Autobiography Part One

WILLIAM (BILL) ANTHONY SHEEHAN

DECEMBER 29, 2012

            I was born to an Irish father (William Ignatius Sheehan) and an Italian mother (Katherine Polazzola, or Polozzola or maybe even Palozzola) on Saturday, July 14, 1945. The lucky hospital, nurses and doctors saw me come into the world at Ideal Hospital in Endicott, New York. I got my very first spanking here. (ha ha)

            My first memories are of my grandfather (my mother’s father) Francesca (he went by the name Frank which was more American) and my grandmother, Francesca (Francis) who lived at 322 Odell Avenue, Endicott, NY.

            My grandfather was bald, except for a fringe of hair going from ear to ear (around the back of his head, not the front). Wow! That would be a fantastic unibrow, huh? (ha ha) I wondered, when he got old, and his skin sagged, if he could pull that unibrow down to form a magnificently grand mustache? Grandpa was a tall man, (6’4”?) compared to my short, stout grandma. I remember them as nice people who did not show much affection and were not very talkative, but my few memories could be wrong or skewed.

            We used to have tea and Cheerios (Cheerios poured onto the tea) for breakfast. I remember really liking it and, at the time, I didn’t realize that most people poured their milk on their Cheerios, not tea. I still have tea and Cheerios occasionally.

            One day grandpa bought a newfangled device called a television. It was one of the first ones, I think. It had an oval screen. I Remember Momma was the first TV show that I remember seeing.

            My grandparents both died when I was quite young, maybe 3-4 years old so I have few memories of them.

            One time, at my grandparents’ house, my mother took me into the bathroom with her. Maybe I was too noisy or troublesome for my grandparents. Anyway, I didn’t appreciate the tinkling sound the way I appreciate the tinkling of rain now-a-days. Plus, at my age I thought she was pretty weird having to sit down to pee. I also remember thinking, I don’t wipe after I pee. Why does she wipe when she didn’t poop? Crazy stuff goes through your head when your just a kid deficient in knowledge, and the “birds and the bees” info wouldn’t arrive for many years yet.

            Hell! Some crazy stuff goes through my head even while I’m writing about crazy stuff. Such as:

Those great golden years

May go best with tears.

Now I have trouble seeing,

As well as trouble peeing.

Food can give me grief,

If chomping with worn teeth.

My body has started drooping,

And I have trouble pooping.

These golden years

Have rusted my gears.

I’m full of natural gas.

What died in my ass?

Must be a skunk

Died in my trunk.

Now people fear

My explosive rear.

Should I laugh or cry?

Why not laugh until I die?

I’ll practice my smelly arts,

Those old and foul farts.

            Some of my first memories also include the Catholic orphanage that my sister and I were sent to, after my mom’s and dad’s divorce (I think I was 4 or 5 years old). The orphanage was a dirty, red brick building with a high chain-link fence all around it. In my memory, it reminds me of an old, abandoned, then converted school building. If I remember correctly, the playground was paved with asphalt (black tar), so running on it was risky and falling would be your own dumb-asphalt (which this dumb-ass did a few times).

It was impossible to play baseball there because

most of us did not know where home was, and even

the older boys couldn’t, nor wanted to, get to first,

second or third base with a nun.

            The flying penguins, oops, I mean the nuns, were mean. I don’t remember them being kind, at least. One time, after I took a bath and was naked, a nun reminded me that I had said something to her which offended her (have no idea what I said). She chased me with a ruler in her hand, looking like a huge black bat with her black habit flowing out like bat wings, and swatted me with the ruler. It gave a pretty good stings, and left several red marks, so I ran to my bed and stood on top of the sheet and blanket. She had me pinned there and I got a few extra stinging red marks on me until I started yelling at her to stop it. Then she stopped and looked around, I suppose, to see if any other nuns were watching. She looked as nervous, at first, as a nun in hell (or, maybe, as nervous as the Devil in church). Did that mean that there were some good nuns? Probably. As I got older I couldn’t help but wonder how those nuns figured that they were going to get into heaven. Didn’t child abuse count with their God? I grew to dislike nuns, all nuns. A wrong reaction, but that was the way it was for me; a very early, very negative impression. That was as a child, though. I don’t dislike them anymore, because I know that all nuns cannot be like the 2-3 that I had.

