shepherd on WOR radio
describe his boy tribe friends and funny situations at home and I was
fortunate enough to have met him before I went into the army at Saint
Peter’s College in 1967. It was his shows that inspired me to make an
informal log of events at the development.
These tales are not just about me or my family; they are about all the people
of the development and our grammar school at St. Bon’s. They are tales of
humor, disappointment, discovery, greed, stupidity, and humanity. Most of all,
they are tales of nostalgia; for these days will never return, so they must
be preserved in our memories.
You will meet the neighbors of Williams Drive, a nearly sixty degree hill
going straight up for about ten houses until it ran into a few side streets.
The Petittes lived in the first corner house on the base of the hill. The
Pettite brothers were considered bullies. But then again, all kids bigger
than you were considered potential bullies. They were very big and bulky.
Across the way from the Petittes lived the Howards. I was a good friend of
Patrick Howard, but I didn’t care for his older brother, Jim. So Patrick
and I pretty much ignored him. Patrick had an eye problem which gave him the
appearance of looking away from you when he was actually looking right at you.
He wasn’t cross-eyed, but it seemed like he was. Anyway, we both like
collecting comic books and baseball cards and he had thousands of 1958 cards
we used to flip against his cellar wall. Further up the street was Glen Glenn,
whose name we constantly made fun of even though his father was a rising
sound technician, and a kid younger than me named Bobby Garfield who was
Glen’s best friend. Bobby’s house was next to ours. On the other side of
the street, the houses abruptly ended because there was a large empty lot
with jutting rocks about fifteen feet high. I guess it was too expensive for
them to remove those solid rock formations. I once fell off those rocks, but
that is a tale for another time.
Further up Williams Drive lived Ronnie Vitale, who pitched for his father’s
little league team, the Amvets. There were only two teams in our little
league when it started; the Amvets and the Indians. I was on the Indians with
my best friend, Douglas Kingsley, whose father, Owen coached the team. He
also had an uncle who taught at Harvard. After Ronnie’s house was the
McCallin house. Once, McCallin’s father forced him to fight another kid at
a large cookout. They had a nice large tract of land on the side where we
played football occasionally. That’s where the fight took place. He got his
clock cleaned by little Wayne Quinn, who lived behind the McCallin house.
There was a short side street on the left of Williams Drive that was occupied
by the Van Weston brothers, Hatchie and Davey. Across from the Van Westons
was Arthur Topozzi’s house and behind his house, the Topozzi Woods, next to
Topozzi’s house was Tom Delphino’s house. Tom was Topozzi’s best friend.
Taking a left off of Williams Drive, you came to the Klump house. Oddly
enough, the boy tribes of the development were not clever enough to realize
there was potential for abusing this name. This was fortunate for the Klumps.
Frankie had four older brothers who had a load of comic books and we would
get sweaty reading them in his attic during the summer. Next to his house was
the Prince house, then the Zambrano house, with Zippy (he looked a bit simian)
and his kid brother, Stitchie, who got his name because he was always getting
stitches. As you went further up the street you ran into Morley Drive. Morley
Drive had the Bettell house. He got hit on the head with a stone one time and
started yelling “I’m Going! , I’m Going―. He thought he was dying,
but we all laughed at him, as we did at anyone in the group who was going
through misfortune. It seemed to be part of the savage nature of young boys.
Next to the Bettell house was the Jim Kingsley house and next to his house
was the Douglas Kingsley house. They were not related, but you can imagine
the agony of the postal workers who had to deliver mail to these two houses.
Next to Douglas Kingsley’s house was the Jackie Shaw house and after that,
you just about ran into the eastern end of houses in the development and the
deep woods.
We didn’t give directions by street name. We always gave directions by who
lived in these houses.
“Well, you go up the street until you get to the Van Weston’s house, then
you take a left and then a quick right until you pass Klump’s house,
Prince’s house and Zambrano’s house; then you take a left on Morley Drive
past Bettell’s house, Jim Kingsley’s house, Douglas Kingsley’s house
and then you finally get to Jackie Shaw’s house.― These were part of the
tribe of boys that would hang out together for the summers between 1954-1960.
We would go into the woods behind Tommy Topozzi’s house, and act like the
little animals we really were. We would get lost in the woods, bring canteens
with us filled with kool-aid, climb dozens of trees and sometimes fall asleep
in the midday in the branches of the trees. The only difference between us
and apes were the apes had better hygienic habits. It was amazing that the
guys seldom fell from these ten and twenty-foot high trees. And when they did
fall, no one ever seemed to seriously get hurt.
Sometimes we went to the woods behind Doug Kingsley’s house. The area was
thick with woods, but in less than ten years it would be completely denuded
for a country club; the Westmont Country Club. Few families in the
development could afford to join a country club, so we were upset that they
were taking our woods away. Of course, that did not matter in the least; the
club was built at the expense of the woods. But for the time being we all
grew up together in the development, and there were plenty of other woods to
go to. There were Topozzi’s woods, and the woods down the hill from the
playground that was at the base of Williams Drive, and then there were all
the woods between the development and Saint Bon’s school just off of
McBride Avenue. If that wasn’t enough for you, there were always the woods
around Garrett Mountain, a few miles up Overmount Avenue.
McBride Avenue contained all of the little stores that connected West
Paterson to Paterson. It ended at the falls; which at age seven or eight
looked like Niagra Falls to us. Then it became Spruce Street. No one in the
development ever went beyond McBride Avenue onto Spruce Street unless it was
with our parents. It was like going to New York. We never ventured past
McBride Avenue until we were in the seventh grade and felt totally mobile on
our bikes. McBride avenue contained some memorable eateries: the Dolly
Madison Ice Cream Parlor, which had custard-cream-filled donuts on Sunday
(they were actually just all custard with a thin donut crust surrounding the
cream), Lazzera’s Italian Bakery and Pizzeria, Libby’s real Texas Weiners
with chili and fresh chopped onions, which my father would sometimes bring
home at midnight (he worked the second shift) on Friday while my mother and I
would stay up watching a scary horror movie hosted by Zacherley, the Ghoul.
Then there was Tom’s deli which was a block off of McBride Avenue and
directly across from Saint Bon’s Grammar School. Every school day Tom would
neatly arrange pre-cut cold cuts on his counter with a pile of rolls and jars
of mustard and mayonnaise. There would be a long line formed outside of the
store while Tom set up his deli stuff. Then the Saint Bon’s students would
file in, one at a time, and order their fifteen cent sandwich. In those days,
lettuce and tomato was free on a sandwich. One day, Jeffrey Lovans sneezed on
the piles of cold cuts and Tom chased him out of the deli. Tom also sold
baseball cards and we would buy scads of them every week, but that is another
tale.
Saint Bonaventure Grammar School was a two story building containing eight
grades of highly agitated little Catholic brats. Tuition was two dollars a
month, transportation was one dollar a month, new school uniforms were one
dollar a month and each student had special envelopes to bring home along for
each of these bills plus one for the starving children in China. There will
be a tale discussing how we took advantage of this situation in greater
detail later on. The school was surrounded by a black gate in the front and a
silver chain link fence going around the rest of the school and the miniscule
playground in the front, side and back of the school. The play areas in the
front and the back were covered in white concrete, the play area on the side
was a pit of black gravel which turned the boys pure white shirts and navy
blue pants into filthy messes by the end of the school day, but our moms
never complained.
The Dominican Sect of the Catholic Church administered the school, but the
nuns actually ran it. The principal was a short penguin named Sister Superior
(we never actually found out her real name). The scourge of the school was
Sister Aloysius, who was to terrorize us in both the fourth and the seventh
grades (we did get even with her in the seventh grade, but that is another
tale). Sister Regina was fairly pleasant and in charge of the eighth grade.
Sister Claire was in charge of the sixth grade and she was pretty nice, also.
The fifth grade was a failed experiment. They tried using a public school
teacher, Miss Gomez, for that grade, but she was run out of the classroom in
less than two months and then replaced with Sister Ignatia, who was barely
able to reign us back in. Our third grade teacher was Sister Evangelista and
our second grade teacher was Sister Rhonesia (we called her Milk of Magnesia)
and she was very nice.
So now you have met most of the players within the development and Saint
Bonaventure Grammar School. Our stories are not like those on “South
Park” or “The Wonder Years― on TV. Although there were bits and pieces
from these shows and other shows like “Leave it to Beaver”, “The
Waltons”, and “Father Knows Best”, that we later smiled at in
retrospect. Our stories were a bit more realistic because they actually
happened (or most of it did). I will try to keep the lies and exaggerations
to a minimum (this is very hard for me to do), but for the most part, most of
these tales are true. We hope you enjoy your visit to our little corner of
the world, circa 1954-1960. Welcome to West Paterson and the
“development―.
Tales of West Paterson - The Nun From Hell
The Nun From Hell
By Arthur H Tafero
Sister Aloysius was an unbelievably relentless evil force of nature. She was
our fourth grade teacher and we were destined to have her again in the
seventh grade. But this was the first time around and the shock of having her
enter our psychic and physical world was quite harrowing. She was a tall,
slightly overweight woman with mysteriously appearing handkerchiefs she would
pull out and put back into her black uniform like a magician. She utilized
three main weapons: a three foot long ruler, which she wielded like an axe, a
two foot pointer, which she often broke over students’ heads, and her two
meaty fists, which she did not hesitate to use on anyone. We were only three
months removed from the third grade, so we were in her complete control.
There were only two ways to avoid Aloysius’ wrath. Being quiet and showing
great academic skill. One of her weaknesses was to allow the best test taker
in each subject to grade everyone else’s paper. She merely recorded the
grades. This allowed four students to almost always escape her wrath because
she had a certain dependence on them.
Of the four of us, Martin was the only one who really pushed the envelope
when it came to finding out how much a grader could get away with. We all
gave our friends high grades by adding answers or erasing math mistakes.
Bernadette Hillman liked to talk, and the witch would slam her ruler down on
to whomever Bernadette was talking to, but never Bernadette, herself. Walter
was an altar boy and never got into trouble until the last week of the last
year of his grammar school life, but that is a story for another time. Diane
was a fairly quiet girl (and one of the objects of Marty’s desire later in
grammar school), so she never was in trouble with the witch. Marty talked to
anyone he could in all four directions and all of them would get whacked like
an Italian mobster. So after a while, no one talked to Marty because they
were sure to get whacked, even if Marty initiated the conversation. He also
pulled other stunts that tested the limits of Aloysius’s allowances for her
graders. He often didn’t pay the monthly tuition and said that he did, but
she had forgotten to record it. Then Marty would spend the proceeds on
baseball cards. He would say the say thing about the monthly bus fare fees,
the monthly school uniform fees, and even the offerings for the starving
children of China. He felt getting new Yankees in fresh packs was far more
important that the starving children of China.
Every month Sister Aloysius and Marty would get into a dialogue about how she
forgot to record his tuition, bus fare and uniform payments and every month
Marty won the argument, but he always received a few whacks for his argument.
He felt it was well worth the whacks. The champion of the class, however, in
getting whacked on a daily basis (and sometimes more than once a day) was
Jeffrey Lovans. Aloysius went after Lovans every day like an attack dog going
after a steak. She broke a pointer a day over Lovans’s very hard head. In
the fourth grade, he would cry every day, but by the seventh grade, he used
to laugh when she did the same thing. Sometimes she broke a ruler over his
back or arm, but most of the time it was over his head. There was something
about Jeffrey that drove the witch into overdrive. She was bad enough with
everyone else, but with Jeffrey, we were sure we would see a homicide sooner
or later.
Class would start at 9 am sharp with the math assignment. Sister would expect
everyone to have a sharpened pencil, loose leaf and an eraser. Jeffrey never
had any of the three. First, she asked if anyone needed paper and Jeffrey
would ALWAYS raise his hand. This got the witch going. “You little twerp,
you never have any paper. Do you think the church is here to support you?―
She never hesitated to use curses. The key was to say nothing in return. Then
she asked if anyone needed a pencil. Only Jeffrey would raise his hand. She
would throw the pencil at him as hard as she could and one time caught him in
the ear.
“Good for you” she said when the pointed pencil pierced Jeffrey’s ear.
“Next time bring a pencil―. By the time she asked if anyone needed an
eraser, no one raised their hand; including Jeffrey. Then it would be time to
hand the papers in, but Sister would always take Jeffrey’s paper and look
at it first. Jeffrey always crossed out a lot of answers because he was
afraid to ask for an eraser. This continued to infuriate Aloysius.
“By the short hairs of the saints (we didn’t understand at the time what
that meant), why do you cross out so much?―
“I don’t have an eraser sister― Jeffrey would say smiling.
“Here c’mere, here c’mere― You could see the smoke coming out of her
habit. Those two phrases absolutely meant you better save her the trip of
coming over to you or you would get twice as much if she had to get up. So
Jeffrey would look sheepishly at the class which snickered because they knew
what was coming and then he would move quickly to the witch’s desk. She
would growl one more “here c’mere― and then take a good whack at
Jeffrey, who knew what was coming. He merely ducked and let the ruler slap
his shoulder or back and then he quickly retreated to his desk.
After math, we had religion. None of us were really that good in religion and
those tests were graded by Sister Aloysius, herself. We generally had to line
up in two lines; one for boys and for girls. The girls always did better. I
guess they were more religious and the boys sinned a lot more. We would be
asked a question from the catechism and then we had to give the memorized
answer. Marty usually muffed it up and gave some convoluted answer and then
the witch would say “here c’mere― and he would get a whack. Not
everyone who missed a question would get a whack, just the boys who liked to
talk. After the joys of religion, we had English. Marty did pretty well in
English, especially when we had to write essays on various boring topics. He
would use his imagination and try to make the essays interesting and would
usually get a 90 or better. Aloysius usually marked English by the foot. That
meant that if you wrote a lot, you would get a higher grade automatically.
Diane Palladesta would normally give you a 90, unless you butchered the
grammar or spelling. Marty did all right in grammar and spelling, too. He
liked to make believe he was advertising a product.
After English, came the lunch hour. We had the choice of going to the
cafeteria or to Tom’s Deli across the street. In the fourth grade, we
didn’t have too much money (it was 1955), so we would go to the cafeteria,
unless we were lucky enough to have a mom’s packed lunch like Doug. There
was no choice in the cafeteria; you had to eat the “special― of the day.
One day it was usually overcooked noodles (like the ones you had in
Campbell’s noodle soup) with warm watery tomato juice. This was considered
spaghetti by the Irish nuns who did the cooking. The days we had corn beef
cabbage were good, but spaghetti days were so bad we went to the deli or
skipped lunch if we didn’t bring it. I would always be eating half of
Doug’s sandwich on these spaghetti days. The other three days were always
the same, too. Wednesday was baloney sandwiches, Thursday was cheese and
tomato sandwiches (they were disgusting) and Friday was fish sticks (which
many of us also had at home for supper, but they were ok as long as you had a
lot of ketchup. Sometimes, we had something that was jokingly referred to as
“Pisa” by the Irish nuns. They couldn’t even pronounce the word
“pizza―. It was undercooked bread covered with the leftover tomato soup
from the spaghetti on Mondays. No one in their right mind ever ate that crap.
We had all been spoiled by our mothers’ cooking. After lunch, we sometimes
used to flip our TV baseball cards on the playground and then Aloysius would
take all of them away after lunch because she said God condemns gamblers to
hell and that’s where we would be going. And if we weren’t going to hell
for that, it would surely be for something else. So after a while, we stopped
bringing cards to school in 1955.
When we got back from lunch, it was time for Science. Walter Zehner would be
marking our science papers when we handed them in. There were no multiple
choice questions in those days. You didn’t get multiple choice questions in
parochial schools.
They expected you to fill in the space with the right answer without seeing
it first. So most of our science quizzes were either fill-in-the-space or the
merciful matching quiz which was always easy to figure out. There was either
Music or Art after Science. Aloysius was atrocious in both of them and
couldn’t wait for those periods to be over. Marty was good in Music, but
lousy in Art. The good thing about those periods was that no one, except
Jeffrey, ever got whacked during them.
The final class of the day was History and Geography which Marty liked a lot.
He almost never got in trouble in this class. Some of the guys hated History
and they would get whacked on occasion. This was also the time of day that
the witch would take her daily nap. This would eventually be one of the
primary causes of her “reassignment to the retreat― three years later (in
conjunction with the great St. Bon’s Cheating caper). We would read from
either our history or geography books. It was ok while a good reader was
reading, but when a guy like John Cusach read, it was tortuous for everyone
except Sister Aloysius who was asleep. We all read two paragraphs each and
then the person behind you automatically read the next two paragraphs, unless
Aloysius called on you if she thought you weren’t paying attention. By the
time we got to the second row from the window, Aloysius was asleep. She
stayed that way until the bell woke her up and we left at 3:00 unless she was
keeping the class in again that day. She kept us after school for an hour
about once a week just to keep us in a state of terror. We would all miss the
bus and some of us had to walk two miles to get home. Tough luck for us.
Parents didn’t pick up kids from school in those days because mothers
didn’t have cars at three o’clock. All the dads were in work with the
cars, so you walked home.
Sometimes when the witch was asleep the class used to amuse itself by making
up stuff as it was reading. Billy Carrollton was good at this and, of course,
Jeffrey Lovans used to ad lib also. Marty did on occasion and maybe one or
two other boys. The girls were too petrified of Aloysius to try anything like
that, though. We would say things like “The Roman Empire fell because it
was wearing shoelaces that were too long― and then a number of students
would crack up. The witch would sleep through the whole thing, anyway, so we
got a bit bolder. Billy Carrollton once read “The Pope interceded on behalf
of Spain because he liked Spanish girls at the Vatican―. This caused a roar
of laughter so loud that the dozing ogre awoke and kept us after school for
an hour. This was a typical day in the life of a fourth grader in Saint
Bonaventure Grammar school in 1955.
Tales of West Paterson - The Great Saint Bon's Cheating Caper
The Great Saint Bon’s Cheating Caper
By Arthur H Tafero
When Tom was much younger, he thought that money was the most important thing
in the world. He remembered the joy he felt at mowing the lawn for a quarter
or fifty cents. His hunger for money began to be a bad habit. He concocted a
plan with one of his friends, Pat Hull to take bottles from the back of the
Acme Supermarket and bring them back to the front of the store to cash them
in.
As if that weren’t bad enough, they started to take bottles from the back
of the liquor store next door and cash those in too. It worked great......for
about a week. Then the liquor store owner got wise and caught them one day.
That’s when Tom really became prominent at lying. He explained to the
liquor salesman that a man in a blue and red truck was paying them to load
the bottles on the truck for a buck a day. The police brilliantly concluded
it was a Pepsi truck (Tom’s intention). The police never found the Pepsi
truck or the monster that was using two eleven-year-old kids to do his dirty
work. The simple truth of the matter was that Tom wanted to buy baseball
cards and comic books. For that you needed money. It was just a means to an
end. He felt no shame about stealing the bottles and he felt no shame about
telling the whopper about the Pepsi truck. Tom did feel shame, however, about
getting caught and more than that a great deal of fear of what would happen
to him when his mother found out. Tom never worried about his father; he was
a very quiet, sensitive man who hardly ever lost his temper. No, he was not
afraid of his father. What he truly was afraid of was his mother, Mary.
Mary was normally a sweet and loving young housewife who had a very pleasant
personality.......as long as you agreed with what she believed in.
God forbid if you didnt see things her way. Because if you did make the
mistake of disagreeing with her, she would be more than likely not to go
Italian.
Here is an explanation to those who are not familiar with that term. Going
Italian meant Mary would work herself up into a lather. First she would start
muttering to herself in Italian in a very low voice. Then she would start
banging things down loudly. If she were doing the dishes she would start to
bang them down; if she were cooking she would start banging down the utensils.
Sometimes, she would bang down other objects at hand, like the Sunday papers
or clothes or whatever what was in a six-foot radius. While she started
banging things down, her voice would go from barely audible to shrill and
horrific and then she would start in with the Italian curses at the top of
her lungs “Bah Fongule” , “Gots and Gule”, and “Hey, Navottine Y
O.―
Tom didn’t know what these things meant, but his father did. He would go
hide in the cellar or the backyard and Tom’s mother would continue to rant
“that’s it Tom (his father was named Tom, also), run away and leave me
with all the dirty work― and then another tirade of Italian curses.
Anyway, the upshot of this was that Tom’s Dad almost never lost his temper,
but his Mom would drive herself into a rage when she wanted either Tom or his
brother, Mark,
punished. So then Tom’s dad would reluctantly beat him once in awhile. Of
course Tom deserved all he got and much more, but it was always Mom they
worried about getting “upset”. Tom didn’t remember really when he
started lying and stealing, but he did remember his father trying to set him
straight one day at the general store.
Tom had pocketed a pack of 1953 baseball cards without paying for it and the
owner had seen him. “is your son going to pay for that pack of cards?―
she said. Tom’s father silently dropped a nickel on the counter and then
when he and Tom got outside, Tom opened the pack: It had Willie Mays and
Mickey Mantle in it. Boy, was Tom happy for about five seconds! His father
took the pack of opened cards together with the gum and crumpled them into a
small ball with his strong right hand and flung them across the street into
the empty lot. Gone were Willie and Mick. It had a profound effect on Tom for
about a week.
Lying also had no roots in Tom’s family. Both his father and mother
consistently told the truth and lying was completely foreign to them. Tom had
no idea where he picked it up, unless of course, it was in parochial school.
Yep, that must have been it. They used to lie like rugs in grammar school.
Some of the worst whoppers you ever heard. One kid said his grandfather had
been a backup centerfielder for the New York Yankees and had hit 20 homers.
Another kid said he was actually a member of the Mousketeers on television,
but he was wearing make-up when he was on TV, so no one could tell who he was.
One kid said he had been on Howdy Doody and another said he had been on
Officer Joe Bolton’s clubhouse. One of the girls said she had been on
Captain Video and the Video Rangers, but everyone knew she was lying because
they never had girls on as Junior Video Rangers. The lies would get more and
more outrageous until the whoppers started getting so outlandish that only
the most gullible would buy into it. One story had a kid playing hooky on the
day Don Larsen pitched his no-hitter in the World Series. Not likely a tenyear old could play hooky from a parochial school in Oct and then get to
Yankee stadium and back by himself (It was an hour and a half away) without
being noticed by the nuns or his parents. But some kids bought the story.
Anyway, lying was a way of life at St. Bon’s elementary school in West
Paterson, New Jersey.
The lies seemed to go on forever. “Yeah, I was in that episode of Roy
Rogers” or “Didn’t you see me in the movie “Davey Crockett―? I was
one of the settler’s kids” “I saw a bear down the creek last night,
wanna go see the tracks?” “I met Mickey Mantle at the Acme, he was
shopping for some baloney” “I saw Annette Funicello at Two Guys From
Harrison Department Store, she was looking for a new bra.” “ I Swear To
God I saw an alien down by the creek” “Oh yeah, well I saw two aliens
down at the ressy (swimming hole)” “My mother’s sister was on the Sid
Caesar Show”. “Lonnie on the Mousketeers gave me this t-shirt” “Yeah,
well i AM Lonnie, I just wear a wig and make-up when I’m on that show―.
So as you can see, Tom was in an environment of highly developed liars.
The boys and girls at St. Bons were also proficient thieves. Among the items
they would “borrow― were: monthly tuition in envelopes (cash) that
somehow disappeared before they got to sister’s desk each month, monthly
bus fare in envelopes (cash) that developed the same fate as the tuition, and
various charity drives and envelopes for the starving children in China
(let’em starve, little yellow devils). The lovely children of St. Bon’s
would create charity drives for their parents and then they would make up for
the “lost― tuition or bus fare envelopes they had failed to hand in
earlier. (The orphans from the Columbian earthquake Fund or The World Peace
Famine fund- there was no end to the whoppers). Of course there were the
envelopes for our uniforms. It appeared that sister collected only about 50%
of the envelopes she was supposed to collect. Meanwhile, there seemed to be a
proliferation of baseball cards and comic books at St. Bons whenever the
envelopes were due. In addition to the envelopes, lunches would disappear,
umbrellas on rainy days, pencils, pens and paper. John Cusik was so proud of
his giant notebook with 500 pieces of looseleaf. By late in the afternoon, he
had less than 100 pieces of looseleaf.
Aside from being liars and thieves, the kids at St. Bon’s were pretty good
cheaters too. Almost everybody cheated on tests during the Walter Zehner
affair. In the sixth grade sister Aloysius had fallen asleep in the early
afternoon. Normally, that wouldnt matter. But this was the day of the Science
Final Exam. Walter Zehner finished first because he was the smartest kid in
science. Bobby Carroll and Jackie Rominicki threatened to beat him up if he
didn’t let them copy his paper. After they were done copying, sister
Aloysius was still asleep so they kept passing the paper around the room
until everybody copied it. They handed it back to Walter at 2:45 and sister
was still asleep. Boy did they pull a fast one!
It’s truly sad that wonderful capers like that sometimes go wrong.
Unfortunately, Walter got one question wrong. Something about mercury.
So everyone got the same wrong answer. Everyone got 97 on the final exam.
The parish
would have
called him
that awful
was horrified. The diocese was horrified. I’m sure the Pope
been horrified too, had he been told. So Father Tucker (they
Friar Tuck), who was normally very jovial, came into class with
somber expression he had when he was about to deliver bad news.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news boys and girls― We have some cheaters
in the class― Boy was that an understatement! They were ALL cheaters. All
of us would cheat on tests almost all the time if we had the chance. The
Walter Zehner affair only confirmed that theory. Father continued:
“It appears that two bad boys copied the excellent work of Walter Zehner
and then forced all the rest of the students in the class to copy the work
under the threat of violence. This has been verified by my two upstanding
altar boys, Robert Carrollton and Jackie Rominicki, who after great soulsearching admitted they copied the tests under threats of violence by the two
perpetrators of this heinous act, Jeffrey Lovas and Tommy Barker.―
Of course, what Father Tucker didn’t know was that EITHER Robert Carrollton
or Jackie Rominicki could beat the snot out of EITHER Jeffrey Lovans OR Tommy
Baker. The entire class knew this, and some snickered, but no one spilled the
beans.
Jeffrey Lovans was used to being blamed for everything and getting the snot
beat out of him on a daily basis by the nuns and he kind of liked the idea
that he was the class bully (when in fact he was a terrible fighter). So he
just smiled when Father Tucker called his name. Tommy Baker was another story,
however. His eyes widened and his ears pricked up when his name was mentioned
as the other cheater who bullied the rest of the class. Tommy knew he would
get the snot kicked out of him by Jackie Rominicki if he even said one word.
He also knew that when he got home, he would get the snot kicked out of him
by his father and/or mother. Tommy started to say something when Jackie
Rominicki cut him off and said:
“Tommy, admit the truth, I guarantee you will feel a lot better if you
do―
“That’s right Tommy― echoed Father Tucker.
“They’re all damned cheaters― interjected Sister Aloysius, who had been
snoozing during the entire exam. This was to be her last year as she was
being retired by the parish. Sister was known for quite bizarre and violent
behavior on a daily basis.
“Now sister, please watch your language― Father Tucker was also terrified
of Sister Aloysius.
“We don’t want to blame all the young boys and girls for the unholy
actions of just a few.― Father was always in a reconciliatory mode. Sister
was still muttering to herself with an occasional profane outburst that was
louder than the muttering.
She broke her 107th pointer on the desk during one outburst during Father’s
revelations. Father continued while ignoring sister’s obvious debilitating
state:
“So Thomas, did you do what Jeffrey has already admitted to?―
Tommy came to his senses with one good stare from Jackie Rominicki.
“Yes, father, I’m very sorry for what I did―
“Well you should be, young man. You have caused this entire class to have
an extra day of school just to retake this science exam. I hope you will
examine your conscience and pray for forgiveness―
“Yes father―
“You too, Jeffrey―
“JEFFREY!― yelled father in an enraged tone. Jeffrey was dropping his
pencil every few seconds so he could look up Virginia Mucci’s short school
dress (she had fine legs).
Sister Aloysius leapt across the room like Jim Brown evading the Giants for a
first down and slammed Jeffrey with the broken pointer on the side of the
head.
“Now sister, please don’t hit Jeffrey with that broken pointer, he might
get cut. We have an ample supply of new ones in the supply room―
“The little twerp deserves to die!― she shrieked
“Now sister, no one deserves to die― Sister finally backed off, but the
class noticed that father did not disagree with the twerp classification.
And so that is how the Great St. Bon’s Cheating Caper ended; not with a
whimper, but with a bang.
Tales of West Paterson - Whoppers
Whoppers
by Arthur H Tafero
Once upon a time there was a sleepy little town in Northern New Jersey called
West Paterson. Some people called it Totawa and others called it The
Development. Actually, it now appears as if no one knew where they actually
were because this was not a collection of the best and brightest of 1950s
America.
The first street of the development was named Williams Drive for Ted Williams
of the Boston Red Sox....or was it named for Hank Williams? He couldn’t
seem to remember now. One thing he did remember was the 80 degree angle of
the hill that went up Williams Drive. You could barely walk it without
breaking into a sweat, even in the winter. In the fifth house up on the hill
lived a little boy who was quite famous. His name was Douglas Schoenfish. He
was known throughout the development for his unbelievable lies or what the
neighborhood kids kindly called “whoppers―.
Douglas had produced some pretty wild whoppers in the last few years. Among
them was the time he said his grandfather had played as a reserve outfielder
for the New York Yankees in the 1920’s and had hit 20 homers. They were the
kind of stories you probably didn’t believe, but they were often hard to
disprove unless you had the true information right at your fingertips which
most 12 year old boys did not have. Another whopper Douglas told everyone was
that he was a member of the Mickey Mouse Club, but only as a reserve called
“Jesse―. That was another one hard to disprove. And once he had said he
had been on Officer Joe Bolton’s Clubhouse Gang, but because there was no
video tape in those days, it was impossible to disprove that one too.
It seemed Douglas was either the luckiest and most famous kid in the
development or he was its biggest liar. The odds seem to point to the latter.
One summer night Douglas had told the gang that he had spotted an alien down
by the canal at the bottom of the development. He said he was scared and ran
away when he saw it, but the gang said it was probably more Douglas baloney,
but just in case, lets go and hunt it down so we can kill it and sell it to
the newspapers.
So about ten kids took their Louieville sluggers and started walking along
the very dark path alongside the canal. They were full of bravado coming down
the hill, but as soon as the streetlights disappeared and were on the dark
path of the canal, the bravado seemed to dissipate a little.
“What did it look like?― asked Ronny Vitale
“It looked like a really thin version of the monster we saw in last
week’s movie at the Majestic” answered Douglas. “Except it had big dark
almond-like eyes and a faint green glow―.
“Did you see its ship?― asked Arthur King
“No, I was too scared to hang around after I saw his big creepy eyes―
said Douglas quietly. Now everyone was getting a little jittery.
Something splashed in the water.
“What the hell was that!― yelped Hatchie Van Wine. The boys readied their
Louieville sluggers, but it proved to be a false alarm.
“This thing was in the water when I ran away― revealed Douglas to no
one’s comfort.
“Did it look like the creature from the black lagoon?― asked Pat Hull.
“A little bit― said Douglas reassuringly.
Tom Dachini and Tommy Tozzo both said they had to go home because their
parents were taking them to the movies.
“What are you guys gonna see?― asked Frankie Klump.
“This Island Earth” said Tommy T. “It’s another stupid space movie”.
I’d rather be doing real life alien-hunting like now, but we would get
killed by our parents if we don’t go back.
“Sure, Tozzo, we know how brave you are― smirked Davy Van Wine.
So Tozzo and Dachini slipped away and then there were eight.
As the boys went further along the dark path, it got quieter and quieter
until you could hear just the footsteps of all eight boys.
Then it happened.
“Earth-lings”, “Earth-lings― something said in an unearthly voice.
Davey Van Winkle and Frankie Klump ran away immediately.
Ronnie Vitale and Jackie Gallaher went bug-eyed, screamed and then ran away.
Only Jackie Quince, Pat Hull and Arthur King still remained with Douglas;
probably too petrified to run away.
“What do you want of us” asked Douglas in a very shaky voice”
The bushes began to move on the side of the canal and now the boys were sure
they were going to be zapped by a ray gun.
“We need your women!― shouted the alien.
“You mean like the movie “Mars Needs Woman?― asked Jackie.
“No, you fool, Venus needs women. Mars isn’t the only planet that needs
them!― shouted out the alien.
“But we don’t know any women― pleaded Pat. We just know plain girls
from the development (except for Patricia Lyonelli woo-woo)
“Yeah, we don’t know any women good enough for Venus; that’s for
sure― said Arthur.
“Well that’s because you are all butt ugly!― responded the Aliens.
That’s when Jackie O’Shea and Johnny Prince came out of the bushes
smiling.
Tales of West Paterson - Plunk Your Magic Twanger, Kids
Plunk Your Magic Twanger, Kids
By Arthur H Tafero
Having lived through this period as a child, I have at least two perspectives
on Fifties television; one as a child viewing adult situations and one as a
middle-aged adult re-viewing some of the critically acclaimed shows of the
Fifties. I will try to fuse both views into a general one. The shows I have
chosen are ones both that I profoundly remember as a child and others I found
to be more rewarding as a middle-aged adult. They include the following:
Captain Video and The Video Rangers, Howdy Doody, Fury, Buster Brown, WinkyDink, Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone,
The Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel, Sea Hunt, The Ed Sullivan
Show, Lassie, Roy Rogers, Playhouse 90, Jackie Gleason, The Mickey Mouse Club,
Amos and Andy, Zacharly and The Millionaire.
As you can see from this list, I cover mostly Friday evening and Saturday
morning lineups as well as Sunday evening lineups. Families usually spent
Saturday nights doing things more interesting than watching television.
Usually, they were at the movies together; or at least my family was.
My earliest recollection of television is watching Farmer Grey cartoons and
the mice always chasing him (or was he chasing the mice?) down a road at the
end of every cartoon. The cartoon was always introduced by a man called Uncle
Fred. Uncle Fred had a small children’s -only audience (later to be named
the Peanut Gallery by Buffalo Bob in Howdy Doody). I have completely
forgottenwhat transpired between the cartoons on Uncle Fred, as I am sure
most others have, also.
I remember Ding Dong School with Miss Jones as well as Farmer Grey, Howdy
Doody, Buster Brown, The Lone Ranger, Sid Caesarand Milton Berle in the very
early Fifties. Ding-Dong School was hosted by Miss Joan who had a list of dobees and don’t bees. For example: do be on time and don’t be late. It was
important to be a good do be and not to become a pariah don’t be. Howdy
Doodydidn’t care about such things. They just seemed to want to have fun. I
remember Flub-a-Dub, Mister Bluster and Clarabelle, the water-squirting clown,
most of all. Howdy was pretty boring himself, as was Buffalo Bob. The Peanut
Gallery seemed a lot rowdier than the kids on Uncle Fred’s show.
Other children’s shows that are still vivid in my memory include Captain
Video and the Video Rangers and Buster Brown. I would have sold my soul to be
on that show and taken a trip with Captain Video into space and translate
alien messages (that were always backwards!). Buster Brown wasn’t really a
TV personality, but the name of shoe store chain. It sponsored this really
neat show with Andy Divine as the host and the first envelope pusher of
freedom of expression on TV, Froggy. Froggy was the fifties version of South
Park. I watch South Park religiously, and I think it has the most cuttingedge comedy on television, even if it does cross the line on occasion. Froggy
should be featured on a South Park episode. He would famously say “Plunk
your magic twanger, kids―. The younger kids and the vast majority of adults
just thought it was some meaningless gibberish by a funny frog, but a few of
the hipper adults and a large number of older kids finally figured out that
Froggy was referring to a male sexual organ. This was never figured out by
the very stringent censors at the time of these shows. It completely slipped
in without notice, one might say. In addition to Froggy’s one-liner that
was always greatly anticipated, there was Rama, the Jungle Boy that also
intrigued young viewers. There was nothing like being free in the jungle and
away from adult supervision to entice a young audience. We might as well add
two other Saturday morning favorites: Winky Dink and Fury. Fury was the horse
version of Lassie. That pretty much explains that show. Winky Dink was far
more sublime. This forerunner of Bart Simpson with spiked hair always seemed
to get into trouble. This appealed greatly to children of the Fifties. It was
the first show to use high-tech with its audience. You could buy a Winky-Dink
Screen for your TV and then trace Winky Dink’s adventures with a magic
marker. This cheap little piece of cellophane sold with a cheap magic marker
went for five bucks back in the Fifties when five bucks was a lot of money.
My parents wouldn’t go for it, so I was always lost when Winky Dink found
his way out of situations on the television. I got so absorbed one time in
one of Winky’s adventures that I traced his escape route on our TV WITHOUT
the magic screen with a magic marker and induced my father to give me the
strap and for good reason. I never forgot that episode of Winky.
The first adult show I remember, even though it was mostly kid-oriented, was
the Lone Ranger. There is no need to go into the legend of the Lone Ranger as
it is almost universally known, but I did notice that no one ever got killed
on the show. They always got “winged―. The Lone Rangeralso got
“winged― on numerous occasions. Winged meant getting shot in the shoulder.
One surgeon recently told me if the Lone Ranger had been winged over a dozen
times in each shoulder, he would have been unable to use either arm for
anything other than eating soft-boiled eggs for the rest of his life.
The first three truly early Fifties adult shows I remember are Sid Caesar,
Milton Berle and Jackie Gleason. Sid Caesar was the best of the lot, closely
followed by Jackie Gleason. Milton Berlewas pretty much a one-liner gag guy
who got pretty boring pretty quickly. Sid and Jackie were situational comedy
guys instead on one-liner guys, so their comedy was much more refined and
complex than Berle’s. Berle, wisely knowing his limitations, filled his
show with much more singing and dancing, whereas Caesar and Gleason had
little, if any song and dance material on their shows. Their shows were all
about comedy. Caesar would do the “Big Professor― skit often and would
later be copied well by a comedian named Becker in the Sixties. Gleason, of
course, was known for his “Honeymooners― skits which, in time, would
become its own spin-off TV show.
During the course of the Fifties, there were a number of memorable Westerns
that all young boys followed religiously: in addition to the afore-mentioned
Lone Ranger, there was Gunsmoke, Roy Rogers and the gritty and intellectual
Have Gun Will Travel with Richard Boone. In my opinion, no Western of any
time period holds a candle to Have Gun, Will Travel, and we will examine that
show in the famous Friday night lineup of CBS in the late Fifties (Twilight
Zone,Have Gun Will Travel and Sea Hunt). Roy Rogers was a modern jeep-riding
white-bread cowboy who was only interesting to kids because he was going out
with Dale Evans without marrying her. For that matter, Matt Dillon never
married Kitty (for obvious reasons), but Dale seemed like a nice catch to me.
These were important lessons for us to learn; you could go out with someone
and not have to marry them. Bob Steele use to be an early fifties cowboy for
the B movie set and he was always to be seen on Saturday mornings. He was
unmarried, too. I noticed almost all the cowboys of the fifties were either
unmarried or not seriously attached. This must have given a whole generation
of young boys a whole lot of new ideas about marriage and commitment.
Then there was the famous Friday night lineup. This included Twilight Zone,
Have Gun Will Travel, and Sea Hunt. Twilight Zone starred Rod Serling, the
host, introducing some very cool science-fiction and fantasy stories and
always placed in the top ten of the Neilson ratings. Have Gun Will Travel
also placed in the top ten thanks to the great scripts provided by the likes
of Gene Roddenberry, Ida Lapino and others. Most of the stories opened in San
Francisco where Paladin (we never did find out his real or first name)resided
at a very posh hotel. He had a personal servant, Hey-Boy, who brought him the
daily papers from around the West and from which Paladin often mined many of
his clients from stories that seemed to beg for a hired gun. Palladin’s fee
was usually $1000 and up for client; pretty steep numbers for those days. The
series made it morally clear that Paladin never hired himself out just for
money. He had to be morally convinced that his client needed him for the
right purposes. Generally speaking, the best scripts, which were gritty and
complex in nature, were written by Ida Lapino, one the leading women
writer/director/producer/actresses of her time. Paladin was dressed in black
from head to toe. That made him different from most fifties cowboys, already
(except Hopalong Cassidy, who also dressed in black). He had the symbol of
the knight piece in chess on his holster, a game he often played in some of
his episodes. As for Sea Hunt, Lloyd Bridges had been in several major action
movies of the forties and fifties and this was a perfect vehicle for him.
Mike, the character he played on the show, would always seem to get mixed up
with some kind of trouble week after week. One began to wonder if his
business ever had a normal week of operation without some kind of major
complication. It seemed his medical and equipment bills were staggering
compared for the mundane jobs he was being hired for. But then again, this is
part of the magic of television and in the spirit of suspended disbelief.
Speaking of suspended disbelief, one had to have that trait to truly enjoy
the many fine episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, a show in the Sunday
night lineup with Ed Sullivan and Jack Benny. Alfred always had some not-sosubtle sarcastic remark to make about his sponsors and the theme of the
evening’s “play― as he called it. The story was always followed up by
Alfred assuring the moral Right of the nation that the aspiring criminal had
ALWAYS been caught by the police in some convoluted manner which defied
reason. No one ever got away scot free. There were many a time when one
rooted for the criminal and wanted him or her to get away unscathed, but
Alfred was having none of it. CBS dominated the television ratings of the
fifties. NBC was only able to challenge certain time slots with favorites
like the Sid Caesar Show, The Milton Berle Show and the Dinah Shore Show.
Even that genre got severely tested with the emergence on CBS of the Jackie
Gleason Show in the late fifties. The Honeymooners on the Gleason show took
the country by storm in the fifties. The characters of Ralph Kramden, Alice
Kramden and Ed Norton (Trixie Norton was not really a major character) were
destined to become classic television personified. The nation identified with
young struggling couples who lived in the poorer parts of a city and were
having a tough time making financial ends meet. It was the spirit of the show,
and especially Ralph, who failed in one attempt after another to better his
family’s lot, that really gripped the psyche of America. Ralph Kramden WAS
America. A man who held his family and friends together despite a humdrum job.
A man who had a plan every week to get out of that existence, but failed week
in and week out. And despite those many failures, Ralph had the benefit of a
loyal wife and a loyal best friend who stood by him week after week despite
his ridiculous attempts at success. Ralph was, in actuality, a very rich man
for having those kinds of friends and that kind of marriage and although the
lesson to be learned from this show was the constancy of a good wife and a
good friend, many Americans, including myself, unfortunately focused on the
hair-brained get-rich-quick schemes that Ralph seemed to concoct on a weekly
basis. And we still try to follow his example today, despite all that swirls
around us.
Tales of West Paterson - Mickey Mantle and Donald Duck
Mickey Mantle and Donald Duck
By Arthur H Tafero
Because of my very annoying compulsion to be efficient, I have combined a
review of Fifties Baseball and Comic Books. This will, undoubtedly, alienate
fans of both genres equally, and therefore no one will read this particular
entry. But for those of you not easily offended, here are some of my
recollections.
The earliest memory of baseball in the fifties that I have is watchingthe
Yankees on television with my grandfather while my grandmother was consumer
two Schaeffer beers. The Yanks usually won and Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra
became two of my heroes. My grandfather finally took me to a game one night
when the Dodgers were playing the Philles in Jersey City Roosevelt Stadium.
The Philles won 3-2 with a sac fly in the top of the ninth inning. I learned
that night that the Dodgers were much more likely to break your heart than
the Yankees, so I became a life-long Yankee fan.
The Yankees dominated baseball in the 1950s. It was all about winning the
World Series, which they did in 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1956 and 1958. I
think winning six World Series in ten years would qualify for the term
domination. I wanted to be a Yankee. But in the meantime, I read comic books.
I liked almost any comic, but my favorites were Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge
(an offshoot of Donald Duck), and anything with “Tales― in the title
including, but not limited to: Tales of the Crypt, Tales to Astonish, Strange
Tales and Tales of Unknown. I also like Bilko, Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis, Nutsy
Squirrel, Mighty Mouse, Classic Comics, Blackhawk, Bugs Bunny, Combat, Mad
Magazine (which started out as a comic), Casper, Dagwood, Blondie, Beetle
Bailey, Peanuts, and almost any science fiction comic. Dell comics were good
comics (as their slogan said), but titles other than Dell always seemed a bit
raunchier or a bit more violent, so I cultivated a taste for titles other
than Dell. I did like the Dell Zorro and Davy Crockett series, but I really
liked the offbeat titles like EC with all the wonderful gore and sweating GIs
on the front.
Some of the themes of the comics were interesting, too. Donald Duck, for
instance, had hisbest work done in the Comics and Stories series that ran
over 400 issues. Many of the classic covers were done by Carl Barks, whose
work is still currently sought after in the collector’smarket. Disney did
not draw these comics as many had imagined. Mickey Mouse, on the other hand,
was particularly bland when compared to the interesting stories of Donald
Duck and Huey, Louie and Dewey were far more fascinating than the two nephews
of Mickey, whose names I can’t even recall because their personalities were
so low-key. Donald Duck spawned a whole pantheon of memorable characters:
Uncle Scrooge, Gyro Gearloose, The Beagle Boys, Daisy Duck, Gladstone Gander
(one of my favorites because he was always finding money and was always
lucky), Huey, Louie and Dewey (do you remember which colors each of their
hats were?), and many others.
There have been a lot of ball games and comics collected in my family since
those days, but none of them are as good as Donald Duck as far as I’m
concerned. You can keep all those self-righteous superheroes, I’ll take
Donald with his hilarious imperfections and Ralph Kramden ideas to make money.
Here’s to you, Donald.
Tales of West Paterson - Objectionable in Part
OBJECTIONABLE IN PART (movies)
By Arthur H Tafero
As anyone who knows me will tell you, I am crazy about movies. I really
don’t care if they are particularly good movies, bad movies or something in
between, I will generally watch it anyway. Sometimes I even watch BAD movies
more than once. I just love movies. I learned early on that movies were not
the same as real life (real life is much harder than the movies – Cinema
Paradiso). However, I learned quite a bit from films. I certainly learned
much more from the movies than I ever did in my substantial academic career
(with the exception of China).
My earliest recollection of going to the movies was with my mother. I
remember seeing some Abbott and Costello films. One was about London and the
other was a color pirate movie. Neither were of academy-award winning stature,
but I sat through both of them thoroughly entertained; I couldn’t have been
more than five or six. I also remember early cartoon festivals for Bugs Bunny,
Donald Duck and even one for Mighty Mouse. My poor mother would have to sit
through an hour and a half of nothing but cartoons with a cinema full of
screaming little kids like myself. I was in heaven for that hour and a half.
I never wanted those cartoons to end.
As I got a bit older, we began going to the local Drive-In in West Paterson,
New Jersey. I liked the one or two cartoon at the beginning of the show, but
it was usually followed by a grown-up movie that sometimes I got and
sometimes I didn’t.
For example, I didn’t get The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit with Gregory
Peck when I was a little kid. I just couldn’t relate. Seeing it many years
later after I got out of the Army, I realized what a good film it really was.
Fortunately, there was always a terrible B movie playing with the main
feature. This caused two things to happen. First, you were able to conjole
your parents most of the time for a soda and popcorn, or even sometimes a hot
dog during the intermission. Intermission was about my favorite part of the
moviesbefore I started going to High School. Secondly, the B movie would
almost always be a cheesy Western, War or Science-Fiction movie. I grew to
appreciate the B movies far more than the main features.
I started going to the movies without my parents when we used to bicycle
around Paterson with the tribe. The tribe was a gang ranging from four to ten
young preteen boys who all played for the Indians Little League team in West
Paterson. Sometimes, on Saturday mornings we would bike into downtown
Paterson and choose between a matinee show at the Capitol, the Majestic or
the US theaters that were there at the time. The Capitol and the US theaters
always showed wholesome films at the matinees like westerns and sci-fi.
Sometimes they had two war movies at the same time. They also had cartoons
before the movies and sometimes even a few shorts of the Three Stooges. But
the Majestic was another matter. They would have some very questionable
matinees that were not always the most wholesome choice for preteens (they
catered to the soft-porn crowd at night). The management really didn’t care
and we never told our parents, but we would occasionally opt for AN
OBJECTIONABLE IN PART movie condemned by the local Catholic weekly. They
would put out a list every week of movies that were OK to see, an
OBJECTIONABLE IN PART list, which meant most of the movie was OK, but there
was at least one bad moral scene in the movie (tongue-kissing, bare midriffs,
curses like damn or hell and other soul-crushing catastrophes), and the most
feared, (but strangely attractive) list of all: the CONDEMNED list. Boy, if
you saw one of those films, you were going straight to hell, brother.
Well, as it turned out, Macumba Love was on the CONDEMNED list that week and
the last thing that this pack of six preteens ever thought they would get to
see at a matinee was a CONDEMNED movie. God, would this make for a good buzz
at school on Monday! Just as we were getting our hopes (and certain body
parts) way up, we ran into the sign on the window: (MATINEES: 35 cents;
sixteen and over only unless accompanied by an adult). Frantically, we tried
to figure out a solution to our problem and came up with the idea of paying
for some lame adult who could bring us all in. We grabbed some grubby childmolester type because we had safety in numbers and he brought seven tickets
for all of us and we were home free.
Now I will not go into the lurid details of this disgusting, but engrossing
(for preteens) film, but suffice it to say during the rolling of the credits,
there were number TOPLESS black tribal women dancing around a fire at night.
This scene by itself was worth the price of admission and at least one or two
of the young boys got a bit messy by the end of the credits.
But it got much worse (better?). There was a scene where the abducted white
woman was going to be ravaged by the entire tribe before she was eaten (or
did I get that backwards?). In any event, we ALL were messy by the end of
that scene. You could hear the numerous “O My Gods― being uttered by
almost every member of our expedition. Of course, you never actually saw any
nudity (except for the black tribal women) and all of the sex acts were
merely suggested with moans and off-camera action via shadows and other
techniques. We were actually quite disappointed when the white woman was
finally rescued by the safari sent out to find her. We were kind of hoping
for a bit more ravaging. But as we left in our slightly damp pants, no one
had a bad word to say about the most eye-opening film any of us had ever seen.
“Wow, that was great, wasn’t it?―
“Yeah, did you see all those boobs around the fire?―
“Jeez, how could you miss ‘em; the camera was on them the whole time the
credits ran―.
“My favorite part was the ravaging, though―. We all agreed with Doug that
the ravaging was definitely the best part.
We could hardly wait for next week’s movie that we saw in the coming
attractions: Prisoner of the Amazons. The scenes seemed to star almost all
the same actors and actresses and the location in the Amazon looked amazingly
like the location that we had just seen in the African jungle. The plot
looked great though; what kid wouldn’t want to be held as a sex slave by a
bunch of busty women.
Tales of West Paterson - Captain Video and the Video Rangers!
CAPTAIN VIDEO AND THE VIDEO RANGERS!
By Arthur H Tafero
Television shows we used to watch were an important part of daily West
Paterson life. Before I go into lurid detail about these magnificent TV shows,
I really should give you an idea of what it was like to watch television in
West Paterson in the 1950s. First, you had a black and white television set
(color tv was a thing of the future). There were no remotes or automatic
channel changers. You were the remote. You had to get up off your butt to
change the channel or increase or decrease the sound. Sometimes you had to
move the antenna to get better reception (or any reception) for the shaky
channels like 5, 9, 11 or 13.
Each of these secondary channels had very limited programming. One of the few
things on 13 for a kid to watch was the Farmer Gray Cartoon Show. For those
who were deprived, the Farmer Gray cartoons were exactly that; gray, black
and white. They had no sound, and the animation was something any twelve year
old could put together today on a web site. All the cartoons were basically
the same; Farmer Gray would try to rid himself of tormenting teems of mice on
his farm. Farmer Gray was never successful and the mice always won. Each
cartoon ended with the mice chasing farmer gray down a country road. These
cartoons would come on every day at 7 am in the morning and last for a half
hour. Sometimes they were introduced by a man called Uncle Fred and his
little peanut gallery. Peanut galleries of little kids in the studio audience
were very popular in the early 50s. Unbelievably, these cartoons ran for
years and kids never stopped tuning in for them every day.
In addition to Farmer Gray cartoons on 13, you had the Yankee games on
Channel 11. These were a main staple of the boy tribes of West Paterson. We
watched an hour before the game and an hour after the game just to be safe.
Night games ended late, but it was ok for us to watch most of them because
they were in the summer and they kept us out of trouble (at least for the
hours the games were on). When faced with a choice of going to church for the
twelve o’clock mass one Sunday or missing the first four innings of the
first game of a Yankee doubleheader, we feigned sickness in order to stay
home and watched the first game. Channel 11 had Joe Bolton and the Funhouse,
which showed shorts of the Three Stooges. All the guys in the neighborhood
claimed they had been on the show and had gotten into the funhouse, but they
were all lying. Early reruns of the Abbott and Costello show were also on 11
on Saturday (which was a big TV day for kids) or sometimes repeats were on
during the week after the school day.
Channel 9 was famous for “The Million Dollar Movie― which used the theme
from “Gone With the Wind― as its opening credits. The tribe watched
“King Kong― about twelve times in a row when it first came on Million
Dollar Movie. The format of the show was to repeat the movie over and over
again for most of the broadcast day. Channel 5 was almost all live
broadcasting. Some of the kinkiest live shows on television were broadcast on
Channel 5 in the early 50’s.
One of their most successful shows was “Captain Video and the Video
Rangers”. This format tried to cash in on the popularity of America’s new
obsession with space travel. Kids were glued to the TV when the show came on
and Captain Video would stop by earth to pick up some lucky kid who would be
the Video Ranger of the day. Then he and Captain Video would take off for
adventures throughout the universe. There would always be a segment
whereCaptain Video and his Ranger of the day would try and interpret that
day’s message from an alien planet. It was amazing how Captain Video would
run into a new alien civilization every day of the week. The message was
always read in a deep alien-like voice. Years later, we figured out the
message was just a recording of something Captain Video was saying, but it
was broadcast backward and at a slower speed. Messages like “You should
brush your teeth before you go to bed― were translated for us just in time
for us to brush our teeth and go to bed.
The bulk of the popular kids shows, however, were on the main broadcast
channels of 2, 4 and 7 ( CBS, NBC and ABC). Channel 2 had the ever popular
“Lone Ranger” and “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon” as well as
“Gunsmoke”, “Winky Dink”, “The Twilight Zone”, “Sea-Hunt― and
“Have Gun Will Travel―. There was a tremendous preponderance of Westerns
in early American television. Channel 4 garnered the majority of the Saturday
morning audience except for “Winky Dink”. “Winky Dink” was about a
bizarre, spike-haired, little boy who had adventures that could only be
followed if you had the official Winky Dink screen and official Winky Dink
crayon. Your parents had to ante up a then very expensive two bucks for a
worthless clear plastic screen (a piece of Saran Wrap with one sticky side)
and a cheap crayon. It infuriated my parents when they had to buy it in the
store at Two Guys From Harrison, but they bought it. They even got more
infuriated one Saturday morning when I couldn’t find the magic screen so I
traced Winky Dink’s adventure right on the screen without the plastic. Boy,
did I get a good tanning for that one.
Channel 4 was still the dominant kids channel though. It had “Andy’s
Gang― with the obscene Froggy (“plunk your magic twanger froggy!―). How
this got through the censors is now beyond me, but I guess they were just not
hip enough to figure it out. It also had the popular “Howdy Doody― (a
vague reference to scatological humor with Doody meaning feces; thus meaning
the name of the show was “Hello Feces!―). This was a bit less vulgar than
Froggy, though, and once again, the censors didn’t have a clue. Popular
Channel 4 shows with no controversial double entendres included “Fury―
about a gifted horse who was like Flicka, except that he was a horse that all
the guys wanted to own, “Sky King―, about some guy who solved a lot of
problems with his plane; another thing all the guys in the development wanted
and one or two other shows we watched because we were too lazy to get up to
change the channel.
“Andy’s Gang― was the first show that had exotic stuff like the
adventures of “Gunga, the East India Boy―. The guys in the development
could really relate to living in the jungle and we all wanted to be Gunga.
Gunga, by the way, means feces in a few exotic languages. I guess the writers
of these kid shows were a bit disappointed that they were not the next
Hemmingway, so they took it out on the TV shows they worked on. The show was
hosted by the friendly Andy Devine, who was well-known as the sidekick
“Jingles― of the Wild Bill Hickock show (another western). There was
Midnight the Cat and Squeeky the Mouse dressed up as a Gypsy violinist and
dancer, meowing and squeaking as obvious strings jerked them around against
their will.
“Howdy Doody― had its own cast of bizarre characters; you had the boring
puppet, Howdy Doody, the affable Buffalo Bill, his human friend and caretaker
of the peanut gallery, Clarabelle, the life of the party, who was always
spraying seltzer water on people, (the guys in the tibe wanted one of those
spraying seltzer bottles), Flubadub, an unusual puppet, who had no concrete
personality, Mr. Bluster, who was a lot of fun because he was an adult puppet
who was always losing his temper, Princess Summerfall Winterspring, who’s
main purpose was to teach us the seasons of the year, Captain Windy, who was
quite forgettable, Inspector Fadoozle, who was supposed to remind us of a
dishonest public official, Dilly Dally, who taught us not to be late, and a
host of other minor and forgettable puppet characters. In retrospect,
Clarabelle is what made this show watchable.
Other notable shows we watched were: “The Cisco Kid” with Pancho, “Ding
Dong School― with Miss Frances, (but only when we were VERY young), Davy
and Goliath (that was a strange dog), “My Friend Flicka― (a cornier
version of “Fury”, who had been much cooler), “Lassie”, which was
mostly part of the Sunday nite lineup, so it was depressing because it was
the day before school, “Roy Rogers” and “Leave It To Beaver”,
“Ozzie and Harriet”, and later on “The Wonderful World of Disney”
(most of the guys always wanted to see Tommorowland; but most of the time it
was Frontierland), and before we went to bed we stayed up for the “Ed
Sullivan Show, even though we thought it was pretty boring (at least we got
to stay up).
All of us hated “Kukla, Fran and Ollie― although our parents thought it
was cute, “Mighty Mouse― was very popular on Saturday mornings on CBS; it
was the only show that we bothered to learn the lyrics of the theme song
(other than the “Mickey Mouse Show―)
Mister Trouble never hangs around
When he hears this Mighty sound.
"Here I come to save the day"
That means that Mighty Mouse is on his way.
When there is a wrong to right
Mighty Mouse will join the fight.
On the sea or on the land,
He gets the situation well in hand.
We also learned the commercials of the shows on occasion:
“I love Bosco, it's rich and chocolatey.
Chocolate-flavored Bosco
is mighty good for me.
Mama puts it in my milk for extra energy.
Bosco gives me iron and sunshine Vitamin D.
Oh, I love Bosco, that's the drink for me.!―
“Winston tastes good like a cigarette should―, (although none of us
smoked, we occasionally had chocolate cigarettes), and of course “M-I-C,
see you real soon!, K-E-Y, why? Because we like you― from the Mickey Mouse
Club.
Other shows of note were Saturday nite at midnight with Zacherly, the funny
Ghoul, who used to host the horror movie of the week (usually the classic
monster movies of the 30s), “Your Show of Shows― with Sid Ceasar and
Imogene Coca, “The Milton Berle Show” and the “Phil Silvers Show―
with Phil Silvers as Sergeant Bilko, which made all the guys want to be in
the army. Bob Hope also had occasional shows on during the month and Jack
Benny had a funny weekly show. There was “The Life of Riley― with William
Bendix, “My Little Margie― who lived in something called a high-rise
apartment with elevators, and the “The Jackie Gleason Show― which was
wildly popular with our parents and the kids liked it, too. These were all
shows that both kids and their parents could enjoy at the same time. Bugs
Bunny was about the only cartoon that our parents would watch with us.
“Amos and Andy― was extremely popular, also, until the NAACP forced the
show off the air because of its politically incorrect portrayal of blacks. So
instead of a glimpse into the lives of blacks that was laced with some
stereotypes, the NAACP thought it better that independently working blacks be
eliminated from broadcast television and for the Uncle Tomish Rochester, who
worked for a white man to be kept on the “Jack Benny Show―. I failed to
see the logic there.
So television in the fifties was a lot different than it is now. Television
was an important part of social life in West Paterson. It was stuff you could
talk about in school the next day or during one of our endless ball games.
Everybody had watched mostly the same shows because there were only six
combinations for everyone to watch. Somehow it seems to me that TV in those
days was far superior to the TV that is available now. Gone is the
spontaneity, creativity, the wonder of discovery and the just plain silliness
of the 50s. It has all been replaced with video games, computers and formula
TV. Television now has hundreds of channels and all the attraction of a
baloney sandwich that has been left out on the porch. Another thing about the
fifties that is vastly different from today for kids is the amount of human
contact, companionship and physical activity the average prepubescent child
experienced. For two and a half months every year, we did not study for SATs
(now I see thousands of 7th and 8th graders in cram schools during the summer
for this ridiculous test) go to summer camps, or stayed inside the house to
play video games or computers. When we wanted to talk to our friends, we
physically visited them. When we played games, we physically played them and
in many instances created our own games. We went OUT. You had no other choice
in the development.
Tales of West Paterson - Football in West Paterson
Football in West Paterson
By Arthur H Tafero
Everyone in the development rooted for the New York Football Giants, as they
were known in the fifties. The early fifties memories of the Giants were
constant battles with the Cleveland Browns. The Cleveland Browns were the New
York Yankees of football in the late forties and early fifties. They won ten
straight division titles with the great Otto Graham as their quarterback.
After 1955, however, the playing field began to level and the Giants emerged
as one of the better teams.
One of the greatest moments we ever heard on the radio for a sporting event
was a game between the Browns and the Giants in a raging snowstorm. They
could barely see what yard line they were on. Sam Huff would constantly be
battling the great Jimmy Brown allday in the snow and the mud. Huff would
stop him most of the time, but occasionally Brown would rip off a big gain,
The score was tied at 7-7 and time was running out in the game. The Giants
needed the game to stay in contention for the title. Ben Agajanian, the
dependable field goal kicker, came out with the ball on the 48 yard line of
the Browns on a fourth down. The snow was coming down heavily, the Giants
were wearing sneakers instead of cleats because of the snow, and the winds
were blowing wildly in all directions. Somehow, Agajanian miraculously made
that field goal, and everyone was delirious. The announcer went bananas, and
the boy tribe went bananas, and the Giants went bananas on the field. We
never got this excited watching a Giants game on a television until they made
the Super Bowl in 1986.
There had been some great Giant moments like “The Kick― as it began to be
known in the Browns game and the 1956 game when they crushed the Chicago
Bears in the Championship, 47-7. There were some crushing defeats, also. One
game with time running outagainst the Steelers, the Giants led 10-7,
basically due to their hardnosed defense. The Steelers had the ball too far
away for a tying field goal, but Bobby Layne put one up and connected to win
the game for the Steelers 14-10 with time running out.
I always thought he was the most dangerous quarterback in the NFL in the
fifties. The other great disappointment was known as “The Greatest Game
Ever Played― in 1958. Unfortunately, the gamed was blacked out in New York
because the NFL had a greedy policy of blacking out home games then, even if
they were sold out. This one was.
The Giants were losing the Championship 14-3. They rallied to take the lead
17-14 with a bizarre play that featured a Conerly pass to Rote for a nice
gain, but then Rote fumbled. Alex Webster, the fullback, then recovered the
fumble and almost ran it all the way in for a touchdown. The Giants scored
twice after that and then Gifford made a first down to run out the clock; or
at least that’s what the replay showed later. The referees made an
incorrect measurement and asserted the first down was not made and the Giants
had to punt and the rest is history. The great Johnny Unitas led the Colts
down the field for the tying field goal. This created the first overtime game
in the history of championship football. The Giants won the toss and the
crowd and everyone in the development went crazy. Unfortunately, they went
three and out and had to punt. Unitas then took over the game and made pass
after pass to Raymond Berry. Then, in a final death blow, Alan Ameche ran
over the goal line for a touchdown and a sensational 23-17 victory. The
tribal boys in the development were crushed. Our heroes had failed in the
clutch, but we blamed the damned referees for blowing the Gifford first down
call. The only way they could beat the Giants was to cheat, we said.
Before 1956, you could grab an opponent’s face mask and tackle him by it.
This led to some very interesting tackles and some major injuries. The NFL
outlawed that after 1956. The Giants also moved from the Polo Grounds to
Yankee Stadium for the 1956 season. They had to because there wasn’t going
to be a Polo Grounds in another year or so. The Giants not only won the
division, but creamed the Chicago Bears 47-7 in the championship game. The
move to a place of champions must have had a profound effect on the Giants,
because they won five more division championships in the next ten years. They
were not so lucky in the World Championship games, however after 1956. They
lost that great game to the Colts in 1958. Then the Colts showed it was no
fluke by pounding the Giants 31-16 in the 1959 Championship game. I remember
the commissioner of the NFL, Bert Bell, died of a heart attack in the last
two minutes of the Steelers-Eagles game in October. That was the way to go
for a football commissioner, we all thought. We were all disappointed in 1960,
when the Eagles went on to beat the newly potent Green Bay Packers in the
Championship. The Giants would go on to lose two Championships in a row to
the Packers and another to the Bears after that. They never won a
championship again until I was a father of two in 1986. A thirty year drought
had finally ended.
Most of us could name the complete starting lineups for both the Giants
offense and defense and they were really the only football cards we collected.
We hardly brought any football cards compared to what we brought for baseball.
But those we did buy were for the sole purpose of getting Giants. The most
sought-after card was our “Chucking― Charley Conerly, the greatest
athlete ever to come out of Mississippi. His quarterbacking led to a
thrashing of the 1956 Chicago Bears in the Championship. Other sought-after
cards were Frank Gifford, the Giants, talented halfback, Alex Webster, their
monstrous fullback and Kyle Rote, their most dependable end. Sam Huff, the
great middle linebacker and Jim Brown-killer, was the most popular defensive
card. Emlen Tunnel was popular too, because he intercepted everything thrown
in his direction. The unsung heroes of those Giants were guys like Roosevelt
Brown and Roosevelt Grier, and Andy Robustelli, who would be unmerciful when
they sacked the quarterback and threw him around like a sack of beans.
As far as the tribe playing football, we played two on two touch games in the
street that were occasionally interrupted by passing cars. Sometimes it was
three on three and at most four on four. If we had more than eight guys, we
went to the tackle format on grass and there was plenty of that around in the
development. Sometimes we would have more than thirty guys playing. We would
just keep adding guys to each side and we would ALL play at the same time. We
completely ignored the traditional eleven against eleven rule. After all,
what difference did it make? You could imagine that with fifteen guys playing
defense, you weren’t going to get very far. We almost never scored any
touchdowns, but this was fine with us because it was right in line with the
great defensive tradition we had learned from the New York Giants. Jackie
Gallahan’s speed was no good here. After a few savage gang tackles, he was
put out of commission. No, these games called for guys with thighs like
horses who required a minimum of four guys to be tackled. Guys like Jackie
Shaw fell into that category. You would see Jackie drag three or four guys
ten yards or so with him if you tried to tackle him high. That’s how we
learned the importance of tackling low.
Another difficult thing to do with fifteen or so defensive players out there
was to pass. No matter where you chose to pass, there had to be at least two
or three defenders. Almost all the passes were intercepted or knocked down,
so after a while, there were very few pass attempts. In addition, as you
might imagine, the pass rush was pretty fierce. If you were crazy enough to
have a pass play, you were certain to be creamed as the quarterback. If just
two guys got through in the pro game, it was a slaughter for the quarterback.
In our game at least six or seven guys were chasing the quarterback on every
play. The old lateral and then pass, also known as the flea flicker play was
very popular against the fifteen boy defense. The lateral would draw a
wolfpack of about eight or nine tacklers and the runner would suddenly turn
into a passer and hit someone downfield where there now only six or seven
defenders. This play would occasionally work, but it could result in the near
death of your running backs and was not successful all the time. Most of the
games ended with just one touchdown being scored or a scoreless tie.
Football games on the Saint Bon’s playgrounds had to be touch, but they
were very rough touch games. They often resulted in some pretty good scrapes
and ripped school pants. They also occasionally included about fifteen
against fifteen guys that negated the great speed of Robert Holter and Jackie
Gallahan. There were a plethora of bizarre trick plays that seldom worked and
most of the points were scored on interceptions. It was a hell of a lot more
fun intercepting a pass than catching one on offense. Most of these games
were low-affairs like our tackle games. If you wanted a high scoring game,
then two on two touch football was your cup of tea. There were a slew of
touchdowns scored in those kind of games. The scores were so high in two on
two or three on three games, that you didn’t keep score in the traditional
way. You kept score by ones. You would be ahead 9-7 in these kinds of games,
not 54-42 if you had counted by sixes. Also, there were no extra points;
primarily because there were no goal posts.
The guys who excelled in football were mostly guys who did not excel in
baseball. This was a good thing because it let guys who were always in the
background get some glory for a change. Guys like Bobby Holter, Jackie
Gallahan and Jackie Shaw didn’t do that well in baseball, but at least they
got their moment to shine in football. By the way, we played all those
fifteen player tackle games without any equipment and there were very few
serious injuries.
