ANTHONY'S ARCHIVES March - December 2008
- December 25, 2008 - Cantique de Noel 1966
Part One O Holy Night
And it came to pass in the year 1966, when his Honor, John V. Lindsay was mayor of the City of New York that Anthony, first-born son of Josephine and Tony, went down to the Port Authority Bus Terminal on December 23rd and journeyed up to the town of Newburgh. ****** It was my first Christmas Eve home after being a freshman at Cathedral College - the Archdiocese of New York’s minor seminary in Manhattan. Over Thanksgiving break I had decorated the front door of our house with strings of big GE colored bulbs, the ones with little ridges on them that gave a depth of glow and color. Every room of our home was elaborately decorated by my Mother. In the parlor, much to my disappointment, we had an artificial Christmas tree; my mother’s two year old baby sister had caught on fire and died of severe burns back in Brooklyn in the 1920’s. So I sprayed the fake tree with our bathroom Glade pine deodorizer to give it a wintry scent but it came out smelling like the public toilets at the gas station. Fragile glass ornaments that we had collected over the years were all hung with care. I invariably would always drop one as it cascaded down the branches of the tree and shattered on the hard wood floor. My mother would throw a fit as she would angrily toss the aluminum tinsel on the tree in big metallic clumps. I removed them all and delicately laid them back on, strand by strand in artistic patterns. On top of the TV set was a cardboard manger we had bought at Woolworths. I stuck a blue bulb in the little opening in the back of it to light up the Holy Family made out of some mysterious, hard chalk material. I covered the Baby Jesus with a paper towel till Christmas Eve. I arranged all the other figures in a dramatic tableaux that I copied from the Radio City Christmas Nativity Scene but somehow a little Frosty the Snowman made his way to the scene. I kept the Magi on a nearby end table and I would move them closer and closer till finally on January 6th they would majestically arrive. Fake garland wound its way down the staircase banister along with Christmas Cards scotch taped up all over the wall. In the bathroom, a woolen hand-knit Santa Hat cozy disguised the toilet paper roll precariously balanced on the top of the tank. The kitchen was filled with half-melted waxen elves, angels and choir boy figurines accented by holly & ivy handmade potholders. The dining room table was covered with a 1940's style white damask tablecloth printed with brilliant red poinsettias with a big crystal bowl of fruit and nuts set in the center. Mr. R. H. Macy would have been proud. Preparations for our traditional Italian Christmas Eve dinner of “Seven Fishes” started in the afternoon. In Biblical numerology, seven is a number of perfection – my mother prepared only three. I had to open a dozen clams using a screwdriver and hammer. I never got the hang of shucking. I smashed the hard shells open which splintered into tiny fragments softy landing into the clam milk along with some drops of blood from my banged thumb. It took me a long time to strain the shards out. My other job was to clean the shrimp. I spread newspapers over the kitchen table and pulled off the outer cartilage and violently tugged off its legs. I then used a small paring knife to devein the shrimp removing the ugly black line of detritus that ran the length of their bodies. Ugh! I helped bread the flounder, dipping it first into egg batter then flour, back into the egg for a final coating of Progresso Brand prepared seasoned bread crumbs. I cut lemons wedges and slowly wiped the briny smell off of my hands as my mother assembled all the dishes. The celebration started at 5pm as soon as it was dark as I dramatically snapped on the outdoor lights, plugged in the blue light, revealing the Baby Jesus still swaddled in a paper towel and put on my Boston Pops LP playing the Christmas Festival Overture by Leroy Anderson. Crowley’s artificial eggnog that tasted like radioactive Elmer’s Glue was served spiked with some rum as we watched the evening news on TV. Dinner was served later than usual, at 7pm – spaghetti with white clam sauce (my brother Michael spit out a piece of an errant clam shell) Shrimp Creole (my mother best recipe written down on a yellowing piece of fools cap) , fried flounder with Hellman’s Tartar Sauce and all accompanied by mashed potatoes, baby peas and broccoli. I hurriedly cleaned up so I could watch Menotti’s’ opera, “Amahl and Night Visitors” on NBC as my mother grumbled “What is this shit?” - thank god it lasted only an hour. With great difficulty, we put my brother and sister to sleep and I set out a plate of Stella Doro cookies for Santa to enjoy when he delivered their presents. At 10:30 my mother and I drove to Midnight Mass at our Italian parish of Sacred Heart Church. We would have to get there by 11pm to get a good seat. The church was in semi-darkness as the choir serenaded us acappella with Italian Christmas carols. At midnight, the main doors of the church opened and a solemn procession started down the center aisle. First came three altar boys attired in special red cassocks and starched white lace surplices – the tallest carrying a large gold crucifix flanked by the other two carrying candles. Another altar boy swinging a thurible, sanctified the way for the entrance of our pastor as celebrant. He was followed by our two assistant priests of the parish, acting as deacon and sub deacon for the High Holy Mass. They wore ornate stiff Sicilian chasubles embroidered with silver and gold threading, waddling down the aisle like the playing card characters in Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland Finally came the youngest, most angelic altar boy carrying the statue of the Baby Jesus on a satin white pillow.
The procession stopped in front of the “Mary” side altar where a nativity scene lay in darkness. It was all very hushed with only the swishing sound of the chain clanging against the censer. The monsignor took the Baby Jesus off the pillow and placed him between Mary and Joseph and nasally intoned: “GLORIA IN EXCELIS DEO…” The organ, king of instruments, bellowed and the choir lustily continued the Greater Doxology – “…ET IN TERRA PAX HOMINIBUS BONAE VOLANTATIS!” And suddenly all of the church lights shone on revealing an elaborate Neapolitan crèche with hundreds of figures, complete with working waterfall and a river running through Bethlehem. The steeple bell pealed wildly and an altar boy almost broke his wrist clamorously ringing the brass hand communion bell as the entourage made its way to the high altar to continue the service. Msgr. Cantatore gave the usual holiday sermon in broken English but made it perfectly clear that he was expecting big bucks in the collection basket when it went around. The ushers walked down the aisles in military precision extending their sliding extension pole baskets to make sure to reach the center of each pew. Those who had money made a great show of tossing in 10 or 20 dollar bills so everyone could see. The rest of us with a closed fist furtively placed our one dollar bills in or made sure our coins silently fell to the bottom of the green velvet line basket. At communion time, my mother and I waited with anxious hidden glee for the soprano, Concetta Coniglio to sing her big solo, Cantique de Noel - Oh Holy Night. We daren’t look back up over our shoulders to the choir loft to see this self proclaimed bovine “diva, dressed in a peacock blue satin pouf gown imagining she was the great Italian opera star, Renata Telbaldi. Every year she would sing O Holy Night, half in broken English and half in bad French. We would unsuccessfully try not to laugh as she struggled to hit the big high C at the end of the carol. The sensation was akin to the squeal of the approaching Lexington Avenue subway train as it rounded the tight corner at the Union Square Station at 14th Street.
O Holy Night! The stars are brightly shining; O night divine, the night when Christ was born;
The organ started the musical introduction as I got on the long line for Holy Communion behind Mrs. Politti who was wearing a bright red fox stole with bristly hairs electrically charged from the cold. As I got nearer the altar rail, so did Concetta closing in on “Fall on your Knees” - the front car of the Cyclone roller coaster inching up to the perilous top before the loud cry of all the riders as they descended the steep incline. I piously knelt down at the altar rail trying not to listen to Concetta sliding up closer to a bel canto precipice. Father Lombardo solemnly placed the wafer on my tongue but it sort of stuck to the roof of my mouth. I started back to my seat all the while trying to manipulate the wafer off when "Renata" rang out that top sour note - “Oh Night Divine!” I was trying to stifle a guffaw when the wafer spit out of my mouth out and landed splat on the back of Mrs. Politti’s fox stole sticking to the red fur. With a quick lizard like flick , I sacrilegiously snapped it off the stole and put the host back in my mouth, now tasting of musk and the Baby Jesus. Back in the pew, I knelt down and didn’t look up again till the end of mass. The choir concluded with the famous Italian carol, “Tu scendi dalle stelle” with Concetta Telbaldi infamously singing the Descant. The recessional was Charles Widor’s organ Toccata played with orgiastic bravura that always sent chills down my spine.
Part 2 “Fall on Your Knees” The Mass was over and on the steps of the church everybody was joyously wishing each other “Buon Natale” or Merry Christmas. It was then, like a star in the East shining down on the Christ Child I spotted Marc Burnett. I hadn’t seen Marc since we performed in our parish Passion Play the previous Easter where he played Jesus and I played Judas and we played each other, so to speak. I went over and gave Marc a seasonal warm hug and said hello to his Mom, Mrs. Burnett. She was leaving to go to her mother’s house to spend the evening and Marc quickly asked if I wanted to come over to his place for some hot chocolate. I gingerly asked my mother if I could go to Marc’s house for awhile. He would drive me home when we were done. She gave me a curiously knowing permission to go. Marc lived in a large house in Balmville, one of the more upscale neighborhoods surrounding Newburgh. The night had turned frigid as we hopped into his father’s car and turned on the radio. The sky was overcast with nary a star, so it was quite dark out as we made our way through the back roads. Pretending to change one of the stations, I slid a bit closer to Marc (this was the era before seatbelts). My thigh lightly touched his as we chatted and caught up on our freshmen college semester. Like the witches house in Hansel & Gretel, Marc’s Tudor Style home glowed with blue Christmas lights as we pulled up into the long driveway. Jumping out of the car, we ran to the front door and tumbled into the warm living room. It looked magical as a giant tree cast a rainbow of hues all across the room and our faces. Marc took me downstairs to the finished basement where he had a small electric organ installed. He was a consummate organist and played me some pieces by Handel and Bach. I sat with my eyes closed listening in fascination. I felt like Christine listening to Lon Chaney play in “The Phantom of the Opera.” However before I could “unmask” him, Marc quickly got up at the end of a Bach Passacaglia and suggested we make hot chocolate and go to his room. With steaming mugs warming our hands, we went upstairs and entered his bedroom quietly. He said he wanted to take a shower as he closed the bathroom door behind him. I turned off the lights and lay on the bed facing the bathroom door, imagining Marc getting undressed. I turned on the table radio on the night stand when I heard the sudden rush of the shower. I could also hear my heart beat as I smelled the iron rust of the hard well water that began to mix in with the pungent scent of Irish Spring Soap. The windows of the room began to mist up with fog as the room grew hotter. The shower stopped. After what I thought was an eternity, the door opened slowly and there stood Marc swaddled in an emerald green towel tied around his waist. With the bathroom light reflecting off the medicine cabinet mirror, Marc looked like the Resurrected Christ I remembered from the spring passion play. The deep green pile contrasted so well against his rosy white ivory skin set off by his fiery red hair that rose just above edge of the bath towel. On the radio, Jim Nabors was singing “O Holy Night” as Marc quietly lay down next to me. We held each other as I heard Nabors’ sing “O Night Divine” in French. Peuple à genoux, attends ta délivrance. Noël, Noël, voici le Rédempteur, Noël, Noël, voici le Rédempteur! And there was no room in the inn…
Suddenly waking up I looked at the clock radio and realized it was almost 5:30am. We ran out to the car in the cold dawn. Marc warmed up the engine as I hastily scraped the ice from the front windows. As we drove back to my house the snow began to fall and I thought of the final famous sentence from the short story ”The Dead” by Irish author, James Joyce which I had just read in my English Literature class. “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
It didn’t take long to get to my house in New Windsor since the roads were empty on this Christmas morning. Marc turned off the car lights as we turned the corner onto Cross Street. I got out without saying a word and almost slipped on the ice in the driveway. I quietly opened the front door of our house, ran upstairs and put on my flannel pajamas without waking my brother and sister. I ran back downstairs and since I was famished wolfed down all the Santa cookies I had put out. I pulled out my LP copy of “Messiah” conducted by Eugene Ormandy with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I silently opened the lid of the stereo, put on LP #3 and turned up the volume all the way. I plugged on the lights of the Christmas tree and pulled the paper towel off of the Baby Jesus in the manger and the “Halleluiah” chorus joyously filled the house.
I heard a couple of th-thumps from the upstairs bedrooms as Karen and Michael came running down. Mom in her floral nightgown came out of the downstairs bedroom, while my Dad slowly walked down the staircase from the upstairs bedroom he shared with me and my brother. My father acted as Santa as we dove into the mountain of gifts, opening them up in wild abandon with gift wrap strewn all around us – toys, perfumes, pants, coats, scarves, sweaters, shirts, and ties. My mother collected up the bows for next year. My Mom got me the original cast album of The Apple Tree which was the second Broadway Show I had seen that fall. As I was reading the liner notes, I was struggling to remove a piece of cookie stuck to my back molar. I ran over the Stereo and put on The Apple Tree and played Eve’s plaintive song to Adam as sung by Barbara Harris. I hummed along to myself: What makes me love him?
- November 24, 2008 - "Anything f' Thanksigiv'n?" Every Thanksgiving morning as a young boy in Brooklyn, I would dress up as a hobo and go begging. No, we weren’t poor… The children would dress in raggedy clothing and blacken their faces with a burnt piece of cork to resemble bums or hobos and we went from house to house yelling, "Anything f' Thanksgiv'n?" In return, and if they were lucky, they would be rewarded with coins, a piece of fruit, or a piece of candy. In the Brooklyn neighborhoods, this custom appears to go back to the 1920's and 1930's and perhaps earlier. It was often called "Ragamuffin Day" and was something akin to ‘trick or treating’ on Halloween. Starting at nine in the morning, in black face, old clothes and my father’s castaway fedora, I made my way around the block “begging” from door to door, "Anything f' Thanksgiv'n?" My brilliant strategy targeted the neighbors who gave out candy or coins and not silly, old fruit. In those days we got full sized candy bars that cost a nickel apiece not like today's small bite sized handouts. Before getting home, laden down with a big shopping bag full of “trick-or-treat” goodies, I would eat a Snicker, a Milky Way and a Three Musketeer bar so I didn’t have to listen to my mother yell at me to save room for Thanksgiving dinner. “Your eyes are bigger than your stomach” was a phrase she loved to use. After my gorging, I ran to the bathroom to flush down the candy wrappers, stripped out of my tatteralls and took a "whore’s bath" wiping the burnt charcoal and chocolate from my hands before facing my mother for a hygienic inspection.. At noon we were going Bay Ridge to visit my grandmother and the Polish side of the family for Thanksgiving dinner. I quickly put on my "Easter suit", snapped on a satin silk tie and secured it in place with a faux gold tie clip. The Napoli’s walked down our brownstone stoop all dressed up, looking like the family from “Leave it to Beaver” – my brother Michael holding my hand and my baby sister in my mother’s arms. We got into Dad’s car and took the Gowanus Expressway to the Belt Parkway to the Fort Hamilton Parkway Exit. Before they built the Verrazano Bridge there was an actual decaying dark brick Fort out in the Narrows built for an impending British attack in 1812 which never happened. Off of Fourth Avenue, a huge black cannon with very large cannon balls still stood silent watch over the harbor. A left at St. Patrick’s Church took us to grandma’s house at 345 96th Street.
Fort Hamilton
My grandmother and my uncles lived on a quiet street lined with London Plane trees. These are the kind of trees that dropped big puffy seed balls and whose bark you could peel off in sheets by hand. A wide red enamel slippery stoop led up to the front door of a two family attached dwelling. The door to the right was Mr. Russo’s, the Italian landlord who lived downstairs. Grandma did not get along with the Russo’s and they were to be avoided at all costs. I rang the door bell on the left labeled, KROTKI and my Uncle Joey came down and let us in. Even from all the way downstairs, a huge wafting miasma of roasted turkey swept over us and high up to the wintery sunlit skylight. A steep set of narrow stairs got you to the top vestibule where there was always a small aluminum trash can. A swinging door led directly ahead into the kitchen while on the right, a French door with lace curtains opened up into the dining room. Since this was a holiday, we got to use the French doors.
Grandma's House
Everyone was already there: my Aunt Laura and her Italian husband, Uncle Cy, a Frank Sinatra looking Lothario who was already drunk; my bachelor Uncles Eddie and Joey who lived at home with my grandmother; my divorced heavy set but baby-faced Uncle Larry still crying over the desertion of his wife to Florida, taking their son with her; and my burly Uncle Phil, the oldest, also bereft of an estranged wife and child and already down Nightmare Alley. Whiskey and Rye was drink of choice washed down with good old Brooklyn Rheingold Beer. My deeply religious grandmother wore a gray and pink floral housedress she had bought at Mays Department Store in Downtown Brooklyn on Fulton Street. She always wore her hair in a tightly coiled bun held together with big black hairpins looking like Irene Dunne in “I Remember Mama.” Like the savory cabbages glumkies she always made, she ran sweet and sour; dispensing coins in my hand when I pleased her and a sharp rap if I said something she didn’t approve. She went to Mass every morning and a large Infant of Prague Statue in a glass case loomed on her bedroom dresser. She changed the Baby Jesus' attire to match the liturgical calendar. I put the light green tied-with-twine boxes of Ebinger’s pumpkin and mince pies that my Mom had bought on the huge buffet in the dining room. Baby Karen was deposited on Grandma’s double bed in a nest of winter coats looking like a little Bon-Ami chick on the half shell. Michael tore around the apartment playing airplanes till my Grandmother gave him a whack which provoked lots of crocodile tears. It was perfectly accepted for a relative to discipline a child. “A child should be seen and not heard” hissed my Aunt Laura. I went directly to my Uncle’s Joeys’ new Hi-Fi that I was enthralled and obsessed with. I put two LP’s on the changer, Jackie Gleason’s “Music for Lovers Only” followed by Lester Lanin’s album, “At the Tiffany Ball.” After awhile, my mother yelled out to shut “that shit” off since dinner was ready. I made it louder for a second before I shut it off.
