Yeah, Once a long time ago it was cool to like Rock and Roll. I remember in the early 60's listening to 77 WABC. That was the station to listen to. It had Cousin Brucie, Herb Oscar Anderson, Dan Ingrum and it had the music, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Byrds, The Animals, The Beach Boys, all the great music. At five minutes before the hour it had the news, 'five minutes sooner' was the saying they used.'News on ABC, five minutes sooner'. I had no idea what it meant. Back then everyone had to stop their broadcasting and go over the news headlines, once an hour, it was a standard thing. Sometime in the early 70's the FCC relaxed the rules and for a while it seemed odd that the music didn't stop sometime around the top of the hour for news.
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| A transistor radio like the one I had |
In the backyard of the house I grew up in there was this huge swamp Maple. It was a swamp maple because the swamp was in the back of our house and this maple grew near it. It was huge. Someone said it was five trees that grew together. Years later a seed from it grew to the south of my garden in the back field and I chopped the tree down. The next year it came back, I did the same thing. and it regrew, it happened the next until one year I didn't get it cut out as much as I wanted. After that I could never get rid of the tree, it grew like a weed. Pretty soon it was thirty feet tall. What this has to do with the first tree now some thirty years later is it looks alot like the first and it is only one tree.
Back to the first tree. In the 60's We built a tree fort in the tree in back and while doing it we listened to WABC play music. It would be one song, then a commercial, then some DJ chatter, then a commercial or a song, then a commercial. The Music was great, but I always longed for more. Then of course, at the top of the hour, the news. And it always seemed to start with a place called Vietnam.
I never had much money growing up. So when I got some I'd spend it.Usually I'd go to the candy store, then called Perino's. Up Klein Ave, left turn up a dirt path we called the 'Mohawk Trail' between two houses to Benson Ave, down to Old Route 59, Where the sidewalk is now, in the 60's it was a dirt path edged with a few large stones to Perino's. A little ways further on to Western Highway was the meat market called McGrath's, where my mother would send me to pick up a pound of ground chuck mostly. It cost $1.29. Behind McGrath's were the railroad track that you crossed and if you walked up the stump of the road then called old 59 you would get to new 59. Then across it and on the other side was a grocery store call Pathmark. In the 60's it had a small record dept about six feet wide by six feet tall. Just big enough to be filled with all the new 33rpm records that were out. In 1968 Karl and I went over there so he could buy the new Beatles record 'The White Album'. I think he paid $9,95 for it. On the way back he was angry because it was so much money, he thought Pathmark had ripped him off. Later he found out it was a double Album. In about 1967 I wanted to buy an album, but I didn't have enough money. So my parents said I could pay them back out of my allowance. I agreed. The Album was, 'Something New' by The Beatles. It seemed to take forever to pay off that loan I think I financed four dollars and I had to pay back a dollar a week to get even, It was such a huge chunk of my allowance.
Sometime in the middle 60's my brother Karl put up posters on the walls of our room, the back bedroom to the right. I remember The Doors 13, line on one poster. Another one was for Creedence Clearwater Revival. There were a total of four I believe sized about three feet by four feet. I didn't know those bands back then. As the Vietnam War intensified and protests became more violent I started to blame Rock and Roll music and I stopped listening to it around 1968 or so and didn't start listening again until the early 70's after the war was mostly over and I only listened to soft Rock then. It's funny how the war affected me and how I changed. Later in the mid 80's I would go back and listen to the music from the 60's to enjoy as new music I deprived myself of.
Around 1968, I quit listening to music, but I still listened to the radio and of all the places I went I ended up at newsradio 88, WCBS. An all news station. I didn't escape from the Vietnam War, I guess I got up close with it. This lasted until I rediscovered music in about 1972. Soft Rock with Roberta Flack, Gladys Knight and the Pips. (Pips are the black spots on dice, that's a fact.) Jim Croce who made great songs about life and would die in a plane crash when I was in my first year of college in 76-77. Those were some of the Artists I listened to in the early 70's.
Around my last year in High School I received an eight track tape player and a set of speakers for Christmas. The local BOSE Warehouse on Route 303 in Orangeburg was closing and my Mom and brother went there and picked me up my first real stereo. It's a sad fact of life that kids in the early twenty-first century rarely get to experience the full sound of a full size stereo turned up a little too loud. The only time my kids get to hear music like it should be played is when I crank up my stereo in the attic and they wander up there to ask a question.And the problem with that is it isn't their music, so they rarely appreciate it. There is nothing like getting between a pair of good four foot high speakers set as far apart as possible and put on Queen, 'A night at the Opera' a little too loud. It can't be explained.
The Eight Track Tape Deck never really worked quite right. It would play the tape too fast, I'd return it, The next deck would do the same thing. The third one the left speakers didn't work, so when the forth one played the tape too fast I stuck a piece of rolled up paper between the tape and the deck so the tape ran slower and lived with it.
Around 1979 or maybe the early 80's I was driving my TR6 and felt it was time to upgrade my sound system. So I went up to Nanuet to a place that looked like a successful electronic store. I walk in and looked over the equipment and selected a set up that had a CD player you could put six CD's in and the sound I thought was amazing, crisp and clear. Not foggy like the 8 tracks always seemed. I used my credit card, because I never had a dollar that I didn't like to spend as a kid. I dropped it into my 1973-4 TR 6 convertible ( Lots of stories about that when/if I ever get to cars) and drove home and set it up in my bedroom at my parents house.My Bedroom during that time was the southern half of the sun porch and the original master bedroom. Later in the eighties, just as CD were starting to give way to all of those Apple products that held thousands of songs and most likely you have never heard of I went out and bought a CD deck that would hold all of my CDs. As of 2017, I still have it and it mostly works. By that I mean it plays the music, but the shuffle feature doesn't work all the time.