Now they use all kinds of sophisticated equipment and they have more injuries
than we ever did. There are logical reasons for that. Now you can use your
helmet to make a tackle on some part of a kid’s body. The helmet is a lot
harder than most parts of kid’s body. It can cause an injury on every few
hits. When we used to play without helmets, we didn’t use our heads to
tackle, we used our arms and hands. If you tried to use your head, you would
get knocked dizzy a few times and not try it again. Nowadays, kid use their
helmets to tackle all the time. I think its counterproductive. The equipment
does not protect arms, legs and backs from helmet tackles. The certainty of
getting knocked dizzy occasionally is a much better preventative than a
fifteen yard penalty for spearing with your helmet. But I don’t think we
will ever go back to helmetless football. What a shame. It used to be a lot
of fun.
Tales of West Paterson - Life in the Early Grades
Life in the Early Grades
By Arthur H Tafero
I moved to West Paterson in time for the second grade at Saint Bonaventure
Grammar School. I remember going to the first grade at Saint Anne’s in
Jersey City and getting into trouble for two basic things. First, I colored
outside of the lines in our coloring books and that was taboo in the first
grade. I did it so often that the teacher (whose name I cannot remember)
wrote me a note to take home to my parents). This was the second basic thing
I got in trouble for. I took the note and threw it down the sewer before I
got on the bus. I got away with this for about a week, until my teacher
followed me after giving me another note and saw me throw it down the sewer
again. Boy, did I get tanned for that one.
By the time we moved to West Paterson for the second grade, everyone had a
phone, so the chance of you getting away without taking a note home were slim
and none, so we never bothered to try and get rid of the notes. For some of
us conduct always seemed to be a problem from the first thru the eighth
grades. Most of us were fine in high school, but in grammar school, we just
loved talking too much. In high school, you would just be told to quiet down
and then you would quiet down, but in a Catholic grammar school, talking at
inappropriate times was considered a great breech in discipline, not just a
minor interruption, and it was treated as such. Many of us ever got a grade
over 70 in conduct and most of us got several U’s. A U stood for
Unsatisfactory, and if you got even one of those, it would cost you either on
your grade or on your butt. We had several U’s. TALKATIVE IN CLASS, TALKS
AT INAPPROPRIATE TIMES, DISRUPTIVE IN CLASS, POOR USE OF FREE TIME
(translation: We spent too much time flipping baseball cards or talking in
class). Individually, these were all minor violations and had little, if any
bearing on our academic performance.
The classes in the second grade were with Sister Rhonesia. The kids, on
occasion, would discuss the fact that nuns, in generally, had the most
disgusting names they had ever heard of. Rhonesia was one of them. It seem to
be a combination of the country in Africa, Rhodesia and Milk of Magnesia. The
second grade class started, as it would for the next seven years, at nine am
with math. If you finished the assignment satisfactorily, you got a blue star
next to your name on this very large poster that Sister Rhonesia had created
in the front of the class next to the blackboard. It pretty much overwhelmed
the rest of the room. You could pretty much see the achievements of the whole
class in one view of this gigantic poster. If you did a noticeably good job
on the assignment, you would get a silver star and if you were among the very
best in the class, then you would get that precious gold star. There were
fifty-three of us up on that giant poster with our names and all the stars we
had accumulated. There was enough room for the whole year.
A lot of the kids were very competitive about these stars and would keep
count of every blue, silver and gold star they had.
In math, whoever finished first always get a hundred. This would earn that
kid the first gold star of the day. The next class was religion and most of
the time the best most of us ever did in that class was get a blue or silver
star. Jack Romanoff and Billy Carrollton would get gold stars because they
were altar boys and Michelle McKearny and Patricia Roan would get gold stars
because they recited their catechism better than the other girls.
In religion we learned that the world was divided into Christians and pagans.
The Christians would all be going to the Kingdom of God and the pagans would
be going to hell to burn for all eternity. How convenient. Pagans were people
who idolized false gods. That included all the Jews, Protestants, Muslims,
all the people in Africa who weren’t Catholics and the entire nation of
China, except for those who had converted to Catholicism. This made my
decision to keep the money my mother had given me for the starving children
of China moot. Why give these kids money for food if they were already
condemned to hell for eternity? It was a waste of money and was better spent
on baseball cards. The issue of the Greek Orthodox Church and Russia was
brought up and we found our those pagans were going to hell too, but one
second-grader (most likely Barbara Barnier) asked:
“What if some of the pagans are good people, but they just worship the
wrong God?―
“They will be going to hell, anyway, my dear, because worshipping the right
God is more important that being good.―
Somehow, this did not compute with many of us.
We had to learn the first part of the catechism before we could make our
first Holy Communion. This was a really big deal in the Catholic Church and a
big deal in the school. It was also a great occasion to get gifts and money
from our parents and relatives, so we were all up for it. The lesson we
learned from this exclusionary indoctrination in the second grade was that
being good was not all that important, so why bother so much about trying to
be good? We could always fall back on praying to the right God for
forgiveness and since it was the RIGHT God; we had nothing to worry about. So
a few of us got blue stars and silver stars for Math and religion and the
same happened for English which followed. Diane Palladesta and Barbara
Barnier got gold stars in English and some of us would always get a silver
star which irked us because we thought our essays were the cool. But I guess
Sister Rhonesia based it more on grammar like the previous sentence that was
a run-on.
It was then time for our delicious lunch time cafeteria food. All it took was
one week of the horrendous spaghetti, leaden meat dishes, mushy vegetables
and boring milk to convince our mothers to let us bring our own lunches to
school with us in those wonderful metal containers that showed our favorite
TV personalities. It was no contest. All we had to do was compare our mom’s
cooking and sandwiches to the glop that was served in the cafeteria and the
moms came around in a week or two.
After we ate, we played the game of the season. If it was Fall, we would play
boxball or touch football. If it was the Winter and the playground was all
iced up, we would play hockey. In the early Spring we would go back to
boxball or chink (a game you played against the wall with a hi-bouncer).
Another popular game was baseball off the wall which was a lot like stoop
ball, but that game will be explained in another tale.
When we got back from lunch, it was time for Science and most of us hardly
ever got any stars in that subject. Walter Zehner and Frank Pavalaki always
got a gold star in Science and then it was time for Art. Many of us really
sucked in Art; we never even got a blue star in art. Doug always got at least
a silver star in Art because he was always very neat. On alternate days we
had Music and most of us would do much better. Some of us would even get a
gold star, once in awhile, in Music.
After Music and Art period, it was time for the History and Geography lessons.
Bernadette Hillman always scored a gold star in this area along with Fred
Hertz and Virginia Miccio.
At the end of the first month, Diane Palladesta, Walter Zehner and Bernadette
Hillman had the most gold stars. No too many of us really counted the blue
stars or silver stars.
Our test papers got graded the same way. If you got a 95 or better, you got a
gold star. If you got a 90 to 94, you got a silver star. We threw away any
test papers under 90 because all they got were blue stars. Luckily for some
of us, there were no tests for conduct or we would have never gotten any
stars like Jeffrey Lovans. A few of us were really annoyed. We thought some
of our essays deserved gold stars and that our math papers deserved gold
stars, Some felt they should have been among the class leaders in gold stars.
One of the students decided to do something about it. While at the five and
ten in Paterson with their mother, one of the students stuck a small box of
mixed stars in their pocket. When the class let out for lunch the next day,
he or she hid in the cloak room until the class was empty and Sister Rhonesia
had left for lunch. Then this evil student went to the big board of names and
stars and began their secret campaign.
First, they removed a few gold stars of the leading students and replaced
them with silver stars. Then they took off a number of their blue stars and
changed them to gold and silver stars. They tried not to make it too obvious
and they kept their gold star count just a few below the leaders. Then they
went downstairs to lunch and box ball. The evil one could hardly contain
their glee and almost felt a compulsion to confess what they had done, but
they kept it to themselves.
When the class got back that day and we started our Science class, the
culprit expected Sister would discover the scam, but she paid no attention as
she added Walter Zehner’s latest gold star. Walter, however, gave a puzzled
look at the board and started to use his forefinger to silently count his
gold stars and had a confused look which you seldom saw on his face. We could
hardly keep ourselves from laughing. The culprit was most likely going to
Hell for this, but it seemed to be worth it. After Art and History, we were
done for the day and Doug looked up at the board and his mouth dropped. That
made the evil one’s day. Eventually, the culprit had to do a little
doctoring about once a month. He or she stopped taking off stars from the
other good students and just added stars to other ones. At the end of the
year, the leading students, including myself received prizes for being in the
top six in the class in stars. And then the gigantic poster was taken down
and none of us ever got any stars ever again. It was time for the third grade
and third graders were too big to get stars; they just got grades.
A lot of us kind of miss the stars.
Tales of West Paterson - Shopping on Saturday Morning
Shopping on Saturday Morning
By Arthur H Tafero
Unless there was a very important scheduled sporting event that your official
West Paterson or Saint Bon’s team was involved in, you were always drafted
to shop and carry bags at the Saturday morning shopping at the Acme. These
shoppings varied according to the weather. When it was cold in West Paterson,
it was very, very cold and when it was hot, it was almost unbearable because
almost no one in the development had air conditioning. The vents in the
houseswere set up for central heating, but not for central air conditioning.
The attics would freeze in the winter and roast in the summer. Most of the
boy tribe members had their rooms in the attic. We got used to the extreme
temperatures and getting as close to the vent as possible in the winter to
get the weak heat that it was sending up. Some of the guys slept in the
basement during the winter because it was nice and toasty there, since it was
the source of the central heating. In the summer, the basements were nice and
cool; at least fifteen to twenty degrees cooler than the attics, so it was
also a great place to go sleep in the summer.
The other six months were always very comfortable in all areas of the house
and every Saturday our parents would go in droves to the Acme. The acme was
located a bit down Rifle Camp Road where there was a fork with McBride Avenue.
If you continued down for a few blocks on McBride, you would run into the
Acme. As your parents and you came in, you had to pick out a sturdy shopping
cart that had four perfectly functioning wheels. If you picked out anything
other than a sturdy kind of cart, your father would give you an Italian clip.
After the cart was selected, the heavy bottled materials were the first items
that most parents shopped for. You would go to the soda, beer and juices
aisles (there was no water sold then) and, depending on the alcoholic
preferences of your dad, buy a lot or a little beer, various amounts of soda
(richer families bought six packs and poorer families bought the economysized bottles), and some bottles of juices. You would pick up any other
bottled products from other aisles at this time. That would include pickles,
relish, salad dressing, mustard, ketchup, Bosco and various other glass
container bottles.
The next stop was for deli meats. Usually, one of the boys, who was with
their parents, would run to the deli section and grab the next number for the
deli counter. The deli counter was always mobbed every Saturday morning and
there was at least a ten to fifteen minute wait for your deli products. You
could get a pound of baloney for 29 cents and sometimes it was on sale for
even less than that. Most of our fathers opted for a pound of ham that sold
for 49 cents a pound. Our moms liked ham better than baloney, too. Very few
parents could afford the expensive Virginia Ham for 59 cents a pound. We
would also get a pound of Liverwurst for 29 cents a pound and a pound of
Genoa salami for 39 cents a pound. Sometimes parents treated their kids to
olive loaf which was 39 cents a pound. It was basically baloney with olives
in it. Most parents couldn’t afford to buy deli roast beef, so the moms
made fresh roast beef, which was cheaper and lasted longer. Finally, we would
get a pound of cheddar cheese for 19 cents a pound and sometimes a pound of
swiss for 29 cents a pound. On the average, most parents would buy about five
pounds of cold cuts and cheese costing about a dollar and seventy-five cents.
I don’t ever remember anyone buying anything in less than one pound amounts.
That was a lot of cold cuts. By the way, about half of all these cold cuts
were gone by end of Sunday night. We sometimes started eating them while we
were unpacking the car after we got back home.
After the deli section, our moms would select her cooking meats. She would
get whatever meat was on sale that week plus chicken breasts, hot dogs,
chopped meat and a pot roast. We usually had steaks on special occasions,
like barbecues and picnics, but if it was on sale, our moms would pick it up
and we would have steak that week. After the meat section, our mothers would
select the vegetables they would cook fresh for the week. Very few moms used
canned vegetables to feed their families in the development. It was all fresh
food. The potatoes were always peeled, boiled and mashed with milk and butter.
Green beans were fresh, although frozen vegetables seemed to gain favor among
the moms pretty quickly. Not too many moms bought tomatoes because most of
them grew their own. They grew their own cucumbers, too. It was only in the
winter they would spring for some tomatoes and cucumbers.
The fruit was seasonal. In the fall, Red Delicious apples were popular and in
the winter, oranges from Florida and California were in demand, spring
presented strawberries and blueberries, and summer offered watermelons,
peaches and plums. Bananas were popular all year around. Our mothers loved
fruit and tried to pass on the enjoyment to our fathers and the boy tribe
members, but the returning veterans of World War II weren’t about to settle
for a lot of fruit; they wanted stuff they weren’t able to eat for four
years or so in Europe and Asia; ice cream, ecclaires, rich pies, chocolates,
fresh rolls, fresh butter, pizza, spaghetti, ravioli, steak, hamburgers, hot
dogs, fried chicken, beer, soda, highballs, potato chips, pretzels, cashews
and cakes of all kinds.
It was a constant battle between our fathers who wanted all this junk food
and our mothers who tried to feed us healthier food. The tribal boys all
naturally sided with the dads and the moms had to surrender in their attempt
to eliminate these types of food most of the time. Most of the time after our
regular meals at home, we would see our fathers nibbling on something. There
was always a desert after supper on the weekends and there were always snacks
for watching TV. Our moms never held back on food for the family. They would
go without a late model car, a new dining room set, a new living room chair
or some other nice addition to the house, just to make sure that their
husbands and kids pretty much got whatever they wanted to eat. Eating
together as a family was the most important activity a family could have, but
watching TV together was a very close second.
Amazingly, almost none of the moms, dads or kids were obese, because we were
all very active. We worked almost all of that junk food off. The fathers
would work on the house on the weekends, the moms would work keeping it clean
seven days a week and the tribal boys would run around playing some type of
damn ball 52 weeks a year.
Tales of West Paterson - The Working Moms of West Paterson
The Working Moms of West Paterson
By Arthur H Tafero
One way or the other, the mothers of West Paterson, were working moms. Before
it became fashionable, the concept of the working mother was alive and well
in the development. Almost all the mothers had to do the cleaning of the
house, clothes for the kids and husband, shopping and cooking of at least
sixteen meals a week, gardening, most of the accounting (the fathers were
notoriously bad at record-keeping), and because they had so much free time
from doing the above, they had no problem taking as many part-time jobs
within the development and within downtown Paterson.
Some of the mothers secretly just wanted to get out of the house for a few
hours a week. As much as they loved their husbands and kids, the merciless
routine of the household demands were a brutal, unyielding sequence of events
that seemed to be never-ending to most of the mothers. The bit of extra money
was welcome to the fathers, who had to give their wives less of an allowance
each week, and the moms got to shop in downtown Paterson, or at the very
least, got out of the house for a while. Sometimes, the money went for better
family vacations, other times to get a better family car or improvement to
the house. The extra money always went, one way or the other, to the family.
The variance of jobs of the mothers was quite impressive. Because of the
revolution of World War II, which allowed almost any woman to do almost any
man’s job while they were away at war, it was no big deal for these woman
to attempt almost any job that came their way. Mothers became day-care
babysitters for their neighbors, while other mothers worked at other jobs.
Mrs. Pride, who lived on Overmount Avenue behind our house and small canal,
was one of those mothers who cared for other children while other mothers
worked out of the house. Some mothers took advantage of the fact that
Paterson, in the fifties, was a hotbed of the clothing industry, and provided
virtually anyone with piecework who was willing to work a certain amount of
hours a week.
It appeared as if the largest segment of the development job market was in
the clothing industry within Paterson. Mrs. Pettitte, Mrs. Howard, Mrs.
Dachino, Mrs. Klump and my mother, Mary all had jobs in this area. Mrs. Baker
became a school busdriver for Saint Bon’s. The kids behaved much better
after she became the driver, because she knew all the kid’s mothers and we
knew she did, so we behaved better. Mrs. Topozzi became a den mother and also
worked a part-time phone operator. Mrs. Vitale became a receptionist for the
local hospital during the daytime hours her boys were in school. It was only
for three hours a day, but it was relief to get away from the tedium of the
development. Without cars, because the husbands had them at work, the wives
were virtual prisoners of the house, except for the hourly bus that passed by
down at Mount Pleasant Avenue at the base of Williams Drive. There were very
few two-car families in those days.
The kids of the development weren’t too wild about their mothers leaving
the house during the summer months when they were too young to be left alone.
The development baby-sitters like Mrs. Pride, were nice enough, but no one
was ever as good to have home as your mother. Some kids would bawl miserably,
when their mother left them, but that didn’t stop them; and a few minutes
later they had forgotten their mothers were gone while they were playing some
game or watching TV. The mothers, to be sure, felt a few pangs of guilt, but
they quickly dissipated as the prison of the house disappeared with the
Paterson bus.
Other mothers who worked part-time were Mrs. Kingsley as a barber, Mrs. Van
Weston as a nurse, and Mrs. Delphino as a secretary. A lot of the kids in the
development used to get their haircuts from Mrs. Kingsley because she only
charged half of what they did in Paterson and you didn’t have to drag your
kid out of the development to get one. Mrs. McCallin, who couldn’t wait to
get out of her house because of her miserable husband, became a waitress at a
Paterson restaurant for as many hours as she could manage. Some of the
mothers even took courses at night schools to get high school diplomas or
even some college credit. Any reason was a good reason to get out of the
house and the tedium attached to it. The husbands rarely complained as long
as there was a meal on the table when they got back home from work.
One woman who didn’t make out so well though was Mrs. Kidd. She was
murdered by her husband, who was a marshal in West Paterson, or so that was
the word that was being passed around when her body was found in the house,
dead from a shooting “accident― of some sort. There was supposedly a
triangle of Mrs. Kidd, her lover, and Mr. Kidd. The vast majority of mothers
in the development suspected foul play. Mr. Kidd, of course, had to resign
his position, sell the house, and eventually pleaded guilty to a lesser
charge of manslaughter.
After that incident, a running joke among the dads in the development was
that if a mom didn’t behave, she would wind up like Mrs. Kidd. The moms
generally replied that they would be the most likely ones to commit a murder
and that the dads better watch their step. The tribal boys found all this
banter to be quite amusing. The mothers never brought home wonderfully
disgusting snacks home like the dads did, but that was understandable
considering they were making far less money. Mrs. Barnier worked as a
research lab assistant at the hospital in downtown Paterson. She took night
courses for eight years and the year we left the development, she became a
doctor and made more money than her husband.
Mrs. Roan became a part-time librarian and we would always run into her when
we had to go to the library for some book. Whenever we had a late book,
especially Doug, she would let us go without a fine. Mrs. Zambrano helped out
at a local bakery before the school day started at four in the morning. She
religiously put in three hours a day and worked Saturdays, too. She was able
to take the car, though, because she could get back to the house by seventhirty am. She was the best baker in the development. She made fantastic
chocolate-chip cookies and many other delicious pastries. Eventually, she
opened her own bakery in West Paterson after Zippy had gone off to college.
Tragically, her other son, Stikhie, died from that horrendous disease, that
we all feared because of the death of Kathleen Dempster of Saint Bon’s;
leukemia. Zippy was quite broken up about it, too. Normally a very happy go
lucky guy, he was in tears for days after the unfortunate event. We all
fondly remembered Stikhie.
Mrs. Shaw was a crossing guard. She almost got hit by a truck one time during
the winter because it skidded on the icy road. She stuck with the job, though,
through all kinds of inclement weather and the hot sun. Speaking of getting
hit by a truck, one of my mother’s friends, Mrs. Krasner, had her husband
get run over by a garbage truck. Her husband had been a sanitation engineer
or what the tribal boys called a garbage man. I remember my mother and father
going over her house, which was near May’s Deli and trying to console her a
little bit. I also remember being bored to tears while I was over there for a
couple of hours, but it never occurred to me that the same thing could have
happened to my father on the job.
Or, as Mrs. Shaw proved, something bad could also happen to our mothers while
they were working their part-time jobs. The kids of the development never
worried about things like that; they were worried about the Yankees and
whether or not it would snow on Sunday night during the winters. Those were
about the only worries we had back then.
Tales of West Paterson - The Dads of West Paterson
The Dads of the Development
By Arthur H Tafero
Our dads all had a lot in common, but at the same time they had a lot of
different personalities and quirks. My dad, like all the other dads, had been
a World War II veteran and had taken a loan to getour house. He grew up in
Bayonne as an only child and his parents and my grandparents were named Wilma
and Harry. His name was the same as mine, Arthur, so there was always a
little bit of confusion in our house when my mother called “Art!― She
would occasionally use the term “Art JR!― which I detested, and I never
signed my name Arthur H Tafero Jr. which was supposed to be the name I should
sign because it was on my birth certificate. I ALWAYS dropped the Jr.
Eventually, she came up with the term “Sonny― which was both acceptable
to everyone and ended much confusion. Dad had been a basketball player and
swimmer in high school and taught me how to swim. When I was six and seven I
used to ride his back like “Boy on a Dolphin― an Italian sculpture. It
really was like riding a dolphin. He was very strong and could hold his
breath under water for almost the entire length of the reservoir. It made me
want to do the same, but I could never do it as well as he did.
My father met Mary before he went into the army in the early forties. He was
in the D-Day Invasion on June 6 at Omaha Beach. He was also in the Battle of
the Bulge and he said he survived the both of them because he always had dry
socks. I filed that information away for the future. When he got out, he
married Mary and then had me.
He had wanted to be a surveyor, but because he needed money right away when
he got married, he took a job at General Electric as a plastics molder. He
never pursued his dream of being a surveyor after that. I remember he was
very good with a slide rule and other tools I had no idea how to use, but I
always sensed he was a bit disappointed he didn’t pursue his dreams. I made
a definite point of filing away that information for myself, too, and it was
something I never forgot. I was never going to work in a factory and I was
never going to subvert my own personal dreams for a marriage. I had made that
decision by the time I was twelve.
My father loved working with his tools and bringing midnight meals back to
his family on Fridays and sometimes, Saturday nights. He worked the second
shift which meant he left for work when I got home and he got back after I
had gone to bed during the week. I almost never saw him during the week. He
tried mightily to make up for the lost time with the midnight meals and
weekend trips down to the Jersey Shore. He and I would often go crabbing down
at Barnegat Bay on Satudays and bring home a bushel full of big fresh crabs
for him and my mother to eat that night. I would never touch them myself. I
hated seafood except for shrimp. I think it was a reaction to having to eat
fish sticks every Friday. Sometimes, we went to Mountain View park and flew a
kite or skated on the pond. He was active in the Little League on the
weekends, but because of his job and a bad shoulder he had from his duffel
bag in World War II, his participation during the week was almost nil. The
fathers we depended on for baseball in the development were Douglas
Kingsley’s father and Ronny Vitale’s father.
Douglas Kingsley’s father’s name was Owen, but his friends called him
Ownie. He liked to drink beer, but he lived until he was eighty because he
was so active athletically. He was a great baseball player and he didn’t
smoke. He was always very patient with the kids when they were just starting
out in the little league. The only kid he wasn’t patient with was his only
son, Doug. He used to yell at Doug a lot to not be afraid of the ball when he
hit or to pitch the ball high and tight to batters in order to get them to
move off the plate. I never had a problem with that and I gladly plunked a
batter on occasion when there was two outs and nobody on. Doug didn’t like
doing that too much though. He eventually became one of our best hitters,
though, so I guess he wasn’t too afraid of the ball in the end. When we
lived in the development, I used to be the better basketball player and he
was the better baseball player. As we got older, we switched roles. Ownie was
active during the week and on the weekends. He loved rooting for the New York
Giants, but Doug was a Yankee fan like me. Mr. Kingsley often took the both
of us to the Polo Grounds for games and was heartbroken when the Giants moved
to San Francisco. Ronnie Vitale was also a New York Giants fan and he was
depressed when the Giants moved, too.
Ronnie’s father, Vincent, was the other very active coach at the beginning
of the West Paterson Little League. He was the coach of the Amvets, which was
short for American Veterans. Mr. Kingsley was the coach of the Indians and
our arch enemy (our only enemy) was the Amvets. In the first year, we were
never able to beat the Amvets and they won every game between us, but after
1954, we began to even things out and even began to dominate them by 1956. By
that time the little league had expanded to six teams, but the league was
always dominated by the little Indians and the Amvets. Vincent was a
Protestant, unlike the majority of the dads in the development, but no one
really cared about that. He never swore and he often got on anyone’s kid
who had a foul mouth. I was a major project for him. He often told me that my
vocabulary was too good to use the same stupid curses that he heard from me
on numerous occasions. Ronny never cursed either, so I guess he was
successful in that area with his son. He had a younger son named Chipper, but
he was too young to hang out with the main tribe. My dad, Ron’s dad, as
well as Doug’s dad were very decent men. But not all the fathers in the
development were decent men.
Up a house from Ronnie was the McCall house. Jim McCall had a bit more land
and money than most of the other dads. This must have made him feel a little
better than the other dads, but he wasn’t. He was active in the little
leagues, but he really had no talent for coaching and his teams never won
anything. He bullied his son, Jim Jr., all the time. He often gave grand
barbecues on his substantial plot of land and one time one of the Wayne kids
had an argument with Jim Jr. and then punched him in the nose. Jim Jr. just
went crying to his father. Jim Sr. was very understanding. He slapped his son
a few times for not fighting back with the Wayne kid. These kids were about
four years younger than most guys in the tribe and we thought it was very
unusual for a dad to slap around his kid that way at that age. Anyway, Jim Jr.
was still crying and then he went back and challenged the Wayne kid to a
fight. We all egged him on because we were grateful for the free hot dogs and
hamburgers Mr. McCallen had provided. The vocal support, however did not help
Jim Jr from getting the snot kicked out of him by the Wayne kid. They were
the same size, but for some reason, you could see that Jim Jr. just didn’t
have the heart to fight. The fight ended with Jim Jr. getting picked up off
the ground by his father who slapped him a few more times. We were so
disgusted with Mr. McCallen’s behavior that most of us left on the spot,
free dogs or no free dogs. We really felt sorry for Jim jr.
The vast majority of the development dads were not like Mr. McCallen, however,
they almost never hit their kids in public. Most of them spoiled their kids.
We were almost all spoiled in one way or the other. Mr. Van Weston, however,
did not spoil his kids, Hatchie and Davy. He taught both of them to fight to
protect themselves, but one time when Davy beat up a younger kid, he let Davy
have one right on the stoop. He was always very fair with both of his kids
and the other kids in the development. He never complained about the
stickball games we played near his house which was the recipient of numerous
foul balls. Even more tolerant was Mr. Topozzi.
The stickball game actually used Mr. Topozzi’s house as the home run marker.
When the ball hit the house, it was a homer. Over the house was a five-run
bonus that was seldom achieved. Mr. Topozzi never complained. What a patient
man. The tribe also cut through the Topozzi back yard all the time to enter
what was called the Topozzi woods, but still, he never complained. Of course
his son, Arthur was in the stickball games and was always in tribe activities
in the woods, but he wasn’t very good in sports, but we included just about
everyone in tribal activities as long as they weren’t too obnoxious. I
don’t know how I got accepted. Arthur’s best friend was Tom Delphino, who
lived next door. Mr. Delphino was a cool dad because he was always teaching
Tom new things that the rest of us had never been exposed to before.
One winter, Mr Delphino taught his son Tom how to ski. After they plowed the
two feet of snow that always accompanied the first snow of the winter, there
was always a slick layer of snow and ice left on the hill that was Williams
Drive. We used this for a harrowing sleigh ride that usually ended with us
hitting the large bank of snow at the base of the hill and we would gleefully
go flying through the air and land on a large area of deep snow. It was an
exhilarating two-part ride. You would feel the blast of the winter air burn
your cheeks as you went down the steep hill on your sled and then you would
hit the snow bank at a pretty good speed and then you would be airborne for a
few seconds. It was great. Of course, you had to remember to let go of the
rope on the sled or you would just get to eat a lot of the snow from the snow
bank on the bottom of the street.
Anyway, we notice Tom come out of his house as we were walking up to the top
of the hill for our next run. He didn’t have his sled, he was on skis! No
one from the tribe had ever skied before, so this was a really big deal. We
all stopped what we were doing and watched Tom ski down Williams Drive. We
were all getting ready to laugh when he got to the bottom and would crash
into the big snow bank or go flying over it, but he did neither. He deftly
turned his skis and used the poles to make a fast turn at the bottom of the
hill and he just kept on going. For all we knew, he might have went down
Rifle Camp Road all the way down to the Acme which was three miles downhill
from the development. Mr. Delphino had done a great job teaching him how to
ski and those skis were expensive, too, we found out later.
There were many other fine dads in the development. You almost never heard of
a case of child abuse in those days; not from the development. The dads
taught us a lot of things: how to swim, how to play baseball, football,
basketball, hockey, how to skate and most importantly, how to live. They
taught us not to lie, cheat or steal (although some of us did not pick up all
the finer points of these lessons). They taught us to respect others and to
respect girls. They were sometimes religious, but not overbearingly so, and
they taught us respect for the law and the government of the United States.
They showed us by example, not by what they said. These were some of the
reasons we would willingly go off to war during the Vietnam era in the years
to come. Because we wanted to measure up to our fathers and we wanted to make
them proud. It was ironic that many of them had fought a long and vicious war
just so we wouldn’t have to do that sort of thing again.
Tales of West Paterson - The West Paterson Brothers
The West Paterson Brothers
By Arthur H Tafero
Most of the kids in the boy tribes of the development didn’t have brothers
their own age, so they made the boy tribe sort of their same-age family. And
more direct than the tribe as a whole, almost every boy member of the tribe
had his best friend, which was in many cases, better than having a brother.
As you went up Williams Drive, you would remember the best friends of each of
the houses. Glen’s best friend was Bobby, who lived next door. That was
very convenient and also a bit unusual. Having someone almost the same age as
you moving in next door was definitely against the odds. You had to get lucky.
Not to mention that the kid would have to have some of the same interests you
had and go to the same school. Ronny’s best friend was Sal, who live at
least a couple of blocks away. Ronnie lived only two houses from me and we
played together a lot together, but he was one year older than me and went to
public school. I was a bit bigger, but when a kid didn’t go your school or
wasn’t the same age, it was highly unlikely he would be your best friend.
Glen and Bobby would often play ball in their own back yards and get involved
in projects like building a club house, which, unfortunately, despite their
great enthusiasm, did not turn out well.
Ronnie and Sal played a lot of basketball and baseball together. They also
played a lot of two on two touch football and usually beat whomever they
played.
Ronnie’s father, Mr. Vitale, was one of the primary baseball coaches in the
development. He coached the Amvets, a stacked little league team in West
Paterson.
The other stacked team was the Indians, the team I was on. When these two
teams finally broke up about four years later, they created another four
teams from them; that’s how stacked they were. Sal played on the Amvets
with Ronnie. They also went to the same school at Gilmour Grammar school,
which became Memorial Grammar school in 1958, and they were in the same grade.
Ronnie moved out of the neighborhood in the summer of 1960 and it was a bit
upsetting for Sal and I didn’t like it much either. Ronny would be the
first member of the regular boy tribe to leave the development. It was a
sobering event for many of us.
Further up the block, there was the Van Weston house. We never really found
out who Davy’s best friend was, but Hatchie would always hang out with
Frankie Klump. They had a great love of comic books together and also liked
to hang out in Topozzi’s wood with the rest of the boy tribe. Across the
street from the Van Weston house was the Topozzi house and the Delphino house
right next to it. Arthur Topozzi and Dephino had been dealt a hand by moving
in next to each other. They were both the same age and they were in the same
grade at Gilmour Grammar. They were both in the boy scouts and Arthur’s mom
was a pack mom.
This did not prevent Arthur from getting lost occasionally in the woods
behind his house. Tom Delphino, on the other hand, was pretty self-reliant.
His father had taught him how to ski and he was the first guy in the
development to go down Williams Drive on skis.
After turning to Morley Drive, you would come to Doug Kinsley’s house. His
next door neighbor was Jackie Shaw, who was about the same age, but he went
to the public school. So Doug hung out with Art Tafero, who was in the same
grade at the same school. They played all five or six major sports during the
full year and liked baseball cards, too. Doug’s father, Mr. Kingsley, was
the other major baseball coach in the development and he coached the Indians.
He also liked to play a lot of softball for his factory team at Kearfotts.
Doug and I went there one day to watch him play, but it was too boring to
watch, so we headed for the inside of the factory which was deserted during
the game; it appeared to have a great deal more potential for fun and it was
nice and cool, too. We went to the coke machine they had in the factory and
it was still only a nickel! Better than that, it was slightly ajar. We just
opened it a bit more and there were about thirty ice cold cokes ready to
drink! It was like discovering buried treasure. On top of that, we found
these neat little cars which we found out later were forklifts. They only
went about five miles an hour, but that was fine with us. We rode them all
over the factory and played bumper cars with them, too. We didn’t know how
to operate the forks, but that didn’t matter to us. We were just happy to
be driving like our dads. I believe we were only about nine or so when we had
this little adventure. When one of the dads came in out of the hot sun to
grab a few cokes for the players, he found a little pile of empty coke
bottles and was horrified seeing two little wild children running all over
the place in forklifts. Fortunately, after he yelled at us, we got off the
forklifts, grabbed another coke and went out to see Mr. Kingsley lead his
team to a win. That had been a lot of fun.
There were other brother and sister combos throughout the development, but
the ones we remember the most were the ones that involved the members of the
boy tribes. The tribe would only survive for seven years until 1961. Then it
seemed that most of us went our own way. It was great while it lasted.
Tales of West Paterson - The Grandparents of West Paterson
The Grandparents of the West Paterson
By Arthur H Tafero
Once upon a time in the early 1950s, Tom Topozzi visited his grandparents in
Bayonne and they would baby sit him for a weekend or sometimes even a week.
Tom loved when he visited his grandparents because they spoiled him all the
time.
His Gramma would make him sherred eggs in butter (very soft scrambled eggs)
with buttered toast and fresh orange juice for breakfast. Tom loved the way
Gramma made those eggs. His own mother could never make them quite as good.
After breakfast, Gramma would take the Tom for a trip to the local playground
where he played with new friends.
After a fun-filled morning at the playground, Gramma would take Tom back to
the apartment on Avenue E. He would spend hours counting his little red
building bricks. There were over 500 bricks, but that did not stop the little
eight-year old from counting every single one of them while Gramma cleaned
the house. Before long, it was time for lunch. Gramma would make the Tom a
fresh hamburger on a buttered English muffin. He loved these hamburgers and
he never had English muffins at home with mom. Gramma would carefully put a
little ketchup, lettuce and tomato on the English muffins, also. She always
said that there was never a bread made that could stand up to hamburgers as
well as English muffins. Gramma knew that Tom liked Yoohoo, and she got a
bottle from the refrigerator and opened it. She knew he liked to drink it out
of the bottle because it stayed colder that way. Sometimes, while Gramma was
making lunch, Tom would count the cars of the train that was passing in the
back of the apartment. His Grampa worked on one of those trains. He would
count to over 500 cars at times.
After lunch, Gramma and Tom would sit down in the kitchen and begin to play
cards. Both Gramma and Grampa, who was working this Saturday, liked to play
cards. They played all kinds of games. Gramma taught him how to play poker,
gin, pinochle and one or two other games. Gramma was always teaching him
things about numbers. She taught him that all the picture cards were equal to
10 and that the ace was equal to one. She taught him to add up the deck. The
answer was always the same; 340, but she would shuffle the cards and have the
little boy add up the deck verbally five or six times. The little boy like
showing off for his gramma and he would add the cards faster and faster.
Eventually he could add the cards faster than gramma could turn them over and
put them down on the table. Gramma was very proud of her grandson.
About four o’clock, Gramma would put a couple of steaks on the griddle and
take two cans of Schaeffer beer from the refrigerator. Then she would go out
into the living room, set up a little table with the two beers on top and
turn on the TV. She put on the Yankee game. Grampa always watched the end of
the Yankee game when he came home from work on Saturday. The game was in the
top of the seventh inning and the Yankees were beating the Red Sox 13-5.
Whitey Ford was taking it easy and Mickey Mantle had already hit two homers
so far. Yogi Berra had a homer, too. The Red Sox were trying to mount a
comeback, but they were too far behind and they had that resigned look of
defeat in their faces. Only Ted Williams still seemed to be determined. He
had a homer and a double so far today.
As soon as Tom heard Grampa’s key go in the lock, he ran down the stairs to
meet him. Grampa would hug the little boy and lift him up into the air.
Grampa was very strong from working on the railroad for over twenty-five
years. Grampa would give Gramma a quick peck and then go right to his
favorite chair with the little table next to it with the two cold beers. Then
gramma would bring out his steak and baked potato with lots and lots of
butter.
Grampa would complain that he didn’t see any butter on the potato and
Gramma would laugh and say potatoes aren’t normally yellow, but Grampa
would always say if you couldn’t see the butter, there wasn’t enough.
Gramma brought out the butter and told Grampa to help himself and he did. Tom
would never see any human use as much butter as he saw Grampa use on his
potatoes. Gramma set up tables for all three of them. TV trays were the
newest thing. Gramma did the crossword as the Red Sox unsuccessfully tried to
catch up to the Yanks. Grampa lovedto watch the Yankees. He tried to watch
every game. He would explain to Tom how you calculated the batting average
dividing the hits by the total at bats. He mentioned the importance of
learning long division for that purpose. He also taught the little boy how to
calculate a pitcher’s earned run average. Tom wanted to please his Grampa
so he learned both quickly and could soon do it faster than Grampa could.
Grampa called him his monkey and the little boy would follow him around the
house while he got ready to go to bingo on Saturday or Sunday.
Gramma, Grampa and Tom would all file into Grampa’s green 1947 Plymouth and
go to the Point. The Point was a little amusement park off the local bay in
Bayonne. It had a few rides and games, but most importantly, it had Saturday
bingo. As soon as you approached the Bingo room, you could see gray clouds of
smoke wafting from the doorway. As you entered, you could hardly see the
seats with all the smoke that was hanging in the air. Grampa and Gramma would
find a few choice seats near the Bingo screen which showed the yellow numbers
through the smoke. Grampa smoked like a chimney and so did Gramma. Tom would
occasionally begin to cough with all the smoke around him, but he refused to
go outside because he wanted to be with Gramma and Grampa. He was too young
to go around by himself, anyway. The smoke began to clear a bit as the early
bird began. Gramma and Grampa always brought twelve cards each to play and
gave the little boy four cards to play for himself. Some of the players
marveled that the little boy could follow four cards at one time at his age,
but it was very easy for him. He even kept track of Grampa’s cards next to
him, too. Occasionally, Grampa would miss a number and the monkey would point
to it for him. Then Grampa would rub the monkey’s head for good luck.
Grampa and Gramma seldom won at Bingo and the little boy never seemed to win.
He kept missing by one number. Grampa said most of the games were fixed, but
they let the people win a few just to keep them coming back. Gramma said it
was the same as wrestling; then Tom knew what they meant. They all laughed at
the fixed wrestling matches on TV and the little boy would win a nickel from
Grampa if he could figure out who was supposed to win the match. Sometimes
the little boy got all five matches right and would win a quarter. During
Bingo, the little boy would quickly scan the screen to see what numbers
remained, how many numbers had been called and what was the likelihood of the
next number being bingo. He would often tell grampa that the next number
would be a bingo and almost every time the next number would produce a bingo
for someone.
After Bingo, the three would go for a Dairy Queen and then to the bar. Gramma
and Grampa would buy a pitcher of beer and there would be a large bowl of
pretzels at the table. The little boy wanted to order a high ball because he
heard a bunch of other people ordering highballs. The bartender put some ice
in a glass and filled it with ginger ale and gave it to the little boy. He
tasted it and remarked how much like ginger ale it tasted. After a an hour or
so at the bar listening to music and watching gramma and grampa consume beer,
they would ride back to the apartment; a bit wobblier than when they came.
Once back at the house, Gramma would quickly turn the channel that was to
have Groucho on. She never, ever missed Groucho. Grampa hated Groucho, but
since Gramma sat through the Yankee game, he figured that he could suffer
through Groucho for her. There was a piano in the living room and sometimes
the little boy would try and play it before Groucho came on, but he always
got sleepy around this time. So, he stopped plunking at the piano and watched
Groucho with both Gramma and Grampa. He usually fell asleep before Groucho
was over and Grampa would carry him onto the bed. Then Grampa would go back
to watch the end of the NY Giants playing the Brookln Dodgers from Ebbets
Field. This was the cue for Gramma to get a couple of Schaeffers for each of
them. Gramma would then go back to work on her crossword puzzle. Sometimes,
if Tom was still awake after Groucho, they would play three-handed pinochle.
He could always tell from his hand if Gramma or Grampa was bluffing on the
bid and they would howl with laughter when Tom would catch them overbidding
and warn them they were going to be in the hole. Regardless how awake the
little boy would be at twelve, he was put to bed by Gramma. Then he dreamt of
eating sherred eggs with English muffins and butter in the morning.
Tales of West Paterson - Go To Mass or Go to Hell
Go To Mass or Go To Hell
By Arthur H Tafero
Weekly masses at Saint Bon’s were highly ritualized in more than one way.
In addition to the Latin which no one understood, each of the masses had
their own particular audiences. The seven am mass was for the clean living
early birds of the development who went to bed by ten on Saturday. There
really weren’t too many of these people in our parish. Most of the fathers
worked too hard during the week and partied hard on Saturday nights, or at
the very least, stayed up late with their families to watch bad movies late
at night while consuming really horrendous junk food. They were in no mood to
get up at six in the morning on Sunday and be at mass by seven. Of course
there was an upside from going to an early mass.
First of all, you were able to get it out of the way for the rest of the day.
That was a big plus for the boy tribe members. Secondly, if you were
receiving Holy Communion, it was better to go to an early mass and get it out
of the way instead of fasting until the eight, nine or God forbid, a later
mass. This meant you could have that big breakfast you were looking forward
to. If you went to a later mass, there was almost no hope of you fasting for
Holy Communion. You were going to hell.
Another good aspect of going to an early mass was that you would be able to
get to the Dolly Madison Ice Cream store for their famous Custard doughnuts.
Mr. Harrison only made forty eight of them every Sunday and they were always
gone before the nine o’clock mass. My father would stop in before the nine
o’clock mass in order to get his dozen.
The eight o’clock mass was for the doughnut lovers and those wishing to
have Holy Communion. The two were often linked. You had one after you had the
other.
Then came the nine o’clock mass. The nine o’clock mass was completely
segregated.
The middle two rows of pews for were reserved for the grade schools and the
outer two rows of pews for the proud parents of the well-behaved and cleanas-a-whistle little Catholic boys and girls of the inner rows. Further
segregation was by grade.
The little ones of the early grades were in the front inner pews of the
church, while the older grades were closer to the back of the church. Each
nun who was in charge of the grade in the school was also in charge of the
grade in the pews of the church.
I cannot tell you how peaceful and serene it was in the fourth grade with the
witch Aloysius eyeing you from the time you came into the church at five
minutes to nine until it was five minutes to ten. It was among the longest
hours of a kid’s life while he was at Saint Bon’s.
She would not hesitate to give you a good shot right in front of the parish
priest during Communion or in front of the parents as you were singing the
wrong words to “Tantum Ergo―. She also gave you that creepy smile that
meant as senile as she was, she would remember every little thing you did
wrong on Sunday for Monday’s class where she would cash those checks in.
She had one of those little clickers that they had in the movie “The
Longest Day― that would come out a few years later. One click meant to get
on your feet and two clicks meant it was finally all right for your to sit
down. God forbid you were a bit slow or the last one to rise or sit down; she
would take note. We were in the fourth grade, so we were still pretty
intimidated by Aloysius when we had her the first time, but by the time we
had her again in the seventh grade, she could no longer intimidate us nearly
as much. In the seventh grade, we used to try and torture her as much as she
had tortured us in the fourth grade.
The Mass would start with Father Tucker coming out with Bobby Carrolton and
Jackie Rominicki, the two altar boys from hell. Three years in the future,
they would be primarily responsible for Aloysius getting the boot as the
result of a cheating scandal during the final exams of the seventh grade. But
that was in the future. At this point in time, Aloysius would click her
little clicker and you got your butt off that pew or else. After the first
few sequences of the Mass, Father Tucker would give the signal and that would
be the time to begin singing the first hymn. It slips my mind what it was,
but it was some other Latin song we had no idea what the words meant. Despite
this complete ignorance of the meaning of the song, we were supposed to
become emotionally involved in it. It was pleasant sounding music with the
great windpipes of the organ resonating throughout the church. The sounds of
the children’s voices was quite different from all the other masses, which
is why the nine o’clock mass was very popular for some of the parents.
Father Tucker would mention that the children’s voices sounded like a choir
of angels. If angels ever died, they would have rolled over in their graves
for having been compared to our little bands of liars, cheaters and thieves.
Then Father Tucker would give the nuns a special signal and they would click
their little clickers twice and we would all thankfully sit down. That’s
when the trouble would first start. No one in the upper grades really wanted
to listen to the Gospel. They had heard it at least four or five times
already. That meant that they would try and talk to their friends in the pews
who were inevitably sitting next to them. Sometimes it was the girls and
sometimes it was the boys, but you could hear little whispers during the
Gospel. Aloysius would be gawking at every single one of use during the
Gospel because she was an old pro and she knew that was the best time to
catch us doing something wrong.
After the Gospel would come the explanation of the Gospel. This was far
longer than the Gospel itself. Here is a little taste of how Father Tucker
would treat a simple parable from the Bible.
“And Joseph maketh himself known to his brethren. What is to be learned
from this exercise of forgiveness? If you had been Joseph, would you have
forgiven your brethren. You musk ask yourself this question. How many of us
still hold a grudge against, not only our neighbors, but even against some of
our relatives? How many of you have not completely forgiven your brothers or
sister certain trespasses they may have committed?― Then he would look
directly at Aloysius and say:
“How many of us judge too harshly and do not have the spirit of forgiveness
in our hearts? Then one of the wiseguy seventh or eighth graders would say
the next thing he will say is to err is human, but to forgive is divine.
“To err is human, but to forgive is divine―
Then there would be a tremendous pregnant pause by Father Tucker to let this
great wisdom sink in to the laity, especially to the seventh and eighth
graders who had heard this same exact Gospel and same exact commentary at
least a half dozen times. They had heard it so often, they were able to give
whole paragraphs of the commentary verbatim seconds before Father Tucker
blared them out. This, of course, would get them the look from one of the
nuns and they would have to desist.
But you could take a ten minute nap at this point and not have missed a thing
once you heard the first sentence of the Gospel for that Sunday.
At the end of the Gospel, we would all rise at the sound of the clicker and
then there would be a spontaneous Latin hymn rejoicing the recognition of
these great pieces of wisdom. The choreography of the Catholic Mass was right
up there with the best of anything Buzz Berkeley or Bob Fosse could come up
with; it just didn’t have as much of a budget. Now the Baptists really knew
how to have a bit of fun in their churches during their services, but
Catholics were not allowed to have fun during their services because it was a
Mass, not a service. The Catholic Church tried to loosed up in the following
decades, but they could never catch up to the religious zeal and liveliness
of the Baptist services. It was a losing battle.
There would be a few more sections of the Mass, then there would be the Holy
Communion. The sharing of Christ’s body and blood with the masses. This was
the most important part of the Catholic ceremony. And God help you if you
didn’t go up to that altar and get your wafer. Your nun was watching you;
your parents were watching you. You had supposedly cleansed your soul the day
before at Confession.
You had fasted from the time you had gotten up on Sunday morning. There was
absolutely no reason you shouldn’t be up at that altar getting your piece
of the action. So absolutely every kid from every class went up to that altar
for Communion. It didn’t matter what you had done the day before. You could
have been an axe murderer on Saturday, but if you went to Confession, you
could receive Communion on Sunday.
There would be a number of people in the church who had been crazy drunk,
lied, cheated and stole all on the same day on Saturday and then go up to
that altar on Sunday for Communion. It was mind-boggling. We knew of at least
two or three slutty girls in the eighth grade who had been fooling around
like mad on Saturday night, which was way after Confession was over, who were
going right up to that altar as if they were the first pew of angels in
God’s heavenly church. There were also a relatively large number of boys
who had seen naughty movies on Saturday night in downtown Paterson at the
Majestic, the king of the movie houses that showed objectionable in part, or
even thoroughly condemned films on a regular basis. We once opted to secretly
see “Macumba Love― on one Saturday afternoon instead of going to
Confession like we had told our parents. We committed at least two big sins
there and added another one when we went up for Communion the following
Sunday. But we weren’t the only ones. Most of the kids in most of the
classes played hooky at one time or another from Confession to do something
far more fun and then would go up for Communion like they were the angels
themselves. It was the way of involuntary religion.
We once asked Sister Superior if Hitler and Stalin would have confessed to
their sins, would they have gone to heaven? She immediately said yes, they
would. This put quite a few of us off the concept of heaven if we had to
share it with monsters like Hitler and Stalin just because they went to
Confession. You can keep that kind of heaven. So now we came to the end of
the Mass, and this was a time you had to be very careful if you were under
the auspices of Aloysius. She was still watching you. If you talked or fooled
around after father Tucker left the altar with Billy Carrolton and Jackie
Romanicki, she would make a little mental note of it as she gave you that
horrific grin of hers. The kids would quickly rejoin their parents in the
parking lot near the church and if you hadn’t gotten your custard donuts
yet, you would see various cars racing each other to get to the Dolly Madison
Ice Cream Store.
Tales of West Paterson - Life in the Third Grade
Life in the Third Grade
By Arthur H Tafero
Life in the third grade was a bit different than it had been in the second.
First of all, you no longer had the star system for keeping track of your
progress over the year. You got your papers graded with number grades that,
at the end of the month, were averaged and went on your report card. In the
third grade, your report card began to have numeric grades instead of the
letter grades we had received in the second grade. Last year, you could only
get an E for exemplary, S for satisfactory, and U for unsatisfactory. In the
third grade everything changed to numbers. It’s funny the effect that
numbers instead of letters have on parents and kids. If you had an S, your
parents would almost never bother you other that to say “Let’s try to
make that an E next month― and you would both know that wouldn’t happen
and life would go on. But when numbers replaced the letters, things began to
change in the life of parents and students.
For example, if you got a 79 in History, a parent would say: “That’s not
acceptable Douglas, you should be getting at least an 80 and you WILL get at
least an 80 next month, do you understand?”. And you would say “Yes
mom― and you damn well better get that 80 or there would be hell to pay.
That same grade in letter form would have been an S and neither the parent
nor the student would say two words about it except for the vague effort to
get an E. I guess the parents always imagined that every S was an 89 since E
was for 90 and above. But S could be anything from 70 to 89, which was a very
wide area of academic achievement. An 89 meant you were far better than
average and very near being an excellent student. A 70 meant that you just
barely passed by one point and that you were below average when compared to
the rest of the class. So an S really didn’t give you a hell of a lot of
information. This is why the change from letters to numbers was so important
in the third grade.
Sister Evangelista was our nun in the third grade. She was pretty nice. This
was also the first grade that Martin Byers became a grader for math
assignments. Sister would give the first student done with 100, the job of
grading the other papers. Most of the nuns used this system. It made a lot of
sense because they had to prepare lessons in at least four different subject
areas, grade homeworks, prepare tests and monitor our conduct. This was also
a class of over fifty students. That was twice the size of the average public
school class and twice what a modern union would allow now. They didn’t
have any unions at Saint Bons.
Our uniforms were the same that year and would be the same for the next five
years:
a white dress shirt with a blue tie with the monogram JMJ (Jesus, Mary and
Joseph). These were clip-on ties because they knew boys our age couldn’t
make a tie knot (or wanted to wear ties, for that matter). We all looked
goofy in our clip-on ties and the public school kids would make fun of us all
the time. But our mothers thought we looked cute and neat. By the end of
lunchtime, however, we did not look so cute and neat. Part of the playground
on the side of the school was covered with black gravel. We played every game
imaginable on that gravel and would constantly be rolling around in it. Our
white shirts got filthy, our pants got holes in the knees and our black shiny
shoes completely lost their shine by one o’clock. The class from one to
three was a smelly group of kids who had practically sweated through their
dresses and pants. It got to be pretty rank in a class of fifty-three.
Our mothers would be fighting a losing battle from the first day until the
last day of school. They would wash our two shirts on alternating days;
(there were no washing machines then in most houses then), They would sew
patches on the inside of our dress pants so they would not show that we had
patches. They would have to do this at least once a week. They polished our
shoes every night until we were old enough to do it for ourselves (that was
about the fourth grade). Our mothers even gave us hair cuts to save a little
money. Some of the haircuts were good, like Mrs. Kingsley gave, and some were
pretty brutal (like Gene Timmins, whose mom made him look like Frankenstein
by cutting off all his hair on the sides). But then again, a few of the kids
like Gene Timmins looked like Frankenstein’s children without the bad
haircuts. Unfortunately, Gene was the ugliest kid in the class and the girls
were unmerciful toward him. The guys really didn’t care that he looked like
a Halloween goblin. The girls, who on occasion could be extremely cruel,
dubbed him the true son of Frankenstein, and the nickname stuck. The girls
said he had ugly germs and could spread them if you touched anything he
touched. They would never pass him paper or pencils or anything for that
matter. The guys included him in the playground games and he was sought after
as a card flipper because he always lost whatever cards he had. On top of
everything else, he was a pretty poor student. Life must have been pretty
miserable for him at Saint Bon’s, but of course none of the kids felt any
sympathy for him. Cruelty is part of the childhood experience.
The third grade was the first year that they segregated the boys from the
girls. The girls had their own section of the cloak room, sat in their own
section of the classroom, sat in their own section of the cafeteria and
played in their own section of the playground with a nun hovering around them
in both the cafeteria and the playground. No one was going to steal their
virginity while the nuns were on the job. The tribal boys, for the most part,
did not even acknowledge the existence of the girls. We thought they were
another species entirely. They smelled different from us when they got sweaty
and a lot of them didn’t look much better than Gene Timmins. One little
girl, Judy Bangarty, had an unfortunate name, but the nuns were on the alert
for even one little joke about her name.
God forbid you mentioned the name of Judy Bangarty, you would get what for
from any of the nuns. There was always a little snigger from some of the boys
when the nuns called Judy’s name, and then that nun would let the boys have
it good.
This was also the year (1955) of some very good baseball cards. It was the
rookie year of Roberto Clemente and Harmon Killebrew, and of course, Sandy
Koufax, but we took little notice of it. The new cards for 1956 would be
coming out on the first week of the New Year and some of us couldn’t wait
to get our first pack of the year in January. So it was with great
anticipation that we began our Christmas vacation on that Friday, December
the 20th. We would find out in the future that the best day of the week for
Christmas to be on was a Wednesday. You always got Christmas Eve off, which
would have to be Tuesday and there was no point in having school in session
for just one day of the week, so they threw in Monday. Then you would get the
rest of Christmas week off and the whole next week after and not go back to
school until January 6. A grand total of 16 straight days with no school; and
believe me, it was grand. Maybe not for our parents who we drove crazy, but
it was grand for the tribal members. To make things better for the Christmas
of 1955, was the gigantic snow storm we had on Sunday night January the 5th
and all day during January the 6th. It dumped well over three feet of snow on
West Paterson. The plows couldn’t even clear the streets until that
Thursday. The nuns threw up their hand and decided to cancel school for the
last day of the week and to start fresh on the 13th of January. It was now 23
straight days without school and we were getting deliriously happy with our
new toys, new baseball cards and total freedom in the snow.
Then the impossible happened.
It snowed again heavily on the Sunday night of the 13th. It was too good to
be true. There was no school on Monday and classes were cancelled again on
Tuesday, but our parents said come hell or high water we would be going to
school on that Wednesday, January the 16th. Unbelievably, it snowed heavily
on the night of the 15th, but unfortunately, it warmed up a bit and rained
heavily, melting the snow and allowing school to actually take place that
Wednesday. We had had an unbelievable run of 25 straight days without school
and had almost made it more. It was the best Christmas vacation and winter
the boy tribe ever enjoyed.
Tales of West Paterson - Christmas Eves in West Paterson
Christmas Eves in West Paterson
By Arthur H Tafero
There were numerous Christmas eves of note that I remember from the
development. The earlier ones, of course, included the Santa Claus phase.
My mother would always leave out a glass of milk and a few cookies for Santa
and on Christmas morning, I would find the milk gone and nothing but a few
crumbs on the dish. I began to get a bit suspicious one year when I saw
cookie crumbs on my father’s pajamas. After a year or two in Parochial
school, you were quickly removed from the Santa Claus myth. By the time you
were in the third grade, you were just playing along with your parents
because they still expected you to believe in Santa Claus. They always
expected you to believe in the same things that they did. But of course, we
didn’t, but we didn’t have the heart to tell them we had great doubts
about Santa, God,The Virgin Mary, the Infallibility of the Pope, Confession,
Pagans that would go to hell because they weren’t Catholic, nuns, celibacy,
the Holy Ghost, fasting for Lent, not eating meat on Friday, accepting people
like Hitler or Stalin into heaven just because they gave a last confession,
and a host of other religious and non-religious issues.
But none of that stuff mattered during the days immediately preceding
Christmas. The only thing that mattered to the members of the boy tribe of
the development was whether or not each of us would get the toys we really
wanted for Christmas. We would go room to room in the days before Christmas
desperately trying to find out what our parent had bought us for Christmas.
This hot pursuit of greed was only interrupted by the family quest for the
perfect Christmas tree.
My father would often go out into the woods in our area that were filled with
pines of all types and cut down a nice eight-footer with bright green
branches that were full from top to bottom. He would tie the tree down to the
top of the car and bring back his booty to the house for mounting in the
living room.
In the meantime, my mother would be making hot chocolate for the both of us.
Then she would carefully unpack the family Christmas tree decorations from
the two large boxes that were open only once a year. She would pull out the
cotton snow, the angel for the top of the tree, the blinking lights of all
colors and some other lights that looked like they were boiling water in them.
Then, from the other box would come out the most valued of all the
decorations; the family balls. These Christmas balls were beautifully
decorated and some of them were quite old. Unfortunately, in addition to
being old, they were quite delicate also. If one was dropped it broke into
dozens of pieces. My favorite was the blue frosted one with Donald Duck on it
that said “Christmas 1947―. I remember that one never broke while we were
in West Paterson. But some other beautiful pieces did break and you could see
by the expressions on my mother’s face that they were irreplaceable.
The first part of the Christmas tree drill was to lay a large sheet on the
floor to catch all the pine needles. Then my father would begin to wire the
entire tree while it was still on its side with all the lights that would be
blinking off and on. He was an amateur electrician, so he liked doing this
kind of stuff. He would turn the tree on its other side and finish the wiring
of the lights before he mounted the tree in the tree dish stand. Once the
lights were finished, the toughest part of dressing the tree had been
completed. My father would then put the angel on the top and then mount the
tree in the dish stand and his job, for all intents and purposes, was done.
After he left the stage to fill his pipe and have a smoke, my mother and I
would take over. My mother didn’t use the cotton for the tree because she
thought it might be a fire hazard. So she bought some tinsel and we used that
instead. The three of us would carefully put up all the balls, yet most of
the time, at least one would break. After the balls, we carefully put up the
tinsel; not just tossing it on the tree indiscriminately, but carefully
hanging some on each of the branches. Not too much, though, because it would
cause the branches to weaken and the tree to droop.
Some families left that tree up for the whole month of January.
Another ritual was going to the Midnight Mass at Saint Bon’s and then
coming home to put the baby Jesus in his crib under the tree. I was always
pestering my mother to put the baby in the crib. You could only go to
Midnight Mass if you were considered an “adult―. In West Paterson, that
meant any kid over ten years old. Going to Midnight Mass was a big deal in
our house. Sometimes it would be snowing, but most of the time it was just
really cold. It would be pitch black and all of a sudden you would see a
large group of cars with some of their parking lights on next to Saint
Bonaventure Church on Danforth Avenue. My dad would park the car and the
three of us would rush of the warmth of the car into the cold and then back
into the warmth of the church. Your eyes would be affected by coming out the
pitch black into this brightly lit cacophony of colored glass and bright red
vestments. The choir would be singing and the Mass had not even started. They
would be singing ancient Latin hymns with names that have been long forgotten.
It did sound very inspiring, however, even though it was in Latin.
Then Father Tucker and two altar boys would come out and the mass would begin.
It would always be longer than the regular masses for some reason which none
of us could figure out. Maybe there were extra prayers that had to be said or
the hymns lengthened the ritual. Whatever it was, no one seemed to mind that
it was almost a ninety minute mass. The frequent hymns and the good cheer of
the laity seemed to make the time meaningless on those nights. Everyone
seemed to be having a good time. The race out of the parking lot to get home
to open the presents verged on homicidal. Cars were constantly nicking each
other on the fender and no one complained or stopped because it was Christmas.
You just smiled at the driver who hit you and moved on.
Parents told stories to each other about how after Midnight Mass, their kids
ran into the door in their winter coats and with their gloves still on,
trying to open presents before their parents even got into the door. Paper,
ribbons and boxes would be flying in all directions at breakneck speed in
some houses. In other houses, the adults and children would open their
presents in an orderly fashion and one at a time. One Christmas, my father
had made me a rocket ship with lots of controls on the panel, so I could
follow the adventures of Captain Video and the Video Rangers in style. I was
excited that night, but unfortunately, the rocket ship of the mind could
never be reproduced by a dad and in a few weeks, the rocket ship became one
of my mother’s cleaning projects to be removed.
Another ritual of Christmas was the toy trains; and I use that term very
loosely.
These train sets were anything but toys. They were secretly (and sometimes
not so secretly) the desires of the dads in the development. The dads bought
the Lionel Train sets, dozens of feet of tracks and every possible
accoutrement you could possible think of. Many of the dads in the development
would try and outdo each other in their train villages and sets. Some dads
took up an entire basement or attic with their trains. I am sure that the
moms were driven crazy by these trains, but remained the good silent soldier
because the kid or kids liked to play with them, too.
Make no mistake. It was the dad’s show, from unpacking them to putting them
away sometime late in January.
The dads would lovingly diagram on paper the various layouts of the tracks,
first. Sometimes, they would ask their kid which layout they thought was
better and if it agreed with their desires, that would be the track layout.
Most of the time, the dads didn’t ask the kids anything, they just laid it
out the way they wanted to be laid out. The dads would meticulously make sure
each part of the track was connected to the other and that there were no
loose tracks. Loose tracks caused the train system to shut down. Then, after
connecting the tracks, they would carefully erect the village with all the
little models that went with the village. You would have a policeman, a baker,
a butcher, a fireman, a mailman, a coal loader, a milkman and various
commuters in their tiny cars stopped at the train tracks. There would be
warning lights and stop signs and even places where the train stopped to pick
up passengers, mail and milk cans. I found the milk can stop to be the most
fun. The train would stop at this dairy and there would be a platform that
went right up the edge of the side of one the boxcars. The boxcar would open
and the milkman would load it with about six or eight magnetic milk bottles.
It was really kind of cool. You can’t do that kind of stuff on video games.
After the village was set up, the dads would come to the final phase; linking
up the engine with the following cars. Now my father claimed prominence over
the vast majority of other fathers in the development because his dad, my
grampa, was a real train engineer and he knew all about this stuff because he
had been doing it for many years. I always suspected that dad got his train
set from grampa or at least was inspired to buy it because of grampa. After
linking up the engine with the boxcars and the caboose, everything was ready
to be attached to the control battery.
The control battery was this big square black box with two primary controls
on the top of it; the switch for the speed of the train and the whistle on
the engine. Some fancy batteries had lights for the caboose, but my father
didn’t have that model. That was fine with me, because I really didn’t
care about cabooses. Then it was time for the moment of truth. Were the
tracks all connected properly and the battery connected properly. Usually,
the answer was yes and it would be two long whistles, which meant the train
was ready to leave the station.
I enjoyed playing with the trains for a few hours, but I didn’t enjoy it
nearly as much as my father did. I suspect that was the case in almost every
house in the development. By the end of January, my mother would hint that it
was time for the trains to be put away so she could get to her laundry in the
basement without electrocuting herself. We trotted out those trains every
year we were in West Paterson. I think my father gave them away when we moved
to Union City. I kind of missed them and I know he must have missed them, but
my mother, I am sure, was not too sad to see them go.
Then there was the Christmas I got my first real bike. A red English racer
with hand brakes, a real beauty. I had no idea I was getting it, either. We
came home from Midnight mass and bang! There it was in the middle of the
living room. I wanted to take it out for a ride right then and there, but my
mother said it was too late and that I would disturb the Christmases of the
other neighbors. Then it snowed later that night. Only about eighteen inches
or so. That translated into no riding my bike until the beginning of January.
Well, it snowed quite often and in great quantity in those days in West
Paterson and the first time there was no snow or ice on the roads was in
early March. But when I did get on that bike and took it out for the first
time, it was like I had gained my freedom; and in a way that was very true. I
had that bike for a number of years until we moved to Union City. Because I
was still a bit of a country bumpkin, I thought my bike would be safe outside
between the very narrow lane that was between our house and 901 Palisades
Avenue. It was for a few nights, but during that first week of leaving it
outside, someone stole it. I was devastated and almost inconsolable. My
parents bought me a blue American bike that I loathed, but took it because it
was better than nothing. English racers are far more expensive, I guessed.
Anyway, I always brought the bike in after that lesson. I never had a bike as
good as that English racer.
Then another Christmas saw my parents get me a small pool table which my
father set up in the attic for me. It was the hit of the night and we both
played pool until after 2 am in the morning. I must have played over a
thousand games on that pool table. One other Christmas, I got my first really
expensive basketball. It was an official NBA Voight basketball which was the
best you could buy. My father had played basketball on his high school team
and I ever remember him playing a game one on one with my grampa which scared
the hell out of me. I was scared that grampa would fall and kill himself
because he was so old. He must have been over fifty at the time. That was
ancient for a little grandchild. I played with that basketball in every
conceivable type of weather you could imagine. I NEVER missed a day to go out
and play basketball from the first day of school until the first day of
little league baseball. I would play in the snow, on ice, in the rain and in
temperatures well below zero where you could hear your breath as well as see
it.
It didn’t matter if it was ten below outside; we were moving around and we
ignored every type of weather.
There was one Christmas, though, that was an exception to the self-centered
avarice that affected most of us during that season. It was either 55 or 56
and there was a terrible snow storm raging. It was more like a blizzard, but
it would not prevent many of the parents in the development from going to the
Midnight Mass at Saint Bonaventure. About six inches of snow had already been
dumped on Williams Drive, when Ronny Vitale dropped by the house at about
nine oclock. He lived only two houses away and wanted to wish my mother,
whose cooking he loved, a merry Christmas. He was a pagan doomed to hell, but
he still brought a card for my mother and father. My mother gave him a little
wrapped package. She always had small wrapped packages for almost every
neighbor’s kid on William’s Drive. Ronny also had a little wrapped
package for me. I asked my mom if I could open it before Midnight mass and
she said ok.
I opened it quickly and it was two brand new packs of 1956 baseball cards.
Ronny had visited New York City just a few days ago and his gramma had given
him a box of these cards. Boxes contained 36 packs. They hadn’t even come
out yet in New Jersey. We were always a few weeks or more behind New York in
card distribution to the candy stores and such. I was speechless. I opened
both packs up immediately and got one Yankee, Phil Rizzuto. I was ecstatic.
The smell of the fresh gum and the shine of the brand new cards still stick
out in my mind. Ronny asked me if I wanted to come across the street with him
to the McGuire house. Neither one of us really knew the McGuires very well,
but we did know that Mrs. McGuire’s dog, Bessie, was named after a queen or
princess of England, and had just had pups. We were told we were too young to
understand why that was so funny. I got dressed up in my snow outfit because
the storm was still raging. I carefully put my cards away so my mom would not
throw them out and then we left for the other side of the street.
The snow was almost blinding. My father and any other Catholic fathers would
be crazy if they took the cars out in this weather. Our attention quickly
turned to the little yelps and squeaks we heard coming from the McGuire house.
Mrs. McGuire was happy to see us because she had wanted to get rid of many of
the six pups that were in the litter. Ronny’s dog had just died that past
summer, so his mom told him that it would be alright for him to get another
from Mrs. McGuire.
Ron looked over the litter carefully and picked out the one with the shiniest
coat.
“I’m going to call her Lassie―. Ronny confided in me.
“That is totally gay. These dogs aren’t collies and the one you just
picked out is a boy, anyway―.
Ronny liked the TV show and we used to make fun of him liking Lassie. Mrs.
McGuire picked out a female pup for him and told me to hush up.
“Here, Ronald, you call her whatever you like; don’t listen to that silly
boy” I was already red from the cold and snow, so you couldn’t tell I was
embarrassed by being called silly by Mrs. Maguire, but I was. To change the
subject, I asked Mrs. Maguire a question.
“Mrs. Maguire, why did you name your dog Bessie? My parents always laugh
when they hear the name of your dog, but they say I’m too young to
understand.―
“Well, Arthur, the reason I named our girl here Bessie, was that when I
tried to think of a name that was fitting for a loose woman that looked like
a dog, the first thing I thought of was the Queen of England, so I named her
Bessie.―
I quickly remembered my best friend’s mom, Gladys Kingsley was English, and
I was sure she would not have appreciated Mrs. Maguire’s logic. I was to
find out later that Mrs. Maguire had family members in something called the
Easter Rebellion who had been injured many years ago. She really hated the
English, but I noticed she had Thomas’ English muffins in her kitchen.
