Summer Vacation 1975

As this epic winter of 2010-2011 grinds on, my bloggy friends all over the interwebz seem to be playing host to daily visits from the black dog. I wish I had a magic wand that could sweep away the dark clouds above their heads, and magically transport them to the brilliant sunshine, and magical blue waters of Dufmanno Island in the South Pacific. Unfortunately, my superpowers are confined to the “power of description”. So instead I will spin another story about sunshine, and magical places and hope that it suffices to give you a few minutes of escape from the cold and snow.

So come along with me and the rest of the 20 Prospect Clan, on our Summer Vacation 1975…

The 1973 Plymouth Fury

In the summer of 1975 the 20 Prospect family piled into our Forest Green Metallic 1973 Plymouth Fury and set sail for Florida. It was to be an epic vacation for the clan, a 2 week tour to sunny Florida. As a family we had never ventured further away than Pennsylvania on a family vacation, spending most of our holidays in close proximity to our Western New York homeland. But in winter of 1975, Mom and Dad saved their money and planned to introduce us to the world. Well, a good chunk of middle America and the Southeast at least.

Dad never took the direct route anywhere. That was for novices lacking in imagination and creativity. No, he spent weeks planning our route and having a AAA Trip Ticket assembled for our adventure. The southbound route would seek out 4 lane interstate highway as much as possible, taking us West on I90 through Pennsylvania and into Ohio, turning southward through Kentucky, and Tennessee, before angling back East into Georgia and Florida. Our return was to be a straight shot up the Eastern Seaboard through Georgia, the Carolina’s, Virginia (which at the time was “for lovers”) Maryland, Pennsylvania, and home.

And so, before dawn one July morning in 1975, we set out from Batavia on the New York State Thruway to begin our 3 day journey to Florida. Mom had roused me from sleep at 4 am, and the excitement of the trip was not quite enough to keep me awake once we had made the requisite stop at the Dunkin’ Donuts around the corner, for coffee and donuts. I slept the first 45 minutes in the car as the sun began to rise, ensconced between Dad & Mom in the front seat, while my Bruddah, and two Sisters shared the backseat. I awoke as we pulled into the Angola service center for the first bathroom break. It was the first of many wonders, a building built between the north and southbound lanes, with enclosed pedestrian bridges over the highway from the parking lot. The thrill of watching semi trucks pass beneath me at 55 miles per hour was about as good as life could get for a 7 year old boy.

Like the cockpit of a space capsule it could take you boldly where no kid had gone before...

The hours in the car passed slowly. The comic books I brought along for the trip gave me headaches to try to read, despite the plush, loping handling of our land yacht. Entertainment consisted mostly of scanning the horizon for other amazing sights, like fields of grapevines along the shore of lake Erie, or blooming fields of Chrysanthemums behind the “Mums” restaurant in North East, P.A. The wonders of nature continued as we reached Ohio, and discovered that the rest stops along the interstate were equipped with pit toilets. Oh the excitement! Oh the smell!

I can’t remember where we stopped that first night. I can only remember it seemed like we’d been on the road for over 12 hours. Perhaps because we had. The bypasses around Cleveland, and Columbus seemed to last forever. For a state that looks so small on the map, Ohio takes an eternity to cross.

The entertainment on Day 2 consisted of a game to be the first to spot “Stuckey’s” signs along the road side. Points only counted in you shouted “STUUUCKEEEYYYS!” at the top of your lungs. Between this, and the road noise from the open windows it’s a wonder we had any hearing left.  Did I mention that the Fury did not have air conditioning? Yes, six people in a car on the open road through the bible belt in the sweltering July of 1975 is a smell that one can never forget. It is burned into my memory, just like the lyrics to “Midnight at the Oasis”. While Wikipedia claims it was released in 1974, the song by Maria Muldaur, a classic piece of 70’s schlock, played about every 30 minutes on our AM radio during that trip.

STUCKEYS!!!!!

Relief from the heat came from thunderstorms in Tennessee, which unfortunately required us to roll up the windows. I sat on the floor of the passenger side in front of the floor vent feeling the cool breeze and road spray on my face. It was a tad moist inside our rolling green terrarium to say the least. The second evening we stayed at a Travelodge in Knoxville, that blessedly had an outdoor pool. Much swimming, and rejoicing.

This was the summer of my Fried Egg sandwich fetish. It was all I would eat in the restaurants along the way. In the rural America of the mid 70’s, McDonald’s were a rarity, and a place considered not suitable for daily meals. I mean really, you had to stand to order. No, road cuisine consisted of Howard Johnson’s, Sambo’s, Lums, and local diners. There was no such thing as non-smoking. You ate in a blue haze of Salem, and Winston smoke, and the food was served by women named Stella in brown and orange smocks. It you were lucky, they had a peg game on the table to entertain you while you waited. The whole decade was orange, brown and yellow, including most choices on the menu. Somehow, and for some reason, my parents humored me by politely requesting a fried egg sandwich with nothing on it at every restaurant from New York to Florida. Somehow, and for some reason, these polite bee-hived southern women humored the strange looking Yankee waif, and for that I will be eternally grateful.

Home of the World Famous Fried Egg Sandwich

I can still remember the excitement and thrill of the crossing the state line into Florida, and looking to be the first to spot a palm tree, or orange grove. It was an exotic, other worldly place. We spent over a week traveling in Florida. We visited Cypress Gardens, and took in the water ski show, back when the place was just gardens and a ski show. We visited Clearwater, and marveled at the little lizards running around pool side at the motel. We stayed in motels with outdoor swimming pools, and I played with kids from South Carolina, who had strange, exotic accents. We ate peanut butter cheese crackers, and Tom’s Pork Rinds from the vending machines before bed. We fought over who would be the first to break the paper seal on the toilet seat in the room. Or who would get a quarter for the magic fingers on the bed. We went to the Ocean, and collected sea shells, and played on the beach.

Oh the thrills and excitement of flowers!

The centerpiece of the vacation was a visit to Disney World, which was still in its infancy. I closed my eyes and screamed my fool head off on Space Mountain, and crawled from the car crying when the ride was done, much to the amusement of my elder siblings. We rode the carousel of progress, and the Pirates of the Caribbean. Toured the Haunted Mansion, and ate waffles for breakfast on Main Street U.S.A. I’m not sure who enjoyed Disney more, me or my parents. They loved the place, and would return many times in the next 30 years, with the grand kids.

The monorail disgorging itself of indigestible polyester

Even our image of the 1890's reeked of the 1970's

Welcome to Tomorrowland, where all people will dress in Harvest Gold and funny hats

But not everything went well on that vacation. While waiting in line for Captain Nemo’s Undersea adventure, I had to go to the bathroom, and while I was inside, I missed the launch of Apollo – Soyuz in the sky to the east. Something I will regret until the day I die. Later that day my 18 year old Bruddah wandered off and got separated, resulting in much frustration for my folks. He didn’t turn up until we got back to the car after the fireworks. Just the first of many rebellious acts on his part.