Aunt Laura, Uncle Cy, Uncle Joey, Mom. Grandma, Uncle Ed At 2pm, we all sat down in the formal dining room which was only used for major holidays. The table was set with a white damask linen tablecloth with an ecru crotchet lace overlay. The best china and crystal had appeared out of the heavy dark wood China closet. The silverware sparkled having been taken out of a mahogany box lined in lush hunter green felt that looked like Alexander Hamilton’s case for his dueling pistols. I never remember wine being served unless it was a Mogan David and we weren't even Jewish at all. The White Mountain Bread left powdery blotches all over my suit that I tried to wipe off with water which made more of a mess – like dirty sleet after a city snow storm. When it was time to say Grace, my father yelled out “Grace Kelly!” and we all laughed. Thanksgiving was the only time we said Grace and my eldest uncle Phil began as we all joined in: “Bless us O Lord for these thy gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty through Christ Our Lord. Amen.” First was Duck Blood Soup that my Grandma had prepared days before. I think it was the Catholic Polish version of Jewish Chicken Soup but being much darker and thicker almost nut brown with great chunks of carrots and celery congealed to the Carolina Rice. You had to lick the spoon after the initial slurp, to savor the savory reduction, coating the unusually large soup spoons. My Aunt Laura and Mom with military precision cleared the soup plates. Uncle Joey brought in the behemoth sized Turkey to the ‘oohs and ahs’ of all. He walked it around the table twice showing it off like a rabbi with the Torah. With great pomp it was laid before Uncle Larry who took out a gigantic ivory handled knife and pronged fork. As he had been an army chef in Hawaii during WWII he carved the 20 pounder Butterball with expertise and brio.
. Me with Grandma, Uncle Larry and Uncle Phil
Out flowed the bowls and platters, - a bounty of side dishes with vegetables and legumes all from my Uncle’s fruit & vegetable store in Sunset Park: a mountain of steaming mashed potatoes (it was my traditional job to mash them and I always bruised the palm of my hand in exuberance) - a tray of cold cranberry jelly mold (Aunt Laura had cut her hand while opening one end of the can, then puncturing a hole in the other end and blowing out the quivering shape) - a piling of steaming homemade stuffing made out of especially bought day old dry bread. – tangy parsnips and rutabagas, roasted sweet potatoes, boiled-to-death string beans with almond slivers, gray-green Brussel sprouts and earthy buttons of mushroom caps dripping in butter. We passed around a precariously filled-to-the-brim boat of turkey gravy which we slathered over everything spreading out over the entire plate like an Appalachian Spring mud slide. We filled goblets with ice cold Key Food Apple Cider poured from a gallon jug with a little glass handle that I always got my thumb stuck into. All this was devoured in almost silence in less than half an hour. There was a collective groan of satiety as Uncle Larry pronounced (as he did every year) "It's the moistest turkey Mama you ever made." Uncle Joey went to the Hi-Fi and put on a record of Art Mooney and his Band. The needle plunked down on “I’m looking over a four leaf clover” and we all sang along: “that I over looked before. One leaf is sunshine; the second is rain, third is the roses that grow in the lane. No need explaining, the one remaining is somebody I adore. I'm looking over a four-leaf clover that I overlooked before.” When the song was over, Uncles Ed and Phil got up in tandem and put on their jackets to go to the neighborhood Irish Bar & Grill to pick up some other Thanksgiving birdies. Uncle Larry kissed Grandma on the cheek saying “Night Ma” as he left in sweet sadness. My father went to the parlor, opened the top button of his pants, stuck his hand under his belt, laid his head back and fell asleep on the couch in front of the Philco TV. With all the men gone or asleep, the cleaning-up was left to women and children: my mother, Aunt Laura, Uncle Joey and me. Art Mooney and his Orchestra continued on with “If I knew you were coming Id’ve baked a cake, baked a cake, baked a cake.” As we scraped and washed the dishes Uncle Joey and I would sing out the refrain: “Howdya do, Howdya do, Howdya do?" Michael sat on the kitchen floor getting in all our way coloring in his Mickey Mouse book till Aunt Laura gave him a good kick that whirled him into Uncle Eddie's bedroom. Grandma didn't help out since she did all the cooking, She went to the brightly lit front sun room which was all windows hung out with Irish Lace curtains and filled with jade and "mother-in-law tongue" plants.. She sat in her rocking chair and prayed the rosary, murmuring like a Tibetan monk; eyes closed looking up in a Bernini pose of St. Teresa ecstasy - "Hail Mary of grace, the Lord is with thee..." Aunt Laura removed the crochet overlay from the Dining Room table. The patterns left behind now looked like a tapestry camouflage mottled with brown gravy stains, blood red cranberry bullet wounds, crumbs of war and gangrenous vegetable smears. A smaller art deco cloth was laid over it all, hiding the skirmish. Uncle Joey put the trash out in that ever present garbage can on the other side of the kitchen swinging door. The whistling of the teapot signaled dessert was ready. Dessert was a ladies delicacy served only with A&P Tea, never coffee. Those of us veterans, who were left, circled the pies, nuts and a large cornucopia display of fruit. Everybody had a piece of each pie topped with a dollop of freshly made whip cream. Grandma used Carnation Evaporated Milk in her tea, a vestige of the Great Depression and war rationing. She would pour the hot, hot tea from her cup onto the saucer as she blew across the top to cool it down before sipping. No one ever ate the fruit while I made a mess cracking open the walnut shells. Grandma opened up her bottle of favorite liqueur, Cherry Heering Brandy. She gave me sip from a rose colored cordial glass. I puckered my face up since it tasted like Smith Brothers cherry cough syrup. The piercing cry of baby sister Karen from the bedroom waking up to be fed startled us all out of our tryptophan drugged state. Her cry was like the factory whistle signaling it was time to go. Grandma never gave us any leftovers. They were always kept for the return of her prodigal sons later that night. There were polite hugs all around but nary a kiss from my colder Polish border side of the family. We all slept on the way home as Dad somehow stayed awake and got us back to 10th Street. There was parking on the right side of the street right in front our place so my father wouldn't have to get up early the next morning and move the car.
Uncle Joey
Later that night in my pajamas, I watched for the first time on CBS “The Wizard of Oz” in glorious black and white. It wasn’t till my Uncle Joey took me the following month to the Sander’s Movie Theatre off of Park Circle on Prospect Park that I realized that when Dorothy opened the door when she was dropped in Oz that the rest of the film was ablaze in lollipop candy, eye-popping Technicolor. I identified with Dorothy longing to be “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” But like the movie running backwards, I was living in the neon lit OZ of New York City. Little did I know that I was soon to be dropped down in Newburgh the following year in 1958, opening the door however onto the drab gray dull florescent existence of suburbia. After our move upstate, visiting either of my grandmothers for Sunday or Holiday dinners would become a thing of the past. There would be no more movies with Uncle Joey or going door-to-door on Ragamuffin Day. There would be no more singing around the Hi-F - real four-leaf clovers now in our backyard that I would hate to mow. Dorothy went back to Kansas after clicking her heels three times. "There's no place like home, there's no place like home." New York City was my home. Why would Dorothy ever want to leave Oz and go back to the sepia drabness of the farm? In anxiety I bit my nails and I tasted some chocolatety burnt cork under my fingernail left over from the morning and my not thorough washing up. I grabbed an O’Henry bar from my day’s big stash that i had hid under my bed. "Anything f' Thanksgiv'n?"
- October 20, 2008 - Ancient Folkways
Remember when?
- October 13, 2008 - Dies Irae
I was so excited. My Dad was taking me to Union Square to see my two favorite TV stars live, in person: Molly Goldberg and Ethel Mertz. My parents loved The Molly Goldberg Show and I Love Lucy. I would squat on the floor like an Indian between Mom and Dad who sat behind me on their gray and pink floral art deco couch. I got to stay up a bit later when these two shows were on. Mom usually bought special snacks, Wise Potato Chips and some of my favorite Hoffman Cherry Soda. Ethel tickled me when she would stick out her tongue behind her husband s Fred back. I laughed at Molly’s Yiddish accent as she leaned on the window sill and yelled out: “Yoo-hoo, is anybody there…?” It was a warm Brooklyn day in June when we hopped in Dad’s black DeSoto – just him and me to see Ethel and Molly. My father was very quiet as he maneuvered down Flatbush Avenue passing the Fox and Paramount Theatres, past the red and gold storefront of Junior’s. The Myrtle Avenue El Train rattled by us as we reached the Manhattan Bridge. I turned the radio on as usual as we climbed up the bridge ramp but my dad reached over and abruptly shut it off. I thought I had done something wrong. He said I didn’t but to be very quiet when we got to the rally and to stay next to him and be a good boy. Manhattan crested into view as we turned onto Chrystie Street directly into Chinatown onto Jewtown to the East Village along Second Avenue. My dad was great at finding parking spaces and he somehow squeezed into a tight spot on East13th Street behind Luchow’s, the famous German restaurant. I was bursting with anticipation to see the TV stars as I held my Dad’s hand, who was still strangely solemn. As we walked up 14th Street, huge crowds were gathering around: men dressed in dark suits, all wearing Fedora hats; ladies with hats or kerchiefs. Some were carrying homemade signs which I couldn’t read. They were all quiet and solemn too like a funeral, like black ants assembling around a hill that I had seen once in Prospect Park.
When we got to Union Square it was so filled with adults that I couldn’t see the stage. Dad put me on his shoulders so I could just barely make out the speaker’s platform. I strained to hear what they were announcing. After many speeches and cheering I ask my Dad when Molly and Ethel when coming out? He took me down off his shoulders and looked amusingly at me and laughed slightly and smiled. “Who, how did you get that idea? Ha-Ha… Ah …. No, no you silly boy. Anthony, we are here for an important reason. We are all to protest a grave injustice being done to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.” I didn’t understand. “So Molly and Ethel won’t be here?” “No they won’t be, you go the names mixed up baby. “Oh” I said with sad disappointment. So Julius and Ethel will be here?” ‘No they won’t be” He started to explain but stopped when the crowd began yelling again. “Just be quiet and when we are done I will take you up to the Merry-go-round in Central Park.” “Yes, Daddy,” I obediently replied. I held his had tightly now since the crowd was beginning to push and swirl around us, like dirty bath water whirring down a drain. I didn’t’ understand but I knew something special was going on by the way people were chanting. Some women started to cry and wail. I couldn’t help it and I started to cry too not knowing why. After an hour, Dad sensed this was all a five year boy could take and we walked back to the car. I knew to be quiet. On the way up to Central Park, my dad explained to me that the Rosenbergs’ were unfairly tried for spying just like Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italians that I heard my Dad arguing about with my Aunt Mary. We were there to speak out against it. He mentioned something about a big bomb and Russia. I was so confused but happy to be alone with my Dad and to hear him talk with such passion even though I could only grasp a little. I asked my Dad what would happen to them as he lifted me up onto a Carousel horse. He didn’t answer me as he stood next to me, holding me and onto his hat as the horse went up and down and round and round - the organ played the Sousa march"El Capitan". We got home around 5:30 pm just in time for our Friday night supper. Every Friday my Aunt Laura who lived down the block on 10th Street would join us for dinner before a movie. Mom had prepared fried fillet of flounder that night since we couldn’t eat meat. Once again, it was strangely quiet at the dinner table, even my argumentative Aunt stared into her bowl of macaroni with plain tomato sauce. After supper, my Dad went into the living room to read the evening edition of The Daily News. My Mother asked my Aunt if she didn’t mind not going to the movies tonight, she wasn’t feeling well. She went to lie down on the bed. She had been doing that a lot recently. My Aunt Laura cleared the table, washed the dishes while I dried. I asked her what was going to happen to Julius and Ethel. “They are gonna fry those awful Jew spies. I wish I could pull the switch myself. They are going to electrocute them tonight at 8 o’clock and I hope they both go straight to hell and burn again. Wait and see, they say the lights will dim when they pull the electric chair switch up in Sing-Sing” I once stuck my finger in the electric socket when I was exploring so I knew this was a very bad thing.A shudder ran down my spine and I almost dropped the bowl I was wiping with my terry cloth dish towel. I started to ask another question when my aunt brusquely told me it was time for bed even though it was not quite the usual 7:30 pm.
When I said my prayers and asked Jesus to help take care of Julius and Ethel my aunt gave me a slap. I spun around and looked at her meanness. I climbed into bed and pulled the sheets over my head, hating my aunt. I couldn’t fall asleep. I could hear my Father watching TV and the front door close behind my Aunt as she left. My Mickey Mouse watch read 7:45 pm as I tossed and turned. It seemed like an hour before 8pm came. I was waiting for the lights to go out so I knew they were dead. Mickey’s big hand with a white glove reached 12 – 8pm. I shot up and ran and looked out of the window. I swore I saw the cobra-headed street light flicker and flare when a muffled collective moaning rose from the neighborhood like when the Dodgers lost to the Yankees in the World Series. There was no one on the street. I heard someone coming down the hallway and I jumped back in bed and pretended to go to sleep, very still. I could smell my Dad’s Old Spice as he kissed me on the forehead and whispered, “Good night silly boy.” He sighed and went back to the parlor. I slept soundly that night and in the morning my mother made us pancakes as if nothing had happened. My Mom wearing a black lace mantilla took me to church at St. Thomas Aquinas. After 9am mass, my dad drove us out to Grandma’s for Sunday afternoon dinner always held at 1pm after my Polish uncles got back from the 12 o’clock mass. . We took the new Gowanus Expressway to 96th Street in Bay Ridge. “Anthony, why don’t you turn the radio on? Aren’t the Dodgers playing?” I looked up at him as he smiled at me as I pushed the button. I went back to school on Monday. No one talked about Ethel and Julius. I took 9th Street home after school so I could pass the Avon and RKO Theatres to see what was playing. My Mom always took me on Friday nights with Aunt Laura to see the double features. That night we watched I Love Lucy on channel 2 and The Molly Goldberg Show on channel 4.... “Yoo-hoo is anybody there…?
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were not.
Post Script: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were the only American citizens ever to be executed for conspiracy to commit espionage. In retrospect it seems an extremely harsh sentence, but the political landscape of the 1950’s McCarthy era created hysteria which saw the ‘Red Menace’ of Communist domination everywhere, and their execution was widely supported by the public at the time. Julius Rosenberg was electrocuted first, at 8pm, Ethel Rosenberg followed, and was still alive after the first attempt: she required two further charges of electricity to kill her: as a result of her small stature, the electrodes fitted poorly, in a chair designed for larger male occupants.
- September 9, 2008 - White Glove Service
Most towns in rural America depend upon their local volunteers to put out fires, in contrast to the urban, paid professional fire departments. The volunteers are a very proud group of guys who respond instantly when the siren wails out across their towns alerting them to drive to the company firehouse and jump on the red pump truck to the scene of the fire. These volunteer companies would sometimes celebrate the anniversaries of their founding with parades and picnics. Every summer, fellow volunteer fire companies would come from all over the state to march in the town parade followed by a beer fest. Dressed in their finest uniforms with white cap and gloves, they sometimes hired a band to walk in front of them in order to win the prize for best participation. ********** My good high school friend Alan Tomer held the Second Trumpet Chair in the NFA High School Orchestra. He never could knock out my other good friend and neighbor, Peter Peluso from the coveted first chair. Alan though was first trumpet in the Newburgh Combination Drum and Bugle Corps. One day in the summer of 1965 over at Alan’s s house, while listening to the LP of Alex North’s score of the movie Spartacus, he got an emergency phone call from his band teacher, Mr. Louis Aulogia. The Drum and Bugle Corps had suddenly lost their bass drum player to an ankle accident and there was a firemen’s parade the next day. The Main Title of “Spartacus” blared out over the hi-fi as I was rapping out the percussion strokes on the coffee table when Alan turned to me unexpectedly and said: “Anthony you can do it. There’s nothing to it – you just bang out the beat like you are doing now. It will be great fun, and you get paid!” Of course my usual immediate response was NO. Alan kept pressing. I had just seen The Music Man and when he mentioned that I got to wear a uniform I could see myself magically transformed like at the end of the movie, marching down Main Street USA. I kept thump-thump-thumping till Spartacus finally expired on the cross and the Exit Music played and the tone arm lifted up into silence. I gave a final rap on the table and I gave in. We turned off the RCA console and for the rest of the afternoon I was in Alan’s hands as he taught me the basics of banging the drum (slowly). The Newburgh Combination Drum and Bugle Corp was a small, historic 10 -15 piece band (the instrumentation depended on who showed up). I would get $5 to march in the Goshen Firemen’s Parade at the other end of Orange County. Our local Vails Gate Fire Department had hired the band to play for them in the parade. The next morning I went over to meet our bandleader Mr. Aulogia who was very grateful to me stepping in. He gave me a uniform and some rudimentary instruction. And so started my marching days… I loved my red (almost salmon) and powder blue uniform, gold epaulets and cap with patent leather visor. It was made of heavy wool so on hot days when I sweat or got caught in the rain, I smelled like a wet dog. It was a classic band uniform, a bit ill fitting on the large size. I looked like Nathan Lane playing Matthew Broderick playing Harold Hill. To complete the look, I got a brand new pair of white, cotton parade gloves, the kind with a little button snap across the palm. I loved the way the soft cotton gloves snugly felt with the three little ribs on the back outlining the span of my hand. The sound of the snap was mysteriously sensual to me - that pop when it closed encasing my hand in white innocence –SNAP!