When the internet came around in the 90's I didn't think it would change things as much as it did. I started my life listening to 45's in my bedroom on a small turntable about the size of a box of cereal with my older brother Karl. I saw my brother buy a stereo cabinet about six foot long that I was not allowed to touch, I listened to my Dad's 78's in the middle 60's during Christmas one year. I was there at her house when my Aunt Emilie threw out her gramophone (look it up) on junk day. It lasted ten minutes on the street before someone snatched it. I switched to cassette tapes, then to eight tracks, back to cassettes, then to CDs. I've bought The Beatles White Album and Elton John's 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road' so many times in each format that I felt when downloading songs off the internet for free I'd paid my dues and the songs should be mine for free. Music the more it changes the more it is the same. Only the format is different. I hope there are no new formats coming cause I done!
DRUGS growing up.
Drugs seemed a harmless idea as I grew up. No One seemed to die from them. Now that I'm older and alot of people in the music industry are dying at a young age. Tom Petty, heart attack at 66, I wonder if drugs or Pot had anything to do with it. As a young kid I saw my parents smoke cigarettes and it made me want to try them. Thank God they got me to stop because now that I'm older I see all the poor souls that smoked growing up dying. A Friend's brother had cancer of his voice box, they removed it. He had smoked for forty-five years at least. He later killed himself because he couldn't live like that.
I was never very big into drugs. I was more into alcohol. I started drinking around sixteen and got caught within a few weeks. My Dad received whiskey, vodka and other alcohol as Christmas gifts. My friend Mike and I would 'taste' the liquor. My Dad never drank it having an alcoholic father and neither did my mom, who also had an alcoholic father, aunt and maybe one other. So Mike and I would steal some from the cellar closet it stayed in. I got so brazen that one time I filled a bottle of Seagrams Whiskey with water and just a splash of whiskey. My Dad never would notice it. That Christmas, He started giving bottles to friends. Some Friend of his got a bottle of water and if he ever said anything I never heard. I hope he got a laugh over it. I cringe every time I think about it.
Mike and I would go into my bedroom, then just the southern half of the sun porch and we tried drinking whiskey. I snatched a bottle for the cellar cabinet. We each tried some shots and eventually decided to go out and take a walk, something we did all the time. When I came back my parents had gone into my room and found the bottle and I was in trouble. How they knew, I never asked.
After I got caught drinking, I was grounded for two weeks. That was it, but they did actually enforce it for the two full weeks, which was rare in my house. Usually my parents would get busy and forget or it would get into the middle of the second week and at that point it was easy to say Ok, just go. But this was different with the history of alcohol in my family. Their anger wasn't as extreme as it could have been. I don't know what they did when Karl came home drunk. I remember when Eric came home drunk. He was in bed hungover and my mom wasn't giving him any sympathy. So in all my self-righteousness, I told him I wasn't going to talk to him until he apologized to our parents. I think he told me to go fuck myself or something appropriate. I was a bit of ass every so often. Some would say still, but I try to limit how right they can be.
I first tried to start drinking beer around sixteen. Sixteen seems to be the magical year. Your hormones are starting to rage and you feeling a little cooler than ever before and you feel indestructible, at least a little and you want to try new things, or at least I did, so I tried beer. My daughters, who I've let try beer and my wife who has tried some of the beer I drink these days, all say it tastes like pee. Which begs the question when did all of them taste pee?
I can relate to the fact that they don't like beer. At first I didn't either. I tried my first one, maybe Rheingold or some beer that is no longer made. It was at a party that Mike's brother Terry was having in their parents house. It was in the basement of their house out of the eyes of their parents. It was a wild time for me, my first party and there was beer. I tried a can and didn't like it. I might of lost it and got another, At the end of the night I might of finished one beer and I didn't like it. That didn't stop me from developing a taste for it.
I look back and think if I didn't develop a taste for beer, would that have lead me to mixed drinks? Over the following twenty years, mixed drinks were the choice of alcohol that seemed to get me into trouble the most. The majority of car accidents that revolved around alcohol were with mixed drinks.That doesn't mean I didn't over indulge in beer and wake up with massive hangovers that I wished my head would just finally explode and be done with it. There were several Sundays during football season in the seventies and early eighties that were spent in my bed, with a hangover trying to watch football. Propped up in bed trying not to move a muscle, staring at the TV in my room.
In passing I said car accidents and alcohol. Yes I was that dumb and for some reason God spared my life in all of them. I have two stories to tell. The first and the worst. The first is not really a car accident, it's more of just God letting me live and the police letting me go when alcohol and driving were just frowned on. and having a brother who worked for the police.
It was the late 70's I was with Mike, I think. It was late, we'd been drinking maybe at the West Nyack Inn. It was a seedy place at the end of Western Hwy and West Nyack Rd. We left the bar to go get food at Bagel Nosh in Nanuet. The building is no longer there. It was near the road on Route 59 in the main shopping district. I went up West Nyack Rd at a breakneck speed. Over near St Anthony's the road used to go straight and connect with Rt 59 at a 'Y' closer to the light, not make the turn on to I think, Church street. The bit of road was an S turn and I went through it almost straight, I think. I got pulled over by the Police and they took my license and insurance cards and ran them through the system. He asked me if I had been drinking, I said yes. He then asked me if I was related to Karl Muller. Now my brother had always said don't use his name to get out of any trouble I got into, so instead of just answering yes, I said yes, but I don't want it to influence your decision. He hands me back my license and insurance card and tells me to go home. For the longest time it was a joke about what I said to the officer. And after that I was rarely allowed to drive with my friends after drinking.