History is made with the final launch of the Apollo Program

Meanwhile the site of all that water is giving my bladder an uncontrollable urge

We visited the Cape Canaveral after the launch, and toured the museum there, before heading north for home. I don’t remember much about the return trip, aside from hellacious traffic jams passing around Atlanta, with nothing to look at but Kudzu, and a filthy dirty Ramada Inn in South Carolina. After we returned to 20 Prospect, I pined for the adventure of the family vacation. I would look over the map of Disney World again, and again, wandering through Adventureland, and Tomorrowland, over and over in my mind. I would ride my bike down the sidewalk to the southern corner of Prospect Avenue, and stand looking out onto Oak Street, thinking “a person could take this street South, and eventually end up in Florida. What an amazing world.”

We would return again in 1976. This time in our new air conditioned Chrysler Newport, and without my Bruddah, who was working a summer job to save up money for college in the fall. The AM radio had moved on as well, and now played “Afternoon Delight” by the Starland Vocal Band all the way there and back that Bicentennial Summer. The world was red-white-and blue, and we would celebrate July 4^th, 1976 at Busch Gardens. We were seasoned travelers now, and had added in Ft. Lauderdale, to the staples of Disneyworld and the Kennedy Space Center. That would be the last of the big family vacation. My siblings were graduating one by one, and soon it would be just me and my folks taking the mid summer trips around the country. Looking back on my childhood vacation, it’s little wonder that I would someday take to the open road like a duck to water. As much as my roots were planted deep in the soil of 20 Prospect, a part of me always thrilled at the thought of being shaken from sleep at 4 am to begin another epic journey to faraway lands.

The Future as Seen from 1975

The Edge of Seventeen – Revisted

Walking out of my office this morning, I caught a whiff of a colleague’s overpowering scent of Polo, and found myself mysteriously transported back to 1985 again. Climb into the wayback machine, and come with me…

They say that the most potent of all of the human senses is our sense of smell. While sight, sound, taste and touch can all evoke memories of our past, there is something unique about the sense of smell that makes its connection to our memory stronger, and more vivid. I have experienced this many times. Put me within 20 yards of mothballs, and I am immediately transported to my Grandmother’s house. Put me near fresh cut grass during the dusty days of late August, and I can almost feel the pain of football 3 a days. So I find it highly distracting when a co-worker of mine douses himself with Polo by Ralph Lauren, and proceeds to fumigate the office with memories of 1985. Like a red shirted character on Star Trek I am suddenly beamed down to a hostile planet where I know I am doomed.

The year 1985 could have been the high water mark of my life. In fact, it had all the makings of it. When it began I was in the 2nd semester of my Junior year at ND, and had suddenly found myself in the midst of a flowering social life which seemed unattainable a mere 6 months earlier. I had a steady girlfriend, more close friends than any man deserves, and access to alcohol that only increased with each passing month. By spring of that year every week seemed to promise a new experience, and a new coed with whom to become acquainted. By all rights I should have spent the rest of my days in Batavia living in the long shadows of my life at 17. How I managed to escape that fate, and wind up happy, and somewhat well adjusted, on the frozen prairies of Minnesota is still a mystery to me. In fact, attempting to solve that mystery by retracing my steps backward to the very beginning is half the point of writing this blawg.

So these periodic blasts of a dated cologne result in a flood of memories that send me off in a reverie trying to grasp the essence of what I felt at the time. The spring of 1985 was an early one that seemed to linger deep into June. With each passing week the temperature inched upward, the world became greener, and began to vibrate with life. My braces had come off after 6 years of suffering and pain, and my self esteem soared. Never before had anyone ever considered me to be “good looking”, but suddenly it seemed as if there was a different, maybe even handsome, face staring back at me from the mirror. The same could be said for all of us that year. We had turned the corner from gangly teens, to young adults, and we were thrilled to get out and try out our new equipment.

I am a born pessimist. For as long as I can remember, I have viewed every good event in my life with the suspicion that it was fleeting, and would soon be followed by Faulkner-ian loss. If ever there was such a thing as Western New York Gothic, I embodied it. But that spring of 1985, for the first, and maybe the last time in my life, the future seemed boundless. My heart still aches remembering it.

Photo copyright atsjbosma @http://www.flickr.com/photos/87185102@N00/2436554995/

It was a spring evening, with the first breath of summer sighing through the trees. It was a Friday, and after school we had borrowed one of our parent’s cars, and driven a classmate who could pass for 21, out to a convenience store on East Main to buy beer. With thrilling success we had managed to acquire 2 cases of beer. Well, if you can classify Old Milwaukee, and Old Milwaukee Light as beer, but at the time we weren’t exactly selective drinkers. Being 16 and 17 year olds, we were limited in our range and mobility. Getting a car after dark, was pretty much out of the realm of possibility, so we had to do some quick planning to figure out where to store this beer, and where to drink it after nightfall. After some discussion, we decided on the woods behind the Blind School. It was a central location, accessible by a short walk from most of our houses. So we drove the dirt driveway back behind the school that afternoon, and stashed our illicit treasure under some upturned concrete blocks, in a pile of dirt and construction waste from a recent construction project. Then we returned to our homes for supper hoping that no one had spotted us.

That evening, shortly after supper, we began to gather in small groups at various houses. The guys started showing up at 20 Prospect on their 10 speeds before, ahem, “going to the movies”. The girls began to gather at Bella’s house on State Street for the same ostensible purpose. Then as the shadows began to lengthen, we started making our way to the woods to rendezvous. The spot we had chosen was a wooded hillside that sloped down towards the north, and an undeveloped area of scrubby growth that extended to the Thruway. The nearest homes were on Burke Drive, over a hundred yards to the west, through a wooded area thick with undergrowth. It was unlit and very secluded, well off the beaten path for any passing kids, or adults.

Looking back it all seems so innocent, but at the time we felt like hardened criminals committing a felony. Retrieving our warm Old Milwaukee, we began passing cans around the circle, and talking in hushed, conspiratorial tones. Being kids it didn’t take more than half a can for us to begin feeling the magical effects of alcohol beginning to tickle our consciousness. I had never felt more mature in my life than I did sitting around that circle, talking and laughing with 8 other guys and girls. It was the first real clandestine “party” we had ever thrown, and it would not be the last.

Sitting there in the gathering dusk, the city began to disappear around us, until it was just the nine of us there in the dark, our senses alive like never before. Goosebumps appeared on my arms, as much from the excitement of the moment as it was from the coolness of late May. The girls huddled close to the guys, and we began to look at each other in a new light. Up until that point the friendships between us had been reserved and platonic. But as the night went on, and the cans piled up, we became aware of each others presence in a visceral way that we hadn’t ever noticed before. Like blind kids, the dimness and the alcohol had suddenly magnified our other senses. We could feel each others presence, even in the indigo darkness. It was an awakening for us all.