We rode to Goshen NY in a yellow school bus. The firemen sat in the back while we sat in the front with instruments piled all around, under and over us. The parade would usually begin outside of a township and we would march in front of our firemen, who were smartly erect, carrying their company colors. We would walk many miles up hills, around fields with nobody to play for but ourselves or the occasional barking dog, annoying kid on a bike or housewife poking her head out of the front screen door. I wasn’t allowed to ever stop playing the big bass drum strapped onto my shoulders even if no one was around. I had to keep the beat, to keep us in step. Even when we stopped, I kept it going so we all could start on the right foot so to speak, right first, then left, right, left, right left….I always had an innate sensitivity to music so keeping the beat came easy to me. It was always exciting when we finally entered the town strutting down its Main Street. The crowds now lined the sidewalks, clapping and shouting out encouragement. We picked up our pace a bit and the fireman stood at attention as we passed the host fire department house. Our march would end up at a park or behind a VFW Hall for beer guzzling barbecue. This was the time for the fireman to party. Being a minor, this was the least favorite part since we had to hang out and watch the guys get drunk. We would sit a picnic tables while the wives of the host company doted on them, serving barbecue chicken, potato salad, corn, watermelon and homemade pies. The guys would tell ribald jokes, smoke many packs of cigarettes and tap the bottomless kegs. This was when I noticed Joe McDermott who was one of the butchers at the Squire Village A&P where I also worked in the produce department. I guess he had been in the back of the bus on our long hot ride over. He shyly came over and sat next to me offering a sip of his warm beer. He was a sweet gentle 40 year old man who lived in Campbell Hall with his ailing mother. We laughed over the fact that here we were in Goshen far from where we worked but had never really met. We spent the rest of day together filling the longueurs with shared sips of beer. He sat next to me on the bus going home. It made plenty of pit stops for bathroom breaks and for the emergency sudden up chucks on the side of the road. I marched all the rest of the summer and rehearsed all winter. I learned all the great marches of Sousa, Goldman, Bigelow and Fillmore. It wasn’t too difficult to follow the notes on the scores during our midweek practice in a small place over Woolworths. Music has always been my escape and refuge so playing in the band was pure heaven for me. Standing in back, making eye contact with the conductor, watching his downbeat, I set the rhythm and pace of the march. “And you'll see the glitter of crashing cymbals and you'll hear the thunder of rolling drums and the shimmer of trumpets. Ta-ta-ta! And you'll feel something akin to the electric thrill I once enjoyed when Gilmore, Pat Conway, The Great Creatore, W.C. Handy and John Philip Sousa all came to town on the very same historic day” Joe and I became fast friends and we would try to time our lunches together. We ate at 11am so we could sit alone in the tiny lunchroom with a single small window overlooking the side parking lot of the supermarket. He always brought lunch that his mother made for him, neatly packaged in a brown paper bag, sandwich in waxed paper, thermos of hot Irish tea and a piece of fruit. I grabbed a grilled cheese and fries from the Squire Village Luncheonette next door to the A&P. We talked about movies, records I had bought, books we were reading and dolce far niente. In our small lunch room sometimes though we so quiet I felt like the blind man and Frankenstein – “Friend.” Once in a while our knees would touch under the small oak Alpine table. I wondered how innocent the awkward brushing up was. I was not sure and sometimes I would place my knees precariously close hoping to be touched. Mr. Aulogia was a great band teacher and I learned to read music more and more. I tried playing the snares but didn’t have the time to devote to it, so I branched out into playing the cymbals and the triangle. I learned that the triangle is the loudest sound in the orchestra. I was fascinated by the musical arraignment of the instruments which grew into my studying the great Broadway arrangements of Robert Russell Bennett, Sid Ramin, Luther Henderson, and Hans Spialek. Once in a while we would give a performance in the park and play more formal concert pieces arranged especially for band like ones by Percy Grainger or Frederick Fennell. One night in midwinter, Joseph, as I now called him, asked me over for dinner to his house in Campbell Hall to meet his mother, have dinner and to stay overnight. It made sense since his place was not close by and I didn’t have a car to go home late at night. We could go to work together in the morning. My mother suspiciously gave me her OK to go. I went to the Squire Village Drugstore and bought a Whitman Sampler to give to Joseph’s mother, Mary. She was a frail 80 year old Irish lady who accepted my candy and excused herself to go to bed early taking the candy to her downstairs room. It was 7pm. He had brought a steak from the store which he had carefully chosen and cut. Joseph broiled the steak and warmed up small white potatoes with parsley and strings beans which were cooked to a gray color of death that his mother had prepared during the day. Joseph lit some candles and played Jackie Gleason’s album, For Lovers Only. The steak was expertly prepared and finished off with a drizzle of lemon and olive oil. I noticed that it began snowing when “But Not for Me” started to play. I was waiting for something to happen as I watched my Anne Page vanilla ice cream melt as I began to swirl it around with my spoon, making lovely pink streaks with the Jane Parker strawberry sauce. We cleaned up listening to “Lester Lanin at the Tiffany Ball.” He washed the dishes while I dried. I felt like Cinderella in the kitchen with a reluctant White Knight. It was time for bed.He showed me to a quaint little room off the hallway upstairs near to his bedroom. There were flowers on the night stand which I guess he had set out that morning. He pulled down the covers for me, walked to the door, stood in the doorway for an uneasy moment, wished me good night and left. All night I waited for him to come to my room. I could hear his mother snoring lightly downstairs and I jumped a couple of times when I heard a noise near my door but it was only Tabby the cat. Outside the wind blustered and howled as I read a copy of Peyton Place that I had stolen out of my mother’s closet. I pulled the quilt around me and finally fell asleep as dawn just about broke. I woke up to the smell of Eight O’Clock coffee and homemade pancakes that Joseph had prepared from scratch. Mrs. McDermott sipped her Irish Tea from a saucer, blowing across it to cool it down. I thought I felt Josephs’ leg graze me under the table but I realized it was only Tabby doing her morning stretch. We drove to work but didn’t have lunch together that day. In the spring, rehearsals continued and our platonic A&P tete a tetes continued. Nothing happened, even sitting alone in the brand new Squire Village Cinema watching “Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines” It was time to take things into my own hands as I realized that I was Harold Hill and he was Marion the Librarian and not the other way around. The firemen of Vails Gate hired us again to march in Suffern NY on Labor Day. It was a great parade held in the late afternoon with fireworks to follow that night. Sitting in the field behind the Suffern Rec Center, Joseph once again slipped me some beer. It was a hot day and long parade and I drank a little more than I was used to. We lay on the grass looking up at the sky-rockets and as I was quite lit, I reached over and took his hand into mine. When we left later that night, I boldly followed Joseph to the back of the darkened bus and stepped over him and took the seat next to him by the window. I stared outside the window watching the houses go by like Maria on the bus from the convent to the house of the Baron von Trapp - “I Have Confidence in Me.” The drinking continued as the firemen were stumbling around down front singing “The Ballad of the Green Berets” that somehow segued into “Strangers in the Night” complete with slurred “Do dody doby do”s. I noticed that this time his knee was definitely touching mine. I was feeling very sexy but nervous. I fidgeted with my white gloves, putting them on and taking them off. SNAP SNAP SNAP. Emboldened by the lager, I reached over to his dark blue slacks and lay my hand on the definite rise that I had kept looking at out of the corner of my eye. SNAP Somehow I unzipped him. SNAP I could feel his hardness as we both looked straight ahead as the fireworks of the town we were passing through lit up the sky casting red, green and golden glows over us. SNAP I remembered the steady beat of the march as I held tight. SNAP I didn’t realize I still had my white parade glove on when I suddenly I felt some rockets going on down below. SNAP Startled at this quick sudden explosion, and not knowing what to do, I awkwardly took my soiled white glove off and tossed it out the window of the bus somewhere onto the passing highway. SNAP Joseph quickly zipped up, jumped up and joined his confreres. I sat there with one glove on. We arrived back in Newburgh and spoke not a word as he drove me home to New Windsor. SNAP Music has always been part of my life. Its transporting power lifted me up and out of “my own little corner” of Newburgh to Siam, River City, Iowa or Bali Hai. I buried myself in my record collection till I could find my own Emile de Becque, Billy Bigelow or Harold Hill. It took me awhle though to realize I had the casting all wrong. In a way, I was The Music Man and I didn’t have to march to the beat of a different drummer I was the drummer. I set the pace and led the band and was marching center. Sometimes I got off on the wrong foot but I was not going to let the parade pass me by. One day I would spot that special someone, I would reach out into the crowd and grab Marion Paroo and together we strut down Main Street or Broadway. September came and it was back to school for my senior year. I worked only on the weekends now so I never saw Joseph again who worked Monday through Friday. Pete Peluso had graduated that past June so my friend Alan got to be first trumpet. Our band rehearsals continued in winter through the spring. When I reached into my uniform jacket the following summer only hours before our first parade of the season, I discovered I had only one glove. I made a mad dash in my full uniform down to the Army & Navy Store on Broadway to buy a new pair of white gloves. Breathlessly back in time, I didn't miss a beat - SNAP!
- August 11, 2008 - Sundays in the Park with Dad
My father and I, before the days of air conditioning, often went to the park on Sundays to escape the heat during then the Dog Days of summer. It is ironic and coincidental that the parks we visited were all designed by Olmstead and Vaux. When we lived in Brooklyn, my father took me by the hand for a short two block stroll up 9th Street to the entrance of Prospect Park, the jewel of the designs of Olmstead and Vaux. We would toss my red ball that he had bought me, back on forth on the Long Meadow. My father was very lean and athletic and we would sometimes race up to the Picnic House to get out of a sudden summer shower. He always let me win.
One day the whole family went to the park and while Dad and I were playing catch, my younger brother Michael somehow wandered off up into the Ravine when my mother wasn’t looking as she tended to my newly born sister in her ornate big, black baby carriage. After a short frantic search, a policemam returned the crying lost boy to us. He cried harder when dad gave him a good smack. I was rewarded for my help with a paddle boat ride on the lake followed by a vanilla custard ice cream cone. In the early 1970’s when I came back to Park Slope after graduate school, I returned to Prospect Park only to find it in disrepair and crime ridden.
I have always thought of Central Park in Manhattan as my back yard, living from 1966 at various times only a block from the park on West 83rd Street; West 110th Street and now West 96th Street. My father first took me there in 1953 after we attended a rally for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in Union Square. We drove up in his car and he put me on a stationary horse on the great carousel by the Dairy Barn. It wasn’t long before I was leaning out on the moving horses that went up and down, reaching out to snatch the brass ring. That is my only memory of Central Park with my Dad, so Central Park belongs more to me than to us. When we moved to Newburgh New York in 1958, my father would take me to Downing Park for his outdoor exercises to stave off his encroaching Parkinson disease. Downing Park was in the middle of Newburgh and designed by Olmstead and Vaux in memory of their landscaper mentor Andrew Jackson Downing who designed the Mall in Washington DC and who died an early tragic death. Downing Park was a green oasis in the blighted chaos of Newburgh, a rundown river city in the Hudson Valley.
His sickness was the reason we moved upstate, since his factory relocated there in that great mass urban exodus to the suburbs of the 1960’s. The gravel paths that wound around the lake and up the hill to the Pergola were perfect for my father’s peregrinations; it gave him good traction. He was very self conscious about his stumbling and shuffling due to his disease, and the park was usually empty early evenings when we took our walks. He would lean on me as we walked around and around; his fixed glance straight ahead, concentrating on his impaired motor skills to build up his agility. We didn’t talk except to point out a squirrel, bird or roller skater coming precariously close to our path. Sometimes he would build up momentum and he would be able to walk a short distance without faltering. This made him very happy and a smile woud somehow shine through his rigid face. I could sympathize with this forward movement and joy of being able to walk without assistance for those few steps. I would feel the same way when I sometimes could get a string of words out, glide along and not stutter till the last syllables.
“Let’s go feed the ducks!” My father used to love to feed the ducks on Polly Pond in the park. He would give me 25 cents to purchase corn feed. I would go into the Stone Shelter and the lady behind the counter would give me a tiny brown paper sack with the top folded ever so neatly down and stapled shut. We would walk to edge of the pond and the duckies would waddle up to our hands and peck up the corn. In the fall came the aggressive geese that would bellow and bluster and suck up the corn like an angry vacuum cleaner. I Ioved their warm breath on my open palm.
Downing Park after a storm
In July and August, after my walk with Dad, our family stayed for the weekly band concerts. An amphitheatre was built in 1936 out of flag stone and granite. Green hedges lined the upstage while a moat filled with goldfish separated the platform from the audience. The audience sat on long green wooden benches on a hill that slightly rose up, a mini-Greek theatre. The concert band was comprised of Italians who wore crisply pressed white shirts, captain hats with black pants and ties looking like a Good Humor Ice Cream Man in his truck. The program was usually comprised of marches; famous classical miniatures and Broadway show tunes. I was in heaven. Stars and Stripes – William Tell Overture – A Symphonic Portrait of Porgy & Bess (arranged by Richard Russell Bennett) - Leroy Anderson’s Bugler’s Holiday - The Blue Tango. Sometimes a local soprano would sing “Un Bel Di", "I Could Have Danced All Night” or “Summertime” There were theme nights too: Oktoberfest! – Italian Night! - Salute to Broadway! – Victor Herbert Tribute! and Down South American Way! etc. There would be guest appearances by a barbershop quartet, a Dixie land band, jazz combo or student accordionist playing “Lady of Spain”. I would get goose bumps when he shook the accordion to vibrate the last chorus. I woud sing to myself "Lady of Spain, I adore you. Pull down your pants and I'll explore you!" My Dad sat in our car parked on a roadway right above the rise of the hill to listen to the program since he didn’t want anyone to see him shake from his palsy. I would sit in the front row all by myself while my mother and sister sat a few rows behind me. I sometimes had to chase down my brother Michael running around behind the stage. We usually didn’t stay for the whole program and left after intermission. My mother got bored easily. I would try to spy out a friend or neighbor who could drive me home. I hated to leave and miss the second half. I am sure I made a pest of myself to people I hardly knew, begging them for a car ride home. I felt trapped in Newburgh, you couldn’t get around unless you had a car and my mother was not a “soccer mom” type who would gladly chauffer her children to their activities. It was always sort of sad looking back up the hill to see my father sitting in the car alone like Quasimodo, a lonely gargoyle silently listening, hidden in the shadows of the green cathedral of leaves. Parkinson had left his face expressionless, set in a fixed dull stare of non-emotion. I would run up between numbers and bring him an ice cream cone that I bought from the Good Humor truck. At times I would gently wipe off the vanilla drips from his stubbly chin.
One night there was a sing-along and all the audience joined in. My family was not the sing- around-the-camp fire kind of family. We would watch the TV show, Sing-along with Mitch in silence. I was particularly self conscious about singing around people even though I sang along to my Broadway LP’s when no one was home. I gave John Raitt a run for his money when I sang both parts of “Hey There.” This is curious to me, since I never stuttered when I sang so you think I would “Sing Out Louise!” any chance that I could get. I had a beautiful voice when I was younger but when I became a teenager and to this very day, I can not hold a tune and sing flat. I worry that I don’t sing good enough. I never play a game I can’t win so I guess I don’t sing out loud from fear of my mother’s ever present criticism that lingers till. However that night the voices of the audience so filled the night air in the park that it was hard to resist. Everybody was lustily singing along as I looked back and saw my father mouthing the words from the car with a big smile on his face. I couldn’t hear my father singing but like a deaf man I could “lip read” the melody of his voice. "Casey would waltz With the strawberry blonde And the band played on. He'd glide 'cross the floor With the girl he'd adore And the band played on. But his brain was so loaded It nearly exploded The poor girl Would shake with alarm He'd ne'er leave the girl With the strawberry curl And the band played on." I mimed the words..."C-C-Casey would w-w-waltz..." Downing Park is still there up in Newburgh; Prospect Park is there and has had a renaissance in Brooklyn. And I walk every week in my beloved Central Park that will be there for all time. My sister and brother are still here. My dad however is long gone. I remember our days in the parks - Prospect, Central and Downing - whenever I hear a marching band or a duck quack or a goose hiss, or the ding-a-ling of an ice cream truck, or the organ at the Carousel. I hear my father’s silent voice singling along. Maybe one day I will sing a song out loud and not give a damn. "And the band played on ..."
Thank you Dad and thank you, Olmstead and Vaux.
"Sing, sing a song (press to listen to this song) Sing out loud Sing out strong Sing of good things not bad Sing of happy not sad.
Sing, sing a song Make it simple to last Your whole life long Don't worry that it's not Good enough for anyone Else to hear Just sing, sing a song.
Sing, sing a song Let the world sing along Sing of love there could be Sing for you and for me.
Sing, sing a song Make it simple to last Your whole life long Don't worry that it's not Good enough for anyone Else to hear Just sing, sing a song."
- July 17, 2008 - Faculty Follies or "Rainy Day Woman"
It was a tempestuous spring evening; the sky was dark with ominous flashes of neon white lighting, apocalyptic, rolling thunder and cascading sheets of warm rain. When the lights darkened in the auditorium of Newburgh Free Academy, a tidal wave roar of applause and cheering swept over the footlights to backstage. Anthony, startled, reeling, spun around into his teacher, Miss Laura M. - his hands on her breasts to break the fall. They quickly broke apart as the curtain went up on the The1966 NFA Faculty Follies.
**********************
It was the fall of 1966. Anthony was a high school senior, sort of a loner, dark, Italian, and dark in mood not unlike Goethe’s Werther which he was reading that semester. He had been elected vice-president of the student club, the Jay Tees, since no one else really wanted to work with Brad Reynolds who headed up a jock clique in it. The Jay Tees had needed a fund raising idea for their annual scholarship fund. Anthony came up with the idea of holding a “Miss Touchdown” contest. Students would donate a dollar to buy a vote to crown the prettiest girl the winner who would be revealed during half-time during the big Thanksgiving football game between the Newburgh’s ‘Goldbacks ‘and rival city, Poughkeepsie’s “Pioneers”. Brad Reynolds, the self important, poppy-cock big guy of the Jay Tees and quarter back on the NFA “Goldbacks” laughed that such a butch idea came from the ‘queer’. No one called him ‘queer’ to his face but Anthony sensed that everyone knew from Brad’s constant insinuations. Of course it didn’t help that he had blown Brad one drunken night behind the goal post after a game, Brad intimated and pushed Anthony down on his knees. “Suck it” he said gruffly. And Anthony did. Brad moaning and smug thought he was the one in control. But it was Anthony who got him drunk, lured him out to the field, and played the ‘queer”. So who was in control? The contest was a great success although Anthony didn’t get to see “Miss Touchdown” be crowned and ride around the football field in an open convertible Cadillac. His parents insisted on leaving early that morning for Thanksgiving dinner in Brooklyn at his grandmothers. However Anthony could not stop thinking about Brad, both sexually and with a great sense of fear. Brad was holding it over Anthony’s head. “I am gonna call your mother and tell her what you do”, he threatened when he wanted another blow-job. And every time the phone rang at home, Anthony would jump to answer; afraid it might be Brad. The sense of danger mixed with the thrill of sex was a potent aphrodisiac. Anthony went to confession the very next day after the goal post incident. He waited till Father Lombardy’s confessional was empty. Father Lombardy was the Italian speaking priest of the parish and Anthony hoped he would not understand him when he told him his dark sins. “Bless me Father for I have sinned, it has been one week since my last confession. I cursed five times, was mean to my mother twice, had three impure thoughts and did one bad act.” “One bada act?” “Shit”, Anthony thought, he understood. “Whata ya mean?” “Well I sort of touched another guy.” “Ah. Did he touch you back?” “No Father.” “Ah” – silence - “Ten Our Fathers, five Hail Marys and one Glory Be.