The worst and stupidest accident involving a car I was driving and alcohol occurred again in the late 70's. It was two for one night at Maximus in New City. I didn't have my own car, so I drove my mother's chocolate brown Ford Mustang there. This if you haven't guessed is another of those cringe worthy moments in my life. If You haven't had any you soon will or later on you will realize that you were an ungrateful ass at a time that you shouldn't have been. I look back at this time and see someone who has yet to grow up, a man-child. Someone who could become a father, if he was careless and had a girlfriend (more about that in another post.) I was careless and inconsiderate. How could I go to a bar driving someone else's car and do what I did?
As I said earlier, it was two for one night and it was the 70's. And as I said in the earlier part of the story the police didn't always arrest you if you were drunk and behind the wheel. At two for one nights at the Maximus, you go up order a drink, I was drinking vodka and OJ, you'd pay for one drink and they would pour you two. It was a fun night and everyone drank too much. I remember talking about the Billy Joel album, The Stranger' and the song I think titled, 'Only the Good Die Young' and the thought behind it was a guy convincing a girl she should have sex with him.I don't remember what time I left, maybe about 2AM. I do remember it was a cold night and I turned the heat and the radio on. I headed for West Nyack from New City. As is still my habit to this day, I took the back roads because I hate traffic. I don't remember how I ended up on Germonds Rd. I do remember I thought it would be fun to see how fast I could go on that road. Yeah, how many smart decisions can you make in a row and still not die. It was a long straight road and I kept going faster and faster. I don't remember how fast I got going,but I remember coming up to Bardonia road and at that time there was a stop sign on Germonds at Bardonia Rd.,so I put my foot on the brake and that was when the world started to spin. I had no idea what was going on until I think I picked my head off the steering wheel and the motor in the car was racing. I saw the front of the car had been wrapped around a tree that bordered a pond a few feet off the road. I turned the car off and got out and started to run. I don't know where I was going except maybe home. I didn't get very far when a Police car came up on me, his lights flashing, he stopped and I got in. He asked me if I was OK and I was. Not a scratch on me. I was going, must of been over sixty when I hit the tree.I wrapped one of the front headlights, I don't remember which one around the tree and not a mark on me. God was looking after me. Why I still don't know. Maybe it was to adopt two Russian girls, it's the only reason I can think of.
The Officer bought me home, my parents were upset, I was crying and saying how sorry I was. The Car was totaled. Like usual the response from my parents was minimal. I had wrecked my mother's car. The one She had purchased with the lottery money we'd won in 1975.I still drove the Van to deliver milk the next day. It now seems so much wronger than it did back then. I guess that is why I don't like Adult children dating my daughters and why I want them both to grow up and be responsible adult so they don't become like I was.
Almost final story. The Theme is the same. Drinking and being stupid. How many people would buy something that was advertised as something you drink, makes you throw up and gives you headaches? Any way, I went to a party thrown by a friend named Louie. This is the same Louie who's cousin I would date, and yes he had quite a few parties. I don't remember much about this one. I came in had a beer, maybe a second and then I went with someone to go out and buy something that was needed for the party. I started feeling a little sick in the car and a little vomit escaped my mouth.We got out of the car and I let it rip in front of his house near the curb. For some reason I thought I had thrown up on myself and refused to go inside. I tried to look down at my pants, but I couldn't see them. Everything was dark and unfocused. It was a confusing night. I didn't remember drinking a whole lot of beer. I stood out there for a while and I remember Louie's father coming out asking if I was OK and I kept saying,"I'm OK, I'm OK..."The next day I was asked why I told him there was alcohol at the party, when there was only supposed to be beer. I never remembered saying that or him even asking that. Weird party.
There are other stupid things I did around this time, but it would become boring hearing the same story underlining each tail. I guess one more story about drinking is OK. This is more of a group thing. No Car accidents, only stupid people who drank.
There was a time in the past going to a Yankee game was affordable and it could be done often. Rob, Mike and I would go sometimes after thinking it would be fun at five PM, when the game started at eight. Back then games started at eight and were occasionally on channel 11. 11 had a News program that ended at eight, they were proud of and when the Yankees changed the starting time to 7.30 there was talk of them skipping the first half hour of the game. There was almost a riot.
Drinking, being young and going to the Yankee game on a moments notice was a big part of my life in the late 70's. You could drink,vote and drive at eighteen. We were set. We'd go down to the game, I don't know if anyone knew we were going. We'd stop in at Ken Lemms deli at the corner of West Nyack Road and Western Highway to get Roast Beef Heros with mayo, salt and pepper. When Louie would come he'd get cheese on his hero and everyone made fun of him for the sacrilege of putting cheese on roast beef. We'd eat as we headed down the Thruway over the bridge toward the Stadium. Tickets back then were not very much. I went to the last game at the original stadium (more about that later) and the tickets were only four dollars. Remember back then, 1972, a nickel candy bar was only fifteen cents, compared to 2017, if you can find a full size candy bar it is like two-dollars.
We'd get to the Stadium, park for I don't know, maybe ten bucks, tickets were somewhere around the same, I think. And the price of beer inside the ballpark was an outrageous, buck-seventy-five each. And it was Rheingold or some swill that didn't taste good until you'd had a few. We'd drink, be outrageous, sing the national anthem, out-loud. Rob always did a great Robert Merrill impression when he sang the National Anthem. Look Robert Merrill up, he was a great opera singer and a big Yankee fan. With the game starting at eight, it would never end until after eleven. By the time you got out of the parking garages it was eleven-thirty. You were home after midnight. While waiting for the cars to leave so We could we'd play parking garage hockey. Someone would be the goalie, Mike and the other two or three the attacking side. A narrow wall was the goal. Mike would go sprawling on the ground trying to save the puck, a crushed beer can from crossing the goal line. The games were short, as soon as the cars were moving, so did we. Yes the game also gave us time to sober up some and I never drove so We were pretty sure to get home. Mike was usually the driver.