As summer came on, we would repeat this scene many times, in many places, but our relationships had begun to change. With each progressive step, our familiarity increased, and romantic intrigues developed. Over the course of the next 5 years the couplings, and breakups would become too numerous, and intertwined, to keep straight. But sitting there on the edge of 17, the future stretched out like a trackless wilderness. We had no idea what lay before us, and we tingled with anticipation, poised and ready to step forward into the virgin woods and begin blazing our trails.

That was 25 years ago. We had no idea of the twists, turns and the dead ends that we would wander into. One by one our paths would diverge into a forest of our own choosing, and slowly the path behind would be overgrown with weeds and burdocks. But the memories are still there, somewhere far in the back of our minds, until something, say a colleagues bottle of ancient cologne, flips a switch and it all comes flooding back. When it does, there’s not much that can be done except to pause, smile, and marvel at the journey.

The Interloper

The first thing you notice is the scent. Before you have even stepped onto the production floor, the smells of the factory hit you. Oil, grease, and cleaning fluids, combine to form a perfume that hangs in the air. You have been inside of many of these places, in many different countries, and the odor is always the same. You could say it was the smell of labor, but you have not earned the right.

The sounds are the next things to hit the senses, the hum of machinery, the thump of presses, mix with the ever present beep of a fork lift somewhere in the distance. Voices die in the noise, so you bend close to the speaker as he shouts above the din. You catch every third word, and nod as if you understand. Even if you heard the words, you would not fully understand what it means to stand there amidst the clamor for hours, days, and years until the sounds blended together into a beat as comforting as a mother’s heart.

Your eyes dart around to find your bearings. Everywhere you look is a maze of machinery, bodies, and metal, stacked and placed according to a design you cannot decipher. Tagged, numbered, inventoried, everything has its place, everything but you. As your eyes adjust to the swirl of light, and movement, you see the eyes. They are looking at you. Impassive, but curious, like deer in the woods, they watch your movements through the forest of steel.

You stop at a station, and your guide gestures, and explains where the man ends, and the machine begins. You put out a hand to shake, and touch flesh the strength and texture of wood. You know they  feel your weakness. There amidst the jungle of machinery is a locker, adorned with photos, and a few stickers. Look close and they tell the story of a life outside of these walls. They serve as a reminder that they live apart from the machine, although it is easy to believe they are always here. Three shifts a day, the hum and rattle of metal hardening them until they stiffen like statues.

You think of the statues in your own past, Mother’s, Father’s, Aunt’s, and Uncle’s, who stood for days at their machines, and dreamed of escape. They bought your freedom. You look into their eyes, and feel ashamed. What have you done with it? Where has your education taken you? You talk, and calculate for a living. Your words and math hold the fate of many in your hands. A few words, and string of numbers and someone would come and cut them away from their machines. The wires cut, the hoses dangling, as the machine is boxed up and sent away where someone hungrier will be yoked to it.

You do not deserve such power. You have not earned it. Their eyes stare back at you, and you look away.

They know why you have come, and they say

nothing.

The Nightmarish World of Sid & Marty Krofft

As all 7 of my regular readers already know, I am a child of the 70’s. I came on the scene in the summer of 1968, just as America was beginning its great slide into obscenity and decay, and race riots were burning through our cities, and our souls. As miserable as the 70’s seemed at the time, when viewed from the distance of 35 years people have a way of convincing themselves that it was a idyllic Eden. A simpler time, when our national enemies were clearly identified, boy’s did not wear hair gel, and only sailors and bikers wore tattoo’s.

This is how nostalgia works, and as this blog illustrates, I am nothing if not a junkie for nostalgia. It is the sweetest drug I know, more powerful than heroin, and twice as addictive.

But my childhood wasn’t all Sears tuffskins, and rubber toed Keds. Even now, looking back after 35 years, there are still some things about the 70’s that make my blood run cold. Yes, even in the idyllic confines of 20 Prospect, there were horrors too unspeakable to mention after sunset. I am referring, of course, to Sid and Marty Krofft.

<Shudder>

The name still gives me chills. For those that are too young to remember, Sid & Marty Krofft were the producers of a string of children’s television shows so horrible, and terrifying, that I am reluctant to even list them all here. Like all abominations in my life they too hailed from Canada originally, but somehow made their way into the U.S. Television Industry, where some drug addled executive thought it was a good idea to let them unleash their bloodcurdling dreams on a generation of petrified children.

Nothing in my life has disturbed me more than the world of H.R. Pufnstuf.

This is your brain on drugs

Oh, the horror.

The plot of the show was basically this: A little boy is lured to a sinister island from which he can never escape. Once there, he is pursued by living trees, and an evil witch named “Witchiepoo”. You know, the sort of typically lighthearted plot that plays upon children’s darkest fears, and dresses them up in Day-Glo, psychedelic puppetry.

I am 42 and this picture still gives me the willies

So began my life long fear and hatred of clowns and puppets. Evil creatures that I was convinced would not rest until they had stolen my soul and condemned me to eternal torment at the hands of their foam headed minions.

Welcome to Hell Jimmy!

Was I alone in this pathological fear of H.R. Pufnstuf? Don’t even speak to me of Sigmund the Sea Monster, or Sleestak. At least the children in those shows had other human beings to console and protect them. Poor Jimmy had nothing but a talking, magical hash pipe flute.

Hmm... suck on this Jimmy, and it will all feel better...

I have read that roughly 25% of all Generation Xers have been treated with antidepressants for depression and anxiety disorders. If there were any justice in this world, their medical bills would be paid from the coffers of Sid & Marty Kroftt.

Harvester Avenue

The great concrete bulk of the building still looms over the street. Its heavy shadows a cool relief from the heat of the sun.

The tracks where trains once flashed by on their way from New York to Chicago are empty, and hidden in weeds. My car bumps across their rails, as I pull down the street.

Across from the old factory, the wrought iron fence of the cemetery continues its centuries long surrender to rust. The factory and the cemetery, surround me like two shores of a river as I drift past.

Three generations of immigrants squeezed into this space between work, and death. Walking up from the South Side every morning, with their exotic meats and slabs of homemade bread, wrapped in wax paper, carried in buckets, and empty tobacco tins.

If I close my eyes, I can see their ghosts in denim, and overalls.

Three blocks away they could already hear the ringing, and pounding from within the echoing halls, a world of steel and stone, turning out reapers and threshers for a nation of farmers.

Knife blades of sunlight slant down from the vents in the roof, and pierce the darkness. They stand at the lathes, and presses, and watch the hours drip like beads of sweat from their brows.

My car rattles over the broken pavement, past the bar where they quenched their thirst after a day inside the dark, and dusty halls. Thick hands, and thicker accents were wetted by the mugs, whose drops of condensation fell like tears onto the sawdust floors.

They are all gone now.