Anthony ran out of the confessional box, knelt down at the main altar where the Sacred Heart of Jesus stared down on him and said his penance quickly. Only the old lady, Penny Anny was in the church as she always was, mumbling some prayers in Italian. He put in a quarter in the poor box, lit a candle and left. He got on his bike and resolved to sin no more. Anthony was going to Cathedral College in New York City that September after graduating from high school to study to be a priest. In an act of supreme self delusion, he eased his conscience by thinking that sex with a man didn’t violate his future vow of celibacy. With the flush of victory, the Jay Tees December decided to do hold another fund raiser in the spring. Many ideas were bandied about: a dance, an auto gymkhana, a roller skating party, a hootenanny and a car wash. Anthony was basking in the bittersweet glow of “Miss Touchdown” and feeling a bit cocky. Unlike the other seniors who were out drinking this past Saturday night, Anthony had stayed at home and watched the popular, TV variety show Hollywood Palace. “Let’s do a Teachers Talent Show! We all would love to see the teachers make asses out of themselves. We can have it in the auditorium, charge admission. It will be great. I’ll direct it!” Everyone was surprised at this idea and excited by the possibilities. Everyone except Brad who was feeling jealous of all the adulation Anthony was getting. He stood up and looked down on Anthony seated on a cafeteria metal chair. “How the hell are you gonna get them to do it. It will never happen.” A murmur of agreement slowly bubbled up from his buddies. Anthony stood up. “Well, I can make it happen,” he brazenly tossed back at Brad. All waited for his response to this bold challenge to his leadership. “Well smarty pants, well let’s see if you can make it happen. You have till the next meeting. If not, we are doing my idea of the gymkhana. Put your money where your mouth is.” He touched his crotch and snickered and they all group laughed at the inside joke. Anthony did not reply but quickly left when the meeting was over. Miss Laura M. was the new substitute teacher at NFA. She had moved from Dayton right after her fiancé had broken off their engagement. She had met John in the Theatre Department at Ohio State. They had just performed together in “Look Back in Anger” when he told her he was leaving to find himself and be an actor in New York City. In late August, she drove all the way from Dayton to Newburgh in her pink and cream, Rambler with only her clothes, books and her still to be finished theses on the poetry of Keats. Gamine, pretty in a boyish way, her smile betrayed her inner loneliness of being away from her family and the loss of John who she had loved with a deep pure love. She was Anthony’s substitute English teacher when his regular teacher took a sudden leave of absence. Being new to teaching, she glowed with a naive enthusiasm especially when she talked about Keats or when she acted out the parts in Shakespeare’s plays – Rosalind in As You Like It or Viola in Twelfth Night. In a few weeks, Anthony was emboldened to show her the poetry he had written, poems of adolescent bleak despair, longing and loneliness. She was impressed and understanding and even read one of them out load to the class. Brad guffawed under his breath, assuming they were about him. Anthony had known when he came up with his Hollywood Palace idea for the talent show that Laura would be teacher and ambassador to the faculty to make his idea a reality. Laura thought it was a brilliant idea and a way to ingratiate herself to her new colleagues. At the next faculty meeting, much to her and his surprise they all thought it would great fun. It would be held in April. Laura would direct and Anthony would act as “coordinator” between the Jay Tees and the teachers. Instead of The Teacher’s Talent Show, Anthony came up with calling it - The Faculty Follies.
At January’s meeting, Brad was none too happy when Anthony announced it was a go. When he mentioned that Miss Laura M. was the teacher and would direct, he smirked; “That bitch, I bet I could fuck her, no problem.” Then Brad gave him that look. Anthony had to do penance again that night. Anthony was now spending his homeroom and lunch times in the Faculty Room planning the show. He got to know all the teachers and was becoming a bit of a pet. Sometimes after school, working on the show with Laura, their conversations would drift to movies, books, music and life. She told him about her fiancée and didn’t understand why he had to leave to find himself without her. He told her about his wanting to be a priest and wanting to be a director. He even told her all about the bullying he suffered from Brad. He admitted he was still virgin and had to remain so to be ready for seminary. She questioned his logic on this, asking him wouldn’t it be better to find out now about sex before it was too late. They became fast friends, “two lost souls on the highway of life” like he remembered handsome, Tab Hunter singing to Gwen Vernon in the movie Damn Yankees. It would get so late, he sometimes missed the school bus and she had to drive him home. Two months whizzed by and the big day arrived. Anthony had brought flowers for Laura for opening night. Even though there was a torrential rain storm going on, it was completely sold out. Backstage was chaos. It was a typical high school back stage: no wings or fly space. Brad who decided he was going to give the curtain speech thanking all the students, faculty and friends for coming and announce the amount of money raised for the scholarship. He was nowhere to be found. Anthony had written and assembled most of the show from old vaudeville routines and TV skits. These comic olios highlighted the teachers who had real talent: a black music combo called the “Jazzmen’; a folk song duet – the “Mossy Stones”; and a Dixieland group – ‘Wee Three’. There were two main segments. “Wild Nell – the Pet of the Plains”, a spoof of silent movie westerns and the finale set in a Greenwich Village coffee house with all of the teachers dressed as beatniks in berets, sporting Van Dycks, and smoking “cigarettes.” Anthony passed out the fake reefers and all the cast sang Bob Dylans’ “Rainy Day Woman.” The entire audience sang along.
“Well, they'll stone ya when you're trying to be so good, They'll stone ya just a-like they said they would. They'll stone ya when you're tryin' to go home. Then they'll stone ya when you're there all alone. But I would not feel so all alone, Everybody must get stoned.”
The curtain calls had just started when Brad stumbled in, wet from the rain storm and having had a few too many beers. He staggered over to Anthony, loudly called him “sister boy” and grabbed the bouquet out of his hands. He lurched onto the stage careened into Laura and pushed the flowers on her. He started to slip from his wet shoes as Anthony grabbed him and held up him, putting his arm around him like two buddies. Avoiding embarrassment, Brad managed to make the thank-yous and announce that $1,000 was raised. As the curtain fell, he pushed Anthony aside and ran off.
The Faculty Follies was a great success. The principal himself, Mr. Fowler came back stage and thanked them all. A cast party for the teachers had been arranged at the Pine Tree Tavern. Anthony was elated while still shook up by what happened on stage. Laura too was shaken and said she wanted to skip the party. She suggested they go to her place for a cup of tea. It was a short ride through the waning storm. He had never been to her house and was very curious how it would be decorated. It was a simple one bedroom apartment tastefully done. They were both soaked from the rain and Laura suggested she put their clothes in the dryer. Hesitantly he went to the bathroom and tossed his clothes back out into the living room. She handed him through the door a plain white robe to wear. She put the kettle on and the LP of Herb Alpert’s “Whipped Cream & Other Delights.” They sat together on the couch, both in robes silently listening to “A Taste of Honey.” “Anthony, it was very brave of you tonight how you handled that bully. No matter what he says about you, be proud o f who are.” She reached over and held his hand. “Oh, I almost forgot. I have a surprise for you!” She dug around in her purse and handed him a small silver cardboard box tied with blue ribbon; the kind of box a set of earrings would come in. He untied the bow, took off the lid and pulled the tissue paper back. “Oh Laura, it’s a, a, a cigarette…,” he stuttered. “No silly, it’s a joint! I thought after our show it would be a perfect present. If there is one person I know who should get high, it’s you.” He held it in his hand, turned it over and over and took a whiff of it. She pulled a lighter out of that purse and lit the joint. “Just take a puff, but inhale it and keep in down.” He did and of course, he coughed and of course they both laughed. It was good to laugh. They exchanged puffs back and forth. As “Love Potion #9” was playing, they both became quiet listening to Alpert’s fine trumpet styling. He looked down and quickly closed his knees and pulled the robe over to hide his growing embarrassment. She took his hand and silently led him to her bedroom. She lay down him down on the sun yellow chenille bedspread with white trim, dimmed the lights and lit some candles. He stared at the ceiling as she controlled the situation, setting up the scene. “Anthony, close your eyes and be quiet. Don’t think about anything.” She took off her robe and gently started to caress him all over but never kissing. She moved down his body and he could feel her breathe on his hardness. He kept his eyes closed and surrendered himself to the moment, listening to the rain and the distant music from the next room. She took off her robe and lowered herself slowly till had taken him in. He was amazed how warm and moist it felt. Catching the rhythm of the music, Laura glided up and down as Anthony rose up in counterpoint to the beat. She whispered, “Tony, Tony” till he moaned in pleasure, “Laura”. The rain was coming down hard now and splashing up against the window panes.
.
The record player arm lifted up at the end of the LP and moved back to its resting place. They were both startled by the whistling of the kettle. She grabbed her robe and ran to the kitchen. He quickly put on his robe and sat on the edge of the bed. She brought them both back a cup of tea. They stirred and stirred their brew not daring to look at each other from opposite sides of the bed. After a brief while she said, “Anthony, I didn’t want to tell you till now but I am moving to New York City. John called me last week and says he wants me to come live with him. He has a small place in the Village.” He sipped his hot tea and almost burnt his tongue. “I understand Laura; I can’t w-w-wait to get out of Newburgh myself. I hope things work out for you and John. And about tonight…” She shh-ed him before he could go on and she kissed him lightly on the mouth and held his face in her hands. “Years from now, I will always think fondly about tonight. I hope you will too.” He didn’t know what to say. “Oh I will” was his only response. A few more sips of tea. “Maybe we can meet up in the city when I am in school. The three of us can all go to a Broadway show together!” She didn’t respond but laughed gently. Their clothes were dry now. They got dressed and she drove him home. The rain had stopped to a drizzle and the wet streets of Newburgh seemed to glow a bit. She dropped him off at this house and he gave her a quick peck on the cheek before she pulled away. As he was about to go down the driveway, he noticed a strange car parked in front of his neighbor’s house. All of a sudden, the overhead light inside went on and Brad looked over and gestured to join him on the front seat as he unlocked the passenger side door and kicked it open. Anthony stood there for a long moment, then walked over, closed the car door, gave a confident wave “goodbye.” Brad stepped on the gas and sped away. Anthony ran up the driveway into his house and turned off the front porch lights and went to bed. The rain had stopped. The phone never rang. That Saturday after the show he went to confession. “Bless me Father for I have sinned. It’s been two weeks since my last confession. I cursed three times, hit by brother once and did one bad act.” “Ah, with thata boy again?” Anthony smiled and said, “No Father with a woman.” He then thought he heard Father Lombardy whisper “Deo Gratias.” But what he really said was “One ‘Glory Be’ and say an Act of Contrition.” “O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishments, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin. Amen.”
******************* In June, Sharon Kish, the Senior Class President asked Anthony to direct the ‘Senior Class Night’ show - “What a Day for a Daydream.” It was another great success. He graduated that June and was awarded a PTA Scholarship for outstanding contribution to the school. Anthony entered Cathedral College in New York City that September of 1966 to study for the priesthood, saw his first Broadway Show and grew up to be a director and homosexual. Brad Reynolds went off to Vietnam and got married and had three kids and still lives in Newburgh. Anthony never saw Laura again.
“Well, they'll stone you when you walk all alone. They'll stone you when you are walking home. They'll stone you and then say you are brave. They'll stone you when you are set down in your grave. But I would not feel so all alone, Everybody must get stoned.”
- July 1, 2008 - "Golden Days" Summer 1953
In the 1950's, when you walked into any tenement building in the Bronx, you were greeted by the rich aromas wafting from landing to landing of each family’s Sunday afternoon feast: the fiery tomato sauces of the Sicilians; the beefy, peppery briskets of the Jews; the sweet potato pecan pies of the “Negroes”; the pungent cabbages of the Irish; the pulled; savory pork of the Puerto Ricans; and the garlicky kielbasas of the Poles. From the laundry rooms, filled with huge apothecary like bottles of bleach and bluing, pungent smells floated up of clean sheets that mixed in with sour/sweet rot of garbage left over night in the basement before the morning collection. Each morning I woke up in our Belmont neighborhood to an aromatic miasma of hot yeasty breads just baked in coal ovens at Madonnia; of glistening salty sea-air fish being laid out on chipped ice at Randazzo’s; of ripe cheeses, salami and baccala at Teitel Brothers and luscious slightly over ripe peppers and melons at the stalls at the Arthur Avenue Retail Market. As the 6am Angelus bells rang out in counter point to the sound of trash cans thrown down by burly garbage men, my Nonna brewed hot espresso and munched on biscotti encrusted with almonds. She would dunk the hard, hard biscuits in the thick dark sweet froth and chomp and chew like a dinosaur. Sometimes she made American coffee in a coffee pot where the brown brew bubbled up and percolated up into a small glass knob signaling it was done. Instead of gnawing on the indurate biscuits, Nonna sometimes whisked a raw egg into her cup of “café Americano”. She always offered me some and laughed loudly when I made a pussy face and refused. Afterwards she would take a basil leaf out of the icebox and rub her gums and teeth with it; a sort of Italian mouthwash or “Pestodent”! It was a hot, hazy, NYC humid summer Sunday and we were all going to Orchard Beach in the Bronx. Orchard Beach was a mirage, an oasis, a miracle. Robert Moses struck his staff into the land along the Long Island Sound and the waters parted to reveal a beautiful white sandy beach with Art Deco pavilions, promenades, and wooded cooking areas. The master builder, Moses has delivered us from the heat and given us all a municipal city beach to rival any in the Hamptons or Jersey Shore, - “the Bronx Rivera.” On Sundays in the 1950’s, all the stores were closed except for the drugstores and bakeries which usually closed right after the noon mass. As my mother and I left the Church of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, I dunked my hand in the holy water font and secretly sprinkled an Old Italian lady kneeling and praying the rosary. My mother, catching me, tugged my ear and pulled me along. Our first stop was the candy store to get the Daily News with its rotogravure in color. We then went to Addeo’s for lard bread before we waited on the long line at Artuso’s Pastry Shoppe to pick up the cannoli. At 11am, we packed into my father’s car: Mom, Nonna, Aunt Mary & Uncle Nick, and my cousin Viola, their daughter. It was already 90 degrees, the air thick and sticky. Still the ladies wore sun dresses below the knees and I never saw my Uncle Nick without a white shirt & tie. My grandmother always wore black since the day she was a widowed in her twenties. I jauntily had doffed a white sailor hat with battleship gray swim trunks and white “guinea” tee. On my pretty feet were brown sandals over white socks. I loved their smell of musty, tannic leather.
Dad and me at Orchard Beach
This was no ordinary trip: it was an excursion, a safari. Napoleon in all his glory did not travel with so much of an entourage and supporting camp. My Aunt was chargé d'affaires undiplomatically ordering us to carry the supplies down two flights to the curb: picnic hampers containing real dishes; utensils and all the makings of a full dinner; boxes filled with pots and pans; linens, lids, graters, cutlery, colander, and wooden spoons; blankets, umbrella and an ice cooler layered with bottles of red wine and 7-Up. My Dad pulled up the car to the front of our place at 2350 Beaumont Avenue, singing along to Rosemary Clooney’s “Botcha- Me!” on the radio. My grandmother rode up front like Lewis and Clarkes’ guide, Sacajawea, eyes straight ahead. I sat in the middle so I could play with the radio, dialing back and forth, forth and back till I got a swift slap on the wrist from Nonna. Aunt Mary (or Titsie as I called her), sat in the back and I could see her jungle red lips in the rear view mirror, glowing like the devil from the “Hell Hole” ride at Coney Island. Somehow Uncle Nick sat back there unflummoxed and never sweating next to Mom and Viola. Passing between the Bronx Zoo and Botanical Garden on Fordham Road, we joined the exodus of other Sunday drivers to Pelham Parkway, leading directly east to Orchard Beach. Dad maneuvered us into the gigantic parking lot holding thousands of cars built for the wave of post WWII new car owners. He was a New York expert and knew all the ins and outs of the city. He had figured out exactly where to park the car so it would be in the shade at the end of the day and not hot as all hell in those days before air conditioning. Dad, our Virgil, guided us to the groves all the way up to the left. It was emptier there almost like Parnassus, secret and cool under the leaves of the umbrella-like trees. We reached a picnic table with a stone grill in the shade under the dabbled light of the afternoon sun. Mom was out of breath and Nonna enthroned herself on one of the wooden green, canvas chairs I had to carry. We unpacked the entire larder under the direct supervision of Titsie. My Uncle Nick quickly found a bottle of wine to slake his thirst. My Dad, now like Prometheus, made a fire out of some mysterious materials of I don’t know what. My Aunt set the dented, aluminum pots on the grate and started to re-heat the sauce she had made on Saturday morning, simmering with contents of meatballs, sausages, pork chops and bracciole. Getting antsy, I started to pester my cousin Viola to take me to the beach to wade in the salty waters. Never in all of our excursions did my grandmother, Aunt & Uncle ever venture near the sand or go into the water. Finally Viola gave in and took me down the hill to the crescent of sand that had been conjured up by Mr. Moses. At the end of the path, I took off my sandals and put on little white rubber bathing booties. The last time at the beach I started to scream at the top of my lungs when my bare feet hit the hot sand. I hated the scorching heat on the flat of my feet and the textured grittiness of the sand between my toes. My father had to carry me from the boardwalk all the way down to the beach where the sand was moist with the lapping, cool waves of the Sound. This time I was ready as I strode down the Sahara in my rubber shoes that Mom had bought me at Alexander’s on the Grand Concourse. Like young Prince Moses I arrogantly kicked sand on people’s blankets, carrying my tin pail and shovel like scepter and orb. Viola was like an older sister to me. She often told me the story how she held me up (like the cub in The Lion King) a few days after I was born to admire her new “Cuz” and how I peed in her face! We were close ever since. Viola (in her bathing cap) and I frolicked in the water. I splashed her when she wasn’t looking and she screamed how cold it was as I gleefully laughed in delight. I made a few sand castles surrounded by moats. I loved to fill them with the water scooped up from my pail and watch the water swoosh around the towers. When I started to nudge her to buy me an ice cream from one of the vendors walking the beach, she announced it was time to go back. “I have had enough of you!” She dragged me like a puppy straining on a leash, not wanting to return home after its walk. My sandals were so hot from lying out in the sun. I dunked them in my pail of water to cool them down before our trek back up the hill. Like an Impressionistic picnic painted by Manet, our sylvan area had been transformed: our table being set out with crisp white linens with china, silverware and glasses. The white smoke from the grill circled around the area as the sunlight magically streaked though, keeping the gnats and flies at bay. In the distance a man (or was it Pan), was playing the mandolin and softly singing “Santa Lucia” which blended with a nearby family's laughing like satyrs at a dirty joke told by someone’ s uncle. We joined them in contagious mirth. The pot was boiling as my Aunt threw in two boxes of Ronzoni macaroni. We never called it pasta. It was either spaghetti or macaroni, no matter the size. I helped stir them round and round the steaming, bubbling cauldron under Titsie’s watchful eye. I foolishly burnt my tongue trying to taste a shell to see if it was done. “Strunzo” my aunt said curtly with no pity. She doled out the steaming “macarone”, the amounts based on ones status and sex, Nonna and my Dad getting the biggest heaping plates. She ladled the wine dark tomato sauce over them and with a flick of the fork, sprinkled cheese lightly all over the mouth-watering mound surrounded by the savory meats falling apart in their tenderness. We never called it parmesan; it was cheese. It had been my mother’s chore before lunch to grate the wedge of cheese since she was Polish and “couldn’t cook” or so covertly said my Aunt in Italian behind her back but I understood. I noticed one of Mommy’s knuckles was scraped from trying to get the last bits grated. My Aunt would not tolerate any waste. Uncle Nick mixed the red wine with 7-Up in small clear glasses as I passed them all around. My Mom didn’t want wine and drank only the lemon soda. She wasn’t feeling so well that summer. After dinner, the heat of the day brought out the loud humming chorus of the cicadas. After we cleared up and scraped off the plates and flatware, we all found spots to lay back and laze. I fell asleep on a wool red & bIack plaid blanket. On my back, squinting up, I spotted a seagull circling above searching for the scraps it knew we would leave behind. Dad and Uncle Nick, smoked panatelas and got out the cards to play briscola and drank lots of wine sans 7”Up.