I smoked Pot when I was a kid, never a lot. I enjoyed it, but for some reason I didn't smoke it a lot. The first time I smoked it a friend got some from his friends in school. The three of us, Mike, Rob and I got into Mike's lime green Dynamic 88 1964 Oldsmobile. We went driving around to try it. We figured it was the safest way to do it. Ironically We were driving around where I live now in Congers. We were passing the joint around each taking an inhale waiting for something to happen. I remember Mike saying if you had to ask, you weren't high. We pulled out of a side street going toward the railroad tracks over near the store fronts, just east of South Harrison Ave when two police cars come up the road, down the hill behind us with their lights flashing and the only thing I can think of is I'm gonna get busted my first time smoking and I didn't even feel high yet. I crushed the stub of the joint out between my fingers as Mike pulled off to the side of the road, as the two police cars wiz by. It was like sex for the first time. The anticipation didn't match the experience, and the after panic, well...
Back in the late 70's Mike was dating a girl who was babysitting one night and he got the great idea to visit her and I tagged along. She made us be very quiet because the kid was upstairs asleep and we were not supposed to be there. I forgot who had the pot, but we're sitting at the kitchen table passing round the joint and I start to laugh. Sometimes pot does this to people.I'm trying to be quiet, but the more I try to be quiet, the more I have to laugh. It gets to the point that I quit smoking. I don't know if the laughing became contagious or not. Mike and I left soon afterwards and I'm sure the parents smelled something weird in their home that night after they came home.The smell of Pot doesn't disappear that quickly. We were kids and didn't think of consequences. It's like smoking cigarettes, when your young the thought of dying of lung cancer is a distant thing, until you get to that distant age quicker than you will believe and you're facing a Doctor who is telling you you have lung cancer and six months to live.
I think the dumbest thing I ever did was smoke pot just before I went to work at Finast Supermarket, or maybe it had become Shoprite by then. It lead indirectly to me getting fired from the store.
One Night I was transferred to the HB (health and Beauty) section of the store. I was told to stock the shelves and block down the aisle. I must of done a good job, because the next day the district manager comes in and comments how good the section looks. I get transferred over to that department and the day, I decide, for some God unknown reason to smoke a joint in the van before I start work. The effects of the pot snuck up on me and I'm just wandering around the store not working, knowing how high I am and that I can't seem to work this high. My Night ends and I head home. The next Day I come in and my new Boss is not at all pleased that I didn't do the work that was asked of me. I am transferred back to Grocery and a few months later I have a hissy fit about working alone and my boss who was a man-child, reacts as one and eventually fires me over a misunderstanding. The whole Story I blogged about in,' What do I want to be when I'm grown up.'
I never tried anything stronger than pot. I had a friend named Fred, who grew up in the 60's and tried other drugs and I get the impression LSD was a drug that was mind expanding, like the they talked about in the 60's. I also think a bad trip on LSD must be terrifying.
My ex-brother in law said he, by mistake tried Angel dust. He was handed a joint and the offerer said to take one hit only because it was strong and it was.
My Sex Life
It isn't anything much different then a 1980's John Hughes film. It is not really that impressive, it's more sad. It's the life of a kid who happened to stumble across the type of women that would end up breaking his heart several times over. Just writing that makes me feel sad.
The first relationship I had was over the summer of my senior year. Her name was Maggie. She was from Haiti and beautiful. I don't have any pictures of her. The relationship started just after school ended when I was told a girl had called and left her number. I was very shy and unsure where to go with this, I'm sure all of the people reading this are just shaking their heads, but I was so shy and I blushed so easy and any attention directed my way was unwanted. I just wanted to be left alone. Don't get me wrong, I was dying to have a girlfriend. I'd made several attempts to go on dates. I'd asked this one girl out at least a dozen times and she always had an excuse and she was always so sweet about saying no, that I didn't understand she wasn't interested.
Maggie was. My Dad, in a gruff bark at me, anyone who knows my temper has heard it, said, "call her." I did.
Maggie was the perfect girl to be a first girlfriend. She was sweet, smiled often and made me feel better about myself. That last one would lead me down several dark paths until I got into Therapy with Barbara. I called her and we set up a time to get together.I think our first date was to the Drive In to see 'Star Trek The Movie". There was a lot of snuggling and hand holding, nothing else. I thought it was great. I was in love. I remember driving her to her sisters place on a dark side street, in all places, Congers. It is the street just after St Paul's Church at the corner of Congers Rd,It's funny how all roads seem to keep leading me back to Congers. I pulled up in front of her sister's house. We talked for a while. I was driving my mother's car (again, still?) when she asked me to wet her lips. I felt that to the pit of my stomach, I can still feel it now. I'd never kissed a girl before! I quickly made the decision to tell her I'd never kissed a girl. When I did, I swear, I remember a bit of delight on her face. I guess it is not often you get to break that cherry. That Night she taught me how to kiss and I hope all girls and women since then have been grateful for that. If I remember her directions correctly she said, and I won't get too gross here, to suck on her mouth and try to catch her tongue with mine. It was the most amazing and simple game I'd ever been taught and it became my favorite too. We stayed there for I don't know how long, but eventually it had to end and she got out of the car and went inside the house. I don't remember many dates. I remember hanging out with her alot. I'd finish my milk deliveries and head over to her house. We'd watch soap operas she was into and sometimes we'd go over to my Uncle's pool and swim. Afterwards We lie out in the sun and I would scratch her back. I wasn't allowed to go anywhere the bathing suit covered. Whenever I did, I'd get an Ah,ah, aaa, Joe, don't go there. In that sing song voice and Haitian accent, what was a boy to do, so I'd listen until the next time. At the end of the day, I'd walk her home. Somehow the topic of sex would always come up. I was eighteen and in love, why not. She would always say, "no", it was always easy to take it. I once asked her to translate the words to the song, Lady Marmalade, by Patti Labelle, She started with the line, Voulez vous coucher avec moi ce soir, "will you go to bed with me?" and of course I told her, "yes" It was fun and oh so innocent. It didn't last.