What do you call a nun who walks in her sleep?

A Roamin’ Catholic.

            Segue: One vivid childhood memory is that after my stay in the orphanage and my stay with my Aunt Augusta my sister and I went to live with my dad. I used to go to the movies a lot. One time I went to an afternoon movie and fell asleep. A policeman woke me up. Yep, I was scared, but not as scared as my sister and father. I just figured that it was nice to be missed.

            My sister Francis was about thirteen years old at the time. I remember a few times when she tried to protect me from the nuns’ wrath. She would argue with them about being so mean to me (maybe my droopy eyelid gave me a rogue pirate appearance and they were out to punish me before I could stick them with my invisible sword. Hell, they were the ones with the sunken chests). Or maybe it was considered a “bedroom” eye or a flirtatious wink and I made their privates tingle, thus taking their guilt out on me. Or, and this is probably not possible, but maybe I was just a genuine pain in the butt, wiseass. Nah. That can’t be it (ha ha). I often wondered if they hid their witches broomsticks up their habit. I was too young, at that time, to think of where they might stick it. I think their meanness was another habit of theirs. All is forgiven but not forgotten because now when I eat black licorice, I think I’m chomping on one of their arms or legs. That has become a habit for me (ha ha).

            I don’t remember my mother’s (Katherine) and father’s (William Ignatius) divorce proceedings prior to my stay at the orphanage. Maybe my sister does, but she doesn’t like to talk about our early years. I think it was a lot more emotionally harmful to her than for me because she was older and understood more than I did. Understanding more probably made her more vulnerable to the conflicts involved in a divorce case. One thing I did learn is that my future would always be uncertain, perhaps even as an adult. Is it any wonder that kids prefer to eat dessert first. “Shit,” they must think, “Things might change before dinner ends. Gobble the good stuff while the good stuff is available.”

            You know what? I’m no kid anymore, now being much closer to death than birth, but sometimes I think about dessert a little differently than as a kid. I think, Wow, I could die before I get to my dessert. So maybe I should eat it first. But I don’t think of any of that in a sad or morbid way, just with humor.

            My stay at the orphanage is a blur. I don’t know how long I was there. One day my sister and I suddenly left the orphanage. I went to live in Binghamton, N.Y. with my Aunt Augusta and Uncle Johnny Maslar. They had two sons (cousins on my mother’s side). One, Henry Orband (he had a different father) was much older (12 years? My sister’s age), but Phillip Maslar, their second son was only one month older than I was. It was good to be with a boy my age. In those couple of years we became very close, like brothers, and remained so until his death of a heart attack( about 1997). I think I might have saved Phil’s life one winter when we were by the frozen Susquehanna River (which was not far from my aunt’s and uncle’s house). I didn’t think the ice was thick enough to support me and Phil weighed more than I did. He stepped out onto the river’s edge and nothing happened. I told him to come back. He teased me and said, “You’re scared aren’t you?” I think I said that I was very scared for him. He laughed and came back on shore and we went home. That was on a Saturday afternoon. The next day, but at a different location on the river, another boy fell through the ice and drowned. I remember when we heard the news. Phil looked at me. He came to me and hugged me hard. My aunt and uncle thought he was being weird. We didn’t tell them about Phil being on the ice the day before. It was another incident that cemented our closeness as cousins.

            After college in Pennsylvania (Bloomsburg State) Henry got married to a lady named Olivia. They both taught school in Ohio, then retired to San Diego. Henry had a heart attack after a bicycle ride and died a few years after retiring. Phillip died a couple years later. I always thought that Phil would die first because of his gross obesity, but apparently, Henry had the worst heart.