Mom and Me
After a couple of lost hours, Titsie heated a pot of espresso and set out the demitasse cups with tiny doll house like silver spoons to match. The herbaceous smell of licorice filled the air as the Anisette was used as the sweetener in our café. The clear syrupy liqueur drew gnats and flies bombarding us like kamikaze pilots. A huge bowl of mixed nuts of pecans, walnuts and “nigger toes” (Brazil nuts) was placed on the tablecloth now spotted with red wine stains like a Rorschach test. I loved the freedom of being able to toss the shells into the woods until Uncle Nick told me to stop. My Aunt, like Ariadne, cut off the pink & white twine and opened the virginal white boxed filled with cannoli. My chest was covered in white confectionary sugar as I picked out the candied fruit (or spit them out if I had missed any). Nonna slapped my hand again. At the end of the day, a golden haze started to stream in from the west as we packed up everything carefully. We rinsed everything off at a spigot at the WPA Building restrooms. Even though the car was in the shade it was damn hot. We opened all the doors and waited for it to cool down. Uncle Nick lit up on one last Camel. Some boys set off Roman Candles on the beach and we all clapped as the Technicolor streaks were reflected on the rooftop of our dark shiny car. I skidded across the front seat and cried out as my bare sunburned thighs hit the blistering vinyl. Dad turned on the radio and of course, I started to race through the dials. He made me stop when the Four Aces were singing: “‘Heart Of My Heart’, I love that melody ‘Heart Of My Heart’ brings back a memory When we were kids on the corner of the street We were rough 'n ready guys But oh, how we could harmonize” Dad started to sing and we all sang along except for Nonna who was looking out for Indians. “‘Heart Of My Heart’ meant friends were dearer then Too bad we had to part I know a tear would glisten If once more I could listen To that gang that sang ‘Heart Of My Heart’” We inched along through shaded arcade of Pelham Parkway. When we arrived home, Dad gave Viola and me a nickel each and we ran back to Artuso’s for Italian ices. We never called them “Italian” ices, there were ices! What else? There were lots flavors but I was a purist - Lemon Ice was king. The ice was so cold a pang of pain shot up my nose and like an aardvark I licked the last tart lemony drops from the bottom of the small white paper cup. With sticky hands we returned home. Mom put me in the bath tub to rinse off the detritus of a day in the sun, sand and salt water. I left behind a gray dull ring of baby oil in the tub as the final particles of sand washed down the drain. After she toweled me down, Mom lay down on Nonna’s full sized bed with white heavy cotton sheets she had to be ironed after washing. I was so sleepy; I made no usual scene when I was asked to go to bed. I slept in a Hollywood bed in the parlor. As I drifted off, the gray flickering light of the DuMont television was my night light and the Burns & Allen Show theme song, “Just a Love Nest” was my lullaby that was given over to some boys in the enclosed courtyard crooning Doo-Wop like love sick alley cats. That night, I dreamed of seagulls, castles, and forests with witches chanting a wordless song. This would be my last golden summer living in the Bronx. We would move to Brooklyn and join Ralph and Alice leaving Marty and Molly behind. In a few years, Aunt Mary & Uncle Nick with Cousin Viola would move to Woodside, Queens not far from Archie and Edith. Nonna stayed behind like a bit of black anthracite coal firmly stuck in the good earth. In 1974 the Goldbergs moved to Co-Op City and my grandmother moved in with Aunt Mary. She gave me the entire the contents of her house for my first apartment. I guess with time and aging, the glowing diamond underneath she had always hid was finally released by the burning of the Bronx. I would never be alone nor “Prince of the City” again. My brother Michael would be born that fall in September. Ah the 7-Up without wine! I would become the big brother having to set an example. “Don’t you know any better, you’re the oldest? You big ciuccio!”
I return to the Bronx often. I stop at Beaumont Avenue hoping to see Uncle Nick sitting on the steps puffing away, cursing “somma-bitch” under his breath as Aunt Mary calls him inside to do some chore. I imagine I hear my grandmother in black yelling at the TV screen as some histrionic wrestler throws his opponent down Slam! on the mat. My cousin Viola takes my hand and we go roller skating at the Parish Hall. I hear my father pull up in his car to pick my mother up for a ride to City Island, singing along with Eddie Fisher, “Oh Mein Papa.” I enter the hushed church of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel and stick my hand into the Holy Water font held by a life size marble angel. The angel and cool baptismal water transport me to the beach, the water lapping up to my bare feet. Outside again, looking up, a pigeon nests next to be big church bell. It is 6pm, the final Angelus rings out and the startled bird flies high, circling the spire. I smile to remember the seagull – now lifting me up up over the tree tops, looking down on Belmont, circling round and round, trying to go home again. I hover over the mean streets of Arthur Avenue, spotting some kids rapping on a corner of a street besides a heap of black plastic trash bags; swooping down for a Lemon Ice; pecking at a bite of prosciutto bread; snatching up some discarded candied fruit or nuts; sipping an espresso – all my Proustian Madeleine’s – reminding me, trying to re- capture those idyllic days of family, smells, tastes and sounds; music and the laughter; of the warmth and love of time lost…of golden days…
"Golden days in the sunshine of our happy youth Golden days full of gaiety and full of truth. In our hearts, we remember them all else above, Golden days full of youth and love. How we laughed with the joy that only love can bring Looking back through memory’s eyes. We will know life has nothing sweeter than its springtime, Golden day, when we’re young, Golden days” *************
Click here to hear “Golden Days, sung by Mario Lanza in the 1954 movie, The Student Prince that I saw with my Aunt Mary at the RKO Fordham..
- June 16, 2008 - Birthday Boy November 1955
November 18, 1955
Anthony was going to be 8 years old in 3 weeks, November 18th and he drove his mother crazy begging her to have a party. He had gone to many birthday parties at his friend’s houses but he never had one of his own. That afternoon, when his Aunt Laura was visiting, Anthony wouldn’t stop pestering his mother about the party. All of a sudden, she burst out in tears and finally gave in. Aunt Laura gave him a mean look and told him what a bad boy he was. She even tried to talk his mother out of having the party “Josephine, it will be too much for you in your condition.” Anthony gave Aunt Laura a mean look back and wondered what his mother's condition was. She was acting funny lately, and she had gotten very big around her middle. She told him he was going to have a new sister, but he did not put the two and two together. His bratty brother Michael was already 3 years old and he didn’t remember his mother getting fat when Michael came. But, since he made his mother cry, Anthony said he would do all the work if he could have the party. His mother said he could invite his 2nd grade classmates of St. Thomas Aquinas for a party after school. He was a lucky boy since he would celebrate his birthday twice - once with his classmates after school and then with all of the aunts and uncles on Sunday. His aunt was not happy, but Anthony was happier than he'd ever been. Three days before the party, his mother asked his father for money to buy a special ice cream cake, potato chips, pretzels and M&M’s. Out of that she gave Anthony some money to go down to Kresges on Fifth Avenue to buy decorations. Anthony walked two blocks to the Five & Dime. There we so many choices for a theme party: Mighty Mouse, Roy Rogers, Howdy Doody, Flash Gordon or Lady and the Tramp. After spending at least an hour deciding, he bought blue crepe streamers, white balloons, Mickey Mouse paper plates and a Pin-the-Tail on the Donkey game. He took them all home and stored them in the front hall closet.
For the next two days, when his mommy wasn’t looking, Anthony would sneak into the closet to see all that he had bought. He was also looking to see if there were gifts for him because that’s where his mother always hid the Christmas presents. All he knew was that his mother had said he would get a very special gift that year. What could it be? What could it be??? The day before the party, Anthony was beside himself. He asked every classmate three times if they were coming to his party. That night he went to bed at his usual 8pm. He gave his brother, Michael a shove in the double bed to stay on his own side. But Michael kept turning and tossing until Anthony finally had enough and he took his pillow and made a wall between him and his brother. He used his Teddy Bear instead of the pillow to sleep on. Very late that night, he heard his Father and Mother talking in loud whispers. Finally his father came over and sat next to him on the bed. “Anthony, I have to take your mother to the hospital" he said."Go back to sleep and take care of your brother. Your Aunt will be here by the time you wake up again. Be a good boy for Daddy.” “Is m-m-mommy ok?” Anthony stuttered. “Be quiet and don’t be a pest. Now go back to sleep” and with that, Anthony's father turned off the lights and left the room. Anthony heard the front door close and all was quiet again. He fell back to sleep. At 7am, the day of Anthony's party, Aunt Laura came bursting in, expecting to find the house burned down. “What are you still doing in bed, you lazy pig? Hurry up now, get dressed, it’s time to go to school. If I were your mother I would have put you in St. Vincent Home for Boys long ago.” Every time they would drive past the home in downtown Brooklyn, his Aunt Laura would point to it and say "If you don't behave we’re going to leave you there". Sometimes she would even threaten to give him away to the Gypsies! Right now Aunt Laura was just trying to get Anthony dressed for school. He was so excited about his party, he could barely put on the clothes his mother had laid out for him the night before; pressed navy blue chino pants, a white starched shirt and a maroon knit wool tie embroidered with STA (St. Thomas Aquinas). Finally, he managed to get dressed, and just as he was about to leave, Aunt Laura said “Tell all your friends that you can’t have your "party" today because your mother is sick!” “B-b-but Aunt Laura! We have to! I have all the stuff bought….” Anthony pleaded “Your mother will not be back until Sunday and you are not having a party and that's that. I will cancel the cake. Do you hear me? You are not!” Anthony ran out the front door and slammed it behind him instead of answering her back like he usually did. He sadly told his friends at school. They all said they would bring him his presents next week since they were already bought. Only it didn’t seem fair to Anthony that they should have to give him presents without going to a party. Anthony's father came home late that night without his mother. His father went right to bed. The next day, Saturday, his Aunt Laura returned and sent him off to the Avon Theatre on 9th Street to see a matinee of cartoons and double feature. After the movies, he went to confession and told the priest he hated is Aunt Laura and wished she was dead. “Three Hail Marys” the priest said. Aunt Laura made supper that night and his mother was still not home when he went to bed. Anthony got up very early Sunday morning. His father must have gotten up even earlier since he was not here. So he didn’t go to the Children’s Mass. It was his birthday anyway! He went straight to the closet and got all the party favors out. He quietly decorated the entire kitchen in blue crepe streamers and white balloons. He put his party hat on with the elastic band under his chin and sat at the table and started to eat only the red M&Ms. Suddenly the door opened and in shuffled his mother and father. His mother was a carrying a small bundle. It was cold outside and she was wearing a heavy gray coat with lamb’s wool collar and dark green silk kerchief around her head. Anthony was so happy to see her and was just about to tell her about mean Aunt Laura cancelling his party when his mother said “Wow how beautiful the kitchen looks Anthony. How sweet, you decorated it for your new baby sister.” Leaning down to him, she lifted bundle’s pink coverlet and showed Anthony his new baby sister, Karen. Her eyes were closed and crusty with sleep. It was the tiniest person he had ever seen. Later that afternoon, all the relatives came over. There were the two grandmothers and all the Italian and Polish uncles, aunts and cousins. And they all brought Anthony lots of presents. But they were really there to see the new present in the Napoli family, his baby sister, Karen. In the middle of the afternoon, Anthony's mother took Karen to the kitchen and laid her on the table. “She has to be changed” his mother said. There was a sour smell mixed with Johnson & Johnson baby oil. As she took her diaper off, Anthony eyes widened. He couldn’t figure it out. “Where’s her Pee-Pee? She ain’t got any.” His mother laughed gently. “She’s a girl, silly. Girls don’t have Pee-Pees. Now be quiet and go back in the other room while I finish".
Anthony stopped in the bathroom on the way down the hallway. He pulled down his pants and held his pee-pee in his hand. He got up on the toilet bowl cover so he could look at it in the mirror. His mother was always yelling at him to stop playing with it. He realized he had something his little sister didn’t have. His brother, Michael had one. Even his Dad, though he had never seen it, must have one too. He smiled. He was very proud. He put it away, climbed down from the bowl. He put the lid back up as his mother had taught him and continued down the hall to the parlor.
And all of a sudden, he heard every one singing: "Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday dear Anthony, Happy Birthday day to you!"
He blew out all eight candles as all his relatives cheered, even his Aunt Laura seemed to be happy. He cut the first slice of his Roy Rogers ice cream cake and got some whipped cream on his nose and made them all laugh. As he was about to sit down to open his presents, he gave his pee-pee a little touch. His Aunt Laura caught him and gave him a smoldering stare. He gave it a defiant tug and smiled up at her as he sat down next to his brother who had been eying Anthony’s gifts.
When his Mother came back in with Karen, they oohed and ahhed - “Bella bambina – What a beautiful baby - She looks just like you, Josie.” That day, as he opened up the first gift of a Jack-in the Box, Anthony wasn’t upset at all. He was surrounded by all his family and a mountain of presents (not to mention the ones his classmates would give him tomorrow). But the best gift was the one his mom gave him, his new baby sister, Karen Jean. He would love her all his life and take care of her as his Aunt Laura said he should. Although he and his sister’s birthdays were three days apart, November 15th & 18th, they would always celebrate them together.
Karen Jean November 15, 1955
- June 2, 2008 - "Sunday, Sweet Sunday" Mother's Day 1960
My mother threw the hard half-gallon brick of Crowley’s Neapolitan ice cream onto the kitchen linoleum floor. “Come on, we’re leaving.” We were still in our Sunday clothes finishing up our 1pm dinner after attending Mass. I quickly grabbed my jacket and helped my younger brother and sister into their sweaters. My father sat quietly in the living room watching the Yankees on channel 11. My Mom grabbed her hat and purse and stormed out before us. We walked two blocks to the corner of Jay Street and Route 94 and waited for the 1:45pm bus from Cornwall to take us to downtown Newburgh. I thought we were going to catch an afternoon matinee at the Ritz Theatre. “Son of a bitch, this time we’re not going back. This is it. I have had enough,” screamed my mother at the cars whirring by as we stood on the side of the highway. I knew then we were not going to the movies to see 2:30 pm showing of “Pollyanna.” “I have to make my own fucking Mother’s Day dinner. He doesn’t lift a goddamn finger. Your father lies on his ass and just pretends to be sick.” My father had Parkinson’s disease. “But Ma, I made you a nice card and bought you a present. Didn’t you like the Jean Natè?” “You’re no big help either… My life is over. I ‘m married to a dead man. Not anymore. I am out of here. You can go back if you want to, little man. You’re just like him anyway. “ “No Mommy I will stay with you.” The bus pulled up and my Mom paid our 30 cents each; Michael and Karen rode free. She calmed down on the bus but still smoldered as she looked out of the window for the short ride into town. The bus passed over the crumbling stone bridge on Mill Street with the old paper factory still underneath beside a dried up stream… passed some service stations and rusty auto shops…passed the only Jewish synagogue before making a right turn onto the very wide expanse of Newburgh’s Broadway. Down the broad way past the Ritz and Broadway Theatres, the Texas Weiner Shop, Sears & Roebuck, The Hotel Newburgh and the Woolworths. Left and farther down to the old business district, the department store with the only elevator in the Hudson River Valley, down to the bus terminal at the ferry station to Beacon. We got off at the last stop on Water Street on the river in front of a sign that said “Newburgh Best All American City 1950 ” That sign would soon be a lie and better entitled in the 1960’s – “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” George Washington may have disbanded his troops nearby but the welfare scandal, the “Battle of Newburgh,” was just to begin for all the nation to see as documented on NBC’s White Paper Series. My mother was unusually quiet now as we got on the ferry, the warm breezes of the river blowing over us. Looking high up and across the river, I could see the abandoned funicular up to the very top of Mount Beacon so named for its Revolutionary War beacon fires to warn of approaching British troops. I wish I had a warning system at home to signal my mother’s tirades. My brother and sister held tightly to my hands as my mother smoked a Kent Light up on the top deck. There were never any warnings of her outbursts and attacks at home. They would flare up like Mount Vesuvius. The battle lines were drawn and as children we could find ourselves on either side of the skirmish. “Who do you want to go with, me or your father when we break up?” was often the war cry to recruit us to their side. There was no Charon to guide us across the river to the sad city of Beacon, already a forlorn, once industrial river town. We walked up the steep Ferry Street to Main. Either the weather had turned warmer or our hike up the hill had all made us thirsty. My mother gave me some change to go to a corner German Deil. I plunged my hand deep into the icy waters of the Coca Cola chest to retrieve 4 small Cokes. We walked over to Memorial Park and sat on the beat up benches in the shade. Karen and Michael played on the swings.
My mother was crying now softly. I tried to hold her hand but she brushed it away. She was quiet for an hour. The ashes of despair were settling as we sat on that silent hill. I am sure she was now realizing she had left home but had nowhere to go but back. She looked like the Trojan Women, overlooking a sacked city, realizing slavery or death were the only two choices allowed to her. She handed me a dime and sighed with resignation, “Go call your father.” We sipped our cokes as I watched some “negro” teen aged boys play softball on the nearby field. Dad arrived one hour later and picked us up. We didn’t’ get out of the car on the ferry. The bridge would soon be built bypassing the two cities, abandoning the downtowns to outlying malls. My father drove slowly and carefully home as the radio played Percy Faith’s hit version of “Theme from a Summer Place” on Newburgh’s AM station, WGNY.