The workers to their humble graves in the Catholic cemetery down the street , the threshers and reapers to rust and weeds, the jobs to places where men and women sacrifice limbs to feed their children.

But the great hulk of the building stands.

Its weather beaten face is scarred by the years, and crumbling around the edges, but its heart is still as hard as granite.

A head stone for a city we used to be.

It’s a Family Tradition

Sorry to put a quote from a Hank Jr. song into my blog post title. Not that I’m above a little shit kicking country (I’ve got some old Buck Owens in my CD rotation as we speak) it’s just that you never know what sort of trailer-trash-riff-raff it might attract to 20 Prospect. Although, come to think of it, trailer-trash-riff-raff is a pretty good description of the 20 Prospect clan. Even though we called my Dad’s folks “Ma and Pa”, we weren’t rural hillbilly types. We were brawling, hard drinking, blue collar enthicky types that worked in the factories, and mills of Tonawanda and North Buffalo, and blew the paycheck in the nearest corner bar.

In the case of my Granny (my Mom’s mom) she actually collected her paycheck in the corner bar. In fact, some of my earliest childhood memories are going up to Tonawanda to visit her in the apartment she lived in upstairs of Dick’s Bar, across from the Chevy Plant. She’d take us downstairs where she worked as a bar tender and let me sit on the barstool and drink pop and eat peanuts. So I guess you could say I come by it naturally. You’d better lock the liquor cabinet whenever I get together with my siblings, because we will surely empty it, and our discussion will proceed straight into the gutter.

Take the story behind my current Gravatar for instance.

Can you spot the hidden Mickey?

This is a close up of my forehead. It was taken at my nephew’s wedding reception at Disney World (Yes, my nephew got married at Disney World, someone here got a problem with that!?!) This was about four martinis, and a bottle of Cabernet into the evening. I was sitting at the table with my Bratty Big sister, and my Adorable Nieces, and we were playing “Hidden Mickey”. It was a game we had just invented where my sister was placing the little glitter Mickey’s in her cleavage and asking the cute waiters if they could “find the hidden Mickey”.

Meanwhile my mother was sitting at the table suffering in silence, adding the evening to a long list of offerings she is keeping track of, lest St. Peter miss a few and she fall just short of Gold Elite Martyr status. (Yes, I doubt she even trusts St. Peter to get his job right) She has a point. Even though she’s a conscientious, tea totaling, Saintly Martyr, and my Dad ‘s wild days were over long before they started the family, her children and grandchildren have all got a taste for the demon liquor. But as the title of this post is meant to imply, our taste for booze, and utter lack of taste in everything else, is a long standing family tradition.

When I look back to my grandparent’s generation, I am amazed at just how bat shit crazy they all were. Seriously. Growing up it just seemed perfectly natural that Granny tended bar, and that Pa had a fully stocked bar in his basement, and cases of Whiskey and Brandy in his pantry. Part of the whole fun of going to Ma’s house was to play bartender in the basement with Vernor’s Ginger Ale, and Pepsi, and go through Pa’s amazing collection of brat pack era swizzle sticks from Vegas casinos. (I think the Sahara one’s were the coolest). In fact, the whole basement bar just oozed 1960’s swankiness, right down to the mid 50’s “modern” sectional sofa, lamps and end tables.

Pa died when I was little, and Ma didn’t drink, so for most of my childhood those bottles of Corby’s and Three Feather’s Whiskey, just sat there gathering dust. (As I said before, back then I was a Black Velvet man). Since Ma didn’t drink, the booze meant nothing to her, and it was her standard practice to fill the punchbowl at the holidays with 2 cans of Hi-C and a fifth of whatever was handy. Usually this was a bottle of Pa’s whiskey. This being the 70’s, the parents were content to let the kids drink from the punchbowl, so unbeknownst to us, that slightly tart stingy taste in Ma’s fruit punch was making us little kids drunker than skunks. No wonder we usually fell asleep in the living room shortly after dinner.

You think I’m kidding? Sigh…

Granny moved in with us in the mid 70’s, when she was diagnosed with Emphysema. She slept on a roll away bed in our front living room, and spent her days hooked up to the oxygen tank, sitting in the recliner, crocheting doilies, watching soap operas, and sneaking cigarettes in the downstairs bathroom. Whenever one of my siblings graduated (which was an almost annual occurrence between 1976 and 1980) what was left of her 12 siblings and their kids would come to the party. There would be cases of Genny Cream ale, and packs of cigarettes smoked as they sat at the picnic tables playing Euchre and telling stories. As we got older, we came to understand that they edited out the good parts when we were in ear shot.

When my big bruddah came to visit this summer we sat out on the back porch drinking, and reminiscing. We began adding up the out of wedlock births, bizarre living situations, and bachelor uncles that we never really questioned until years later. Like “Uncle” Bobby.

Uncle Bobby wasn’t anyone’s Uncle, but he lived with Ma & Pa for our whole lives. He had his own bedroom, right between Ma’s and Pa’s, in the three bedroom ranch in Tonawanda. I think he originally had been a friend of Pa’s from his army days, but after Pa died, Uncle Bobby just stayed on living there with Ma as her roommate. Whenever we visited he sat in his recliner in the living room, while Ma puttered away in the kitchen. The men would sit around the TV discussing the latest Bills loss, or layoff at the Chevy plant, while the women pitched in with the cooking, and the kids went downstairs to play bartender. It never struck us as funny that Uncle Bobby was there. He had always been there, listening to his Don Ho eight track tapes, or watching the Bills game on Sunday afternoon.

Dad’s side of the family was the stable German & Croatian mix. Mom’s was the crazy Irish, and French-Italian mongrels that bred like rabbits, and always seemed on the edge of respectability. Assuming that we only know about 10% of all the crazy stuff that their generation did, we were amazed at what professional hell raisers they must have truly been.

Someday, I hope to learn the rest of the stories. Sitting there in the dark, sipping our beers in the flicker of the bug torches, we both agreed that when we die, we hope that heaven is something like this…

You wake on a cold snowy street in Buffalo. Snow is falling so fast and thick you cannot see your hand in front of your face. Through the white static you see a warm light, so you lean into the wind and start walking towards it as the flakes sting at your face like wasps. The light grows until you see it is the neon signs from the window of a corner bar. You walk up the short flight of stone steps, and push open the door, and a wave of steamy warmth washes over you. Shaking off the snow, you look up and see St. Peter standing behind the bar welcoming you in from the cold. You know that somewhere in back, Jesus is shooting pool with Gabriel, and you decide to have a drink to calm your nerves before you head on back to say hello. That’s when you look down the bar and see the faces of all of your parents and grandparents in the blush of their prime, smiling back at you and laughing at the look of shock on your face. The guy on the stool closest to you turns around, and you see that it’s your Dad and he’s got a tear in one corner of his eye as he hugs you, and asks “What are you drinking”. The three piece in the back corner kicks in with a new set of all your favorite tunes, as sung by the long dead singers you worshiped as a kid, and the camera slowly pulls back through the rainbow glow of the neon in the window, and the scene disappears into the snow.