Around the end of August she'd said she was going to go to RCC, Rockland Community College. I decided I would go too. I went up alone and got all my classes taken care of. For some reason she never got there.
As We got deeper into September I noticed a difference in her and I kept asking her about it and she would always say it was nothing. One afternoon the both of us were down at the trailers behind Bill Vines office. I was doing some work. And I asked her again what was wrong, she said nothing so I picked her up and put her on a couple of fifty pound 3x4ft blocks of ice we used to keep the milk cold. She agreed to tell me. In a nutshell she was getting married. I have to believe it was an arranged marriage and she knew nothing about it. I was devastated. And of course Her affection toward me was turned off immediately. We hung out for a few days then she disappeared off to Brooklyn. Every so often, not understanding the situation, I'd stop by her parents house and ask if they'd heard anything from her. They'd always say no.
In the Spring, I think I received a phone call from her inviting me to her apartment in Brooklyn, during the day. Remember I'm a gentlemen.I don't mean that as in a stuffy English sort of way. I went to visit her. It was the first time I'd ever been to the city on my own, much less Brooklyn. Remember this was the late 70's and Brooklyn had its share of burned out neighborhoods, and it wasn't' the yuppie haven it is fast becoming now (2017) I drove to Brooklyn, I wish I remember where she lived. It was a nice neighborhood. I was such a babe in the woods that I came up to a light and a car was ahead of me. I pulled up behind him and waited for the light to change. It changed and the car didn't move. I waited and the light turned red again. When it turned green again and the car didn't move I got angry and that was when I noticed the car was empty and double parked. I put my car into reverse and backed up as I came around the side of the car, I accidentally side swiped the car. I was so scared that I kept going and never looked back.
I got to Maggie's apartment around noon or so I think. I rang the buzzer, like she said and I waited, When the door buzzed, I noticed it buzzed. (Remember, Babe in the woods.) Finally She came down and opened the door and let me in. She asked if the door buzzed and I said yes, She asked why I didn't come in and I told her I didn't know I was supposed to. This is all leading up to the afternoon to come. We went up to her second floor apartment and we sat down and started to talk. Somehow not of my doing the conversation turned to sex and she told me about her wedding night and all the things that had gone on and some trouble she was having. I don't remember the exact stories. All I remember is I was trying to help her solve the problems. After a few hours of talking it was time to leave. I hugged her and I think kissed her. When I got down to the bottom of the stairs, I heard her say to me, :You don't know what you missed today." I smiled and waved at her not sure of what she said and left. Through all the intervening years the question remains, did I miss out on what I think I did? and is it legal to take two cherries?
I never saw her again and I left her family alone. A few years later her family moved off of West Street. I heard she was working at Bar Labs, in the 90's, where my cousin Harriet was working. I told Harriett to tell her I said hello. Harriet I think liked my wife way too much to do that.
It was late 1978, I had tried to get dates during the two plus previous years, but I was never good at it and I must have seemed a little desperate. Parties at Louie's house had started to become a regular thing, one of the enjoyable things about turning eighteen. Notice I didn't say an Adult. That would wait for another ten years or so when my Dad died.
Louie invited Mike, Rob and I to his New Years eve party. He'd said to come about eight and Mike and I arrived in his car about then. There was Beer and I was happy and opened one. I wandered around and talked to some of the people I knew. I don't remember when I noticed the dark haired beauty talking with Louie's sister Maria. I do remember when midnight came around I kissed some girls and as I turned she was right there. I could get to kiss her and I could use the excuse it was New Years. I think I smiled, I know she did. I got a quick kiss from her and a short hug. She was like a line out of that Bob Seger song, 'Night Moves', 'She was a black haired beauty with big brown eyes, points all her own, sitting way up high'. Afterwards, I don't remember when I went over to talk to her, or when I asked her name. It was Michele, with one 'l'. It would be the way I would spell it for the rest of my life. Eventually I asked her if she'd like to go out for a walk. If I was going to ask her out, I didn't want anyone to be around when she said no, If, she said no. We walked outside. Louie's house was in the end of a cul-de-sac and we walked toward the main road. From there We turned around and started back toward the house. On the homeward leg I got the courage up to ask her out and to my surprise she said yes. Now what do I do. I have a date for a movie next Saturday, what now. I hung around her the rest of the night and I made sure not to lose her phone number. She and I had agreed to go see the new Superman movie with Christopher Reeves. Later I found out that she had told her brother Mark, before I asked her out she had no interest in the movie.
The next Saturday came. I drove my mother's car, again. I would eventually get my first car that summer, a new 1979 CJ5 Jeep, in dark blue, with a hardtop and a second hand soft top I was given.
The drive to her house is etched in my mind. I would take that drive many time over the next few years and have some of the most exciting and enjoyable times of my life and some of the worst. In the end it would set me on the course that I am on now almost forty years later. The directions to her house were simple.
Take Middletown road to West Clarkstown Rd. Take the turn after the gas station on West Clarkstown Rd. Follow West Burda Pl. to Gerardine Pl. The House was just off the corner. I turned onto West Burda, the right side of the road was the parkway and the road seemed to be very dark. I thought to myself for just an instant that I could turn around and leave, just as quickly it was gone. This was a shy person's moment to break through. To not let his fears be in control. I started to grow up a little that night. I don't remember who answered the door. Everyone was very friendly and very nice to me. I think I did relax that night and I think I got a kiss from her and I think we said let's do it again or words to that effect, because either later that week or the next weekend she invited me over to her house, her cousins were coming over. I knew Louie and I knew Maria a little bit, so it was an evening I thought I could survive. There was really no real possibility I wouldn't go. I had a girlfriend and she made me feel great. Someone wanted to spend time with me who wasn't related to me, A GIRL!