            One particular thing that Phil and I hated to help with was the Pasta Weekend. Once every other month, Saturday and sometimes Sunday were set aside to make pasta. Phil and I helped make real spaghetti noodles from scratch. We’d hand the soft, dough noodles from an indoor clothes rack that had a bed sheet coated with flour over it. We also made ravioli and gnocchi. We helped make these thing in large quantities so we only had to do it every other month. The on Sunday afternoon, Aunt Augusta would make her home-made spaghetti sauce, but she’d pour it over pizza dough that she also made. She’s made 2-3 different kinds of pizza. That almost made it worth working all day on Saturday (Sometimes we couldn’t get it all done so we had to finish up on Sunday, after church).

            My sister, Fran, went to Endicott (?), N.Y. to live with our Aunt Josephine and Uncle Carl Tanner. They had an older boy, Daniel Mathews (a different father), plus a girl (Rosalee) who were around my sister’s age (give or take a couple years). There was also a daughter named Lucille who was about the same age as Phillip and I.

            While I lived with my aunt and uncle, my dad would visit once in a while and take me to lunch and a movie, then he’d go back to Endicott, N.Y. where he had an apartment above a restaurant/bar named The Coffee Pot, on Odell Ave. (only 2-3 blocks down the street from where my grandparents used to live).

            When I lived at 322 O’Dell Ave. there was an interesting Mafia incident. For years the whole neighborhood knew an older man who had a wheel cart (like a large, flat-bed wheelbarrow) full of ice, with fish on the ice. He would walk up and down the streets of the North Side of Endicott selling fish. He was just an ordinary part of the neighborhood for all of us. No one really paid much attention to him, except his customers.

            One day he didn’t show up. No big deal, until he didn’t come around for a few days, then there was some talk about him. Some of our neighbors started wondering about him. A day or so later his body was found in an empty, overgrown lot that was directly across the street from where my father lived ,over the Coffee Pot restaurant. He didn’t just die there of natural causes. He was executed; shot in the head. It turned out to be Mafia related. All the time he was selling fish, he was also selling drugs and no one seemed to be aware of it (except his very discrete customers, of course). Also, a few years later, when I was 12 years old, there was a historic summit meeting of the American Mafia leaders held on November 14, 1957. The meeting was held at the home of chief mobster Joseph “Joe the Barber” Barbara in Apalachin, N.Y. (Apalachin is a small hamlet bordering the Endicott town limits). Apparently the meeting consisted of an estimated 100 Mafia members from the United States, Canada and Italy. The topics being discussed included loansharking, narcotics, trafficking and gambling, as well as dividing the illegal operations that were formerly controlled by the deceased Albert Anastasia (the former boss of bosses).The New York State police and local law enforcement swarmed over the residence arresting the largest number of Mafia Members ever arrested at one time. The neighborhood also swarmed with thrilling, exciting talk for quite awhile afterword.

            After a couple of years, I was reunited with my sister when my father took us to live with him in an apartment above a different restaurant/bar called Massy’s, which was located near the rear of St. Anthony’s Church which was also on O’Dell Ave. (the bar was on the next parallel street to O’Dell Ave. While I’m speaking of St. Anthony’s rear, next to the church was another building which was called St. Anthony’s Rectory (where the priest lives, plus rooms to teach things). Anyway, I wanted badly to change the word Rectory to the word Rectum. I never did it though, I would have probably been killed and gone to hell (?) because this was the solid Catholic part of Endicott’s north side. My grandparents, sister, Larry and my father would have been embarrassed if I got caught. Plus my father was on a first name basis with Father Dacey and Father Dacey was always extra friendly to my father and grandparents (Larry had to convert to Catholicism to marry my sister, but it was just a formality. Secretly, he probably would have laughed with me).

            Segue: It seems to me that the word that is the most wrongfully used in the American language are the words “impossible” and “miracle.” It is said that this or that is impossible, or that this or that was a miracle. First of all, miracles are impossible (read the atheist philosopher David Hume’s rejection of miracles at part of the natural world). Most of the time the event has already happened and then is called impossible (contradiction). Something is said to be impossible to do, think or believe, then the impossible is done, thought of, and believed. And he most often mispronounced word, from my experience are: nuclear and cavalry (not “nuc-u-lar,” and not “cal-vary.”) And why would we say, “A word to the wise,” when the wise people don’t need advice; the dumb people do?