I can’t speak for the rest of you, but that is the heaven that I hope is waiting for me, somewhere far down the road. Until then, I’ll just raise that glass to their memories. Peace.

Bella Ragazza

As I have said many times before, growing up in Batavia it wasn’t so much that we abused alcohol as alcohol abused us. It wasn’t always that way. In fact, until the summer of my Sophomore year at Notre Dame High School I had never had so much as a sniff of alcohol. Well there was New Years 1977 when my parents hosted the one and only New Year’s Eve Party of my life. The next morning while they were still sleeping off of their hangovers I crept into the kitchen and took out the bottle of Black Velvet from behind the bar. (Yes we had a bar in our kitchen. We were Catholic. It came with the statues of Mary)

Anyway, I remembered what fun the adults had been having the night before, and how happy they all seemed, so I thought I would give it a try. So I took a Dixie Cup from the dispenser above the sink and filled it up. Then I took a great big swig and fell onto the floor clutching my throat. As I lay there gasping for air with tears streaming from my eyes the Black Velvet seemed to burn a hole in my stomach. I thought about the Fire Safety guy that came to St. Joe’s every year to show us slides of burn patients, and remembered the pictures he showed us of the kids that ate Crystal Drano. After about fifteen minutes the pain began to subside and I decided that I did not have the constitution to become a 9 year old alcoholic.

Add to that experience that my friends and I spent our weekends playing Dungeons and Dragons and you can understand why it took me so long to start drinking. However, as the stories here can attest, I quickly made up for lost time. I can still remember the first time I ever drank a beer. And like all the wonderful and terrible things in my life it was because of a pretty girl.

She wasn’t just any pretty girl. She was THE pretty girl. The one that I had spent the better part of two years dreaming about and following through the halls of ND like a stalker. I would love to tell the whole story of this girl, but it would take months, and rival War & Peace in length. I am proud to say she is still my best friend and I will spare her that embarrassment for the time being. So for the purpose of this story I will just call her “Bella Ragazza” which is Italian for “pretty girl”.

I met Bella during my freshman year. I had seen her during classes those first few weeks and all I knew of her was that her name was Bella and she was from St. Mary’s. She was a petite little brunette with big brown Sicilian eyes, and I was smitten the moment I saw her. So when she said hello to me as I was walking into the Varsity Football game in Oakfield one Friday night, I almost fainted. I was amazed she even recognized me much less said hello. For my part I think I opened my mouth and mumbled something, but it’s entirely possible I just opened my mouth and stared at her.

Anyway, it was a long time before we became friends. I watched from afar as she dated upper classmen and bided my time. I sat next to her in every class I could and slowly learned how to form actual syllables and words in her presence. By the fall of sophomore year I was even able to hold short conversations with her. She lived on State Street and when I discovered that she walked to school down Richmond Ave. , I started walking to school as well trying to time my departures so that we’d run into each other on the way.

Yes, I moved kind of slow. By the spring of that year I finally mustered up courage to call her on the phone. So one Saturday when I was alone in the house I dialed the black rotary telephone with my sweaty hands, and asked to speak with her. Of course I had a detailed plan to ask some contrived question about Geometry homework lest she think I was stalking her or something. We talked for something like 15 minutes, and I doubt she thought much about it. But I lay on my bed the rest of that day staring at the ceiling and basking in the glory of the moment.

Then came the fateful night of the spring dance…

I had gone alone to the dance to hang out with all the other wallflowers, and watched as she arrived with her boyfriend and several of the popular girls from our class. It was a hot and sweaty April evening, and as the night went on I hoped that somehow, someway, I would find the courage to ask her to dance. Passing her in the hallway I tried to catch her eye to say hello, but she stared right past me, glassy eyed and looking ill. Five minutes later a crowd gather on the front steps of the school to watch as she threw up and various priests and chaperons fumed and fussed around her. It was quite the drama.

I had never been to a party at that point and still thought that drugs and alcohol were dangerous things that the good kids should stay away from, so I was scandalized. I walked home that night so angry that the girl I had spent so much time building a Marian shrine to could be so, so… human.

The next day I decided to call her up and tell her what I really thought of her and how angry I was that she could be so stupid. So with all the righteousness that I could muster I picked up the phone and dialed her number, but a funny thing happened. The person that answered the phone was not some salacious harpy, but a real live girl that was suffering unimaginable humiliation and pain. All I could do was ask how she was doing, and listen as she poured out her soul. We talked for over an hour and when we were done she was no longer some cold, marble Venus de Milo, perched high upon on a pedestal, but a living, breathing person whom I cared about very much. That was the beginning of our friendship.

For the remainder of the school year she was a pariah at ND. None of her friends would talk to her because she had cracked under interrogation by the Holy Inquisition and spilled the names of all the kids that were drinking that night. Her parents had grounded her for the entire months of May and June. Suddenly I was the only friend she had in the world.

Soon our phone calls became a daily occurrence. We would hang out together at school. Even though she was shunned by the cool kids, the geeks and wallflowers in my circle had no problem admitting her to the lunch table. When summer came I would ride my bike over to her house where we would sit on her front porch talking. By the time her sentence was commuted in July, we were even going out in public together. We would meet at the gates outside Dwyer Stadium, where my friend Chris took tickets, and stand there talking with him until the 7th inning. When he got off work the three of us would sit in the bleachers for the last few innings, then ride our bikes to Jerry Arena’s for pizza after the game.

I was in heaven. It was just like having a girlfriend, except for the fact that we didn’t kiss. Or hold hands. Or do anything even remotely romantic. In fact we were about as platonic as I was with my guy friends. I was one of those “nice guys”. Yeah I would have made a great gay friend except that I still wanted her. I still dreamed about her. I was just too chicken to do anything about it. A theme to be repeated over and over in the stories of my misspent youth.

Finally, one fateful evening as Summer was winding to a close, Chris and I stopped by to take her and her friend Janine to the movies. Janine didn’t have a ten speed so the two girls sat on the seats of our bikes and held onto our shoulders as we stood and pedaled. Janine rode on the back of Chris’ and Bella rode on the back of mine. I’m not sure how our plans changed but Chris knew of a “party” that some of his BHS soccer teammates were having in the woods out by North Street Extension. So we skipped the movie and rode our bikes down North Street to the empty grassy field that served as a sort of park. When we got there we found about 10 kids and a couple of cases of Old Milwaukee beer.

After Bella’s night of selling Buicks in front of ND, she had not had a beer. Lord knows Chris and I had never drunk one. But when they were offered we didn’t want to look like dorks so we accepted them, and tried our best to look cool. Not that it mattered it was pitch black out there in the woods. We sipped away on our warm Old Milwaukee and slowly began to feel our cheeks warm, and our senses tingle. I think I drank three whole cans that night and was amazed I was still standing.