There's a summer place Where it may rain or storm Yet I'm safe and warm Your arms reach out to me When seen through the eyes
As we passed the Dairy Isle my Dad made an abrupt u-turn back into its gravel parking lot. “What kind of sundae do you want, Jo?” my Dad asked my mother – “Hot Fudge Sundae with Vanilla Ice Cream.” -Détente- “Anthony, get your mother some ice cream.” My Dad gave me two dollars out of his allowance that my mother weekly doled out to him. I got Karen and Michael a vanilla cone each with chocolate sprinkles; a swirl with rainbow sprinkles for me. I bought my Dad a dish of vanilla since he couldn’t hold a cone in his shaking hand. We finished our ice cream before heading home. My mother gave the signal it was time to leave by handing me her fudge smeared napkin to toss in the trash. I could see the grease stains on our black top driveway as we arrived home. Hand over hand, my father turned the big steering over and guided and glided our car over the spots and hid them from view. My mother went ahead as my Dad shuffled in behind her. We all went to our rooms to change out of our clothes and put on everyday ones. As I entered the kitchen, I almost stepped on the blob of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream that has spread out from its container. I mopped up the mess and ran hot water in the sink over the carton on to melt the rest before I could toss it into the garbage can. I loved making it swirl round and round like the water circling down and around in the drain form the movie “Psycho.” Since it was Sunday night, I carried the two big metal garbage cans from the back yard to the front so the Town sanitation truck could pick them up Monday morning. My Mom fixed Dad a sandwich from the leftovers. At 8pm, we all gathered around our RCA television console set to watch the Ed Sullivan Show on Channel 2 - like we did every Sunday.
- May 5, 2008 - Broadway Baby or "I'm walkin' here!" The Freshman & Sophomore Years 1966 -1968
In the fall of 1966, I attended Cathedral College, a preparatory seminary for the Archdiocese of New York. Cathedral College was based on the old 6 year school system of 4 years of high school combined with college freshman and sophomore years. The final 6 years of junior and senior college years and 4 years of graduate work would be at St. Joseph’s Seminary up at Dunwoodie, Yonkers, NY. The school itself was on the corner of West End Avenue and W. 87th Street. The dorm, known as the Bishop Ford Residence was on W. 86th Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West. The West Side was not what it is today, the residence of the up and coming sophisticate. It was a raucous, dangerous, teeming collection of artists, pimps, drug dealers, Bolsheviks, liberals, homeless, struggling actors, musicians and students. The avenues were lined with decaying storefronts of Irish bars, Flea Market Thrift Shoppes, Chinese Laundries, Greek Coffee Diners, Jewish Dairy restaurants and SRO hotels. No one ventured above W. 72nd Street then known as Needle Park unless you lived up there. After graduating NFA, Newburgh Free Academy, I enrolled myself for the study of the Roman Catholic priesthood. Of course, this was a big step for a boy to take. My mother, who you think would be ecstatic about being the mother of a priest, was not. She wanted me to get a job and contribute to the household. I had higher aspirations, priesthood or not and this conflict would escalate with her in the coming years. The Bishop Ford residence was set up for the students from the upstate counties of the diocese. Classes were held Monday to Friday and we were free to go home on weekends. The residence was a classic five -story limestone townhouse -first floor was parlor and dining room, second floor chapel and the upper floors were the sleeping rooms. Since I was a freshman and sort of upper class to the high school attendees, I got to share a dormer room on the top floor facing 86th Street. My two roommates were Bob and Charles. Bob was in the top bunk, me on the bottom and Charles had his own single bed. There was a sink in the room, one closet and one communal bathroom per floor. The day my mother dropped me off was very emotional. My father waited in the car since he could not come in due to his Parkinson’s disease. My mom came up and as I dropped my valise on the floor we both burst into tears. It was the first time I would be away for any extended period of time. My roommates were great guys. I am still in touch with Bob who lives in North Carolina. Every night, Bob would hop onto his top bunk, reach down and shake my hand and say good night when it was lights out. I dreamed of Charles in his single bed and longed to be next to him. I lost touch with Charles years later after an intense homo-erotic friendship.
Me, Dad and Mom
I was so excited to be back in New York City after my forced exile in Newburgh. I didn’t need a car to get around and I was free from my parents glare. The subway was my chariot. During the first week of classes I snuck out to see my first Broadway show at a Wednesday matinee. For $3.75, I saw “Funny Girl” starring Mimi Hines who was great and had just replaced a then unknown to me, Barbra Streisand. I became a Broadway Baby and attended theatre at least once a week. As a freshman, I got the keys to the front door so I could sneak in at night after curfew. Some of the shows I saw that first year were: Fiddler on the Roof Man of La Mancha Hello Dolly Cabaret The Rose Tattoo Marat/Sade Annie Get Your Gun The Apple Tree Right You Are, If You Think You Are I Do! I Do! Ilya Darling Galileo Hallelujah Baby! Mame Royal Hunt of the Sun The School for Scandal Cathedral College was a great place to study. I received a classic education of Latin, Greek, English Literature, Philosophy etc. I had 32 classmates from all walks of life form Staten Island to Saugerties. They were mostly middle class immigrant sons: Irish, Italian, Polish, Puerto Rico and one Negro. We studied hard, prayed a little and played a lot in Central and Riverside Parks. We wore jacket and tie to school and prayed in the chapel before dinner every night. Our Irish cook and sort of den mother, Mary prepared wonderful home-style meals on the first floor dining room of Bishop Ford. The two priests who resided with us never ate with us. In the evenings, sometimes we pulled all those college pranks what adolescent boys are wont to do from shorting of sheets to water balloons to snapping of towels in the showers. We night we entirely dismantled a freshman room and set it up in the basement. To save the five dollar round trip bus fare to and from Newburgh, I stayed the weekends at my grandmother’s for the first few months. I would take the R train to the last stop at 95th Street in Bay Ridge Brooklyn. My Polish grandmother would make dinner for me and my two uncles at 7pm. My uncle Eddy owned a fruit and vegetable store in the Sunset Park section and my Uncle Joey was a night watch man at Metropolitan Life. By 8pm both were gone for the night, one off prowling and drinking with his doll and the other uncle off to his nightshift. I was alone with my hard of hearing grandma who went to bed at 8pm. The first weekend there I turned on the radio after grandma went to bed and listed to very first opening night of the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center. Since grandma was asleep and deaf anyway, I turned up the volume way up and listened to Samuel Barber’s, new opera, “Antony and Cleopatra”. It was difficult opera but Leontyne Price was in glorious voice. I fell asleep on the kitchen table listening to Cleopatra’s final aria: “Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have Immortal longings in me.” On Saturday, I helped my uncles in their store while my grandmother washed my clothes by hand and hung them out to dry from the 3rd story clothesline strung across the alleyway. It was an old fashioned fruit and vegetable store. The Old Norwegian ladies would select their produce and I would weigh it on a big white enameled scale that hung from the low ceiling. I would calculate the price in my head and write the amount on a small brown paper bag and put apples, potatoes or turnips in it. After all the weighing was done, I grabbed a brown shopping bag, took the pencil from behind my ear, licked the point and wrote all the amounts down ant tallied them up. I made change, put all the purchases in the shopping bag and handed the bag to the lady. I always was courteous and remembered to thank them very much and wish them a good weekend. Sometimes I delivered the packages and got a quarter tip. My uncles gave me 5 dollars and I used this to see my beloved Broadway shows. The store was closed on Sunday as were all the stops except for the drugstores.
Before Saturday supper, my grandmother would polish my Uncle Ed’s shoes and in a childlike game sort of way, he would say , “Thank you Mama”, and give her a one dollar. She would then hand him a white stiffly starched shirt and he was off gallivanting around. I was alone again and I would often be susceptible to Saturday night fevers. Sometimes I went to the Harbor Theatre on Fourth Avenue to catch a double feature. Sometimes I walked under the Verrazano Bridge looking for love. I never found love by the Straight and Narrows. Sunday was 10am mass at the neighborhood parish church, St. Patrick’s. We all ate a full Sunday dinner at 2pm that grandma had been preparing since the day before. At 3pm with my little suitcase filled with clean clothes and sheets, I made a dash on the R Train to St. Patrick’s Cathedral to sing Vespers with the rest of my classmates. That night I usually went to the movies in Times Square with Bob. Sometimes it was a road show presentation with assigned seats and intermission – “The Sand Pebbles” or “Hawaii.” I was intensely lonely that fall on the weekends. I was so happy when one my classmates, Paul asked me to come with him to visit his folks in Brewster New York one weekend. His parents were very Waspy so I felt I was visiting the set of “The Donna Reed Show.” I did my own laundry for the first time in their basement as Paul and I fooled around a little. We did manage to catch the movie “Valley of the Dolls” that weekend. Wow did that movie affect me. "When did I get, where did I
My love of theatre crossed over to the other side of the boards. I was assistant director on our school production of “Inherit the Wind” and “Murder in the Cathedral.” Every Christmas tide, the graduating class hosted Gaudeamus. This was a musical celebration held on the last day before we all went home for the holiday. I wrote and directed our musical satire based on “Damn Yankees” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” In my version of the musical mélange, we made fun of our Greek professor Father Wilders who is tempted by the devil and goes back to classical times to coach the Olympics! The highlight was a filmed sequence within the play which I edited ala Richard Lester. The cast got dressed in togas which I borrowed from my Sacred Heart Parish Passion Play costume collection and did a madcap version of the Olympic Games farcically reenacted in Riverside Park. After Christmas break, I began going back home to Newburgh for weekends. I would grab my weekend suitcase, rush out of choir practice class at 2pm, catch the Broadway IRT Downtown local, ran like a banshee through the underground connecting tunnel to Port Authority to catch the 2:45pm ShortLine bus. My parents picked me up at 4:45pm and dropped me off at my weekend job at the A&P. I worked in the Produce and Deli Dept. till 9pm and worked all day Saturday till 7pm. I was lucky to have this standing weekend arrangement with the A&P Manager, Mr. Smith who had take a shining to me. I was a very good employee. Of course, this was money to pay for the bus fare and all of my theatre going. After work and a quick bite to eat at home, it was usually a movie with my Mom at the local Squire Cinema on Saturday night. I was slowly turning into a surrogate husband and I could feel the jealousy of my mother growing as I escaped every Sunday back to the city. That winter was when I first saw the film, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” I had heard or seen nothing like it before on the screen but the tensions, language and the dynamics eerily reminded me of my parent’s many furious arguments. Martha: What a dump. Hey, w-what's that from? "What a dump!" George: How would I know? Martha: Oh, come on, what's it from? You know! George: Martha… Martha: What's it from, for chrissake?! George: What's what from? Martha: I just told you. I just did it. "What a dump!" Huh? What's that from? George: I havent't the faintest idea. Martha: Dumbbell.
So was the beginning and the end of my first two years of college. Bob would leave the studies for the priesthood after we graduated and go on to Marymount College up in Riverdale to become an engineer. He married a lovely nurse, moved to North Carolina and they had three handsome boys. In 1969 Charles and I continued on to St. Joseph’s Seminary and continued on....like the symbiotic relationship between Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo in "Midnight Cowboy." Continued on, little white, valise in hand... continued walkin' on... "Everybody's talking at me. (click) (To be continued)
- April 28, 2008 - South Pacific "Again and Again"
The Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, South Pacific, has been a great artistic and emotional influence on my life.
1948 – The Original Cast I was born in 1948, the same year as the publication of James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific. The following year Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein turned it into the hit Pulitzer Prize winning musical - the story of love and war; the clash of cultures on the other side of the world. My Uncle Joey on the Polish side of my family, saw the show and owned a set of 78’s starring Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza. As a young boy whenever I went to grandma’s house, Uncle Joey would play the music for me. Yes Uncle Joey along with my Uncle Eddie were bachelors and lived with my grandma in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. This was not an unusual arrangement due to the housing shortage after World Word II and the social mores of the time (pacé Harvey Fierstein re: A Catered Affair). I didn’t know the story at all but I would sit in front of the Victrola and play the songs over and over again in thrall to Mary Martin (I guess it’s in the gay genes). My mother would sing “Some Enchanted Evening” as she washed the dishes or set the table. That song I think is my favorite of all of the many hits from the show for many reasons. The first is the lush sweep and beauty of the song and the second is that my Uncle Joey and my Mom would sing it to each other. Looking back I can see why it would resonate to them. My mom would have just met my dad and my Uncle Joey alas was alone and I suspect homosexual. Both were looking for that “stranger” who would take them away to “that special island” and make their life beautiful.
1958 - The Movie Version The movie version came out in 1958 in Todd – AO -which according to Cole Porter meant “glorious Technicolor and stereophonic sound”. I almost saw the film for the first time in the Bronx with my Aunt Mary but she passed it up since she “didn’t like war movies” So I got to see it with my mother at the Broadway Theatre on a Wednesday afternoon in downtown Newburgh, New York. Of course, one never paid attention to moive starting times so my mom and I entered the theatre about 30 minutes into the film, just in time for “Bali Hai.” We sat down in the darkened theatre. My mother started to mutter as she was wont to do and kept looking at the screen and then back up to the projection booth. “Something is wrong with the picture!” she blurted out. “The colors are off.” She poked me and whispered rather loudly that I should go out and tell the manager to fix it. I embarrassingly approached one of the theatre matrons and she brusquely said nothing was wrong and escorted me with her flashlight back to my seat When I got back into the auditorium, indeed the film looked fine. My mother did not believe my answer until the next song started and the screen started to go through a kaleidoscope of lush color washes. Of course, now we all know about the notorious color gels Joshua Logan had used to enhance the mood when anyone sang which received great critical distain. So the laugh was on her or Josh when we walked in to see a yellow to purple to amber Juanita Hall singing on the beach. I loved it. This is also when I fell in love simultaneously with Rossano Brazzi as Emile de Beque and John Kerr as Lt. Cable. Rozzano was the handsome older cultured gentleman, a stranger I would like to meet one day. I almost came in my pants when John Kerr wore his little white trunks during the song “Happy Talk.” I swear to this day you can see the outline of his dick when he jumps in the lagoon for the underwater sequence - “Happy Talk” indeed. And how can I not fantasize as a gay teenager over the SeaBees played by all the hunky men that Joshua Logan always cast in his shows. This was one closeted homosexual director if I ever knew one. I could only imagine the guys he had on stage in his musical “Wish You Were Here” which features a swimming pool on stage. I think I saw the movie 8 times in 1958/59. I even dragged my hard-of-hearing Polish grandmother to the RKO Dyker Heights in Brooklyn to see it. Somehow she heard it all and we both walked out weeping. Gathering my neighborhood pals together, in 1960 I put on the show in my best friend's garage. We all lip-synced to the soundtrack and I played Bloody Mary but in my heart I was Emile. And in 1969 I saw a production at Guy Lombardo's Jones Beach Theatre, with an elaborate Boar's Head Ceremony and I think even a exlploding volcano!
Since then I have seen the movie at least 12 times on VHS, Laser Disc and DVD.
1968 – Lincoln Center Revival
I took my mother to see the show at Lincoln Center when Richard Rodger himself headed up a two year musical summer season of shows. I was going to college in Manhattan and Lincoln Center had just opened two years prior. It was a great production directed by Joe Layton and starred Florence Henderson and Giorgio Tozzi who had dubbed Mr. Brazzi’s voice in the movie. As a teenager I was looking for that “stranger “in every crowded room I entered not to mention the restrooms of the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center. I was always on the prowl in the city from street to subway to theatre to park. One night I wound up in the Rambles in Central Park. My dorm was only tfour blocks away and on a hot summer’s night like a lemming I instinctively knew where to go. The scene was something like the movie “Night of the Living Dead”. Men roaming the woods like Zombies looking for love in the all wrong places. As I was nervously meandering, a group of Hispanic boys jumped me and threw me to the ground with a jack knife at my throat. I had no money of course. They took my Timex watch that I had just received for my High School graduation from my godfather Uncle Joey. They wanted to take my class ring but I somehow talked them out of it. They laughed in my face calling me a maricon as they disappeared into the evening. They were not the strangers I had in mind. Well they were cute but let’s not go there. However in a weird way this incident t may have saved my life since never again would I go to the Rambles and ever put myself in that kind of jeopardy. This was very lucky since the dawn of the 1970’s gay liberation was about to burst. I avoided the specter of Aids that lurked in the darkness and the underbelly of the city in the 1970/80s..
2008 – Broadway Revival Gary and I celebrated our 25th anniversary in February 2008 and we included “Some Enchanted Evening” in our musical review. I guess I was Emile and he was Lt. Cable confusing the two plot strands! In April we saw the revival of South Pacific currently playing at Lincoln Center. The revival at Lincoln Center curiously left me cool. I was not involved with the show which is ironic since I can hardly watch the movie without tearing up. What was wrong? Kelli O’Hara was great as Ens. Nellie Forbush but casting Emile de Becque younger diminished the tension and heightened sexuality of a younger American woman falling in love with an older Frenchman in 1942. There was no frission between them. Also casting Lt. Cable younger makes his singing of “Younger than Springtime” incredulous since how can he feel younger than springtime when he is a kid himself. There was no sense that war had thrown these characters together and the hot house atmosphere of the South Seas was making them take chances in their lives and fall in love with abandon. I had more danger in my ramblings in Central Park looking for my strangers. And where was Josh when you needed him to cast the sailors with men and not with pasty white preppy chorus boys playing grownup. They culd have at least used body makeup to suggest tans. Yes, the music was played gloriously but I think they were grandstanding and ostentatious when the orchestra pits opens up to reveal the players. “Hey look at the 30 of us! Wow see how a nonprofit subsidized theater can throw away money.” Wagner would not have been pleased. He put the musicians in the pit for a reason to achieve Gesamtkunstwerk.
Finale Ultimo So why does South Pacific speak to my soul? - Being a cockeyed optimist is a nicer way of saying I am cynical - The great fantasy of meeting a stranger across a crowded room even if it is only a one night stand and falling madly in love or lust. “Washing that Man Right out of your Hair” that u met the evening before and doing it all over the next night . Seizing the moment cause who knows tomorrow you may be dead and you don’t want to be singing. “This Nearly was Mine” at your funeral Working out 5 times a week so I can be “Younger then Springtime” which is why I work out 5 times a week to have "Honey Buns." Being on the beach with a bunch of macho sailors Finding that special island: Coney, Fire or Manhattan. And singing at the top or your lungs on top of a double-decker bus heading down Fifth Avenue: “I’m in love, I’m in love, I’m in love, I’m in love, I’m in love with a Wonderful Guy!” And he is sitting next to you singing back.