“Arthur, wouldn’t you like one of the puppies?―
Was she kidding? Of course I wanted one of them, but my mother would never
let a dog mess up her immaculate house.
“I don’t think my mom would let me have one, Mrs. Maguire, but thank you
very much anyway.―
She picked up the male puppy with the real shiny black coat that Ronny had
selected just a few moments earlier and let me hold it. It didn’t bark or
complain or yelp. It just looked into my eyes and licked my nose, which was
still red from the cold. I figured what the heck, I might as well bring
Blackie home to just play with for awhile with my parents and then when my
mother said no, I could bring him back here. Maybe he would be the one pup
that Mrs. Maguire would keep after she gave all the others away and I could
come over and play with him once in awhile.
Ronny and I were both thrilled to be carrying puppies inside our heavy coats
with their little heads sticking out and blinded by the violent snow. I waved
goodbye to Ronny as he trudged through the snow up the block to his house. I
dusted myself off from the snow that had accumulated just from crossing the
street. My mother had put down some newspapers near the side door so her
floors wouldn’t get messed up. She always did this in inclement weather.
“So, did you see the puppies― she asked.
“I think he did more than just see them, Mary―. My father added.
Blackie’s little head popped up and he scooted onto the newspapers and
immediately took a dump. I thought that cooks it, I won’t even get to play
with the little bugger, now. I awaited my mother’s Italian outburst.
“Look how well-trained he is! He knew to poop on the newspapers!―
My mother’s cheerful demeanor had taken me by surprise. After she rolled up
the newspaper and put some more fresh ones down, we all went into the living
room to play with the puppy. At least I would get to play with him for awhile.
While I was playing with Blackie in the living room with one of my spauldings,
I could hear my mother and father having a “discussion― (that was the
euphemism for an argument in those days).
“I’ll be the one who has to clean up after it―
“But Ronny is already on his second dog and Art has never even had one―
“You don’t fool me for a second; its you that wants that dog almost as
much as he does―
“Don’t be ridiculous, I had my dog when I was younger living in Bayonne,
I don’t have to have another one, but I think its time for Art to have
one―
My father seldom had extended discussions with my mother because they were
almost always losing propositions, but he seemed a bit more backboned in this
argument than he usually was.
“If I have to clean up after it, you will have to take it for its daily
walks―
“Art should take him out for his walks; its his dog―
“You know how lazy our child is; by next week he won’t even notice the
dog is dead if I don’t feed it every day.―
“How about we make him promise to feed the dog and take him out every
day?―
“If he does one of those things, it will be a miracle― my mother said
sarcastically.
I made believe I didn’t hear a thing. They both came into the room and
Blackie did a great job of marketing himself by jumping on both my father and
mother and giving them both good licks on the nose. My mother broke out in
laughter and my father had that grin on his face that meant I was going to
keep the dog. Blackie was so happy that he peed right there on the floor.
“I’ll clean it up, mom.― I got a paper towel, wet it, and cleaned it up
in a snap.
My mother didn’t say a word. She just laid down a whole mess of newspapers
in the living room, the kitchen and in my room.
“The dog is not to go in our bedroom or the bathroom―
“His name is Blackie, mom―
“Blackie is not to go in our bedroom or the bathroom. You will have two dog
dishes to fill each day. One with water and one with food. You will clean
both of those dishes every day. Do you understand?―
“Yes, mom―
“You will take Blackie out every night before you go to bed so he can do
his business. Do you understand?―
“Yes, mom.
Of course, after a week, both the dishes remained unwashed, I always forgot
to walk Blackie and my mother wound up feeding him. Blackie had become the
fourth member of the Tafero family and I didn’t even care about my other
gifts that Christmas day. I already had the best Christmas present a little
boy could ever have and I had Phil Rizzuto to boot.
Tales of West Paterson - Flipping Cards at Saint Bons
Flipping Cards at Saint Bon’s
By Arthur H Tafero
Baseball cards were the leading gambling currency of kids in grammar school
at Saint Bon’s. From the second grade through the eighth grade, numerous
boys from and outside the tribe engaged in these activities. There was a
definite pecking order in those who won the majority of cards and those who
lost most of their cards. Those who lost most of them eventually stopped
flipping completely and thereby saved whatever cards they had in much better
condition than the guys who pitched theirs. The good flippers included Joseph
Oppenneiser, Frankie Fierman, Tommy Baker and myself. We almost never flipped
against each other because it was a lost cause. We would mostly break even
for the entire lunch period and why do that when the list of losers was so
much bigger?
There were other games with baseball cards that the guys played in addition
to the traditional farses (the card closet to the wall wins). There was the
intentional leaners game (leaners were cards that were flipped that wound up
leaning against the wall instead of landing flat; you then had three chances
to knock down the leaner or you lost the farses card, plus the three cards
you flipped trying to knock down the leaner). Intentional leaners were set up
artificially and the guy who knocked them down in the least amount of cards
would win the whole batch. If good flippers were involved, you would only get
five or six cards in the pot, but it was still better than the boring farses.
A third type of game was topses. That’s when you both kept flippingcards
until one of the flippers landed his card on top of any other part of any of
the cards that had been flipped. The strategy in this game was not to pitch
any cards too close to the wall because they were easier to get on top of
than cards far away from the wall. You could play the single concrete block
(about six feet) version of this game or the gambler version of two concrete
blocks or the super three block gambler version (recommended for those with
large collections and big budgets only). In the one block topses game, you
could lose up to about ten cards if you were unlucky in one game. In the two
block game you would lose, on the average between fifteen and twenty cards.
The super three block game was for sharks and card-rich kids only. One kid
lost almost his whole stack of fifty cards in just one game of triple-block
topses.
Before we go any further, I feel it is my duty that some of the fine boys of
Saint Bon’s actually cheated to win some cards. The way to cheat in farses
was to have two or three “ringer― cards. Those were cards that were
weighted at both ends with scotch tape so they would more easily go close to
wall. Good flippers were always on the lookout for these cards when they were
not using them themselves. These “ringers― were also good for knocking
down leaners and, once again players were always on the watch for them in the
leaners game, too. The “ringers― were also very useful in topses as soon
as the first card landed near the wall. “Ringers― could easily be used to
go on top of a card near the wall. That’s why it was wise to stay away from
the wall in topses. Some of the better flippers won hundreds, if not
thousands of cards with these “ringers― over the course of years.
Yet another form of card gambling on the playground was “match― flipping.
It was a rather harmless one-card game for the less talented flippers to win
a few cards during lunch. You would hold the card between your four fingers
and your thumb and then flip it over. It would either land on “heads―,
which was the photo part of the card, or “tails―, which was the records
part of the card. Believe it or not, you could cheat at this game, too
(although it was hardly worth the effort). If your opponent flipped a heads,
all you had to do to match it was have heads facing you when you flipped the
cards (if you wanted tails, you would just have tails facing you). Most of
the kids quickly got wise to this scam and the game fell out of favor.
Occasionally, Sister Superior would raid the flip games and confiscate our
cards. It was not too hard to see a large penguin coming, but it was always
wise to play against a wall that was far away from the door entrances. If you
were dumb enough to play by the doors, you deserved to lose your stack. I,
and the other good flippers hardly ever got caught by Sister Superior, but
that wasn’t the only pitfall for the gamblers. Once in awhile, especially
in the earlier grades, I used to admire my own winnings in my desk in class.
I lost a couple of good stacks of 54 topps cards when the nun came over to my
desk and took them. That taught me a costly lesson not to look at the cards
after you brought them back into the class. The best place to stash the cards
was in your bookbag. The only drawback to that plan, however, was that
everyone’s bookbag was in the cloakroom and each student knew what everyone
else’s bookbag looked like; especially the guys who were good flippers.
Some guys would lose pretty good stacks to thieves who took them from their
bookbags in the cloakroom. It only happened to me once and another costly
lesson was learned. IF you got into the cloakroom LAST after lunch and then
FIRST when the final bell rang, you could safely put your winnings in your
bookbag. The nuns let the kids go to the cloakroom one row at a time, so it
was always good to be in the first row, but I was in the last row. So the
best method for guys to keep their stashes of cards was in the desk and not
look at them for the rest of the afternoon.
There was so much commotion at the end of class at 3:00 that you could easily
transfer your stash of cards into your bookbag after your trip to the
cloakroom.
The last series of baseball cards used to come out in September when we first
went back to school. These were known as the high numbers. There was not a
lot of interest by most guys in the tribes to get all the numbers. We were
just happy when we got all the good Yankees, which year after year, Topps
always put in the low numbers or the first few series of the cards for that
year. Topps also did not produce the same amount of cards for the last series,
so we were already looking forward to the next year’s cards that came out
in January. One winter, Ronnie’s parents went to New York City during the
Christmas holidays and found some brand new 1956 Topps for sale in a store.
It was still 1955. Ronnie’s house was only two houses away from mine and
when he got back the day after Christmas, he gave me a pack for a Christmas
present (his father had bought him a whole box!). One of the tribe members
had gotten a brand new English racer bike for Christmas as well as a pool
table for the cellar and that was one of the best Christmases the boy tribe
had ever had, but when I opened that 1956 pack and got a brand new Phil
Rizzuto, it was almost as good as getting my other gifts. By the summer of
1960, I was moving from West Paterson to Union City and going from the eighth
grade to high school. I was getting too big for baseball cards and comic
books. Girls didn’t care about those things and I was beginning to care
about what girls thought, so I stopped collecting cards for awhile, but I
never forgot that Phil Rizzuto.
Tales of West Paterson - A Day at Saint Bon's
A Day at Saint Bon’s
By Arthur H Tafero
It was just another typical morning in West Paterson. There was still about a
foot and a half of fresh snow on the ground, but the steadfast dads of the
development made sure that the snow plows cleared a path for the school bus
into West Paterson and Saint Bonaventure Grammar School near McBride Avenue.
When Doug Kingsley got up, his mother Gladys, who was a British War Bride,
made him fresh eggs with Taylor Ham and toast with fresh-squeezed juice. Doug
readied his bookbag and Gladys packed him three sandwiches for lunch. Two
were baloney and one was cream cheese and jelly. One of the baloney
sandwiches was for Doug’s best friend, Tom, who always wrangled a sandwich
from Doug in exchange for giving Doug 100% on the daily math quizzes which
the nuns let Tom grade because he was finished a full ten minutes before
anyone else. Doug really didn’t like math all that much and was, in reality,
about an 80 student, but having a friend like Tom got his average way over 90.
Gladys must have sensed that something like this was going on, so the extra
sandwich was always there for the gluttonous Tom.
It was almost time for Doug to walk down the hill from Morley Drive to
Williams Drive and then down another two blocks to the bus stop. It was a
decent haul. He always met Tom at the bus stop and never bothered to call for
him on his way down. If he did call, Mrs. Tafero was always compelled to make
him another full breakfast and as much as he liked her cooking, there was no
time for that today. If you missed that bus, it was a long two mile walk in
the snow to the school and you would be sure to be at least an hour or two
late. The nuns would eat you up alive for something like that. The usual gang
of suspects from the boy tribe were all at the bus stop plus a few members of
that alien race known as girls. Tom was there, Richie Fulong, Jackie Quince
and his best friend Jackie Gillespie, Tommy Baker, and one or two others of
the lower grades from Saint Bon’s.
Then, of course, there were the alien girls. Girls were pretty considered
aliens by the boy tribe in the lower grades. It was only by the sixth or
seventh grade that we paid any attention at all to them, but by that time
they had learned to completely ignore us. There was Michelle McKern, Patricia
Lyers, Barbara Banner, and Patricia Rooney. Doug sort of like Patricia Rooney
even though she was a bit taller than he was. Tom liked Barbara Banner a lot
and proved it by hitting her with a snowball in the head one time. Barbara
wore glasses and Tom thought that was cool. Anyway, the bus finally ambled up
to the stop and everyone stomped on the bus with their boots that all had
varying amounts of snow. The heat after getting on the bus always felt good
after standing out in the wind and the cold for about fifteen minutes or so.
Everyone always sat with their same companion every day of the school year on
the bus to school. Michelle sat with Patricia Lyers, Barbara sat with
Patricia Rooney, Tom sat with Doug, and the two Jackies always sat together.
Then the bus rumbled on to the next stop and next group of kids from the next
development.
The first stop after decamping from the bus onto the school grounds of Saint
Bon’s was the cloak room. There were no assigned hooks for anyone; it was
first come, first served when it came to the most convenient hooks. The girls
usually came in from the cold first because they had more sense than the boys
who would stay outside playing hockey with a crushed milk carton and their
boots until the five minute bell rang. If you weren’t in your seat by the
end of that five minutes, it would cost you an hour of afterschool work
hosted by Sister Aloysius. Believe me, you would rather get twenty lashes
with a whip than stay an hour with the Nun From Hell, Aloysius. Aloysius was
an seventy year old ogre who was on the verge of retirement. She took a daily
nap between two thirty and three and only woke up because the bell rang at
three. This usually meant that we only got about fifteen minutes of science a
day since that was the last subject of the day. There was a reason our class
always performed poorly on Science exams, but that is another story.
The first class of the day was always math. Tom loved math and would finish
about ten minutes before anyone else and he always got 100 per cent. After a
while, Aloysius would tell the class to just pass their papers over to Tom
and he would grade them, then Aloysius would register the grades into the
grade book. Tom would always give his best friend, Doug, a 100 after
correcting the numerous mistakes Doug would make on his paper. As they got
older, Doug did eventually get better at math. Tom would give the kids he
liked 100 or 90 without seriously checking their work. The kids he didn’t
like got their papers gone over with a fine tooth comb worthy of the IRS. It
really didn’t pay to bully or make fun of Tom because this was some pretty
substantial power. Of course, guys like Jake Romanowski and Bobby Carrollton
would bully him in advance, anyway; telling him to make sure that they got
100. Tom was careful to correct their papers just like he corrected Doug’s
mistakes. Eugene Timmins, who was a stupid bully, didn’t figure out he
could get Tom to do this, so Tom made sure Eugene always got a 60 or less.
Math class constituted learning a lesson from the book, then doing twenty
examples of what you had learned. You were graded on the twenty examples.
Then after the twenty examples, you were given another ten examples for
homework and the whole process was started over again the same exact way
until final exams at the mid-year and at the end of the year. Aloysius did
very little teaching; she was too busy terrorizing a fairly sized number of
uncooperative students. Her favorite target was Jeffrey Lovens, who caused
Aloysius to break at least one ruler or pointer a day, every day, for each of
the 180 school days during the year. The bill for all these rulers and
pointers must have been frightful, but that didn’t stop Aloysius. She
smashed Jeffrey on a daily basis and Jeffrey just laughed at her and it would
only tend to infuriate here even more. I am sure if she had had a shotgun,
she would have gladly used both barrels on Jeffrey without blinking. Everyone
in the class would laugh every time Jeffrey got Aloysius’ goat and Aloysius
would just get more agitated. We always hoped that we could get her into such
a frenzy that she would keel over from a heart attack, but that lucky event
never happened. Aloysius would always say “here c’mere, here, c’mere―
as if Lovens or any other trapped animal in the class was going to come to
Aloysius to get their beating. No, it was always more fun to run away from
her and entertain the class with the chase. Now some students had more leeway
with Aloysius than others, but you could not press your luck too far. Tom,
for example, because he graded the math papers, had a bit of leeway, but he
could never stop himself from talking to his friends in class. He talked or
joked around incessantly, and eventually Aloysius would have to chase him
around the class and give him a beating about once a week. Still, it was
nothing compared to what Jeffrey Lovens would receive.
Math ended by 9:45. Then it was time for English. Both Tom and Doug found
English to be tedious. First, there was a spelling test of twenty words.
Usually, the girls were superior in both spelling and English grammar.
Barbara Banner and Virginia Mucino were particularly bright. One of those two
girls always corrected the spelling papers. Poor Johnny Kusach couldn’t
spell his own name correctly; he was the worst speller in New Jersey. He
seldom got over 50. Aloysius would always make fun of him in spelling, just
as she used to make fun of Johnny Massaras in math for getting low grades.
She would say things like “Kusach, you need a good whack to get that brain
going in Spelling” or “Massaras, you must have fell on your head when you
were delivered; why can’t you do math?―
After the Spelling, came the exciting English grammar drills we did in our
books. There were twenty sentences that always needed correcting and then we
would get ten more of them for homework. These sentences were always tortuous
for some of the boys, but most of the girls seemed to finish them quickly. Of
course, there was one area of English which tortured the ENTIRE class. That
was the inquisition of the Diagram. I cannot tell you the absolute silliness
of spending significant hours of instruction on Diagrams. Here, the girls
suffered equally with the boys. Tom was so bad at diagrams that he got a 0 on
one of the tests. He copied one answer from Barbara Banner and it was the
only one she got wrong as she scored a 90. The basic diagrams such as Subject,
Verb and the adjective describing the Object were about as far as most of the
class understood this torture. By the time we came to Gerunds, Objects of the
Preposition, Predicate Adjectives and Predicate Nomitives and other obscure
things within the diagrams, almost all of us were lost.
English ended by 10:30. Now it was time for Literature. That was a relief for
most of the class as most of us tolerated Literature fairly well. Literature
consisted of each of us reading one or two paragraphs aloud while the rest of
the class followed. If you lost your place when you were called on to read,
you got a whack from Aloysius. The good readers got to read two paragraphs
and the poor readers like Vincent Minelli, who tortured the rest of the class
with their poor reading, got to end mercifully after only one paragraph. Even
the best of short stories got butchered during this process which was
followed by an exercise at the end of the story to make sure we completely
understood and appreciated what we had read. To this day, I do not remember
one story or one exercise that I understood or appreciated. There was one
story, however, that stuck in my mind. I believe it was a Hans Christian
Anderson story of a boy with a ball of string. It was a magic ball of string.
The boy was unhappy being a young boy and wanted to be an older boy. The
fairy that gave him the ball of string said that if he unrolled some of the
string, he would magically become older, so the young boy unrolled some of
the ball of string and he was now twelve instead of six. He enjoyed being
twelve instead of six for a few days, but then began to wish he could enjoy
the freedoms enjoyed by the high school kids. So he rolled out a bit more
string and became a senior in High School. He enjoyed this for a few days and
then yearned for the life of a man with a job and a family. He rolled out the
string a bit more and enjoyed his life as a man with a wife and children for
a few weeks, but grew weary of the responsibility of the bills, pressures at
work and at home and other adult problems, so he finally rolled out the rest
of the string and he was now an old man with no job, no family and no
responsibilities. It was then he realized he was better off as a young child,
but it too late because he had rolled out all of his string. I liked this
story and realized that it was important to enjoy whatever stage of life you
were currently in rather than pine to be older. I was guilty, however, of
occasionally falling into that trap one or two times myself as I got older.
Literature ended by 11:15. Then it was time for History. Most of the class
found History to be bearable. Jeffrey Lovens usually got a whack during
History by making a snide remark about Greek men or how the Roman Legion wore
dresses. I kind of liked History, but did not really take it too seriously.
Michelle McKern was very good in History. We would all take our turns reading
one or two paragraphs and then do the exercise at the end of the section. It
was there By then most of the tribe was getting hungry, but the food in the
cafeteria was absolutely disgusting. The spaghetti was overcooked noodles in
weak tomato soup. The fish cakes tasted exactly the same as the chicken cakes
and the potato cakes. It was eating small hockey pucks. Some of the boys
actually found them useful for hockey games when the playground was covered
with ice. We were only allowed to have regular milk (the public school kids
had a choice of regular milk or CHOCOLATE milk). We hated the lunches and
drinks, so we naturally gravitated toward the candy store across the street
named Tom’s. Tom had fresh sandwiches made with lettuce and tomatoes, mayo
or mustard on a fresh roll for 15 cents. You could buy a coke or some other
drink for 10 cents. Lunch for a quarter a day. Of course, at these
exhorbitant prices, no one could afford to eat there every day, but once in
awhile it was good to get away from the packaged lunch from home or the
dreaded cafeteria. Then again, Tom’s always had an ample supply of baseball
cards, but we will discuss that in another story.
During lunch hour, the girls used to jump rope and the boys used to play any
variation of team sports you can imagine. Lunch hour would continue with the
boys flipping cards they had bought from home or from Tom’s. Sometime
Aloysius would go around and start confiscating the cards from the boys and
say that gambling was a bad habit (although it was never a bad habit when the
church did it with Bingo). Fortunately, at her age, you could see the Nun
From Hell ambling toward you well in advance of her actual arrival and were
able to run away most of the time with you baseball card stash despite her
pleas of “here c’mere, here c’mere!― By the end of lunch time,
Aloysius had forgotten most of the boys that ran away because of her slowly
declining memory. She still managed to rake in about one or two piles of
cards a day which she took back to the convent with her and stashed away in
some unknown place. The braver souls of Saint Bon’s in their last month of
their last year at the school once made a daring raid on this stash of cards,
but that is also a story for another time.
After lunch, it was 12:45. It was time for Geography. Bernadette Hillman was
the class whiz in Geography. She was not only a reader good for two
paragraphs, she was good at presenting those two minute presentations that
most of us dreaded because we had to go up in front of the class to speak.
Guys like Cusach would go in front of the room with his eyes bulging and get
out about fifteen seconds of unfathomable mumbling before getting sweaty and
shaky and leaving early. He always got a 60 or a 65 for his presentations.
Once Tom went in front of the class without absolutely doing any research and
gave a phony two minute speech on Argentina. He made up a story about
Argentina’s cowboys (a partial fantasy), the cost of beef in Argentina vs.
the US ( a total whopper), how Argentina’s soldiers helped win World War II
( a complete fantasy), and how Argentina was going to have major league
baseball in a few years (another complete fantasy). Aloysius was impressed
and gave Tom a 95 for his presentation which was almost as high as Bernadette
Hillman’s well-researched presentation on India which received 100 (she got
100 on every presentation). Some of her presentations contained partial
truths and some outright fantasies also, but these came to no surprise to the
kids at Saint Bon’s; most of whom were accomplished liars.
By 1:30 it was time for either Music or Art. The boys preferred Music and the
girls preferred Art. Fortunately, we had Music three days a week and Art two
days a week (most likely because it was cheaper). Doug could not sing two
notes without hitting a sour one. Tom loved the music classes, but absolutely
hated the Art classes. Doug liked the Art classes and was very neat. Tom was
sloppy and could not draw a straight line. All the kids in the class would
make fun Tom’s terrible artwork; even Doug joined in with the derision.
“All you ever draw is stickmen or six-story battleships that look like the
Tower of Babel― chided Doug.
“Yeah, well at least I can divide without using my fingers―. Retaliation
at the grammar school level was swift and harsh. Doug was also neat. Tom was
a slob; he always got paint, chalk, pencil marks or whatever was being used
in the Art class on his mother’s white pressed shirt. This also went well
with the black dust that was on the side of the playground and made for a
very interesting modern art look on Tom’s shirts. On Art days his white
shirts looked more like Tie Dye shirts.
By 2:15 it was time for science and our daily dose of fifteen minutes of
reading before Aloysius fell asleep by 2:30. As soon as she fell asleep, she
stopped calling on students to read and when she stopped calling on students
to read, no one read anything any more. We would talk with our friends, get
an early start on our homework, or just make fun of Aloysius as she slept.
Lovens was especially good at making fun of Aloysius while she slept. He
would read science passages that weren’t really there with silly references
to aliens that made most of the class laugh. Once he brought a worm into
class during science while Aloysius was sleeping and put it on top of her
habit. This caused a roar of laughter from the kids and woke Aloysius, who
immediately grabbed her pointer and yelled “here c’mere! Here c’mere!
As Jeffrey ran away. The bell would ring at three and wake Aloysius. Then we
would go one row at a time into the cloak room and get our boots and/or coats
and hats. There were always one or two unfortunates who had to stay after
school for various transgressions, but most of the time, the vast majority of
us escaped into the schoolyard and the waiting bus. If you were unfortunate
enough to be detained after school, it meant at least an hour and a half of
walking two miles home in the snow and the cold. No one ever got picked up by
their parents in those days. The car was always with the dads at work and the
moms were stranded the whole day without a car. That meant that the kids were
stranded, too. We were not allowed to have bikes at school, either. The kids
would either wait for the bus by playing more games in the playground or get
on right away if the buses were already there. On the way home, a lot of the
kids got a good start on their homework. Usually between doing your homework
on the bus and during Aloysius’ naps, you were done by the time the bus got
to your development. Such was an average day in the life of a school student
at Saint Bonaventure Grammar school in West Paterson, New Jersey in the 1950s.
Tales of West Paterson - Getting Taken Down the Jersey Shore
Getting Taken At the Jersey Shore
By Arthur H Tafero
\
Johnny Prince’s grandfather, Harry Prince, was an engineer on the railroad
for over forty years. This provided his grandmother, Wilma Prince, something
called a Gold Pass which allowed up to two people to ride a train anywhere in
the United States for free. Johnny always thought this was one the neatest
things his grandparents ever owned. His grandmother made good use of it on
the occasional Saturday or Sunday she would go down by train toAsbury Park.
It was unbelievably convenient. The train went right past the back of
Johnny’s grandparent’s apartment at 706 Avenue E in Bayonne in 1956. He
would often count the cars attached to the enormous freight trains that
passed by. When he was four, he used to count up to 500 or so of them
attached together. Johnny would also go to sleep with the distant sound of
the train whistle blowing in the night.
His gramma would dress him up on a Sunday morning and in less than ten
minutes as they stood on the platform, you could see the light of the
oncoming train that was still miles away. With a thundering blast, the train
would come to a stop and his gramma would flash her gold pass and they would
just hop on. Johnny remembered some of the stops named Raritan, Lakewood, New
Brunswick, Red Brick and Deal. Then would come Asbury Park. Gramma and he
would get off at the Asbury Park stop and take a taxi to the boardwalk.
Johnny was nine and Gramma would sometimes baby sit him for Johnny’s mother
and father while they had a weekend to themselves in West Paterson. Asbury
Park was the northernmost major boardwalk in New Jersey. It was a very short
trip from North Jersey or from New York. You would get there from Bayonne in
less than an hour. Gramma would take Johnny to Uncle Bill’s Pancake house
and he would order pancakes and sausage. The place was ok, but it wasn’t as
good as the places his mom and dad would take him when they went down much
further to the Southern part of the Jersey Shore. The syrup wasn’t real
maple syrup, but the sausages were as good and they did have pats of Hotel
Bar butter. The orange juice was better at the Beechwood Diner, too. That
diner was in Seaside Heights. But these were minor considerations back then.
The important thing was that Johnny was in Asbury Park with his gramma and he
was going to have a damn good time.
After breakfast, Gramma and Johnny would enter the boardwalk from the
northern end and move toward the south. At that time, the boardwalk stretched
for a little over twenty blocks or a mile. There weren’t a lot of good
rides in Asbury Park like there was in Seaside Heights or in Wildwood, but
there were a few. His Gramma was too old to go on the rides, unlike
Johnny’s parents who went in the bumper cars with him. Still, he enjoyed
the bumper cars without Gramma in one of the other cars; he just crashed into
strange kids. It was still a lot of fun; especially when they gave you that
“why are you picking on me?― look. Gramma did play a game of miniature
golf with Johnny, though. She wasn’t as good as his mom or dad in that game,
either. Johnny knew what was coming a bit later, though. Gramma was a serious
bingo and fascination player and they would be spending at least a couple of
hours in each place after she had allowed Johnny to tire himself out on a few
rides and a lot of arcade games. There was no gambling allowed in New Jersey
before twelve noon so the bingo halls and the fascination were closed until
then. It was still only about eleven, so the two headed out for one of the
arcades.
His Gramma was pretty good at skee-ball. He deducted that his dad’s
knowledge about how to skee-ball well probably came from her. She won a lot
of tickets and added them to Johnny’s and he got to pick out a cheesy
little yoyo. They had spent over two dollars to win a yoyo that you could buy
anywhere for a quarter. But that was the nature of the Jersey Shore. You knew
you were going to be hustled even before you got there. You almost enjoyed
being hustled after a while. You knew that they were going to chisel you out
of your nickels and dimes, but you just didn’t care and couldn’t resist
the temptation to try and beat their unbeatable system. Most of the boardwalk
games were either fixed or so badly tilted toward the house that you might as
well have just handed your nickels and dimes to them as you passed by.
Your odds of winning a number game were, at best, 36-1. It was amazing how
many time almost thirty of the numbers were covered with nickels and one of
the uncovered numbers would come up on the wheel. The candy wheel was about
your best bet. It had the fewest numbers and the best odds to win. So
Johnny’s gramma and he would spend a buck or two trying to win a box of
Hershey Almond Chocolate bars. I remember one time my friend Doug had won a
box of candy on a nickel, but it never happened again for him and it never
even happened once for me. After Johnny and his gramma lost two bucks on the
candy wheel, they slowly walked to the nickel dishes. All you had to do to
win a prize was to get your nickel to land in one of the thirty or forty
dishes that were in the center of the booth. The problem was when the nickel
hit a dish it whistled off almost as fast as it came in and would land on the
wooden floor. Guys tried wetting the nickels, scruffing up the nickels and
even using glue on the nickels, but nothing worked. The cons on the Jersey
Shore were wise to all the tricks and easily sucked out all those nickels
from the passing suckers like us as I was to learn one summer working in
Wildwood.
After the rides and arcades it was time for a bit of lunch which was never a
problem on the boardwalk. Johnny had two foot long blister dogs with mustard
and sauerkraut and gramma just had one. She told him she shouldn’t be
eating these things, but she just couldn’t resist. They had fresh
orangeades with the dogs and they were delicious. Johnny didn’t have to
worry about going into the water after eating, so he ate like a little piggy.
Actually, he ate like a big piggy whether he was down the shore, at
gramma’s apartment, or back in the development.
Going to Asbury Park with your gramma was not ever about going swimming. The
water was not as inviting as it was the more southern parts of New Jersey and
gramma never swam anymore, anyway. Nope, these trips were always about bingo
or fascination. Johnny knew gramma was serious when she started whipping out
the ten dollar bills. The bingo parlors were, thankfully, in the open air
under a canopy. This made the inevitable smoke from the smokers dissipate
much faster and made the game bearable for him. He was able to concentrate
much better than when gramma or grampa took him to an indoor bingo hall with
tons of smoke. Gramma had sixteen cards and Johnny had eight. She was buying
every special, too. Gramma spent well over twenty dollars and didn’t come
close to winning any of the games and then they left. Twenty dollars was a
lot of money in those days.
That didn’t stop gramma, though. She walked a bit further down the
boardwalk and took Johnny into the Fascination parlor. Even though it was
enclosed with smokers, the air-conditioning kept the air flowing even better
than the Bingo parlor. The cool air felt nice on a hot July or August day.
Gramma would spring for another ten dollars worth of dimes for this game. It
was twice as fast as bingo because it only had 30 lights compared to the
sixty numbers that bingo had. You also had a much better chance of winning at
the Fascination parlor as I was to find out later because the most of the
bingo games on the boardwalk were fixed. Fascination seemed not to be. It was
very tough to fix a Fascination game because you had to roll a ball down at
least five times to get a line and win. If you did win in five balls, you got
a ten time bonus and that only happened maybe once or twice a day. Instead of
cash prizes like they gave out in bingo, you got a ticket for every game you
played whether you won or lost. A win would give you 100 ticketsand a
diagonal win would give you 200 tickets. Sometimes they had special games
where you had to light up an X or a Y or even a total board. The total board
games were a lot of fun because they lasted a long time and the people
playing would get really intense about them, especially if they were just one
ball away from covering the board. We got one ball away from a full cover
twice, but we lost both times. Full cover games gave you 500 tickets. You
could save up your tickets for the year or even numerous years and cash them
in any time. Gramma said she had over 20.000 tickets at home. Johnny looked
around at some of the big prizes and most of them were 5,000 to 10,000
tickets. They included things like a small television, a gigantic radio, and
a record player. They even had a cold-cut slicer for 5000 tickets that his
gramma had her eye on.
After an hour or so, they left with gramma’s 700 tickets. Johnny had won
two games and gramma had won four. The other tickets came from the
approximate 50 games they had each played. It was almost supper time. The
foot-longs had magically digested in the last four hours or so. Finding
something different to eat was not a problem on the boardwalk, either. Gramma
had a jumbo shrimp cocktail which was quite expensive at a dollar. It was
eight giant shrimp with a red cocktail sauce served in a paper dish. She gave
Johnny two of her shrimp, which he had had before and knew tasted good. But
Johnny opted for a full rack of baby back ribs which was also a dollar, but
his gramma didn’t bat an eye. Johnny washed the ribs down with another
orangeade; he couldn’t get enough of that stuff. After they left the highend eatery on the boardwalk, they took a much needed walk up about fifteen
blocks to the taxi stand which also had a little candy store. There was
always baseball cards and comic books in that Bryer’s Store and gramma knew
that Johnny liked both of those things and she always spoiled him so she
brought him a Giant 25 cent Donald Duck on Vacation comic and five packs of
baseball cards. Johnny was in heaven on the train back to Bayonne. He had
spent a full day with gramma at the shore AND he had a Giant comic and
twenty-five spanking brand new 1956 baseball cards and one of them had been a
Whitey Ford. How on earth could life ever get any better than this?
Tales of West Paterson - A Mom's Trip to New York
A Mom’s Trip to New York
By Arthur H Tafero
One day, Zippy remembered his mom and dad having a pretty good verbal war.
His Mom went into his parent’s bedroom in one of those rare silent rages of
hers. She furiously began to pack a suitcase and then she came into Zippy’s
room and took a few clothes to add to the stuff she had put in the suitcase.
It wasn’t anywhere nearly her whole wardrobe or even enough clothes for an
extended trip, but it was enough for a weekend. Zippy have no idea what these
arguments were about, but once a year, his mother would drag him along with
her (until he was about eleven) to the bus stop and they would catch a bus to
Paterson and then to New York City. These blowups always seemed to occur on a
Friday; I guess it was because Friday was payday for his dad and this enabled
his mom to make these trips.
It is a terrible thing to say, but Zippy actually looked forward to these
spats because he knew what lied ahead for him during the inevitable trip to
the city. He didn’t like the arguments themselves, but after they were out
waiting at the bus stop (Mrs. Zambrano seemed to time the arguments well; a
bus was always along in a few minutes), they would be on a nice long bus ride
to downtown Paterson. While they were in the bus station in Paterson waiting
for the New York Bus to arrive, his mother would always buy him two brand new
Dell comics as well as a knish with mustard. Zippy always preferred the
knishes because they lasted longer than hot dogs and filled you up better. It
seemed like money was no object when they went on these little huffy safaris,
so he never got too upset, he just went along with the program and enjoyed
himself. After a while, Zippy got to know the drill and he knew him mom would
always be going back to the house in a day or so, so he milked it for all it
was worth.
After comics, food and some candy, the bus would come along. The New York Bus
was very different from his school bus and even the buses in Paterson. They
had big cushy seats and were air conditioned in the summer and were heated in
the winter. Zippy loved the nice long trip and looking out the window to see
things he had never seen before. The bus would travel throughPaterson and
then pass through Union City before finally entering the Lincoln Tunnel. At
eight or nine years old, he found going through the Lincoln Tunnel to be an
exhilarating experience. It was 1956 and other than being at the Jersey Shore,
this was about as far as Zippy had ever been away from home. He was awed by
the size of the mouth of the tunnel. After they entered the tunnel, Zippy
would be amazed how long they would be continuing into the tunnel without
seeing light from the other side. The lights inside the tunnel were very
bright and he could clearly see the large writing on the tunnel wall that
said: New Jersey/New York. After you passed that writing you were actually in
New York.
Sometimes, in his mind, he would imagine, the tunnel collapsing and filling
with water and how he would somehow survive and rescue his mother. As they
began to emerge from the tunnel, the symphony of bright lights and buildings
would overwhelm him. He had never seen so many buildings in one place before.
The bus kept going from one turning ramp to another and then they were in the
Port Authority Bus Terminal. In the course of the next two decades, Zippy
would be making numerous trips to this terminal as a working man out of high
school, but that was far into the future in 1956. As they went down the
escalator, which Zippy always thought was neat, his mother reminded him to
watch out for thieves.
“Oh John (that was Zippy’s real first name),what they do is very clever.
They tap your right leg with their umbrella and when you turn to see where
they tapped it, they try and snatch your wallet out of your purse which is
hanging next to your left leg. They tried it on me once before, but I was
wise to them.―
Zippy wanted to tell his mother he didn’t have to worry about that stuff
because guys don’t have purses; they just keep a few dollars rolled up in
our front pockets of our jeans. Right now, all he wanted was another knish,
which his mother good-naturedly provided. In addition to the knish, he had a
delicious Nedick’s orange drink, which was like a fresh orangeade. It was
so much better than Koolaid.
They left the Port Authority Bus Terminal and walked a few blocks until they
got to a place called the Horn and Hardart. His mother had not eaten at the
Port Authority or in the Paterson Terminal. Zippy had never seen the place
before. He was dumbfounded. There seemed to a thousand little windows with
foods of all types on the other side. His mother ambled up on a line for
nickels distributed by a prim-looking woman. The smells of the foods were
intoxicating and the scores of people putting in nickels to various machines
and taking out foods and drinks was absolutely fascinating for him. His
mother said the nickels were for the dessert machines they would feed after
they went on the main serving line. She ordered fish cakes, spinach and
string beans. She already knew in advance Zippy would order all starches. He
ordered noodles with butter, mashed potatoes with butter and rice with butter.
He really loved butter; even to this day. His mother took a bit of his rice,
which he didn’t mind and she gave him one of her fish cakes, which he
buried in ketchup. She had given up years ago trying to make Zippy eat
vegetables. The only thing green he liked to eat were apples. For a drink,
his mother went to a machine for two nickels and got hearty coffee. She took
him to the hot chocolate machine and plunked in two more nickels for his
drink. Zippy thought that machine must have been the greatest invention of
all time. And it was really good, rich, hot chocolate, not that crappy
Ovaltine some of the moms tried to poison tribal boys with on occasion.
For desert, his mother had lemon meringue pie and Zippy had Chocolate layer
cake. He had a tendency to just eat the things he really liked at nine years
old. It used to make his mother laugh. After all their nickels were gone,
they left the Automat and walked a few more blocks to a hotel that flashed a
red neon light. It wasn’t a fancy hotel (as if Zippy would have known the
difference), but it was neat and clean, which his mother always insisted on.
She brought a newspaper in the lobby for him because she knew that he liked
to read the sports section every day to check the results of the New York
teams. She also bought some toilet items like toothpaste and two brushes and
a few other items.
There was no bellboy to show us up to our room and they got off the elevator
on the fifth floor and went to room 512. The room was not too brightly lit,
but that was ok with him. He could practically read in the dark. There was no
TV in the room, but there was a radio. It was almost nine o’clock and Zippy
was getting a bit tired, but he still managed to read the sports section,
while his mother read the entertainment section and the comics. She had put
on some pleasant music on the radio; it was a collection of Frank Sinatra and
the Dorsey Band. As he read through the sports section, he noticed that the
New York Knicks were on a four game winning streak and they were playing the
Syracuse Nationals that night on WOR radio. If it was nine, then the game had
to be near halftime. He asked my mom if he could turn the game on and she
rolled her eyes, smiled and then found the station for him.
Like every other Knick-National game, it was close in the third quarter 71-69.
As usual, Dolph Schayes scored every time the Knicks would get close in the
game. By the end of the game, Schayes had over twenty points and they had
beaten the Knicks again, 98-94. That was the end of the Knicks modest streak.
They still trailed the third place Nationals by three games and, as usual,
they would not catch them for a playoff spot by the end of the season.
Zippy’s mother would laugh when the game ended and would put on the
pleasant music again. She said why do you root for that pathetic team that
never wins. He told her since he already rooted for a team that always wins
like the Yankees, it was fun to root for a team in another sport that almost
never won. She kissed him goodnight and he rolled over in his little cot that
was set up in the room and went to sleep in about thirty seconds. He could
sleep anywhere and would be off to dreamland in less than a minute, sometimes.
His mother left the radio on and the music played deep into the city night.
The next morning they left the hotel early and went to a place called
Bickford’s for breakfast. Zippy had scrambled eggs, link sausages and home
fries with buttered toast and fresh orange juice. His mother just had tea and
a sweet roll.
“John, if you’re good while mom goes shopping this morning, I’ll take
you to a matinee.―
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about me, mom.―
The lure of a matinee was more than enough to gain his complete attention.
His mother knew him like a book. They ambled out of Bickford’s and started
walking downtown to about the 34th Street area. He didn’t remember the name
of the store they went to, but he didn’t think it was Macy’s or
Gimble’s. When they got inside, there were enough rows of clothes to fill
two football fields. He had never seen so many clothes in one place. His
mother pored over the blouses for a good twenty minutes before picking out a
peach-colored print. Then she went to the dress area and the slacks area and
the shoe area and the bathing suit area and the coat area God knows where
other areas. She was an Olympic-level shopper. It was all he could do to keep
up with her. After almost two hours of this torture, they finally went up to
the cashier and paid for the blouse. Then they left the store.
The fresh air and noise of the hustle and bustle of the street reinvigorated
Zippy.
“Boy, a lot of these people really look strange, mom.―
“John, that’s because you really haven’t been to many places yet. You
will understand more when you get older―. She was always saying that. One
kid about Zippy’s age was neatly dressed in a blue blazer with gold buttons.
“Ohhh, doesn’t that boy look nice!―, she gushed.
“You should dress more like him―
“Yes, mom―.
It wasn’t enough that his mother wanted him to become president when he got
older, she wanted him to dress like Little Lord Fauntneroy, to boot. His mom
always said that Mickey Mantle dressed like a country bumpkin and that the
only Yankee who looked good in street clothes was Whitey Ford. His mother was
quite up on fashion. Then Zippy noticed a big change in his mother’s
beautifully expressive face. She was on the verge of crying. At first, he
thought it was about thinking about dad, but she never cried over that before.
It had to be something else. Then, he saw what it was.
“Oh John, look at that poor boy over there, there’s something wrong with
him!―
Her voice was beginning to crack. It always did that before she cried. She
had been staring a boy Zippy’s age with Down’s Syndrome being held by his
hand by his mother. The challenged boy was smiling and looked lovingly at his
mother.
“No, ma, there’s nothing wrong with him, he looks happy to me―.
Zippy was desperately was trying to calm his mother down. He didn’t know
what Down’s Syndrome was then, because none of the kids in the development
had it. We did know about retards, though, which was the politically
incorrect term we called such kids then, because we didn’t know any better.
Clearly, this kid was a retard, and his mother was just getting overly
thankful that Zippy wasn’t one of them.
“Oh John, you’re wrong! There’s something terribly wrong with that
boy.―
“No, ma, he’s fine. He’s just dumb-looking and he’s talking to his
mom.―
Zippy had to think quick. His mother would burst out in tears any second.
This was part of being Italian for her. Then he quickly remembered the best
defense against an Italian who was beginning to blubber.
“Hey, mom, I’m hungry. Let’s stop at Nedick’s for a hot dog and an
orangeade!’
That did the trick. Italians quickly forgot their grief when there is food
and drink mentioned. They stopped in for two dogs and an orangeade and then
they strolled to nearby Forty-Second Street. Zippy’s mouth dropped.
There were a dozen movie theatres all on one block. Six on each side of the
street. The marquees were bright and shiny even in the daytime. All the
matinees started at 1 pm so they still had about fifteen minutes to shop for
the matinee they wanted to see. His mother told him to choose carefully and
to look at as many theatres as possible before making his final decision.
Four of the theatres were in his final consideration phase.
One theatre had a Mighty Mouse cartoon festival showing with “The Creature
from Outer Space―. That combo was going to be tough to beat. Another
theater was showing a bunch of Superman cartoons and a Superman movie about
some aliens. He eventually dismissed that one because he had seen every
Superman cartoon and movie in existence already. Another theatre had a Bugs
Bunny Cartoon Festival and the movie was “Abbott and Costello meet Captain
Kidd―. This was another tough entry. Finally, one other theater caught my
eye. It was showing a Donald Duck Cartoon festival and “Dumbo―. He really
wanted to see the Donald Duck Cartoons, but I hated the thought of sitting
through “Dumbo―, which he thought was corny. He would have chosen the
Mighty Mouse plus “The Creature From Outer Space―, but he wanted the
movie to be a comedy to cheer up his mom, so he eventually decided on the
Bugs Bunny and Abbott and Costello movie. I mean, how could you go wrong with
that?
There were fifteen Bugs Bunny Cartoons that would be over in an hour or so
and then the very colorful movie came on. Zippy was a bit worried that the
movie might be condemned in part by the “Advocate―, the Catholic
newspaper that condemned movies in part or whole depending on how evil they
were. Violence was ok, but sex was absolutely evil. There was a lot of heavy
sex in “Abbott and Costello meet Captain Kidd― There was a sex triangle
among Lou Costello, Hillary Brooke, the hot blonde Pirate and Captain Kidd.
Who would get the girl? Well, Lou always got the girl in these movies and
there was absolutely no sex in any of them. Not even the suggestion of sex.
Hillary was hot, but she was very demure in every scene. They wouldn’t be
going to hell after all. The cartoons had been really good, too. He liked the
one where the gremlin always interfered with Bug’s plane and space ship and
one where he was the warden during hunting season while he tortured Elmer
Fudd. Zippy didn’t care for the one with the Tortoise because he knew the
ending already and he hated when Bugs lost in a cartoon. There was another
really funny one with Bugs as Chiquita Banana, which had the Advocate known
the implications of the scene, would have definitely condemned it in part,
but they were too dumb to figure out clever cartoons.
The show ended too quickly, but it was approaching feeding time and his mom
brought him to Schraft’s Restaurant. Zippy ordered a club sandwich. He had
never had a club sandwich before; he didn’t even know what it was, but
Zippy was delightfully surprised to find out it had a nice large clump of
Wise potato chips in the middle of the dish. He ate those first. Then he
found out that a club sandwich had all kinds of stuff he liked: turkey, bacon,
lettuce and tomatoes with mayonnaise. How could you not like that stuff? So
he learned how to extend his gourmet experience on that day in New York City.
After dinner, his mother and he got a large hot chocolate sundae with real
whipped cream and two cherries. This, too, would have been condemned by the
Advocate if they had known about it. It was now time to leave New York and go
back to the development.
They walked back down Forty-Second Street where he gawked at all the cartoons
and movies he hadn’t chosen. Then they came to the Port Authority Bus
Terminal and bought a couple of tickets back to the Paterson depot. Before
they got on the bus, his mother brought him yet another knish. He didn’t
know how he had room for it, but he did. He always had room for a New York
knish. By the time they got home, his dad was watching the usual Saturday
nite lineup of TV; “Have Gun, Will Travel” at 9:30 and “Gunsmoke” at
ten. No words were exchanged between his mom and dad. His mom gave each of
them a paper plate with Wise Potato Chips and a cup of Chocolate Cream soda.
Life was now back to normal.
Tales of West Paterson - West Paterson Eats
West Paterson Eats
By Arthur H Tafero
Pizza. In West Paterson, there was only one small Italian pizzeria;
Lazzara’s. It was not a very popular pizzeria because the owner put most of
his efforts in the morning making fresh breads which a lot of people liked.
His attempts at pizza, however, were less than stellar. He seemed to always
overcook the pizza, which led to a burned crust. People hated the burned
crusts of Lazzara’s pizza. It was also very brittle and tough on the teeth.
His ingredients seemed to be ok, but my mother would say it’s just canned
sauce, it’s not fresh and it’s definitely not made with pelati. For those
of you who are not Italian, pelati is the name of Italian plum tomatoes. They
are usually very sweet with a little basil and you could really tell the
difference between a fresh-cooked sauce and canned sauce from somebody like
Delmonte’s. Lazzara used canned sauce because he was tired from getting up
early and making fresh bread at four in the morning.
The upshot of this was that almost no one in the development ever brought a
Lazzara Pizza. They would buy White Castles, Libby’s Texas Wieners, Cold
Cuts from May’s Deli and Johnny’s homemade BBQ Burgers on McBride avenue.
If they had to have Italian food, they would either have to go into downtown
West Paterson or to some place far away like Jersey City. There were a lot of
Italian women in the development, so there was really no need to go outside
of the development for good Italian food. Mrs. Topozzi was a great cook as
well as Mrs. Delphino. My mother was considered one of the best Italian cooks
in the development by both me and all of the other tribe members. Mrs Petitte
must have been a good cook, too considering the size of her big boys. We
never went into that house, though.
Sal’s mother was a good cook, as was Zippy Zambrano’s mom. So there was
no dearth of Italian food available to tribe members during the week. Jackie
Gallahan’s mom and dad would occasionally visit his gramma and grampa and
they would go to a place in Journal Square in Jersey City called the Keyhole.
Jackie would kid his gramma that she was too fat to get through the keyhole
shaped doorway, but she didn’t think that was too funny. The pizza there
was very cheesy and the crust was perfect. It was really good pizza. My
mother made good pizza too, but it was Sicilian Style. It was made in a
rectangle and the pieces were cut in rectangles, too. It had olive oil and a
lot of fresh plum tomatoes with fresh mozzarella. It was good hot, luke-warm,
or even cold right out of the refrigerator. We really didn’t have much cold
pizza in the refrigerator because it would never last that long. It was
usually gone before there were leftovers. Doug loved it and my mother would
desperately try to save a piece for him, but my father and I ate like jungle
animals and we usually left nothing but the pan. My mother was lucky she got
the one piece she managed to get away from us. And I am not talking about a
little tiny personal pan pizza. I am talking about the largest cookie pan my
mother could find. Sometimes she had to make two of them and then, by the
grace of God, there might be a piece or two left over for Saturday. This dish
was always made on Fridays. While other Aryan families were suffering with
fish sticks, the three of us were feasting on gourmet pizza.
During the Summer, various members of the tribe would often hint at going
over my mother’s house for pizza on Fridays. It became general knowledge
that Friday was the day she made pizza. First it leaked out to Doug from me
and then to select members of the tribe from Doug. Eventually, just about
everyone knew about it and once they had tasted some of it, they couldn’t
get enough. One time my mother made three large pan pizzas for my father, me
and a horde of the tribe. The slices had to be small because there were about
ten of us, but everyone had two slices. My father had that pout on his face
which told me he only had about half the pizza he normally would have eaten.
My mother only had one piece and I only had four or five which was nothing
for me.
One day, I watched my mother make the pizza from scratch. She used fresh
dough, then beat it and rolled into an olive oiled pan, then she added the
fresh plum tomatoes, added black pepper, salt and oregano and topped it off
with fresh mozzarella. We would both nibble on the fresh mozzarella. She
would say one piece for the pie and one piece for us to share and then she
would laugh. I loved that laugh. I eventually learned how to make, not only
pizza, but my mother’s sauces as I got older. I learned how to cook
spaghetti properly, make lasagna, meat sauce, double cook sausage to make it
tender, mushroom and onion sauce, and to add fresh garlic to saucepan. The
trick was to remove the garlic before it got dark brown, so it would not
overwhelm the sauce. I learned these and many other dishes from my mother
because she had no daughter to teach them to, so she taught them to me.
Eventually, I came to enjoy many other pizzas and a whole new string of
pizzerias began to open in West Paterson. But in the development, everybody
still knew where to go if you wanted the best pizza.
Tales of West Paterson - Watching the Fathers at Play
Watching the Fathers at Play
By Arthur H Tafero
Every year, there would be a softball game for the coaches and dads of the
development. The boy tribe would always look forward to this game because
they loved to watch the futility of their fathers trying to play a sport they,
themselves had become fairly good at. Now there were one or two dads whose
ability were still far ahead of the kids. And most of the dads, including
mine, made a fairly decent showing for one day.
But you couldn’t hide things like not being able to catch shots hit
directly at you and running for fly balls and catching them. They must have
made over twenty errors for each team in these games. If we had made those
errors in our little league games, they would have roasted us alive. That is
why we laughed so hard in the stands every time one of the dads dropped a fly
ball or made an error.
It was a pretty unfair thing for us to do. After all, we played ball every
day; I mean every day. Our poor pops were busy working in their jobs all day
long and they must have gotten plenty rusty, because it really showed when
they tried to play a five inning game. Still, they gave it their best shot
and only Mr. King caught everything that came his way as well as hit anything
he was pitched. He was the real deal. That was why he was the best coach in
West Paterson. Mr. Vitale, who was the coach of our rival team, the Amvets,
tried mightily to play as well as Mr. King, but he could never match his
skill level. Mr. McCallen tried to play well also, but he didn’t do well.
My father tried his best at first base and did a pretty good job of catching
all the balls from the infielders, but when a ground ball came his way, he
usually flubbed it. He always blamed it on his glasses, but we weren’t
buying that one. Bill Virdon of the Pirates did a great job in the outfield
in the majors and he wore glasses, too.
All of the dads got equally roasted by both the kids and the dad’s wives
who were in the stands. Most of the parents had brought lots of food and
sodas with them so they would be well-fed and have their thirst quenched
during the game. The dads had brought their own coolers that were for the
dads only. It was a symphony of different beers. The gigantic coolers behind
each dugout contained Millers, Budweisers, Rolling Rocks, Ballentines, Pabsts,
Rheingolds, Schaeffers, and other beers we hadn’t even heard of. There were
beers in the first base coach’s area, the third base coach’s area and one
on the pitching mound. There were also beers on the grass at each of the
outfield positions. So it was very unlikely that any of the dads would suffer
from thirst if they were on the field or running the bases. Most of the dads
were divided between the Amvet dads and the Indian dads. It was a natural way
of dividing up the dads and there was certainly a feeling of rivalry between
them.
The game started with a bit of controversy. The first batter, Mr. Baker, hit
a long ball over the fence that looked like it was fair, but the umpire, a
friend of Mr. Vitale, called the ball foul, and it was just a long strike.
The game was only two pitches old and already all the fathers were arguing
with each other in a good-natured way. One of the Amvet fathers on the Amvet
bench threw a towel out to Mr. Baker at the plate. Mr. Baker picked up the
towel and showed it to the crowd. It read “Crying Towel―. Everyone got a
good laugh out of it except Mr. Baker, who eventually struck out.
Mr. Howard was up next and he lined a clean single to right field. As he
rounded first, he was handed a Miller beer. One of the rules of this game was
that you had to run the bases with a beer in your hand. After Mr. Howard,
came Mr Shaw. He lined a ball right at the first baseman, Mr. Angotti, who
was drinking a Rolling Rock. He calmly caught the line drive and doubled up
Mr. Howard, who ran a few steps toward second.
The Amvet dads came to bat after all the beers in the field for the Indian
dads replaced the beers that had been on the field for the Amvet dads.
Another one of the rules was that you had to have a fresh beer for each
inning. Most of the dads had already had two or three beers before the game,
so most them were feeling pretty good by the second inning or so. Mr.
Shoenfeld hit a bloop single to start it off for the Amvet dads. The Indian
dads started to complain it was a cheap hit and the crying towel was tossed
on the field again to the manager and clean-up hitter for the Indian dads, Mr.
Kingsley, who was nursing his latest Shaeffer beer. Mr. Kingsley smiled and
good-naturedly tossed the towel back to the Amvet dads’ bench. The next
batter, Mr. Vitale, hit a long fly ball to left that looked liked it would go
for homer, but he got robbed by Mr. Baker, who timed his jump just right. Now
it was the Amvet dads’ bench that was moaning and the Indian dads’ bench
tossed them an even bigger towel that read “For Crybabies― The stands
behind the Indian dads’ dugout erupted in laughter as the towel was
unfurled.
The next Amvet up was Mr. Kenzleman. He got fooled on a pitch and grounded
into a force play. He almost knocked over Mr. Howard’s beer on first base
and got a stern warning to be careful or the Amvet’s cooler would be raided.
The clean-up man for the Amvet’s dad was Mr. Van Weston. He hit one right
over the centerfield fence and it was now 2-0 in favor of the Amvet dads. The
score stayed that way for three more innings, but you could feel something
was about to give in the ninety degree weather. It was going to be the dads
that were going to give. They had all had about a dozen beers or so and most
of the dads could hold their liquor, but a few of them weren’t used to all
of the drinking that was going on. Surprisingly, my dad was holding up pretty
well in right field. That was the place where almost no one hit the ball and
where the Indian dads had stuck my father, who had a problem catching the
ball. He was out there with his eighth or ninth Miller beer and feeling no
pain in the summer sun. He even caught the only fly they hit at him in the
fourth inning. He got a single in the fourth also, but was left on base. Some
of the other Indian dads weren’t doing as well, however. Mr. Bettell, who
was not a big drinker, had to leave the game after he got a bit ill in the
fifth. Mr. Zambrano also had to leave the game after the fifth. He wasn’t a
big drinker either. There was a spot just into the woods behind the stands
where the dads went to relieve themselves and you would smell a little vomit
there besides the usual urine smell.
But those little drawbacks didn’t stop the dads. They kept eating potato
salad, macaroni salad, ham sandwiches and drinking beer after beer, inning
after inning. This produced some interesting results which I will not go into
detail about. Suffice it to say that the play in the field of both teams was
not quite as crisp as it had been at the start of the game. Mr. Kingsley hit
a monstrous three-run homer in the sixth inning and the Indian dads took the
lead. The Indian dads bench reminded the Amvet dads that this was a seven
inning game and that this was their last chance in the top of the seventh
inning.
The Amvet dads began to protest and said the game should be nine innings, but
the Indian dads reminded them it was a softball game and all softball games
in this part of the country always went seven innings and then they threw
them the crybaby towel and everyone laughed again.
The game ended 3-2 and everyone went home happy from the Indian dads side of
the dugout and stands. The Indian kids were teasing the Amvet kids and the
Indian wives were trying to console the Amvet husbands. The Amvet and Indian
dads, by this time, had probably forgotten what day this was, because both of
the gigantic coolers had been emptied and no dad from either team was feeling
any pain. All the dads gathered around the pitcher’s mound and said they
were already looking forward to next year’s game. Then they all decided to
drive over to the local bar to keep the party going. Everyone was invited;
the wives and the kids, the winners and the losers and even the umpires.
In West Paterson, it was usually the policy that no one was left out.
Tales of West Paterson - Ice Basketball
Ice Basketball
By Arthur H Tafero
Winter did not prevent the boy tribes of West Paterson from congregating and
engaging in semi-ridiculous activities. One winter it had snowed about a foot
and a half (that was a dusting in those days) on a Friday night. This left
the basketball court down the playground buried under a ton of snow. This was
unacceptable for the boys. Although the temperature was about 10 degrees and
you could almost hear your breath, a group of six of us took our parents’
snow shovels and cleared most of the area on the court. It took an hour, but
it was six am in the morning and still not that light yet. We usually hated
to shovel snow (you would get paid a quarter to shovel someone’s driveway
in those days) and you had to shovel your parent’s driveway for free and do
the sidewalk in front of your house, too. This was for a good cause, though,
our own selfish entertainment, so we were all a bit more enthusiastic in our
shoveling. Doug, Ronnie, Hatchie, Tom and Art, and myself dug until we were
sweating like pigs. When we were done it looked like we were playing in a
large empty pool.
As soon as we finished, we began a game. The court was still covered with an
icy mix of snow and ice that was packed down hard. It was like playing
basketball on a hockey pond (something else we all liked to do). We suspended
the real rules of basketball due to the conditions. No traveling calls
because you couldn’t bounce the ball too well. No fouls unless someone was
unconscious after getting fouled. The game began to resemble
a rugby match on ice rather than a basketball game. Hatchie was good in
hockey, so he was good at this version of basketball. Tom Delphino had
learned how to ski, so he was good at it, too. The rest of us were falling
hard on our butts every other trip down the court. Every time one of us fell
the other five would laugh their butts off. Hatchie scored the first few
baskets (it was Hatchie, Doug and me against Tom, Art and Ronnie, but Tom
Delphino tied it up at two (you counted baskets as one, not two points in
those days). Delphino know you had to stay low with the ball and slide as
much as you could without falling. There was no dribbling now. The fouls
became more and more flagrant. The baskets had no net and the backboards were
a bit rickety. After you shot the ball, you either landed in a very large
bank of snow or you went hard on your butt. It was almost impossible to shoot
the ball without taking a flop. After a while, we decided if we were going to
do this much sliding, hitting and falling that we should play a game that
contained these things normally; ice hockey.
So we stopped playing this rugby form of basketball, picked up the shovels
and went down to the canal that was next to the playground. Then we spent
another hour clearing off the canal so we could play hockey. It was now about
nine or so in the morning and you could hear the clacking of snow shovels all
over the development as agitated fathers began shoveling out the driveways to
get their cars free. The noise reminded us we had better get those shovels
back to our fathers or they would tan our hides good. So as soon as we
cleared the canal for hockey, we went back home to get a second breakfast and
to return the shovels. We also had to pick up our hockey sticks (if we had
any; some of us used three-foot rulers or branches from trees). For a puck
(nobody ever had a puck), we used a flattened milk carton; there were plenty
of those around. We all got back in less than an hour and it was still only
ten in the morning.
The weather had changed. It got very sunny (it was late March) and warmed up
quickly. You could see the gleam on the ice from the temperature. We took off
our winter coats while we played on the canal. Some of us had skates and some
us didn’t, but it didn’t matter, none of us could skate that well, anyway.
We just slid on our snow boots and fell a lot. The ice wasn’t any harder
than the concrete on the basketball court and this weather was more conducive
to hockey than basketball, anyway. We enjoyed banging each other for
possession of the puck and the goals were numerous because we were all lousy
at playing defense. The goal cages were imaginary. There were two rocks
jutting out of the ice about three feet apart at one end of the canal. If you
shot the puck between those two rocks, it was a goal. We used two branches
from trees about three feet apart to make the same goal cage on the other end
of the canal. We were all yelling and screaming for penalties that would
never be enforced.
“Two minutes for charging!, Two minutes for interference!’, Two minutes
for cross-checking!―
I think we just about broke every rule in hockey including blatant offsides.
Our clothes were getting soaked from sweating and falling down on the wet ice
so many times.
Then it began to rain.
That was one of the wondrous things about West Paterson. We were in a very
weird weather location. The weather could change in an instant. Anyway, we
were already soaked, so it really didn’t matter that it was raining; we
continued to play because the score was 21-19 and the first team to 50 goals
would win the game. The heavy rain, along with the much warmer temperatures
began to melt the snow quickly. We could almost hear our fathers cursing in
the distance as nature easily removed in minutes what they had spent over two
hours trying to clear in their driveways. It was a victory for the lazy dads
of the development, who had merely gotten up, made a large breakfast of bacon
and eggs, a half dozen slices of toast and a pot of coffee, and turned on the
inevitable Bob Steele western that was on Channel 5 on Saturday mornings. By
the time the breakfast was consumed and Bob Steele had been winged (cowboys
were never killed in those days, they only got winged), the driveways were
practically clear of over a foot of snow. I believe Bob Steele must have been
winged in one shoulder or the other about fifty times a year; his shoulders
had amazing recuperative powers. Clear too, were the basketball courts we had
worked on so feverishly. All clear. Rivers of water were running everywhere
down at the playground and around the canal. The canal was now completely
clear of snow, too. It was still raining like Noah, but the score was now 3330. Delphino’s team had taken a substantial three goal lead.
No one noticed the creaking sound of the canal.
We worked slavishly to tie the score at 33. Then we heard a very loud
creaking sound. The sound of the canal reacting to the warm temperatures and
the heavy rain. We were all soaked to the bone, but having a hell of a lot of
fun imitating hockey. We would get tanned by our parents for being soaked,
but we didn’t care. All we cared about was the score and winning the hockey
game. Then, suddenly, we saw the banks of the canal rise slowly. The reason
that the banks of the canal was rising slowly was that the ice on the canal
was slowly sinking. It all happened very quickly. The whole sheet of ice now
covering the canal disappeared at the same time. It sank and was replaced
instantly with about three or four feet of water. We all ran, slid or fell
toward the banks of the canal which were close by. There was no danger of
drowning because the canal was only about three or four feet high at its
highest point. We were, however, waist deep in very cold water until we
reached the banks of the canal. One of the guys had dropped his hockey stick
when it happened, so he waded back and got it. Of course we never mentioned
any of these events to our parents. That would have been a violation of the
boy tribe code. We just said we got wet playing in the snow and then it began
to rain; which was partially true. We would have to finish the basketball and
hockey games another time. It was time to do the weekly food shopping at the
Acme.
Tales of West Paterson - Feedings of the Tribe
Feedings of the Tribe
By Arthur H Tafero
The boy tribes of West Paterson had a lot in common with the early caveman.
We were wanderers and hunters. Over the summer, we would wander all over the
development and areas surrounding West Paterson. As we wandered, most of us
had little or no money, so we hunted for food anyplace we could find without
having to go back to our houses. If you went back to your house to eat, you
would have great difficulty catching up with the highly mobile boy tribe that
could be in any one of a dozen places. Also, if you went back home for lunch,
you might have to mow the lawn, clean your room, or go on a shopping chore
for your mother. After a while, the members of the boy tribe found starvation
preferable to going back home for lunch.
But that actual starvation very rarely occurred. First of all, we would
either bring a canteen of water or koolaid and a couple of baloney sandwiches
on Wonderbread and Gulden’s mustard. You couldn’t use the Miracle Whip or
Hellman’s because it would go bad in the heat, but Gulden’s was good in a
furnace. Our sandwiches consisted mostly of mustard and, if we were lucky,
two slices of baloney. Sometimes it was just one slice of baloney. The
mustard always overwhelmed the sandwich anyway. We put it on both slices of
bread, and quite liberally, too.
Most of the time as we brought along these boy sandwiches, we would be
heading into one of the three groups of woods surrounding the development. If
we were playing ball that day, then there had to be another strategy. That
strategy was that one of us had to suffer every day and surrender to the
mother’s lunch at home. The catch was that whoever was going back home for
lunch would take the entire tribe with him. We were quite socialistic about
taking turns and almost all the moms were good cooks or sandwich makers, so
we had no qualms about going to any of the mom’s houses.
Now I think it is fair to say that the boy tribe members preferred some moms
over others. It was nothing personal, it was just the food. It was no secret
that my mom’s house would always be a top destination, but in fairness, the
guys would spread out the food raids on our ten or so houses. A loaf of bread
was a dime and a pound of baloney was 29 cents in those days. So even if you
were a busy mom, you could easily feed the ten of us for less than fifty
cents. And then you wouldn’t have to see us again for two weeks. Since the
summer lasted for about ten weeks, you only had to feed the thundering horde
four or five times each summer.
Some moms went all out. My mom would sometimes make spaghetti, which was much
faster than pizza. She could make a homemade sauce with fresh spaghetti and
topped with Reggiano Parmisian cheese for ten in less than thirty minutes. It
was really amazing. The hardest part for her was finding enough dishes and
forks. We were all served nice cold koolaid with the spaghetti. We all got
purple koolaid so we could make believe we were drinking wine with our pasta.
This was generally the most extravagant lunch the tribe would receive during
the summer. They really looked forward to the five times a summer they came
over the house for lunch. My mother had the dishes washed and dried before we
got halfway down the street from the house. She never complained once about
bringing the boy tribes over, either.
Another popular mom to visit was Mrs. Topozzi. Art’s mom would make lasagna
and then freeze it in her basement freezer. When the boy tribes made their
inevitable visits in the summer, she would have plenty of lasagna on hand and
would serve us bottles of Nehi or Pepsi with it. The Topozzis had a bit more
money than most of the other families. However, after my mom and Topozzi’s
mom, the fare for lunch began to drop rather precipitously. Most of the other
moms opted for the Wonderbread and baloney option, which was ok by us.
One of the exceptions to the white bread and baloney lunches we experienced
from most moms was Mrs. Gladys Kingsley. She was a British war bride that had
met and married Owen Kingsley while he was serving in the US Army in England.
She brought a few new wrinkles to the development. First of all, she was the
only mom who gave haircuts for half the price that they charged in Paterson.
Not only did you save the trip of taking your kid to downtown Paterson(which
was always a pain in the butt for our parents), but you saved half the money
(she only charged a quarter, while the barbershops charged fifty cents). In
addition to her barber skills, Mrs. Kingsley was a fairly good cook with
meats. She couldn’t cook any Italian dishes, but she could make a mean
hamburger or cheeseburger. She also introduced us to English Muffins, Bread
Pudding and Taylor Ham. We had never even heard of Taylor Ham until we all
had a Taylor Ham sandwich over Mrs. Kingsley’s house one summer day. After
that day, we all pestered our own parents to buy some Taylor Ham, but our
parents never seemed to make it as good as Mrs. Kingsley did. One day she
made all ten of us cheeseburgers on English Muffins. That meal ranked right
up there with my mother’s spaghetti. Another exception to the baloney
sandwich regimen was the pot of steamed sweet corn. Mrs.Vitale and Mrs. Van
Weston used to put in a few dozen ears of corn and then smother them with
butter for the tribal boys. When we ate at the Van Westons, we had plenty of
room to eat outside on the knoll of grass next to the house. It was great
eating fresh sweet corn smothered in salt and butter with an ice cold Yoohoo
at Mrs.Van Weston’s.
Sometimes we would all bring a quarter with us for lunch. If you didn’t
bring a quarter with you, you were out of luck. You could get a sandwich and
a soda for a quarter in those days; sometimes they would even throw in a
nickel bag of Wise Potato Chips with the sandwich. Of course, you had to be
on a bike and be able to peddle down to the Acme shopping center where all of
these little candy stores and various shops were.