The drive over to her house the second time is not as seared into my memory as the first trip. Like who remembers the second person to fly across the Atlantic?
Well I just looked it up and it turns out everyone knows the second person to cross the Atlantic, but she is better known as Amelia Earhart.
When I got to the house, it was a jumble of noise. I was welcomed in and introduced to everybody, who in the following few years would become important people to me. I went into the kitchen and sat around the table with all the other kid and watched, not talking to much, being very shy, but watching this group of people who had a lifetime of shared history recall stories. I remember Michele reeling with laughter, trying to add something to a story before someone else remembered it and could recover from their laughter. I was dazed after my night there, but I think I wanted to stay around these people even more now.
The relationship went well in the beginning as most do. I invited her to my brother's wedding as my plus one. And I took one of the best pictures of her that day I ever took. The only problem was it was slightly out of focus. It is a close up of her smiling face outside the reception hall.
The last I heard about Michele, she is living in Philadelphia. She has not become the lawyer she'd wanted to be, but is working in an office or something like that. It is always strange asking a friend about his cousin and I'm sure he wants to ensure her privacy. I do hope she is happy.
I was alone for a while after that. My Therapist told me once it was like she'd died for me. But she was still alive and I still couldn't be with her.
Sometime in or around 1985, still living at my Mom and Dad's house I go out to get the mail and there is this cute women delivering the mail. Jeannie was a slim, athletic person with long blonde/ brown hair. I think I struck up a conversation with her and somehow asked her out and she said yes. I don't remember where we went, but the relationship didn't last a year. She was another troubled person. She had a child, a boy about eight who didn't like to share his mother's attention. And She, it turns out was desperate to marry someone and have a family. From the start, in retrospect, she was looking to have the family she never had growing up. Looking back, She was desperate to have that family and willing to do almost anything to get it.
As I'd said earlier, I was still living at my parents house. Yes, I was a little old to be there, but I justified it by saying I was still not making enough money and I was also going to College part time still. One Night She wanted me to stay over, but not call home to let my parents know where I was. Her reasoning was I was an Adult. My Reason was it was respect for them that I needed to call home. I did call home.
One of the high points of the relationship, it wasn't all bad were going to a Chicago Concert in 1985. I don't remember where it was held, probable at the RCC field house, I really enjoyed it.
Some of the problems in the relationship were, when We went out to eat she didn't want to go any where to eat where we could make it at home. She would not go to a steak place, but would rather go to a Thai Restaurant. At that Thai Restaurant I had squid for the first time. It was like chewing on a rubber hose and I didn't like it. I didn't even know if the food was good food or not I was so inexperienced with other types of food. You have to remember this was also before I became a little more open to trying different types of food.
I'm not sure how this next set of events went down. Jeannie one day, out of the blue tells me she messed up on her birth control pills and might be pregnant. Our Relationship was not going well. It had started in the fall and in late winter I don't think I was very happy being with her. We were at the pool at RCC watching her son take swimming lessons. Talk went back and forth and I remember her saying, "You want the baby, but you don't want me." I think I'd just ended out relationship and I wasn't even trying to. I think We stayed together for a little while longer. She wasn't pregnant and with full knowledge of her having messed up on her birth control pills She tried to seduce me to have sex with her. (With a smile while I write this) She only half succeeded. Do You know how hard it is to stop in the middle of....well I won't bore or gross you out with any more talk about it.
The Relationship officially end in the Spring. I'd never ended a relationship before and I didn't know how. So I took the cowards way out and left her a note with her Apartment key in her car. All these years later I still feel bad about doing that to her. I didn't think about how she would feel being dumped that way and I wish I could take it back and be a man about it and tell her to her face. Needless to say anything of mine in her apartment I never saw again. It was 1986.
I spent the next few years alone. I was getting deeper into therapy and every relationship I'd ever had up to this point felt like it had hallowed me out a little after they were over. I was just skin thick and I couldn't dealt with another bad relationship.
In two Years, my Dad would get sick and die in February 1989. I would ask Women out and they would say no. I think during this period of my life I was asking out women who I subconsciously knew would say no because I was so hollowed out at this point.
I opened up my Video Store by fall of 1986. So I was working the milk business, then going to the Video Store at night to work there. I kept myself busy. There were Women who wanted to go out with me too. One Women named Kathy, a real nice person, she was a member at the Video store. She would come by and we'd talk. I think We sort of went out to a bar together. It never came to anything. I was in my 'I'd never want to be a member of any club that'd have me as a member' faze. An other women who was interested in me, I forget her name. I remember she also was very nice, but she was short and I remember telling Barbara, my Therapist, she reminded me of a little man. Both of these Women were real nice and if it had been a different time in my life I might have dated them.