When the beer was gone we pedaled Bella and Janine to Pontillo’s where they were supposed to call their parents to pick them up. Then, feeling like James Dean, Chris and I rode our ten speeds back up Ross Street to his house where we sat in the shadows on his front steps marveling at the new world that had opened around us.

There would be no more nights of rolling dice and playing kids games. A door had opened and we had walked through it. From that day forward everything we did was focused on our one and only purpose for living. That was finding girls and beer, preferably at the same time.

Now that I think about it, even 25 years later we still are focused on the same things.

Well, except for the part about the girls. Now it’s pretty much just the beer.

As for Bella and me, even though we live a thousand miles apart we are as close as ever. So as you read this post Bella all I can say is Happy Belated Birthday, and thanks for vomiting on the front steps of Notre Dame all those years ago. Who knew at the time that it would be the start of 27 years of a beautiful friendship? I’m hoping for at least another 27.

Love,
Tom

Top Five

Last week were the first cold days of fall on the front porch. The wind was ripping and tearing at the house, trying to find a way inside. After the monsoon’s we had earlier in the week, I had hoped for a reprise to summer. Instead we got leaden clouds, and a cold wind blowing in from the steppes of Outer Mongolia.  OK, OK, God, it’s fall, I get the point already!

Driving the kids to school the maple trees were flaming orange in the overcast, and already the first few fallen leaves of autumn were swirling down the street, inspiring mopey teenagers all over town to pen poems about death in their journals. Not that I did that when I was a teen. At least as far as you know. (Note to self: burn those old journals in the fire pit tonight)

Last week was Lil’ Miss 20 Prospect’s parent-grandparent lunch, and since Mom and Grandma were in San Francisco I got to be the guardian-du-jour. (I don’t speak French, but I think I just said I got to protect the soup). Anyway, rather than make the 40 minute commute to work, just to turn around and drive right back to school for lunch, I took the morning off to work from home. And by “work from home” I mean “hang out in a coffee shop surfing the internet, waiting for the Used Record store to open so I could loiter and browse.” (Shhh, don’t tell our shareholders).

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Autumn puts me in a pensive mood. I’ve always been deeply affected by the seasons, and fall has always had the biggest impact on me. (Relax. I’m not going to share a poem about death.) Ever since the weather started cooling off, I’ve been playing old 80’s music in the car on the drive to work. My playlist has been kind of limited, as most of my music from college and single days was on cassette tapes, which have gone the way of Victrola’s, and pay telephones. Being a Luddite, it took me until 1994 to embrace CD’s. Then a few years ago, Mrs. 20 Prospect convinced me to get rid of most of my old CD collection of 90’s music. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time as the kids were so little most of what I listened to was Raffi, and the Wiggles. (You know you have arrived as a parent when you drop the kids at daycare, and realize half way to work that you are not only still listening to the Wiggles, but you are singing along.)

Mrs. 20 Prospect bought me an iPod for Christmas last year, and ever since I have been gradually adding back to my music collection. Being a Luddite, however, it took me months to figure out how to operate the thing. So I just want to pause a moment to ask; if Steve Jobs is such a freaking genius, why is iTunes so bleeping hard to figure out? I could do my taxes in less time than it takes me to find and download a podcast. So, instead I loaded all of my current CD’s into iTunes. Well, the ones that didn’t get purged, or have been bought in the last few years. Which meant that my collection was mostly Alt-country stuff like Lucinda Williams, Wilco, The Jayhawks, Son Volt, and old Uncle Tupelo.

So now that I have an iPod, and a half hour to myself in the evenings as I walk the dogs, I have started listening to music again. Lately, I’ve missing been all the old music I used to listen to in the 80’s and early 90’s, which was the first and only time in my life that my tastes in music were remotely topical, and relevant. (That probably had more to do with rooming with a couple of guys that had great taste in music, and working at a college radio station, than anything on my part.)

So I considered downloading some music from iTunes. Of course this had a few drawbacks.

First, I am technically incompetent and not at all convinced that I could do it based on my experience with iTunes.

Second, I am cheap and the thought of paying $0.99 a song seemed way too decadent for my frugal ways.

Third, I am still suspicious of buying downloaded songs. I mean really, what have I bought? I can’t see it. I can’t touch it. I just can’t wrap my little brain around the abstract concept of digital music. What if my computer tips over and all the songs leak out? How would I pick them up off of the floor? (Yes, I fully realize that these questions are on par with an aborigine believing that a camera steals souls)

So for these three reasons I have continued to buy CD’s.

Well, mostly because of reason #3.

My store of choice for buying music in the Twin Cities, is, was, and always shall be Cheapo Records. Besides the obvious reason that the store is named after me, they have the biggest remaining collection of CD’s in the city. Of course, that’s like saying you have the biggest collection of VHS tapes. But, the best part about Cheapo is that married 40 something guys like myself have been forced by their wives to sell off their  CD collections, so the used CD bins are overflowing with 80’s and 90’s music.

So I spent the bulk of an hour perusing the bins, looking for deals as I waited for lunchtime. For 20 bucks I was able to add back a nice portion of the soundtrack of my life. This trip netted me New Order, The Pixies, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and some REM.

So, without further ado, I give you the TOP FIVE songs for morning commute…

5.)    New Order: Blue Monday

4.)    REM: Gardening at Night

3.)    The Jesus and Mary Chain: Just Like Honey

2.) The Replacements: Unsatisfied

1.)    The Pixies: Gigantic

So that’s what I have been listening to lately, which probably explains why this blog has been marinating in stories from the 80’s the past couple of weeks. What have you been listening to?????

Souvenirs

I’ve never been a big believer in Karma. I guess I have just known too many successful jerks in my life to think that our behavior will be rewarded or punished during our time here on Earth. I like to think that God has a notebook and is keeping score at home, waiting for the afterlife to mete out his justice. Sure, there have been times when I have looked skyward and asked “Why me God?”. This is a rhetorical question of course, but one that continues to provide theologians and comedians with good material. Looking back across the gulf of my 42 years, I can honestly say that I was the root cause of most of my own misery. I still am to some extent. After all, that’s where wisdom comes from, or was it character building? I forget. If the workshop way taught me nothing else, it taught me that “mistakes are intelligent acts”. It’s funny, but I never found a lot of consolation in that while I was lying on my bed listening to Simon and Garfunkel in the dark.

This story is no different from most of my stories. It involves a girl, various forms of alcohol, and poor judgment. (Funny how this seems to be a re-occurring theme.) It begins during Christmas break of my freshman year of college. Someone from the group of BHS kids whose orbit I had fallen into was hosting a New Years Eve party over in Naramore Drive. I was fresh off of my first semester away from home, and the whole of Christmas break had been devoted to family in one way or another. By New Year’s I was getting stir crazy, and starting to long for the freedoms of dorm life. I was not alone.