Some enchanted evening
- April 14, 2008 - Camp David 1975
In between my Off -Off Broadway directing jobs, I paid my rent as a teller at Bank Leumi, an Israeli establishment on Fifth Avenue and 47th Street in Manhattan. I would work there from 9 to 5 and then direct showcase rehearsals from 6pm to 11pm. It was a long day and a long subway ride home to my place in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Ars gratia artis As a stood at my teller window in front of a wall of the skyline of Jerusalem made out of cut-up pieces of carpet, customers would que up on one long line and then wait for the “Next Available Teller.” There was one particularly good-looking Israeli boy who somehow always got to my window. I caught him a couple of times letting other people go ahead of him while he pretended to be fumbling, filling out a last minute deposit slip. We would demurely exchange pleasantries as I slowly counted out his large deposits, delaying our transaction as long as possible. Soon enough, our hands would ever so lightly touch as I handed him back his receipt. He would finger the diamond ring on his pinky finger as he sweetly whispered thank you then look deep into my eyes and coyly say Shalom. It was like a prison visit of some white trash girl visiting her man at Sing-Sing as they stole a forbidden kiss as the warden watched on. Or a scene from “Midnight Express” where I was the young American captive and he was the handsome swarthy Turkish guard. My prisoner of love was named Sol, short for Solomon and he worked in his family business in the Diamond District on W. 47th Street across 5th Avenue. He hated his job but was compelled by his strict Jewish Orthodox father to assist him at the Exchange. He longed to open up a floral shop. He always smelled of lavender scent. Our exchanges went on for a half a year with the visits becoming more brazen and our conversations longer. I gave good customer service. One frustrating morning visit, Sol asked if I would meet him for a drink on Saturday night after Sabbath was over. I hesitantly agreed. He suggested we meet at a bar called Camp David. That seemed like an ironic place for our rendezvous since Israel and Palestine were negotiating peace terms at The White’s House’s Camp David. I wondered excitingly what negotiations he had in mind to bring us to détente. Camp David was located on the fashionable Upper East Side on Lexington Avenue. I soon discovered it was a gay bar. I was 26 and surprisingly I had never been to one and was very scared about going to one now. I was sexually precocious in many ways but not “out.” I was socially inept at meeting guys in public outside of illicit places. That Saturday afternoon I almost backed out in going if it were not for my roommate, Loretta’s insistence that I grow up and go. Should she have said, “grow out!” Showered and coiffed, I hopped into my metallic chocolate brown, Toyota Corolla and drove into Manhattan taking the Brooklyn Bridge and up the East River Drive. There was no anticipated traffic; I got there so early I had to walk around for an hour before our meeting time of 8:30pm. I circled the block may times to see who was going in and out. I didn’t know then that NYC gay bars didn’t start hopping till much later so I saw no one go in or out. I finally got up the nerve to enter the bar. It was a small place, dark, clean and contemporary in style. I took a barstool at the far end of the bar by the TV as All in the Family” was just about over - “Those Were the Days.” An older mustachioed bartender in white shirt and black tie brought my requested cocktail. There were a couple of guys at the back of the place sharing a table and quietly chatting, all very civilized. I was not set upon and stolen by a homosexual white slavery den. I downed the first gin and tonic quickly and was on to my third in no time. It was 9:15pm and I was playing with the lime and stirrer in my fourth gin and tonic when the door opened. A sexy woman decorously dressed in a gray skirt and blouse with black pumps walked in. She was clutching a leather handbag as she peered into the darkness; I didn’t think lesbians came to this bar. I only knew the Park Slope flannel and denim variety lesbian. Guess this is what they called a “Lipstick Dyke.” She slowly sidled down the bar as she moved closer to me. Of all the empty seats, she took the stool next to mine. I hurriedly pretended to look discreetly away as to not to have to interact with her. The final moments and theme song of The Mary Tyler Moore Show was playing on the TV. “Who Can Turn the World on with Her Smile?” I froze as I got a whiff of lavender. “Hi Tony, sorry I am late.” I quickly turned in disbelief to see… Sol. “Hey Sailor, see anything you like?” I dropped the lime on my lap. I held tightly onto my empty lime-less glass and stirred as I looked down at his pinky ring. It’s a wonder the glass didn’t explode in my hands. “H-h-hello Sol,” I finally stammered. “You can call me Sheba, tonight” she laughed lightly. But her laughter, amplified by my surprise, fear and nervousness, seem to fill the bar. Were the bartender and that couple at the back laughing too - Laughing wildly, wild strawberry lipstick mouth agape, handle bar waxed mustache bouncing up and down like some Ingmar Bergman surrealistic sequence I might have seen at the Thalia. I did not know what to do. The G&T and the lavender were going to my head as if to swoon- So I escaped…. Without a word, slapping down a few dollars on the bar, I ran out onto Lexington Avenue, jostling an East Side doyenne and her poodle. I had my keys out before I got to my car. I almost flooded the carburetor as I pounded the gas pedal. I sped down the F.D.R Drive and through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, having to pay a toll to get home faster, safe and sound. Thank God, Loretta was out on a date. I jumped into bed, turned off the lights and pretended to sleep till I finally did. Sunday morning, Loretta sat on my bed and asked me how my date was. I said it went ok but it didn’t work out. She made breakfast for me and a Latino guy named Ronnie she met the night before a at a disco. The three of us making an odd sight. I am sure the guy thought I was her lover and was ready to pounce on him for a threesome. I was so frustated that maybe I did give off that scent. Loretta had good taste in men. Later that afternoon the thought of Monday sprang up! What was I to do tomorrow when he showed up at my teller window? So of course, I called in sick.I went to work on Tuesday and waited all day for the siren’s call. Sol did not come in that day or the rest of the week. He never came to my window again; fumbling on line if he had to, so he could avoid me. Eventually, he stopped coming to the bank and another runner for his company made deposits. Looking back at Solomon and Sheba that night, of course I knew I acted silly and not wise.. I had behaved like a silly little girl in the big bad city. Of course, it was a shocker seeing Sol as a She but I could have at least stayed a bit and got out gracefully. It was not till fall that year that I dared to go to another gay bar. I was tired of tricking on the streets. So I picked a safe haven to return to the scene of the crime. Julius, a bar in the Village was not so threatening since it seemed like a place where the old queens went to die. I could be a chicken and not chicken out. Eventfully I graduated to other bars for the living and the quick: Uncle Charley’s, Wildwood, Tys and Boots and Saddles. I wised up pretty fast as the Bicentennial year started in 1976. I reveled in a newfound freedom of liberation. I was ready for any drag queen that came my way. It was a time to throw my hat in the air, spin around and start living…
“Love is all around, no need to waste it
April 7, 2008 - DISCO DAZE Summer of 1974
The summer of 1974 was the start of my Disco years in New York City. I had just completed my MFA thesis at Brooklyn College and was now on my own. I was staying temporarily with my good friend Dennis who was the set designer for my graduate production. He lived in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn before the lesbians, yuppies, chic shops and million dollar brownstones - the Park Slope of Irish Bars, Chinese Laundries, Food Coops and middle class teen rednecks. “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” Dennis was a tall and lanky, very bohemian, sensitive artiste – straight. He was very generous and open to let me room with him in his tiny studio until I figured out my life. We shared a pullout sofa bed in a tenement walkup on Seventh Avenue and First Street, facing a noisy public school yard. It was a platonic relationship even though I wouldn’t have minded a bit of “gee was I drunk” one night since he was handsome Pole with a kielbasa to prove it “Ah Memories, Light the Corners of My Mind.” Armed with my recently acquired MFA in directing from Brooklyn College, I was ready to take New York by storm and become a famous Broadway stage director. For the summer interim however, I received a scholarship to study directing at the Shakespeare Institute in conjunction with the Stratford Theatre Festival in Connecticut. Lodging and classes were at the University of Connecticut at Bridgeport. Evenings and seminars with the cast were held at the theatre in Stratford. Bridgeport was an iconic 1960’s urban renewal mess of a city. One side faced the then polluted Long Island Sound, one side faced the PT Barnum Museum, and the other side faced ghetto squalor.
“Livin’ Just Enough for the City”
Loretta I Discovered Disco and Loretta in the summer of 1974. Loretta was also attending the “institute,” as we mockingly call it to this very day. Loretta was a 22-year-old English Major from the hollers of West Virginia, a girl destined to escape her Mennonite ancestry and blossom into a then unknown Hilary Clinton-like dynamic woman. She was a demure high school English teacher in the one-stoplight town of Romney who fell in love with New York City and soon fell in love with me. We became the Disco version of Scott and Zelda as we escaped the “institute” every weekend for madcap escapades in the city. “I Can’t Help It, If I Am Still in Love with You”
Our favorite hangout was The 82 Club in the East Village on E. 4th Street. The pre- “Rent” East Village and The 82 Club were the height of depravity. This hideaway was as close to a cabaret of the Weimer Republic as one can imagine with drag queens, chanteuses, superstars and us. Like Sally Bowles and Christopher Isherwood we played on Saturday nights at being totally decadent and in love. Early Sundays mornings, we would crash on Dennis’s pull out sofa, all three of us exhausted in drunken abandon. Dennis was usually the first to rise, and he would get up and moan, “I need my coffee” and make us the first cappuccinos we ever tasted. On Sunday night, Loretta and I would sleep in each other’s arms all the way back up to Bridgeport on the local Metro North train, waking up at every stop to chant with the conductor: Stamford! Darien! Westport! “You’re My First, My Last My Everything” The beat, the drive, the rhythm of Disco turned me into a dancing fool. I never was the teenager who watched Dick Clark’s American Bandstand dancing around the living room or went to the school dance. I don’t remember the exact song or moment it possessed me but suddenly at 26, the music swept over me and took control of me like the ballerina in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, The Red Shoes or like a manic Sicilian girl with twirling skirts, dancing herself into a trance to the Tarantella trying to ward off the malocchio.
“Rock the Boat Baby” I bought a portable record player (the boom box of the day,) and became a proselytizer of dance, a young Pan, a Disco Dionysus. I spent money I did not have n 48’s and LPs. I had to have the latest extended DJ version of a song, which you could only buy at a store on Carmine Street in the Village. I had Disco parties in the UConn cafeteria after our studies or after we retuned late from an evening performance at Stratford. We danced at Club 82, on the beach of the Sound, in the scene shop at Strafford and on the hardwood floors of Dennis’s apartment. Loretta and I even danced to our own inner beat on the empty D train as it crossed Manhattan Bridge high above the East River. “Dancin” in the Street” The Disco beat was steady and pulsing. It’s trance like mantra released my inhibitions. It was if I took an elixir and turned me into an impish Puck/Donkey of Midsummer Night’s Dream or a devilish, grinning Mr. Hyde. You didn’t need to know dance steps and the movement was sexy and fluid. You could be dancing with anyone in the swirling crowd around you. I sometimes pretended Dennis was my partner as I danced around an unsuspecting Loretta as we all spun around her “Disco bag” she had recklessly thrown down on the dance floor of Le Jardin, ourr own Arden Forest.
“Get Dancin’” We studied Shakespeare all summer and we all had to present a project for accreditation. In retrospect I must have been unconsciously inspired by my dancing craze and summer love. I directed a choreographed/acted version of Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis. The poem was accompanied by the music of Arnold Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night – a very Anthony Tudor/Agnes DeMille dance/drama piece Venus and Adonis comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Ovid told of how Venus took the beautiful Adonis as her first mortal lover. They were long-time companions, with the goddess hunting alongside her lover. She warns him of the tale of Atalanta and Hippomenes to dissuade him from hunting dangerous animals, he disregards the warning, and is killed by a boar. “Must Be the Night Fever” I also fell “a little bit in love” with the director Michael Kahn, while assisting at Strafford. This was the season of his “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” with Elizabeth Ashley, Keir Dullea and Fred Gwynne. He also directed a beautiful production of “Romeo and Juliette” set during the Risorgimento in Italy. I dreamed of becoming Michael’s assistant and protégé and lover. He never did and I never told him. “If You Love Me, Let Me Know,” The dancing stopped one night in August. After our cafeteria dinner, as we listened to “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” from Elton John’s new album. Someone turned the TV on and we froze like figures in a game of “Statues” as we gathered around to hear the rumored news.
“Good evening. This is the 37th time I have spoken to you from this office, where so many decisions have been made that shaped the history of this Nation. Each time I have done so to discuss with you some matter that I believe affected the national interest. I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad. Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office.” “Shame Shame Shame” We all listened in silence as President Nixon resigned on Aug. 8, 1974. And the sun did go down over the Long Island Sound. I can’t say August 8th is the “day the music died.” Even though it was the last days of the “institute my inner beat and Disco were about to explode. We danced and danced all though that hot summer nights in Manhattan, Stratford and Bridgeport. Loretta and I became beloved friends and soul mates. A woman I could love without fear or responsibility and expectation – a masquerade, a pas de deux, and shadow play of Romeo of Juliette. How fitting we were studying in the hometown of PT Barnum, appearing in our own Midway Freak Show with acts of curiosity and sideshow romance.
Sam, Barry and me “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” Loretta returned to Romney, West Virginia only to move in with me the following year with a her friend Fran. I returned to Park Slope and started to notice an influx of women in overall and flannels. Thirty years later, straight Dennis came out. Timing is all. He now has a lover who looks curiously like me. Ahem.
Garfield Place
“Rock the Boat Baby” The Disco Years had just begun with nights at Studio 54, Peppermint Lounge and the Sanctuary. The era of liberation and sex was dawning - poppers, pot, polyester shirts, and potluck Disco parties in my first apartment on Garfield Place. I rented it with Dennis’s younger brother, Robert and “gee we did get drunk”. I was the “new boy was in town” – not Tony Manero of Saturday Night Fever strutting down 86th Street but Tony Napoli strutting down Broadway like a character in Fame. I was dancing down the street and catching the night fever, dressed in platform shoes, white tight pants, Nik Nik shirt with gold chain bracelet or Puka Bead necklace and blow-dried styled hair. I was ready to take NYC by storm. “Stayin’ Alive”
Loretta, Fran and me
- March 31, 2008 - Passion Play A Short Drama in Three Acts with Epilogue by Anthony Napoli and the Holy Spirit
Produced by the Sacred Heart CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) Directed by William and Lillian Andersen (a drama teacher and his over-weight wife)
Scenery by Joey Joe, the school janitor Costumes by Beulah Politti, and her staff of old Italian ladies Music by Miklos Rosza as adapted and taped by Fr. Dominic Leo, the parish priest.
PLACE: Action takes place in two different areas and times: TIME: Newburgh New York - 1964 Backstage and dressing rooms of Gallo Hall in the basement of Sacred Heart School Jerusalem – 30 AD The Upper Room, Golgotha and a Tomb
CAST OF CHARACTERSJUDAS………………………………………………………….......................................... Anthony Napoli
CHRISTUS………………………………………...............................................................…Marc Burnett
MARY MAGDALENE……………………………………….............................................….Betty Davis
ANGEL…………………………………………………………..............................................…Louie Falco
ROMANS, PRIESTS, APOSTLES………………..........................................….…Teen youth of the CYO
Authors Note: It is the weeks before Easter. Anthony after attending the parish’s Passion Play the previous year is in rehearsal for this year’s production. A passion play is a staging of the last days of Jesus Christ, usually from the Last Supper to the Resurrection.
Sacred Heart’s Passion Play is held in the school basement, called Gallo Hall. The hall was named for one of the founding pastors and is also the site of Saturday Night Bingo, School Talent Shows, Class Assemblies and Social Events.
The spectators sit on metal fold out chairs set theatre style with a center aisle facing a typical small grammar school stage. The CYO, Catholic Youth Organization, produces the production and the cast is comprised of the parish club teens - sons and daughters of second generation Italians.
The hall is darkened and lots of colored gels should be used to set the stage. There is no scenery to speak of beside a long draped table for the Last Supper; a large wooden cross for the Crucifixion and a paper mache tomb made from a large refrigerator cardboard box for the Resurrection.
All the music is from the LP collection of Father Leo. It is comprised of cuts from the soundtracks of the film scores of Miklos Rosza’s “King of Kings” and “Ben Hur”. It has all been copied to an unwieldy cumbersome TEAC tape machine and is played over the school sound system.
Beulah and her old Italian ladies of the church have made colorful costumes for the temple priests; plain rough canvass robes for the apostles; leather skirts for the Romans and a white cotton vestment with matching loincloth for Jesus. Wigs and beards are fashioned from strands of knitting wool and mop rope.
William and Lillian Andersen, a married couple that teaches at the local Junior High School, direct more like traffic cops. They move the crowds around the stage to make tableaux vivants. Lillian loves her pizza breaks during rehearsals. William likes to teach the boys how to apply stage makeup.
The style of acting and mise en scene should be reminiscent of Luchino Visconti - operatic and passionate not unlike a silent movie staring Gloria Swanson and Ramon Navraro. Think Vincente Minnelli and his staging of “The Nativity” for the Christmas Show at Radio City Music Hall minus the camels. ACT ISCENE ONEDressing Room off stage of Gallo HallANTHONY Hey Marc, does my beard look all right?
MARC Hell, yeah it looks like Anne Marie’s pussy but upside down!
ANTHONY How would you know? (Adjusting his beard) MARC I know more than you think I know…
Here, can you make sure my makeup is covering the back of my neck?
ANTHONY Let me do your back now so it will be easier later for the crucifixion. We don’t want a white pasty Irish Catholic Jesus on the cross.
BETTY DAVIS Have you seen my jar of oil…(she stops) …Hey, what’s going…?
ANTHONY W-w-w were just going over lines. MARC “One of you shall betray me”
BETTY DAVIS Yeah? Well get it over it Mary! (She chortles) SCENE TWO The Upper Room
CHRISTUS Take and eat. This is my body. Take and drink. This is my blood of the new covenant. (All share the bread and wine except for Judas) MARY MAGDELENE I am not worthy even to wash thy feet. (She washes his feet and uses her hair to towel them dry)
CHRISTUS Verily I say into you, before a cock crows three times, one of you shall betray me.
APOSTLES Is it I? Lord, is it I?
ACT II SCENE ONE Dressing Room
ANTHONY It’s gonna feel cold.
MARC Hey watch it! You’re dripping it all over my costume! ANTHONY What costume? (Laughs)
MARC Do my legs too.
MARC Do I look sweaty enough? I love the way the light shines on my body when I hang up there.
ANTHONY No, Shh! You need more.
Hold on, I missed a spot.