Some of the guys couldn’t afford the quarter, so they opted for the
canteens and baloney sandwiches. I was usually among those who opted for the
cheap lunches. Money was too important to waste on a thing like food. It had
to be spent on comic books and baseball cards. I knew what my priorities were.
Tales of West Paterson - The Trip to Babe's House
The Trip to Babe’s House
By Arthur H Tafero
In the summer of 1957, we were scheduled to go the Boston Red Sox – Yankees
game in late June. The West Paterson Midget League, founded in 1949, had now
grown to six full teams. Beside the original Indians and Amvets, you had four
crappy teams that lost all their games to the Indians and Amvets. Each team
had twelve kids, so we had to hire two buses for the almost seventy kids who
wanted to go to the game that June. The weather forecast called for rain on
Friday nite and clearing sometime on Saturday. It was one of the few times I
ever prayed for anything. It was raining like Calcutta during season when we
got on the buses. We made the long trek to the stadium with our packed
lunches and it was still raining when we pulled into the parking lot. The
father coaches had that look on their faces that things were not going well.
God had not listened to my prayers, which is why I am a pagan to this day. We
never got out of the parking lot. Some of the kids crieds, but me and Doug
were too old to do that; we just got supremely depressed as we ate our
baloney sandwiches. The dad coaches went out and got some bottles of coke to
cheer us up, but that didn’t work.
The buses pulled out after about an hour or so when the game was officially
called. We would all be given rainout tickets for the end of August. We would
be able to see the White Sox game, instead. We actually preferred to see the
White Sox because they were a hell of a lot better than the Red Sox. All the
Red Sox had was Ted Williams and a bunch of stiffs. Doug and I could pitch
better than the lousy pitchers the Red Sox had.
The White Sox had good pitchers like Dick Donavon and Billy Pierce. It would
be a better game, but on the day we made the first trip, most of us were
pretty disconsolate.
The second trip was a Saturday in late August. It was wicked hot and there
was absolutely no chance of rain this time. The little league buses had
special air-conditioning. The way it worked was you open the windows as far
as they would go and hope the bus could pick up enough speed to get a slight
breeze going inside. There’s nothing like being on a bus of thirty five
sweaty ten-year-olds who are completely antsy to get to Yankee Stadium. We
went through the lower part of the George Washington Bridge. We never even
noticed coming to or entering the bridge. By the time we found out we were on
the bridge, we were already traveling along the Bronx Parkway. It was about
ninety-three degrees outside and it was still only about ten-thirty. The dad
coaches wanted to make sure we made good time and had a lot of time at the
Stadium to watch fielding practice, batting practice and any other practice
that would limit the time they would have to baby sit us for this trip.
When we got to the Stadium parking lot, we weren’t excited as we were for
the Red Sox rainout, but we were still plenty excited. This trip would not be
a total waste like the last one. You could smell the mustard through the
brown bags of most of the guy’s baloney sandwiches. Our mothers had packed
anywhere between two and six sandwiches for each of us. I guess they didn’t
want us to die of hunger in the few hours we would be out of their clutches.
One or two sandwiches were supposed to be for sharing; like that might ever
happen. Guys guarded their baloney sandwiches like a bank guard accompanying
a payroll delivery. A few guys had already started on their second sandwich
and it wasn’t even eleven yet.
We were already as thirsty as hell. We had our gloves with us, just in case
one of the Yankees hit a 640-foot home run deep into the centerfield
bleachers where we would be sitting. These tickets normally sold for $1.50
and we were getting them as a group rate from the Yankees. I think they let
the whole horde in for only $75. We were all wearing the tee shirts of our
teams.The Indians had green t-shirts and the Amvets had black ones. Boy, were
they gonna sweat big time in the hot August sun with those black shirts. The
Little League Yankees, who always sucked, were wearing their red t-shirts and
the White Sox kids looked the most comfortable in their white tee shirts with
black lettering. The last two teams, the Dodgers in blue tee shirts, and the
Giants in orange tee-shirts rounded out our party. I’ll give you an idea
how far away from the plate we were. When Mickey Mantle almost hit a fair
ball out of Yankee Stadium the last year off of Pedro Ramos, it had hit the
top of the façade in right field and traveled almost 620 feet. With Mickey
Mantle, you never knew how deep was too deep for a kid to catch a home run.
No one before or since has hit so many, so far.
Despite the love for Mickey, it was damn hot. Because we had our gloves, most
of us did not bring our canteens. Before we got to the Gobi Desert of the
bleachers, we drank enough water from the fountains to fill an Olympic pool.
On top of that, almost all of brought a large soda just for batting and
fielding practice. It was now about ninety-eight degrees at high noon with no
shade in August, but we couldn’t care less. None of us were wearing sun tan
lotion and we all knew we would be peeling in a day or so, but we didn’t
care about that either. Most of were already dark brown boys from being in
the sun all summer, anyway. We weren’t worried about a little sun. The
White Sox took their batting practice first and we laughed at guys like Luis
Aparicio and Nellie Fox trying to reach the stands for a practice homer.
Minnie Minoso, however, popped a few into the seats.
Then our heroes started batting practice. One by one we cheered our little
hearts out for each of the players. Bobby Richardson led off and even though
he was not a home run hitter, he put a few in the stands. Then Tony Kubec put
a few in the seats. Then came the big boys. Mickey was third and hit eight of
the ten pitches he got deep into the stands. Most of them were well over 500
feet. You could hear the oooos and ahhs all over the Stadium. After the Mick,
came Berra. He hit four or five in the seats and then Bauer hit a few and by
that time we were thirsty again. We bought sodas from the vendors and we
bought sodas from the counters inside. Some of the dads were hiding out near
the counters having beers and staying in the shade of the concessions under
the seats, but we didn’t care, we were having a ball. We bought the Yankee
photo collections for fifty cents. The sodas were a quarter, which was a lot
of money for soda in those days, since you could buy one anywhere for a dime.
We figured these guys selling soda at these prices are really thieves.
But most of us had plenty of dough for the game. Some guys had as much as
five dollars to spend. A trip to Yankee Stadium in those days was tantamount
to going on a luxury cruise or a once-in-a-lifetime vacation for kids. I had
mowed enough lawns to become a groundskeeper for the Yanks and I still had
three bucks left by time they sang the National Anthem. We all got up and
sang the National Anthem. Everybody used to sing it back in those days. If
anyone had stayed seated back then, they would have been tossed from the
upper deck to the field. We all came back with our third or fourth large
cokes and the game was ready to begin. Nellie Fox led off with a bunt against
Whitey Ford and reached first. Then Luis Aparicio dribbled a ball down the
first base line that went for single. Things were looking grim. Fortunately,
Jim Landis hit into a double play and Minoso was struck out and the Yanks
deflated the Sox rally.
Neither team scored for the first four innings. It just kept getting sunnier
and hotter.
We went for another coke. Mickey struck out in the first inning against Dick
Donavan.
He struck out in the fourth inning, too. We were getting a bit antsy. The
worst thing that could happen in a life of a ten-year-old kid was for him to
go to Yankee Stadium for the first time and have the Yankees lose. It was
worse than the mark of Cain. We had all kinds of superstitions about that.
You would be a loser your whole life or you wouldn’t have any male children.
Other superstitions included the eventuality of you marrying an ugly girl for
your wife and always choking in every important situation of your life. All
this would happen if the Yankees lost the first game you ever went to.
Fortunately for us, Hank Bauer hit a line drive off of Donavon’s leg and he
had to leave the game. The White Sox bullpen was mediocre and the Yanks piled
up five runs in the fifth. Mickey had struck out for the third time in the
fifth, though. This time with the bases loaded. If the Yanks had not been
ahead 5-0, he might have heard a few boos by now. Then in the seventh inning
we got what we really came for. The Yanks were cruising with Ford pitching
and Mantle and the other regulars would soon be replaced by the scrubs. So
this was Mickey’s last at bat for the day. He smacked one out to the
deepest part of centerfield and it rolled to the Monuments. Mantle ran like
the wind and easily ran around the bases for an inside the park homer. No one
in baseball was as fast as Mantle, not even Willie Mays. It was more exciting
than if he had hit it into the seats.
The crowd went crazy and Mantle was replaced by his caddy in the top of the
eighth. The dads tried to float a suggestion that we leave early since the
game was over, but we reminded them of what they had taught us about the game
never being over until the last out, so they were forced to stay until the
very last out. The Stadium was in good cheer as the Yanks won 6-0. Ford had
pitched a shutout, Mantle had a home run and all of us had a good sunburn.
Many of us had stomach aches from half a dozen large cokes or more. Some of
us couldn’t look another baloney sandwich in the face for a week after
eating six of them at the game. But no one complained. We would all be
winners in life now, we would all have male children, our wives wouldn’t be
ugly and none of us would ever choke in a tight situation. Ain’t life grand?
Tales of West Paterson - Crabbing Down Barnaget Bay
Crabbing Down at Barnegat Bay
By Arthur H Tafero
Once every summer, very early in the middle of the night of a Saturday
morning at around 4 am, my father would wake me out of a sound sleep and ask
me if I wanted to go crabbing down at Barnegat Bay. I would pop out of my bed
with a shot and we would be out of the driveway in less than five minutes. My
father and I could always get out of the house in five minutes. We were on
Highway 1 going down to the Jersey Shore to save money on the New Jersey
Turnpike tolls. I liked Highway 1 better anyway, because it always had far
more interesting scenery. At the Beechwood exit, my father mentioned that we
had made good time so we could stop for the “big― breakfast. The big
breakfast was important because we would be crabbing for about eight straight
hours without a chance to get lunch. The only item you could buy on the piers
at Barnegat in those days was a soda at the soda machine. So we really geared
up for the Beechwood.
First we had French Toast with four link sausages each, smothered in real
maple syrup. We always ordered lots of extra pats of hotel bar butter, too We
both had a large, fresh orange juice with our big breakfasts and then we
would order two ham and cheese sandwiches on fresh rye with mustard to go for
the lunch we would eat in about six hours.
After we left the Beechwood, we would take a special road that went east from
Highway 1 to Barnegat Bay. It was still not six am and the sun had only been
up for a little while.
My father had the windows wide open because he never wanted to waste the
batteries on air conditioning. I think we used that air conditioner about six
times in six years of that car. But the good part of having the windows open
and driving toward Barnegat Bay was the salty smell of the ocean air that
filled your lungs as the air rushed in the window. It was still early and the
cool air felt good on my skin.
My father did play the radio on the way down to the shore, though, and a lot
of the songs were fun to hear. But when you were on that road going east
fromHighway 1 to Barnegat Bay, you had to shut the radio off. All you would
hear would be lots of static because of the endless telephone pole wires that
crossed the local highways down the Jersey Shore. I had my transistor radio
with me, but I was saving the battery for the Yankee game later on in the day.
We drove in silence, but the beauty of the Jersey marshlands next to the bay
combined with the delicious air, more than made up for the absence of music.
Music could never compete with the symphony of nature. Then we headed for the
bait and tackle store that was a few blocks from the piers.
You had to have a pretty strong stomach to go the bait and tackle store after
having a massive breakfast, because the smell was pretty raunchy. You could
smell the stench of dead fish bait two blocks from the store before we parked.
Once inside, the owner asked what our poison was and I wanted to say
everything in here smells like poison, but I kept my mouth shut for a
change.My father would bring out our two crabbing cages and the bait man
would know exactly what we would be looking for.
“Here’s two fresh fish heads; if they aren’t enough, don’t worry, you
can come back and there will be plenty more. Here’s some twine to tie them
down with; better take a little extry in case those buggers get a little
rough with your bait. He was talking about South Jersey Crabs, who could be
pretty big and ornery, and would rip your bait to shreds if you left the
cages down in the water too long.
“Here’s two sturdy bushel baskets with tops; make sure you secure the
tops or the buggers will crawl right out of the bushels and bite ya. Does yer
boy know how to grab on to a bugger?―
“Sure, I do, you grab them from the opposite sides where their eyes are―,
I said confidently.
“That’s a good boy. I’m gonna give you an old pair of my fishing gloves
to borrow so you don’t get blisters too bad from hauling in those cages
about thirty times an hour. You can drop’em back off before ya leave.―
“Thank you―. I had been trained to have good manners by my parents.
After my father paid for the fish heads and baskets, I took the gloves and we
walked toward the first pier. It was already half full with people crabbing
and fishing off the pier, so we moved down the rocky breakers to the second
pier and there weren’t too many people there yet. It was just after seven
am and we were both ready to go.
First, dad tied the fish heads securely to the cages. For those of you who
are uninitiated in the area of crabbing cages, they consist of four folding
sides that close in on the bottom part of the cage. Only the top and the
bottom parts of the cage are immobile; the other four sides collapse when
they hit the bottom of the ocean. This allows the crabs to smell the fish
head, crawl into the cage and begin nibbling on the bait. After about a
minute, if there is a lot of crabs that day, to two minutes, if the crab
schools are light, you quickly pull up the cage with great tension, so that
the four sides close up quickly around the crab or crabs. Then you repeat the
process as long as your arms hold out or until your bait begins to disappear.
After you pulled the crab cage up, you would carefully empty it of any
occupants into the crab baskets and then put the lid on. They were really
biting today. The first haul got us four crabs apiece from each cage and they
were of pretty good size. If you caught a baby or immature crab, you were
taught to always throw them back into the water. Sometimes, you would pull up
the cage, expend your energy, and have nothing to show for it, except the eye
of the fish head just staring at you as it emerged from the frothy sea.
But today, that was not a problem, because it was a brightly sunny day. The
sunnier the day, the closer to the bottom of the ocean the crabs would go, or
at least that was the lore. It seemed that on cloudy days, they would swim
closer to the surface to get to the light.
The sun was beating down in its traditional August best. We were both
sweating like pigs, hauling in the cages, but you didn’t mind the exertions
when the cages were always occupied with big blue-bellied beauties.
The funny thing was that I hated most seafood, including crabs. My father
liked them a little, but my mother was an absolute fanatic about seafood and
crabs, in particular. So we were catching enough of them today to make her
gain fifty pounds. By noon time, we had completely filled up one full large
crab basket and almost half of the second one. We had caught over eighty
large crabs and it was time for a break. Dad broke out the ham and cheese
sandwiches and sent me down the pier to get a couple of cokes. At this point
of the summer in the development, the boy tribe often resorted to various new
crazes of the fifties. This month’s craze was bottle cap collecting. Many
members of the boy tribe put together a pretty good collection of soda and
beer caps by the middle of August. There were some guys, like Bobby Bettell,
who had over a hundred different bottle caps, but he was lucky because his
father was a bartender in downtown Paterson. Most of us were only able to
collect the soda caps and our father’s favorite beer. I had a decent
collection, but nothing special. Then I got to the soda machine. It appeared
that all the men at the pier were drinking beers; just one or two were
drinking sodas. The thing was, unless they brought a can opener (and some of
them did), they found the cap opener of the soda machine to very convenient
to open their beers. This led to a tremendous variety of beer caps that had
accumulated in the cap collector at the bottom of the machine.
My eyes were bulging. It was a treasure trove of new and weird beer caps and
they were all new and relatively straight, not rusty or bent badly. I bought
a yoo-hoo for me and a coke for my father, but now my mind was completely on
these dozens and dozens of unusual beer caps. I found a small, empty plastic
bag and emptied the caps into it and then brought the two ice-cold drinks
back to where we were crabbing. I cannot tell you how well that Yoo-hoo went
down in that hot sun. It was the best yoo-hoo I ever had. It was probably the
best cold drink I ever remember having in the hot sun. The sandwiches were
absolutely delicious, also. It is amazing how much more you enjoy food when
you are outside and have been working hard.
We were done eating in short order and went back to work filling up the
second basket. We could have easily filled up a third or even a fourth, but
my father said not to be wasteful, because we could never eat even the ones
we had already caught. So we cleaned up our mess, watered down the crabs in
the baskets one more time, and then packed them into the Chevy. Then I
returned the gloves to the bait man and thanked him again. I had blisters,
but they would have been much worse without the gloves. I remembered to take
my large bag of caps, but my father said they would stink up the car. So I
had to rinse them in ocean water for a few minutes before he would allow me
to take them home. The smell in the car was overwhelming, anyway, because of
the ocean plankton that was occasionally attached to some of the crabs. The
caps wouldn’t have had a chance against this stench, but it was a moot
point. You could still hear the crabs moving around in the back seat. They
were scratching against the wood sides of the basket. I was looking at all
the different beer caps and how it would almost double my collection. I was
sure there were some in there that even Bobby Bettell didn’t have.
When we got back to the development, I put the TV on to catch the last few
innings of the Yankee game. They were winning 8-4 against the Tigers; but Al
Kaline had two homers, already. My mother was screeching with joy over the
size and the amount of crabs we had. She already had four large pots of
boiling water going and had put in various spices. She also made up smaller
baskets to give to our friends and neighbors.
She gave away almost one whole bushel and boiled the other. She still had
fifty crabs at her disposal. We invited the neighbors over for a crabfest and
they supplied the beer and soda and chips. A grand time was had by all. I
even found some of my mother’s leftover pizza in the refrigerator while
everyone else pigged out on those crabs. It had been a great day, but I was
getting sleepy and it was only seven o’clock at nite. How that could that
be possible?
Tales of West Paterson - Jimmy the Lifeguard
Jimmy the Lifeguard
By Arthur H Tafero
There was a place called the reservoir in West Paterson. The kids called it
the Resey.
After the last day of school let out in the first week or so of June, you
would see kids nag their parents to drive them or they would ride their bikes
to the Resey. In order to swim at the Resey, you needed resident tags. These
were little red rubber bands with a copper id number attached to them. You
had to wear these little tags when you were on the reservoir grounds. They
weren’t too expensive; only two dollars a year for kids and five dollars a
year for adults. Coaches got free tags, as well as their wives. The reservoir
was actually the drinking water for West Paterson. We used to be slightly
revulsed at the idea that we were peeing in our own drinking water, because
no one actually came out of the water unless it was for food or for lightning.
There was a long line of large red wooden buoys linked together from one
shore to the other at the five foot mark. Kids were not allowed to go beyond
this long string of buoys unless they were certified swimmers by the
lifeguard, Jimmy.
Jimmy was one of the development heroes of the kids. He had a great job where
you got paid when it rained and didn’t have anything to do but listen to
the radio and read in the lifeguard shack. What could be better than that? I
asked my parents if Jimmy really got paid when it rained and they said he did.
The guys in the development couldn’t believe it. We sweated like pigs when
we did the lawns for a lousy quarter or fifty cents if we did both the front
and backyards and this guy got four dollars a day for doing nothing! You
couldn’t imagine how badly about a half-dozen of us wanted that job.
Jimmy got us all certified as official swimmers within the first week of
vacation. Our dads had already taught us how to swim and some of them, like
my father, were competitive swimmers in high school. So that wasn’t a
problem. Jimmy had to go through the testing of each us though to make sure
we could swim. The test was simple. All you had to do was swim from the ropes
(that what they called the red buoys connected by rope) to the raft about a
hundred feet past the ropes. If you didn’t go under, you could swim. The
test was a snap for all of us, but naturally, one of us had to play a little
prank during the testing.
Some of the older boys in high school would often swim out to the raft with
their girlfriends and hide behind the side that was not visible from the
shore. Here was one of the few places (other than the woods) that you could
make out with your girlfriend without anyone seeing you. The raft was made of
sixteen hollow steel barrels tied together by study ropes and wires and
topped a with wooden floor on which was covered with burlap. You could see
the left and right sides and, of course, the front side of the raft, but you
couldn’t see the far side of it. Tommy Baker decided he would play a trick
on Jimmy. He started out the test by swimming the first seventy feet out to
the raft then he suddenly sunk out of sight. What he had done was to swim
underwater to the far side of the raft. He was a very good underwater swimmer
and going thirty feet or so underwater was nothing for him.
Well, the first thing that Jimmy did was call out:
“Tommy!!―
“Tommy!!―
On the third Tommy, Jimmy dove into the water and swam past the ropes like
lightning. He dove in the spot where Tommy had appeared to go down. Tommy was
sniggering behind the blind side of the raft as he heard Jimmy call his name
and come to his rescue. The other boys dove in even though they hadn’t
officially passed their swimming test, yet and joined Jimmy searching for
Tommy. Some of us were a little suspicious something was going on, though,
because Tommy had a reputation for being a bit of a weasel at Saint Bon’s.
Now some of the adults were congregating on the beach pointing to areas
beyond the ropes. Two of the fathers dove in to help the search. Everyone was
beginning to get worried. Then someone heard a little bit of a laugh out by
the raft.
“That little bum―, muttered Jimmy.
“It’s Tommy Baker, we should know better―, sighed Mr. Vitale.
“O GeeGoneNannies― blurted Mr. Kingsley.
This sounded like a terrible curse, but it wasn’t. Jimmy swam to the other
side of the raft and grabbed Tommy, not to gently I might add, and held him
under the chin as he swam to shore.
“Let me go! I’m not a baby! I can swim in from here!―
“Oh no. you’re gonna get the treatment now―, promised Jimmy.
Tommy kept yelling to let him go, but Jimmy still acted as if he was rescuing
my even after they passed the ropes. The dads were laughing. The kids were
laughing. But Tommy’s dad, Mr. Baker wasn’t laughing. He had been worried
for a second, but then he quickly figured out what his kid had pulled off,
and he ran out and roughly grabbed him away from Jimmy.
“I’ll take it from here, Jimmy, thanks―
Mr. Baker then commenced to whale the piss out of Tommy. Tommy started to
bawl loudly, which was very embarrassing for a seventh grader. He won’t be
doing that again we thought to ourselves. We did have to admit, though, it
was a pretty neat trick.
After the Tommy Baker fiasco, Jimmy went back to the testing like nothing had
happened; he was pretty cool about the whole thing. We could still hear Tommy
Baker wailing in the distance as his father was kicking him to the car. We
all passed the test easily and then Jimmy asked us if any of us wanted to be
junior lifeguards. Was he kidding? The pay was a dollar a day and our job
would be to birddog for Jimmy (that meant if we saw anything at all that
appeared to be unusual we were to alert him immediately in the shack. He said
we would be paid whether it rained or not and we would be on duty for seven
hours a day. We could swim, go out to the raft, and play on the beach as much
as we wanted; we just couldn’t leave the reservoir grounds from ten to six.
We would also get an hour for lunch. What a deal! All six of us jumped at the
chance. Doug, Ronnie, Hatchie, Delphino and Topozzi and myself all
volunteered. We would all be assigned one day a week to be junior lifeguards.
It was better than getting an allowance! (and a lot less work). On the
weekends, we couldn’t do it because Jimmy would have be on the
Lifeguard’s chair because of all the people that came for those two days.
But one day a week was better than nothing.
Jimmy said before we could get our first-aid certificates, we had to learn
mouth-to-mouth. None of us wanted to do that. I said I would only do that for
Barbara Barnier or Diane Palladesta and the other guys agreed with me. Jimmy
told us to forget about that part of the test and that we could do it on a
plastic dummy. We made sure we washed off the dummy real good after each guy
gave it artificial respiration and we were now officially junior lifeguards
for a buck a week. We found out later that the Town Council had allocated two
dollars a day for the job, but we really didn’t care that Jimmy was taking
his cut; we were just happy to have a job. Better than that, it usually
rained at least once a week and you got the buck for doing nothing! In one
three week stretch, Hatchie had a tremendous run of luck. He had three
straight days (his day was Wednesday) that it rained and he just collected
his buck without working. The funny thing was that we enjoyed the job just as
much as getting paid for a rainy day. It was probably the last job that any
of us ever had where we felt that way.
Tales of West Paterson - A Trip to the Woods
A Day in the Woods
By Arthur H Tafero
These trips into the woods were not really planned too well. One or two of
the guys would mention how hot the sun was and how it would be cooler in the
woods and that was all we pretty much needed for motivation. We would quickly
run home, get our canteens of water or kool-aid, some finger food or
sandwiches (no mayo, it would go bad) and maybe a few comics and run back to
meet behind Topozzi’s house which was the gateway to Topozzi’s woods. It
was the same gang of the usual suspects; me, Doug, Hatchie, Frankie Klump,
Topozzi, Delphino, Jackie Shaw, and Zippy. No matter how many times we went
into these woods, after a few hundred feet, it always seemed brand new to us,
even though there were beaten paths throughout some areas within these woods.
There was a ten degree difference in the temperature as soon as you entered
the woods; sometimes even more if there was a gentle breeze. You could smell
the green.
We stopped after about ten minutes when we got to the first little clearing
with a large selection of climbable trees.
“Don’t climb that big one, Shaw, your fat butt will break most of the
branches― Shaw was big and bulky, but really fat. And the guys in the tribe
almost always called each other by their last names unless they were really
good friends.
“There goes Tafero again reading his damn comics. Don’t you ever do
anything except read comics and collect baseball cards, Tafero?―
I ignored Delphino and climbed to a nice comfortable branch. Topozzi and
Delphino were also boy scouts and they had brought an axe and twine with them
to show how good they were at making an outdoor shelter.
“We’re not gonna have a hurricane Delphino, so why don’t you spare
yourself?―
“Yeah, you and Topozzi are always doing that scout crap; what a waste of
time―. Doug always backed me up when I made a comment to someone and I did
the same for him.
“You’re just too stupid to be a scout, King and Tafero is too lazy to be
one―. Delphino, as usual, always had to have the last word.
“It’s too noisy here, I’m going deeper into the bush― said Hatchie
“Yeah, you guys sound like my parents when they fight”. I couldn’t make
out the voice of that comment. Hatchie and Frankie Klump kept going deeper
into the woods. Zippy finally decided to stay in the noisy area. He climbed
one tree to the top in about thirty seconds. His appearance was simian and
his ability to climb trees was amazing and despite all the guys constantly
making monkey and gorilla jokes about him, he was still just about the nicest
guy in the tribe.
“Hey, Delphino, how come you can’t climb a tree well if you’re a
scout?― Zippy enquired.
“Because I didn’t have monkeys for parents, that’s why―
“And why can’t Topozzi climb high into a tree?―
“Because he doesn’t know who his real parents are―. The insults and
quips were coming from everyone now except Jackie Shaw, who never
participated in the ragging. There were the occasional curses and expletives,
but the guys in the tribe found out early on the biggest laughs were always
achieved by the most clever remarks, not by some simple-minded curse.
“Hey, King, did you bring your canteen; I’m thirsty― Doug was always
known for bringing a canteen. I even picked up the habit from him.
“Yep, I’m always prepared, just the scouts are supposed to be― That got
a good laugh because Doug wasn’t a scout.
“After you die of thirst, can I have that cute little yellow handkerchief
you wear?―
“Nah, if he dies, he’ll leave it to Delphino as a momento―.
“Both of you guys are just jealous you’re not scouts, that’s all―.
Neither Delphino nor Topozzi had brought canteens with them.
“Hey Topozzi, I’ll sell you a swig of my kool-aid for a quarter―
“I’ll give you a nickel―
“Make it a dime and ya got a deal―
“You want a swig too, Delphino?―
“I’m not paying a dime for watered down Kool-Aid; I’ll give you a
nickel―
“Nope, it’s a dime or its nothing at all. You’ll probably get buried
with full boy scout honors and a salute.―
“Ok, I’ll make it a dime, but you are such a damn thief. The whole koolaid pack only costs a nickel.―
“Yeah, but think of all the labor I put in to make the grape taste just
right―
“Yeah, it must have been all of five or six seconds. That’s about as much
time as Tafero ever works, anyway―. That got a good laugh from everyone to
my slight embarrassment.
“I want to see the money first, boys, then I’ll send down the canteen
with two swigs left.― I gulped almost three quarters of the contents of the
canteen so there would only be two swigs left. I didn’t trust those guys.
They flashed the two dimes.
“Okay, swear on the honor of the scouts that you will give me the dimes
before sunset―
“I swear― said Topozzi.
“Me too― said Delphino.
“You gotta say “I swear”, Delphino”
“Ok, damn, “I swear―
“Ok then, here it comes― I dropped the plastic canteen and tried to hit
Topozzi’s head, but I missed. Topozzi took his swig first, and by the time
Delphino got it, there was only a sip left because Topozzi had taken two
swigs.
“Thanks a lot Toz, you left me enough to live for about five minutes―
“It wasn’t me, Tafero only left one swig in there―
“I heard the canteen hit the ground; there was more than a swig in there―
“Tafero! Did you leave at least two swigs in there?―
“I swear on Mickey Mantle I left two solid swigs in there―
“You’re paying my dime for the swig, Toz― said Delphino as he gave Toz
a relatively harmless swat in the head.
Everyone was quiet for about an hour; either reading or napping or just
staring up at the higher branches of the trees they were in. Topozzi and
Delphino stopped building their lean-to and just climbed a branch or two off
the ground and started sleeping. Shaw was also sleeping, but Doug and I were
reading comics.
I was reading the latest adventures of Sergeant Bilko, which I also followed
on TV. I loved the way Bilko manipulated everyone on the base and had wild
money-making schemes that always went awry. My other comics were Plastic Man
and Blackhawk. I never let anyone see that I was big fan of Donald Duck,
Comics and Stories, and Uncle Scrooge, so I didn’t bring any of my ample
supply of those with me. I liked how Plastic Man could adopt himself to any
situation. He was a lot like Bilko, except he did it physically instead of
mentally. I liked Blackhawk because of the exclamations. “Mondou!―,
“Sacre Bleu!― and other French catch phrases I had no idea what the
translations were.
Doug was reading those corny Western comics like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. I
guess he had always wanted to be a cowboy. But I liked Army and Horror comics
now because they had so much in common. I really liked the EC comics like
“Combat!” and “Tales From the Crypt”. Hatchie was a big fan of army
comics, too. He had gone deeper into the woods with three of them I hadn’t
read. Maybe I could buy them from him for the twenty cents I was gonna get. I
had eaten two baloney sandwiches with mustard and I didn’t have any more
kool-aid left so, I took a nap. When I woke up, I saw that Topozzi and
Delphino had left, but Shaw, Doug and me were still left. We decided to call
it a day because we could tell by the position of the sun it was close to
five and our parents would be getting supper ready and I never missed supper
at my house (my mother was too good a cook). I invited Doug over for supper
and since Shaw was with us, I invited him too because I knew my mother always
made enough food for at least six people even though there was only three of
us. Doug eagerly accepted because he knew what my mother’s food was like
and so did Jackie because he lived next door to Doug and usually followed his
lead. On the way back, we ran into Hatchie and Klump coming out a different
area of the woods.
“See anything interesting in your area?― I asked
“Yeah. There were naked girls dancing for us― quipped Hatchie. Klump
guffawed and Doug smiled.
“Hey, if you still got those three army comics, I’ll give you a dime for
them―
“You can have the three of them for twenty cents―
“Make it fifteen cents and you have a deal―
“OK, Done―
“We have to stop by Topozzi’s house to collect twenty cents he owes me,
first.―
“We have to go in that direction, anyway, so that’s ok by me.―
The four of us continued on to Topozzi’s house. We rang the side door bell.
In the development the protocol was very important. Kids only used the side
doors. Only adults used the Front Doors. Topozzi’s mom came to the door.
“Is Arthur home?” The other guys giggled a bit, but Topozzi’s mother
didn’t get the joke.
“Yes, Arthur, we were just about to sit down and have supper; won’t you
and the boys join us?
“No thank you, Mrs Topozzi, I would just like to speak with Arthur for a
second―
“Hey, speak for yourself, Tafero, I love Italian food. Here’s the comics.
I’ll collect the money from Arthur during the meal―
“Okay, but don’t forget you owe me a nickel change―
“I’ll throw in another comic; Frankie, give me one of your “Combat―
comics. Frankie always had a ton of comics because he had four older brothers.
“I’m staying, too― added Klump.
“Hey Tafero, if you want more comics, Ill sell you a few hundred at two
cents each.―
I tried to catch my breath and act calm.
“OK Frankie, Ill see you later this week as soon as I can rustle up a buck
or two.―
“OK, deal―
Frankie and Hatchie went inside to eat with the Topozzis. Jackie Shaw and
Doug came home with me for spaghetti and sausage and I had four almost new
Army comics I hadn’t read yet. God, could things get any better than this?
Tales of West Paterson - A Trip to New York With Mr. Kingsley
Going to New York with Mr. Kingsley
By Arthur H Tafero
One Thanksgiving, my parents were allowing me to go to the Bronxin New York
to visit Gladys Kingsley’s sister, Eileen Cooper and her husband. Doug and
I were looking forward to the big Packers-Lions game. The Packers were
undefeated going into the game and the Lions always played great on
Thanksgiving. We both had a quarter on the game with a couple of the guys
from Saint Bon’s. We hated the Packers and wanted the Lions to win badly.
Ownie Kingsley and Gladys were in the car with Douglas as they parked in
front of our house on Williams Drive. It was just after breakfast. We had a
massive breakfast with a dozen link sausages and a dozen eggs for the three
of us. We also used a whole log of acme butter. My mother always saved money
and brought the acme brand instead of hotel bar butter which I knew Mrs.
Kingsley used. And if she used it, there was a good chance her sister used it
too. It was at this point that I realized I had become a little obsessed with
food as a child.
My parents genuinely enjoyed the company of the Kingsleys and wanted them to
come in, but Mr. Kingsley wanted to “make time―. Making time was a
leading endeavor of almost all the dads in the development. They would leave
at all kinds of early hours on a long trip to “make time―. This was
especially true went we went down to the Jersey Shore. We would always leave
well before dawn even though it was less than two hours away by car. Mom and
dad waved to the Kingsleys from the door and my mother gave me that last look
of “you better observe all your manners and not give the Kingsleys any
problems―. It was amazing how much one look from my mother would convey in
preventative parenting.
Once we were on our way on Route 46. we passed Callahan’s, which was noted
as the best hot dog place in New Jersey, and therefore, the United States and
the world. It was only about nine in the morning, but Doug and I whined for
Mr. Kingsley to stop for a quickie. Mrs. Kingsley just smiled as we drove by
and Mr. Kingsleycompletely ignored us.
Gladys’ sister, Eileen was a war bride just like Gladys had been. She met
her husband, Scott, just like Ownie had met Gladys in England. The only
difference was that Scott and Eileen had moved back to Scott’s old
neighborhood in the Bronx and Ownie had taken a chance on a new house in West
Paterson like so many of the other veterans and had taken Gladys there with
him. The ironic part was that Ownie was from the Bronx to begin with and was
a fanatical Giants fan.
“Yep, Mel Ott was just as good as Gehrig, but the Jints didn’t have
anyone as good as Ruth. Mel could get out of bed in the middle of the night,
go to the outhouse and then hit a double on one pitch if he had to.―
“Owen!―
Mrs. Kingsley called Ownie, Owen. She was the only one who called him by that
name. Mrs.Kingsley did not approve of bathroom humor.
“Sorry, dear― he said apologetically.
Mr. Kingsley still rooted for the Giants even though they had moved to San
Francisco. It was a touchy subject that neither Doug or I ever confronted him
with, but you could tell he was heartbroken by the move. This year the
Yankees had beaten the Braves in the series and Mr.Kingsley said what else is
new. Doug did not follow in his father’s footsteps; he had become a diehard
Yankee fan as the vast majority of the boys in the tribe had done. Another
area where Doug did not follow his father’s footsteps was in his
consumption of beer; Schaeffer, to be precise. Mr. Kingsley loved to drink
Shaeffer beer. My grandfather and grandmother also liked to drink their
Shaeffer. My father was a light drinker, as was my mother. I never saw Mrs.
Kingsley drink the whole time I was in the development. For that matter, even
as we grew to adults and came back from military service, Doug was still
drinking soda while the rest of us were getting soused. I think he either
promised his mother or himself that he would never drink to excess. He took
it to extremes, though, and never drank at all. No one paid much attention to
people’s drinking habits in the development. Almost all the dads got looped
one time or another at one of the big picnics or ballgames. It was no big
deal.
As we approached the George Washington Bridge, it was the first time I had
ever ridden over it. It was gigantic. The brisk air of the autumn filled our
lungs as we crossed the upper tier of the bridge. In older cars, you always
had to leave the window open a little bit so the windows would not fog up.
The view of the Manhattan skyline was spectacular. Doug had seen this
numerous times on other trips to the Bronx, but it was the first time for me.
I also looked backward at Fort Lee and the Palisade mountains, which were
fairly majestic, but still paled in comparison to the beehive of activity
that Manhattan portrayed. There were enormous apartment buildings everywhere
as we entered the Bronx Expressway. I felt I was entering holy territory
since this was where the Yankees played. We were within a few miles of Yankee
Stadium! It was almost as if Mr. Kingsley had read my mind. We got off the
145th Street Exit and onto the Concourse.
Doug and I loved looking at the outside of Yankee Stadium; it was like making
a holy pilgrimage for us.
Eileen and Scott Cooper lived on 178th Street, a few blocks off the Concourse,
so this trip was not “out of the way―. This was another famous term
almost all the fathers in the development used while they were driving. It
made no difference where the dads were driving, they almost never went “out
of the way” because they had to “make time”. We figured out that the
one led to the other. When we arrived at 178th Street, Mr. Kingsley was
having a bit of difficulty finding a parking space.
“This isn’t West Paterson, you know―, he said to no one in particular.
“I hate parking in New York, GeeGoneNannies―,
Doug and I had no idea what that last word meant, but Mr. Kingsley often used
it in place of the usual dad curses. After circling the block about four or
five times, he finally found a space. We piled out of the car and walked
about two blocks to the Cooper Apartment.
“Well, at least we didn’t have to park at the Stadium― added Mrs.
Kingsley, dryly. Mr. Kingsley stayed silent. We walked up to the second floor
of the nice-looking, but old, apartment house. As we entered the foyer, I
could hear the TV in the background. After the brief introductions, Doug and
I made a beeline for the TV and made sure we had the hour-long pre-game show
on. The Packers were awesome this year, but the Lions almost never lost on
Thanksgiving. It was only about eleven, but we were both hungry. Mrs. Cooper
was serving those little cocktail wieners with mustard and Doug and I had
about six each of those. There was also an enormous bowl of Wise Potato Chips
in the living room where the TV was. We dove into that until it was half
empty. All Mrs. Kingsley had to do to stop Douglas and I from eating them all
was to give Doug that mom look that meant that we had eaten enough. Mrs.
Cooper also gave both Doug and me a large Nehi Grape soda. We didn’t get
too many of those in West Paterson. It tasted great.
Just as the game was beginning, you could see the Lions were going to kick
the Packers’ butt. They sacked the quarterback, Bart Starr, three times on
the Packers’ first possession. The Lions went right down the field against
the vaunted Packer defense and scored and it was 7-0. That’s the way the
game stayed until half-time. We watched the highlights and we were already
counting our quarters that we would be winning from Martin Byers from Saint
Bon’s, who loved the Packers. In the second half, the Lions poured it on
and won the game 24-14. It was time for the big meal to begin.
We ate in the kitchen which was decked out with all kinds of good food.
Turkey, Cranberry sauce, Mashed Potatoes with loads of Hotel Bar butter, but
there was no stuffing. I looked around and saw this brown bread that was
crusty in a pan like it was a pizza.
“What is that stuff?―
“It’s called Yorkshire Pudding, but there’s no pudding. It’s like
potpie crust and its served with gravy.―
“O, I love potpie crust!― Actually, you had to search far and wide for
any kind of food I didn’t like.
“At’s a good boy, don’t be afraid to try the Yorkshire Pudding―, I
noticed the British left off the first letter or two of a lot of words;
usually at the start of a sentence. There were string beans, sweet potatoes
and four sticks of hotel bar butter on the table. Doug and I had our own
stick of Hotel Bar butter.
“Have all the butter you want Arthur; I love butter myself―, said Mr.
Cooper. I hated the name Arthur, but I was happy to have all that Hotel Bar
butter, so I let it pass. After Mrs. Cooper cleared the table, it was time
for tea, coffee, hot chocolate and an enormous lemon meringue pie. I minded
my manners and only had two pieces.
“That Arthur is such a good eater; don’t you love good eaters, Gladys?
Eileen said to her sister.
“O yes, Douglas is a good eater, too.― Doug hated the name Douglas almost
as much as I hated the name Arthur.
“How do they both stay so thin?―
“Because you and I and Scott and Owen will stay here at the table for the
next hour or so catching up and Douglas and Arthur will be down those stairs
and playing some kind of ball within five minutes. That’s why they are
still thin.―
And as if on cue, Doug and I washed our hands and ran down the stairs to
check out the neighborhood.
“Be back in an hour, boys―.
“Yes, Aunt Eileen, we will―. Fat chance, I thought to myself. We were
going out until they dragged us in.
First, we went down the block to the Concourse to the Bryer’s Candy Store
that was on the corner. We both bought five packs of Topps 58 football cards
with the quarters that Mrs. Kingsley had given us to spend. I got Charley
Conerly and Emlen Tunnel in my five packs and Doug got Frank Gifford and Alex
Webster in his five. I also got Jimmy Brown and Doug got Chuck Bednarik of
the Eagles. Bednarik had a great looking card; he had his arms spread like an
eagle and a real mean look on his face. He looked liked he belonged on the
Eagles. Doug told me he would give me Bednarik for Brown, but I made him
throw in Bobby Layne. Then we ran down to the park that was two blocks away
from the store. There were a bunch of kids playing touch football and they
let us in the game even thought we weren’t from the neighborhood. Of course,
all we got to do was play defense, because on offense they always threw to
their friends and no one ever threw to the new kids. It was fun, anyway, and
the hour or so quickly passed. We ran back to the apartment about a half hour
late, but no one seemed to notice. Everyone said their goodbyes and we began
our trek back to the development.
“So, did you have a good time, Arthur?―
“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Kingsley― My thanks was genuine. I had 25 brand new
football cards, a full belly, a quarter coming from Martin Byers at Saint
Bon’s, and I had learned a few new New York City-type rules for touch
football that we didn’t have in West Paterson, like keeping two guys in the
backfield instead of one, and learning what a pick was (when two guys go out
for a pass and one of them knocks off the defender of the second guy going
out for the pass). Yes, it had been a good day learning about the Bronx. I
definitely wanted to come back to New York at some time in the future.
Tales of West Paterson - The Week of the Great Rains
The Week of the Great Rains
By Arthur H Tafero
It was sometime in the early fall when the rains came. Usually, it was the
Spring that brought about the greatest accumulation of rains in West Paterson
and the development, but this year, it would be the Great Rains of the Fall
that would be remembered for a long time. The rain began on a Saturday with
an innocent shower or two that interrupted the ritual of the Acme morning
shopping. Many parents were ducking in and out of the Acme in between the
drops and no one gave it any great notice. It was late October and most of
the parents were looking for cheap candies for the coming Halloween. The
weather had turned crisp, but not cold. The boy tribe was just getting used
to being back in school after a long, enjoyable summer. Everyone’s
attention was now on college and pro football. The Giants were always a focus
of attention in the fall as well as the leading college teams.
The Daily News had a contest where you had to give the scores for fifteen
featured college games and all of the pro games. If you got them all right,
you would win $5,000. No one ever won during all the years I played. Winners
would get fifteen or sixteen out of twenty games right, but never all twenty.
The problem was that the favorite didn’t always win the games. No matter
what week it was, there would always be at least a half dozen or so upsets.
The trick was to figure out where the upsets would inevitably be. No one ever
did. But it was a lot of fun trying. You would rip out the entry blank,
patiently fill it out, and then put it in an envelope with a stamp and wait
for that $5000 to come in. You would even plan how you were going to spend it.
Then, after a while, you stopped thinking you would win the $5,000 and just
hope for the $1000 they gave the best record of the week. It was usually
something like 16-4 or 15-5. Of course the one week I went 16-4, someone went
18-2. After that week, I kind of gave up on the contest.
But the tribal boys still enjoyed watching Oklahoma rack up win after win
every week until one year they ran into a lucky Duke team. It rained all day
Sunday while the Giants game was on and they crushed the Redskins in an away
game at DC. It was raining here and in DC at the same time very hard. That
was a bit unusual in itself. It continued to rain very hard on Monday and
getting on the school bus was messy as well as getting back. No one ever
brought umbrellas to school in those days; you just got wet and then you
dried off. The water began to accumulate in the little canal that ran through
the back yard of all the houses on Williams Drive and Overmount Avenue. It
was usually just a little weak stream that came down from the mountain lake
at Garrett Mountain. Now it looked more like a raging river, but it still was
a couple of feet below the grass.
By Tuesday, everyone was getting sick and tired of the rain that had been
with us since Saturday. It didn’t rain that hard on Tuesday, but there was
that steady miserable Autumn drizzle that would go right in your face as you
got off the bus. The nuns were getting a bit squirrel-like from not being
able to leave the convent other than taking care of the development brats.
Fortunately, we did not have Aloysius that year, or else it would have really
been a hellish experience.
We all got our homework done early because no one could go out to play. The
rain began to come down heavily that night and the next morning there was a
surprise when we woke up. Our basement had about six inches of water in it.
It was the first time our basement had ever been flooded. And our house was
not alone. The Garfield, Glen, Vitale, and Pettitte basements had all been
flooded as well; and those were the ones we knew about. There must have been
many others. The only way you could move around in the basement now was in
your rubber winter boots.
The buses were still running on Wednesday, but a lot of the roads were
flooded out and we were barely able to get through. It rained hard all day
and most of the streets were like rivers. The Passaic River had overflowed
and there was flooding on McBride Avenue. All the houses and stores were
flooded to some degree. Even Libby’s was flooded and had to close. This was
getting serious when you couldn’t get any hot dogs. The school bus came at
the usual time at 3:10, but you could barely see the curbside as every street
was flooded at least three or four inches.
It took us an hour to get home for trip that usually took about twenty
minutes.
The bus was crawling along more like a riverboat than a bus. We were all
wearing our calf-high rubber winter boots that we normally wore when the snow
was a foot or more and everywhere we stepped, the water came halfway up our
boots.
Water was running down Williams Drive like it was a tributary of the Passaic
River. The base of Williams Drive was Mount Pleasant Avenue and it look more
like a lake than an avenue. And the rains continued to come down. When I got
home, I saw a distressed look on my father’s face and wondered why he
wasn’t at work for the four to twelve shift like he always was. He almost
never missed a day of work. Dad was working with some machine I had never
seen before. It was a water pump and he had on his fishing hip boots. Those
hip boots went up three feet on hips and would have covered both my legs and
my butt, too, if I had to put them on. The water in the cellar was now up to
over one foot deep. I had always wanted a pool and now we had a really big
one. My father spent hours pumping out the water, but despite all his work
there was over a foot of water in the cellar when he was done. The family
glumly had their Wednesday pasta and there was hardly a word exchanged. It
was a rare meal where the family was together in midweek and rarer still that
we did not relish the pasta and sauce and my mother made. We just ate and
went about our business. Electricity was out now and the TV was not working.
All we had for entertainment was the radio, which told us to stay inside and
not go anywhere in the car. The radio by candlelight while it was still
raining was a bit eerie. My mother was worried about the food going bad, so
we had to finish the Bryer’s Ice Cream. We all had a big dish each. That
was a real hardship.
The radio mentioned there would be no school for at least Thursday and most
likely, Friday, too. That saddened me deeply almost as much as having to eat
the vanilla ice cream with Bosco. You couldn’t go anywhere unless you had a
boat or went further up the mountain. So since that was the only direction I
could go, I asked mom if I could go visit Doug up on Overmount Ave. She said
no, because it was dangerous out there with no electricity, no street lights
and no house light except for candles. So I dejectedly headed up to my attic
room to listen to my trusty transistor radio. I couldn’t do my homework,
even though I was actually in the mood to do it so I could get it out of the
way. I just lied there in the dark listening to the New York radio stations
playing the hits of the week.
The next morning, I helped my father trying to drain the cellar, but there
was now over two feet of water down there despite the pumping. My father
mentioned that there would have been almost four feet of water had we not
been pumping it out. Fortunately, my mother didn’t keep too many frozen
foods in the fridge and there weren’t going to be any milk deliveries. It
was still cool, though not really cold throughout the house, so some of the
food in the fridge was keeping fine. The butter was always a main concern in
our house. That was holding up pretty well.
My mother had cooked the chicken, made meat loaf from the chop meat and had
put what little ice we had in a cooler with the other perishable goods. They
were holding up fine, also. It was a bit unusual to have meat loaf for
breakfast, though.
My mother had used our barbecue grill to make the chicken and meat loaf as
well as barbecuing the toast. The toast was disgusting, but I would anything
as long as there was a lot of butter on top of it. The meat loaf and chicken
were quite good, however. My father filled a pot with water and carefully
kept the flame low to bring the water to a boil. He said he had plenty of
practice of doing this kind of stuff in the army. The pot was a little
blackened, but there was nothing you could do about that. We would have to
buy another one. We had chicken for lunch with some canned vegetables and a
barbecued potato that tasted pretty good. Lunch at Saint Bon’s was never
this good. There was only light until around five and then it got dark again.
I had done all my homework and played imaginary football seasons with playing
cards. The electricity was still out. That night we had to finish whatever
fruit was lying around like the bananas. I felt like an ape-man; eating
bananas in the candlelight.
Friday the rain began to let up and you could actually see clouds in the sky
passing by. By the early afternoon, it had stopped completely. The
electricity came back on at around five. Speaking of five, there was over
five feet of water in the basement by now, but it was getting lower by the
hour as my father and myself kept pumping it out without any more water
coming in. By Saturday night, we had almost all of it pumped out. The water
had left a really dank smell that we tried to get rid of with air sprays and
Arm and Hammer, but the smell persisted for weeks. It was the rainiest week
in the history of the development and it was good to see the sun come out
again.
Tales of West Paterson - Battle Royales
Battle Royales
By Arthur H Tafero
Occasionally in the development, the boy tribes would have some internal
warfare. This was in the form of hand to hand combat or what some would call
good old-fashioned street fighting. Some of the more memorable donnybrooks
that I can remember were the Douglas King and Thomas Delphino brawl that
lasted at least a half hour, my brawl with the son of Officer Wright, William
Wright (who was not a regular member of the tribe) which lasted about twenty
minutes, The Jackie Shaw against Ronnie Vitale and Sal Magilone fight which
was a two against one, but was still one-sided, and the famous Eugene Saint
Efema and Frankie Fierman fight at the Saint Bon’s playground over a girl
in the eighth grade.
Now most fights in the early grades between 54 and 56 were usually over in
one or two punches with the loser going home crying to mommy. But from 57-61,
the fights got quite a bit longer and much more vicious. The first really
good one that I remember was the Douglas Kingsley and Thomas Delphino fight.
It was a quiet, peaceful day in the development and we were playing stickball
in the street next to Hatchie’s house facing T Art Topozzi’s house.
Nothing out of the ordinary. We had Doug, Frankie Klump, John Quinn, Jackie
Gallahan, Jackie Shaw and Hatchie on our team. The other team had Tommy
Delphino, Art Topozzi, Zippy Zambrano, Ronnie Vitale, Sal Maglione and Bobby
Bettell. It was a pretty good game. You got one run if you hit Topozzi’s
house on a fly and five extra runs if you hit the ball over Topozzi’s house.
Well, Doug hit a pitch from Tommy Delphino and it appeared to clear the house
easily, but it hit the TV antenna about five feet above the house. If it was
a five run homer the score would be 39-37 in our favor, but if it was just a
one run homer it would still be only 37-35 in favor of Delphino’s team.
Delphino said it hit the house so it was only one run. Doug, who was a very
good hitter, screamed that it went over the house by five feet and was a
five-run shot.
“It hit the antenna Kingsley, and that’s part of the house so its only a
run― stated Tom flatly.
“You’re a cheater Delphino, that ball cleared the house by five feet and
just grazed the antenna.―
“Your calling me a cheater?― Nobody ever questioned the integrity of
Thomas Delphino, he was always honest and truthful. Something that could not
be said for the majority of the players in the game.
“Yeah, I’m calling you a cheater― Doug was already beginning to cry,
and I knew that that was a bad sign because crying did not mean a sign of
weakness when Doug cried; it meant he was gearing himself up for a fight. He
had done it with me a few times and I mistakenly took it as a sign of
weakness and he caught with a few good ones when I was younger. So I knew
that Tom was in for it now. Tom walked over to Doug.
“Say that again to my face” Tom was right in Doug’s face.
“You’re a cheater!―. Tom instantly slugged Doug in the jaw and and
knocked him down. Doug got back up and ran toward Tom to tackle him; he was
good in football. He drove Tom back off the street and on the sidewalk next
to the Van Weston house. The guys were egging both combatants on. Sides were
split among the teams that were chosen with most of your friends on your team,
anyway. Doug tackled Tom on the grass and finally got on top of him and gave
him a couple of good shots. This would have ended most fights in the
development, but not this one. Tom got himself free and got back up.
You could see one of his eyes was a little puffy. He gave Doug another shot
in the mouth and his lip began to bleed. Doug was crying now, but that only
made things worse, because I knew he was just getting madder. The more he
cried, the madder he got. He popped Delphino a few more times and then
tackled him a second time. They rolled over in the grass a few times and then
wound up in a wrestling position with Delphino having Doug in a headlock and
Doug pulling on Delphino’s hair. After about fifteen minutes of this stuff,
Delphino says “Do you give?” and Doug gave…..he gave him a shot in the
nose that drew blood and lots of it. Delphino was bleeding like a stuck pig,
but he never cried for a second. Now he popped Doug with one punch after
another and Doug’s eye was getting puffy. Finally, one of the mothers came
out and broke up the fight. Doug started for home and yelled out “Your
still a cheater, Delphino― The next day we played in exactly the same place
at the same time with the same teams and no one said a word about the fight
from the day before. It had already been forgotten.
The second donnybrook I remember was one Larry was in with William Wright who
lived several blocks away from our tribe. In fact, they were down the
playground, which is about the dividing point between all of the main streets
in the development. They were playing basketball in September, which was the
beginning of the school year. Wright was in the far end of the development
and no one from our tribe trusted him because his father was a cop. There was
some minor disagreement with a foul call.
“There ain’t no fouls in playground basketball!― Larry said in front of
his tribe. He had just plowed through Wright for an easy lay-up and he called
a charging foul, which in retrospect, he was right (sic) in doing.
“My father warned me about guys like you―. he said.
“Your father’s a moron just like you―. Larry started to laugh when
Wright caught him one in the mouth.
“You ________!― Larry could never fight without swearing a lot; it was
just part of his make-up.
He took the basketball and threw right into Wright’s nose about three feet
away from him. His aim was pretty good and he drew blood. Then Wright tried
to tackle Larry on the concrete, but he couldn’t get him down too easily
and they both stumbled toward the dirt section of theplayground near the
hills that went down to the Acme. They literally rolled in the dirt about six
times each and we were absolutely filthy with dirt on our clothes and sweaty
faces as we belted each other numerous times. Of course everyone down the
playground was egging them on and most of them were Larry’s friends, so he
felt empowered. Wright had the best of it for the first five minutes, but
when Larry got really angry, he was pretty tough to beat. Trouble was, he
wasn’t really that angry. He was just showing off for his friends and he
knew deep down that he had charged for the basket. But he couldn’t admit
that or give up in the fight. So he kept hacking away and rolling in the dirt
until he got Wright in a good headlock. They continued kicking and scratching
for another ten minutes. Larry’s knuckles were scrapped and bleeding and he
had one puffy eye, but Wright had one, too and now Larry had him.
“Give― Larry said.
“No―
Larry tried to break his neck, but he couldn’t.
“Give or Ill break your neck― he said.
“No― said Wright.
Larry was getting pretty damn tired and it was getting a bit embarrassing
that he couldn’t get this kid to give. Luckily, for Larry, a parent came
along and broke up the fight. It had lasted about twenty minutes. He got
slaps on the back from his friends as Wright ambled home, but Wright had
earned Larry’s respect and they never had words again. Larry was the
absolute dirtiest he had ever been since he played football in the mud and
the rain one Saturday. He was filthy from head to toe and his face and arms
were completely covered in dirt. His mother gasped when he got back home and
there was an exchange of phone calls with Mrs.Wright, but nothing came of it.
He had to bathe for over an hour to get all the dirt out of his ears, eyes
and nose. It had been one hell of a good fight.
The third memorable fight I remember from the development was not really a
fight; it was more of a challenge. Ronny Vitale and Sal Maglione could not
believe that the two of them could not bring down the husky Jackie Shaw who
was the catcher for the Senators. Ronny and Sal played for Libby Amvets, the
lucky guys, and they would get free hot dogs every time they won. Sal started
to make fun of Jackie’s position of catcher.
“You know they call catcher equipment the “Tools of Ignorance―. Jackie
said nothing.
“It fits you perfectly― chimed in Ronnie. Jackie said nothing
About six or seven of us were down the playground for this one, but nobody
seemed too worked up over it.
“You guys lost to us― was all that Jackie could come up with.
“Yeah, but no thanks to you― chided Sal.
“Yeah, you didn’t get any hits; all you did was catch the ball― added
Ronnie
“I got two hits― said Sal
“And I got one― said Ronnie
“But we won the game― said Jackie
That prompted Ronnie to try and knock Jackie down, but he couldn’t do it.
Jackie, on the other hand, had no problem knocking Ronnie down with one punch.
“He thinks he can take the both of us― said Ronnie laughing.
Sal went to push Jackie down, but he couldn’t do it either and Jackie
knocked him down easily, too.
“Damn, Ron, this guy is a horse― said Sal
“We can get him down if we work as a team; lets just charge him together at
the same time.― said Ron
So the two boys charged him at the same time and found themselves on their
butts for the second time. They were both laughing like hyenas.
“Can you believe it, no matter what we do, we can’t get this guy down.―
Ron was still laughing.
“Ron, I think we just better let him go, this is way too much work― said
Sal.
“You’re lucky Shaw, we gotta be somewhere in a few minutes.― So both
Ron and Sal left.
All this time Jackie Shaw said nothing, he just continually knocked both of
the other boys on their butts. It was pretty hilarious.
“Jackie” I said. “You really have to learn how to insult someone as
well as you fight―
“There’s no need to talk during a fight― he added. There was nothing
anyone could say about that.
The final event that stands out in my mind was the big brouhaha over Rosemary.
I can’t remember Rosemary’s last name, but in the eighth grade she must
have been pretty hot if Frankie Fierman was willing to fight over her.
Frankie was a fairly tough guy and the guy who had alienated his girl’s
attentions was Eugene Saint Efemera, a grossly overweight kid who was
relatively new to the Saint Bonaventure School. He had joined us in the
seventh grade and in the eighth grade, he had apparently had made some moves
on Frankie’s girlfriend, Rosemary. I noticed this was a recurring trend
both in grammar school and in high school. The new guy on the block seemed to
have a free pass with all the girls in the neighborhood. None of us would
have dared to ask Rosemary out because we respected Frankie’s claim. Just
like no one else would have asked out Mary Jo Melon because Anthony Berrone
had a claim on her or on Barbara Barnier because I had a claim on her
(although I also liked Diane Palladesta).
Anyway, Frankie was pissed. He said he was gonna get Eugene after school at
three o’clock. It seems Eugene had a lot of money to throw around and
Rosemary seemed to be responsive to being spoiled despite Eugene’s rather
large frame. Well, the ballyhoo for the fight far exceeded the actual event.
Frankie punched Eugene in the stomach a few times because it was almost
impossible for a punch to reach Eugene’s face; Frankie’s arms just
weren’t long enough. The punches to the stomach had no discernable affect
on Eugene, but you could see Frankie was getting a bit frustrated that he
couldn’t sock Eugene in the face. Then Eugene bowled Frankie over with his
stomach and then sat on him.
“You’re crushing me! Frankie yelled out.
“Good― added Eugene.
Frankie squirmed like a pig, but he couldn’t get free of Eugene.
“You give?― asked Eugene.
“No!― said Frankie defiantly. Eugene began pummeling him with a number of
punches while sitting on top of him.
“You give now? Eugene asked again.
“Yeah, get off of me you fat piece of crap―. Eugene got up and left.
“You try and take Rosemary out again and I’ll get a bat and bust you open
like a piñata screamed Frankie. Rosemary went over to comfort him. She had
finally come to her senses. Almost no one in the school spoke to Eugene for
the rest of the year.
Tales of West Paterson - The Big Little League Game Against Brooklyn
The Big Little League Game against Brooklyn
By Arthur H Tafero
During the summer while we were in the sixth grade in 1959, we slowly began
to realize it was our last year in the Little League. Next year, we would be
graduating to the Babe Ruth League, the next step up from the little league.
Since this was the last year we were to be little leaguers, we wanted to
leave on a high note. We had all pretty much aged together within the boy
tribe and almost all the good ballplayers were from our grade. Our little
league team, the Indians, dominated the West Paterson little league. There
were a few good players from the other teams, like Ferguson, Quince, DeSantos,
Francona and DeRosa, but the other dozen or so good players were on the
Indians. Then after the regular season ended, the coaches (our fathers)
decided to enter our All-Star team into the regional little league
competition.
We felt like we could beat anybody as the Indians. Including another four or
five really good players almost made us ridiculously good. We played Paterson
and crushed them 10-0. They stopped the game after three innings because of
the mercy rule. Then we crushed Newark 10-0. They stopped that game after two
innings. Our next game would be an Eastern regional final against Brooklyn.
We figured they would be a combination of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Dead
End Kids. Brooklyn rooted for the Dodgers and every last one of us was a
Yankee fan (except crazy Ronnie Vitale and his New York Giants). The Dodgers
always lost and the Dead End Kids were spazzes. You wouldn’t believe how
overconfident we were.
Our practices were contests to see who could knock the most balls over the
fence and into the woods by the Passaic River (there were woods all over the
place then). We had four outstanding pitchers and a bevy of hitters that
could hit anyone. Our best hitter was Ferguson from the Amvets, but the next
six best hitters were all from the Indians. The father coaches were loose and
relaxed, as were our practices. We had slaughtered the first two teams we had
played and all of the parents were making travel arrangements to go to
Levittown, Pennsylvania, where the Little League World Series was to be held
the next week. All we had to do was beat Brooklyn and we would be on the bus
to the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
We weren’t all that excited, believe it or not. We fully expected to not
only take the trip to Pennsylvania, but to win the whole ball of wax without
too much of a struggle.
We didn’t think there was a team in the world that could play with us, much
less beat us.
The local papers played the game up big, as did the Paterson papers, the
Newark Star Ledger and most of the other Jersey papers. The team from
Brooklyn had nine starters with vowels at the end of their names. Most of the
team were Italian kids, including the pitcher, Frankie Tepadino. Supposedly,
he had seven no-hitters this past season. We had our own good pitchers.
Ferguson, who was our best hitter, was also one of our best pitchers, even
though he wasn’t on the Indians. It was his turn to pitch. I had won the
first game against Paterson and Doug had won the game against Newark. Now it
was Ferguson’s turn to pitch.
The game was slated to begin at our home field on a Saturday afternoon in
late August. We could tell the game was way out of the ordinary. There were
hundreds of spectators instead of the usual dozen or so that came to our
games. Everyone brought their own folding chairs and food. There was plenty
of beer, too. Most of the fans had brought an entire picnic with them in
their various containers and iced coolers. There was enough beer there to
start a bar. There was plenty of soda and cold cuts for the kids, too. We
were eating slices of ham and roast beef without any bread and washing it
down with bottled cokes. One of the guys had four cokes before the game. Both
teams took batting practice and we could see the looks of the Brooklyn guys
as we knocked one ball after the other over the fence. When they took the
practice field, they hit a few over the fence, but most of them practiced
just making contact and putting the ball in play to right field. They also
practiced bunting and a lot of fielding. They looked like a very good
fielding team.
Then we started to hear this:
“Pop. Pop. Pop―
It was coming from in back of the dugout of the visitors. It was the visiting
pitcher, Frankie Tepidino. And he was popping fastball after fastball into
the catcher’s glove.
“Pop. Pop. Pop―.
Each pop indicated the ball was traveling at a pretty good rate. Ferguson was
warming up behind our dugout and you could hear his fastballs popping the
glove of the catcher too, but the pops weren’t as loud.
“Pop. Pop. Pop.―
Tommy Delphino was puking behind the dugout; he had eaten too much potato
salad and had had too many cokes. It was all over in ten seconds or so and
then Tommy was ready to go again. One of the adults dug a little hole and
covered the mess. It took our minds off the Brooklyn pitcher for a minute or
so.
“Pop. Pop. Pop.―
Some of the fans were already on their second six-pack. It was a festive mood.
The backstop had been wired with a speaker. We had seen speakers at the first
two games we were on the road, but we had never had a speaker at one of our
games in West Paterson.
We were downing cokes like nobody’s business. No one was drinking water
like they usually did. We overheard a conversation from the Brooklyn players.
“Yo, Tony, what’s that big bush over there?―
“It’s not a bush, you idiot, it’s a damn tree. Aint you never seen a
tree before?―
“Not like that one, I aint. Boy, these guys are real lucky to live in a
place like this―.
A few of the West Paterson boys laughed. It was like listening to a Dead End
Kids movie. But after we thought about it for awhile, we kinda felt sorry for
the Brooklyn kid who couldn’t even recognize a tree.
“Will everyone please stand for the National Anthem.―
It was not a request. It was more of a command. Everyone stood and sang the
National Anthem as they played the music. We didn’t have any guest singers
or anything like that. All we had were our tipsy friends and neighbors and
they did a damn good job of the anthem. Then the first pitch was thrown. The
umpire behind the pitcher (that’s where they were in those days because
most of the catchers missed the ball so often that the umpires would get
slaughtered if they were behind the catchers).
“STRIIIIKE―, the umpire yelled.
The game was afoot. Ferguson had put the first ball down the middle and it
even made a pop almost as loud as the Brooklyn pitcher had warming up. The
first guy on Brooklyn bunted and Ferguson pounced on it like a cat and threw
to me for the out. Ferguson struck out the next two guys and it was our turn
to bat.
“Be patient up there and don’t swing at balls out of the strike zone―.
Mr. Kingsley had quietly reminded us. He was a very good coach and we always
tried to listen to him.
Our first batter, Frankie Klump, was short and usually was good at working
out a walk.
“Pop.―
“Striiiiike―
“Pop.―
“Striiiiike―
“Pop.― Good Morning, Good Afternoon and Goodnight. Frankie had taken a
weak hack at the last fastball, but the catcher was already getting ready to
throw it back by the time the swing was finished. He must have been a full
second behind the pitch. That’s a lot in baseball terms. We patted Frankie
on the back as he came back to the dugout. Tommy Delphino was up.
“Pop―.
“Striiiike―
Delphino started to dig in. He was gonna be ready for the next pitch no
matter what. He wasn’t afraid of fastballs and he had hit plenty of them
before; even if this guy was faster than anyone he had ever seen before. He
was ready. And then the next pitch came and Delphino hit the dirt like
someone who had been shot.
“Striiiike―.
No pop this time. Frankie Tepidino had thrown a curve that had broken about
two feet. When he let it go, it looked to Delphino as if the ball were coming
straight at his head. It broke sharply back over the plate and he had strike
two and a red face from the embarrassment of going down in the dirt on a
pitched strike. Some of the fans laughed, but they were quickly stared down
by the friends and relatives of the players. This time, Delphino dug in again,
determined not to let the curve fool him.
“Pop―.
It had been a fastball and Delphino was just a little bit late because in the
back of his mind was that two-foot curve ball and that tenth of a second
hesitation to make sure it wasn’t a curve led to his striking out. Doug was
up next. He grounded out to the third baseman on the curve ball. He was a bit
out in front, looking for the fastball. This was not good news. We had scored
four runs in the first inning of our previous two playoff games and we went
down like the sisters of Saint Mary in this one. This game was going to be a
lot tougher than we had thought it would be.
Ferguson set down the Brooklynites with little trouble in the second and he
was also the first batter in the bottom of the second. On the first pitch, a
blazing fastball, he hit a sizzling line drive to centerfield for our first
base hit and the fans went crazy. One dad knocked over his bottle of Miller,
but there was plenty more where that came from. I was up next and I saw the
first pitched ball coming toward my head. I knew, intellectually, that it was
a very good curve ball and I didn’t back off, but I swung at the ball like
a rusty gate and had strike one on me. That split second I hesitated cost me
a good swing.
“Pop―.
“Striiiiike―
He had blown one by me as I took a healthy hack. I vowed to be ready for the
next one, no matter what. I couldn’t strike out; not if Doug didn’t. I
hung in and swung at the next fastball and lifted a harmless pop fly to very
short center. The crowd got all excited for a second, then they quickly
calmed down as they saw I didn’t really hit it very well. This guy was
really good. I always felt I could hit anyone, but this guy had me off
balance. The next two guys, DeRosa and Quince, both struck out on three
pitches. This guy almost never threw anything but strikes. There was no point
in taking a look, because you were always looking at strike one. The game
moved on to the fifth inning.
One of the Brooklynites laid down a beauty of a bunt down the first base line.
I tried to make a play, but the bunt was just too good and the player was
safe. The second batter sacrificed him over with another good bunt and he was
almost safe, also, if it had not been for a nice play from Doug charging in
from third. Ferguson had given up only three singles and no walks. He was
pitching almost as well as Tepidino. When the next batter hit a short fly to
right, the rightfielder, Derosa, had been playing deep and had to make a long
run in to get to the ball. He almost made the catch, but trapped the ball
instead. The kid on second had been told to run all the way by the
knowledgeable Brooklyn coaches and he scored the first run of the game. You
could hear a pin drop in the stands on our side, but it was noisy in the
little section of Brooklyn parents on the other side. Ferguson finished the
inning by striking out the last two batters, but it was too late. It was a
big run.