The party was packed as just about half of the BHS graduating class of 1986 seemed to be in attendance. My girlfriend was not there though, as she was babysitting for her neighbors. As I’ve mentioned before, my High School steady worked just about every weekend, which meant that most of the time that I was in the presence of copious amounts of alcohol, and nubile coeds, she was not there to chaperon. The results have been well documented, as I was suffering from an undiagnosed case of Tiger Woods’ disease at the time. Back then the medical terminology for this affliction was called “being a teenage male”. Yes, I am ashamed to admit it, but despite 12 years of Catholic schooling I had the moral judgment and decision making capabilities of your average stray dog. (Sorry Sister Josepha.)

The Bartles and Jaymes wine coolers were flowing freely this night as they did at most of the Naramore parties, but thankfully someone had the foresight to provide real beer too. Lord knows I sure as hell didn’t pay for it. However, I was pretty certain that whoever did could afford it better than I could, so I didn’t have any reservations about helping myself to ample quantities of it. I had even had the foresight to leave my car at home, and walk the mile and a half to the party through the gloomy gray clouds of winter in Batavia.

Among the party goers that night was a girl who had the unfortunate habit of getting drunk at parties and trying to physically and s%xually assault the nearest unsuspecting male. She shall remain nameless in this story, as frankly I’m afraid she would still be able to kick my @ss. Unfortunately, someone had let her into the wine coolers that evening, and being one of the “unattached” men at the party, I had drawn her attention. So between trips to the fridge for more beer I was crawling under pool tables and hiding behind furniture to escape her “amours”. I would like to say that I am exaggerating, but at one point she actually did grab me by the ankle as I was crawling under the pool table to escape, and she dragged me out from under it. Let the record show that even though I may have been cheap, I was never easy.

As midnight neared I stepped outside to get some fresh air and hide from the giant, amorous blond. There on the steps was my girlfriends’ best friend. So I sat down next to her and we started talking. We hadn’t seen each other since summer, and were both interested to catch up on events in each other’s lives. Neither one of us was wearing a coat and this being December 31st in Western New York it was a little brisk outside. We had both come alone to the party, and we were very drunk by that point of the evening. So as we talked we huddled close to keep warm. It wasn’t long before we were kissing instead of talking, so we got up from the front steps and retired to the bushes where we wouldn’t be seen. I’d be lying to say there was no attraction between us, for it obviously takes more than cheap beer, and wine coolers to decide to risk frost bite for a few sloppy wet kisses.

Laughing and kissing there beneath the bushes in the manicured backyard, snow drifted down on us like feathers. As everyone inside the house was cheering Happy New Year, we were welcoming in 1987 by rolling around in the snow. Eventually the cold started sobering us up, so we went back inside to warm up. At that moment it was no big deal, just a brief little make out session, probably one of a dozen that were occurring simultaneously somewhere in the house that night. We went our separate ways and I didn’t think anymore about it until the walk home. That was when I realized that I had just been making out with my girlfriend’s best friend, and would end up having to answer for it. The minute I was back at Clarkson the word got around to my girlfriend, and there was much wailing and lamentations. I groveled from the cowardly distance of the phone line, and made promises that we both knew I wouldn’t keep, but life continued.

In the spring our relationship finally collapsed in an event of karmic comeuppance that I have described elsewhere. Then I began 3 long years of wandering in the wilderness searching for a relationship that would last longer than a week. As far as romance was concerned, my college years were not kind to me. After the freewheeling years of my misspent youth in Batavia this came as quite a shock to my system, and provided a better cure for my condition than any twelve step program ever could.

It was the Christmas break of my senior year when I ran into her again at the Engine House. It was a pleasant surprise. We stood at the bar drinking cheap beer, and talking as bad 80’s dance music played, and the ND and BHS expatriates milled about catching up on old times during their annual return to Batavia. Shots of Jagermeister were exchanged, and when the bar closed we weren’t ready to call it a night, so we met my friend Dan and his girlfriend at Perkins for breakfast. I loathe admitting it, but we were both drunk by that point and I should not have been driving. We sat in the booth at Perkins for over an hour, drinking several pots of coffee, and talking about the good old days. Neither of us were in a relationship at the time, and it seemed like we had both made up our minds about how the night would end.

I paid the bill and drove her home. She lived only a few blocks from Prospect Avenue on a street of humble front porches, where the homes crowded shoulder to shoulder. I parked a few doors down from her house, and she invited me in. It was past 3 am. Her parents were asleep upstairs, and the house was dark and quiet. We sat down on the couch in the living room amongst the knick-knacks, doilies, and effluvia of a working class German-American home. It could have been the living room at 20 Prospect, so familiar were the Hummel figurines, cuckoo clocks, and snow globes from family vacations. We pulled the afghan over us to ward off the midwinter chill. By that point I was dying to kiss her. (Please remember that is had been nothing but romantic misery for 3 long years!)

At last it seemed that the drought was going to end, and warm, wet kisses, like falling rain, were going to sooth my thirsty soul. I leaned over to kiss her, but before our lips touched she stood up, ran to the kitchen, and threw up in the sink. Sitting there in the dark on that worn sofa I can distinctly remember thinking “God. You are really toying with me here.”

Despite what you might read on this blog, deep down I am a nice guy. So I got up off the couch, walked out to the kitchen to get her a washcloth, and held the hair out of her face while she threw up. After about twenty minutes of heaving, she started to feel a little better so we returned to the couch. Sure the passion had waned a little bit, but I was still really desperate and hoping that somewhere deep down there was a chance that the embers of the fire could be rekindled. We sat quietly in the light of the streetlamp shining through the front window, and she put her head on my shoulder. We started talking again. That’s when she told me a story about how she was out at a bar the previous month and ran into an old acquaintance from High School. He was someone I knew, but not anyone that I really associated with. A big meat headed BHS jock to be quite honest. After a few drinks and some talk he offered to drive her home, where he proceeded to force himself on her while his car was parked in her driveway.

I was just heartsick. I felt so sorry for her. She talked and cried a little. I listened and consoled her. In the darkness of the living room a cuckoo clock squawked to life. It was now 4 am. We sat there without speaking. The house was silent except for the occasional clanking of the furnace, and the ticking of the clocks. She rested her head on my shoulder, and closed her eyes. We sat there for what seemed like eternity.Then I took her upstairs, tucked her into her bed, and slipped out before the sun rose.

We never did get together. A week later I contracted the chicken pox, and after a week and a half in bed I returned to Clarkson. It was the last semester of my Senior year, and I had no idea that the chicken pox would end up being the highlight of it. But that is a story I have already told. It has been over 20 years since that night, and I doubt she would even remember it. We have both gone on to happy, and well adjusted lives. We came across each other on Facebook a few months back, and added to our lists of ever expanding virtual friends. We are, and will remain, just names and faces in an address book. Like signatures in an old high school yearbook, or knick knacks gathering dust upon a shelf, these memories are just souvenirs of a trip we started once, but never got around to finishing.

