I'm almost sixty and I haven't gotten used to burying friends and I felt I need to write about it.
My best friend, Mike buried his older brother, Steve this past weekend. I honestly don't know how he has done it. Two of his brothers have died and neither were that old. Are drugs doing this? A lot of Rock and Roll Artists have died young too. Ronnie, Mike's second oldest brother was in his fifties when he died,now Steve.
Steve was a smoker, had been all his life. He started some where around the age of twelve, maybe a little older, I was there near the start. We used to go smoking in the swamp behind my house to a place we called Davy Jones' locker. It was a locker like in high school. It had been thrown there, a clearing had been trampled around it to form a semi secluded place to hang out with your friends. You would talk to friends about things, do things that were best done out of the eyes of Adults. We pretended the Adults didn't know about the places we hung out. For all I know they were there first. Mikes and my father were both West Nyack boys. My Dad was born in a camp house in Nanuet up near where Rt 304 would be built. Mike's Dad, if he wasn't born here came when he was young.
I maybe getting stories and details mixed, which gives me the opportunity to embellish some if I want, but I won't. How I remember it starting was Mike and I got it into our heads to smoke some cigarettes. Why not our parents did and if they did it it must be OK. We went up to the local luncheonette at the corner of Klein Ave and West Nyack Rd. It was the sixties and there were hippies and cigarette vending machines. My Dad smoked Kools and Mike's Dad smoked Lucky Strikes. Both sounded so cool that you just had to try them. We walk through the door of the Luncheonette to the cigarette machine. Looking at the selection. I think at that point one of us says ah,my Dad smokes Kools, or Lucky Strikes, oh wait no he smokes Marlboro's, Then the other says Kools or something like that. If You had been watching it most likely it would of been the funniest,dumbest, not subtle, not cool moment of anyone's life. The fact that two kids could walk into a place and buy cigarettes from a vending machine without anyone thinking it odd or maybe telling them they couldn't buy cigarettes, because they were too young, didn't happen ever then. Before We left, we each snagged a couple packages of matches, also left so they could be conveniently taken without bothering the store owner. We walked out of Don Len's Luncheonette with our booty,thinking this was going to be fun. We headed toward Davy Jones' locker, cutting between my Aunt's house and her neighbors. Out through their gate,make sure you close it if you go through it and into the back field. The last open space before the Swamp. The place were civilization ended and our world began or so we thought. We ducked past where my cousin, Billy had parked his junk car, past trees covered in vines, some as thick two inches. On other days We be imagining swinging like Tarzan from them, but not today. Today We were doing something more adult, smoking. Behind Billy's 1939 car was a small clearing and the start of a path between two bushes. We sat down on Davy Jones' locker.It was Spring and it was still cold. We both tore open the top of the packs the way we'd seen our father's do it. Open it up just enough to create that little square in the top and then tap out your first cigarette like we'd seen adults do a thousand times. Strike a match, the smell of the burning match oh so associated with cigarettes. You had to hold your cigarette between your first two fingers or have it perched gently between your two lips as bought the match up to the end. A quick in hale, the end of the cigarette glows and the mostly ignored cough of your first deep inhale as your body tries to tell you that this is poison as you tell yourself how cool is this. We had a cigarette or to that day. We'd come back on other days and smoke. Some days I'd comeback on my own and smoke, but that wasn't fun.
One Day my Mother calls me from out the back door,saying I have a doctors appointment today. No one had ever said anything about it,but I went home to get ready. While I was gone Steve and Tommy Martin somehow got involved or maybe I've forgotten their involvement earlier then this day. I'm at the Doctors office being told I have the heart of an old man, while Mikes mother storms Davy Jones' Locker. It was told to me several times over the years how it happened. Steve and Tommy Martin were there smoking with Mike.Tommy Martin was showing of his option (think about it, option, He got it and she doesn't.) when Mrs Marsico catches everyone there red handed. Mike tells me at that point Steve says,"Well guy, crime doesn't pay" In the movie remake of this incident I can just imagine a James Cagney look a like playing Steve delivering that line. Me, I felt going to the Doctor was way better then getting caught like they did. What my mom and Doctor Rosen cooked up mostly went over my head. I didn't know that I stunk of cigarette smoke and the Doctor was a set up. I felt I'd been lucky and got away with it.
I never did smoke cigarettes after that. I did smoke some pot, I guess it's called grass, no weed now. I found that out when I tried to sell an energy drink that had THC in it like pot, grass, weed, whatever.
All of my friends smoked as they grew up. Rob and Louie stopped sometime before the 1990's. Until this day Mike uses nicorette gum to avoid smoking. He's been on it for ten years.
In the last few years of his life Steve smoked. He worked in construction doing seasonal work on big construction jobs and getting paid well. He was rail thin one of the last times I saw him. I was walking down Lake Road toward Route 9 W with my daughters. He was outside his house on Lake Road smoking a cigarette and sitting on a step near the road. I stopped and we talked about nothing important. I introduced my Daughters and after a while went on. A few years later just before he was going to lose his house he decides to move to Florida. He'd been unemployed for a while and had not been able to pay his mortgage. So his wife, Carol buys a home in Florida and they walk away from this one. A few months later Mike says his brother has throat cancer and they need to remove his voice box. After it is done Steve doesn't adapt very well and he leaves a message on mike's phone he can't life like this. By the time Mike gets it and calls the police, it is too late. Steve is gone. It was a sad way to end.
x
No comments:
Post a Comment