            Now that I’ve mentioned Father Dacey, I’ve wondered, since I was old enough to understand the cardinals and the hornets (the birds and the bees), they would be so silly as to want to be called Father when they know ( the rule of celibacy) that after they become priests, they are forbidden to marry and have sexual intercourse, thus cannot be fathers (except for the fact that they’ve been fornicating for centuries, and not necessarily with women). Maybe that’s what made them dull-witted and unable to tell joke on the sperm of the moment.

            I think that if someone asks a priest if he’s “getting any,” it should be in reference to sleep, not what priests are doing nowadays.

How is a Catholic priest like a Christmas

tree? The balls on the stiff branch are just

for decoration. And at present and surely

more virulent in the past, they have excellent

but disgusting hindsight.

            I only have a few memories of that life. My sister was like a surrogate mother, cooking, cleaning, etc. because my father was basically a functional alcoholic who worked as a janitor at I.B.M. (International Business Machines) in Endicott, N.Y., which was before they became famous, worldwide for their computers. At that time they were famous for business-oriented adding machines.) I remember one time when I went to spend the weekend with my father (In his apartment over the Coffee Pot restaurant/bar). In late afternoon he took my bar-hopping with him. This is always what he did when I stayed with him over a weekend. He’d shove me off into a corner booth or chair and buy me unlimited soda, sometimes popcorn, pretzels, etc. He’d see his drinking buddies for a while and then we’d be off to another bar. He was drunk by the time we reached the last bar and it was way past 1:00 A.M. I was so tired that I put my head down on a table and was falling asleep when I heard him making derogatory comments about me, as if I were his anchor and he wanted to cut me lose. He kept at it; saying worse and worse things, loudly. I felt shattered, unloved, even unwanted. I wanted to crawl into a dark corner and hibernate so I could forget his vile remarks about me. I knew he was a jerk, but he was my father, so I wanted to see him once in a while. Well, I found out how he actually felt about me and my visits. I pretended to sleep as the bartender and some customers tried to get my father to shut his mouth. Someone said, “Those are awful things to say about your son. Good thing he’s sleeping and can’t hear you.” Not long after that we left and I had to try to support him while he staggered along the side walk. He almost didn’t make it up the stairs. I had to use the key to open the door since he couldn’t keep his hand steady or his feet still. We went to bed immediately and I cried myself to sleep. I told my sister about what happened. I never spent a weekend with my dad again (I used to do it once a month). But he must have been a good man, right? After all, he went to church every Sunday, prayed during the week, chatted with Father Dacey, smiled a lot while talking to friends and/or relatives. On the surface he was one thing, but inside, he was the opposite. Sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself and those you love is not to be like your father. It was my goal from an early age.

            As I got older I often wondered of my father looked into my eyes and saw a reflection that he didn’t like, some aspect of himself that he did not like, or was it just me that he regretted. When he was sober, he controlled himself to a very stern demeanor, not overtly hostile, but when drunk the firewall of his rigorous Catholicism could not stop him from stating his true feelings about me. When I was in my upper teens I wanted to tell my father, face to face, that when I had children, I wanted to be exactly not like him. His death of a stroke at age 64 prevented that confrontation. I believe that I have accomplished that with Mara, giving her unconditional love, letting her know how proud I am of her accomplishments, and that I need her as much as she needs me. I know that I would not want to go on living without her.

I am nobody, and since nobody is perfect, then I am perfect (a perfect bull-shitter!)

            Nietzsche said that if a person has not had a good father, then that person must create one. I never was able to create one for myself (the closest person to fill that job, perhaps, was my brother-in-law, Larry French), so I tried my very best to create one for Mara. I tried to be the best, loving and concerned father to Mara. What a superb, and gratifying job that came to be.

“To a father who is growing old, nothing is more dear than a daughter.”