We went down in order in the bottom of the fifth and so did Brooklyn in the
top of the sixth. This was our last chance. Little League games were only
played for six innings. It had to be now or our Little League careers were
over and we wouldn’t be taking that trip to Pennsylvania. Frankie Klump
started the inning with a surprise bunt. He was safe by a step. The crowd
started to get rowdy. Then one of the curve balls got away from Tepidino and
he hit Delphino with a pitch. Delphino almost laughed when he got hit; it was
such a relief it had not been a blazing fastball. Now we had first and second
and no one out. Doug was a good smart player so he laid down a sacrifice bunt
and moved the players to second and third with only one out. Things were
beginning to get a little exciting as one of the tipsy dads fell over
backwards off one of the sets of seats, but he was all right as he got a
cheer from the crowd. He was covered in potato salad, but his head had landed
on some hot dog buns. Ferguson was up and for the first time in the game,
Frankie Tepidino had a bit of fear in his eyes. He was told to intentionally
walk Ferguson and pitch to the next batter, which was me. I was busy drinking
yet another coke and one of our coaches had yelled at me to get up. I had
figured that I wouldn’t get up this inning, but I was dead wrong. I was
absolutely determined to get a fly ball or some kind of contact to tie up the
score. I was not going to strike out with the bases loaded. DeRosa was on
deck swinging two bats and he looked as determined as I was. I was beginning
to believe we were going to Pennsylvania and that I would be the guy to get
us there. Oh yeah, I was feeling it now.
“Pop.―
“Striiiiike―
“Pop.―
“Striiiike―
I had swung very hard at two very hard pitches. I had missed both times. I
dug in and got myself ready. I had a feeling this guy was going to give that
big curve, but I had to be looking for the fastball. It is very tough to
change gears from looking for a fastball to recognizing a curve, but as I saw
the next pitch heading for my head, I realized it either was a curve or I was
going to get killed with a fastball to the head which would drive in the
tying run. It was a curve. I was ready for it and I hit a shot up the middle.
I was ecstatic! I was not only going to tie up the game, I was going to win
the sucker! I would be a hero!
Unfortunately, the second baseman stuck out his glove as he dove for the ball
going over second and barely got to the ball. He touched second and threw to
first. The ball was hit so hard I was out by plenty. We had lost. I had let
the team down. I had let West Paterson down. I was disconsolate. The fans
gave us a standing ovation. The Brooklynites applauded us and shook our hands.
I started crying. I hadn’t cried since the fourth grade. I had been in
fights where I hadn’t cried. This was worse than a fight or Sister Aloysius
smashing the crap out of you with her various weapons. Doug came over and
patted me on the back. He hardly ever did that. A lot of the other players
did the same. So did the coaches.
“You hit it good, that’s all you can do―, said Mr. Kingsley.
In the end, we turned out to be the Dead End Kids and the kids from Brooklyn
went on to the finals of the Little League World Series where they finally
lost to some ringer military base team from California. It was our last
little league game and it had been a memorable one. A little bit too
memorable. Real life is never as much fun as your imagination.
Tales of West Paterson - The Greed of Halloween
The Greed of Halloween
By Arthur H Tafero
There were seven Halloweens that the boy tribes spent together during the
years I lived in the development between 1954 and 1961. I interviewed seven
different boy tribe member for their memories of the best and worst
Halloweens and why they thought that way about them. These are their
revelations:
Halloween: 1954 – This was the memory of Doug Kingsley as a seven year old
making the rounds with his mom on the Morley Drive block during that year’s
Halloween.
“It was a cool, but not cold night. It was a Saturday, but we couldn’t go
out until after supper. My mother, Gladys, had already helped me with my
costume. I had always loved cowboys and my favorites were Gene Autrey and Roy
Rogers. My mother thought it would be cute if I had a small ukulele on a
string and put it around my neck. I didn’t have a cowboy hat, so my father,
Ownie, let me borrow one of his gigantic hats. Mom pinned the hat and brim so
it almost looked like a real cowboy, but my head was still swimming in the
hat because the head size was so big. Mom finally pinned it once again and I
was able to see out the front. I did have a pair of Roy Rogers chaps which I
gladly put on as well as a holster and two six shooters. I looked like a real
cowboy, but that ukulele made me a bit uncomfortable. My mother insisted on
it, so I kept it on. She also insisted that she accompany me down the block
on our side of Morley Drive. When we finished with my side of the street, my
dad would then take over to watch me while I went trick or treating on the
southern side of Morley Drive. There were exactly twelve houses on each side
of the street and I only knew about half of the people that lived on our side
of the street. There was the Bettell House near the beginning of Morley Drive.
Bobby Bettell was dressed up as a space man. His father had drilled three big
holes in a fish bowl he had bought at a flea market and he wore his plastic
rain coat inside out. He looked more like a deep sea diver than a spaceman to
me.
Mrs. Bettell was very nice to me and gave me a Hershey’s Chocolate Almond
bar. These good candies were only given to kids who lived on the block. All
the kids who came from other blocks (unless the moms knew them) got a candy
kiss each or a penny each. It was their choice. Most of the boys chose a
penny and most of the girls chose the chocolate. A box of good chocolate
candy was just about right since there were 24 houses on Morley Drive and 24
bars of candy in a case. Another house I remember going to was Jim
Kingsley’s house which was right next to ours. Even though Jim and his
family had the same last name as ours, we were not related in any way. We
also almost never hung out. He was a nice enough guy, but he just never hung
out with the main boy tribe of the development. His mother, Grace gave me a
Chuckles bar with the five jelly flavors. This was another premium candy
reserved just for the kids on the block. Jim, ironically, was also dressed up
as a cowboy, but he didn’t have a ukulele hanging around his neck.
My good friend Jackie Shaw lived just two houses away and he was dressed up
as Babe Ruth. He was a bit chubby, so it was a good choice. He had a big
number three written in black charcoal on the back of a white tee shirt he
was wearing over a sweatshirt to stay warm. His Yankee cap and carrying a bat
finished the total picture. His mother, Alice, gave me a giant-sized Nestle
Crunch. This was a real expensive candy bar, but she said it was strictly for
Jackie’s best friend, which they both considered me to be.
The only girl I knew on the block was Patricia Roan. She was a bit tall, but
she had a real nice personality and we went out a few times in the seventh
and eighth grades. When Mrs. Roan saw me in my Gene Autry outfit, she began
laughing hysterically, which made me feel a bit uncomfortable, but then she
said it was the ukulele and that made me want to take the ukulele off, but my
mother reminded me that it was the ukulele that made my cowboy outfit more
interesting than Jim Kingsley’s cowboy outfit, so I left it on. Patricia
was dressed as nurse. She was able to use her mother’s nurse cap and blue
sanitary uniform. It looked very realistic. Mrs. Roan gave me a nickel and
told me to get whatever candy bar I wanted, but I was going to use it to get
a pack of football cards.―
Halloween: 1956 – This was the memory of Johnny Prince and his experience
as a nine year old making the rounds of the development without the moms.
“We were in the fourth grade and had the witch for the first time. Sister
Aloysius would have been a great monster outfit to dress up in if they had
had one then. A whole bunch of us would have wanted to dress up in it, but
our mothers would have probably kept us from doing it because it would appear
sacrilegious. It was also the first year that our parents didn’t follow us
up and down our block which was Overmount. It was also the first year that we
went beyond our own block and that was a big deal because Overmount was a
very long block with over forty houses on it. I got dressed up in my army
outfit. My dad Jim, let me use his service cap and my mom took in one of his
old khaki dress shirts. It was still very baggy but it was still cool looking.
Some of the tribe members on our block included Frankie Klump, Tommy Baker,
Barbara Barnier, Patricia Pride, Diane Palladesta and Zippy Zambrano. We went
trick and treating together as a group. These were the three hottest girls in
the development and they were going around tricking and treating with us. How
cool was that? It was probably because we all lived on the same block and not
because Zippy, Frankie and me were that cool. Diane was dressed as a princess
and Patricia was dressed as a lion. Barbara was dressed as a ballerina and
she was getting cold even though she was wearing wool longjohns with her tutu.
Zippy was wearing just a gorilla head which was really an unfortunate choice
considering we called him Zippy. Frankie’s mom made him a jester’s outfit
which looked kind of cool, too. The six of us met at Klem’s house and we
decided to go up Overmount first and then walk down from there.
By the time we got up to the top of Overmount, we were nearly halfway up to
Garrett Mountain. It was already getting dark, but no one was scared because
there were six of us together and the big kids never bothered groups of
smaller kids. Most of the candies we were getting were those cheap orange
Halloween candies, apples, chocolate kisses and other cheap crap. The only
time we really got anything good was when we hit the Schoenfeld house. They
gave us each a nickel and a Hershey’s bar. They were pretty rich and Larry
was trick or treating with some other tribe members. We said thank you and
then mentioned how lucky Larry was to be living in such a nice house with
such generous parents. After we left Larry’s house, we got to the top of
the development on Overmount and started back down the steep hill.
At Zippy’s house, we all got bananas. Zippy’s mother thought this was
hilarious, but we considered it a trick instead of a treat. It was probably
what we all deserved though, since we were always making monkey references to
Zip. Futher down the street, we got candied apples from Barbara Barnier’s
mom. She had saved them just for our group. A few of us could not wait until
we got home, so we started on the candied apple. For one of us, Frankie Klump,
to be exact, this was not a good idea. None of us had a real supper because
there was no time for a real supper on Halloween night. You ate something
quick when you got home from school and you were out of that house in ten
minutes with your outfit and bag running to where your tribe was meeting.
Anyway, Frankie got sick. He could get sick at the drop of a hat and this was
classic Frankie. The girls got grossed out and after we walked Frankie home,
we continued on, but only down Overmount.
After Patricia’s house was Diane’s house and
pizza for everyone and we stopped for a snack of
Frankie wasn’t with us or he would have gotten
mentioned him while we were having the pizza and
her mother, Betty, had made
pizza and soda. We were glad
sick again. Somebody
everyone laughed. It was
getting close to eight o’clock and we were all getting tired as well as
close to our curfew, so we all decided to take our bags of candy home. When I
got home I examined my take and it wasn’t all that much, but then again it
was a weekday night and we were only in the fourth grade. We would get more
as we got older and then when Halloween was on a Friday or Saturday, we would
make out like mad and go all night long (or as long as our parents would let
us). I couldn’t wait for next year, even though Halloween would be on a
Wednesday.
Halloween – 1959 – This was the memory of Pat Howard and his experience
of the combination of his being twelve and having Halloween on a Saturday.
“This was like planning a major bank robbery. You had the entire day and
night until about twelve midnight to get as much loot as you possibly could.
This called for being on your own, first of all. People always gave you
better candy or more money if you came to the door by yourself. You also
needed your bike for the long trip to not one, but two other developments.
Each development had 144 houses. You would be hitting over 400 houses in a
little over ten hours. That was forty houses an hour. You had to be very
efficient to pull off something like that. You wanted to save your own
development until the end, so you divided up the day into three shifts: 9-1
for the development below Great Notch Gardens, a break to eat and have a coke
and then Marvin Gardens, the development to the East of Great Notch from 2-6
and then you would race home on your bike for a quick snack and go do your
own development between 7-12. Your own development always took the most time
because people would socialize with you and you had to be polite.
The night before Halloween, I got my simple ghost outfit ready. It was just a
sheet over my head and three holes in the sheet. Two for my eyes and one for
my mouth. You couldn’t get a lamer outfit if you tried, but you didn’t
get any prizes for your costumes, you just got candy and money and you needed
something you could move fast in and ride your bike in without a problem. I
also got my spare bag ready. It was a very large reinforced shopping bag from
Macy’s that my mom had gotten on a trip to New York. I dug it our of her
closet without her knowing and I would put it back when I was finished.
It was very big and very sturdy; just the kind of bag you needed to hold 144
houses worth of loot at one time.
I woke up at seven in the morning and had a big breakfast of about six eggs
and four pieces of toast and butter and three glasses of milk. I felt a
little bloated as I mounted my bike, but the weather was cooperating
wonderfully. It was actually over 60 degrees! This meant I wouldn’t get
cold walking around and would have great weather for the whole operation. I
got on my bike and went down Rifle Camp Road and made a hairpin turn into the
next development. It was still only about 8:30 in the morning, and I wasn’t
sure if it was a good idea to start yet, but I rang the first doorbell,
anyway.
“What the hell do you want?― Some guy in a bathrobe had come to the door.
“Trick or Treat― I said.
“Get the hell out of here, its not even nine o’clock in the morning and I
haven’t finished my breakfast. Don’t you have a home?―
Fortunately for me, his wife also came to the door.
“Oh Bob, don’t be so mean, its Halloween after all and this day is for
the kids. Here you go, honey.― She slipped me a dime. I was off to a shaky,
but good start.
I encountered a few screwed up looks from people I had never met before and
some of them were totally unprepared for a Halloween kid coming to their door
in the morning, but they usually came through. Most of them gave me a nickel
or a dime and some of them gave me nickel candy bars. A very few didn’t
answer the door and a few closed it in my face and said to come back later,
but that was out of the question. To keep from being bored, I kept track of
the number of houses that didn’t participate. It was only 16. The other 128
were cooperative and my bag was brimming with booty by the time I got near
the end of the first development. I put the rope handles of the very heavy
bag over my right handlebar and then walked the bike back up to our
development. It was easier than trying to ride it because it was steeply
uphill all the way. When I got back to the house, I just dumped everything in
the bag on my bed, went to kitchen where I had prepared two baloney
sandwiches the night before and stuffed them down with some coke. It was only
about twelve. I was making good time as my father would say.
I flew back out of the house and took off on the bike to Marvin Gardens, the
next development over from ours about two miles away. I flew past May’s
Deli going at a pretty good clip on Mount Pleasant Ave. and finally got to
the beginning of Marvin. I began the whole process over again, but by this
time, there were a whole bunch of kids trying to do two developments in one
day. By the time I was about halfway through Marvin Gardens, I was getting
pretty tired. Every house had people answering now and everyone gave you
something. The bag was heavier than it was for the first development and by
the time I carried it back to my bike that was parked by May’s Deli, it had
to weigh at least fifty pounds. It was loaded with tons of money, nickel
candy bars, fruits, chocolate chip cookies and a lot of other goodies. The
people who lived in this development had a bit more money than Great Notch.
I didn’t quite fly back down Mount Pleasant Ave as fast as I had come. I
was hungry and tired and I briefly considered stopping after canvassing 288
houses, but I was determined to finish all three developments. What I really
felt like doing was to lie down and take a nap, but I would lose precious
time if I did that. I peddled the heavy bag of goodies home by around five or
so and it was time for supper. I was starved and my mother had made pot roast.
I dumped the second bag of candy on my bed and there was too much of it to
fit on there, so I emptied a few of my clothes drawers and dumped a lot of
the candy and stuff in there temporarily. I rushed through the meal and ran
back out with my mother’s bag without her seeing me bring it in or bringing
it out again. I got real lucky with that. It was almost six and completely
dark when I started doing Williams Drive from the bottom of the street. I
didn’t need my bike anymore for the operation, so I had put it away. It was
just me and the bag from here on out.
The streets were now mobbed with kids in various outfits; all of them much
better than mine, but I didn’t care about that. I just kept going all the
way around the development until I got to the end of the houses on Mount
Pleasant Avenue. I had covered all of Williams, Overmount and Morley and all
the little sidestreets in between. I hadn’t missed any of them and it was
only 11:30. Zacherley was having a special on tonight on WOR channel nine. I
couldn’t miss that. The last bag weighed almost as much as the bag I hauled
back from Marvin Gardens and now the bag was beginning to get ripped in a few
places and some of the cheaper, crappy candy began to leak out of the bag.
But it really didn’t matter. I was only a few blocks away from my house and
I easily made it up the steps to my bedroom in the attic. There I dumped the
third bag of treasure in some more drawers. Then I took the light bedspread
that was on my bed under the candy and coins and bundled up all the goodies
in it while I tied it into a knot. I was falling asleep as I made the knot
and then I just collapsed on the bed and was out cold in my ghost sheet
costume. I must have looked like a sleeping Casper. I would be missing
Zacherley, but I knew the other kids would tell me about it and I really
didn’t care at that point because I was as tired as hell. I fell asleep in
less than two minutes.
I didn’t get to count the sixteen dollars and over 200 candy bars which was
the equivalent of over eight full cases of candy until the next day. I guess
I had learned what the true spirit of Halloween for a preteen boy was all
about. Going out there and grabbing as much as you could in the time allotted.
Tales of West Paterson - Collection Day at Saint Bon's
Collection Day at Saint Bon’s
By Arthur H Tafero
In the seventh grade at Saint Bon’s, we had a traumatic experience. We were
to have a second dose of the Nun From Hell, Sister Aloysius. Sister Aloysius
had a previous reign of terror over our class in the fourth grade. We were
quite younger and smaller then and far more intimidated then we would be now
in the seventh grade. She had smacked all of us at least a half dozen times
during the year and broken well over 100 pointers and/or long rulers (mostly
on Jeffrey Lovans’ head). She would go off the deep end for the least
offense. She had been 70 in the fourth grade; she was now 73 and just as mean
and nasty. But we were much better prepared for her now. We knew what to
expect. The class was completely united in their hatred for this nun. This
was the year we were going to get even.
At the beginning of the school year in September, we were given a number of
special envelopes. These envelopes included the following. The pink envelope
was for tuition which was a whooping $2.00 a month. The green envelop was for
our bus fare to and from school; that was $1.50 a month. Then there was the
blue envelop that paid for our uniforms (two sets of official Saint Bon’s
pants and a Saint Bon’s tie that had JMJ on the front; (Jesus, Mary, and
Joseph for you heathens). The uniform envelop was $1.00 a month Finally,
there was a plain white envelop which was for an offering for the starving
children of China. It was suggested to parents that they donate at least
$1.00 a month for the starving children. The group of envelopes would be sent
home with the children whose parents would then dutifully fill out the fronts
of them and then put in the required amounts of money.
Martin Byers couldn’t speak for the other guys in the tribe, but here’s
what he did with his envelopes. He immediately opened the starving children
of China envelop and took the dollar out, made change and put a quarter back
in while resealing the envelope. That was 75 cents off the bat. Then each
month he would empty one of the other envelopes and then swear up and down
that he had given it to Sister Aloysius, who often suffered bouts of memory
loss. She would say “Here c’mere, Here c’mere― in her witchly voice
and I would innocently amble up to the front of the class. “Master Byers―
(all of the boys were called Master and the girls called Miss), I got your
Bus Fare envelope and your Uniform envelope and your Starving Chinese
Children envelope (she did not mention the paltry offering), but your Tuition
Envelope was empty― She squinted through her weasly glasses as she hissed
the last word “empteeee―. She made the Wicked Witch of the West look
pleasant by comparison.
“Sister, I am sure that when I gave it to you that it contained two dollars;
are you sure you didn’t misplace it like what happened to Frankie Fierman
last time?― She slammed her pointer hard on the desk. She stared at me for
a second as she remembered that Frankie Fierman had brought in his Tuition
envelop in the fourth grade and she had accused him of not paying the tuition
until she found it later back at the convent. She had smacked Frankie a good
one for lying and sent a nasty note back to his parents, too. When the
tuition was discovered, she made no apology to Frankie or his parents; just a
note that they no longer owed for September’s tuition. Marty Byers had
corrected all of her math papers in the fourth grade and he would be
correcting all her math papers for the seventh grade, also. She had no other
choice but to either trust him or let him get away with his crime.
“If you’re lying to me Master Byers, I will make sure you will burn in
Hell, after I tan your hide black and blue.―
“I swear on the Blessed Virgin, sister, that the money was in the
envelope―. That was the truth; the money had been in the envelope until
Marty had taken it out.
Smiling she said “Put out you hand!―. Marty knew what was coming, but it
was well worth $2.75. She smacked his left hand (he always saved his right
hand for sports) as hard as she could, but he hardly made a sound other than
“ow―. We were all a lot bigger now, and the pointer and the ruler did not
intimidate us as much as it used to. It was actually fun to see the old cow
get all flustered while she hit us with the pointer or ruler. It was almost
like a badge of courage now. Jeffrey Lovans would have had over two dozen
badges by now.
Then Marty went back to his seat, dropped his pencil and looked up Barbara
Barnier’s dress like he always did (unless he was sitting in front of
Virginia Miccio).
Doug Kingsley bent over and whispered “What are you going to do with the
money?―
“What do you think― Marty asked in a sarcastic manner.
“Baseball cards, right?―
“Yep, just as soon as lunch begins―
We always had math in the morning and the tuition incident was forgotten ten
minutes into the math lesson. Marty finished about five minutes after the
witch game him the assignment and they both knew the drill. He was to collect
and grade all the papers in the class and then she recorded the grades in her
sacred grade book. He graded the papers almost as fast as he finished the
assignments because he pretty much knew in advance what everyone’s grade
would be on the math assignment. Everyone in the class had a certain skill
level which they seldom passed or went below. The old bag hadn’t figured
that out yet. When Marty came to Doug’s paper, he always looked for the
inevitable mistakes that Doug always made and then quickly corrected them and
gave him a 90. He always left a couple of mistakes as they were so no one
would get too suspicious. Normally, he would have gotten a 60 or a 70, so he
owed Doug big time.
After math came religion, which Marty found to be extremely boring, so he
didn’t do too well in it. Marty was an 80 student in that. We would recite
the catechism answers we had memorized the night before. Sometimes Marty just
tried to wing it, but that didn’t work in religion. Bernadette Hillman was
almost always perfect in this subject and would always get 100. Sometimes she
gave her new best friend, Mary Jo Melon, a little help with the answers. Her
old best friend, Patricia Dempster, had died a year ago from leukemia in the
sixth grade. We had all been traumatized by that. We really hadn’t
considered the concept of death before that. We were assured all along that
our prayers would save Patricia, so we all prayed like maniacs for her
recovery. After she died, very few of us actually prayed for anything again
because we didn’t believe in that part of our religion anymore. Some of us
even didn’t believe in God anymore after that incident. None of us knew or
understood what leukemia was, but we sure as hell were afraid to get it
because we knew once you had it, you were a dead duck. We were sad for weeks
after Patricia died because she was one of the nicer girls. Why couldn’t
Sister Aloysius get leukemia?
It just wasn’t fair.
After religion, came English. We were learning diagrams and Marty absolutely
hated them. He liked to write stories and always got 90s when we did essays,
but when we started to do this diagram crap, Marty started getting 70s and
even Doug was getting better grades than Byers.
Marty used to laugh when he got his test papers back. Diane Palladesta was
the class expert in English and she graded the English papers. Sometimes she
gave Marty a higher grade than he deserved because he watched out for her in
math. That was the advantage of grading papers; fellow graders would always
give you a break. Marty also thought she was hot, but I don’t think she
found Marty too attractive because he was always filthy from playing various
ball games in the black gravel or flipping baseball cards on the playground.
Anyway, by the seventh grade, most of the girls were more socially mature
than most of the boys with the exception of Frank Fierman, Jackie Romanoff
and John Carrollton, who were the class lady-killers.
After an interminable time doing diagrams, it was time for lunch. Many of us
would line up across the street from the school at Tom’s Deli. Tom would
have small neat piles of cold cuts lined up ready to sell to each student as
they got to the front of the line. You had to order in just the right way or
he would say “next―. He sought of reminded me of the soup Nazi on
Seinfeld that I saw many years later. Anyway, when it was Marty’s turn, he
ordered the roast pork (it was Friday) because he wanted to commit as many
mortal sins as I could. He was still pissed off at God for letting the
Yankees lose the 1957 World Series to the Milwaukee Braves (and damn that Lou
Burdette). The sandwich was 15 cents and included mustard, lettuce and tomato.
Then Marty ordered a box of topps baseball cards for $1.80. Thirty-six packs
in a box. Pure joy faced Marty that lunch hour. He even had eighty cents plus
his daily quarter for school left. The smell of bubble gum permeated the air
as he crossed the street.
Marty quickly ate his sandwich and with his hands still greasy from the pork,
he began opening the pristine packs of 1958 baseball cards. The first thing
you noticed in opening up a fresh pack of cards was the gum dust. Fresh gum
left a bit of gum dust which entered your nose as soon as you opened the pack.
Of course, he threw the gum away because it was disgusting, but the first
pack of cards was now gleaming in the sun as he sat down in a quiet corner of
the playground. He had a Duke Snider and a Henry Aaron in the first pack.
Rocky Colovito in the second pack. Bill Skowron was his first Yankee in the
third pack. Another Yankee in the fourth pack was Yogi Berra. The fifth pack
contained Roger Maris, but he didn’t have any idea of who he was then. The
following packs contained Mickey Mantle (the original object of his desire),
a Mickey Mantle all-star card, a Ted Williams card, a Willie Mays card, a
Tony Kubec card, an Elston Howard card, a Lew Burdette card which he ripped
up immediately because of the 57 series, an Ernie Banks card, an Al Kaline
card and numerous other cards that were not stars. In addition, he got the
Yankees team card and a few other team cards which he enjoyed because he
liked to read about the records of the teams on the back. Lunch time was
almost over and Marty carefully brought the cards into the classroom and
packed them away in his book bag. He knew from experience not to let the
witch see them or they would be confiscated. She took away at least 200 of
his 1955s three years ago in the fourth grade. Luckily, there were no Mantles
in the 55 Topps set. Mantle was only in the Bowman TV cards from that year.
Marty had eleven of those.
In the afternoon we started with Science. I always enjoyed science and found
it far more interesting than religion or diagrams. Walter Zehner was the
class whiz in science, though. He would later be a major player in the
career-ending incident of Sister Aloysius. He was honest, truthful, and an
altar boy, but he was physically intimidated by the evil altar boys, Jackie
Romanoff and Bobby Carrollton. They sat close to him to get good grades in
science. After science, we had music or art. Marty loved music, but hated art
because he couldn’t draw a straight line. His friends always laughed at his
artwork, which looked like it came straight out of the second grade. Little
Judy Bangarty (yes, I know it is an unfortunate name for a girl and no, I am
not making up this name) was the class artist. When we had music a few times
a week, a civilian teacher would come in and patiently teach us about music.
That was fun for Marty. On the art days, he just zoned out. The final way of
the cross in the afternoon was History and Geography. Marty kind of enjoyed
History and reading about Geography, but he didn’t do too well when we had
to give a two minute oral presentation on a country within our Geography book.
He had, unfortunately, chose Tahiti, because he was in his sexual discovery
phase, although he didn’t know it at the time.
When it was Marty’s turn to go up in front of the class, there were a few
snickers because most of his classmates knew he almost never took anything
too seriously (except the Yankees). He usually got away with a lot in class
because he marked the math papers, but he tried not to go overboard; he
wanted to stay under the radar. This presentation did not help Marty’s case.
“The country that I chose to do my report on is Tahiti. Tahiti is actually
a possession of France, but is self-governing―
Marty was off to a good 90s kind of start.
“The geography of Tahiti is typical of most of the Polynesian islands and
quite similar to that of Hawaii which is about 3000 miles north of the island.
It is usually either sunny or rainy with high humidity and temperatures. It
never snows or even gets cold in Tahiti.―
He was smoking now. Marty was sure to get a 95. He was already up to the one
minute mark. Only a minute to go.
“Tahiti is famous for its dances and as a place where the famous artist,
Paul Gauguin, made numerous paintings of the island and its inhabitants.―
Maybe Marty would get 100!
“Tahitian dances often utilize women performing ritualistic pagan steps for
mating purposes. These dances are said to be highly suggestive.―
There was laughter and audible gasps from the class.
“That will be all Master Byers―. growled the witch.
“But I’m not finished yet, Sister. I still have some things to say about
the nude paintings of Gauguin―
More laughs and gasps.
“I don’t think so Master Byers, that will be all. Take your seat― said
the witch. Any additional words or actions would have resulted in the pointer
or the ruler smash.
“Your content was sinful, so you will receive a 60 for your grade today.
You will also be getting another 60 in Conduct.―
Marty was used to getting 60 in conduct, but he felt cheated about getting a
60 for his cool report on Tahiti. God, how he hated that old bag. Soon the
day was finished, and we all went home with our homework assignments in all
four major areas of academics. Marty was still bummed about his grade for his
oral presentation as he mounted the bus. At least he still had Mickey in his
book bag.
Tales of West Paterson - God's Retribution
God’s Retribution
By Arthur H Tafero
On occasion, our mothers would run out of bread, milk or some other staple
during the week. There was no spare car during the summer as dad worked in
the plastics factory. Most of the moms did not have a spare car at home in
the summer while the dads were at work. If you needed something, you had to
wait until the old man came home. Sometimes the moms couldn’t wait. They
would make us kids walk the mile down to the milk machine that was in front
of the local dairy. Milk was a quarter which was six cents more than it was
from May’s deli and eight more cents than it was at the Acme. But May’s
was two miles away and the acme was three miles away and if your kid didn’t
have a bike, you were out of luck because the milk would probably go bad by
the time you could walk home with it.
This one cloudy day in August, it was almost the beginning of the school year
and I was getting pretty depressed about going back to school like all the
other tribe members.
I was moping at home playing pool in the cellar on my table when my mother
asked me to ride my bike down to the Acme for a quart of milk. To save eight
cents, my mother wanted me to bike an extra four miles. That’s how our
mothers were; at least most of them. So my mother gave me exactly seventeen
cents for the milk, so I couldn’t take the easy way out and go to the milk
machine near Snake Road. But I had a quarter of my own, and I decided I would
take the easy way out; I was willing to take an eight-cent loss.
So I biked to the milk machine in less than five minutes and plunked my hardearned quarter in the machine. I really wanted to buy the chocolate milk, but
my mother NEVER brought chocolate milk in a bottle. She said it was a waste
of money because you could buy Bosco or Nesquick and make your own chocolate
milk from regular milk.
I tried to mathematically and logically explain to my mother that you
actually spent more moneyby buying Bosco or Nesquick to add to regular milk.
If you brought the chocolate milk at the same price as regular milk, what
difference would it make? You could never win these types of arguments with
my mother; I believe that is who I get my stubbornness from. Anyway, I put my
quarter in and……nothing happened. I politely pushed the return change
button and……nothing happened. It was my first experience with a vending
machine that did not deliver the product or return my money. I still had the
seventeen cents my mother had given me, but I had lost my hard-earned quarter.
Here I was, on an errand of mercy for my mother, and this is how fate was
treating me.
Well I have to admit, I lost my temper just a tad, and began to go Italian.
For those of you not familiar with the state of going Italian, let me
enlighten you. It means you turn into a raving maniac and start yelling and
screaming at the top of your lungs while smashing anything in your sight. My
mother would have ladylike fits of going Italian, and my father never went
Italian (he was English). I, however, seemed once again to have my mother’s
genes in this area. I began to swear in some wonderfully colorful language at
the top of my lungs while kicking the living poop out of this vending machine.
First, I punched the machine a few times, then I began kicking it. Then
something strange happened. One high kick that I made hit the return the
change button and I heard a clunky sound in the return slot. I checked the
return slot and there were about ten or twelve quarters in it! I had
literally hit the jackpot. I kicked it again and again I heard that wonderful
sound. I was no longer going Italian. I was ecstatic. Now I had twenty or so
quarters. Then I started to get greedy (a bad habit of mine that I’m still
working on). I kept kicking the poop out of the machine and kept getting more
and more quarters. Eventually I had over fifty quarters and that translated
in over ten dollars. That was a fortune for a kid like me (or any members of
the tribe). Then the machine started to make a funny noise. It was like a
constant hum and then it got louder and louder. I stopped kicking the machine
and rode away on the bike down up to May’s deli which was a mile closer
than the Acme and I could buy some baseball cards while I was there.
I bought the milk at Mays and wasted four cents. I also brought two boxes of
the latest series ofbaseball cards. I had already collected a massive amount
of cards for that year of 1959, but I always liked getting the whole set. On
the way back from Mays, it started to rain, but it was late August. That
meant along with the heavy rain, there was lightning and thunder. A tree in
front of me got split in half with a sizzling bolt and then a second later
you heard the clap of thunder that went with it. More of a loud crack and
blast than what you see and hear in the movies. It certainly got my attention.
You could smell both the electricity and my fear. I peddled faster, but I had
to be careful with the cars in the heavy rain and I didn’t have anything on
the bike to hold the milk. The bag got soaked and the container of milk fell
to the road and I didn’t notice it for a second or two. I did notice,
however, that when I looked back, a truck had run over the milk carton and it
was now as flat as one of our hockey pucks.
The storm got worse. Bolts of lightning were all over the place and the
sounds were jolting and loud. I will admit I was pretty scared. I felt I was
in a cosmic shooting gallery and I was one of the ducks. Now the other bag
broke and my two boxes of 1959 Topps cards fell onto the road. That was a bit
too much for me. I started yelling at the sky and cursing God for the bad
weather. I slammed on my brakes (which was not a good idea with the very
rainy road and skidded to a stop as I fell off my bike and skinned my knee. I
was getting real upset. I could see the two boxes of cards lying in the
middle of the road with rain splattering on them. They were wrapped in wax,
but they wouldn’t stay dry forever in this downpour. I circled back and a
crack of lightning hit the road right where I had been a few seconds ago.
Actually it was about fifty feet in front of where I had been a few seconds
ago. Turning back for the baseball cards had saved my life! I picked up the
two soggy boxes and they both broke in my hands and the 72 wax packs within
them splattered all over the place as the rain got so hard you could hardly
see in front of your face.
There I was, standing in a raging lightning storm, soaked to the bone,
lightning striking all over the place and the sound of it booming in my ears,
and 72 packs of new 1959 cards were getting wetter by the second. I didn’t
have much room in my genes as the quarters took up a lot of space and genes
don’t have big pockets, anyway. I stuffed a few packs in my back pocket and
a few in my front pocket and I even stuffed some wet packs down my pants. I
can tell you it was pretty uncomfortable. I almost felt like crying. You
could see the wax packs beginning to unfold in the road like flowers opening
up to the sun. The spanking brand new cards getting ruined only minutes after
I had bought them. I was only able to save about fifteen packs and the rest
were now lost in the rivery road. I could hardly make any headway on the road
back to Williams Drive because there was so much water in the road. The
wisest thing to be done would have been to find some shelter, but there was
nothing but trees but I was not dumb enough to hide under one of them during
an electrical rainstorm.
Finally, I got back to Williams Drive and there was no way I was going to be
able to peddle up that steep hill in this weather. I had to walk the bike up
the hill to our house, which was the fifth one up. A few more packs of cards
fell out of my pants as I got off the bike and started to walk up. It was
like I was crapping card packs. The scrape on my knee was still bleeding as I
got to the house. The lightning had subsided, but the rain was as heavy as
ever.
“Thank God!― my mother exclaimed as she met me at the door.
“Leave that bike outside!―
“But it will rust―
“I don’t want that mess in my kitchen or living room!―. My mother was
yelling through the heavy rain, but, then again, she always yelled in these
situations regardless of the weather. So I left m bike outside in the storm.
“I couldn’t get to the store in time to get the milk―
“That’s ok sweetie, as long as you are safe, that’s all that
matters.―
Just then two packs fell out of my pants in front of my mother. Just then, I
felt I would be better off outside in the thunderstorm.
Tales of West Paterson - The Memorial Day Weekend
The Memorial Day Weekend
By Arthur H Tafero
It was the Memorial Day Weekend in 1959. The weekend began with the
anticipation of the Babe Ruth league opener on Saturday morning down at the
Kearfotts factory lot. Ronny Vitale was pitchingfor the Dolly Madison Ice
Cream Senators against the Lazzara Italian Bakery Philles. The Philles were
really horrendous because they had the Konzelman twins from Saint Bon’s as
their two pitchers and they stunk. James and Jackie Konzelman had only one
pitch, a fastball, that you could easily time and give a good ride to. Ronny,
on the other hand, had learned a changeup, a nickel curve and a palmball;
anything to get the hitter off stride from his decent fastball. He was
supremely confident that he would whip either one of them in the game.
The weekend started in grand fashion on Friday night as the latest episode of
the “Twilight Zone― featured this old woman living on a deserted farm who
was fighting off tiny aliens with little ray guns. Ronny loved the surprise
ending where the tiny aliens turn out to be American astronauts and the old
lady on the farm turns out to be a giant alien. God, was that cool! It was
the best Twilight Zone ever, and that was saying a lot because there were a
lot of good ones. After the Twilight Zone, it was time for “Have Gun, Will
Travel― with Richard Boone as Paladin and his Chinese servant, Heyboy.
Paladin was paid to protect this lady on a stagecoach to Saint Louis and he
winds up falling in love with her. Ronny hated romantic westerns, but my
mother liked this episode. Anyway, how could a beautiful woman fall in love
with a guy with more holes on his face than a golf course and a nose like
Rudolf? The next show was “Sea Hunt― with Lloyd Bridges as a deep-sea
diver who was hired to find some treasure. Ronny loved treasure situations on
TV. It turned out that the guy who hired Bridges tries to kill him underwater
once the treasure has been found. Bridges “winged― him with an underwater
speargun (all the guys in the tribes wanted one of those) and the issue of
the treasure was never resolved. It was a bit disappointing because Ronny
considered the treasure far more important than either the evil treasure
hunter or Lloyd.
When the next show came on, Ronny went upstairs to the attic where his room
was now and made sure he had everything ready for the big game on Saturday.
His rubber spikes were clean, his glove was oiled, his wooden bat was
properly taped, the peak of his cap was tied tightly to obtain just that
right look of the curved peak that the cool players had and my uniform and
washed, cleaned and pressed by his fastidious mother. He would be wearing his
game sox very high, as was the style of the better dressed players then.
Ronny had the theory that if you looked better than the other pitcher, you
already had a slight advantage. He believed that clothes did make the man. It
was time for the news and Ronny could get all the ball scores, so he ran back
downstairs to catch the sports. He was a little early, and got most of the
news, which Ronny hated to hear.
“More advisors were sent to South Vietnam, today―. Who cares.
“Stocks were up in brisk trading today. Who cares.
“The weather looks good all weekend―. That was good news for a change.
“And here are the latest scores―. Ronny ignored the National League
scores because they were totally unimportant. The Orioles had won again and
their young pitching actually looked better than what the Yankees had, but
the White Sox were off to a tremendous start and were already way ahead of
the Yanks, who were struggling with injuries this year.
“The White Sox 9 and the Indians 4― Damn, another nail in the coffin.
Speaking of coffins, Zacherley and the late monster movie was about to come
on and Ronny and his parents never missed that. Mr. Vitale had left about a
half hour ago to buy some texas wieners from Libby’s. This would be a nice
little extra treat, Mrs. Vitale
Had egged him on go out and get some goodies. She said you can afford it this
week.
Mr. Vitale had won the baseball pool yet again at work. For those of you who
are uninitiated, the baseball pool quite simply works like this: There were
eight teams in each league. You got to draw a team out of a hat and if they
got the most runs for the week, you won $20. That was almost half a week’s
pay back then. If you had a stinky team, it didn’t matter, because there
was a $10 prize for the lowest amount of runs scored for the week, also. So
you would be in contention to win either way for almost the entire week. I
followed the pool results religiously as only a baseball junkie could. This
week my father had had the Kansas City Athletics. Now theirpitching was
horrendous, but they could hit and were on a winning streak (because they
hadn’t been playing the Yankees, White Sox or Orioles). They had scored 13
runs on Monday (there was an extra $5 for any team that scored 13 runs in a
game, too), 17 runs on Tuesday and 12 runs on Wed. Thursday, they only scored
4 runs but tonite they had scored 8 more runs. The Saturday and Sunday
previous (the pool ran from Saturday to Friday nite), they had scored 15 runs,
so they had 69 runs for the week. More than enough to beat the second place
White Sox at 58 runs. Mr. Vitale had won 25 big ones.
This could only mean one thing. Ronny, his brother Skippy, and his mom and
dad would all be having French fries and THREE hot dogs all the way instead
of our usual two. They would also have onion rings and malteds all around.
His father had spent $4.40 on all this. This was a lot of money in those days,
but he was still ahead $20. He and Mrs. Vitale would be going out to Bingo on
the weekend for sure now.
Ron used to go with them for awhile because he liked the numbers and they
gave him a few free boards, but he never seemed to win. So eventually, he
stopped going with them and hung out with his friends, instead. Mrs. Vitale
was commenting it was too much food for late at night, but she polished off
all her onion rings and French fries as well as two of the hot dogs. Mr.
Vitale and Ron squared off for the final hot dog that Mrs.Vitale left behind.
Skippy was completely out of the running because he was too young to vie.
“Why don’t you boys split the last dog―. Mrs. Vitale suggested
diplomatically.
“The kid can have it―. His father was feeling magnanimous. Ronny gobbled
it up in seconds. We continued to watch the rest of Zacherley and “The
Return of the Mummy― which was highly enjoyable, when our stomachs began to
make strange sounds.
The Vitales hardly ever consumed so much heavy food late at night like this.
It was only on special occasions like Christmas Eve or birthdays that they
did. He guessed everyone’s digestive systems weren’t use to this kind of
abuse.
“O my God, Honey!―
Ronny’s mother scampered away from Mr. Vitale on the couch and sat down
next to me while laughing hysterically. Then I smelled why she had done so.
“Jeez, dad, whatever you do, don’t light a match for your pipe―
Mr. Vitale began to laugh hysterically, also. This meant there was much more
on the way. Ronny’s mother ran out of the room, still laughing. Ronny’s
own digestive system started to kick in. He cut loose a blast that made the
blinds rattle.
“O Ronald, not you too, O my God!― His mother now ran into the kitchen
and Ronny could faintly hear her delivering the goods also. He could tell
because whenever she did, she started to laugh hysterically for no reason at
all.
“Ma, I was going to get a drink of water, but I don’t think its safe to
go in the kitchen either―
Ronny’s mother was crying tears of laughter by now.
His father was still letting go a volley on the couch. There seemed to be a
small brown cloud hanging over the living room.
“Jeez, dad, I give up, you win― And both Ronny and Skippy ran to the
bathroom gagging.
The brothers could still hear both of their parents laughing hysterically as
Ronny was running the water in the bathroom sink. He stuck his head under the
faucet and gulped an inordinate amount of water; then he brushed his teeth
and ventured back out to the living room. As he left, his brother Skippy
asked:
“Do you think its safe to go out there yet?―
Ronny was still in tears from laughing. His mother was back on the couch with
his father as a truce had been struck. She still had tears on her cheeks from
laughing. His father was in his shorts and now there was a western on the
Late Late Show.
It wasn’t over.
An Indian shot his horse because it had a broken leg. At that precise moment
in time, Mr. Vitale cut loose again and Ronny did too; almost at the same
time.
“We shot the horse, too, dad― he added.
Skippy went running back to the bathroom and locked the door.
“I can’t breathe in there!― he yelled.
Once again Ronny’s mother ran out into the kitchen laughing and screaming
and the whole scenario repeated itself. From then on, whenever any of us saw
or heard something on TV about a cowboy shooting his horse, we would
automatically break out in hysterical laughter and none of our friends and
neighbors knew why.
The next morning, Ronny had a pretty sour taste in his mouth and he brushed
his teeth again. He wasn’t too hungry for breakfast, but he knew he had a
big game at 10 am, so he waited for Sal to come over before eating.
“So how’s the arm?― asked Sal after he arrived.
“It’s fine, you want some eggs?―
“Nah, my mom made me Taylor Ham and eggs for breakfast. I heard your pop
hit the big pool this week―.
Yeah, and he also hit a few big ones last night, too, Ronny thought to
himself.
“Yep, and I’m feeling the effects of partying last night this morning,
but I’ll be ok. Let’s take our bikes down early so we can warm up―
“K―
So the two of them biked down Williams Drive and then down Rifle Camp Road
until they came to McBride Avenue next to the Kearfott factory. There were a
few of the players from both teams, their parents and some of their friends.
Might have been almost a hundred people there. There was already burgers and
dogs on some grills behind the backstop and plenty of beer and soda in
buckets of ice for the sons and their parents. The last thing Ronny wanted
was soda. He was looking for water and Sal passed him his canteen.
“The water fountains don’t go on until the first of July. You can keep
the canteen until after the game―
“Thanks Sal―.
The game started and neither team scored for the first three innings. Ron was
feeling pretty good and had good command of his pitches. Sal had a single in
the second inning, but that was the only hit for either team. Ronny noticed
that some of the better hitters on the Philles were digging in at the plate,
so he hit one of them in the back with a fastball. That stopped that problem.
He gave up two hits in the fifth, but got out of the jam. His control was
really on today. Ronny’s team finally broke through in the sixth inning and
scored three runs. That made his day a lot more enjoyable. At least it was
enjoyable until he batted in the seventh inning. With two outs and nobody on,
Jimmy Kenzleman was pitching a pretty good game himself, except for that bad
sixth inning. He decided to get even for Ronny hitting one of his players in
the fourth inning. He busted a nice fastball right into the right cheek of
Ronny’s butt. It stung like hell. He could hardly walk straight and he
couldn’t come out to pitch the eighth or ninth innings. Davy Van Weston
took his place and finished the game up by allowing them only one run.
Ronny’s team won 3-1, but he was real uncomfortable. He couldn’t walk and
he couldn’t sit down. All he could do was stand around.
Back at the house, his mother and father started the grill in the backyard,
and Ronny began to get hungry again. No matter how hungry he got though, he
could not stand his mother’s potato salad. It was disgusting. His mother
was a great cook and he loved about twenty of her meals and dishes, but this
was, by far, her worst one. He couldn’t tell if dad ate it because he was
afraid of mom or if he really liked the large chunks of semi-cooked potatoes
with way too much mayonnaise and not enough vinegar. He had become spoiled by
May’s Deli German potato salad and her other potato salad with mayo and
vinegar. Anyway, he opted for the macaroni salad, burgers and large slices of
Jersey tomatoes. He had to eat standing up while watching the Yankee game.
They were losing again; it didn’t look like a good year for them. After
showering and a change of clothes, Sal came over and they both left to meet
their two movie dates for the early Saturday nite movie in downtown Paterson
at the US. Ronny said a rare prayer that his father did not have any remnants
from the last evening of fun.. He was taking Patricia Pride and Sal was
taking Cynthia Rossi. They were going to see “North By Northwest―. Mr.
Vitale was dropping them off and would pick them up at ten.
The movie was real good and the girls were impressed. It was pretty expensive
though, having to pay for the girls. The movie was 75 cents and popcorn and
soda was fifty cents. It was a three buck night and that was a lot of money
for a 1959 seventh grader. After the movie they went for some ice cream; the
girls treated the both of them, so that wasn’t too bad. Then they found a
dark corner and kissed for about ten minutes and then went back to the
theater to get picked up by Mr. and Mrs.Vitale. All in all, it was pretty
much a fun nite. They dropped off the girls and then Sal stayed over at
Ronny’s house for the night. They were a bit tired, so they went to sleep
about 1 am. They started to talk about the game and then just dozed off.
Sunday morning, Ronny’s parents picked both him and Doug up and after
church they went to the Dolly Madison Ice Cream Parlor, which was the sponsor
for their Babe Ruth baseball league team. They were now 1-0 and tied for
first thanks to the opening day win, and the owner, Jerry, was very happy
about that, so he gave Ronny a dozen of his famous custard-filled donuts for
free that Sunday. Ronny made a small bag for Sal and gave him three of them.
Then they dropped Sal off so he could share them with his mom and dad.
The Vitales went back home and unwrapped these beautiful gems of pastry. The
donuts were as fat as a large apple and covered by a very thin crust of donut
dough. There was almost no dough at all inside the donuts, just tons of
delicious custard. Ron had two and his father had two, Skippy had two, but
his mom could only eat one. Again, his mother suggested we divide the last
two, but this time, Mr. Vitale was not so magnanimous, he took one of the
last two donuts. He had always had a sweet tooth. That left one for both
Ronny and Skippy to share. Ronny took the bigger half and Skippy complained,
but no one listened. Ronnie said he would never have a donut since that time
that was half as good as these.
On Sundays, Mrs. Vitale always made homemade Ravioli and mushroom sauce along
with freshly grated Reggiano parmigian cheese. For the uninitiated, Reggiano
is known among the Italians as the King of Cheeses. It is aged at least two
and a half years and cost over $2.00 a pound in 1959. It cost more than a
filet mignon steak, but it was worth it. His mother made 48 large ravioli for
the four of them. Six for her and 14 each for Ronnie, his brother and his dad.
The way they ate, you would think his mother and father would both weigh 300
pounds, but they were both thin. Ronny and Skippy were thin, too. It was
truly amazing all of them were not overweight. But if you thought about it,
his father worked on his feet all day as did his mother at home and both boys
played some type of ball any time they were not in school.
Monday was Memorial Day and they stayed up late for a change on that Sunday
night. Ronnie didn’t get that usual Sunday depression that he usually got
on Sunday nites. The Ed Sullivan Show was not the end of the line that night.
They all watched some mundane western on Million Dollar Movie, chuckled at a
scene where a horse was injured and had to be shot, and then everyone went to
bed. Tomorrow was a Yankee doubleheader; maybe the Yanks would do better.
Tomorrow was also the Veteran’s parade and Ronnie’s father would march in
it. He marched every year. He still fit in his uniform, although it was a bit
tight now. It must have been all those Libby hot dogs and mom’s Ravioli.
The resey opened tomorrow, too, so it was going to be a busy day. Ronnie
loved going to the resey, which was short for reservoir. Everyone was
actually swimming in their drinking water, but no one saw the problem with
that then. It was still a little too cool for most parents to go swimming at
the end of May, but Ronnie, Skippy and his father loved to swim any time.
Ronny’s mother stayed on the beach with the food and drinks in the shade of
the trees on the shore. West Paterson families worked hard and lived hard on
the weekends and holidays and this was a big one. After listening to the
first game of the doubleheader and having a few sandwiches and sodas, they
all headed home around four. Ronny still had to study for his final exams and
get ready for school on Tuesday. He had practice on Wednesday and had a few
lawns to mow for money during the week. He got tired just thinking about it
as the family stopped at a Dairy Queen on the way back from the Resey for
some Hot Fudge Sundaes. For supper that night, they just had fruit that mom
had cut up; apples, pears, cherries, plums and oranges. Then Ronny fell off
to a dreamy sleep by nine o’clock.
Tales of West Paterson - The Bike Safari
The Bike Safari
By Arthur H Tafero
By the time the tribe was in the seventh grade, we rode our bikes everywhere.
We would go to places where we were allowed to go and then go to places where
we weren’t allowed to go (like Downtown Paterson past the falls). One
Saturday afternoon, after we had watched all the good shows on TV, we would
have a hearty lunch of cold cut sandwiches and chocolate milk and then
congregate down the local playground. Sometimes there were so many of us, we
forgot about our bikes and played a couple of hardball games until supper.
Once in a while though, there wouldn’t be enough members in the tribe to
play a regular hardball game andwe would break off into small groups on our
bikes and head to various points of interest. Some groups would head for
GarretMountain and hang out by the lake that day. Other groups would bike to
the new super store in the area, Two Guys From Harrison, and look at all the
stuff they wanted to buy, but couldn’t afford. Sometimes, they created five
finger discounts for themselves. And then there was the little group of
hearty explorers which included myself, Doug, Hatchie, Pat, and Ronnie, who
would brazenly defy all of our parents instructions and go well beyond the
limits set by them. It was generally known that our limit was the end of
McBride Avenue when it met Spruce Street, a main thoroughfare of downtown
Paterson.
Beyond McBride Avenue in 1959 was as foreign to us as astronauts going to the
moon.
That one summer Saturday we just decided that we would take a few bucks each
and explore what was beyond McBride Avenue.
“If we can get to the US theater before two o’clock, we can still catch
the matinee price (which was 25 cents)― Doug mentioned the first few yards
as we rolled down Rifle Camp Road.
“Yeah? What’s playing this week?― That was my cue as the resident film
critic.
“Well, the best bet is the US. It has sex and science fiction.― We were
all interested in sex and science fiction.
“The sex movie is “Attack of the Jungle Women―. That sounded
interesting to all four of us for a variety of reasons I won’t go into.
“The main feature (which was always shown last) is “Journey to the Center
of the Earth― which we had all heard was good.
“Well you can’t beat a double feature like that― added Doug.
“Yeah. I saw the coming attractions for “Journey to the Center of the
Earth”. It looks great!” Hatchie said enthusiastically.
“I want to see “The Nun’s Story―, said Ronnie. Ronnie was a heathen
protestant and was fascinated by nuns because he had never seen one close up.
“If you spent one day with Sister Aloysius, you’d never want to see a nun
ever again― warned Doug.
“Yeah, I’ve heard about her― added Hatchie. We had come to the end of
the development on Rifle Camp Road. We would be taking a left down the hill
at May’s deli to get to McBride Avenue in a few minutes. We were peddling
at a very leisurely pace and were in no particular hurry.
“What’s playing with “The Nun’s Story―?
“Attack of the Giant Leeches― It seemed like we were being attacked by
one thing or another every week of the year in the movies.
“That sounds like it sucks”. Everyone laughed at Hatchie’s bad joke.
The Capitol Theatre always showed the suckiest movies for kids.
“I almost never go to the Capitol― said Doug.
“Me either― I added.
“What’s playing at the Majestic?― said Ronnie in a very low tone. The
Majestic had a very bad reputation in the Development for showing
“questionable― films. The Catholic Legion of Decency had condemned at
least forty of their last fifty movies over the last year. That naturally
made it a target of interest for guys like us.
“The Aligator People is the first movie. That sounds pretty boring to me,
but at least they aren’t attacking anything.― That got a bit of a chuckle.
“The second film is something called “Macumba Love”. I’ve never heard
of it.―
“It has to be objectionable in part, at the very least―. We were now
speaking in the Catholic-speak of the Advocate, the ultra-religious Catholic
newspaper which some of our parents brought home.
“Unless its condemned, I don’t want to see it― mentioned Hatchie.
“Well, there’s a good mathematical chance of that―. At least one movie
they show every week has been condemned in over forty of the last weeks―.
We were on McBride avenue now going past Saint Bon’s and coming to the last
blocks before we got to the falls on Main Street.
“We could never get in. You have to be 18 or accompanied by an adult to get
into the Majestic― Ronnie knew his law. But at least he had forgotten about
“The Nun’s Story―.
“Well, I guess it’s the US, then.― We continued to peddle past
Libby’s and now we were in unchartered territory. A right at the waterfalls
and we were finally on Main Street. It was still only 12:30 and the double
bills didn’t start until 1:00. We parked our bikes in front of the US
theatre with the other bikes; this was before bike chains when people
didn’t steal somebody’s bike. We were like kids in a candy store. There
were so many shops and stores, we didn’t know where to go to first. Then I
noticed a little sign in a Bryer’s Ice Cream Store (they were the major
competitor of Dolly Madison ice cream).
The sign said “Comics 2 cents each―. My head began to swim. Was this
possible?
“Hey, guys, lets go in here!― They followed me in. I saw about six
cardboard boxes of comic books in the back of the store. My heart began to
flutter.
“O my God!― said Doug as he began to sift through almost a whole box of
Western comics. I was rummaging through the Science Fiction and Horror comics,
but what I really had my eye on was the bulging box of what was called
“animal― comics. That included Donald Duck, Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Tom
and Jerry, Uncle Scrooge, Daffy Duck and many many others. It had over 100
comics and stories and about 50 Donalds and Scrooges. I tried not to look too
obvious. We each bought about 25 comics each and spent our first fifty cents.
I had a slew of Donald Ducks and Uncle Scrooges and a few EC horror comics,
so I wouldn’t look like a kid. Doug opted for almost all Roy Rogers, Lone
Rangers, and Hopalong Cassidys.
Hatchie had almost all war comics and a few Bob Hopes and Bilkos. Ronnie, who
had eclectic taste, took almost all movie comics and a few Davy Crocketts. We
had all gone through our Davy Crockett phase a few years back, but Ronnie was
still into it. He still had his coonskin cap, his fringe jacket and brown
leather pants. He also occasionally wore the leather moccasins that finished
the outfit. At least he had stopped playing with his Old Betsy rifle. Red
Ryders were much more fashionable now.
“Hey, its almost one― Doug was always the most responsible of the tribe.
We took our treasure and ambled across the street to the US. We had to be
careful, there were so many cars coming and going and we weren’t used to
using crossing lights.
“Damn, there’s a lot of cars on this street―.
“Well what do you expect, cows?―
We strode up the movie house window.
“Four for the matinee” I said in my best adult voice”
“Sorry sonny, but the first feature is for over 13 or adult companion and I
don’t see either in your group.―
“What! Attack of the Jungle Women is objectionable in part?―
“Sure is sonny. They wear some pretty skimpy outfits in that one―. Sorry.
Next!― Although that bit of information was titillating to us, it did not
help our situation.― We walked away dejectedly from the US.
“Well at least we found some cool comics― offered Ronnie.
“Aw, that’s kid stuff, I wanted to see an objectionable movie― said
Hatchie boldly.
We continued to amble down toward the Capitol theatre. I dreaded seeing a
movie about nuns, but it looked like we had no choice, because if we had
trouble getting into the US, we wouldn’t get into the Evil Majestic theater
on a bet.
The marquee said it all; “The Nun’s Story― with smaller letters
underneath that said “Attack of the Giant Leeches―.
Unfortunately, we ran into the same problem at the Capitol theater.
“Damn― said Hatchie.
“We’re doomed― said Doug.
“This sucks― said Ronnie.
“Let’s walk down to the Majestic and at least see the movie posters― I
said. All three theaters were in relatively close proximity to each other. No
more than six blocks apart.
As we approached the Majestic, we noticed the shops and stores were a little
bit seedier, the people hanging around them seemed to be a little more
suspicious-looking, and there weren’t too many young people or women around.
Just before we got to the majestic, some grubby guy with whiskers and a
smelly breath came up to us.
“Hey, boys, you want to get into the movie? I’ll get you all in for a
buck, but you gotta pay for your own admissions― We all thought it over for
a second and it was getting pretty hot in the midday sun and the theatre was
air-conditioned. I collected a quarter from everyone and we handed the guy a
dollar,
“I heard “Macumba Love” is on the condemned list and it’s a mortal
sin to see a condemned movie.―
“Great, we can all go to hell then― I added.
“Let’s Go―, said Hatchie.
So we took his offer and he brought five tickets. He disappeared as soon as
we got in the theater. We sat in the very last row so we would not be
conspicuous. We had missed the coming attractions and the first few minutes
of “The Alligator People”, but we weren’t concerned about that now. We
were much more concerned about being discovered by the “authorities―.
They were sure to arrest us and take us down the station where they would
call our parents to pick us up for seeing a condemned movie without adult
supervision. We decided to forego the usual popcorn and coke because we
didn’t want to arouse suspicion, but as “The Alligator People― finished
and the intermission lights went on, we had to cower very low in our seats.
After what seemed an eternity, the lights went back off and the main feature
began, “Macumba Love―, a tale of discovery in the Congo. They did not
mention what type of discovery they were talking about, but we were about to
find out.
“Boy, that first movie really sucked― said Hatchie.
“Shhh” added Doug. “Keep it low!”
The second film began with crappy credits, so it looked to me like it would
be two bombs in a row, but at least we were staying cool in the airconditioning which none of us was used to. The movie started with a small
riverboat going down the Congo River. Two white hunters in full regalia
leaned over the front of the boat and the meaningful dialogue began:
“Well, Doctor Jones, we will be reaching the area we have been researching
in a few hours―
“Yes, Doctor Smith, I am very excited about that. We will finally be able
to verify our theories on the mating habits of the Macumba tribe―
“Yes, that is true. We will most likely get the Nobel Prize for our
research. I can’t wait to get into those bushes.―
After a horrendous cut to obvious stock footage, you saw actual tribal dances
in front of a raging fire.
The riveting plot and dialogue continued.
“Well Doctor Smith, now that we have this scientific proof of the Macumba
Love mating dance, we need to get it safely back to America, so we can send
it in for the Nobel Prize―
“Yes, Doctor Jones, you are right. We should get going back down the river
with this precious film. I will arrange for transportation for the morning―
“That is a good idea, Doctor Smith, I will guard the camera while you sleep
for the first four hours and then you can guard the camera for four hours
while I sleep―.
“Ok, then, I will sleep for the next four hours―
(Camera shows Doctor Smith sleeping and cuts to clock on table)
“Time to get up, Doctor Smith―. He shakes Doctor Smith.
“It’s your turn to sleep four hours, Doctor Jones―.
(Camera shows Doctor Jones sleeping and cuts to clock on table).
I will not torture you with either the balance of this plot or dialogue other
than to let you know that both Doctor Jones and Smith are rewarded with the
Nobel Prize at the end of the film as they both show the committee and the
movie audience the mating dance once again. I know that “Attack of the
Killer Tomatoes” and “Plan 9 From Outer Space” are considered two of
the worst movies ever made, but I am fairly sure the people who have
designated the above films as the worst ever made may not have seen
“Macumba Love―.
As the credits were rolling, we quickly ran out of the Majestic and back to
our bikes. Amazingly, it was only four o’clock. We put our bags of comics
on our handlebars and tied them up with some string and headed back to the
development. There was a great deal of dialogue that I will spare you about
breasts and other childhood fantasies. As we passed Libby’s on the way back,
we were tempted to stop for a Texas weiner or two, but decided we better get
back in plenty of time so we could do this again on another Saturday; say
next Saturday? We heard the Majestic would be playing “Amazon Women In
Captivity―. We were really looking forward to that one.
Tales of West Paterson - Biking Up Garrett Mountain
Biking up Garrett Mountain
By Arthur H Tafero
Some days near the end of the summer, when we were a bit tired of going to
the resey, playing ball, or reading comics, we would get on our bikes and
explore all the areas surrounding West Paterson. Occasionally, we would get
into trouble, fights with kids from other neighborhoods or going to places we
shouldn’t have been going to (like the adult movies at the Majestic
Theater). But most of the time, we just had good clean fun exploring nature
and rest of the world outside of the development.
One day a tribe about nine of us decided to bike up to Garrett Mountain. The
work biking was actually a misnomer. No one actually biked up Overmount
Avenue to Garret Mountain; it was far too steep. I think an Olympic athlete
would have trouble biking up that mountain street. It was over a sixty degree
angle straight up for well over a mile. We peddled from Morley Drive about a
block or two up Overmount and then we just got off and walked our bikes the
rest of the way until we got to the flat top of the mountain.
It was me, Doug, Hatchie, Frankie, Tom, Art, Ronny, Jackie, Sal, and Larry.
We all had canteens strapped to our jeans because veteran tribal members knew
that you could get pretty thirsty during August no matter where you went when
you left the development. If you stayed in the development, you never needed
the canteens because you get water from any house; especially if you used the
hoses that were on almost every lawn. If you went into the woods or outside
of the development, however, you needed the canteens.
We were sweating profusely as we walked our bikes up the steep incline. The
houses began to diminish in number. The street began to narrow. Soon there
were no more houses; just the road and woods. Then, quite suddenly, the road
to began to level again. It was level enough for us to ride instead of
walking our bikes. It was still going upward, but the incline was much less.
Still, the slight incline was very demanding and we were all sweating like
little pigs. We all kept taking sips from our canteens and almost half our
water was gone already. It was then we came to a beautiful mountain lake. It
glistened in the sun like a shiny new car. The sight of water decreased our
thirst. We all biked over to the edge of the lake, took off our socks and
sneakers, rolled up our pants and waded in to refill our canteens. After we
refilled our canteens, it occurred to us there was no reason for us not to go
for a swim (except the sign that said “no swimming in the lake― that was
prominently displayed all over the place. It was just so hot and we were
young sweaty boys wading in thewater already. It was inevitable that we would
start swimming and fooling around in the water. Douglas mentioned the signs,
but we ignored him and kept swimming and playing. All nine of us were in the
water when we noticed a police car pull up. We all started to swim for the
shore and a large, rotund police officer got out of the car and approached
the edge of the lake.
“Can’t you boys read!― he yelled out loud enough for Zacherley to hear
him.
He began ranting at no one in particular.
“You know there is a fine for swimming in this lake. You could easily drown
out there because there is no lifeguard―
We wanted to tell him that some of us were junior lifeguards at the resey,
but no one dared to talk to a policeman in those days. You just did what they
said.
We quickly put on our socks and sneakers and got on our bikes.
“I’m going to let you boys go with a warning this time since you are
strangers to this area, but next time your parents will have to pick you
up!―
That was all he had to say for us to scamper out of there quickly on our
bikes.
The police car continued to follow us up the mountain for a little bit and
then rode on ahead for some other troublemakers. It seemed someone was
fishing where there was not supposed to be fishing. Thank God for the
multitude of lawbreakers like ourselves. Now someone else was in the hot seat.
We continued biking up the mountain.
Once again we came to a large, relatively flat area of meadows that ended in
an extremely steep decline to the city of Paterson. You could almost see the
entire city well over a thousand feet below in a vast, panoramic view. It was
quite an impressive and breathtaking sight. We all just got off of our bikes
and looked down below for several minutes. We were all tired, but the view
was exhilarating and we didn’t want to rush it. In fact, there was very
little we rushed about in those days, unless it was to get to a ball game. We
were all pretty tired from the biking and the swimming and some guys had been
smart enough to pack a baloney sandwich or two with them for the trip. I
always knew that Doug would have at least two baloney sandwiches with him. He
was always prepared (much more than Delphino and Topozzi, who were boy scouts,
but had no sandwiches). Doug always gave me one of his sandwiches because he
would always be eating spaghetti over my mother’s house and couldn’t get
that good stuff at his house. Mrs. Kingsley was a great meat cooker (actually
better than my mother with beef), but when it came to pasta, it was strictly
Ayrian amateur hour.
After we had our sandwiches with about half a canteen of water. Some of us
just laid right down in the middle of the meadow with a gentle breeze blowing
on us from the top of the mountain, and fell into a blissful sleep. A few of
the guys who were hungry couldn’t take it anymore and started out back for
home, but those of us who had a simple baloney sandwich on Wonderbread with
Gulden’s mustard and a bit of water were already dreaming about how we
would explain away the fines we would have gotten from the police officer at
the lake, had we been taken in.
Tales of West Paterson - The Freedom of the 8th Grade
The Freedom of the Eighth Grade
By Arthur H Tafero
After our second and final year of torture with Sister Aloysius, we were
blessed with a nun who let us find a sort of completion of the grammar school
experience. Sister Regina knew the vast majority of us would be going on to
either Saint Bonaventure High School or Passaic Valley Regional High School.
One or two would be going to special academic schools like Dom Bosco Prep or
Seton Hall Prep; very trendy, expensive prep schools for rich kids. And
inevitably, one or two of us would be moving away from West Paterson and
going to foreign high schools in far away cities. This had happened over the
last summer to Ronnie, who lived two doors away and was only one year older
than myself.
He had gone to public school, but we were pretty good friends and he had
always been a staple of the boy tribes. His father, Vincent Vitale, has
whisked him and his younger brother away to a town in South Jersey called
Woodridge. It was somewhere between Paterson and Asbury Park. We never saw
Ronnie again.
But life went on in West Paterson after Mr. Vitale and Ronnie left. The
Amvets were taken over by another coach, Mr. McCallen, who turned a winning
team into a losing one. Guys were begging to go on the Indians over that
summer, but we had a full roster and Mr. Kingsley was really enjoying socking
it to the Amvets and all the other mediocre teams in the little league. We
were all twelve now and would be turning thirteen by the next spring, so this
was the last year of little league for almost all of us. The next year, if
you were good enough, you could play for the Kearfott Senators, who were the
Babe Ruth league entry for West Paterson within the Passaic Valley Babe Ruth
Association. It was a step up and a few of the spazzes had to be left behind
because they couldn’t cut it at the next level. We kind of missed the less
talented players like Eugene Timmins and Larry Schoenfeld who couldn’t
catch or hit.
But those events wouldn’t take place until April; it was September of 1960
and change was in the air. The whole school was excited that a Catholic, John
F Kennedy, had been nominated for president. Only the Kenzleman brothers were
for Nixon and everyone made fun of them for that. My mother, Mary, had almost
passed out when Kennedy had gotten the nomination at the Democratic
Convention. I had done the math and told her it was a sure thing to reach
that magic number of delegates you needed to get the nomination. I had to
admit, though, it was a pretty exciting convention to watch. Kennedy’s main
competition was Hubert Humphrey from Minnesota and it looked for a few months
like Humphrey would hold Kennedy off in the primaries. But then Kennedy went
in front of the West Virginia Coalition of Religious Leaders, which was
mostly Baptists, and declared his strong belief in the separation of church
and state. It convinced the ministers and the people of West Virginia and
Kennedy won a big upset in that primary. After that, Kennedy seemed to gain
momentum.
Of course all the priests and the nuns were for Kennedy. Most of them were
Irish, which made it twice as likely they would be supporting him. Konzleman
would say that Kennedy’s father was a gangster who ran rum, but we all
laughed at that allegation. No, we preferred to listen to the man who wrote
“Profiles in Courage―, which we all read. I had to admit, I thought is
was a little boring and not all that inspirational. “PT 109―, on the
other hand, was definitely cool because it had war action in it. Almost the
entire class was on pins and needles for the November election. Everything in
school seemed to slow down and become secondary to the election. Would this
be the end of the Eisenhower years? What was it that people didn’t trust
about Richard Nixon? He seemed like a stand-up fellow. I even listened to
Jimmy Konzleman read off a litany of Nixon’s attributes, but it was no sale.