I did have a one night stand sometime about now. It was before my Dad died and I'd moved out. I was sitting in a Bar across the street from Sun Video and a little east when a friend who worked in the Deli comes in. Her name is Geneva. She was a nice person and had moved here with her son several months ago. We talk and I'm telling her about a wonderful dinner I made for myself. She says she'd like to have some. I tell her there is left overs and innocently invite her to have some. Yes, it was innocent, I'd never thought of her in that way for some reason. I was twenty-seven and she was thirty-two, maybe that was the reason. We go to the house and I guess I might of surprised her when I walk in and introduce her to my father. We go to my room. My Room, at that time consisted of the southern side of the sun porch, my bedroom and the old master bedroom, my sitting room. It was nice. I had a large heavy curtain dividing the bed from the rest of the room. We start with me making her some food and then We are playing with the video camera. After a while she makes her move and I'm sure you know where I'm going with this. I was only a little experienced and well out of practice and still too much in my head phase of my life. She kept saying we had to do this quickly. When it was over and she was not satisfied and wanted to do it again, I was more like no, you said we had to be quick and I also wasn't feeling real good about myself about then. She gets dressed and says we have to keep this quiet her husband is come home. Husband?? I didn't know!! She leaves and I go back out to the bar to process what had just happened. I don't remember feeling anything during or afterwards. Anything like enjoyment. I think I was embarrassed. I do know as the years have passed I am glad to have had a one night stand, but I am also sorry I ever did. It was exciting while playing with the video camera,wondering where this was going. Was it going where I thought?
I did keep quiet about the one night stand and later on I even got a haircut from her in her apartment with her husband present. It was a weird time.
Around this time, after Geneva, I feel in love with a girl from Florida, Lynda. Now the fact that I fell in love with her should alert you to the fact that she was not interested in me at all. She was sweet and worked at the Deli down the street from the video store. She was involved with a guy who I think had just gotten divorced and he didn't want to be involved in any relationship that might involve his feelings. Of course that just made her want him more. I did all kinds of things for her. When Her car wasn't working well I took her car over to a gas station and paid to get it fixed. I wanted to do this so bad that when the mechanic said he couldn't get to it for several days I didn't hear him. So during that time I lent her my new Grand Am. She drove it and I walked to work. 19 Klein to behind Bill Vine's office. The Mechanic did finally work on the car, but didn't complete the job. The Car worked worse then when I bought it there. Another time she was celebrating something so I went out and got her a small balloon attached to a flower or something. It's a mylar balloon and it is summer, I have the windows open and I'm going down Rt 59 to the Deli when the balloon gets sucked out the window and pops. I get to the Deli and I tell her I did have a gift for her to celebrate and I remember her not being happy I wanted to give her a gift. I think she was uncomfortable about it. I don't remember what happened to her. I think one day she was just gone, gone back to Florida, I think. I think that was 1987.
Two Years later my Dad died and I was not interested in anything much beyond my anger. It took me a while to get over my anger at my Dad leaving me. Part of the getting over my anger was me growing up. In 1989, I'd just turned 31. Several things happened between my Dad's death and my meeting Teri that made it possible for her and I to get to the point we are now twenty odd years later. Some time after my dad's death, my Accountant tells me I have to grow the milk business if I want to survive, which I did know, I guess I just needed someone to tell me that. And Me actually going out and growing the business. I was taking actions being aggressive and growing something.
After my dad's death the family went to my uncle and aunts' fortieth wedding anniversary. At the party I met up again with my Jackie. As a young kid I'd always had the hots for her. She always seemed out of my class. As she got older she ran into all sorts of problems and in 1989 or maybe it was 1990 she had three kids and was making a go of it in Maine. After the party she and I are walking to our hotel rooms when I say, "You know you've always been my favorite cousin. I didn't think more about it then that. She got the message and I think she invited me to come visit her in Maine. Sometime later, I don't remember when I went up to visit her. It was a seven hour trip from New York to Maine. I took I 95 which took me through Rhode Island adding another hour to the trip. I drove and drove and drove for what seemed forever. At last I got to the border of Maine and thought to myself that this trip wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. From the Maine border to Dover-Foxcroft it was another three plus hours of driving. I got to her place an old summer cabin on a lake that had been converted to year around living. It had two bed rooms, a living room and a kitchen. It wasn't bad.
I think we both knew why I was here and I do remember Jackie telling me that she had talked it over with a friend of hers and if she lost her nerve she was going to fix me up with a friend of hers. She didn't lose her nerve. Several time that day and for the time I was there she didn't lose her nerve. I look back on the relationship and I see two damaged people trying to find some comfort with another person who also needed comfort. I went up to Maine several times. One I even went to Maine on a Friday or maybe a Saturday morning got there just long enough to drive back on a Sunday morning. The ultimate booty call? She even came to New York once and I took her and the kids out on my boat. Some time around the fall of 1992 I started to want more in a relationship. A seven hour drive to be with someone was not enough. I was better this time ending the relationship. I did it over the phone, I know it could have been done better. She said if I was going to end the relationship to just do it and she would be sad for a little while, then move on. She did come to my wedding and she stayed at my mom's house. I was in the same house. She comes into my room lays on the bed next to me and stretches out. The signs were there. I didn't act on them. Marriage is tough enough without adding a lie just before it starts.
I have talked about my meeting Teri in an other blog.
I became friends with Jim and Phyllis when I opened the Video Store. I went fishing with Jim and we'd started hanging out together. One night in 1992 We were drinking Southern Comfort, might have been straight and We were in the Video store. Out of the blue without even thinking about it I ask Phyllis if she has any friends she might fix me up with. I was drunk and it was the only way I ever would have done something like that. It was admitting to myself my choices were poor and to be willing to let someone else decide who I should date. The next Morning it was remembered as a drunken thing that I didn't want to talk about. I think deep down inside I might have hoped she would find someone for me. Nothing changed until Jim and Phyllis got married in November. I had no idea what she had planned until she asked me to dance with her during the reception. I think while we danced she pointed to Teri and might have said something about her being single. Teri is dancing with her father. The next thing I remember Phyllis has maneuvered us toward them and is asking Tony if she can switch partners. We switch after a quick introduction. Teri and I dance and talk. She doesn't know what is going on, that she is maybe being set up with me.