Dirt Track Date

If there is something that all American’s can agree on it’s that we are better than everyone else. This not only includes foreigners, who obviously aren’t as good as us because they aren’t American’s, it also includes rednecks. (Redneckus Americanus, to use the correct Latin name for the species) Rednecks are defined as those other people. You know the ones. The kind that do all the things that we think are beneath us. However, given the fact that roughly 78% of the American populace are indeed rednecks, I’d say we have a bit of a blind spot about ourselves.

The internet affords a certain anonymity and freedom to redefine oneself into the image of the person you most want to be. Well, I guess I can forget about that now because after this post, there will be no denying it. If any of you knew the 20 Prospect clan you’d consider this information to be self evident.

I am a redneck.

An honest to God, sh!tkicking, beer swillin’ redneck.

This was the highlight of my weekend.

Yes, I spent Saturday night at the dirt track with 20 Prospect Jr. watching guys in really loud cars drive around in circles. And you know what? I loved it. I loved every blessed minute of sitting on those mud flecked aluminum stands, blinking to get the dirt out of my eyes as the cars kicked up dust devils behind them. In fact, aside from a High School football game I can’t think of a better way to spend a cool September night.

There. I feel much better now. They say that admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery. I’m not sure who “they” are, but oddly enough, you never here “them” admitting they have a problem.

I’d like to say that it was an accident. I’d like to say that 20 Prospect Jr. and I were innocently driving home from Wisconsin when our car broke down in front of the dirt track, but I can’t. It was premeditated. September 11^th had been circled on the calendar for over a month, not to remind me of a national tragedy (for surely Saturday night car racing in Wisconsin is not a national tragedy) but to remind me that it was the night of the Jerry Richert Memorial Sprint Car Challenge at Cedar Lake Speedway. I’ve been looking forward to it all summer. On hand were over 60 sprint cars from the IRA and UMSS, racing on the 3/8 mile dirt oval.

Now for the other 22% of American’s that aren’t redneck, let me explain. A sprint car is a small, lightweight, fenderless race car that is popular in the Midwest, and parts of the East and West Coast. (Down South, not so much). The name “sprint” comes from the length of the races. Most are 10-15 lap affairs. No refueling, no changing tires, and no starter motors. The cars need a push from a pick ‘em up truck to get their engines started. These little machines are no bigger than Mini-Cooper’s, yet they are powered by an 800+ horsepower, 410 cubic inch engines. That’s a big @ss engine for such a little car. When 20 of these cars come screaming around to take the start, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in the middle of a buffalo stampede. The noise is so loud you not only hear, but see, feel, smell and taste it. I can’t imagine what an adrenaline rush it must be like to be inside of one of these cars. These things are turning the 3/8 mile track in around 11 seconds!

Johnny Parsons III

I saw my first race when I was about 9 years old. Mom and Dad took me out to Perry Speedway down in Wyoming County on a muggy Saturday night, and we sat on the peeling paint of the wooden bleachers watching Western New York’s finest drivers spin around the bull ring in Modifieds, Midgets, Stocks, and Super Stocks. I was hooked. After that first visit it became an annual summer event to go see the races. We’d make the drive down through those verdant, rolling hills, taking in the late summer air through the windows of the Chrysler, and breathing the perfume of the dairy barns. (I still far prefer the smell of cowsh!t to that of either pigs, or chickens. Call me a connoisseur if you like.)

Wyoming County is one of the prettiest in all of New York. Maybe it lacks the variety of Genesee County, with it’s mucklands, swamps, cornfields, dairy farms, and orchards. But it makes up for it with the fact that cows outnumber humans. (45,800 vs. 43,424) You’ve just got to love a place with more cows than people. So long as the cows aren’t carrying firearms. I could spend a happy eternity living in a Greek Revival house on a nice plot of land out in the folds of those hills. But I digress…

If the weather was nice, and the original Mr. 20 Prospect was in a good mood, he’d take one of his patented shortcuts. Like all dads, his shortcuts usually added a minimum of 15 minutes to any trip. Working for Niagara Mohawk he spent most of his days driving rural back roads to fix power lines, flip switches, or do whatever it is that electric company employees do out there in the country. (Take naps I was to find out years later). Whenever our travels took us into the south eastern part of Genesee County he would cut south from 33 on the Francis Road. This little asphalt two lane road was laid out by the most sober, serious, and unimaginative of surveyors. It shot straight south through Bethany turning aside for neither hill nor dale. Up and down it went at ridiculous gradients. Dad would take this road at around 60 miles per hour. When we crested the top of each hill the soft, spongy suspension of the Chrysler would float, and we would achieve a few seconds of weightlessness. Our stomachs would flutter, and Mom and I would squeal with delight as we plunged down the other side, gathering speed until the springs bottomed out as we hit the nadir of the hill and charged up the next one.

That always got me in the mood for racing. Sitting in the stands we’d survey the cars as they pulled out onto the track, and each decide on a favorite to root for. Mom was always a sucker for the blue cars, while I would pick the ones with the best paint job, or the number of my favorite Notre Dame football player. (#15 Gino Oliveri). I think Dad took a more technical approach as his cars almost always won. Maybe he had some inside information.

For weeks after our trip to Perry, I would ride my bike up and down the sidewalks in front of 20 Prospect imagining I was driving a race car.  I’d tear into our gravel driveway, and lock up the coaster brakes and throw my Huffy into a sideways skid imagining I was drifting through the corners to take the checkered flag.

Driving over to Wisconsin on Saturday night 20 Prospect Jr. did not stop talking. Being the quiet one, this is always a sure sign of his excitement. It was a gorgeous evening, with bright sunshine, and not a cloud in the sky. Crossing the lift bridge into Wisconsin, the boats stood out bright against the deep blue of the river. Climbing the bluff into Wisconsin, I thought back to those drives down to Perry as a kid. When we got to the track we parked out in the grass, and took our Amana blanket, and ear muffs out of the trunk. If Dad could have been with us I’m sure his would have been “borrowed” from NiMo, with his initials written on them in black permanent marker.

Sitting in the stands on Saturday night, we looked up from the glow of the track and noticed the bright orange crescent moon descending towards the western horizon. The sprint cars roared away and we shared our popcorn, each picking a car to root for. 20 Prospect Jr. picked the best looking cars on the track, while I judiciously studied the drivers in qualifying, and choose the ones with the best times.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The races were fun, but the season is ending, and soon our life will shift from summer into fall, and with it all the other wonderful things that autumn brings, like apples, pumpkins, and football games. Playing catch with the football in the backyard last night 20 Prospect Jr. was already asking when we can go back.

Our trips to Perry would eventually stop. At some point in my early teens, I discovered girls. A few years later they discovered me. After that, spending Saturday night with the folks lost some of it’s appeal. I’m sure in another handful of years it will for 20 Prospect Jr. as well. Then that bright orange moon will slip below the horizon for a while, only to rise again in another time and place.