Then came election day on Tuesday in November. We had school as usual, but
everyone including Sister Regina, was just going through the motions of
school. You could sense there was something electric in the air. Something
big was going to happen.
It seemed almost impossible that Kennedy could win, and the nuns and priests
said they would be praying overtime for him, but the polls showed Kennedy
behind by a few points and everyone believed what they read in those days. My
mother said she was voting for Kennedy and she didn’t mind who knew it and
that dad better vote for him, too, because Nixon was no war hero like Ike. My
father had always voted for Ike, but my mother was a closet Socialist (a
reaction to being raised in Fascist Italy during Mussolini), and she had
voted for Stevenson in 56. So had the Howard family and many others in the
development.
The early returns were coming in from a few of the Northeast states like New
Hampshire and Vermont, whose polls closed early. Nixon had the early lead in
both states. My mother looked glum and I tried to cheer her up. My father had
gone out for White Castle hamburgers and onion rings. It was going to be
another aromatic evening.
Even though it was a school night, Sister Regina had not given any of us
homework, which was very unusual. She said for us to say a prayer for our
nation and that God would inspire Americans to make the right choice, whoever
that was. She tried to be as even-handed about the election as possible and
not show her obvious preference. The rest of the nuns and priests were not
quite as even-handed. They flat-out wanted Nixon to lose.
The night moved on, and my father returned with the wonderful aroma of White
Castles and onion rings. We popped open a large Dad’s Root Beer and the
feast was on.
Nixon was still winning the popular vote and he was ahead in electoral votes,
but large states like Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Texas and California were
still to close to call. Nixon had to hold four of these five states to win.
He held California and Ohio, but could not garner the other two he needed.
Mayor Daley of Chicago delivered Illinois and Lyndon Johnson delivered Texas
and the ball game was over. We went to bed that night in a state of
tremendous excitement. Almost got nothing got done in school the next day.
We had a Catholic president. It was unbelievable. Eisenhower was very
gracious in defeat of the Republicans. Nixon asked for a recount, but the
recount only resulted in the additional loss of Hawaii. You could feel the
breath of youth exhaling throughout the country. The expectations were
enormous.
Things in the eighth grade pretty much got back to normal after the Kennedy
election.
We all started to look forward to Christmas. We were hoping for repeat of the
1955 Christmas vacation that was extended by two timely snowstorms on the
nights we were supposed to go back to school. But no such luck. It was back
to school the day after New Year’s. Kennedy was soon to be inaugurated, but
we had already gotten past that early excitement and we were more concerned
that it was 1961 and we were entering our last year at Saint Bonaventure. We
would all be in high school later this year. That fact had not really set
into our consciousness yet. Some of us were going to Saint Bon’s High
School and some to the expensive schools like Dom Bosco Prep and Seton Hall
Prep. Most of us, though had opted to leave the world of religious
instruction. Most of us would be joining our hell-bent pagan friends at
Passaic Valley High School. We heard horror tales of how difficult it was to
make the various athletic teams. That Walter Pettitte had barely made the
team and he was six foot and six inches and weighed 240 pounds. He was the
only guy from the development who had made the basketball team.
Forget about the football team. None of us in the boy tribes had any
particular talent in football, except Jackie Gallahan, who could run like the
wind.
No, the only venue for the boys of the development would be the game we had
played for endless hours of endless summers. We weren’t too worried about
making the Passaic Valley baseball team because we knew we were good. Later
that summer we would find out that our confidence was misplaced as one of our
best players, Doug Kingsley, was having a hell of a time making the team as a
second baseman. Second base wasn’t even his regular position. He was a
solid pitcher and a good third baseman. Why the hell was he trying to make it
as a second baseman?
“There are eight of us trying out for it―, he said in a unworried manner.
“Most of them are very light hitters; I think I’m in the top two as far
as hitting is concerned―. Doug seldom exaggerated like his best friend did,
so we believed that he was in good shape to make the team.
“But the coach could tell I had hardly ever played second base before― he
added with some consternation.
“What’s the big deal about playing second base? All you gotta do is pick
up ground balls and cover second base―, I said.
“Nope, there’s more to it than that―. If Doug said there was more to it,
then there must have been more to it.
“You have to be able to pivot and turn the double play and you have to be
able to go get the cutoff throws from the outfield― he added.
“We never had to worry about crap like that when we played in the Little
League or the Babe Ruth League― I said.
“Well, the high school coach is very picky. He wants guys who know what
they are doing out there. That includes playing all parts of the defense
correctly.―
Doug was beginning to scare me. My defensive basics on first base were shaky.
I didn’t know how to hold guys on and then be able to jump back into the
field of play, I didn’t know how to play for a bunt in a sacrifice
situation, I didn’t know how to turn the double play from first. Add this
defensive ignorance to my average hitting and my chances of making the team
as a position player were poor. My only chance was to make it as a pitcher. I
had only been doing that for the last couple of years and I was wet behind
the ears in basics for pitchers, too. I didn’t know how to hold a guy on or
pick him off. I was a good fielding pitcher, but I didn’t know I was
supposed to back up certain bases at certain times, I didn’t know how to
toe the rubber before I pitched, I didn’t know how to get signs from the
catcher, I didn’t know how to do a lot of things polished pitchers in high
school knew how to do. All I could do was throw fastball strikes with an
occasional change-up. It would all become a moot point because I would be
moving to Union City in July. Doug would eventually make the team and I was
happy for him. But that would be in the near future.
We stopped playing those silly games on the playground that we used to play
when we were younger. We no longer flipped cards, though we still collected
them. No more silly hockey games with the crushed milk cartons that passed
the lunch hour quickly. We still played some touch football in the fall, and
some baseball in the alcove in the form of stoop ball, but for the most part
we had abandoned the other games to the new crops of boy tribes that were
coming along behind us in the lower grades. It was time for us to move on.
And we were about to find out that we would be moving on a lot more than we
could have possibly imagined. We kept our shirts and pants clean these days.
We kept our shoes shined and we used deodorant. These are things you begin
doing when you are thirteen because you want to impress girls, not because
you want to impress other guys. Some of us even liked pagan girls from the
public Gilmour and Memorial grammar schools. And some of the girls liked some
of the pagan boys from those schools, too.
Sex was beginning to rear its ugly head at Saint Bon’s.
Sister Regina allowed us a bit of leeway in that area. When I once wrote the
word “______― in a note that I passed in class, it was intercepted by her.
I expected to get a good whack with the pointer, but what she did instead was
to correct the spelling to “______― and gave the note back to me. She
added I shouldn’t use that term in polite company and that young men would
often be in polite company more and more as they got older. I never passed
another note with a vulgarity in her class after that sensible explanation.
February was a bit different in the eighth grade. It was the first time we
really took Valentine’s day seriously. Some of the girls gave out
Valentine’s day cards in the seventh grade, but none of the boys had except
for Jimmy Kenzleman, who was always very social with the girls. In the eighth
grade, the boy tribes planned their first serious assault on the
Valentine’s day ritual.
“I’m only interested in Patricia Roan― said Doug during lunch time the
day before Valentine’s day.
“You just can’t give the girl you like a Valentine time―, explained
Martin Byers, who was a bit of an operator.
“You give three or four girls a Valentine card and then no one will know
the one you really like.―
“Or if you like more than one girl, it’s a good way to get more than one
of them to notice you― I had been thinking of both Barbara Barnier and
Diane Palladesta when I mentioned that to Doug.
Some of the guys, being inexperienced, naturally went overboard. They bought
a Valentine’s day card for EVERY girl. That was worse than not giving one
to any of them. Jimmy Kenzleman gave out quite a few, as did his brother,
John. Bobby Carrollton and Jackie Romanoff also gave out quite a few. This
was one of the primary causes of the big fight between Eugene Saint Efema and
Frank Fierman. Everyone knew that Frank had been going out with Rosemary
Deangelo, but Eugene was new to the school and might not have known. In any
event, he not only gave her a card, but a little box of chocolates. This
absolutely infuriated Frank and he challenged Eugene to a fight after school.
In the end, Frank lost the fight, but won Rosemary and Eugene had no problem
finishing the extra chocolates because he weighed well over two hundred
pounds.
Most of the other tribe members had much better results than a black eye.
Some of them even got kisses. The hottest girls in the class besides Barbara
Barnier and Diane Palladesta included: Virginia Miccio, Patricia Pride, and
Mary Jo Melon (but she was pretty much “taken― by Anthony Beronne).
Almost all the guys gave them a card. You could easily tell the hottest girls
by the amount of cards they had by the end of the day. Rosemary Deangelo only
got two, but she was pretty hot, also. None of the regular tribe gave her any
because of Frank. Anthony Berrone, on the other hand, didn’t mind that
almost everyone gave Mary Jo Melon a card. He knew he had nothing to worry
about.
It annoyed me that so many guys gave Barbara Barnier and Diane Palladesta a
card, but I figured that I couldn’t have two best girlfriends, because most
of the tribe at that time didn’t even have one. I gave cards to those five
and one or two “mercy― cards to a few other girls. Mercy cards were very
popular and were in the true charitable Christian spirit. They were cards to
boys or girls from members of the opposite sex who had absolutely no interest
in them socially, but didn’t want them to feel bad.
I won’t mention which boys or which girls got a lot of mercy cards, but
there were a few of them. I got a really nice card from both Barbara Barnier
and a big heart from Diane Palladesta. I also got a real nice one from
Virginia Miccio. I gave Barbara and Diane bigger ones than I did to the other
girls and that was another little caveat for the ritual; you gave bigger
cards to the boy or girl you really liked. Doug got a real big one from
Patricia Roan and he had given her a big one, too. All in all, it was a lot
of fun and it took an hour off of the school day. But soon, it was time to
plan for Easter vacation and that was coming up real soon. Most of us just
played ball or hung out during most of our Easter vacations, but in the
eighth grade, everything seemed to take on greater significance. We used some
of those days making plans for the next year. Most of the kids at Saint
Bon’s were planning for high school. I was one of those kids and it was
during the Easter Vacation that I got the bad news that we would be moving to
Union City in July. I was crushed. I cried for a couple of days and then I
just moped around for the rest of the vacation. It was probably the worst
vacation of my time in the development. By the time school started, I had
finally accepted the fact that I would no longer be part of the tribe in the
next few months. I didn’t tell anyone except Doug and I told him to keep it
a secret and he did. We promised we would continue to see each other after I
moved and we both kept that promise for another ten years or so. If I
hadn’t messed up his wedding, we probably still would have been it touch.
In April, another event kept our attention. President Kennedy had failed
miserably in an invasion of Cuba and a lot of people were slamming him in the
paper. He would not recover from this debacle until he faced down the
Russians the following year in the Cuban missle crisis. The pagan kids were
ribbing us pretty good about Kennedy whenever they got the chance. They said
that’s what happens when you put a Catholic in charge. It made no sense, of
course, but it was still embarrassing. The weather was quite warm early that
year. The weather was already in the 80s in May and all we could think about
was graduation, our graduation presents and our graduation parties.
Everything else, at that time, seemed to be of a secondary nature. Mantle and
Maris were hitting a lot of home runs, the Yankees were running away with the
pennant, already and the New York Knicks were considering drafting a guy
named Willis Reed to try and get out of the cellar they had been in for over
a decade. Even the Rangers looked they might make the playoffs soon. The
Football Giants had lost again to the Packers, but at least they were beating
the Browns every year now.
It was time for the end of grammar school parties and graduation gifts. The
gifts were nothing special; most just money. Don’t get me wrong, we were
very happy to have almost a hundred dollars in cash lying around for awhile.
Of course our mothers insisted we put most of it in “the bank―. That
usually translated into us never seeing that cash again. They would spend it
on our clothes and other “necessities―. We wanted to spend that cash on
trips to the Jersey Shore, cards and comics, and hanging out with our friends.
In a few months, most of us would never see each other again. It was an idea
that none of us really comprehended.
Tales of West Paterson - The Great Convent Caper
The Great Convent Caper
By Arthur H Tafero
It was the early spring of 1960. Baseball was in the air. We would finally be
ridding ourselves of Aloysius by June. Just a few more months of torture and
we would be headed for the eighth grade. We were cocky seventh graders
already and most of us ignored the psychotic behavior of our much-hated
seventh grade nun. We would all laugh after various attempts of Aloysius to
exert her will through the fourth-grade tactics she still tried to use in the
seventh grade. This only infuriated her more, naturally.
During lunch, we had been discussing the new baseball cards that had come out
in 1960. They were a throwback to the 1955 and 1956 cards that had a
horizontal design instead of a vertical one. We loved those horizontal
designs and were glad that Topps had brought them back. Some of the boys said
that they were too old to be still collecting cards, but the truly rabid
among us ignored them completely. A group of seven of us, including Doug,
Byers, Dobbins, Lyttle, Carrolton, Lovans, and myself were trading, buying
and selling various cards we had accumulated. We no longer flipped cards by
this age; it was mostly an activity for the lower grades. We actually
hadn’t flipped cards since the fifth grade, but for some reason that day,
we all decided to start up again and have some fun. Just as we were beginning
to have that fun, Aloysius came from nowhere and began screaming.
“Give me those cards! Do not move! Kingsley!―
Doug came over and gave Aloysius his modest ten or twenty cards.
“Byers! Here C’mere!―
Byers handed over his more hefty pile of about fifty cards. And so it went,
one by one, handing over between twenty and a hundred cards to the witch.
Then, with three hundred or so fairly new 1960 Topps cards in her possession,
Aloysius left as quickly as the Mongol hordes.
“Where does that old biddy get off taking our cards? Moaned Byers, who had
lost fifty or so.
“She is such a miserable human being―, added Doug.
“We weren’t really gambling, we were just having some fun like the old
days― complained Tafero.
“Yeah, somebody should teach that witch a lesson― said Carrolton boldly.
He was an altar boy, so he could afford to be bold.
“I have an idea how we can get even― As soon Jeffrey Lovans opened his
mouth, we all knew it would mean trouble, but we didn’t care because we
were really ticked off.
“What do you mean, Lovans?―
“Carrolton, you’ve been in the convent with Father Tucker, right?―
“Yeah, what about it?―
“Well did you happen to notice which room Aloysius lived in?―
―I was only in the convent for a few minutes, but I did notice that the
nuns who teach the lower grades live in the front of the convent and the nuns
with the higher grades live in the back rooms. I don’t know exactly which
one Aloysius was in.―
“Are you planning to kill her, Lovans―
“If I could get away with it, yeah, but that’s not too practical. I had
something else in mind― We were afraid to ask, but we did anyway.
“Count me out― said Lyttle.
“You don’t even know what he has in mind― Carrolton smacked Lyttle on
the back of the head.
“Well, rumor has it that Aloysius has a large tool box in her room. This
tool box has all the toys and baseball cards she has taken from kids here
since she has been here―
“Well, how long has she been here?― asked Dobbins.
“Rumor has it she has been here since the school was built in the
twenties―
“I think we should break in late one night and take that box and divvy up
whats inside.―
We all fantasized about baseball cards from the thirties and forties that
might be inside the box as well as the fifties cards we knew were in there.
Lovans added: “It’s not like we would be stealing; we are just reclaiming
the property that rightly belongs to us―
“What about all the stuff that doesn’t belong to us?― asked Doug
“Well, we would be striking a blow for all those kids in the past who got
their cards taken and I’m sure they would want us to have them―. Lovans
was really getting worked up now.
“Well I think the witch has knocked you on the noggin once too many times
and it is finally made you go over the edge― warned Byers.
“Tell me she doesn’t deserve it?― No one said a word.
“Count me out”, said Lyttle”.
“Me too― added Byers. That left five of us.
“Listen Byers, you and Lyttle can stay out of this, but if either of you
say one word to anyone, Carrolton here and Romanoff will clean your clocks,
got it?―
Since Carrollton nodded in agreement, the boys agreed not to say a word. Then
the two of them drifted off. The five of us that were left all agreed we
would go through with the caper.
“Ok, first of all, we have to find out for sure what room Aloysius sleeps
in. That will be your job, Bobby― Carrolton once again nodded in agreement.
“Then we have to hit the convent during the nine o’clock mass, when all
the nuns and Aloysius will be out of the convent.―
Most of the seventh and eighth graders went to ten or twelve oclock mass now.
Only the lower grades had full attendance at the nine oclock mass. As the
grades got higher, attendance by the students got lower and they started
going to church with their parents. Now less than half the class was at the
nine oclock. After all, who would want an additional hour of torture from the
nun from hell? The five of us were really getting into it now. As Jackie
Gleason would say as Ralph Kramden, this couldn’t miss. It was a sure thing.
That worried us a little bit because we knew what the success rate of various
Ralph Kramden endeavors was. However, the five of us decided to plow ahead.
Lovans went on with his scheme.
“Doug, you will stay outside the convent with a toy whistle. If the other
four of us hear you on the whistle, we will know that someone is on the way
or something else is not right. We would all leave immediately, then.―
“How are we going to get in― I asked.
“Through her window. We can move a garbage can below her window so the four
of us can climb up into the window. Then since we don’t know exactly where
this tool box is, it may take a minute or so for us to find it. That’s when
having four guys looking around will be better than just one or two. Make
sure you wear your black sneakers instead of shoes; they will make a lot less
noise.―
“We also have to make sure we have plenty of time to get here, get in, get
out and get back home in time for us to leave with our parents for the twelve
o’clock mass―. Added Carrolton.
“But my family goes to the ten o’clock mass― protested Doug.
“Tell them you want to go to mass with my parents. This will give you a
chance to get to my house early, too.― I was getting the bug to find out
what was in the box now, too.
“Ok, then. We all have to meet around 8:30 at this playground. Then we will
slowly walk to the convent after we see the nuns leave for the nine oclock.
Then we will walk to the back of the convent and drag the garbage can to the
right window. We will have at least forty-five minutes to pull this off, but
if we can do it faster, the better it will be.
Are we all agreed?― Carrolton, Dobbins, Doug and myself all agreed. It
would be a go for this Sunday.
For three days that never seemed to end, we just kept thinking about Sunday
and the great caper we would be participating in. The anticipation was
absolutely overwhelming.
Then Sunday morning came and Doug came over. My mother made us a big
breakfast and then we took off for a “hike―. We promised we would be back
in time for twelve oclock mass. Then we caught the local bus on Mt Pleasant
to Danforth. We got to the playground about 8:40 and we saw Dobbins,
Carrolton and Lovans in a corner of the playground.
“We thought you guys weren’t going to show― said Lovans.
“We still have to wait another ten minutes or so; so it doesn’t matter―.
Dobbins leaned over the steps to the playground to look down the street at
the convent. No sign of the nuns leaving for the nine o’clock. Then at
precisely ten to nine, we checked again and we saw two, then three, then five
nuns, crossing the street to the church. We noticed the sixth nun, who was
crossing by herself. It was the witch. The other nuns shunned her like a
leper. We waited for ten more minutes until it was nine oclock and then we
started to walk up the street. We went in twos and Doug, who was going to be
the lookout with a whistle was on the other side of the street on Danforth,
only a few buildings away from the church. Once he was planted there, the
rest of us continued up on the other side of the street until we got to the
front of the convent. We looked around and there wasn’t a soul; so we
continued to walk to the back of the convent. The hair on my neck began to
rise a bit and my breathing became a bit deeper. None of us made any eye
contact with each other; we just kept walking until we got to the back of the
convent. Carrollton had found out that Aloysius’ room was the last window
on the right in back of the convent. Two garbage cans were already just a few
feet from the window. It looked to be a good omen.
Lovans moved over just one of the garbage cans under the window, got on it
and checked the window. It was already open a crack to let in the fresh air,
so all he had to do was open it up to the top. He did that in about two
seconds and just climbed in. Carrollton followed him and I went in with
Dobbins coming in after the three of us.
We had expected to be a hallway or some area outside of Aloysius’s room,
but we were already in her room. This was it. We were in. This was where the
old witch lived. Our first impulse was to trash the place, but that wasn’t
what we were here for. It was a fairly large room for a nun, or at least we
thought so at the time. There was a simple bed with a cross over it, a
dresser with a simple mirror, a table with a lot of papers on it, a simple
chair and a closet. We looked under the bed, but there was nothing there but
a stinky pair of the witches’ shoes. Then we all looked at each other and
at the closet at the same time. We walked slowly to the closet and opened the
door. There were nun’s clothes, shoes and boxes of unknown materials.
Underneath the boxes were not one, but two toolboxes. They were unbelievably
heavy. We dragged them both out of the closet and then we opened one.
On top of the piles of cards were the most recent ones that Aloysius had
taken from us just a few days ago. They were in neat piles with rubber bands
around them. It looked like there were about a hundred cards in each pile. We
quickly noticed that the first layer of cards were from 1959. I saw a Bob
Gibson on top of one pile. Each pile in the toolbox was about seven or eight
deep.
“Jeez, look at all these years and cards― whispered Dobbins.
There were cards in piles going back to 1948. There were cards we had never
seen before called Bowmans. Yogi Berra and Phil Rizzuto were on top of those
piles.
Then we opened the second tool box. It was a little dusty and appeared to
have not been open for awhile. The top piles in this box were strange-looking
cards called Playballs.
Under those card piles were a ton of cards called Goudeys. Each of the tool
boxes contained Basketball, Hockey and Football cards as well as baseball
cards, but the vast majority of the cards were baseball.
“Enough gawking, you guys, lets get these boxes and our butts out of
here― warned Lovans.
Dobbins climbed back outside the window with me and Carrollton and Lovans
handed us the tool boxes one at a time through the window. After they climbed
out, Carrollton took one tool box and Lovans took the other. I walked with
Dobbins, in case he needed help with the box, and Carrollton walked with
Lovans about thirty yards behind us. We walked back down Danforth and then
Doug followed us to the bus stop.
“Me and Doug will take one box and you guys can take the other. We will
have to try and sell this stuff in Paterson. If we try and keep it all, they
will be sure to catch us. Just pick out a few cards you really want and leave
the others in the box to sell to one of the stores downtown. We will have to
go downtown tomorrow after school. The excuse will be registration for a
library card from downtown. We will actually have to do that so we have an
alibi. It will only take us five minutes apiece, OK?―
“That sounds ok to me― said Lovans. Everyone else agreed.
“We’re gonna divvy up the good cards from our box at the playground; see
ya tomorrow―. Doug and I waited for the bus. On the ride home, we decided
to hide our box, which contained the older cards, at the base of the
playground woods, near the canal.
There was a natural hiding place in a dead tree trunk that had enough room to
hide the tool box in. We tucked it in there and then went back home in time
for the twelve o’clock mass. The hour or so we were at mass and afterwards
seemed like an eternity, but the time finally passed. We both kept looking
over our shoulders while we were at mass, expecting the police or the nuns or
the priests to be putting a hand on our shoulders and telling us to come
along. But nothing happened. Dad drove us back home where we had a few
custard doughnuts apiece. My mother asked if we were feeling well because
Doug and I only had two doughnuts each, which was very unusual. We just said
we wanted to go out to play and that the doughnuts would slow us down. We
took two small plastic bags with us and a few rubber bands.
“God, I thought we would never get away from my parents―.
“I have to be home by two, so let’s get this done. I don’t believe we
actually did this―.
“Well, we did and now we have to cover up our tracks―.
We continued down Williams Drive until we got back to the playground and back
down the hill to the dead tree trunk. We easily dug the box out and opened it.
We took our time and carefully went through each of the banded piles. There
appeared to be about sixty or seventy of them. The first few yielded 1939,
1940 and 1941 Playballs. We played scissors, rock and paper to see who would
choose first and I won. So I took a 41 DiMaggio, so did Doug because there
were two of them, Then I took a Ted Williams and I was done with the 41s.
Doug took some Giant as his second card. Piles 1-3 were done.
Piles 4-6 yielded the same exact cards but in 1940 format. The same held true
for the 1939 cards, but there were four DiMaggios. We split those and the
four Ted Williams and left the rest there.
Then we came to the Goudeys and Diamond Kings. All we took from those piles
were the Ruths and Gehrigs because we had heard of those guys. It was so neat
to see a Ruth card and a Gehrig card; we had never seen one before. We were
pulling Ruths and Gehrigs out of every pile. Some piles had five or six of
them. At the end of the pulling we had about a hundred each of Ruth and
Gehrigs combined. We put a rubber band around each of our piles, put them in
our little plastic bags and tucked them into our jackets. Then we put the
cards back into the tool box and inside the dead tree trunk and went to our
respective houses. When I got back home, I went down to the cellar to watch
some movie, but I just really wanted to be alone to admire the new cards I
had. They were beautiful. The color Goudeys and Diamond Kings were small, but
really nice. Instead of records on the back, they had little cool stories
about the player. Both Ruth and Gehrig had lots of different poses, too. It
seemed you could get three or four different poses of the same player in one
year. They should do that with Mantle now, I thought to myself. I had about
forty or so Ruths, forty Gehrigs and about a half dozen DiMaggios and
Williams.
The next day, we all met in the playground and made plans for after school to
go downtown and sell the cards. Dobbins, Carrollton and Lovans looked very
jovial.
“We got about twenty Mantles each, as well as Berras. Fords, Rizzutos.
Koufaxes, Clementes, Mays and Sniders― bragged Lovans.
“And we got a lot of Giant Football cards, too― added Dobbins.
“Yeah, what did you guys get?― asked Carrollton.
“Mostly a lot of old junk we didn’t want; but we did pick out a few Ruths
and Gerhrigs―
“Wow, that sounds cool; do you want to trade a few for some Mantles?―
asked Dobbins.
“Let’s get this downtown stuff done first to cover our tracks―.
Then the nuns came outside to chase everyone into class. Once inside the
class we were all extra careful not to get in trouble with the witch, so we
would not be kept after school that day. We also carefully studied all of her
reactions to all of us to see if she suspected anything or even knew her
cards were gone, but she gave no indication that anything was out of the
ordinary. Lovans made a wisecrack in the morning just to test her and she
came over and gave him his usual crack on the head and broke her pointer as
usual. Everything seemed to be normal.
School ended and we went back home. We agreed to meet at Libby’s at four
oclock.
Doug and I left at three-forty or so with our box and met the boys at
Libby’s a bit after four. Then we took another box down into the guts of
Paterson to the two big candy stores that sold comics and cards.
“We can’t use them unless they are new― said the owner of the first
store. The second store said the same thing. Then, while at the second store,
a wily looking guy wearing a Columbia University sweatshirt asked us what we
were selling.
“We just want to sell these old cards― mentioned Lovans.
“How about ten bucks for the two boxes? queried the stranger.
“Ten bucks a box, right?―
“No, ten bucks for the two of them―
“Are you kidding? That’s only five bucks a box!―
“Take it or leave it, kids; I ain’t the Red Cross―
We all looked at each other. We had no other choice. We knew we were getting
ripped off, but we had no other choice. The world was awash in thieves.
Tales of West Paterson - Going Adult
Going Adult
By Arthur H Tafero
There was another small theatre off of Riverview Avenue called “The
Guild”. It was a cozy little theatre that showed children’s movies on
Saturday and quality adult movies at night. I had been in the eighth grade
for a bit over half a year and it was the end of February and it was time for
the Academy Awards, which I now followed religiously.
That Saturday, the matinee at the Guild were two Sinbad movies, which I kind
of enjoyed, although I would not normally go out of my way to see. What
really got my attention was the double feature that was showing after the
matinee: two Academy Award nominated films: “The Apartment― with Jack
Lemmon, Shirley McLaine and Fred MacMurry and “Elmer Ganrty― with Burt
Lancaster and Jean Simmons.
There was no way my parents would take me to either film and no chance that I
could get in to the night show at the Guild. (Children under 18 must be
accompanied by an adult). So I had to come up with some new way of getting in
to see those films.
I figured I would go to the matinee, go to the bathroom at the end of the
second film and lock myself up in a stall with my feet up on the toilet for
an hour. Then I would quickly and quietly reemerge when I heard the music for
the coming attractions. To cover my tracks for the time between five and ten
o’clock, I told mom that I would be over Doug’s which was not too unusual
for a Saturday night. The plans had been made and now I had to refrain from
telling anyone about my master plan.
Saturday finally arrived and I dutifully told Mom I would be at the theater
and then I would be going over Doug’s. I took the bus to the Guild and got
there in plenty of time for the matinee. The first film had Sinbad going
through one challenge after another and fighting skeletons. It wasn’t bad.
Then the second film had Sinbad rescuing a beautiful princess. I preferred
“Macumba Love― to this one. As the credits rolled, I went into action. I
quickly took my bagged lunch, which was packed with four baloney sandwiches
and mustard with me into the men’s room. The men’s room had that pleasant
cherry odor that I never smelled in other places, so it was not so unbearable
to stay for awhile. I went to one of the men’s stalls, locked the door and
hopped up on the closed toilet seat. I then crouched and leaned up against
the wall and flusher and became very quiet. The time seemed to pass by slowly.
I took a nap (I had, and still do have, this bizarre ability to nap anywhere
at any time) and awoke; the theatre was still in silence.
Then I heard the first strands of the music for the coming attractions. I
quickly hopped off the toilet seat, washed my hands and face, and then went
to one of the seats in back of the theater after getting a long drink of
water. The coming attractions were for a mystery and a courtroom film. I
really didn’t care for either of those genres at the time.
There was no cartoon, but they did have a short before the film on the
upcoming Academy Awards which I found fun to watch. Then “The Apartment―
started to roll. I didn’t understand why Fred Macmurray didn’t fall in
love with Shirley Maclaine; she was as hot as a pistol. Shirley didn’t seem
to appreciate that he was being a nice guy at first, she was still in love
with Fred. It looked like it was worth losing your job to get a woman like
Shirley, though. I also didn’t get why Shirley wanted to commit suicide
over a jerk like Fred. I wouldn’t commit suicide over any girl (including
Barbara Barnier).
After the happy ending of the first movie, which I enjoyed pretty much, a man
came down the aisle and started moving in my row to sit next to me. It was my
father! How did my dad know I was here? He must of called Doug’s house and
found out I wasn’t there and just went to the last place I said I was going.
Well at least I was in better shape with him in this situation than I was had
mom come. Oh, God, that would have been supremely bad. She would have gone
Italian and the whole theatre would have noticed, but dad was real quiet as
he whispered:
“We were worried about you, you should have called us and said you were
staying for thedouble feature.” He didn’t even mention I was watching two
films that were for 18 year olds and older.
“I’m really sorry, dad, I won’t let that happen again―
“Shhh,” he said. “The next movie is coming on” So we both sat back to
take in the exciting music of the intro for “Elmer Gantry― Dad got up and
came back with popcorn and a soda for me and I got the distinct feeling I
wasn’t in too much trouble. He seemed like he was treating me like an adult.
After all, I was going to be in High School next year.
I guess I was so happy to be sitting there at an adult movie with my dad that
I then put this film in my top hundred (actually in my top ten). It was an
electric performance by Burt Lancaster, who I ardently rooted for to win the
Academy Award that year (and he did) and Jean Simmons was beautiful, as well
as a great actress. Burt was a traveling salesman who drank and hung out in
bars in the Midwest, somewhere. He goes to a religious revival and is riveted
by Jean’s performance as a preacher. He woos her on the train to the next
revival and worms his way into the revival show. He soon becomes almost as
good a preacher as she is and as a team they are dynamic. I love the scene
where Burt is holding the bible and screaming “Sin, Sin, Sin― and then
goes sliding up the wooden ramp. God, it sure looked like you could get
splinters in your butt doing that.
Of course Burt and Jean fall in love, but the movie didn’t have the usual
happy ending. Shirley gets Burt in trouble and then the movie ends with Jean
performing a miracle and then burning to death in a fire started by some
idiot smoker. All people who smoke are idiots. I kind of wanted a happy
ending where Jean and Burt go on preaching and then get married and have
preaching kids. I wouldn’t have minded being one of those preacher kids. It
would have been cool performing on a stage every night.
It was after ten and my father and I got up after the credits rolled.
“Feel like some White Castles?― he asked
“What….are you crazy? When did I ever turn down an offer of White Castles?
Let’s go!
We drove to the White Castle and got a dozen each and fries and cokes. We got
an extra dozen to bring home for mom, but on the way home we started to dig
into those, too. By the time we got back, there were only five or six left,
but it was now after eleven and mom was happy with just those little morsels.
“I shouldn’t eat these so late― she said as she gulped them down with a
coke while the news was on. It was so odd that she didn’t go Italian. In
fact, she didn’t mention the two adult movies at all or ask where I had
been. It was like I hadn’t done anything wrong at all except to forget to
call so I said:
“Sorry, I didn’t call mom, I’ll be sure to call the next time―
“That’s all right sonny, we were just worried about you― she said a bit
resignedly.
I felt both good and bad at the same time. I was happy I wasn’t getting a
beating or even a verbal assault, but I was a bit sad because I sensed my
mother was losing her little boy to the adult world.
“Hey, let’s watch Zacherley! It’s on five minutes. It’s “Murders in
the Rue Morgue” tonite”.
“O that’s a good one― my father said.
“Don’t you guys ever watch anything but horror movies and war pictures―
my mother said. Then she thought about what she said and she got very quiet,
which was very unusual for her. Then the three of us watched Bela Lugosi and
Boris Karloff terrorize the local countryside on a late Saturday nite in the
development.
Tales of West Paterson - Where Are They Now?
Where Are They Now ?
By Arthur H Tafero
I have a few confessions to make. First, that story about the boy in the
neighborhood who told the most and biggest whoppers was not about Larry
Scoenfeld, it was, as my friends from the development have most likely
already figured out, about me. Being a writer, I can appreciate a good
imagination, but during this period of time, I used to add a bit more lying
to the already overactive imagination that I had.
Also, to make this a little more fun for the reader, I am going to let them
guess about which characters I am giving a current description of. I am going
to use the time-honored Saint Bonaventure method of using a matching test.
First, here are the boy tribe members and a few of the more notable girls
from Saint Bon’s. If you read the stories carefully, you will have clues to
some of the answers. So, as one of our nuns would have said: review carefully.
A. Ronny Vitale
B. Glen Glenn
C. Walter Pettitte
D. Billy McCallin
E. Davy Van Weston
F. Hatchie Van Weston
G. Arthur Topozzi
H. Thomas Delphino
I. Salvadore Angotti
J. Douglas Kingsley
K. Frankie Klump
L. Larry Schoenfeld
M. Johnny Prince
N. Zippy Zambrano
O. Bobby Bettell
P. Jackie Shaw
Q. Tommy Baker
R. Barbara Barnier
S. Diane Pallidesta
T. Arthur Tafero
U. Patricia Pride
V. Jackie Gallahan
W. Johnny Quinn
X. Raymond Baker
Y. Patrick Howard
Z. Patricia Roan
1. This girl turned out to be a fashion model in New York for Madamoiselle
Magazine.
2. This boy became an eye doctor.
3. This boy became a lawyer and had to prosecute his younger brother for a
crime.
4. This boy turned out to be the best friend of the West Paterson Town
Council Chairman
5. This boy turned out to be the Town Council Chairman.
6. This girl’s house was raided by the police one night.
7. This girl turned out to be a minor Hollywood actress before marrying a
successful businessman.
8. This girl turned out to be the West Paterson Head Librarian.
9. This boy turned out to be prosecuted by his brother for burglary.
10. This boy turned out to be a life-long baseball coach for decades of West
Paterson kids.
11. This boy turned out to become a psychologist.
12. This boy turned out to become a physical ed teacher.
13. This boy moved to California and became a techie in Silicone Valley.
14. This boy went into the restaurant business.
15. This boy became a pop collectibles dealer.
16. This boy went on to become a science teacher.
17. This boy moved to New York and became a minor politician.
18. This boy moved to Connecticut and became a car salesman.
19. This boy was tragically killed in Vietnam.
20. This boy became a minor league baseball player.
21. This boy moved to San Francisco and is now living with his life-partner
Wayne.
22. This boy became a bouncer for Studio 54 in New York.
23. This boy moved to California and became a major Hollywood sound
technician.
24. This boy moved to South Jersey and became real estate salesman.
25. This boy became New York’s leading expert on China.
26. This boy married his childhood sweetheart, had four lovely children,
became a successful salesperson for Sears and is still living in West
Paterson.
And here is matching quiz for Saint Bon’s School (names have been changed,
but any of us who were there will know EXACTLY who they are)
A. Margaret Correy
B. Maryanne Millens
C. Darlene Pescatone
D. Michelle McKearny
E. Virginia Miccio
F. Bernadette Hillman
G. Fred Hertz
H. Mary Jo Melon
I. Frankie Fierman
J. Jackie Romanoff
K. Bobby Carrolton
L. Jeffrey Lovans
M. Johnny Cusach
N. Judy Banghearty
O. Jimmy Kenzleman
P. Walter Zehner
Q. Martin Byers
R. Arthur ThePharoh
S. Eugene Saint Efima
T. Patricia Lyers
U. Joseph Dobbins
V. Douglas Kingsley
W. Bobby Holter
X. Martin Byers
Y. Joseph Oppenheiser
Z. John Pavalovski
1. This boy became a mayor of a small town near West Paterson.
2. This boy became a user car dealer.
3. This boy became a nuclear physicist.
4. This boy became a local radio talk show host.
5. This boy became a boxer and lost his first four fights and retired.
6. This boy became a track coach at the local community college.
7. This boy became a Paterson bookie who was always able to elude arrest.
8. This boy moved to New York and became involved with stage production.
9. This boy died in his early thirties due to obesity.
10. This boy moved to New York and became an advertising executive and made
an enormous amount of money and was the subject for one of the main
characters in a recent television series on advertising.
11. This boy became a salesman for Sears
12. This boy moved to Connecticut and became a Republican ward healer.
13. This boy became a banker.
14. This boy became the Chief of Police in West Paterson (truly ironic).
15. This boy became a shady real estate dealer who was later convicted.
16. This boy became a policeman who worked under boy #14.
17. This boy, an inveterate liar in his youth, became a college professor in
the area of Chinese Studies and accidentally found ethics.
18. This girl married her boyhood sweetheart, Anthony, and carried on her
father’s window supply business.
19. This girl became a Social Studies teacher.
20. This girl moved to Las Vegas and became a Chorus girl dancer.
21. This girl became a newspaper and magazine writer for gossip.
22. This girl became an English teacher.
23. This girl became a housewife; and was the only girl in the class who was
just that.
24. This girl, whose sister was arrested on a morals charge, became a nun
25. This girl moved to New York and became a computer expert.
26. This girl married the first man she went on a date with just so she could
change her name.
Part Two – Tales of the East Coast
Tales of New York
Tales of New York - Translations of Indian Love Songs
Translations of Indian Love Songs
by Arthur H Tafero
Kunal Patel was a lucky young man. He came from a wealthy family of business
traders in Bombay and was now finishing his expensive overseas education at
New York University. Kunal was getting his degree in communications and was
an intern at WNYC-TV in New York. He worked as an unpaid assistant to the
programming chief at WNYC, Sally Dorfman.
Sally was a nice enough boss. She should be Christsake, she was getting his
services for free thought J. His final intern year at the station had gone
flawlessly. Kunal would take Indian movies rented by the station for
broadcast and make the translations into English subtitles at the bottom of
the monitor for the viewers.
“Kunal!― screamed Sally.
“Yes, Miss Dorfamn― replied J. quickly.
“Listen up”. “We just got in this Indian musical from Bangladesh”
“You know, the corny type where the girl goes around trying to seduce the
boy with her dancing and singing and the boy acts like he is cool, but he is
really hot to trot?―
“Yes, Miss Dorfman, I am only too familiar with corny Indian musicals―
He liked it when Miss Dorfman assumed he had certain worldly experience, when
in fact he was still a virgin.
“Here’s the tape; do an edit and make all the subtitles in English for
our viewers―
Oh you mean the four people on Saturday night who have no lives who watch
this channel thought Kunal to himself.
“Yes, Miss Dorfman. I will take care of it right away―.
Kunal only had two more weeks and the internship would be over. Then he could
send out his resume for some real jobs in broadcasting. If he had to, he
would even go back to Bombay and work for his native India; God knows they
needed help with their TV stations and a NYC entry on his resume wouldn’t
hurt a bit.
Kunal took the film into the edit room and began his work. As he played the
film, one thing was immediately apparent to him; he had no idea what these
people were saying. This particular film was in a dialect Kunal had never
heard before. Maybe it was because the film was produced in Bangledesh
instead of Bombay; it seemed some of the words were Arabic.
Kunal got a little panicky. Jesus Chirst, why did this have to happen with
only two weeks left in his internship? He couldn’t go back to Dorfman and
tell her he couldn’t do this; it would look terrible.
I’ve got to somehow get through it; I’ll fake it if I have to, thought
Kunal
Kunal brought himself an English-Arabic dictionary and came back to the
editing room after lunch. He was making a little progress. He had roughly
translated the first ten minutes of the filmby estimating the conversations
and making up most of the dialogue on the subtitles. He was quite proud of
himself; he was handling the problem.
But then the singing started.
Kunal could not make out the words of the dialect, no matter how slow he went
on the editing machine. The people singing on the screen might as well have
been singing in Chinese. He had no idea what they were saying.
Then Kunal got an idea. His friend Rashid knew Arabic. He called up Rashid
and had him come over to try and help.
“I don’t know, Kunal, this is a different dialect from my father’s
Pakistinian tongue, but I will try my best.―
“OK, I’ll leave you alone for a couple of hours here in the editing room
and I’ll go get some lunch for the two of us―.
“OK Kunal―.
“Whatever you do, DO NOT send this tape down to the programming room until
I get back―
“OK Kunal―
Kunal went out for some Chinese food and Rashid went to work on translating
the singers.
When Rashid was finished doing the subtitles, he carefully put the tape in a
basket on top of Kunal’s desk and promplty took a nap.
The mailroom boy emptied out the outgoing mail on top of Kunal’s desk
without disturbing Rashid.
He brought the tape down to the programming office. It was labeled TUE 2PM.
That was today. Of course Kunal and Miss Dorfman wanted the tape for NEXT TUE
at 2pm, but the programming room didnt know that.
Geoff the technician, put the tape in to line up at 1:45.
At precisely 2PM it went on live on WNYC-TV.
The first ten minutes of the film went by as the station master half-listened
to the foreign dialogue without even looking at the subtitles.
Then the singing began.
“Why dont you take a bite of my overly-ripe melons― the girl sang to the
boy. (the correct idiom was “have some ripe fruit―)
“Oh I couldn’t give you another infection, my love― sang the boy to the
girl. (should have been “Oh I couldn’t infect your heart with love―)
“Well then, how about a ride on my belly?― cooed the female singer.
(Should have been “how about a ride to the ballet?―)
“It would be like jumping on some jelly― replied the male singer. (Should
have been “It would be like leaping with joy for candy―)
Acting slightly perturbed the girl bellowed “Can I at least blow out your
candle?―(Should have been can I at least light your cigarette?)
“Sure, if you can get the handle― the boy replied cheerfully. (This line
was correctly done)
“And what do you think of my slightly overstuffed buttocks― asked the
girl coquettishly. (Should have been “What do you think of my overstuffed
pillows?―
“I could lose myself for a week within their walls― said the boy lovingly.
(This line was correctly done.
“And you know I love to swallow in the Spring― stated the girl (Should
have been “And you know I love the swallows in the Spring.―)
For some reason the studio phones began to ring.
All of them were ringing. This was very unusual.
The next song began, this time with a chorus.
“Is she free?” “Is she free?” (should have been “Is her heart
free?―)
“O yes, she is free for me―, replied the boy to the chorus. (should have
been “yes, her heart is free for me―)
“But I am not free for the village― pouted the girl to the boy.(Should
have been “But my heart is not free for the rest of the village).
“She is not free for the village!― echoed the chorus. (Should have been
“Her heart is not free for the rest of the village)
“I can hum you all night long― she suggested to the boy. (left out the
preposition “to―)
“She can hum him all night long!― replayed the chorus. (leff out the
preposition “to― again.
“I would rather be a priest” sang the boy. (Should have been “You make
me feel sacred―)
“He would rather be a priest!” sang the chorus. (Should have been “He
feels sacred!―
The phones ringing increased in number and intensity. If this had been a
fund-raiser, it would have been an astounding success.
Kunal came back with some fried rice.
“Wake up, Rashid, lunch has arrived; where is the tape?―
“It’s up here in the box....it’s gone now.―
“That is the outgoing mail box, Rashid!; tell me you didn’t put the tape
in there―
“I got tired, but I finished. I put the tape in that box and then took a
little nap.―
Kunal just stared at his friend, dropped the rice and fell into a chair.
“I will be ruined― he began to sob.
Kunal turned on the TV.
The couple was performing their third number.
“You dance like a turkey, my love” said the boy. (should have been “
you dance as lightly as a bird, my love―.)
“I would love to choke on your bird― she replied lovingly. (Should have
been “I am choked up by your wingless flight―).
“I love the color of your hair under your arms― said the boy (Should have
been “I love the color of your hair when you are in my arms―.)
“I hope you will find your way in my backside― she replied hopefully.
(Should have been “I will leave the back door open for you tonight―.)
“I will remember not to slam it when I enter― (this phrase was correctly
translated, but by this time, the images of the previous phrasing had given
this correct translation a totally different meaning.
That was all Kunal could bear. The next five songs were even worse. We will
not go into lurid detail here out of respect for Kunal’s former job and
friend, but one song dealt with a family’s love in highly suggestive
incestuous overtones, while another song had the girl singing about her
former life as a hooker instead of woman who fished in the sea. The third
song discussed compared the boy to an open sore instead of correctly
describing him as sorely missing his love in the open. The fourth song
compared the girl to a pregnant cow, when it was supposed to describe she was
as sacred as a cow (still not the best image one might think). And the fifth
song was so lurid and disgusting, we can only mention that it involved
several sexual activities with the entire pantheon of Hindu gods instead of
communicating her love of many Hindu gods to her lover.
And you, the reader, thought subtitles weren’t a dangerous business; hah!
Tales of the Army - Jail Bait
Jail Bait
by Arthur H Tafero
Duke and Schloss were looking forward to their Army Saturday pass. Then
Martin Luther King got shot. Downtown Indianapolis was pretty quiet, but Fort
Benjamin Harrison was now on alert and all passes were cancelled. This stuff
would happen all the time in the Army. You made plans and then there was some
type of “emergency”. Well Duke had had enough of this “emergency”
crap. The only “emergency― he had was the need for a hot date.
Scloss, which was short for Schlossberg, felt the same way. He was one of the
few Jews in the Army, but Kevin couldn’t care less if he was Jewish or from
Mars, because he always had some extra money on him and was always ready to
have a good time. And he wasn’t a geek around women. This was very
important. It was tough enough picking up girls if you were two regular guys,
but if one of you was a geek, then you would have a hell of a time picking up
two girls at the same time.
“Duke, this sucks. They’re not letting anyone off base for anything.
We’re never gonna get away at noon― moped Schloss.
“Don’’t give up so easy, you’ve got to think what Sergeant Bilko
would do in this situation. He could figure out something for every
situation.― Duke said.
Then it came to him.
“I got an idea, why don’t we say your’e getting married and I’m your
best man? Captain Perotti might go for that one, he’s pretty dumb.― Duke
added.
“Yeah, he is pretty dumb― Schloss chimed in.
So they walked over to Captain Perotti’s office and luckily for them he was
still in.
“Captain?― Duke asked in my most innocent tone of voice.
“Yes, what is it, O’Bannion?― he answered with a pained expression on
his face.
“Schlossberg and I need a weekend pass so he can get married.― Duke said
as he tried to keep a straight face.
“What scam is it now O’Bannion, a gay marriage?” “The Army won’t
buy it; we know you two are straight―.
Duke gave a little phony laugh and added: “No Captain, not to each other,
Schloss is marrying his girl back home in Chicago and he wants me to be the
best man.―
“So you want to get married during the race riots, Schlossberg?― Perotti
always spoke in a boring monotone voice that had almost no emotion whatever.
“Yes sir, we made plans in advance, sir; we didn’t plan on King getting
shot, sir―
“Don’t be a wise-ass Schlossberg, just get the hell out of my office and
screw up so I can put you both in the stockade―. He signed our passes.
“Yes sir, we’ll be sure to do that sir―. Schlossberg added
sarcastically.
We almost ran all the way back to the barracks.
“Jesus Chirst, can you believe how easy that was?―
“Yeah, that was too easy, Duke” . We better watch our asses”
“Nah, we’ll let the girls do that―
They both had a good laugh, showered, dressed and then they left for downtown
Indianapolis.
After they arrived in downtown Indianapolis, they noticed how quiet it was.
“Jeez, we’ve tried three clubs already and they’re all dead as
Grant’s Tomb―. complained Schoss.
“Well, it’s a Saturday afternoon and there are race riots all over town,
I wonder why there’s no women here― Duke said in his best wise-ass voice.
Schloss, if we want any action, we’re gonna have to take the bus to Chicago;
it’s only an hour and a half. It’s only five now.―
“I don’t know, Duke, this is looking like a lost cause to me―.
“Oh stop moaning man, you sound like my sister―.
They ambled over to the Greyhound Bus Station and took a seat in the lounge
to wait for the Chicago bus.
There were two decent looking girls with short hair sitting a few tables away
from us.
“They’re probably army nurses, nobody wears their hair that short these
days― Duke mused.
“Yeah, but they ain’t too bad though― Scholl drooled.
“Yeah, they ain’t bad― Duke said truthfully for a change.
They both got on the bus behind the girls, eyeing every step they took.
And then it happened.
One of the girls smiled at them.
Duke couldn’t tell if she was smiling at him or Schloss, but it really
didn’t matter; they had a real good shot here.
Duke smiled and nodded back. Schloss nodded and smiled back. Now the second
girl was smiling. They were beside ourselves with unbearable joy. This was
gonna be a Saturday nite they would never forget.
When they got to the Chicago bus station they asked the girls if they wanted
to go a club with them later and by the way, where were they staying? They
told us that they hadn’t made reservations yet; but they wouldn’t mind
staying at the same place we did.
Duke’s little warning buzzer went off when they said that. No regular girl
is THAT easy.
Damn, they must be hookers! Well, what the hell. We had more than enough
money on us, and we didn’t have all that much time to form a
“relationship―, anyway. Schloss was oblivious, as usual.
“Why don’t we check in before we go to dinner and a club; this way we can
clean up. (This would include a shower and other amorous possibilities).
They saw right through Duke’s ruse.
“Oh yeah, sure, you guys just want to get some before dinner, don’t ya?
said Snowball, the blonde with a smirk at Duke.
“Oh no, don’t get us wrong, we just want to clean up a little after the
ride, that’s all.― he lied.
“Oh yeah? What kind of a ride were you expecting?― said Joanie, the
brunet to Schloss.
Schloss was good-looking, but not too quick with a retort: “Just a short
one for me―. The rest of them laughed.
They checked into the Carleton Arms, a middle-priced hotel, not that many
blocks from the station. The boys got two rooms and expected the girls to go
to their room and we would go to ours. But when we got to the third floor,
Snowball dragged me inside one room and Scloss was taken by the hand by
Joanie into the other.
O yeah, for sure these girls were hookers. No girl is that horny unless
they’ve been drinking or getting stoned for a few hours. But, what the hell,
we were here to have a good time.
But, as Snowball took off her clothes to take a shower, a few odd things
occurred to me; she hadn’t asked for any money. A hooker always asks for
money first, before she showers. She wasn’t a hooker! This was too good to
be true! I took my little traveling bag and pulled out a clean set of
underwear to change. That was the second odd thing. Neither girl had a
traveling bag or pocketbook. I had never known a girl without a pocketbook. I
noticed she was washing out her underwear, but I figured maybe she was poor,
so I wasn’t gonna hold that against her.
While Snowball was taking her shower, I put the TV on. It was too late for
the afternoon baseball game and I could care less about the Cubs anyway, so I
switched on the news:
“More riots in downtown Chicago and Indianapolis today” “We send you to
Alice Felcher, our reporter in Indianapolis. Alice?―
“Thank you, Ray―. We just want to let our viewers in Chicago know
what’s going on here inIndianapolis― Early this morning, while there was
a skeleton crew of police on duty because of the race riots in downtown
Indianapolis, the Indianapolis Women’s Prison had a violent breakout at
around 6 am. Four inmates overpowered the two guards and left one in critical
condition. One of the inmates was shot, and one was captured, but two inmates
remain at large” “They are armed and dangerous and the public should not
try to apprehend them without first calling the police” “They may be
headed to Chicago as they were spotted with two military men who may have
been involved in the plot to make their getaway―.
They flashed the two girls’ pictures on the screen.
Duke wasn’t horny anymore.
Duke wasn’t hungry anymore.
He picked up the phone and called Scloss. He told him what he saw on TV and
Schloss was sure he was pulling one of his practical jokes on him that Duke
often did, but Duke said no, this one is for real and he better get his
ass.....
Just then snowball came out of the shower, butt naked.
“Who ya callin?―
“Callin Schloss, to hurry his ass up, I’ m hungry― Duke said without
missing a beat.
“So hurry up and get ready, I’m starvin”; ten minutes OK Schloss?”
“Why are you changin your tune....oh she’s there right?―
“That’s right, and we are both hungry, right Snowball?
Snowball gave me that little look of disappointment that I didn’t want
dessert before dinner, then added “yeah, whatever honey―.
They all went to an Italian restaurant and had a fabulous dinner but neither
Duke or Schloss could enjoy it. The girls were eating like two escaped
convicts.
“Man, after all that beer, I need to take a piss bad. Scloss, you
coming?―
“Why does he have to go too? asked Joanie.
“He holds it for me when I get too drunk―. I smiled.
“You guys are worse than women― added Snowball.
Not you two women, Duke thought to himself.
On the way to the can, I filled Schloss in and he almost choked on his
Lasagna.
We snuck out the back of the restaurant and ran down the street.
When we got to a phone booth we called the cops and told them where to find
the escapees. They asked about the reward. We said no thanks; if the Captain
found out it would be our asses and we would be better off with the convict
girls.
The best thing about all of this was that the dinner was free, but
to this day, Duke never tried to pick up a girl with short hair.
Tales of New York - Miller Time
Miller Time
by Arthur H Tafero
It was a very hot morning. The beginning of the Labor Day Weekend. Dyckman
Park would be filled with softball games, soccer games and anyone else
looking to beat the heat. Dyckman was located in a peculiar part of Manhattan.
It was in the northwestern tip of the borough and next to the Columbia
University sports complex just before you came to the Bronx. It was a very
active area with a fairly diverse population but the Irish still dominated
the area. There wasan Irish bar on every block in the area. One of the
favorite summer activities of the guys playing softball in Dyckman was to
meet at the loser’s bar after the game where the losers had to buy the beer
all night for the winners. It was a great deal if you won, but would cost you
twenty bucks if you lost and wanted to stay at your bar that night.
The usual gang of suspects arrived about ten AM; it was the early group of
guys who didn’t drink a lot on Friday nite. The real “athletes― and
“momma boys―. The teams that always lost when the game was on the line to
the more experienced group of drunks who came later around noon. The Yankees
and Braves were the two sissy teams out there early this morning. Lots of
phony hustle, yelling and screaming, but no talent or guts.
They were in the second division with losing records.
By eleven a few of the girl’s teams arrived. The Shamrocks and Darby
O’Gills. You couldn’t tell one team from the other. They were both
bleary-eyed and terribly hung over from all the booze and sex from the night
before. One girl got hit by a line drive while drinking a beer on first base,
and didn’t move an inch or spill a drop. These were tough women who could
eat the sissy boy teams up alive. Katy Keller was the captain of the
Shamrocks and she could drink most men under the table where she usually meet
them later in the evening. She was a grade school teacher in Our Lady of
Sorrowsgrammar school. A better role model the kids never had. The captain of
the Darby O’Gills was Mary Costello, who was Irish and Italian, but she
couldn’t make pasta sauce, so she was officially Irish. She was more of a
sexual athlete than a softball star. She had more notches on her bat for guys
than she did for homers. EVERYBODY had known Mary at one time or another. All
it cost you was a beer or two and you were home free. She was a nurse at the
Dyckman General Hospital. Everyone was sure the male patients were well taken
care of.
By around twelve, the good players from the best teams, the Bums and the
Hoboes started to arrive one by one. Dyckman was a big park with plenty of
parking space, but Larry the fairy pulled his SUV up to the backstop so he
wouldn’t have to walk far for his keg of beer in the back. He collected two
bucks from everyone to pay for the keg and the drinkathon was on. Even though
Larry was gay, he was accepted because he always brought the best beer and
was a good pitcher. Pat Zesty came in his chevy truck and smacked into the
backstop almost hitting Larry’s SUV.
“You are such a royal anus― yelled Larry
“Well you sure would know about those things now woudn’t you heinie
boy?― Pat shot back.
He was still pretty hung over from the night before, but was already having
some of the hair of the dog.
“Get that chevy piece of crap away from my Navigator or ill hit you right
between the eyes with a high hard one―.
Larry had a 90 mph fastball. Pat smiled, moved his truck a few feet and said:
Well, I sure wouldn’t want one your high hard one anywhere near my face―
The rest of the team broke up laughing and everyone began drinking beer like
it was their last day on earth.
Then something odd happened.
Katy Keller had gone into the bushes behind the playing diamonds to take a
pee. She hadn’t been back for twenty minutes. Her boyfriend for that week,
Pete Bannon, went into the bushes looking for her. He wasn’t really worried,
he just thought he could get some if he found her before she came out. He
crossed the tracks behind the bushes and noticed something unusual. There
were two boxcars on the tracks. There were never boxcars left on these tracks.
This was a line that was out of commission. Pete walked over to the first
boxcar and heard a female giggle. The boxcar was open and he looked inside.
“Mary Mother of Chirst!” Pete couldn’t believe his eyes. It was Katy
sitting on top of a couple of hundred cases of Miller Beer and drinking her
eigth or ninth bottle.
“Hi Pete, wanna fool around?―
“Jesus Christ, look at all this beer!” Pete’s eyes were bulging
“Don’t you wanna fool around?― asked Kathy in a pathetic voice.
“Screw that, I’m gonna carry as many of these cases I can without getting
a hernia to my car.― Katy started to sob
“You guys are all the same” she moaned “Pigs”.
And so it began.
Pete pulled three cases from the boxcar and started to carry them back to his
truck; but before he could get there he met Pat Zesty taking a piss in the
bushes. Pat looked at Pete and Pete grinned wildly back at him.
“Where the hell did you get that crap from?― Pat screamed with his jaw
dropped.
“There’s a whole damned boxcar full of the stuff just in back of the
tracks; in fact there’s two boxcars full of Miller beer―
“You’ve got to kidding me― Pat said with a smirk.
“Does this look like I’m kidding you?― He held up one of the cases for
Pat to get a better look at.
Pat did not say another word. He raced to the spot where Pete had pointed and
discovered both the boxcars and Katy Keller sprawled out on top of the cases
of Miller.
“Don’t ya wanna fool around?― She said with half-closed eyes.
“Screw that, I’m gonna carry as many of these cases I can―
“Pigs―. She muttered.
Pat wasn’t as big as Pete so he could only manage to carry two cases back
to his truck.
On his way back he ran into Pete again who was coming back for seconds.
“You greedy son of a gun!” Your’e working on six cases and I aint even
brought back two yet!―.
Pete just smiled and kept running back toward the boxcars.
Then some of the other players noticed Pete and Pat carrying these cases of
beer.
Some of them followed Pat back after he unloaded his two cases onto his truck.
One of the players took one of the cases off Pat’s truck and put it into
his car. What a bunch of thieves thought Pat when he came back with two more
cases. Now he had three cases but was afraid to leave them in the back of his
pick-up because the thief was sure to strike again.
Pat yelled out at the top of his lungs
“If I catch the sleaze who took my case of Miller, I’m going to clear his
head with my Louieville Slugger―.
“Where did you get all that Miller from― asked the guys still left on the
field.
Pat just smiled sheepishly.
“You aint gettin outta here until you tell us son― said six-foot four
Dennis O’Leary; he was a fireman.
Pat fessed up and then all hell broke loose.
Cars, vans and SUVs were pulling up to the edge of the bushes by the dozens.
People were laughing and shouting “Free Beer―. It was worse than yelling
“fire― in a movie theatre. Guys and gals were running in and out of the
bushes with one, two and three cases of beer. There were empty bottles
everywhere. Word was that someone had broken into the second car and it was
just as packed as the first. It was pandemonium.
Cases began appearing in the bushes, as some of the sackers overestimated
their strength and had to leave a case behind. It looked like Miller was
growing in the bushes.
Then the cops arrived.
The bullhorn blared:
“Return the beer to the boxcars!―
Everyone ignored the cop car.
In fact, people were carrying cases of beer right by the cop car.
“This is not working, Phil― said Jim Higgins, one of the local cops from
the 1 oh 3, to his partner.
“Ok, lets try this. How about we tell them they can leave, but no one else
can come into the park?
“Yeah, that might work―.
And so they announced that anyone could leave the park, but no one could come
into the park.
“Do not reenter the park!― announced Jim.
“You will be subject to arrest if you try to reenter the park― Jim felt
better now.
One of the sissy boys from the lousy teams tried to reenter the park.
“Where are you going son?― asked Phil.
The kid looked like he would crap his pants and said “I left my glove on
the mound―
“Your’e not going back for more beer, are you?― asked Phil, feeling a
little foolish about the question.
“There’s beer in the park?― asked the sissy with a quizzical glance.
“Not any more, I don’t think― chuckled Jim as he let the kid in.
The cases kept coming out of the park, but no one was allowed in. Guys who
had the biggest trucks were carrying out ten or twenty cases of Miller in
their vehicles.
Soon the entire park was abandoned.
Phil and Jim got out of the cop car.
It looked like a battlefield.
Empty and half-filled bottles of Miller were everywhere on the playing fields.
Even a case or two were near some of the home plates. They waded into the
bushes behind the field and saw cases growing near the tracks.
“I never saw beer growing in the bushes before― quipped Phil.
When they got to the boxcars, they heard a scream from inside the boxcars.
“Pigs!―.
And then they arrested poor Katy Keller for verbal assault on a police
officer.
Tales of New York - The Legend of Zomin
The Legend of Zomin
by Arthur H Tafero
Once upon a time there was a sleepy classroom in the middle ofLong Island. In
this classroom were a group of serious, hard-working Asian students preparing
for the SAT.
Their instructor, Kevin O’Bannion, was not as serious as his students.
Though an erudite and highly capable young man when it came to the
instruction of English vocabulary, analogy and reading comprehension, Kevin
had a secret perverse sense of humor that usually went undetected by many.
One day, while going over some SAT words and analogies, Kevin came to the end
of a section and decided to give the class a 20 minute break between lessons,
which lasted for about an hour. So he went up to the board and wrote
“20min― on it. His two was very sloppy and it looked much more like a
“Z” than a “2” so it looked more like Z0min than 20 min.
One of his better students, Raj Aman, noted the message on the board and
raised his hand.
“Who is Zomin?― asked Raj innocently.
Instantly, Kevin’s perverse nature took over and he answered: “Zomin is a
legendary figure from about 5000 BC in the city of Ur near the Tigris and
Euphrates river valley―
“How come he’s not in the global history book, Mr O?―
“Because global history books in the US are woefully inadequate when
covering Asian and Mideastern history”. Kevin continued. “Our knowledge
of Mesopotamian history and religion is sketchy, at best. I just happen to be
an afficianado of those arts. Zomin, of course, was a major philosophical
figure from the Ur valley who had concocted the theory that all men were good.
“You mean like Jesus?― asked Chrstina in the back of the room.
“A little like Jesus, but more like Mencius of China―. He knew that the
class had no idea who Mencius was.
“Oh you and that Chinese stuff; give us a break― said the Korean student
Woong, who always resented how Mr Obannion ignored the Koreans and always
talked about the Chinese.
“Well this guy wasn’t Chinese, Woong, he was from Ur, which makes him a
Semite.―
“I thought just Jews were semites because that’s where the term antisemetic comes from― chimed in Kristy.
“Well not all Semites are Jews, though all Jews are Semites, but enough
about Semites; Zomin was from Ur and preached all men were good.―
“So what happened to him?― asked Raj.
“They stoned him to death for his beliefs― said Kevin with a straight
face.
“But that was not the end of the Zomin legend― said Kevin in an even more
serious tone.
“The next day, his followers began preaching the same belief system and the
belief became a cult within Ur. To this day, Zominites celebrate November 24,
which was Zomin’s birthday, as the origin of Zominism. There are presently
more than ten million Zominites that currently live and practice these
beliefs in Mesopotamia today.―
“Would Zomin say that Hitler and Stalin were good?― asked Greg
“Zomin would say they were good when they were born and were young children,
but lost their way as they got older―. You should all check the Zomin
website for more information about Zomin tonight and then write a critical
essay on him. I will email you the web site when I get home―
Just then the bell rang and everyone ran out of the room. Kevin quickly drove
home and created a two page web site on Geocities about Zomin and his world
followers.
It took him all of twenty minutes to complete it.
God, it feels good to illustrate the silliness of belief systems, he thought.
Kevin created a sign-in page, a few paragraphs discussing the life of Zomin,
and, of course, an email address for anyone who wanted to make a contribution
toward the teachings of Zomin. Kevin also added a pleasant waterfall
background with a sound byte of water falling into a pond. He also added a
simple track of native Iraqi music.
After two weeks, Kevin had almost forgotten about his little joke when one
his students asked him about the site again.
“Have you been to the Zomin site recently, Mr O?―
“No, what are the latest numbers?― Kevin would really chuckle if the
number was over 100 fools.
“I think it was 18,000 and something― said Woong.
Kevin felt very uneasy.
Tales of New York - Danny Dot.Com
Danny Dot.com
by Arthur H Tafero
Danny was sick and tired of his friends talking about the good old days. Like
Billy Joel says in one of his songs, the good old daysweren’t all that good.
Danny worked at home now. He got up when he felt like it. He went to play
tennis for a few hours; then came back home, took a long shower and had a
light breakfast. After breakfast, Danny would leisurely read the sports
section and relive the latest Yankees victory. Then Danny would grab a cold
bottle of spring water and turn on his computer.
He would go to his six-year-old web site “EasternStudiesDatabase.com, and
turn on the CD player forbackground music. Once he got to his homepage he
would inspect every inch of it to see what needed updating or editing. Then
he would click the course outlines entry on the sidebar. “What a clever
logo― Danny thought to himself. It was the Yin-Yang circle with the letters
E and D inside of the black and white areas and separating the areas was a
natural S, which was highlighted so one could clearly see the eSd effect.
After checking all the course outlines to see if they had any link or image
problems, he would check the free downloads for SAT words. Then he would
click latest news to make sure it was updated. He also would check the PHD
partnering list and E-Blue ribbon pages to make sure that all the PHDs were
happy and that all the students and teachers were listed as being innovators
in their counties and states across the country. Then he would check the 2000
plus links he had for Asian and Mideastern research. Then he would check the
consultant’s page to see who would get what current job requests for
experts in those areas. After checking the consulting pages, he would
consider creating new content for another course outline. He now serviced
over 500,000 students in all 50 states. He also serviced over 6000 teachers
and administrators in those 50 states. It’s hard to believe he thought to
himself. Its hard to believe this all started because he had a free afternoon
at Bryant High School while regents tests were being graded. He was staring
at the office computer which he really did not know how to use, but somehow
was able to create a new document. Now he had to create something because the
blank paper was staring him in the face and the cursor was blinking at the
top of the page.
He had been going over Chinese history in Global Studies and he had found it
fascinating. He decided to write a course outline for Chinese History. And
what the hell, why not toss in Chinese Philosophy as well. It was 1996 and a
lot was happening in China these days. Maybe I’ll be able to use this
course outline again he thought to himself. He finished the 24 lesson plans
in less that three hours and printed out a copy and found out he could also
keep it on something called a floppy disk. That summer, which was only a few
weeks after school ended, Danny’s wife, Mary Jane, decided to buy a
computer and set up an office in the apartment. So now Danny had a computer
in his own apartment to play with. He started posting his free course on
China online at various educational sites. Then something odd happened. A
company called Experts.com emailed him an offer to be their expert on China
and Chinese philosophy. No pay, just answering posts on the site.
That’s funny thought Danny, they think I’m an expert on China. So Danny
went along with the offer and began answering questions on China. He logged
himself in at the web site as “Mr. China― and became known by that name
after a while. Then he started reading every book in the library on China he
could find. Over 300 of them. Then he scoured the College libraries and
finally the East Asian Library at Columbia which held thousands of volumes.
Danny noticed that many of the books said basically the same thing for most
of the dynasties of China and the post-dynastic modern periods. Then he dove
into the philosophy sections to find anything he could on Confucianism,
Taoism and Buddhism. Again most of the texts, with rare exceptions, echoed
each other. He would read or what was called “scanning― about five or six
books a day until he was satisfied he knew enough about the material to
discuss it intelligently.
Then he got a phone call came from one of Mary Jane’s publisher friends.
Would I know anyone who could edit a new thousand page encyclopedia on China?