MARC Line… Line What’s’ that line? Damn …“Into thy hands I commend my spirit” Oh yes. (Breaking the freeze, he runs off almost late for his entrance) ANTHONY “Lord, I am not worthy” (Cue the ROMANS and the TEMPLE PRIESTS)
SCENE TWO Golgatha
CHRISTUS They know not what they do.
TOWNSPEOPLE Crucify Him!
ROMANS Isn’t he one of them?
HIGH PRIEST For 30 pieces of silver, he betrayed him with a kiss! (Eerily looking like Fagin from “Oliver Twist”, he spits at Judas)
JUDAS I have sinned against God and Man!
CHRISTUS Into thy hands I commend my spirit.
ACT III SCENE ONE Backstage MARC Whew, I am glad that’s over till next year. (ANTHONY helps MARC down from the cross. He grabs him around the waist and lowers him)
ANTHONY Damn you’re heavy. You smell like a baby’s bottom.
MARC “In three days I will rise again”…
ANTHONY
“Lo today you will be with me in paradise!”
SCENE TWO A Tomb MARY I have brought my oils to anoint my Lord but they have rolled the rock away and there is no one in the tomb.
ANGEL Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here? He is risen as He said!
CHRISTUS
Do not touch me! I have not yet ascended to my Fathter. Remember me. I will be with you always even onto the end of time.
MARY Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
JUDAS I am damned!
EPILOUGE Dressing Room MARC Grab me a towel pal.
ANTHONY Hey dummy, you missed a spot.
“Oh Lord, I am not worthy… Another openin’, another show From Philly, Kansas and Balti –mo” Hey, I think you need to take a shower to get the rest.
MARC My Dad is out of town– wanna go up to my house and hang? You can help me get this crap off.
ANTHONY Sh-Sh-Sure
“A chance for stage folks to say hello Another openin’ to another show. Strange dear, but true dear When I’m close….”
BETTY Hey Marc! You were great tonight! You shined! Mrs. Andersen has invited me out for some pizza? Wanna come along? (She poses in the doorway) MARC Wow, Yeah!
I am starving! Yeah lets do it. (BETTY and MARC start to exit but stops…) Hey Tone, do you mind…?
(A long embarrassing pause)
ANTHONY Oh s-s-s-ure, go ahead, I am tired anyway.
“That’s why the Lady is a tramp.”
MARC “Night Anthony.
ANTHONY ‘Night Judas. “Same time, next year?”
MARC Huh? (ANTHONY doesn’t answer as MARC and BETTY exit)
ANTHONY
“Fish gotta swim Birds gotta fly… I gotta…” A FIGURE
Where is Marc?
ANTHONY “He is not here.”
A FIGURE Hey, you missed a spot on your back. ( he draws near)
CURTAIN
******************************************
2008 POST SCRIPTThe following year, Anthony decided to write his own Passion Play called, “The Road to Golgotha.” I discovered a copy of the script in that bottomless cardboard box my sister found in the family attic this past summer.
He made Judas a sympathetic character that acts with Jesus to fulfill his plan of redemption. How curious that it is so similar to the controversy over the recently discovered “Gospel of Judas”. Both have the same basic premise.
The CYO never performed it.
After re-reading the script, I thought it best that is stay unpublished and remain on the bottom of the box of ones youthful attempts. However, it inspired me to write the above Pirandellian “Mystery Play” based on true incidents.
- March 18 & 24, 2008 - Holy Week 1950 -1960's
Easter 1968 Karen and Me Newburgh, NY
My family celebrated Easter in traditional Polish style while Christmas always reflected the Italian side of the family. In the Christian religion, Easter Sunday is the most important holiday of the liturgical year since the resurrection of Christ is the foundation of all its beliefs. Since my mother was a devout Polish Roman Catholic, Lent and Easter were very important to her and therefore to us. The season of Lent started on Ash Wednesday, the day after the indulgent holiday of Carnevale or Mardi Gras. We went to church that day to receive ashes on our foreheads – a sign of repentance and mortality. Lent lasted forty days in preparation for Easter - a symbolic time referencing the Old Testament tale of Moses and the Jews wandering in the desert and the parallel New Testament story of Jesus fasting in the desert on honey and locust, preparing himself for his ministry. We were all urged to “give up something” for Lent like candy, movies, alcohol or sex. At Catholic School, the nuns gave us small cardboard Lenten Boxes (that you had to assemble) to put coins in to save the pagan babies of China. We were allowed only one full meal per day with meat, which meant a lot of cheese, tuna and peanut butter sandwiches for lunch! On Fridays there was no meat at all. Going to Howard Johnsons on Fridays for the unlimited Fried Clams was a special treat and didn’t seem like a penance at all. On Easter Sunday we were always outfitted in a new suit and hat symbolizing our rebirth and fresh start in Christ. My mother took us to Robert Hall Store in Newburgh, NY to buy a new suit, which came with two pairs of pants. She would get a new dress and an Easter Hat (bonnet). You did not go to Church on Easter Sunday morning with anything old on! Our parish of The Sacred Heart Parish was mainly comprised of Italian Americans so the Polish celebration at home was in contrast with the Mediterranean flavor of our church's liturgical celebration. For Lent, all the statues of the many saints were covered in purple cloth like ladies wearing veils to cover their heads for vanity. For forty days the organ was silenced, no bells rung and no weddings held. As an altar boy I loved clacking the large wooden clapper only used at mass during this season. For Forty Days and Forty Nights all of the parish repented, gave alms, fasted, and attended the “Stations of the Cross.” We cleansed ourselves of evil and the pleasures of the material world in order to enter the Promised Land. We had fattened up the weeks before Lent to get us ready for the Fast and we all looked forward to Easter and the great celebration and feasting.
Easter 1956 Mom, Michael and Me Fort Hamilton Park, Brooklyn Palm Sunday After Mass everyone received Palms in memory of Christ’s entry on a donkey into Jerusalem when the throngs waving their fronds greeted him. I would take mine home and make little crosses of them. We would wear these on our lapels and put them around the house usually stuck onto mirror frames or over our beds. The old, Italian ladies of the parish made and sold elaborate Palm crosses to put on the graves of loved ones.
Monday, Tuesday and Spy WednesdayThese three days were spent shopping for fish f or Good Friday and Polish meats and groceries for the big meal on Sunday. We went to Commodore’s on Broadway to buy homemade chocolate Easter Bunnies, jellybeans and yellow Peeps. Spy Wednesday was named for Jesus hiding from the magistrates and the priests of Jerusalem.
Holy ThursdayThe evening service commemorated the washing of the feet of the apostles by Jesus and the Last Supper. At the end of the service came the stripping of the altars of all cloths, flowers, candles and adornment. The door of the tabernacle was left open and the Blessed Sacrament was transported downstairs to the basement of our church to a special repository. The atmosphere in the main church for the next few days reminded me of Shakespeare’s sonnet, “bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.” Since ours was an Italian parish our repository was quite gaudy. Lots of candles, aluminum foil, palms, kneeling angels in adoration framed the altar where Jesus was in wait till Sunday. One very old, Italian lady, we called Penny Annie, stayed all night in the basement to keep Jesus company. After the Thursday night mass, we would visit Newburgh’s other two parish’s repositories to gain a special indulgence: St Francis Church for the Polish immigrants and St. Patrick’s for the Irish of course.
Easter 1970 Karen and Me Newburgh, NY Good FridayThis is the most somber day of calendar, the day the Lord was crucified. There was no school and my parents came home from work at noon. No music or TV or Radio was allowed to be played at home. I think it is called “Good” Friday, because without the death of the Son of God there would be no salvation so it was good. This is a sort of ironic Christian logic not un-similar to “if it rains on your wedding day it is good luck”. From noon to 3 p.m. in the afternoon, the duration Jesus spent on the cross, we would attend the service of readings on the Passion. Some called it the “Seven Last Words.” Mass was forbidden to be celebrated this day and of course it was a fast day so it was fish for dinner at 5pm - that evening back to church for the final Stations of the Cross. Most Catholic churches held “Stations of the Cross” services every Friday evening during Lent. These centered around thirteen depictions of the passion of Christ hung around the church in chorological order from Pontius Pilate to the Crucifixion to the Laying in the Sepulcher. At each station the priest would stop in front of each picture and read and pray. At the 11th Station - “Jesus is nailed to the cross” - I always remembered the line: These barbarians fastened him with nails, and then, raising the Cross, leave Him to die with anguish on this infamous gibbet. For a long time I thought gibbets had something to do with turkeys. We all droned the famous Bach Chorale, “O Sacred Head Surrounded by Crown and Piecing Thorn.”
Holy SaturdayThis was a busy day of house cleaning and cooking that started at 7 a.m. Our home was scrubbed top to bottom and my once-a-year job was to wash all of the windows - our Goyim version of the ritual cleaning and ridding of the Passover chametz. Mom baked the ham, boiled the eggs and kielbasa and made potato salad. In the afternoon we dyed our Easter Eggs using a Paas brand coloring kit. You had to dilute tiny colored tablets in white wine vinegar. Like Proust, whenever I smell white vinegar, I think of Holy Saturday and times past. We inscribed our names on the eggs with a Paas wax crayon. All three of us children got an Easter Basket filled with all of the sweets we had bought at Commodores and our colored eggs. In the evening was the great Easter Virgil Service that had to begin after sundown. We forget how much our liturgical days, calendar and rites derived from the Jewish tradition. We all assembled outside in the church parking lot, holding unlit candles with makeshift cardboard holders to prevent drips later on. I used to love it when the hot wax dripped on my hand and I would eat it off.
Easter 1959 Me and Karen
The priest struck a flint to start the blessed fire to light the big Pascal(lamb) Candle that would burn till Pentecost(50) days later. All of our candles were lit from this one spark. We followed our pastor into the darkened, quiet church. Three times he would stop while processing down the aisle intoning on a higher scale each time: “Light of Christ!” We all chanted back as we took our seats in the dark, “Thanks Be to God!” When we got to the “Gloria” part of the mass, the lights were dramatically turned on and all the church bells were rung for the first time in forty days. I went wild with my communion hand bells. Ushers had been stationed by all of the Lenten covered statues and with a stick with a nail on top of it, they whipped off the purple cloths. Boo! Then a huge white sheet hanging in front of the altar was torn down like the rending of the veil in the Great Temple of Jerusalem when Jesus died. This curtain revealed the resplendent high altar filled with hundreds of lit candles and Easter Lilies surrounding a statue of the triumphant resurrected Christ. The choir and organ sang out: “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” to the rafters as incense wafted throughout the nave. This was such an overwhelming dramatic and emotional experience as the music, the incense and heat of the candles blasted out through us parishioners. It was like the rock was rolled away on Easter morning and all of creation shone out enveloping all in a Bellini-St. Teresa-like-ecstasy. I believe this is where my love of theatre and special events was born.
Easter SundayWe got up at early at 7a.m. and opened our Easter Baskets. All dressed in our spring finery it was back to church for the Children’s Mass at 9 a.m. For most parishioners, it was difficult to understand our Italian accented pastor's sermon but I had no problem since my Aunt Mary spoke the same way! After mass, we stopped at the neighborhood Italian Pastry shop for cannoli to have at our afternoon mea. Easter lunch was at 1 p.m. with Baked Ham as the centerpiece served with kielbasa and horseradish. Even cleaning up all the dishes and pots after dinner, we stayed dressed in our new clothes for the entire day. At 3 p.m. we drove back into Newburgh for a walk in Downing Park to see the flowers and my father’s favorite pastime of feeding the ducks in the pond.
Easter 1960 Michael and Me Downing Park That evening, eating our jellybeans and caramel filled chocolate eggs we gathered around the television and watched some Biblical epic. At 9 p.m. we all went to bed, sated and exhausted but not before we neatly hung, folded and put away all of our new clothes. Christ was in Heaven and all was right with the world.
Easter MondayI would get up extra early on this day around 6 am. It was Dyngus Day! It is a Polish tradition for the boys to get up early so they could douse the girls with water as symbol of baptism of a new life in Jesus. I am sure it was based on some sexual pagan rite too. First I would sneak to my mother’s room and throw a small pan of water on her. She pretended to be asleep and would scream and feign anger. I then slowly crept up the stairs and doused my sister Karen who was sound asleep and screamed too and not with unreal anger.
Easter WeekThe rest of the week was filled with the debris of eggshells, aluminum foil wrappers from the chocolates, squashed jellybeans that had fallen to the floor and trampled by our shoes. We all enjoyed variations on the leftovers. I particularly liked scrambled eggs with chopped up ham and kielbasa. We continued to water our Easter plants till they died usually around Pentecost. The following Saturday I vacuumed up the green cellophane grass which had fallen out from our Easter Baskets and had somehow always found their way into the corners of our living room. The Sunday after Easter was called “Low Sunday” after the high celebrations of Easter. At home and at church, what an apt name that was.
- March 10, 2008 - Travels with My Aunt 1959
The Bronx Nonna, Baby Michael, Me, Cousin Viola, Aunt Mary & Uncle Nick
My Aunt Mary was a life force in my childhood. Well no one called her Aunt Mary. We all called her Titsie! This was a corruption of Tzia, Sicilian for aunt, but as a child I pronounced it TIT-ZEE. Unbeknownst to me, this was a great joke. Aunt Mary had a great pair of knockers, as Bette Midler would say, so TIT-Zee was an appropriate malapropism. She wore Lana Turner-tight cashmere sweaters, jungle red lipstick, and was the spitting image of the great Italian actress Anna Magnani. She spoke English with gusto in a thick Sicilian accent. My aunt was a consummate cook and I have never tasted a better meatball than the perfectly round ones she made. My Polish mother came close since she was under her tutelage and was ordered by my father to cook Italian. Aunt Mary prepared full meals every night for her husband, whom I called Uncle Nick. Sunday dinner at 1pm was the main event for all the family: macaroni, with meatballs, sausages and braciole followed by roasted chicken with rosemary flavored potatoes and escarole sautéed in garlic with lemon. Dishes were cleaned up, dried and put away. The table was cleared and re-set with mixed nuts; finocchio, espresso and store bought Italian pastries. Then we would start all over again in the evening with sandwiches made with the leftovers. We never went out to an Italian restaurant. Why would we? Indeed, I don’t remember my aunt ever going out to eat. Nothing came up to her standards.
Famous Italian Star Anna Magnani On a cold November weekend in 1959, my parents had yet another one of their bitter fights so my Dad and I were stayed with my Nonna on Beaumont Avenue in the Bronx. Aunt Mary and Uncle Nick lived upstairs as was typical of Italians in a average middle class Bronx tenement building. That Saturday night, Titsie looked at me knowingly and asked if I wanted to go to the movies with her. In those days, one never checked a schedule for movie times. You just went to the theatre and walked in and caught the film in progress. You stayed till the movie started over. Hence the phrase: "This is where we came in." It was a chilly, damp eveing as we drudged up the gray dirty snowy streets of Fordham Road. I was dressed in a red/black checkered wool plaid winter coast, my aunt in chartreuse overcoat and colorful kerchief. She puffed on her Camel cigarette like the "little engine that could" going up the steep Fordham Road hill. My aunt didn’t just inhale; she sucked the smoke in like a vampire and made a lip smacking popping sound as she exhaled. She did everything with gusto. We crossed under the Third Avenue El as the subway cars careened and shrieked around the tight corner of the Sears & Roebuck Building. Up the hill we went passing many small emporia: a haberdashery that sold ladies lingerie, a hosiery store with nylon stockings in neat little cardboard boxes, a cigar shop and pawn place with those three golden balls hanging over the doorway. We stopped first at the Valentine Theater on Valentine Avenue. Last Train from Gun Hill was playing. It was as a Western but I was confused since I knew there was a Gun Hill Road in the Bronx so how could this be a Western? As my aunt looked at the lobby cards, I looked longingly up Valentine Avenue to Jahn’ s Ice Cream Parlor, hoping my aunt would get the hint. They were famous for their "kitchen sink" ice cream sundae. "Too much shoot ‘em up," she said sounding eerily like an Italian John Wayne. Right up the block was the RKO Keith Fordham, a huge movie palace. My aunt said she didn’t like war movies so we didn’t get to see South Pacific. Past the army recruiting station, over the Grand Concourse with Krums famous Candy Store and the Loews Paradise, rounding the catty cornered huge Alexander’s Department Store for a few more blocks to the second-run little movie theatre, the Lido. And lo and behold, guess was playing that epochal night? Auntie Mame! My aunt paid her 75 cents adult admission and my 35 cent children under 12 admission - no popcorn, too expensive! We walked in as Mame Dennis was "hung" over in bed with her attendant nephew Patrick. Auntie Mame is an iconic movie for gay men starring one of the actresses in the homosexual pantheon of divas, Rosalind Russell. Roz was a hard-hitting actress, strong, tough almost masculine in her drive with acid wit. His Gal Friday behind her, her Mama Rose of Gypsy was still to come. How did my Aunt Mary know to take me to see that movie out of all the others? Maybe it was just coincidence or maybe Titsie just knew best. Roz as Auntie Mame
How ironic and momentous was this? Almost like Oedipus meeting the Sphinx and receiving his fateful knowledge. Little Anthony, gay boy in the making - sitting in a darkened movie theatre next to his Italian Neorealim Aunt - watching Rozalind Russell as Auntie Mame. Was this the crossroads where it all began? "Live! Live! Live! Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!" "This is where we came in", Aunt Mary announced as she bundled up her coat and marched up the dark, dark aisle of the Lido. Out we went into the cold, the Jerome Avenue El to our right, farther right was the original Loehman's where once my Aunt dragged me into a communal dressing room to try on a prized acquisition. Dazed, blinded by the snow, over the Concourse and through the turf of The Wanderers, we went down the sloping hill of Fordham Road. I slowed down like a puppy on a leash that does not want to go home as we crossed Valentine Avenue. Then my Auntie Mame gave a shove to the left as she dragged me around the corner to Jahn’s. Sitting at a booth, we shared a hot fudge sundae. She looked across the formica table, stared me deep in the eyes and said: “I’ma your Aunt Mary, don’ta you forget it.” How could I forget it? I would remember what she said to me again in 1972 when she took me in for three years to live with her and my Uncle Nick when I went to graduate school. We didn’t have the "kitchen sink" that night; I had everything else but... Life is a banquet and I have lived my life every day like my Aunt Mary - braving the elements to see a movie, standing over the stove watching the sauce bubble, savoring the leftovers, snatching up a bargain with brio and shouting Aha! And inhaling life and exhaling with a gusto.
Live! Live! Live!
- March 3, 2008 - The "March" of Time
|