After a while Phyllis points out a blond to me telling me she is also single and she could arrange for us to meet. I tell her one in a night is all I can handle. I don't remember anything else about the night until near the end of the reception. It's just about last dance. I go to ask her to dance and hopefully to go out. As I head toward her table her brother in law has beaten me there and is asking her to dance. I think my chance has gone out the window. She tells him no, thank you. I go up to her before anything else can go wrong and ask her to dance. It's the last dance of the night. My last chance to ask her out. I don't remember what I said, Most likely something stupid, I don't know, all I remember is she said yes she would go out with me.
We went to see 'Home Alone 2' I think. We went to dinner at a restaurant I'd never gone to before, possibly called Pizza and Brew. It is long gone by now. It was in part of the Nanuet Mall called Nanuet Mall south. It was an Italian Restaurant. It served good food and I remember I couldn't finish it. I think we saw the movie in Pearl River. The Theatre is gone, not even the building is there any more.
One of our classic early date happened in New York City, in the Village. Now anyone who knows Teri or even talks to Teri for more than a little while knows she is Italian and very proud of it, even more proud then the fact she grew up in Nyack. So there was this off Broadway show called Tony and Tina's Wedding.
At 'Tony and Tina's Wedding', We are ushered to our seats. It's a large table with several other people, just like you're at a wedding. A Gentleman get up and announces what is going on. I remember him saying one of the course will be wedding night salad. The Lettuce will be like the bride on her wedding night and have nothing on it. And so goes our night. It's lot of fun and Teri and I talk more about the bar then the play whenever we reminisce about that night.
Teri is and always has been a very focused person. Before I met her she'd been putting money away for a deposit on a house. It got me to start thinking about the future and I put $4,000.00 into stocks. It was 1992-3 and I'm not sure if it was around the time when the dot-com bubble was about to burst and bring everything down with it. I just remember the money did little where I put it.
Teri started looking at junior two bedroom condos in and around Nyack with the thought of buying one. When I started dating her, I looked at the price of condos, around $100,000.00 and I looked at the price of houses in Nyack and saw they were in the same ballpark. For some reason, Teri listened to me and she bought 80 North Midland in Nyack. It was an old house and needed work. I felt there was more value in houses, then condos. For whatever reason she listened to me, she was now the proud owner of a house.
I began staying over at the house. I'd park around the corner of the house so if Teri's parents happened to pass by late at night they would not see my car. In the beginning it was ok. Parking on the streets overnight was not allowed, but the police left me alone. I remember getting a parking ticket and around this time I got stopped by the cops going through a light, I thought was changing, they said was red. What makes this memorial is after my father's death I'd started drinking beer in my car, not drinking and driving. I'd throwing the cans on the floor of the back seat. like a dirt bag would. When the cop stopped me and saw the cans, it didn't matter what type of person I was, I was getting a ticket. After it was all said and done, I asked myself what the hell was I thinking? I realized I was being a jerk and it was time to stop it and grow up. I cleaned up the cans. I consider that incident the day I quit morning my dad's death.I remember the day Teri decided she needed to know where this relationship was heading. We met in November of 1992. We went to Cancun Mexico in February of 1993. She purchases a house in the summer of 1994.
June of that year on a hot and humid summer day Teri makes me what at the time was my favorite dish, Chicken Parm. IT WAS A HOT AND HUMID SUMMER DAY!! I sit down to eat not seeing anything coming. We are talking about what I don't remember. I don't even remember how the subject came up. Teri, I think, asks where is this relationship heading? I tell her the truth, "I don't know, I haven't thought about it" I don't think the expression, 'shit or get off the pot' was uttered, but it has become associated with the day. Teri never came out and said we need to get married or we need to break up. Later she said, after I'd asked her to marry me that that evening's chick parm was her 'shit or get off the pot' ultimatum. I never saw it that way.
A while... a little while, like maybe a week or so later Teri tells me that her mother saw my car and asked her if I was staying over at night? I don't know where the conversation went after that. The next memory I have is I have her in my arms and I am telling her that her mother wouldn't mind me staying over if we were going to get married.
A Wedding date then had to be decided on. Teri asks me when I would like to get married. Me being my father's son come up with all these ridiculous days. Armistice Day, second Tuesday of next week, so on and so forth. Then I say April fools day. Teri says that if it is on a Saturday, then that's the day we will get married.
And so we did on April 1st of 1995.
About a week before we were to be married we started to try to have a family. We figured we were not kids. I was 37, she was 36. We tried and nothing happened. Like all things Teri does she threw herself full into this so that we were trying every night for a while. Have you ever gotten tired of it? After a while I did and it was the only time ever.
Sometime in the late 90's Teri asks if we could look into adoption. There was this group of people who adopted chinese orphans at St. Anthony's in Nanuet. We went up the group was nice and friendly. We thought that was where we were headed. Teri starts the paperwork and somewhere in the paperwork it says that the children need to have their own room. We live in Nyack, in a one maybe two bedroom house. We look into putting an addition on the house. The addition will run at a minimum $175,000.00. Our purchase price of $100,000.00 would put the price of the house at $275,000.00. None of the house in the area were near that price point. I thought it was too much to put into a house.
Teri decides we need to move. It's sometime around 2000-2001. Adoption seems to have been forgotten. I reconcile myself to be Uncle Joe for the rest of my life. In 2003 We move into an old farm house in Congers. It's old, needs work, but has a lot of promise. And hey we have the money. We both have good jobs and our bank account is reasonable flush.
I have an other blog that details the history of Teri and I adopting the girls. It goes into great detail about as many things as I could think about to write. As of July 4, 2019 it has been going on over ten years. And I see no end in site. Originally it was supposed to only the time we were in Russia. Then I was going to print it out and make a book of it. A memento of our epic adventure. Then something happened. Life continued to happen. We, the four of us had adventures together, we went places, saw things. The Girls changed in amazing ways and became something so different and wonderful. I never could have imagined. And the adventure continues on that blog. This entry I think is finished.
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