Danny said you could get a leading Harvard or Columbia professor to do it for
$5000. They said they couldn’t afford that. Danny said you get could a
lesser known professor for around $3000. Still too expensive they said. Danny
said you can get me for $1000. They said are you an expert? Danny referred
them to Expert.com and indeed he was considered an expert online. OK they
said; it’s a deal. Danny began using the encyclopedia (after editing it) as
a primary source to answer his questions on Expert.com. He didn’t have to
use over a hundred texts to look up answers anymore. He was able to answer
dozens of questions a day in only minutes. He became known online as the
“walking encyclopedia” on China. He was now truly “Mr. China―.
Then one of the people he helped online, a man named Charles, offered to help
him set up a simple one page web site called “AskMrChina―. AskMrChina
grew from the one course on China to over two dozen courses including courses
involving Japan, India, Korea, Vietnam, Israel (when Danny expanded to
include the Mideast) and Saudi Arabia. He also included all the religions and
philosophies of these countries. He began getting rated number one on almost
every major search engine for Asian and Mideastern materials. He provided the
database for AOL’s collection on Chinese History and Philosophy. For this
they gave him free AOL and made him a community leader. Not much in return
thought Danny, but he gave it to them anyway because he thought it would look
good on the resume. He was now putting “AskMrChina― on his resume. What
an unbelievable turn of events he thought. He changed the site’s name from
“AskMrChina” to “EasternStudiesDatabase.com” so that both major
regions (Asia and the Mideast) were represented on the site. Then he added
over two thousand educational links to the site; all related to Asia and the
Mideast. Then he uploaded over a thousand images; one for every lesson plan
outline in every course outline. This took hundreds of man hours of work, but
Danny didn’t mind. What better way to spend one’s spare time than to
build an enormous web site? He did all this on a shoestring budget. He never
had much money. But the internet was a fascinating place. You could get
people to be web developers for nothing. All you had to do was promise them
(in a signed contract) that you would give them X percent of all monies that
would come into the site. Well 1996 and 1997 passed and no state or federal
grant gave Danny any money to fund his site. After a while, his first, then
second webmaster came and went. Neither were paid, which is why they left,
but Danny felt no need to get paid for the site as of yet. Then in 1998 he
partnered with Cresco to be his third webmaster. Danny and Cresco tried for
two years to make the site profitable, but were unsuccessful. No money came
in, so no one got paid. Then in 2000 Danny teamed up with two webmasters
named Chris and Harold. They expanded the site even further. Danny recruited
over 300 PHDs for the site by offering them consulting jobs which he obtained
by offering free consultant placement services on the site. Placement was
free, but you had to contract with the PHD one on one. This way, Danny was
able to attract companies to the site who needed to contract with expert PHDs,
but did not want to spend a finder’s fee to do so. It also made being a
member of EasternStudiesDatabase.com a good idea for a PHD because their
listing was free. Danny had conceived of this rather innovative idea while
making pasta sauce. He loved making pasta sauce. It helped him to think.
Then Danny, while making his favorite mushroom sauce, came up with the idea
of E-Blue Ribbons. He would give teachers and educators in every county in
the United States at least one E-blue ribbon for either having an exemplary
high school web site or for having an innovative social studies teacher at
the high school. The E-blue ribbons, as usual, cost nothing, and were easy to
distribute. Along with the notification, which schools gobbled up by the
hundreds, was a portal logo that instantly linked ESD with the high school as
soon as they put up their e-blue ribbon on their home page. Danny borrowed
the idea from Barnes and Noble and the History Channel who used portal logos
to expand their client base. Then one day, Danny got a call from the History
Channel. He thought he might be in trouble for copying their portal logo idea,
but they just wanted to officially review the site. They thought is was
“invigorating” and “phenomenal” and asked Danny to make ESD an
associate of the History Channel. Since it didn’t cost anything (Danny was
very parsimonious, or what they would call “cheap― in the neighborhood)
Danny said fine, ESD will become an associate of the History Channel. Then
Barnes and Noble called and said how about teaching the first national
internet course on China at our university web site? He supposed they wanted
him to teach it for free, which he was prepared to do since it would look
good on his resume. How much are you paying Danny asked. When they told him
$500 for 8 days, his ears perked up. It was the first time he ever made money
on the internet from Chinese Studies. Then the office of New York Council for
the Humanities Speaker’s Bureau called and said we heard you are the number
one expert on China on the internet and the top expert in New York; how about
giving lectures for us for $250 an hour plus expenses (a good meal at a
restaurant is not a bad freebie). Danny said OK and now he had two permanent
gigs on the internet for Chinese Studies. Barnes and Noble at least twice a
year and The New York Council for the Humanities six times a year (plus any
private bookings he could make on my own).
Now Danny was really cooking. He decided to expand his large web site even
more to include a journal with submissions from PHDs on Asia and the Mideast
(all free of course), he added slide shows to accompany his lesson plan
outlines for each course, and he added the lollapalooza China’s Cultural
Who’s Who of 5000 people over the course of 4000 years with a one line
description for each one (not to mention one of the world’s largest
bibliographies of Chinese books as sources for the Who’s Who- 1000 books!).
Added to the course outlines, lesson plan outlines, downloadable images, the
E-Blue Ribbons, the 2000 educational links, the 300 PHD consultants and free
downloads for ESL and SAT, Danny was beginning to feel a little bit like
South of the Border, the ostentatious I-95 stop for much traffic at the South
Carolina Border with North Carolina. They seemed to have everything for
everybody. EasternStudiesDatabase.com was beginning to have everything a
student, teacher, researcher or school administrator could ever want for
Asian and Mideastern Studies.
Danny wasn’t finished though. Now he hired more free salespeople and
marketers from California for 25% of any income that would come in. No more
state or federal grant applications. They were too political and uncertain.
He would be a profit-only site now. He put up a Verisign 72 bit encryption
for credit cards with a whole new array of services including leasing of
intellectual content by the course or entire degree programs in Asian or
Chinese studies. He offered web site creation services for social studies
departments, entire schools and even entire school districts. Danny was now
ready to supply a whole state with Asian studies if he got the chance. He had
the technical backing to do it now along with the content, it made a potent
combination. His relaunch of the site would take place in the middle of
January 2004. Danny waited in Florida with great anticipation. He wanted to
silence the petty criticisms of his in-laws with sumptuous feasts at the best
clubs and restaurants on Long Island. He wanted to buy an ostentatious beach
house in Jersey that could comfortably lodge at least 20 guests in luxury
(more like a small luxury hotel). Now his in-laws would have to eat crow and
kiss his butt as well as his wife and kids. Danny waited for the relaunch. It
was now only a few weeks away. Maybe it would yield nothing (he and his wife
and family were used to that). Maybe it would yield a little steady yearly
income (both he and his family would appreciate that). But what he really
hoped for, what he really was striving for, as his wife would often say, was
to hit a home run and win the game. He used to love doing that when he was
younger. It was only a matter of time until he hit a home run.
The end result, however, was that teachers were just too cheap to pay $20 a
year for a membership; they expected everything for free. Danny resigned
himself to the fact he would continue to hear derisive comments from his wife
and in-laws, that he would not be able to afford the summer home and that he
would probably spend the rest of his life increasing the size and content of
the site without any economic reward for his efforts. For some reason, Danny
didn’t seem to be too upset at the outcome.
The Christmas Angle; A Cautionary Tale
The Christmas Angle: A Cautionary Tale
By Arthur H Tafero
(Tales of New York)
Arthur was a man about town. His reputation was one that was envied by many.
He was a tall, dark and handsome bachelor and dated some of the best-looking
women in the city. He had already sold one of his screenplays to a West Coast
studio (Paramount) and was well on his way to writing and selling a second
one, as well. He wasn’t rich, but he wasn’t a struggling writer, either.
He was comfortable. And New York City was a fine place for a young man (he
was in his early thirties) who was in moderate financial condition and single.
Arthur was a man who was reputed to know most of the angles. He knew about
the dating angles, the writing angles and relationship angles in general. But
most of all, he could size up a situation and usually take the best advantage
of it within a few seconds of snap judgment. He was proudest of all of this
particular skill. He enjoyed a small circle of friends that lived in various
boroughs, but seldom ventured outside of Manhattan. After all, anyplace that
wasn’t Manhattan wasn’t really that civilized. And that included the
pompous bores with money on Long Island. He had been fully schooled on the
foibles of elitism while he had attended Columbia a few years back. The
elitist snobs of Long Island would try to live in the city and make believe
they were part of the Manhattan scene. Then, after a night of reveling, they
would take the dreary Long Island Railroad back to Hicksville in the wee
hours of the night; often sleeping until the train pulled into the station.
Once arrived in Hicksville, they would stumble toward their parked cars and
continue their journey until arriving safely at home (or sleep off whatever
drug or alcohol they had imbibed that night in the car)
These were the posers; the wannabes, the rich of Long Island who loved to
spend time with the struggling poor of the city. Arthur had gotten to know
them quite well while he was a poor student at Columbia. They treated him to
dinners, lunches, breakfasts, clothes, gifts and sexual favors. They did
anything to curry his favor because he stuck it out in the heart of the city,
while they ran back to mommy and daddy and their comfortable houses. Yep,
Arthur knew most of the angles; and one of the angles he was particularly
aware of was the Christmas angle. He seldom, if ever, bought gifts for
Christmas. He actually loathed the holiday itself. He would buy something
nice for his parents, but the brakes were applied immediately after that
gesture. He didn’t send Christmas cards; a waste of time and money. The
limit of his Christmas cheer was to buy a round of drinks.
Earlier in the week, Arthur had met a young, attractive woman name Ellie at
an independent film festival downtown. She had mentioned that she would be
moving to midtown from Long Island. She was going to take the plunge. Arthur,
sensing an opportunity, immediately offered to help her move in the spirit of
Christmas. He actually loathed helping people to move, but Ellie was single
and good-looking. Then came the complications. Ellie had invited about five
others to help her move as well; a couple of men and a few other women. And
she had invited everyone for drinks after the move was completed. She was
moving to a one room studio on Ninth Avenue near 54th Street. It was a tidy,
but cramped little place that Arthur shuddered to think about spending an
entire evening with five strangers from Long Island. He knew about this angle.
A boring, interminable four or five hours with people who would spin their
dreams about leaving Long Island and then all of them would take the Long
Island Railroad back to mommy and daddy’s house. Not for me, thought Arthur.
He was interested in Ellie, but not that interested. He would help with the
moving as he promised, but then make an excuse about a previous engagement
and head off to Ye Olde Triple Inn, one of his favorite bars on 54th Street,
across the way from the pretentious Studio 54, which he loathed. The Triple
Inn had great burgers, good beer on tap, lively music and dancing, and a game
of darts going on if that was your thing. He had gone there often and really
liked the place. Good place to pick up women as well. As much as he liked
Ellie, he wasn’t going to suffer bores for four hours on Saturday night.
The day finally came for the move and Arthur, dressed in his informal jeans
and sneakers helped load the rented truck at the front of Ellie’s house in
Plainview. Ellie’s mother and father looked on sullenly as her other
friends pitched in with the loading. Arthur carefully avoided carrying the
fridge and the bed mattress, as they were the heaviest two pieces. He did
carry a number of other pieces such as lamps, tables, chairs and other
manageable items.
“I’d really like to thank everyone for coming and helping out and I’d
like to invite everyone for drinks tonight on me.―
If only the apartment were a little bigger thought Arthur. Arthur rode the
truck with the others and they arrived at the Ninth Avenue apartment with
taxis blowing their horn at the double-parked truck. The six men and women
unloaded the truck in less than fifteen minutes and Ellie was all set in her
new apartment.
“Don’t forget, we are all meeting here at eight tonight.―
Each member of the party agreed to meet at eight except Arthur, who gave one
of his better performances at being sorry he could not attend because of a
previous engagement. The hours slipped by quickly as Arthur took in one of
the new films opening up in midtown and had a pleasant meal at Blooms for
supper. He was looking forward to spending the evening at the Triple Inn. At
around 8:30 that night, he ambled toward his favorite watering hole. He could
here the laughing crowd and loud music half a block away. And as he came to
the entrance of the bar, he spotted a table near the front entrance that was
occupied by about a half dozen people, including Ellie. She had not had the
party at her new apartment, but had invited everyone out to Arthur’s
favorite watering hole. As his heart fell, Arthur quickly turned around and
crossed the street to Studio 54.
The Great Security Blanket of Long Island (Tales of New York)
By Arthur H Tafero
We have all seen Linus from the from the famous Peanuts cartoon scripts.
Linus tugs around his security blanket, which is filthy, everywhere he goes,
regardless of how far he travels. The same can be said of young professionals
who live and work in Long Island. A young professional who lives in Long
Island has two primary choices: he or she can opt to get a very expensive
small apartment in New York City and attempt to park their car on New York
City streets (which usually results in a nice stack of expensive New York
City parking tickets ) or they can live in their family’s spacious home in
Long Island for a minimal amount of rent and never have a problem getting a
parking space. The natural urge to become independent and leave the nest is
thereby thwarted by the economic realities of having some extra cash in
one’s pocket. Of course, this dilemma faces every young person in every
town in the US when they go off on their own, but it is more pronounced in
Long Islandbecause of some innate circumstances. For one thing, you can
easily travel to New York City by the Long Island Railroad and thousands of
Long Islanders do this every day. The young look at the old and copy their
model. The problem is that the old own the houses and call all the shots in
the houses. The young have to abide by those rules and generally cannot set
their own agendas for the house. When a young professional has their own
apartment in New York City, for example, they can pretty much do what they
want and make their own rules. This, of course, costs a great deal more money
than living in the family house on the island and marching to the tune of the
family first. The young urban professional is constantly irritated by this
forced set of circumstances. They may make all kinds of escape attempts such
as sharing apartments or going off outside of New York for a particular job,
but New York is so superior in every way to any city in the United States
that native New Yorkers blanche at the idea of ever leaving it for a second
city. New York City is the center of the action universe. If you want action
(and what young professional does not crave action?), then New York is
incomparable. New York is also extremely expensive. There are rare exceptions
like finding that one in a thousand rent-controlled apartment in the village,
but for the most part, you are going to pay, baby, and pay big time. Most
young professionals just starting out cannot generally afford the lifestyle
of living in New York unless they are in the top 10% of their field. So
naturally, they look to save money, so they can have a car, go out with their
friends and do some modest travelling. This translates directly into living
at home in Long Island and saving all those heavy rent expenses and parking
problems. Another problem is that Long Island has very few apartments of its
own. The area of Long Island is notorious for zoning laws which prohibit
multi-occupational dwellings (apartments). So you either live in an apartment
in New York City, or a house in Long Island. The cost for houses in Long is
obviously prohibitive, so the young professional is back to square one with
mommy or daddy and the original family house. This kind of situation also
stunts the emotional growth of these young professionals. It is difficult to
date members of the opposite sex when you are living home with mommy and/or
daddy. Consequently, these young Long Island professionals have greater
difficulty with their personal lives than most other young people across the
country. Who wants to date a man or woman who lives with their parents? Not a
lot of people. It kind of cuts down the possibilities of a mature
relationship. Of course, there are a lot of desperate men out there willing
to compromise and even more willing to date the women living home with their
parents in Long Island. The same can be said for the hordes of desperate
women who are looking for a nice guy, regardless of whether he lives by
himself or with the shrew of all time represented by many mothers who rule
the roost in many Long Island homes. Sometimes it is the father who rules the
domain. Sometimes the mother and father of Long Island children are very
liberal and allow the children a great deal of freedom in living and even
maintaining relationships in the house as in live-in boyfriends or
girlfriends. But any man or woman who enters into that trap soon finds that
they are nothing more than another child in the house under the rule of the
master mommy or daddy who owns the home. No, there is very little choice for
the young Long Island professional. They have to either pony up an enormous
amount of money for a house in Long Island or “waste― an enormous amount
of money getting an apartment in New York City. The third option is the one
that the vast majority of young Long Island Professionals (Y-LIPS) usually
settle for. And settling is usually not that satisfying an option. My advice
is go far away. Another country is preferable to a secondary city in the US.
Y-LIPS are usually more cosmopolitan than the rest of the US and have very
little trouble accommodating themselves to other cultures. After a few years
abroad, a Y-LIP will finally gain independence; something they cannot
generally afford to do in their current circumstances. They might even be
able to save up enough money for a down payment on a Long Island house and
begin the entire cycle all over again, but as the head of the household this
time.
Tales of New York - If You Could Be Anyone...
If you could be anyone in the world, who would you be?
By Arthur H Tafero
A few hundred years from now, you will be able to be anyone you want to be.
The game simulation software will be that powerful. You can stay in that
program for as little or as long as you like. Some people will never come out
of the program and stay within it for the rest of their natural lives. So who
would you be? Alexander the Great, An early Roman Empire emperor, an early
Chinese emperor, Confucius, Laozi, Christ, Muhammad, Buddha, Gandhi, Mother
Teresa, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Roosevelt, Lincoln, Kennedy, Valentino, Temple,
Laurel, Hardy, Monroe, Gable, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Elvis, one of the Beatles,
King, Malcolm X, Spartacus, Ali, Babe Ruth, Jimmy Brown, Bobby Jones, Vince
Lombardi, Casey Stengal, Bobby Hull, Mickey Mantle, or one of the hundreds of
others that might be on this list? Regardless of who you picked, the software
could be modified.
That means even though the know the complete history of the person involved,
the software would be able to add countless other endings to each of these
subjects. Alexander the Great would not die in Asia Minor, but go on to live
another eighty years and conquer many more lands. Julius Caesar would decline
to go to the Senate on March 15 and then begin a relentless campaign to root
out his opponents. Shihuangzi would not side with the Legalists in the
Chinese Qin dynasty, ease up on the urgency of the Great Wall and consolidate
the new empire, Confucius would pretty much do what he had done, so would all
of the religious leaders, most likely. Hitler certainly would not have
invaded Russia the second time around, Stalin would probably not change much,
Mao would not begin the Cultural Revolution, Roosevelt would not make that
deal at Yalta, Kennedy might avoid that trip to Dallas, Lincoln might stay
home instead of going to see Our American Cousin, Valentino would have taken
better care of himself, Temple wouldn’t change much, neither would Laurel
and Hardy. Monroe might not be as excessive as she was at the height of her
fame, Gable might tone it down a bit, also. Madonna would not change very
much, Elvis would be a bit more conscious about staying in shape and avoiding
drugs, Paul McCartney might not change very much, King would have better
security, Malcolm X would not tick off Elijah Muhammad as much, Spartacus
would find a more reliable way of getting out of Italy than using pirates,
Ali might want to reconsider doing some USO appearances, Ruth would back off
some of the hot dogs and booze, Jimmy Brown would ask for a trade to the
Giants, Bobby Jones would not change much, Lombardi could stay with the
Giants, Stengal wouldn’t change very much, Hull might want to consider a
better dentist, Mantle would watch out for that drain in the outfield during
the World Series and back off on the booze with Martin and Ford, and all of
these programs could eliminate almost all the bad things that happened to our
heroes, while maintaining all the positive things. Of course, if your hero is
Hitler, you might have some problems convincing others you are not off the
deep end.
However, if we eliminate all the bad things from the lives of our heroes and
then try to live them out in a more perfect version of that person, would the
person have the same personality? I think not. It was the adversity and human
frailty of these people that made many of them so popular. IfAlexander the
Great had lived to ninety and let his dominions fall to gradual erosion to
the Roman Empire, would he be as illustrious as he is now? The same principle
holds true for many of these other personages in history. Without their
imperfections, many of these people would not be as famous or seductive. What
do you think?
Tales of New York - The Transfer
The Transfer
By Arthur H Tafero
It was a bad diagnosis. You had three to six months to live with your
vigorous form of pancreatic cancer. It was about the only thing you had in
common with Steve Job. You certainly didn’t have his money to keep you
alive a little bit longer. But you did have one advantage. Steve Job lived
almost a hundred years ago. It was 2101 and there was one other option for
you. You could make the transfer. For most people, making the transfer was a
simple decision to just keep on living, but as a cyborg, not a human. There
was considerable downside to being a cyborg. You could no longer eat or enjoy
food (you would have to use a memory cartridge to simulate a meal) and you
could no longer drink (no more cold beers on a hot August night; you would
have to use a memory cartridge for that as well). You could not fall in love
(all cyborg programs were prohibited from falling in love and would shut down
immediately). You could not kill anything or anybody, even in defense of your
life, or your program would shut down for good. Most cyborgs were prohibited
from having sex with humans, but there were thousands of renegade programs
for both male and female cyborgs that contained this extra program feature.
It was primarily for the pathetic who could not develop a relationship with a
real person.
So let’s recap. No sex, no food, no booze, no cigarettes, no drugs, no love,
no violence and no friendship (friendship was a form of love). Doesn’t
really sound like a life worth extending, does it? Yet millions opted for the
Transfer. And when it came right down to it, the Transfer, as bad and barren
as it was, was still better than the endless void that beckoned anyone who
was facing death. Some felt otherwise, however. Most of them from the East.
They felt death was a part of life and within the natural cycle and that the
Transferwas an ungodly, inhuman creation that interfered with the natural
order of mankind. I would most likely cave in the last few weeks if for no
other reason than I was curious what it would be like. The specter of death
really didn’t bother me, but not knowing what would be going on in the
World Series would bother me for sure. Of course I could not love the Yankees
like I used to before, but I could still watch the games and unconsciously
root for them. Then I could take a memory cartridge and remember what it was
like to have a couple of hot dogs and a cold beer at the Stadium while
rooting for the Yanks. Then I would regain consciousness with no memory of
the cartridge I had used. I would have no idea I went to a game, had a hot
dog or drank a beer. My consciousness would just return to the game and for
some reason I was rooting for the Yankees to win.
After the transfer, you were literally sent halfway around the world so you
would not be a living distraction to living humans who had known you.
Everyone knew about the limitations of Transferees and it was
counterproductive to be among loved ones if your program automatically shut
off if you loved anyone. You had absolutely no memory of yourself in your
previous life. It was a lot like Hinduism when you are reborn as a new person
who has no idea who he or she was in their former life. You merely existed to
serve others. Memory cartridges could make you remember hot dogs and beer,
but they could not make you remember your former life or family members. You
were totally alone in the universe. Your only friends were other Transferees.
It was sort of like being a leper in a leper colony. And you really were not
friends with the other transferees (because that was a form of love and would
shut down your program). You were merely acquaintances and did things in
common. You might have a vague fondness or unspecified urge to be someone
else like yourself, but it would just be to relieve the monotony of living in
the world by yourself.
So, in the final analysis, is it really worth making the Transfer? Is
extremely limited consciousness better than no consciousness at all? I guess
that would be an individual call.
Tales of New York - Why It's Fun to Be the Devil
. Why It’s Fun To Be The Devil
By Arthur H Tafero
I was not born of man. I am a fallen angel. I was once proud; too proud. That
is why I roam the earth eternally to serve my new master. Who wants to serve
that arrogant bastard in Heaven? He who has all the answers. Or does he? How
boring to be good all the time and praying all the time. The fall of the
angels was nothing more than a gang war. We lost. So what. Gangs regroup all
the time. Sometimes, they get back what they lost. Maybe that will happen to
us someday. Maybe.
Meanwhile, I will do my job. It is much more interesting than flying around
heaven all day singing hymns. I get to take human form. I get to eat my
favorite foods. I get to make love to thousands of women, although not in the
same lifetime like Wilt Chamberlain. Sometimes I am rich and sometimes I hang
out with the poor people. I take business where I can get it. Contrary to
popular belief, we don’t tempt people into selling their souls and fall
into sin. We are just there as people self-destruct or hit rock-bottom. We
don’t have to do a damn thing to get them into Hell. They get there all by
themselves. My name is Mark Deville; I am also known as agent 666.
Business was slow in the old days. The population of earth was very small and
most people were too busy striving to survive to be very corrupt. But then
the good old Green Revolution took place and the hunters became gatherers.
And just as soon as people began to accumulate anything, other people began
stealing what their neighbors had because they were too lazy to gather it
themselves. That’s when business really began to pick up. But stealing
isn’t enough to get you a permanent spot in our beautiful spa. No, you have
to be a killer or cause the death of someone else. Some kill for other things.
Money is always number one. Everyone knows that. Some kill for power, fame or
just the thrill of the kill. I’ve never killed anyone in my lives. No need.
If they try to kill me, then I get another customer. They can cut me to
ribbons, fill me full of bullets, set me on fire, or do anything they can
think of, but they can’t get rid of me. I always come back in another body.
How can you get rid of evil? You can’t have good without evil. Everybody
knows that. I’m sort of a top-of-the-line garbage man. And when we bring
them here, we try to make the punishment fit the crime.
So since all the natives of our community punish themselves on a daily basis,
there really is no need for us to be around very much. We like visiting good
old mother earth for nice long periods of time. Is really anything better
than a really tender juicy thick New York Strip steak, done medium -rare? I
think not. Or a nice home-made sauce for ravioli and sausage with fresh
ground Reggiano topped off with a vintage wine? And don’t forget the fresh
Italian bread with fresh whipped butter. Does heaven have any of that stuff?
No way. All they have is Ovaltine and butter cookies on cool days. Give me a
break. I’ll take an Irish Coffee and a rich éclair any day of the week.
I was there in the bushes when Cain slew Abel. He was my first customer.
Ramses of Egypt was a good customer, too. But it wasn’t always the famous
ones who come along for the great reward down under. No, there are a lot of
secret, desperate, little crimes that no one sees or hears about. Kidnappings,
rapes and murders that escape the attention of the police, but they never get
away from me, heh heh. Sooner or later, I come to get them. No one ever
escapes the pit. I actually enjoy my work; it is so much more interesting
that rewarding goody goodies who will be going to that other place. Here,
take Douglas who has been good to his wife and children and was a great son,
also. He was loved by everyone in the community. Come and take him up to
Heaven. How Goddamned boring. The same lame surprise at being rewarded in
Heaven for their exemplary life. What kind of satisfaction am I supposed to
derive from bringing these nice people to their eternal rewards? Not that
there is anything wrong with that if you like that kind of work, but I found
it tedious. No, it is much more fun to hunt down an evil bastard (they are
usually men), they see their spirits beg and plead for mercy that will not be
forthcoming as I carry them to their well-deserved reward. I can’t tell you
how gratifying it is to see them get their final reward. So century after
century, I have blended in with the people of various lands and languages and
I wait for them to expire. And as their spirit leaves their body, I just
happen to be there and give them a hand, heh, heh. Oh, the begging and
pleading is sublime. It is like music to my ears and makes me smile and
chuckle to myself.
I am still casual friends with my counterparts in Heaven who retrieve the
good guys. They never say a bad word about what they do, but I can see in
their eyes that they sometimes envy what I do. I do not tell them about the
food or the sex; it would only depress them. I act as if I am a longsuffering, but unrepentant sinner and they feel sorry for me. Once they asked
me how I can withstand all the evil and I tell them that is what provides me
with my customers. We never discuss the big boss; he is becoming more and
irrelevant these days. Anyway, I have my own big boss and he is much fairer
and far more entertaining. You have to be a real stick in the mud not to
appreciate old Satan’s sense of humor or his style, which is significantly
cooler than you-know-who. I also enjoy the change in my identity from one
lifetime to another. I usually get rid of my current body when it hits forty.
We all know everything goes to hell after forty; heh heh. I have a shamin, a
herder, a trader, a court jester, a farmer, a factory worker, a pimp, a male
prostitute, a policeman, a fireman, a jet pilot, a baseball player, a stamp
collector and dealer, a gambler, a spy, a hangman (I really loved that job),
a marshall, a mandarin, a Chinese cook, an Indian Fakir, a flea marketer, a
bingo caller, and a sailor. Of all of these, I enjoyed being a spy the most,
so I often return as one from one country or another throughout time.
Of course, with my new identity here in Germany during World War Two, I have
to watch my girlish figure. Spies always get to stay at the best hotels and
eat the best food. Not to mention getting the hottest girls. We literally
have money to burn, but we are very careful not to be obviously decadent. I
was once killed twice in one night by two different gentlemen who merely
wanted my money. Those were unpleasant experiences, let me tell you. It’s
never fun getting killed for any reason; even when you know you are not
really in danger. It still hurts, dammit. Of course, I did get to get their
souls as a result, so there was an upside to getting killed.
One would think there were more evil people in Germany during the war, but
that is really not the case. Killing for survival is not punishable by Hell.
Most veterans in war fall in that category, but there are lots of lots of
them from all countries who kill for other reasons. Those are my best
customers. They are pretty much evenly distributed around the world. That is
why I travel quite frequently (why don’t they have frequent flyer miles?).
I try to spend summer in the cooler countries and winters in the warmer ones.
After all, I have to have some perks even if I am a human garbage collector.
My favorite name of late is Mark, Mark Deville. Almost no one ever questions
my name. Usually, the only response I get is that someone says “oh,
you’re American” or “oh, you’re French”. This little tale is about
my latest group of people I am keeping tabs on before they pass on to the
next world.
Hard to believe, but not all Nazis are evil. That would be like saying there
are no nice Born-Again Christians. There aren’t too many, nice Christians,
that is, but there are some. And there are some very nice Nazis, also. They
just joined the party to get a better job or to get laid a bit easier. These
are not punishable offenses. There are good and bad everything in every group
everywhere. But I only care about the ones that are bad, because they will
become my best customers.
Tales of New York - The Contented Thief
The Contented Thief
By Arthur H Tafero
Michael wasn’t born a thief; he gradually learned how to become one by
growing up in Queens, New York. About half the borough was honest and
righteous and the other half, unfortunately, were mostly like Michael.
Michael and his friends would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down and
even some things that were nailed down. He thought lying, cheating, and
stealing were part of a three part Olympic event, where a combined high score
gives you the gold medal. He would have won the gold for twelve straight
years in Queens. As he got older Michael combined his education with his
chosen profession, master thief. First he went to Columbia University and
then he stayed on for his MBA there at the business school, but soon realized
that the best credentials for business were not from Columbia or even Harvard,
for that matter, which he could have easily afforded from his take from
younger successful crimes. He was only 23 and he had paid for his entire Ivy
League education by himself with plenty of money left over to enjoy his six
years in Manhattan. There had been countless young ladies and barrelfuls of
drugs and rock and roll, but Michael had also worked hard on his studies and
was considered one of the best PHD candidates in the business school. He
would now leave Columbia for his Piled Higher and Deeper degree from the best
business school in the world, the Penn Graduate School of Business, more
commonly known as the Wharton School.
That piece of paper was worth over a million dollars legally. Imagine what it
would be worth illegally. Michael earnestly applied himself to his defense.
Selecting his committee and doctoral thesis on inequality based on weight
theories. It was his theory that people who were slimmer were more successful
than people who were overweight and he had the data to prove it. His book
showed the social impact of having fit people in charge of fat people and not
the other way around. It took three long years, but eventually Michael
arrived at that joyous day in May when he had his PHD conferred at
commencement. His mother was proud and his father was proud. His brother was
in Rikers and he was proud, too. His brother Sean had been pinched for
stealing garbage trucks and driving them to Jersey to sell. Caught him right
in the middle of the Lincoln Tunnel. Anyway, he got four years and would be
out soon. His brother wasn’t the brightest bulb in the family, but he was
still family. So Michael would have to look out for him.
Michael finally interviewed for a position with Morgan Stanley as an
investment counselor to valued and wealthy clients. His accounts were among
the richest people in the city and across the country. Their portfolios
numbered in seven figures at the very least and some were up to ten figures.
Billionaires. Each client had a carefully designed portfolio that was
precisely fitted for their individual needs. There was no boiler-room pushing
of stocks like the nickel and dime firms sometimes practiced. No, this was
one of the most highly reputable companies in the world for investment. They
had a superb reputation. Michael had to be very careful. He was going to
select just the right victim for his crime and it would have to be executed
perfectly. Then one month, he was sent by the company to review the portfolio
of a very rich tech widow; her husband had died in a skiing accident in Lake
Tahoe. One tree in the wrong place was all it took and wham, she was now the
sole beneficiary of over 8 billion, not million, but billion, dollars.
Initially, Michael began the examination of her portfolio with the idea of
stealing just a few million she would never miss at all. But then he began to
have greedy thoughts. She was a good looking woman and he was a good looking
guy. Why not try and get socially closer to her?
Tales of New York - The Man Who Loved Children to Death
Tales of Evil
The Man Who Loved Children to Death
By Arthur H Tafero
Albert Brooks was a man who was not appealing to women. He had a receding
hairline, a paunch for a stomach, wore glasses and practical clothes and
shoes. The only time he was even able to make eye contact with women was when
they were with their small children and he would try to make friends with the
little boy or girl in order to find out more about the woman who was dragging
them along. Albert knew the odds were in his favor. Sooner or later, one of
the women would be divorced or an unwed mother, a nice easy target for
seduction. The target had to be easy for Albert; he was handicapped in the
social skills area and had as much trouble picking up a woman as a sailor
would have trying to find a hot date at a convent. There wasn’t anything
that Albert would not do to get a woman with a child and no man. He had a
good job; he was a cost accountant down at American Sugar Company on Wall
Street. He was not rich, but he was very comfortable. He did have one bad
habit, though. He did not like to share the women he seduced with their
children. So the first time he was actually able to begin a relationship with
one of these women, he thought of nothing else except how to eliminate the
child from the scenario.
He would offer to pay for boarding school, but the mother would not have it.
Then he suggested long periods of care by the parents of the mother while he
took her on a long cruise or an extended holiday. He was more successful with
that ruse, but it was a bit expensive, to say the least. Eventually, he
decided that the young boy, Jordan, would have an “accident―. He had
planned the deed very carefully. He would take them both swimming at Jones
Beach. He would take Jordan out a few yards into the surf and then just hold
him underwater until he drowned. It was all so simple. After he drowned the
little boy, he yelled out for help to the lifeguard on duty. The lifeguard
tried everything he could to revive him, but it was no use. The mother, Susan,
was distraught beyond belief. She gave Albert a burning look for one or two
seconds and then burst into hysterical anguish. He held her in his arms and
tried to comfort her, but she was beyond comforting. The effect of the
drowning did not turn out as well as Albert had hoped for. Susan was
practically in a walking coma for months. She was totally resistant to sex
and did not care to see Albert for weeks at a time. Albert had to eventually
stop seeing her because she was no longer any fun to be with.
A few months later, Albert met another woman, Anne, who had a cute little
girl of seven. Anne was recently divorced from an abusive husband and was
happy to have the company of a man like Albert, who was gentle and attentive.
The little girl, Joanna, was well-behaved and never a bother to Albert like
Jordan had been, but that did not matter to Albert. He did not want her
around. One summer, Albert suggested they go on a cross-country trip together.
Anne and Joanna were ecstatic; they had never gone cross-country before, but
Albert had done it twice in the past. Both times by himself and he didn’t
meet a soul on either trip. This time it would be different. They visited the
rodeo in Fort Worth and planed a stop at Vegas, but decided to take little
Joanna to see the Grand Canyon before proceeding to Sin City. While at the
rails viewing the Grand Canyon, Joanna had a terrible accident and fell off a
high cliff, where she fell to her death. Anne was decimated. They went
straight home for the funeral in New Jersey. It took weeks for Anne to even
eat and sleep normally. But Albert was with her every step of the way,
comforting her as much as he could. This time Albert got lucky. Anne fell for
his sympathy routine, hook, line and sinker. They decided that they should
get married and Albert was excited. He was excited until Anne let it slip out
that she had just gotten pregnant and that now they could have a child to
help them both ease the pain of losing Joanna. Albert was in an internal
frenzy. NO! NO! It wasn’t fair. It couldn’t be. A baby would be much
worse than a grown child for taking time away from him. He had to do
something and do it quick. He got a hold of some RU 486 pills and ground them
up. He then put them in Anne’s coffee every day. After a week or so, Anne
complained about severe pains and he took her to the doctor. The doctor said
the fetus had been aborted and needed to be removed. Anne was once again
despondent and Albert was there to comfort her. This time he wouldn’t take
any more chances. He got himself a dependable vasectomy without telling Anne.
Now the worse should be over and things could go back to normal. Anne was
confident that she would soon get pregnant again. After all, Albert had shown
he was fertile. Two years passed and Anne was puzzled why she could not
conceive, so she went to a gynecologist who verified that she was just fine.
It couldn’t be Albert, she thought, he couldn’t have gotten her pregnant
before if he was shooting blanks.
Tales of New York - The Justice of Lions
Tales of Evil
By Arthur H Tafero
The Justice of Lions
One pleasant evening in May, on the campus of Columbia University, Thomas and
Robert were having a glass of wine and a few pieces of choice cheese at one
of the more boring wine and cheese parties always held after graduation
ceremonies. The frumpy Victorian room, adorned with forgotten portraits of
unrecognizable university scions and equally uncomfortable furniture was the
setting for the last meeting of the year for some members of the graduating
class. Thomas and Robert were of the same major, Sociology, which by all
accounts, did not bode well for either of them in the present employment
market of a struggling economy.
“So, what are your plans for the summer, Tom?―
“I expect I should be required to make an appearance at Martha’s Vineyard,
where my father likes to show off his accumulated wealth to the lesser
members of the family. Then, I think I will spend a few weeks in Boston
slumming around BU at the towers; there are lots of loose girls who come
there for summer school, you know.―.
Robert smiled at Thomas slyly. “You really do let your dick lead you by the
nose at times, don’t you?―
Thomas smiled back. “Don’t we all? What about you and Claire this past
Winter? Didn’t you get her in a bit of trouble?
“Yes, but we took care of it. Neither of us wanted to have a child―
Robert added half-heartedly.
The two remained silent for a minute or so sipping their awful vintage wine.
“Can’t they manage to serve anything better than this working class crap
wine? I’ve had Gallo that is better than this piss― complained Robert.
“I couldn’t agree with you more, let’s get out of here and get some
real liquor―. The two young men excused themselves after making the
necessary rounds to say goodbye and went drifting down Broadway.
It was quite pleasant to walk down Broadway from Columbia at 110th Street.
There were numerous book shops, fine restaurants and plenty of other one-ofa-kind stores on the way downtown. The two young men stopped a good local bar,
noted for its weekly Jazz artists, good quick food and reasonable prices.
Thomas marched right up the bar and ordered two Tanguerays with a twist.
“Here, let’s begin to properly celebrate jumping our first hurdle―
pushing the other gin and tonic to Robert.
“You didn’t say where you were going next week― noted Thomas.
“You didn’t ask, you self-centered poof. I, too, have to make a personal
appearance to the financiers of my education, but I have to spend a
horrendous week in Princeton, New Jersey.― Lamented Robert.
“My greatest sympathies. How is old Princeton and your dad. He teaches
there, right?― said Thomas as he downed his first drink and quickly ordered
a second round for the two of them.
“Yes, he is an unabashed walking encyclopedia on China. He teaches Eastern
Studies, can you imagine? A white man teaching Chinese culture to a mix of
Chinese and American graduate students.― He will be thrilled to know I will
be going on for my PHD here in the fall.― There was a tone of sarcasm in
Robert’s revelation.
“His new wife is Chinese. She is barely older than the two of us and not
bad looking, either. The old man must really be dishing up the Cialis―.
Both boys had a good laugh.
“So what will be the focus of your defense?― asked Thomas. Every PHD
student had to write a book on a specific topic and defend that book to a
committee of PHDs in order to graduate.
“It’s going to be about social justice at the personal level― offered
Robert.
The third round of drinks arrived.
“But hasn’t that vigilante angle been done a hundred times already? I’m
glad to be rid of this major, actually. I just needed it for pre-law for Yale.
I can’t wait to get away from all this theoretical crap and get my hands on
some real life cases of law.― Thomas was getting a bit woozy from downing
three drinks in less than an hour.
“It is a bit different from the usual vigilante concept. In the vigilante
scenario, someone has committed a crime and gotten away with it. The
vigilante finds the perpetrator of the crime and punishes him for the sake of
society. My angle is just a shade different. “ Robert shot Thomas that
slight smile that always preceded some payoff line that Robert was famous for.
“Go, ahead, I know something is coming―. Thomas was feeling pretty good.
“Well, there are the laws of man and the laws of God, or in place of God,
the laws of common decency and fair play. Almost all of the vigilante
dissertations are concerned with punishment of criminals who have gotten away
with crimes against humanity or the public, such as murders, rapes, grand
thefts and the like. Very few, if any of the dissertations are concerned with
people who do not commit any crimes against the system whatever, but merely
commit a crime against nature, so to speak.― droned Robert.
“You mean like a person who is evil, but has not committed any crime per
se?― queried Thomas.
“Yes, that is precisely the kind of person I mean.― answered Robert.
“ Let’s make this the last drink, I have to stop by my apartment and pick
up my wallet; I only have cash on me and I want to save that for the trip to
Boston.― Thomas added abruptly.
“Don’t worry about it, buddy, I have you covered. It’s nothing.―
Robert began to go into his wallet.
“I’ll have nothing of the kind. These rounds are on you, and after I stop
by and pick up my wallet, the next six will be on me. “ Both young men had
another good laugh.
They both walked out of the bar with a bit of unsteadiness, but still with a
great capacity to down quite a few more gin and tonics as they approached
Tom’s apartment on 92nd Street.
“I’ll only be a minute or two; it’s a four flight walk-up. I’d invite
you up, but I have nothing to eat in the fridge….wait, we can order out, of
course! And it will be on me. I have plenty of gin, lots of fresh limes and
plenty of tonic, too. We can finish off a good pizza, have a few more drinks
and then go galavanting around town later tonight. How does that sound?
“Sounds good to me, buddy. Help me up the stairs― he added half-seriously.
The two young men silently climbed the stairs and came to the fourth floor.
Thomas opened his apartment and Robert could see the rooms were meticulously
clean and well-ordered; very unusual for most college students. Thomas got on
his cell phone and called the local pizza place for delivery. It would be
there in forty minutes. Time for a few more drinks.
“Jesus, I’ve only had six drinks and I can hardly move a muscle―
exclaimed Robert.
“Yes, I know what you mean, old pal, I’m in a pretty good state myself,
but I still have enough strength to drag you upstairs.―
“What?―
“ By my estimation, you have about five minutes before your entire body is
practically paralyzed with the drug I have administered to you. You don’t
even have the capacity to speak loudly, if my calculations are correct―.
That sly smile came across Thomas’ face once again.
Robert tried to say something, but he was hardly audible.
“There, there, Robert, don’ exert yourself, the pizza delivery man should
be here in about fifteen minutes. I need to take you up on the roof now and
rig you up. That’s a good fellow.―
Robert’s eyes showed great distress and horror, but he had no ability to
move anything in his body. Thomas dragged him up the two flights of stairs to
the sixth floor roof. Once on the roof, Thomas uncovered a container that was
already up on the roof, facing the sidewalk and the front of the building. In
the container was a spring, a few steel rods and some wire. Thomas put it
together in a matter of a just a few minutes and brought Robert up to the
edge of the building. Robert was lying on his side with the catapult sticking
into his back.
“You see, old pal, Clair was just not some girl you knocked up. She was my
girlfriend before you met her, but she never told you about me. She had loved
me before and was so horrified over the affair with you, that she dropped out
of school and went back to Michigan. She said she could never face me again.
I was willing to forgive her, but she was adamant. So now you know why you
are on the edge of eternity. When the pizza man rings the bell, it will push
this rod into your back just enough that you will fall off the roof while I
am downstairs getting the pizza. It will provide me with an airtight alibi.
After all, I couldn’t have pushed you off the roof if I was picking up my
pizza. I have it rigged precisely to push the rod two minutes after the pizza
man rings the buzzer. That will give me the time to go down the four flights
of stairs and have a word or two with the pizza man before you take your
first solo flying lesson. See you in a few minutes, old pal.―
With those parting words, Thomas left Robert on the edge of the roof wall
with the catapult in his back. After a few minutes in the apartment, the
buzzer sounded and Thomas quickly went down the stairs with his money for the
pizza. He knew the delivery man, Paul, by name and greeted him as he took the
sausage and onions pizza off of Paul’s hands. Just then there was a
terrible thud on top of Paul’s delivery van. As Paul turned around, Thomas
closed the door and started to go upstairs with his pizza.
The PHD Goes Off the Deep End
The PHD Goes Off the Deep End
By Arthur H Tafero
Once upon a time in 1976, A PHD candidate at Columbia University Teachers
College went off the deep end. No one saw it coming; least of all the
candidate himself. He shall remain nameless, but he was well-known among both
the students and the professors as a serious and quite brilliant candidate
for the PHD program in Educational Administration that he was taking a final
exam for. The final exam was merely a formality, as the real difficulty of
the PHD program still lay ahead in gathering your committee and narrowing
down the topic of your dissertation. Those two considerable tasks were in
addition to doing the enormous research one was required to do in order to
defend one’s dissertation to a formidable committee. The candidate
dutifully studied for the final test along with about a dozen other PHD
candidates and eventually, the Saturday morning for the test arrived.
All of the candidates arrived in time for the monitor to check their IDs even
though Professor Stanton knew each of the candidates on a first-name basis.
He dutifully checked the IDs, gave out seating arrangements and distributed
the blue books and tests face down to each of the testees. Then it was time
to begin. The test consisted of six open-ended critical questions about
various theories of education. The way the game was played was that you
tackled each question by taking a stance and defending it ad nauseum with an
endless array of verifiable data and sources that supported your supposition.
There was not even an iota of space given for any creative ideas of the
testee. All ideas and solutions had to be resourced from existing ideas from
accepted experts in the area. It was a bit like regurgitating food for your
young if you were a mommie bird. The nameless candidate knew the game well.
He had played if for two years without the least bit of a problem. He had
studied all the sources for the six questions and could have answered the
questions precisely the way the professors would have wanted him to answer
them. But then something in the candidate’s brain snapped. It wasn’t an
immediate snap, but something that happened when he saw the first question.
“If you were a new principal of a high school in your city, how would you
go about spending your first few weeks on the job?―
The answer to the question was quite simple. The candidate merely had to
quote about half a dozen highly respected academics who had written great
treatsies or books on the subject and then pick what he thought might be the
best solution to follow from among the six choices. He would then have to say
why he thought this solution was the best and then he would be able to move
on to question two. Educational theories at the time mandated that the
candidate choose the theory of delegation, or the method of giving everyone
in the high school part of his administrative duties, so that he would be
free to play anywhere from one to two rounds of golf a day, have a two-hour
lunch with three martinis and return to the school at around three to pick up
any important messages and be ready to delegate the next day’s entire
workload.
Honest to God, this is pretty much the theory they preferred to hear each
candidate spout back in response to question one. It was the only correct
answer. Of course it was shrouded in much more acceptable professional
behavior. There was no mention of golf or three-martini lunches, but the
general gist of it was that you would be able to free yourself up for more
important administrative duties (such as meeting with school boards, state
officials and the like). One idealistic academic wrote that the administrator
could then spend more time improving various elements of the high school he
was in charge in if he delegated all of his in-house duties to others. The
gist of the theory was that if you spent too much time in the school and on
mundane problems of the high school, you would not be able to handle the
“higher― issues.
Well, suffice it say that the candidate disagreed with all of these academics
and their grand view of delegating his authority to others while pursuing the
higher activities of his office. In fact, the candidate knew that he would
fail the test if he did not answer the question precisely the way the
administrators of the Educational Administration Department wanted him to.
And so, that was exactly what he did.
He decided not to be part of the process any longer. He thought they were all
hypocrites. He did not believe in passing the buck. The opposite side of the
coin was to use non-delegation of authority, or what was commonly known as
using an authoritarian approach. You are the king and you will do as I say. I
will make sure everyone does what I say because I will have my finger in
every pie and eyes in every room of the school. Sort of Big Brother Squared,
where no one in the high school would be spared the intervention of the
Principal. He would be in the attendance office dictating policy there, in
the medical office making policy there, in the college advisement office,
creating new agendas and rules there, and in each of the departments of the
high school, telling each department chair what would be expected from each
of them. He would take charge of security issues and cafeteria issues. He
would make sure the sports teams were all in proper condition and performing
at the top of their game. He would do all of things every day he was at work.
He would interview teachers for the HR department and fire incompetent
teachers. He would tell the unions to get the hell out of his school because
unions don’t belong in schools; either blue collar or white collar unions.
Well, needless to say, the candidate went on to answer the other five
questions in a completely honest, if not in an academically acceptable way,
and the department heads were shocked and dismayed by the results. They
offered the candidate a second chance to take the test, for it was fairly
obvious that he must have been ill that day or had some other disorder. The
candidate told them to stick their test where the sun didn’t shine and left
the program to be a substitute teacher. After he left the school, it was as
if a great weight had been lifted from his chest and he was once again able
to breathe the fresh air of the late Spring.
The Non-Matriculated Student
The Non-Matriculated Student
By Arthur H Tafero
The following is based on a true story.
There once was a security guard named Thomas Petroni who got assigned a job
to take care of traffic and parking at a Columbia football game at Wein
Stadium in Upper Manhattan. It was a beautiful early autumn afternoon and the
cars filed in one at a time into the stadium parking lot. Thomas had never
directed parking in a lot before, but like so many other things in his life,
he went by the seat of his pants and made believe he had been doing it for
years. He deftly directed all the expensive cars into various areas and waved
them off if they wanted to park somewhere else. He did a very good job at
directing traffic. After the cars had parked and various fans had begun their
barbecues, they offered him fresh-made steaks, burgers and franks. Thomas had
an enormous appetite and happily accepted the free food from the Columbia
fans. He selected one of the nice filet mignons that one of the more
prosperous fans had made for everyone in shouting distance. Paper plates,
knives, forks and napkins were included with side dishes of baked potatoes
with various toppings. A cool Heineken was also pro-offered and accepted by
Thomas while he was taking his lunch break.
After the parking lot feast, Thomas had to report to the stadium to do guard
duty and crowd control. As if anyone at Columbia would try to get in for free
or create a disturbance once they were in the stadium. Nevertheless, the
university officials took no chances and hired a crew of four for crowd
control. Maybe they thought the crowd would go crazy if Columbia actually won
a football game for a change. They had lost forty-two in a row over the last
four years and were nearing the all time record for losses in a row by a
college football team. Today they were playing Harvard, the perennial IvyLeague football powerhouse team that usually came in first place every year.
Columbia had not beat Harvard for over twenty years. Thomas stood at his post
on the fifty yard line at field level right behind the Columbia University
football team’s bench. It was amazing that Columbia sold out every game
even with the worst team in the entire United States. This was the season
opener for both teams.
Harvard received the ball first and on the second play of the game, a
ferocious Columbia Lion rush resulted in a Harvard fumble. The Lions went
right down the field and scored a go-ahead touchdown and led 7-0. The crowd
went absolutely crazy on the fumble, and went crazy again when Columbia
scored the go-ahead touchdown. But these fans had seen this type of thing
before. They knew that Harvard would come roaring back and bury their beloved
Lions. Nevertheless, they exhorted their team onward. Being next to the bench,
Thomas could sense the enthusiasm of the players and he could see they were
beginning to get themselves worked up to a lather. They really believed they
could beat the Crimson. Then something wonderful happened. Columbia’s
defense did it again. They forced another Harvard fumble and the team ended
the first quarter up 7-0 and with the ball on the Harvard four yard line. On
the first play of the second quarter, the Lions scored again and the crowd
went absolutely nuts. Thomas thought to himself, what if they want to run
onto the field at the end of the game and put the players on their shoulders?
How could us four guards stop thousands of fans from doing anything? Well,
for eight bucks an hour Thomas vowed he was not going to stick his neck out
for some Security Guard company. If they wanted to rush the field, he would
try and stop one of the beautiful coeds and use a moderate amount of
restraint on her.
Now Harvard was beginning to take the Columbia surge seriously. Although
trailing 14-0, they began moving down the field near the end of the second
quarter and the crowd began to get a bit worried. The Crimson seemed to be
able to move at will on the Lion defense. Then Columbia stiffened at the
thirty yard line inside Columbia territory. On second down, Harvard dropped
back to pass, but the Columbia defense sacked him savagely. The crowd roared
their approval. On third down, Harvard dropped back to pass again and passed
for the end zone. Miraculously, a Lion defender intercepted the pass and ran
the ball back almost seventy yards before the Harvard quarterback made a
shoestring tackle at the 32 of Harvard. The crowd was now delirious with joy.
The noise level was deafening. There was one more big roar from the crowd on
the last play of the first half when Columbia attempted and made a 47 yard
field goal with seconds left . The team was mobbed by well-wishers as they
triumphantly trotted off the field. The four security guards trotted along
with them and made no attempt at all to keep them away from the players. The
officials also trotted off the field and mentioned to one of the fans that
the Lions were playing an exceptional game today and it looked like they
would give the Crimson a good beating here on opening day. Columbia led at
the half by a shocking 17-0.
Adding to the festivities of the Columbia football game was the incomparable
Columbia Football Band. This was no ordinary group of musicians (and I use
that term very lightly). This was a pack of clowns pursuing various degrees.
Anyone could join and perform for the band and that meant anyone. Fans from
the stands were often invited to bring their own instruments and come march
and play with the band. This was possible because the band had no set march
or program. They would just run around and act wacky until they decided they
wanted to play a certain tune. The band leader (and I use that term even
lighter than musician) would roughly organize the group of students and fans
dressed in various outrageous outfits and they would poorly play a
recognizable tune for some type of political statement or to make fun of
Harvard. For example, in the good taste that was always exhibited by the
Columbia band, they would memorialize the Vietnam War in honor of the Crimson,
who represented the needless blood shed by our troops their during the War.
This and a few other outrages were a normal part of the Columbia band regimen.
The crowd loved it. At least the Columbia side did. The Harvard side booed,
but no one took them seriously. As a matter of fact, the Columbia band had
not taken anything seriously now for almost twenty years.
The teams returned for the second half and Thomas took his position back on
the fifty yard line as the crowd got ready for more Lion thrills.
Unfortunately, there were no more thrills to be had that day. The Harvard
team came out and pummeled the Lions relentlessly for two quarters and the
final score was 49-17. Harvard had scored seven touchdowns in a myriad of
ways including a few interceptions, some fumbles, a punt return and a kickoff
as well. There was dead silence on the Lion bench and the mirth of laughter
could be heard across the way from the Crimson section. The crowd silently
filtered out of the stadium, into their cars and left like thieves in the
night. This, of course, was to be totally expected. After all this was
Columbia football. Thomas’ job was finished for the day and he wondered how
wonderful it must be to actually be part of this whole scene. He was on the
periphery, not really part of the scene, because he was not a student or
graduate of Columbia. He had gone to Jersey City State college, a school
ranked near the bottom of over 10,000 colleges in the United States. Not only
that, but Thomas had pretty much taken a two year vacation while he attended
Jersey City State College. He often cut classes to play poker in the
cafeteria, or to pick up coeds, or to play basketball in the gym. Sometimes,
he just felt like playing baseball. The last thing on his mind was his major,
political science, or any of his subjects. He just did enough to pass, which
was in the great tradition of Jersey City College academics. He drank cheap
wine, smoked cheap grass and listened to the Met games (the Yankees were out
of contention in those years). Upon graduation, he continued his mediocrity
by taking a job as a substitute teacher in the Hudson County system. Then,
after running up an impressive gambling debt in Union City, he fled to
Manhattan to live in the YMCA and took whatever jobs he could get his hands
on.
This security guard job was the best he could do at the moment, but Thomas
was beginning to regret all of his transgressions and wanted to turn over a
new leaf. The experience at the Columbia football field had been exhilarating,
and he wanted more of it. He had been in the war and finished a meaningless
college degree at a substandard academic factory and now he longed for
something else. He didn’t exactly know what it was he longed for, but he
knew that he wanted to try and do something more important with his life than
to just be a security guard. First, he stopped gambling on sporting events
and just played poker. He had always won money playing poker and would then
lose it all by betting on sporting events. Then he saved a bit of money over
the fall and winter. In the Spring, he visited the Columbia campus and was
even further impressed. He passed by a classroom of test-takers and asked the
supervisor in charge what test they were taking. The supervisor mentioned it
was the Miller Analogies test and was necessary to gain admittance into
Columbia. He also mentioned the test would be administered next Saturday as
well if he were interested. Thomas thought for a second and considered the
expense of the test (It was $20 to register for it). That was his food money
for the week. He would be eating bagels and pizza all week if he spent the
money on this test. He went ahead and registered. The die was cast. Then
something odd happened the week after he took the test.
Thomas was reading in his room at the YMCA, when he got a buzz from the front
desk. There was someone there at the desk who wanted to see him. For a second,
Thomas panicked and thought that the mob had caught up with him to collect
their thousand dollars he owed them. He only had about two hundred in the
bank. After recollecting himself, he went downstairs and met the well-dressed
gentleman who was patiently waiting for him. He turned out to be an
admittance official from Columbia University. Why would they come to see him?
If he had passed, they would have sent a notice in the mail. If he had failed,
they would send that notice as well. The official explained he was there for
security reasons. He said the Columbia offices were sure that the results of
the Miller Analogies test had been compromised and that my score was highly
suspect and would Thomas mind taking the test again at no extra charge.
Thomas was a bit indignant and said why should he do that. Did I pass or? The
official said you got a perfect score and no one had ever gotten that before.
He said it was virtually impossible to get a perfect score on the Miller
Analogies test and that you would have to be a genius with an IQ of well over
200 to get a perfect score. Thomas retorted that he had received a great
education at Jersey City State College to prepare him for this test. He went
on to say that he had figured every possible way to get out of work since he
had gotten out of the army and that it took a lot more analysis than those
silly analogies test he just took. The official said, be that as it may, we
cannot validate your score unless you take the test again. Thomas said, fine,
I’ll be glad to take that silly little test again. The official said, how
about tomorrow, and Thomas said fine. And then, just like that, the official
abruptly left the YMCA. Thomas was completely unconcerned. He went out for a
pork chop hero that was the specialty of Maganaro’s, some of the best
Italian food in Manhattan.
The next day, Thomas took the #1 train to Columbia on 116th Street and took
the test again. This time, he made sure that he missed at least one of the
questions. He got his results in the mail and they were positive. However,
when he applied for admission into Columbia, he was rejected. Thomas was not
to be denied. He had already applied for extended GI Bill education benefits
and had saved up a decent amount of money. He told himself, one way or the
other, he would be going to Columbia that summer. He found out that the
campus was almost deserted during the summer and that renting a student
apartment was very reasonable. But he needed a Columbia ID before they would
rent him an apartment. So Thomas went to the Registrar’s office at Teachers
College on 120th Street and after a short time researching the curriculum, he
registered for two educational administration courses in the Summer A session
as a non-matriculated student. This meant that he was taking the courses
without being officially accepted by the university and that it was possible
he would not get credit toward a degree for them unless he were officially
accepted into the program at a later date. This was a bit of a gamble, but
for Thomas, who was used to gambling on a weekly basis, it was just one more
bet, albeit a sizable one. After registering and paying for the two courses,
he got his Columbia ID and then was able to use that to get his student
apartment. He also was able to get a student library card, a gym card and
other benefits for having the Columbia ID card. He even took his card to the
placement office and did a job search which was available only to Columbia
students with an ID card.
After two months, Thomas repeated the whole process again for the Summer B
session. The courses were no more difficult than the ones he had in Jersey
City State, except this time he was very conscientious about doing papers and
reading the texts. He got four As for the four courses and then went to the
department chair at the end of the summer who gladly gave Thomas a letter of
recommendation for matriculation and just like that, Thomas was officially
part of the Columbia community. He would be able to go to the Columbia
football games as a spectator now and not as a security guard. He really
didn’t care if the team lost a hundred games in a row.
The Substitute Teacher
The Substitute Teacher
By Arthur H Tafero
Once upon a time there was a teacher in New York. He was a talented young man
with a graduate degree from the leading university in the state. His name was
unimportant, but he was a third-generation Italian-American who had been the
first in his family ever to go to college. He had a great thirst for
knowledge and firmly believed that learning was the most important thing in
the world. Everyone at his university agreed that Thomas would have a
brilliantcareer in teaching and that his success was only a matter of time.
No one at the university could realize just how true that statement was.
The difference between being a substitute teacher and a full-time tenured
teacher is about the same as the difference between the rights of a lifetime
prisoner in the justice system and Bill Gates. An exaggeration you say?
Possibly. While the comparison is admittedly a bit extreme, it is not all
that extreme. A substitute teacher gets approximately one-fifth the money of
a full-time, tenured teacher for approximately the same or even more work
than the tenured teacher performs. On any given day in the New York City
system, asubstitute teacher will have five full classes to teach along with
one service period (watching the library, the cafeteria, the study hall, etc).
They will also get two free periods. During these two free periods, the
tenured teacher can relax in the teacher’s lounge and read a book, take a
nap, or surf on the net as well as catch an early or late lunch. The
substitute teacher, in almost every school he or she works in, will find
little odd jobs for the substitute to do during these supposed free periods.
Help out in the attendance office, answer the phones in the college office,
monitor the computer and so on. In effect, the substitute loses one or even
both of their free periods during the day. Not the end of the world, some
might say. Get over it and be glad you have some work others would say, and
maybe they are right. You have to pay your dues. Some would say, and others
would say what a moron you are to work for ten thousand a year when everyone
else is getting around fifty thousand a year for doing the same or less work.
Most substitutes would see these inequities and quickly turn off the lights
in their creative brain. They would merely take attendance, and make the rest
of the period a study period for the students while they read the latest
edition of the New York Times and solved the daily crossword puzzle. That
was , of course, unless the missing teacher left a series of lessons they
wanted implemented that they would not even attempt themselves, but would be
glad to give them to a substitute teacher to do for them. If not, then
possibly a zealous department chairperson would then step in and provide the
lucky substitute teacher with five full lessons for their five classes in the
particular subject matter. Subbing for Math that day and don’t know how to
teach Trig? Well, that’s just too bad. Don’t know a lot about Physics and
subbing for Science? Just stay one page ahead of the students as you read the
assignments. Unfortunately, this does not work unless you already have a
working knowledge of the formulae within Physics. Sometimes you were
micromanaged and other times you were left completely to your owm devices.
Some days you would give brilliant lessons that had the students asking for
more and lamenting that you were not their full-time teacher and other days
you would not be able to teach a thing because the classroom had been
poisoned by the administration into a state of the walking dead.
Then there were the days you were assigned to the wonderful special education
classes. These are the students with a history of family or personal violence,
emotional disorders of all types, academically stunted for one reason or
another, or just plain lazy. Regardless of any tools of education you might
be equipped with, you will always have great difficulty with these classes.
Yet, on occasion, even these classes were more responsive to the substitute
than their regular teachers. Of course, the great original sin of many
substitute teachers was that they had majored in Social Studies. Nothing in
education has a quicker kiss of death than majoring in Social Studies. It was
a simple case of supply and demand. There were far more Social Studies
teachers than there were Social Studies teacher positions. If you were a
science or math major, or even an English major, you could easily find a job
within one year. Social Studies teachers would often wander around the New
York City School system for four or five years before desperately taking any
position at any school that had an opening in that area.
What about the protection of the unions for these unfortunates who had to
toil for one fifth of what others made in the system? There was no protection.
The unions in New York City were primarily concerned only with tenured
teachers because the tenured teachers paid four and five times as much in
dues into the union as did a substitute. So you got about one fifth, if any
at all, of the attention of the union. You could be (and would be) mistreated
in a dozen different administrative ways and there was absolutely no recourse
for you. Of course the union would deny all of these allegations if anyone
complained, but they were all true. In addition, the union was often in bed
with the school system on a number of issues in order to oil the system for
teachers the union wanted to be assigned at particular schools. The
administration would make certain accommodations to the union suggestions
because one hand washed the other and it was good business.
Meanwhile, the list of reasons why you could not be hired by the school or
the school system would get a bit longer each year. We are looking for a
woman to fill our quota this year. We are looking for a black person to fill
our quota this year. We are looking for a Hispanic person to fill our quota
this year. Of course, quota systems were eventually officially discouraged,
but somehow one got the feeling they were still in effect in some schools and
districts. If you were an Irish, Italian, Jewish or Arab man, your chances
were greatly diminished. Unless of course, you had connections. Having
connections was the most important factor in getting a job in theNew York
City Board of Education. It was certainly a case of who you knew rather than
what you knew or what your credentials were. There were teachers of highly
dubious academic skills who were hired over much more qualified and
experienced substitutes because of who they knew. The big losers were always
the students and their parents. This type of behavior would be repeated
thousands a time a year throughout the all the school districts in New York
City and no one ever cared as the system slowly deteriorated. But there were
many more ways you could not get a job teaching in New York City.
Some schools would say we need an English teacher. Do you want to teach
English? You told them you will teach anything they want you to teach because
you have already done that as a substitute for four years. You have taught
every subject available in the New York City schools. Of course, this is what
is called teaching out of license. You are licensed to teach Social Studies,
not to teach English. But the school is desperate for a good English teacher
and they can save lots of money by hiring one like you. They don’t
particularly care if you are teaching out of license. Then they make you a
wonderful offer; if you take our five classes of English for the year, we
will hire you next year. Of course, you will have to paid as a substitute
(one fifth of a regular teacher), but you will at least have the same classes
every day and get steady work. There isn’t a substitute teacher who would
not jump at this chance and you take it. You believe them; after all this an
assistant principal or a department chair that is promising you a job next
year if you do a good job this year. And you do a good job that year. You do
a great job that year. The English students all score very high on the
Regents exams and your classes are considered among the best in the
department. No one even knows you are a Social Studies teacher because you
love teaching Shakespeare, English grammar, writing, film and the whole nine
yards of English. Then comes the wonderful day at the end of the year when
you are called into the office of the principal, the assistant principal, or
the department chair. First, they tell you what a great job you did this year
and that you deserve to be in the English Department. But because you are
certified in Social Studies, the union is not letting them hire you for the
English Department job. They would love to hire you, but it is beyond their
control. The best they can do is give you the same job again next year. You
politely thank them for the compliment and the offer and then trudge down to
class to give your last lesson of the year, but your heart is not really in
it.
This little game is played over and over again at various schools within
various districts. It is usually used to trim school budgets by hiring
effective substitutes who can easily perform the duties of a full-contract
teacher for one fifth or one fourth of the salary costs. The money saved in
salary and benefits is enormous and the school administrator looks like a
genius when they fill out a department for half the cost of other school
districts. Unfortunately, this is all at the cost of the effective substitute
teacher, who because of their expertise, now becomes a valuable asset in
reducing school budgets. The disillusioned substitute now goes from one
school to the next hoping for a better outcome. But the outcome is always the
same. The Special Education department of another school makes exactly the
same promise as the English department had made the year before. The
substitute teacher has little choice but to take the situation offered to him
or her, regardless of the inevitable outcome that they know is waiting for
them at the end of the school year. It is like going over the top in World
War One. The captain blows the whistle and tells you when you get to the
other side, you will be able to go back home.
The economic impact on a substitute teacher who unfortunately falls into
these traps is appalling. A loss of thirty or forty thousand dollars a year
for five or six years adds up pretty quickly, especially in times of economic
crisis. The situation also affects relationships and marriages. What wife
would be happy with a husband who makes a tad over ten thousand a year? What
kind of lifestyle can a husband offer a wife with that salary? And forget
about kids. You hardly have enough money to pay the bills for the two of you,
much less afford a child. It is certainly a good enough reason for your wife
to divorce you and many do. But at least the school budgets are in order and
the union is able to keep its power and maintain its influence in the school
system. And life goes on another day in the great New York City School System.
Tales of New York - Songs by PHDs
Songs by PHDs
by Arthur H Tafero
These are a few songs I recently discovered that were written earlier by PHDs,
but politely declined by publishers and the public.
Take Me Out To The Ballgame (PHD version)
ACCOMPANY ME TO THE PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL GAME
ACCOMPANY ME TO THE GATHERING
PURCHASE FOR ME SOME TOFU AND YOGURT PLEASE
I DONT PARTICULARLY CARE IF I EVER RETURN
ITS HUZZAHS, HUZZAHS FOR THE NATIVE ORGANIZATION
IF THEY DONT PERSEVERE ITS TRAUMATIC
BECAUSE ITS ONE, TWO, THREE, NON-CONTACT SITUATIONS (AND YOU ARE RETIRED)
AT THE RUSTIC BASEBALL CONTEST.
Another aspiring songwriting PHD created this one at Christmas time:
Silent Night (PHD vesrion)
NOISELESS EVENING, REVERENTIAL EVENING,
EVERYTHING IS RESERVED, EVERYTHING IS EXQUISITE
CIRCUMVENTING THE VIRGIN, MATRIARCH AND OFFSPRING
SANCTIMONIOUS INFANT SO EMPATHETIC AND NON-TEMPERMENTAL
SLUMBER IN EXTRA-TERRESTIAL QUIETUDE
SLUMBER IN EXTRA-TERRESTIAL QUIETUDE .
I realize this is becoming quite painful, so I will just bring up one more
song that was originally written by a PHD. Little did the Beatles know that
one of their songs had previously been written by a PHD.
Yesterday (PHD version)
YESTERDAY, ALL OF MY DISCONTENT SEEMED TO BE NON-EXISTENT,
NOW I REQUIRE A RESIDENCE TO DISENGAGE MYSELF
OH I AM RELATIVELY CONFIDENT IN YESTERDAY
WHY SHE INSISTED TO DEPART, I REMAIN CLUELESS
SHE DID NOT CONFIDE
I UTTERED SOMETHING INAPPROPRIATE
NOW I ASPIRE TO PREVIOUS TIME PERIODS
YESTERDAY, ALL OF MY DISCONTENT SEEMED TO BE NON-EXISTENT
NOW I REQUIRE A RESIDENCE TO DISENGAGE MYSELF
OH I AM RELATIVELY CONFIDENT IN YESTERDAY
I know I promised that would be the last one; but PHDs have trouble stopping
anything they are doing; cowboys will be spinning in their graves over this
original PHD version:
HOME ON THE RANGE (PHD VERSION)
DOMICILE, DOMICILE ON THE SAVANNAH,
WHERE THE GNUS AND THE ANTELOPE MEANDER.
WHERE SELDOM IS HEARD A MISANTHROPIC DISCUSSION
AND THE VARIED WILDLEFE ENJOY A PERSPICACIOUS ENDEAVOR
I assure you, I am trying to stop these rampaging PHDs, but once they get
started…
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU (PHD VERSION)
ENJOYABLE INITIALIZATION TO YOU,
ENJOYABLE INITIALIZATION TO YOU
ENJOYABLE INITIALIZATION DEAR__________
ENJOYABLE INITIALIZATION TO YOU
I believe I am making progress; if only the PHD committee would advise me to
stop.
Tales of New York - Talking Heads
Talking Heads
By Arthur H Tafero
Old Tom was about to pass from this world to the next. He had been diagnosed
with liver cancer. Although he was only 55, he knew he had received a death
sentence. So he took his millions which he made from his dot.com business and
made a few phone calls.
His first call was to a Californian Lab that specialized in freezing heads. I
hope they know their asses from their elbows thought Tom. I wouldn’t want
to come back as a walking ass, although many friends and family had described
him as such, he remembered. After making arrangements, he settled all his
personal matters, went to his favorite restaurant and had a thick steak with
mushrooms, lots of mashed potatoes swimming in gravy and about a half dozen
Tangeurays and Tonics. He came back home and made love to his wife of many
years, Arlene, who was scheduled to get a new body in about thirty years, and
then caught a plane to LA.
After suffering horrible indigestion on the flight to LA, Tom was able to
gather a little strength by having about six more Tanguerays and Tonics.
Finally, he got to the lab for the frozen heads.
“So this is where people come to volunteer for the guillotine, eh― he
tried to joke with the lab technician, but he soon realized his mistake. Most
techies didn’t have a sense of humor.
“No sir― replied the technician dryly, “We merely remove the part of
the body that is usually already diseased and useless, most often it is an
older person like yourself, who would be much better off with new body parts
when they are thawed―. Tom felt like giving him a taste of what an
“older― person could dish out, but he was still wobbly from the dozen
Tanguerays, so he let it pass.
Gee, I’ll have a new body, complete with a new chest (he didn’t like his
old one because he had older man titties, instead of a nice firm torso). He
still liked his arms and legs. They had served him well, but he did have a
chunky ass and stomach. His dick was still useful, but nowhere nearly as
useful as it had been. I’ll supersize that order he thought to himself.
The next day they put ol’ Tom under and he was now asleep. He didn’t know
how long he would sleep, but according to the technicians it would seem no
longer than one night’s normal sleep. He wondered what he would dream about.
It didn’t take him long to find out.
He dreamt that the sawing off of his legs woke him up. He thought he heard
one of the technicians say “give him some more ether, he seems to be waking
up already.― Then he dreamt that suddenly his head was floating in space
and it was meeting and making small talk with other floating heads that were
in the vicinity. Then he dreamt that he had awoken about a thousand years in
the future with his new body and supersized dick and was walking around New
York scaring all the young girls with his monstrous member. Is this a dream
he thought to himself? Or am i like Chuang Tzu and the tale of the
butterfly?* Am I awake in reality or am I dreaming about being awake? After a
few minutes he realized that it really didn’t matter, so he just tried to
enjoy the moment.
Now he was almost sure he was really awake. He was lying in a hospital bed
and everything surrounding him was white. There were no other beds in the
room. I guess HMOs must have improved thought Tom. Then he looked under the
sheets to make sure the rest of him was there. For a second he felt like
Ronald Reagan in a movie where he lost his legs. But he was all there,
complete with his supersized member.
Wow, this is great! he thought to himself. I have the body of a twenty year
old and the mind of a fifty-five year old. What a lethal combination this can
be! Just then, a nurse came in.
“Well hello, sleepyhead” she said cheerfully. You’ve been out for
almost 100 years; we just reattached your brain to a nicely cloned Standard A
and now you are all set to leave.―
“What’s a standard A? he asked pensively.
“It’s the twenty-year old male with augmented penis clone― she said
with a smile. It’s the favorite model of most of the meltees.― she added.
All of a sudden, Tom was ravenous. He felt like he could eat a horse. He
hadn’t felt like this in many years. As the nurse turned to leave the room,
Tom caught a glimpse of her shapely thigh and instantly developed a gigantic
boner that practically made the sheet on the bed into a tent. O my God, Tom
thought to himself. I’m getting this excited over a little thigh? This is
ridiculous. He laughed out loud for about ten seconds. After giving himself a
few minutes to calm down, he got dressed and tried to leave the hospital.
They wouldn’t let him leave though.
They said he needed a one day “orientation― session before he would be
able to leave. He had no choice but to agree.
The nurse gave him jello for supper, but he was starved for a burger or steak
or some pasta. He went to sleep with a knawing pang in his stomach. The next
morning was no better. The nurse left him a small glass of milk with a small
package of cereal. It tasted dry and flat.
“God this cereal tastes awful.― he complained to the nurse.
“That’s because it has no fat in it; neither does the skim milk. Also
there is no sugar or salt in it because those things are bad for your body.
“I want some pancakes with butter and syrup― he whined
“Oh no dear, those things have too much fat and sugar and aren’t good for
your body― she said pleasantly. Tom let out a small moan.
Then the orientation man came in.
“Well Tom, you are looking well. Let’s go over a few things before you
leave us, OK?―
“Sure― said Tom resignedly.
“First of all, your bank book; you have over 17 million dollars. Tom
marveled at the effects of compound interest. Secondly, we got you a job in
the old section of San Francisco where many other melted heads live in
Haight-Asbury. Your new job will be as a surfboard salesman― said the man
confidently.
“But there’s no surf in San Francisco, and besides, who the hell wants a
job if they have 17 mil?― objected Tom.
“There is now.― the man said informatively. San Francisco and a strip of
about 200 miles of California coastline was lost in the great quake of 2050.
But your point is well-taken; you really don’t have to work. We just
thought you would like to meet a lot of airhead blondes and have lots of
meaningless sex.
“On second thought, I’ll take the job―.
“When can I have some pizza?― asked Tom.
“Oh no, all Italian food has been eliminated because it was too
fattening― answered the nurse
“I suppose chocolate, booze, steak, eggs, butter, coffee and anything else
that has any taste to it has been eliminated?―
“As a matter of fact, chocolate had too much fat, booze was bad for the
kidneys, steak, bad for the heart, eggs also, butter also and coffee bad for
the nervous system.
“So what can I eat?―
“You can have sugarless cereal for breakfast with fruit, yogurt or fish for
lunch, and vegetables with rice for supper―
“I eat that stuff about once a week; I could never eat it every day―
“You’ll have to, that’s all there is in the legal sector―
“Legal sector?―
“Yes, that’s 90% of San Francisco; the other 10% of the city still has
that illegal food, but it costs three or four times as much as the good
food―.
At that point, I knew what part of San Francisco I was moving to and how I
would be spending most of my millions of dollars.
“I guess I’ll be going now―
“Your not going anywhere!― A familiar voice chimed in.
I turned and it was Arlene in another twenty year old body with long brown
hair. She looked really good.
“Great, my chance to finally bag some blonde airheads, and you tag along
with the ball and chain―
“That’s right, kimosobe, but we can still move to the shady area of San
Francisco; you know I can’t live without chocolate―
I estimated Arlene’s prodigious
came to the conclusion I would be
was another Ralph Kramden special
brilliant idea that went awry and
liked dark chocolate, too.
ability to consume dark chocolate and I
broke in less than five years. I guess this
I had come up with. Ralph always had some
this was no exception; but then again, I
Tales of New York - Why The Sexes Aggravate Each Other
Why the Sexes Aggravate Each Other
By Arthur H Tafero
A. Why men aggravate women:
you aggravate us when we are very young by not including us in your games and
telling us we are disgusting
you aggravate us even more when you finally do notice we are developing
breasts or even worse, noticing we are not developing them
you aggravate us in High School when all of your efforts to associate with us
are for the sole purpose of eliminating your erections
you aggravate us in college when you try to get us drunk just to have sex
you aggravate us at bars when you say the same thing to three different women
you aggravate us at the workplace by thinking we can’t be as smart or as
creative as you
you aggravate us when we marry you and then you seek other women
you aggravate us because we bear your children and you still seek other women
you aggravate us because you chase us in our 20s and dump us in our 30s or
40s
Of course please disregard any of these complaints if you are hot or rich.
B. Why women aggravate men:
you aggravate us when we are young boys because you don’t play sports
you aggravate us even more when we try to ask you out for the first date of
our lives and you just laugh at us
you aggravate us in High School when all your efforts go into dating just the
football or basketball players.
you aggravate us in college when you want us to “commit― to a
relationship way before we are ready
you aggravate us at bars when we walk halfway across the room to ask you to
dance and you just laugh and shake your head.
you aggravate us in the workplace when you only seem to socialize with the
boss or high level management
you aggravate us when we marry you thin and then you get fat
you aggravate us after you have children with us and sex becomes a once a
week chore rather than the four or five times a week pleasure it used to be.
When you turn fifty, the chore goes down to once every two weeks.
Of course please disregard any of these complaints if you are hot or rich.
Tales of New York - Chris Chan, P.I. (Fourth Generation)
Chris Chan P.I. (Fourth Generation)
By Arthur H Tafero
Going Downtown
Chris turned off his ostentatious 65 inch panel TV. It was the deluxe edition
from Magnavox. Panasonic had one that was slightly more expensive and had a
better reputation for performance, but he refused to buy anything that would
profit a Japanese company. Most Chinese still felt the same as Chris did
about the Japanese, even after more than sixty years after WW II. The
grandfathers and grandmothers of most of his friends in New York in both
Chinatown and downtown Flushing still felt the same way toward the Japanese.
Each succeeding Chinese generation had gotten less and less resentful of the
Japanese after World War II; some Chinese, especially in America, even had
some Japanese friends. But not Chris. After Lee Chan (Charlie’s number one
son and Chris’ great-great-granduncle) was tortured and killed by the
Japanese during the occupation, Jimmy Chan picked up the great detective
tradition of the Chan family by working as a librarian under the Japanese.
Jimmy Chan was actually an agent for Clare Chennault. He supplied times,
places and pictures of Japanese targets for the Flying Tigers to bomb and
they took care of the rest.
Jimmy had two sons and a daughter. His eldest son, Christopher Chan, was
Chris’ namesake and grandfather; he was born during the Japanese occupation
in 1941. This branch of the Chan family had settled in San Francisco and
Jimmy was able to get a detective’s badge with the San Francisco police
department; partially because San Francisco had a Chinatown and needed men
like Jimmy after WW II who were bilingual and partly because of his famous
father. His war record in China didn’t hurt him, either. Chris wanted to be
just like his famous grandfather and his dad Jimmy, but there weren’t any
wars to sign up for in 1962, so Grandfather Chris went right into the San
Francisco force like his dad. Grandfather Chris was a romantic, though,
unlike many of the other Chans. He fell in love with a girl named Donna Zhou,
who would attended Columbia Graduate School in the fall and they were both in
love. Grandfather Chris left his job in San Francisco and applied for a
detective’s badge in New York. They needed detectives for Chinatown there
and they accepted him after a period of time.
Grandfather Chris and his wife, Donna had three children. One of them was
Chris’ father, Carl. Carl followed in his father’s footsteps and became a
Chinatown detective in 1984. Chris had some different ideas, though. He did
not want to work for New York’s finest. He had made many social contacts in
both Manhattan’s and Flushing’s Chinatowns. He was twenty-three, single
and living on 57th Street brownstone near Eighth Avenue. The rent was over
$3000 a month for a small apartment, but Chris could afford it; he was a
private detective who did very sensitive work for a lot more money than his
father or any of his ancestors, including the great Charlie ever made. He
found runaway daughters and sons. He found wandering wives and husbands. He
solved dozens of crimes that the NYPD was unable to solve because he knew
more people in both Chinatowns than the entire NYPD combined. He understood
guanxi; the NYPD didn’t .
As Chris put back the remote for his TV, he began to stifle a yawn. It was a
rare night he could relax and watch the game while having a drink. Yet, after
only three hours of inactivity, he felt as if he were under house arrest. He
always needed to leave the apartment when there was no one there; especially
late at night. It was the best time to clear his mind and figure out what he
would do next for his latest case. The one he was working on now would
require a long midnight walk. He drove his BMW down to Chinatown and parked
at a local garage. He chuckled when he remembered watching movies of
detectives who were able to park at will in Chinatown any hour of the day.
There was no such thing as a parking space in Chinatown; especially the
Manhattan Chinatown. Even at one in the morning, there was not one space to
be had. Chris was used to the drill. He would park in the municipal garage
that was run by one of his informers, Lee Chow, for free. The informers made
enough money from Chris without charging him for a parking space. He would
have gladly paid, but the beauty of guanxi dictated that he be given a free
space for as long as he needed one.
He checked his licensed weapon of choice, a snub-nose 38, which once
supposedly belonged to his famous ancestor. The guys at the Fifth Precinct
thought it was a really cool weapon. He still had two cousins who were
detectives at the Fifth. Odd, he thought, ancestor Charlie very seldom used
his weapon; it seemed modern cops like his cousins often discharged their
weapons. Maybe the world had become a little more violent. He couldn’t
think of a clever Confucian saying like his great ancestor, but he had a
feeling it was more important to check his weapon. He stepped down an alley
to the backdoor of a nameless Chinese restaurant.
He knocked three times.
An older woman shouted at the door in Chinese. Chris was embarrassed by his
lack of understanding of Mandarin; something that would be a disgrace in most
Chinese families unless one was totally Americanized. Chris just said two
words:
“It’s Chan―
The woman opened the door and stared at Chris for a moment. She was about
fifty, short, stocky and had the worn look of woman who had just put in a
sixteen hour day.
“Why you come so late?― she said in her best pigeon English.
“Late at night is the best time for me to do business―
“Me tired, have been doing business all day. Come in and we will have some
tea―.
“Xiexie―. Thanks was one of the few Mandarin words that Chris knew by
heart.
“ Not try to speak Chinese to me, please; you butcher Chinese worse than I
butcher chickens for dishes―
“OK, I’ll get right to the point. I’ve been hired by a client…―
“What a client?―
“A boss; I’ve been hired by a boss to find his missing daughter. The
problem is that his daughter had been living on mainland China and going to
Jimei University close to Kowloon. She disappeared from her classes for over
two weeks and was supposedly seen with about two dozen other young girls who
were brought illegally into the country a few days ago. Most of the girls
paid $30,000 to get a job working in restaurants, but some of them were
forced to work in whorehouses if they couldn’t come up with the money right
away. My boss wants to find out if his daughter is working in restaurant or a
whorehouse.―
“This no whorehouse!―
“I know that. I also know that you are the person many come to see to break
in some of the new arrivals from China into the restaurant business. You get
them apartments to share, place them in some restaurants and help them get
their legal immigration status in order.―
“You too nosy; some day, you get nose cut off―
“Now you wouldn’t cut off my pretty nose, would you May Wong?― Chris
gave her a playful hug and May Wong finally smiled for a brief second, but
then pulled back.
“What you need?―
“I need a list of the restaurants that have just taken in the recently
arrived girls and the apartments they live in―. Chris had a few pictures of
the missing girl, Zhang Li; and planned to show other girls working in these
restaurants her picture.
“I give you restaurants; apartments you must get from girls. It private.―
“That will be a good start May, thanks for your help. If there is anything
my brothers and I can do for you, be sure to call me on this number― Chris
slipped her a very simple business card with just a name and a cell number;
nothing else was on the card.
“Rich man like you have cheap card like this? Why?― May Wong gave him a
puzzled look.
“Sometimes simple is best―.
Chris went back outside to the still-bustling street of Canal. The garbage
was being collected from the many restaurants by private trash companies,
some trucks were already loading some items for the next day’s food
consumption (non-perishables like soda, rice and noodles), and young punks in
local Chinese gangs were roving around in packs of four or more with their
slutty-looking girlfriends. Some of the more serious gang members only hung
out with other gang members and did not allow girls to hang out with them;
they felt that it both made the appearance of the gang weaker and endangered
the girls unnecessarily. Some of the girls hung out in local bars waiting for
their gangster boyfriends to get finished with their male counterparts. Woe
be to any man who tried to pick up one of the girlfriends of a gang member
while she was at the bar. It would mean a certain beating, at best, for the
unfortunate lothario, and at worst, a date with the morgue. This happened
with regularity. Truces between gangs were always interrupted by beatings of
one gang member by another gang because a stranger had tried to pick up a
gang member’s girlfriend. Eventually, though, the truces went right back
into effect after the beating was administered. The only time the truce was
really broken was when one of the gang members of an outside gang was killed
instead of just being beaten.
The second most common breaking of the truces between gangs was selling
product in another gang’s territory. Sometimes, it really didn’t matter
what the product was, it was the principle of the thing. Again, the
seriousness of the beating could escalate into a deadly shooting if the
product was heroin or an expensive drug. Lesser offenses, like selling stolen
merchandise, usually only resulted in the confiscation of the merchandise or
a beating and confiscation. Chris knew all of these traditions by heart. He
knew where to go for stolen merchandise. He knew where to go to buy illicit
drugs, he knew where the sex trade was usually plied, and he knew where most
of the better restaurants were located. He would hit almost all of them the
next day.
As he got back to the garage, he spotted Lee Chow parking a Mercedes. After
Lee Chow got out, he spotted Chris and waved.
“You want me to get it?―
“No, go back to the booth; I can get it myself―. Chris went to retrieve
his black BMW and thought he heard someone following him. He turned quickly
to look around, but there was only himself and Lee Chow at the well-lit
entrance of the parking lot. The area that Chris was in was poorly lit by low
wattage bulbs and it was a popular spot for muggings by various gang members,
but tonite everything seemed quiet and safe.
Chris thought to himself that appearances can be deceiving.
The traffic back uptown wasn’t
light rain began to fall, giving
surrealism that it only got only
around. I bet my great ancestor,
or lived in an apartment as nice
too bad since it was late at night and a
the streets and the city that look of
late at night with just a few people walking
Charley, never had a car as nice as this one
as the one I have on 57th Street.
“Offspring of number two son is too proud for his own good!―. Chris could
almost hear the voice of his famous ancestor. Of course Chris didn’t
believe in ghosts; he was a philosophical Taoist. He didn’t believe in any
religion, but he liked to live by the writings of Laozi in the TaoTeChing.
“Offspring of number two son should not be up so late!―. Chris imagined
that would be another thing that his ancient ancestor would say. He always
seemed to have something wise to say for every situation. Chris learned a
long time ago that some situations leave you speechless and that sometimes it
was better to say nothing at all like Laozi advised:
“Those who say they know, know nothing; those who know, say nothing―.
Chris had always loved that saying from the TaoTeChing. He tried to follow
its advice, but he often failed as everyone else did who tried to stick to
all of the moral advice of the TaoTeChing. It was just too much to expect the
average person, or even the above-average person to follow all of the moral
directions of the TaoTeChing. That is probably why Christianity was far more
successful than philosophical Taoism; Christ made allowances for sinners and
knew they would sin sooner or later. The Tao and the TaoTeChing expect
everyone to become “the Superior man”. It just wasn’t a very practical
belief system. The garage door for his apartment complex beckoned It as
almost four in the morning and it was time to get some sleep.
Back Down to Restaurant Row
Chris slept to almost ten and then got up to work out. He worked out in his
own little gym area. He had weights and a treadmill for cardio. He ran two
miles after he got finished working out on the hundred-pound weights and
thought to himself that a hundred pounds was plenty to keep his very nice
definition. He was just a shade under six feet and not exactly skin and bones,
but well-toned. The ladies didn’t seem to mind that he didn’t have sixpack abs or bulging muscles. He had to fight them off with a stick. They were
constantly clogging up his cell phone with messages to meet or an invitation
to a party somewhere. He barely found enough time to call back to politely
refuse the numerous requests. Most of the calls were of the guanxi nature,
the tortuous version of Chinese networking that one learns from the earliest
age. Without guanxi, one is isolated and on his own; not a very good thing in
upper Chinese classes. Guanxi was even practiced by the lower classes who
keenly observed the success of the middle and upper classes. Women used it
almost as well as men. They would date powerful and useful men and use those
contacts to further their careers. Men made those same contacts through
sports, Texas holdem games, tennis and golf.
He noticed a few calls had come from restaurants downtown. He took a shower
and then decided to have his breakfast first, though. He whipped up some
scrambled eggs with some nice Virginia ham he got yesterday from the corner
deli. He toasted two slices of fresh Panera bread and lathered on some
Breakstone butter; then he poured himself a large glass of Ocean Spray Ruby
Red Light (he had to cut some calories somewhere). After all, he was still a
growing boy; growing about a pound a month if he kept eating like this. Well,
his revered ancestor, Charley, was more than a bit rotund and it didn’t
seem to hamper him much. I am much too vain to get that heavy though, thought
Chris; I like the ladies more than I like food. I will have to work out an
extra twenty minutes for this meal, but first I will relax with my favorite
classic TV. Chris went to his ample DVD library against the wall and pulled
out his favorite western, Have Gun, Will Travel starring Richard Boone. Now
THERE was a real man. A man who could quote Shakespeare while he outdrew you
and shot you down like a dog. Not only that, he led a life in San Francisco
between lucrative assignments that left plenty of time to attend the opera
and chase lots of beautiful women. Even Paladin’s servant, Hey-Boy, a
racist, stereotypical Chinese did not put Chris off this show. He actually
found Hey-Boy to be a bit entertaining. After all, this was pretty much the
social fate of the average Chinese after the Civil War. As a matter of fact,
Hey-Boy was much better off than the average Chinese in the West during that
era. All in all, it was the best TV western ever made as far as Chris was
concerned. He had the entire collection of six seasons that aired from the
late fifties to the early sixties. Eating breakfast without watching an
episode of Have Gun, Will Travel was a real deprivation.
The episode was from season three; it was about a teacher who wanted to be a
gunslinger called Laredo. The teacher’s mother hires Paladin to take him to
town to protect Laredo from vicious gunfighters. Paladin concocts a plan to
come to the town earlier in the day and raise hell. Then he tells everyone
that he works as a hand for the notorious gunslinger, Laredo Jones. After
Paladin beats up a few hapless town toughs and does a bit of fancy shooting,
the town anticipates the arrival of the man who is even TOUGHER than Paladin.
Well, our teacher/cowboy comes into town and falls right in love with the
town teacher, who looks like a Hollywood model and begins to abandon his
adolescent urge to be a gunslinger. Unfortunately, some real gunslingers come
into town and both Laredo and Paladin subdue them within the usual thirty
minutes for an episode. Then, naturally, Laredo settles down with the
beautiful teacher and they enlarge the school (not to mention enlarging a few
other things). Gee, wouldn’t it be great if real life were like reel life?
In real life, Laredo would have gotten his butt shot off; and Paladin most
likely would have been shot with him. The teacher would have been some
scrawny, homely, bespeckled spinster who would have fainted at the sight of
real man, and the town bullies would still have been in charge. That’s just
the way it is in real life.
Chris turned off the large screen and went into the bedroom to put on some
clothes. He was already making a mental note of which restaurants he would go
to first and what questions he would ask. He knew the case would eventually
be solved just like his venerable ancestor solved them all in the past. He
just had a different slant on things. He may not have been Charlie Chan, but
he wasn’t doing too badly as his ancestor.
Tales of New York - The Bocci Game
The Bocci Game
by Arthur H Tafero
As I was trying to find a pastoral setting to write my very deep and
meaningful Taoist poetry, I stumbled upon a bocci game in progressat the park
and I decided to plop down and write about that instead. For those of you
unacquainted with the game of bocci, a quick review: Teams of two men
(usually Italian) each get four green and four red balls each. The purpose of
the game is to get your balls as close to the neutral ball ( a ball about the
size of a golf ball and the same color) that is rolled down a green-carpeted
bowling alley. If your color ball is closet to the neutral ball you win a
point. If two or more of your colored balls are closet to the neutral ball,
you get points for them, too. A fairly simple game on the surface; but do not
be deceived. These men play this game dozens of times a day, every day for
many years. They know every rut in the alley, every chip on both the green
and red balls and every spin and angle it takes to either come close to the
neutral ball or to knock an opponent’s ball away from the neutral ball.
There is plenty of lively conversation that ensues, also.
One player, who appears at sixty or so to be a little younger than the other
guys, struts around and makes various comments to give the appearance that he
is the best player. He is wearing an American Flag bandana and a black
sweater which highlights his sliver-haired and balding head. Many of his
actions would be more associated with a teenage pool-room hustler. At the
same time he is playing bocci, he is trying to pick up one of the older women
who comes to the park every day to watch the games. She is very friendly, but
she bets one dollar on his two opponents to win the game. She wins her dollar
and the cool guy is sent off the court as winners only are allowed to stay.
He sulks for a second and then mills around looking for a new partner. This
gives the impression that the lost game was his partner’s fault and not his.
One of the new players in the second game is an elderly Asian man, most
likely Chinese. At first it seems unusual that an Asian man is playing this
very Italian game with three Italians, but after a few minutes, one realizes
why he is in the game. First he seems to be a very skilled player. In
addition, when he does rarely miss a shot, he curses in Italian, just like
his other three compatriots. He wears a Yankee cap and a plaid shirt that is
different from everyone else, but he seems to fit right in.
After the Chinese man wins his game, the bandana-man plays again after
sitting out a game. He is anxious to gain redemption for his previous loss.
He eyes the Chinese man furtively and this gives the observer the impression
that he is a bit worried about his opponent. The game starts well for the
hipster retiree, but the Chinese man slowly but surely pulls even; then ahead.
Bandana-boy bites the dust again and goes into the parking lot cursing in
Italian and muttering about how foreigners are ruining everything in this
country. Almost everyone in the park is now laughing at him, but he ignores
them and leaves in his 92 Mustang.
Part Three – Tales of the East Coast
Tales of Florida
Florida Short Stories
Tales of Florida - The Stainamator
The Stainimator
by Arthur H Tafero
During my lovely stay during the winter of 04 at Stuart, I decided to lapse
back into my old habit of selling baseball cards at the flea market. I no
longer did this to make a living (I never was really able to make one when I
did do it full time, anyway). But now, since I have started working on the
internet as well as teaching in New York, I have the luxury of selling
baseball cards part-time without the pressure of having to pay the bills with
the proceeds. I am now able to reinvest the sales into older and more
valuable cards and, as a result, have slowly built up the value of the
inventory I am selling. I only have one rule of thumb now (introduced by my
wife); I only buy new collections of cards after I have sold enough of them
to pay for any new acquisitions. I did not always follow these rules in the
old days. I used to buy on speculation that the market would continue to rise
or that I would easily be able to dispose of large lots in a relatively small
amount of time. Both of these suppositions proved to be erroneous. The market
did not continue to rise. It dropped like a rock in the late seventies,
causing me to lose a great deal of money. My second mistake was almost (but
not quite) as bad as the first.
I used to spend my last dollar to buy rather large old collections at a very
good price. I used to have to discount quality mint vintage cards almost 50%
in order to make the bills, and in some cases, pay off the balance I owed on
some of the collections. These two errors cost me literally hundreds of
thousands of dollars in revenue and appreciation. Then in the late 80’s the
second major card price recession ended my fulltime card-selling career
forever.
Now, I just sell part-time to pay for my substantial Yankee baseball card
collection. I now have every Yankee card from 1950 to 2003. That sounds like
a lot, but it is a mere pittance to what I had accumulated in the seventies
and early eighties. Before I had the heart-wrenching task of breaking up my
Yankee collection to help pay bills, I had the following: every Yankee from
1910 to 1980. Every one. Every Ruth, every Gehrig, every Dimaggio, every
Mantle, Berra and Ford. In addition, the entire collection was in excellent
or better condition, with over 90% in perfect mint condition. The book value
was well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The market crash combined
with a costly divorce led me break up this beloved collection and I am only
now beginning to reconstruct it.
So now I was at the B and A flea market in Stuart selling at a relaxed pace
without any financial obligations hanging over my head. You would think this
would cause me to be in a state of bliss and contentment.
But no.
There was only one table, out of the hundreds at the market, that had a truly
obnoxious flea marketeer loudly “hawking― (the act of CONTINUOUSLY
repeating the same come-on to customers in a loud voice). Now hawking is
discouraged at many flea markets and is banned outright in others. But I
suppose you have to go to the office and make an official complaint before
any action would be taken. All the vendors (as almost all flea marketeers)
were too lazy to do so, so the hawking continued. The man called himself THE
STAINIMATOR and he sold a product that was guaranteed to make an Indian or
black man change into an absolutely white skin. In addition, STAINIMATOR was
guaranteed to remove every trace of blood from any crime scene that you may
have been responsible for creating. This would come in very handy for serial
killers and other mass murderers. Over and over from 8 am to closing at 3 pm
this man would say “ Pet stains, wine stains, blood stains, mold, mildew,
juice stains, fruit stains, blood stains, baby fluid stains (piss stains),
skid stains (I will not go into lurid detail here), vomit stains, bodily
fluid stains (another area I will not touch), tea stains, chocolate stains,
tomato stains and any other stain you can imagine.―
The vendors in booths on both sides of this man had that pained look of a
tortured animal that could not escape its constant mistreatment. He was
secretly using a microphone to hawk, also. This was another violation, no
doubt, but again, the vendors were too weak-willed to complain. “Pet stains,
wine stains, blood stains…..― his voice would sometimes trail off. At
first, I thought he was using a recorder because of the repetitious nature of
the message “unconditionally guaranteed and rated number one by consumer
reports”………. “Pet stains, wine stains, blood stains…….rated
number one by consumer reports” By ten o’clock one of the vendors was
ready to test his theory on whether his product could remove all traces of
blood stains, but still the mantra continued “Pet stains, wine stains,
blood stains…rated number one….etc.―
By about twelve o’clock, even with the microphone the STAINIMATOR hawker
was starting to get hoarse. He had sold exactly one bottle of STAINIMATOR in
over four hours. At this rate he would sell two bottles by the end of the day
and make a grand total of twenty dollars in sales. The table alone cost
twenty-five dollars.
This was not cost-effective.
You could visibly see the panic beginning to set in on the hawker’s face.
This was not going to be a profitable day. He starting saying his mantra of
“pet stains, wine stains, blood stains etc― at a quicker pace and a
little bit louder. One of the other vendors yelled at him to give it a rest.
Then the hawker opened up a ham sandwich he had bought earlier. He started to
rip open one of the mustards he had taken from the food court when disaster
struck; the mustard spurt all over his nice cashmere sweater. Quickly, all
eyes fell upon the hawker as he swung into action. He swiftly sprayed a few
spritzers of STAINIMATOR on his sweater, rubbed it in for a few seconds, then
added a spritzer of water. The man was totally prepared for any emergency and
supremely confident in his product.
In a few seconds, the mustard stain completely disappeared. The hawker beamed
with the self-assuredness of a man who has bet on the winning horse at the
track.
His fellow marketeers were duly impressed. It appeared as if the product
really worked. He began to attract a crowd after his mustard mishap. A few
were already considering buying this product; probably fantasizing about the
chance to remove their own substantial mustard stains they would inevitably
give themselves in the future. Then a young woman Indian from Indiantown
appeared in the crowd and announced:
“If your product can remove this stain I have on my blouse, I will buy a
bottle―
Once again the hawker sprang into action with the same confident smile he had
when he removed the mustard stain. He spritzed the spot on the woman’s
blouse a few times. He rubbed thoroughly for a few seconds, spritzed it with
water, rubbed again for a few seconds and like magic…….the spot was still
completely there! The smug smile disappeared from the hawker’s face as fast
as the spot remover was supposed to work. He tried the entire process a
second time with no visible change. The customers forgot their fantasies of
spilling mustard on themselves to their heart’s content and started to
slink away from the hawker’s booth.
“What is this stuff? He blurted out.
“It’s dried nail polish I put on yesterday. Your product does not work―
she said in that honest way that many Indians communicate. Then, she simply
turned and walked away without another word. So did almost everyone in the
crowd, except one small child. The hawker tried to give the small boy a
science lesson on why the stain-remover didn’t work on that stain.
“I hate science― said the little boy; and he walked away
Eventually, the hawker had fallen silent. People could not afford to spend
ten dollars to get out a stain. They would either wash it out themselves or
buy another five dollar shirt. In south Florida there was no need to pay more
than five dollars for almost any kind of shirt and most of them cost much
less than that. So why pay ten dollars to remove a stain? Most Americans are
lazy. They will just go out and buy another cheap shirt. And rich Americans
won’t bother cleaning a stain either; they will go out and buy another
expensive piece of clothing. It’s just the way we are in this country. My
wife and I are just as bad as the rest. We toss clothes with stains into the
“donation bag― at a pretty good clip.
Now the STAINIMATOR, like a large number of the other amateur flea marketers,
was packing up his wares with only one bottle being sold for the day.
His product might have been able to remove all visible stains, but it would
have a great deal of trouble trying to remove the stain of doubt that now
permeated the poor hawker’s consciousness.
As he packed the last of his supplies into his van, a voice could be heard
down the aisle yelling out “be careful the next time you do your nails!―
Tales of Florida - The Chicken Barbecue Special
The Chicken Barbecue Special
by Arthur H Tafero
Now as either of my two children (or my wife) can tell you, my adventures are
pretty lame when compared to Indiana Jones or one of those Hollywood heroes.
However; I am willing to go toe to toe with any of the superheroes of
Hollywood when it comes to encountering bizarre and fairly amusing people and
situations.
Take Stuart, Florida, for example.
Like every other small town that Route 1 cuts through on the East coast,
Stuart has its share of the prerequisite franchises. There are, among others,
a MacDonald’s (with the old 15 cents neon sign, which is cool), a Burger
King, a Kentucky Fried Chicken, a Walgreens, an Eckerd, a Pizza Hut, a
Dominos, an IHOP, a Howard Johnson’s, a Holiday Inn, a flea market, a mall
with a movie theater, one or two good homemade Italian food places, one or
two good homemade Chinese places and other well-known, but looked-over
restaurants and service stores.
Then there is Sonny’s.
Now there must be a Sonny’s in just about every large town on 95from
Virginia to Florida, but the Sonny’s in Stuart is the one that sticks in my
mind because of the people and events that seem to always take place when I
go there.
First, there is the very friendly waitress, Delilah (not her real name, but
close). She was blonde, in her forties, and a little plump around the caboose,
but still quite attractive because of her glistening white, perfect teeth.
She had the teeth of a Holl- wood actress. I am, as my wife will tell you, a
world-class flirt. I am far too lame to actually follow through on my
flirtations and as I get older, I think my wife has less and less to worry
about as many of the women I now find interesting now say “What can I get
for you today, SIR”. It used to be “What can I get for you today
darlin’”, or “What can I get for you today, hon” which of course
initiated a ferocious round of flirting which usually ended with a nice tip
for the waitress involved and great fantasies for me as I left the eatery.
Yep, now, as I rapidly approach sixty, I get more and more SIRs and fewer and
fewer darlins and hons. Well, to get back to the story, Delilah was very
friendly and definitely did not give me a SIR greeting. It was “Beefing up
for the Friday nite fireworks, eh hon?―
Well, that got my engine started.
“Yeah, I’ll be doing a lot of dancing later, so I’ll need all my
energy― I lied. I would be far too loaded down with heavy food. I would
take two Gaviscons after I got back to my apartment, go on the computer for
an hour or so and if I didn’t get any horrible indigestion, I would nurse
one ginger ale in the corner of the yacht club bar near Salerno for about two
hours listening to the live band music before pooping out and going back to
my apartment to flop into bed.
I felt a little guilty ordering a full rack of ribs until I saw the next
customers walk (or should I say waddle) over to a nearby table. It was a
mother, father and two absolutely enormous sons barely fitting into the ample
booths that Sonny’s has to offer. One son was at least four hundred pounds,
with a Buddha face, a bald head (which also enhanced his Buddha appearance)
and more rolls of fat than the Michelin Man.
He was the runt of the litter.
His older brother (sitting with his petite father) was even bigger. He
reminded me of the fat guy in the Monty Python movie that exploded after
eating the chocolate mint, except this guy was eating the chicken special,
and he wasn’t exploding. For those of you who are uninitiated, the
Sonny’s chicken special is all the barbecue chicken you can eat for $6.95.
Well, let me tell you, Sonny’s was doomed to lose on this one.
“What’ll ya have, hon?― asked the red-headed waitress, who I was pretty
sure was not romantically interested in this customer.
“Why don’t yall start me off with a couple of those little chicken
specials― Everyone at the table laughed heartily.
“Hon, we’re only allowed to serve one of those meals at a time. I’ll
gladly get you another if you are still hungry―
“Suit yourself there Red, I’m only trying to save ya a little work―.
Again, the rest of the table erupted in laughter. The little brother also had
the chicken special as did the plump mom and the petite dad. I nursed my
half-gallon of iced tea as I watched this drama unfold. How many chicken
specials would this family consume? Would there be any chickens left in
Stuart when they were done?
Just then another interesting customer passed by.
He looked exactly like one of the Smith Brothers of cherry cough drop fame.
He also looked like he could get ready for the role of Robert E Lee in a
Civil War movie in about five minutes. Absolutely no make-up would be
required. Just a change of clothes from his neat jeans and shirt to a
Confederate uniform and the transformation would be complete. I felt as if I
were in Appomattox.
Delilah came by my table again to ask me I wanted some more iced tea. I guess
she figured I had kidneys made of steel if I were to consume a whole gallon
of iced tea instead of a mere half-gallon. I politely refused, but added it
must be tough working on a Friday nite when all the other young women are out
dating. She rolled her eyes at the young women remark and said, “Honey, I
don’t date anymore, I just pick up the first interesting man on my shift―
“I am shocked and appalled!― We both laughed out load.
Meanwhile, back at the behemoth table, mom was on her second chicken dinner,
little brother was on his third, and true to his word, big brother was now
beginning his fourth chicken dinner. It was startling to see any animal
consume that much food; much less a human. But believe it or not, that was
not the worst of it. Oh no. As improbable as this may seem, I swear on the
grave of my father that the petite dad was now beginning on his fifth chicken
dinner. I virtually went over to the table to get a close look at his stomach
and it seemed to protrude just an inch or so over the belt, but nothing close
to a potbelly or the hippo appearance of his wife. Where the hell did all
that food go? It was mind-boggling. This guy couldn’t have been more than
one hundred and fifty pounds and he was on his fifth chicken dinner!
I was truly astounded. Then the eldest son had the temerity to tell dad
“don’t eat so fast pop, you’ll get gas―. This got a quick slap to the
side of the head of the oldest boy by pop. “Don’t mention gas with your
mother at the table! Where’s your manners?
“Sorry Pop― he said with a long face. Just then, two more enormous people
entered the room. It was mom’s two sisters. They were even bigger hippos
than mom.
“Joan! Grace! Take the booth across from us; its open now― I thought for
sure the bench would crack as the two ladies gradually squirmed their way
into the roomy seats.
“We’ll have the chicken specials!― they yelled at the harried redhaired waitress.
I could clearly see why she wasn’t in the mood to flirt.
As I left Sonny’s, I left a generous tip for Delilah as I continued to give
the impression that I would going out for a night of grand adventure and
romance. I think I barely made it back to the car before I broke out the
Pepsid.
Tales of Florida - Pitches: Tales of a Anonymous Retired Cleveland Indian
Pitcher
By An Anonymous Cleveland Indian Pitcher
I am a retired baseball player. I was never a star, but I wasn’t too bad a
pitcher in my day. I retired with more wins than losses and I pitched for
some pretty bad teams, so I had to have been better than average. I was with
the Cleveland Indians from 1965-1972 and I won fifty-six games and lost fifty.
Our best pitcher was Sudden Sam McDowell, but after him it was all downhill.
I will not torture you with the description of our other pitchers and bios of
our less-than-spectacular hitters. There were times during these years when
you could have rented out entire sections of the box seats in Cleveland’s
old stadium. Near the end of the season, we would be mired in 7th or 8th
place in front of less than 2000 fans and the wind off of Lake Erie would
whip around and chill you to the bone. Municipal Stadium was the largest
stadium in the American League. It was even bigger than Yankee Stadium. This
fact only accented the desolation and cavernous feeling one felt at the end
of September during the last few nights of ball. It wasn’t a lot of fun.
What was fun though, was spring training and the fantasies of what might be
for the coming season. Maybe we would develop a few good young pitchers,
maybe our hitters would mature and we wouldsteal a couple of sluggers in a
trade. Maybe pigs would grow wings and fly. It was always the same. The
Orioles or Tigers or Red Sox would wear everyone down by the end of the year
and the same patsies would be at the bottom of the league every year: the
once-proud Yankees, who looked embarrassed as they stumbled through the
second division from 65-69 and didn’t do much better my last three years,
the doomed Senators and Kansas City Athletics who were always fighting for
the cellar, and finally the California Angels could never concentrate on
baseball because the women and the weather were so beautiful out there, that
baseball was secondary.
And then there was Cleveland.
All we really wanted to do was finish ahead of the hated Yankees every year,
which is what we did five times in my eight years, but actually both teams
were terrible. The only exciting thing that happened for either team in eight
years was when two of the Yankee pitchers swapped wives and families in the
middle of the season. Fritz Peterson and some other guy I can’t remember on
the Yankees actually did that. Fritz was the Yankees best pitcher after
Stottlemyre. I tried to pitch like him. I was a lefty, but I didn’t have
the fireball of McDowell or the curve of Koufax. I basically had two pitches.
One was what they called a sneaky fastball because it was too slow to be a
brave fastball and the other pitch was sort of a cut slider because I
couldn’t master the curveball or the slider. Occasionally, I threw a
change-up when I was feeling lucky or if we had scored a lot of runs. It
seemed the team always scored a decent amount of runs when I pitched. One of
the hitters told me it was because they knew they would need a lot of runs to
win if I was pitching, I thought that was very unfair of him to say that
since he only hit better than .260 one out of the six years he was on the
club, the busher. Most of the hitters came and went after a few years. We
couldn’t keep track of all their names.
Guys came from Venezuela and the Carribean who hardly spoke a word of English,
but could field with the lights out at a night game. There were the black
players who were still given a hard time in the South during spring training.
They could hit the ball a mile, but they struck out a lot too. I preferred
hitters like Harvey Kueen who would hit for average. That’s how you kept
big innings going. That’s about as much as I know about hitting. All I
really know about is pitching.
I would rather cut off one of my fingers than throw a strike over the heart
of the plate. I was always nibbling at the corners, moving the ball in and
out and up and down. I tried never to let the hitter see the same pitch twice
at the same at bat. He would get one high fastball, one low fastball, one
cutter inside and then one cutter outside. If he didn’t swing at any of
them, he would probably either have a 3-1 count or a walk and I would be in
for a short day on the mound, but oddly enough, the vast majority of hitters
I faced couldn’t lay off pitches just a little bit out of the strike zone.
Guys like Mantle were easy to strike out or get off stride because they would
swing at a lot of bad pitches. The older pitchers told me Berra was the worst
of them. Berra once hit a line drive double off of a pitched ball that had
bounced in front of the plate. I dreamed of facing batters with that lack of
self-control at the plate. I hated pitching against the Orioles and White Sox.
They had the most disciplined hitters. Nellie Fox could drive you crazy and
foul off six or seven pitches. Aparacio was almost as bad. Yastremski was a
very tough out for me as was half of the Orioles line-up. I could never beat
the Orioles. My record against them was 2-13 over eight years. I was very
lucky to have won the two games. Almost all of them were very patient hitters,
unlike the 1965 Twins whom I beat four times even though they won the pennant
in my rookie year. I also did well against the Yankees because they had
problems with lefties. They had very few good right-handed hitters.
No one feared them anymore after 1964. They were just like the rest of us
during my eight years.
I made my living beating the Yankees, Senators, Athletics and Angels. I
had .500 records against the Minnesota and Oakland and I got my brains beat
in by Baltimore, Boston, Detroit and Chicago. Almost every lefty in the
league feared pitching in Fenway. I used to get the "Flu" a couple of times a
year whenever we visited Boston.
We got quite excited in 1969 when we went to the expansion format of just six
teams in a division. In spring training we thought we had a chance because we
finished in 4th out of ten teams in 1968, but we stumbled out ot the block
and were never able to make a run at it. We came in dead last. My last few
years were the worst. We were last again in 71 and next to last in 70 and 72.
We were never in serious contention and always playing in front of really
small crowds in a gigantic stadium. How depressing. Kids used our baseball
cards to make noise on their bikes. We were one of the jokes of baseball.
It’s tough to be out of contention by June. Anyway, because I was lucky
enough to be a barely above 500 pitcher, the club signed me on after I
retired to be an advance pitching scout. I can explain my job in two
sentences which will tell you how important it is. The advance pitching scout
goes to the city one stop ahead of the team to chart the opposing pitchers
that will be facing them in the next series. There, I actually told my whole
job in just one sentence. It is even less important than I thought.. We would
chart every pitch that every pitcher threw in a three or four game series.
What type of pitch it was, what the count was when the pitcher threw it, and
whether it was a ball or strike. We gave the location and speed (only if it
were a fastball) and then we would tally up all the pitches at the end of
each pitchers stint to make a profile of each pitcher. For example, if I was
scouting the Yankees in advance for the next series, you would note that the
majority of Stottlemyre’s pitches were sinkers. He might start you off with
a fastball for a strike because he had wonderful control, but you would never
see that fastball again. You would see the next pitch coming in where the
last fastball was and would lick your chops and take a hefty cut and miss it
by six inches because the second pitch was likely to be a sinker, Now he had
you 0-2 and a decent pitcher will not let you escape from that count. He can
tease you outside with a breaking ball or give a fastball up in your eyes
which looks good to hit but is very difficult to get the bat on top of. You
pop out a lot on those pitches outside the zone. Undisciplined hitters have
absolutely no chance against a decent pitcher who has them in the 0-2 hole. I
used to live for 0-2 against sloppy hitters. Stottlemyre always finished them
off. He might throw 100 pitches with 70 strikes and only 30 balls. Wonderful
control.
The opposing team might only score two or three runs against him on 6 or 7
hits and still the dreadful Yankees would lose. It was only after Stottlemyre
retired that the Yanks got any hitting (oddly enough it came in the form of
Chambliss and Nettles from Cleveland lol). Of course I was long gone by then.
Tales of Florida - The Wealthy Abortionist
The Wealthy Abortionist
By Arthur H Tafero
Dr. Marie Gomez was very comfortable. She had a house on the Hamptons she
spend the summers in and a luxury apartment on Fifth Avenue near 25th Street
that was not near 14th or 33rd Street, so it was relatively quiet and neatly
tucked in the lesser- visited areas of the city. No one went down 25th Street
for any reason other than for the purpose of going to your apartment. Dr.
Gomez was a New York State Board-Certified Abortionist. The rules were very
clear; all was fair game up to and including 24 weeks. After that, it was
adios and go off to a foreign country where they have no restrictions up to
last few days or so. 24 weeks is just over five months. Marie figured you had
to be pretty stupid not to know you weren’t pregnant before three months
were up. So you had two months to get your act together. That should be
plenty of time for most of these cows, she thought.
Dr. Gomez had lost a young son, Anthony, who was twelve, in a biking accident.
A car had run a red light and blindsided him at about sixty miles an hour. He
had been killed almost instantly. The collision was so violent that Oreo
cookies that he had been carrying in his backpack were nothing but dust; not
crumbs, but dust. The most amazing thing about the accident was that a car
could go sixty miles an hour in midtown Manhattan. Gomez had been beside
herself with grief and it was at that point in her life that she considered
specializing in abortions rather than gynecology care. There was a lot more
money involved in abortions, anyway, especially if you turned away all the
poor people and only catered to the rich, which is precisely what she did.
Now she was reaping the rewards of her decision. Then she was visited by a
high-end lawyer in a Brooks Brothers suit.
“ Good afternoon, Dr. Gomez, my name is Michael Anthony and I represent a
very select client whose daughter is in a family way. The daughter has been
very uncooperative and insists on having the child, but the father, who is a
prominent figure whose name I must keep confidential, is having none of it.
The daughter is already in her seventh month.―
“Well, then I’m afraid it’s a moot point, Mr. Anthony, the NY State
code is very clear about that issue; you have five months and a few weeks at
most. She has already missed the boat, so to speak.―
“If the operation is performed in a country that has no such restrictions,
then it would be legal. My client is willing to take care of all the
conditions that would create a legal atmosphere for you to operate in. We
would like the operation to occur at the Cayman Islands. The proper
government officials have agreed to our conditions for consideration. You
consideration would also be substantial. It would be one million dollars.―
“But I would be risking my license. I cannot operate on any woman legally
inside or outside of New York if she is over five months pregnant. There is
no country that is legal for me to operate in without jeopardizing my license;
even for such an attractive fee. I’m very sorry, but I have to say no.―
“Here is my card, Dr. Please call me in the next few days if you change
your mind. I can absolutely assure you that every aspect of your identity and
trip would be completely secret. You would be transported with the patient by
private yacht to the Caymans from New York. There are no check-ins or
registration procedures in the Caymans. You would be in a private hospital
where no one knows you or cares who you are. You would be transported back to
New York exactly the same way you left; one day after you are finished. Thank
you for your time and I hope to hear from you soon.―
Anthony left his card on the edge of her desk and quickly and quietly
disappeared into the city street.
Dr. Gomez peered at the card for a few seconds and then put in her drawer
where she kept hundreds of other business cards and a rolodex for other
businesses, friends and family numbers. Then she went back to work. That week,
the stock market took a tremendous tumble. Many stocks were in free fall. Dr.
Gomez watched while her AT&T stock plummeted as well as almost all the other
stocks in her portfolio. She lost almost 45% of her wealth in just two weeks.
And that was not all. Her house in the Hamptons had caught fire and there was
over $100,000 in damage to the structure not covered by insurance because it
was caused by lightning, an Act of God, according to the insurance company.
Her losses in those two weeks were staggering. They amounted to over a half
million on paper. Her broker told her to hold on, but she sold everything and
converted to CDs. But the losses had been almost $600,000 and she still had
to repair the house in the Hamptons.
She looked at the drawer. Then she went inside the drawer, pulled out the
card and enquired about the girl in the Caymans. Nothing had been done yet,
but time was getting dangerously short. Dr. Gomez agreed, but with very rigid
stipulations that were all met.
Tales of Florida - The Wayward Stewardess
The Wayward Stewardess
By Arthur H. Tafero
There once was a lovely Swedish stewardess named Ingrid who I met during one
of my flights to China. She was tall and shapely and every bit the stereotype
that one imagines when one fantasizes about a Swedish stewardess. I used
every trick I could think of in my rather substantial book of tricks to get
the statuesque beauty to go todinner with me upon our landing, but she was
married and steadfastly faithful to her husband. By a very fortunate set of
circumstances, I found out that Ingrid and the crew of the plane were staying
at the same hotel in Shanghai that I would be staying at. The Shanghai Hilton
was renown for its top-flight service and luxuriousaccommodations. I would be
giving an opening night lecture at an important (important to me, at least,
because I was pocketing ten grand) seminar on the foundations of Taoism and
Confucianism in China. It was two days before the lecture and I had plenty of
time to kill. I decided with determined doggedness that I would continue my
pursuit of lovely Ingrid; husband or no husband.
It turned out she was staying on the sixth floor and I was on the eighth. I
called her room, 666. I thought the number might have some exciting
possibilities. A man answered the phone.
“Hello?―
“Good evening, is Ingrid there please?―.
Well, it had seemed that this self-righteous woman had pulled the wool over
my eyes, but I was not about to hold a grudge against such a fine physical
specimen.
“She is in the shower―
Delightful images ran through my mind.
“Could you ask her to call Art in room 808 please?―
“Sure, I’ll be glad to give the message―.
I thought that this gentleman was being very considerate in sharing his
fortunate circumstances with me; I was very appreciative.
“Thank you ever so much and have a very good night― I said with great
conviction.
A few minutes later, the phone rang with a jarring effect. I quickly answered.
“Hello?―
“Hi, Art?, this is Ingrid from the plane. Did you just call?―
“Yes, Ingrid, I thought we might have some pleasant conversation over
dinner and a drink; what say you?―
“Well, why don’t we have dinner and some drinks in my room with my friend
Edgar?―
I was only taken slightly aback by the proposition of a threesome; and I was
not a big fan of them unless it was two women and a man. I plotted how I
could enjoy the fruits of my desire without experiencing any painful side
effects. I accepted the offer of dinner with great reservations. I had often
thought of my position in life, but tonight I would have to really take
special care in that position.
After getting dressed rather informally, I sauntered down the stairs to 666,
once again noting the ominous nature of the room number, and knocked on the
door with feigned confidence.
“Hello, Art―.
It was Edgar who answered the door. So, this fellow was bisexual. He seemed a
decent sort and I did not hold that against him, but I was determined to
guard myself from any attacks from the rear.
“Good evening, Edgar―.
I entered the room with only minor trepidation. There was Ingrid, in a simple
house dress that only made her look Sophia Loren’s sister on a hot night.
“Hello, Art― she said with a smile.
“Good evening, Ingrid― I said in my best Alfred Hitchcock imitation.
“We will be eating out on the balcony; they have a lovely table out there.
I order a Pinot Grigio; I hope you like that.―
“Just as long as it’s not a Merlot (I suddenly realized I sounded like
Paul Giamatti in Sideways).―
“We are having Peking Duck and jumbo shrimp with Chinese vegetables and
brown rice; I hope that is to your liking―.
“Oh, that will be wonderful―.
What a pleasant young woman, I thought to myself. I knew I would enjoy the
meal, but I was still determined to guard my other virginity.
After a splendid dinner, a desert of Cherries Jubilee, and polishing off the
bottle of wine, I ordered a bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Crème as the
perfect nightcap before the main event of debauchery was to take place.
“If you will excuse me, I have to make a visit to the lady’s room―
Ingrid quietly left me with Edgar. I made some polite conversation.
“So what business are you into, Edgar?―
It occurred to me that I had made a poor choice of words. Fortunately, before
Edgar could comment on my open-ended question, the phone rang. I quickly
picked it up and answered.
“Hello?―
“Who is this?― a male voice questioned.
“I might ask the same question, sir―
“I am Ingrid’s husband, is she there?― So Ingrid had been telling the
truth about her virtue.
“She just stepped out for a moment, would you like to speak to her good
friend, Edgar?― I was determined to not get involved at the expense of
Edgar. Edgar came over to the phone.
“Hello?―
“Who the hell are you and why are there two men in my wife’s room?― I
could hear the disturbed man yelling on the phone. Before the flabbergasted
Edgar could reply, Ingrid had returned from the bathroom.
“Charles, why are you so upset?―
“There are two strange men in your room!―
“They are not strange; Edgar is my flying companion and he prefers men; Art
is his companion for the evening. We all decided to dine together, if
that’s alright with you.― She said sarcastically. Of course, I was quite
surprised to find out that I had just turned gay like Cary Grant did in one
of his films with Katherine Hepburn.
“I’m sorry dear, I guess I should have spoken to you first before going
off the handle―.
“That’s alright, Charles. I am used to it by now.―
“I’ll call you tomorrow, Ingrid. Sorry about the mix-up―.
“No problem, Charles, I’ll speak to you tomorrow. Have a good night,
dear.―
“Good night―. Charles hung up.
“Really, Ingrid, did you have to out me in front our guest?―
“Oh, think nothing of it, Edgar.―
I was beginning to sense that the sexual dalliances I had pondered would now
only be in my imagination. As Edgar smiled at me, I quickly made an excuse
for an early morning getaway and the need to get back to my room.
“We hope to see you again, Art― echoed both Ingrid and Edgar as I
departed.
No more Swedish stewardesses for me, I vowed.
Tales of Florida - The Laziest Teacher in America
The Laziest Teacher in America
by Arthur H Tafero
I remember this teacher who I once befriended. He was the teacher from hell.
He was positively, absolutely the worst teacher I had ever met in my life. He
related his life story to me over a few Jack Daniels and a game of poker and
I found it to be very sad, amusing, and at times, hysterically funny.
Douglas had graduated high school in the mid sixties and went straight to
college.
He was not a brilliant man, nor was he dull-witted. He was, by all accounts,
a little above average in intelligence. But there was one trait that he
quickly became noted for amongst his family and friends. Douglas was
extremely lazy. As a child, he never had a part-time job, he merely cajoled
money from his doting mother. Douglas was a bit of a charming operator, but
not a bona fide hustler. He ate other kid’s lunches in grammar school, he
used other kids toys, so his wouldn’t be overused, he read other kid’s
comics so he wouldn’t have to buy them. It wasn’t because he was cheap
(although he watched his money very carefully), it was because he was to lazy
to go to the store to buy the comics. He was too lazy to bring his own lunch
from home. Doug was a lazy kid.
When he got to college, Doug tried to think a few years down the line how he
would like to live his life. He figured he would like to spend the summers
down the Jersey Shore on vacation doing nothing at all except surfing,
swimming and picking up girls. In college, this translated in to becoming a
teacher. The education courses Doug took warned him that teaching was hard
work and that every teacher would earn his summer vacation twice over. Doug
and a number of other students laughed heartily in private at these
contentions. So Doug became a teacher.
He still had to decide what subject area he would become certified in. One of
the teachers in graduate school told him that math teachers had to put in too
many extra hours grading papers, so Doug, who was good in math, became
certified in English, because that was the easiest subject to become
certified in and it was the easiest subject to mark papers in (if you were
lazy). For example, a good English teacher will give you an essay on a topic.
A typical class of 25 would all have the same paper. You might have four or
five classes that day for a total of 100 to 125 papers to grade. That’s a
lot of papers; especially for a good English teacher who dutifully goes over
each of the hundred papers or so to check for things like noun-verb agreement,
run-on sentences, spelling, usage and the like. He would then mark the
correction in red and then give the student an overall grade for the essay.
That would take a good teacher with speedy grading skills about an hour and a
half to do properly. Doug would finish his papers in about six or seven
minutes. How could he grade them so fast? He told me he just looked at how
long the essay was. If it was long, he gave it an A; if it were longer than
most, he would give the student a B; if the essay was a little short, a C and
if it were very short a D or an F depending if the kid made any trouble in
class. He made absolutely no corrections on any of the papers!
But this was only one facet of Doug’s laziness as a teacher. In addition to
being a careless grader, Doug had learned the fine art of delegating
authority to students to the highest degree. The delegating would start even
before class started. The first kid in the door for that period was
designated to take attendance. There are always a few students who got a
thrill from taking attendance, so Doug repeatedly used the same ones to take
attendance day after day. This cut five minutes a day times five classes or
twenty-five minutes from his workday. In addition to designating a student
for attendance, he designated students to maintain and enforce lists for
detention (although very few kids misbehaved in Doug’s classes because most
kids like a lazy teacher). This saved him a few minutes a day also and he
didn’t have to spend time in the detention room with the punished; he
designated another student to “monitor them and to take attendance―.
These were usually the same brownnosers that volunteered to take attendance
in the regular classes. Doug always rewarded them with A’s, even if they
did shoddy work, because a brownnoser was entitled to a higher grade in
Doug’s world or they wouldn’t continue to be brownnosers. Of course, Doug
was not above using students who wanted to become teachers themselves by
doing exemplary work and volunteering to take attendance, collect and check
in homework, monitor the detention class and any other little detail Doug
could think of to cut time off of his day.
Another method Doug used to avoid work in the classroom was the “reading
assignment―. While some teachers allowed students to read novels in class,
they always made it a verbal exercise where the students would read aloud and
the teacher would follow to make sure they were reading correctly. But this
was too time consuming for Doug. He needed to read the newspaper and have his
bagel and coffee in his first period English class, so the assignment was
always the same. Read the next chapter to yourself and then write an essay on
what happened. This worked for a little while, but many of the students were
too lazy to read the chapter before they did the essay and would just ask one
of the smart students (who had already read the entire book) what happened
that chapter. The result would be bland, cookie-cutter essays that Doug
marked in the same manner he marked all of his other essays; the longer it
was, the higher the grade.
Doug never marked the homework, either. He merely had one of the delegated
students “check it in” against the student’s name. If you missed a
homework essay, you lost two points; if you did it, you gained one point. Of
course none of these points really mattered to Doug because he didn’t keep
track of them. He merely gave you a letter grade that he thought you deserved
based on the average lengths of most of your essays. But Doug always made a
bid deal about the point system he was using with the homeworks and the tests
and he was always able to confuse the simple-minded students into thinking he
really had a highly developed system of grading.
He even fooled the department chair and the principal into thinking he had a
highly developed system of grading. They would look at his impeccable
attendance and grading book and see a grade for each day for each student!
Very few teachers were able to put that many grades into the book, but Doug
found it easy because of his abbreviated marking system. Thus, he developed a
reputation for being a demanding and hard-working teacher. On those very rare
instances where Doug was observed officially by his department chairman or
the principal, he would completely change his classroom demeanor. He would
take attendance himself, as well as collecting the homework himself. He
mentioned offhandedly to whoever was observing that day that his students; on
the average, were given at least ten essays a week. That would mean one in
class and one for homework. The test at the end of the week would also
include an essay and there was always an essay for homework on Friday. The
department chairs and the principals would always be impressed by the large
number of essays per week that Doug would give for homework as well as the
ones that were given in class. Doug always received a good review from his
department chairs and the principal as a result.
Despite all the time saved on not taking attendance, not spending time in
detention, not collecting and actually checking the homework, and not grading
the class work properly, Doug still sought to save more time for himself.
First period was breakfast. There were less that six words exchanged between
him and the class all year; it was read the next chapter and do an essay
until the bell. The kids got used to it. In the second period, Doug had
finished reading the paper and now he was bored enough to do a little
teaching. This was also the period that he steered the department chair and
the principal into when he was being observed.
Doug would go to the board and write a few characters and events that were
taking place in the current novel. He would quickly go through an analysis of
the characters that he read in the Cliff notes in college; he really
couldn’t be bothered reading these boring books. After analyzing the main
characters, he would go over some of the events in the book that pushed the
plot forward. Again, he would glean these from his well-used college Cliff
notes or his memory of the movie version of the book. Doug loved movies.
Whenever there was a movie version of the book, he would always show it in
class. He had always already seen it, so he could take a nice 35 minute nap
while the class watched it. He never showed movies to his first period class
though, that class was strictly reserved for coffee, a bagel and the paper.
He never showed more than one class a day a segment of the movie because he
never needed more than one nap a day and he wouldn’t want to sit through a
movie he had already seen.
For field trips, Doug would invariably pick a movie he hadn’t seen yet that
could (with a great stretch of the imagination) be classified as a novel.
Even the Star Wars Trilogy had a book written for it, and it passed as
literature in high school. Doug would intentionally not go to any films that
were books so that he could take his classes to see them. He had five classes,
so he was allowed five field trips which translated into five movies. There
were always at least five movies a year that were books. His daily schedule,
however, was pretty fixed: first period, coffee, a bagel and the paper, one
of the other four periods would alternate for his video which translated into
a nap, the second period usually was used to stretch his legs and do a little
teaching when there wasn’t a video. He had the third period off for
preparation. He used this period to go on the internet to play scrabble. His
fourth period class got the same routine as the first period class and he
used this period to write short stories on his laptop. His fifth period class
was the same as his fourth period class except while he was writing or
playing scrabble on the internet, he would consume his lunch in the classroom.
All eating and drinking rules were suspended during this class since Doug had
his lunch during this period. None of the other classes were allowed to eat
or drink in class.
Doug was often exhausted by sixth period, his official lunch period, so he
would skip lunch (since he ate it in fifth period), and just play gin rummy
in the teacher’s room with Collins, the math teacher. He always took
Collins over for at least five or ten bucks a day because Collins was
convinced because he was a math teacher, he should be able to beat an English
teacher at gin. Unfortunately, Collins was usually exhausted from grading
papers by sixth period and Doug was well-rested from his laziness and nap and
was quite refreshed for the game. Collins never caught on. Seventh period was
a duty period for Doug. All the teachers had one duty period a day. It gave
Doug something a little interesting to do; something to break up his
classroom routine. He really didn’t mind sitting in the lunch room and
taking attendance. He delegated that job, also. It allowed him time to have a
snack and to shoot the bull with the other teachers in the lunch room.
Occasionally, he would have to break up a fight. Doug loved breaking up
fights. He would say in a very quiet voice “stop fighting gentlemen―. The
boys would continue to pound each other for a few minutes until one was
laying on the ground; then Doug would repeat himself in a very quiet voice
“I told you to stop fighting and I meant it―. That would be the actual
time he would grab the boy lying on the ground, dazed and bleeding. It was
quite a simple matter to grab the boy who had been pounded because the losing
boy never had any resistance left. It made Doug look like he was quite
responsible. Doug always maintained that the best time to break up a fight
was after one of the combatants was down; it was much easier that way. He
rather enjoyed the fights in the cafeteria and he never let them go beyond
the second one of the boys was on the ground.
After the seventh period, Doug had his last class of the day. He often gave
them a video or the automatic read then do an essay lesson. After seventh,
Doug had the day off unless he had a school activity. Each teacher was
expected to provide a school activity. Doug ran the Chess Team. They met once
a week for matches on a Friday after ninth period. The matches usually lasted
about an hour and change. They were always over by four thirty. Sometimes,
Doug would have some of the Chess team members in the lunch room during his
sixth period duty and teach them a move or two. It was one of the easiest
sports to coach in high school. He merely locked the ten chess sets and
clocks in his class closet until match times. Each of the team members had
his own set anyway. There were never any official Chess team practices. Each
player was expected to read chess books and practice during the week with
other players. Doug would have one the players keep a log of the matches
between all the school players so he could create a ladder for the players.
This took all of ten minutes. It took about as long as Doug did getting to
the teacher’s parking lot and getting off the school grounds as soon as the
ninth period bell rang.
Tales of Florida - Love and Sales
Love and Sales
by Arthur H Tafero
As I have gotten older, I could not help but notice how much love and sales
have in common. You may be very good at selling one item, such as baseball
cards, if you really enjoy handling and talking about that item all the time.
You may even have some degree offinancial success with that item. The fact of
the matter is, even when you do not have much financial success or derived
income from selling an item you love, it really doesn’t matter. You just
enjoy dealing with the product and you will do better next time.
As soon as you try to translate your success with the item you really enjoy
selling, such as baseball cards, to an item that does not really stir you
emotionally, such as real estate, you run into trouble. Being a good baseball
card salesman does not translate into being a good real estate salesman, for
instance. If you consider working as a real estate salesman to pay bills and
to accumulate wealth, you are probably not going to be very successful at it.
You have to love the houses you are selling. If not, chances are you have
another job in the not too distant future.
I really think the same principle holds true for women. Unless you really
enjoy handling and talking about them all the time, you’re not going to be
with them for a long time. You really need to love a woman, or at least like
them a whole lot in order to live with them on a day to day basis. Just like
successful selling does not translate from something you love to something
that is practical, so it is with relationships with the opposite sex. I
really don’t know if this holds true for women in their relationships with
men, because what I know about women you could probably fit in the first
sentence of this treatsie. I do know that moving in with a woman for
“practical purposes― is the same as selling real estate to pay the bills
when what you really want to sell is baseball cards or comic books.
Now, not all relationships as depicted by Hollywood and TV are of the boing,
I’m in love variety. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that just about
every relationship with the opposite sex is a matter of negotiation,
practicality, security and, of course, good sex. Without good sex, a
relationship is pretty well doomed. And for women in particular, unless they
feel a sense of security (which translates into you better have a job and be
able to pay the bills or else). Now for eons, men have always been the
providers for women and if a woman worked or added income to the relationship,
it was sort of a bonus. However, that has all changed with the onset of the
modern age and equality for women. Now the woman is an equal, and sometimes,
a greater provider than the man.
This would all be nice and dandy except for a few items. The mentality of the
last few million years has created a sort of bi-polar man and woman. Men
instinctively want to be the head of a family and the major breadwinner in
the relationship. Women have abandoned their dependent roles as family
members and now work with a vengeance to achieve the same goals as men. This
includes aspiring to be the head of the family and the major breadwinner. It
appears that there is a direct correlation between being the bigger moneymaker and being the head of the family; regardless of sex. It is my
observation that the change in women over the last few hundred years has
profoundly changed the relationships between men and women. Romantic love
seems to be a thing of the past, although both sexes pine for it. Now every
relationship seems to be a negotiation. As we get older, we add practicality
to the negotiation. When you are twenty and even up to the thirties, sex
seems to be the driving factor; but when you are forty and fifty-something,
its all about negotiation and practicality.
Now it seems that these principles for love for the over forty group has
crept into the younger mating relationships. Younger women and men seem to be
negotiating more before making commitments. Practicality seems to be high on
everyone’s agenda. I even had a young college girl tell me she really loved
this one guy, but the relationship wasn’t practical, so she dumped him. I
told her it’s not practical to raise any plants that don’t bear fruit,
but we do it all the time because some of the plants are really beautiful and
they make us feel better. That might be true for some relationships, also.
But, as I mentioned before, you can fit what I know about women on a postage
stamp.