Euripides  480-406 B.C.

            Doesn’t almost every father want his children to think of him as their hero, their rampart against everybody and everything sinister? I wouldn’t allow myself to be a failure to Mara. I had to be a good father and protector for her even though I had many weakness. I’d like to think that I could protect her against all odds, but that’s an odd thought for a frail man, especially an old one who gets more frail every year. But I love her dearly, I’d protect her from harm, and I sacrifice my life for her (I am terrified of the thought that I won’t die before she does. I guess no loving parent ever wants to outlive their beloved children). I am so lucky. Mara was my wonderful little girl and now she’s my wonderful big girl, plus she’s one of my best friends. What’s that old saying? “A son is a son until he gets a wife, but a daughter is a daughter for the rest of your life.”

            My mother remarried a man named Ervin Hill. They moved to farm country in Vestal, N.Y. The only thing I vividly remember about the place is having a race with Phillip. Henry offered a piece of candy to the one of us who was first to run to the wire fence and touch it. Well he might just as well have put the candy in my pocket because I knew I was faster that Phillip. I ran, touch the fence first and started hoping back to Henry looking at my hand. It was an electric fence. Phillip touched it, too. We both had surprised looks on our faces as Henry laughed hysterically. But, as least he gave both of us a piece of candy.

            Another time, Phil (he called me Will, not Bill) and I were playing in the back of a warehouse where large trucks were kept. There were many wooden pallets back there, almost like a mountain of wood, so I climbed to the top and told Phil that I would jump. He said don’t do it, but I was cocky and showing off, so I jumped. It was not big deal. I even landed on my feet, didn’t lose my balance, stood erect and smiled at Phil. “See,” I said. “Nothing to it.” Then I started to walk away with Phil but could not step forward. My foot was trapped somehow; wedged into the space between the separate pallet boards. I looked down and could see what was wrong, though I felt like I’d stepped on a bee and it stung me. Phil’s eyes bugged out and I’m still trying to lift my sneaker (rubber sole athletic shoes) off the pallet. Phil said, “Oh my God. I looked at him, then at my foot again and saw a nail sticking out of the top of my sneakers. I got scarred and yanked my foot upward and it came off the nail; a long damn nail, a nail that looked like the Empire State Building. Really long. Phil helped me hobble back home. I had to go to the hospital to get it taken care of and to have a tetanus shot (the word tetanus looks like it would be a shot in the anus, but it wasn’t, although I often referred to the inability to walk well and not be able to run at all as a pain in the ass).

            My mother and Irvin didn’t stay long at that farm. They moved, again, to Davie, Florida where they ran a vegetable farm selling vegetables for a living. I don’t think I saw her again from the time I was about 10-12 years old until I was about 20 years old (My Navy ship pulled into Fort Lauderdale, FL for repairs. I called her, then got a weekend pass to visit her and Irvin). It was an awkward visit where I had to take another person’s checkbook away from my mother who intended to keep it because she thought the other lady was cheating her (My mother was illiterate. She could only write her own name via memorization, and even that took her a long time to do). I took the checkbook away from her, added up the price of the vegetables and told the lady to write a check for that amount, which she did. The two women’s stories were both so convoluted that I never did figure out if my mother was right or wrong. I think my mother only went as far as 2nd grade due to getting polio. My father only went as far as 6th grade, I think, and my sister quit school in the 10th or 11th grade to get married to Larry French.

            While my sister and I were living above Massy’s bar, I can remember being a wise-guy with smart answers and sarcasm learned early in life (along with the stinkiest PU puns). I guess I was a handful, although I thought I was hot shit (although not literally). Anyway, one day I was helping my sister by drying dishes as she washed them. I responded to her query with a wise-guy remark and she swung to slap me. I had a frying pan in my hands so I held it up to block the blow. I could picture her slapping the frying pan and hurting her hand, so I smiled while peeking over the top of the frying pan. But when she hit the frying pan it came back at me and the rim hit me on the upper lip. Blood started running down my lip, around my mouth and into my mouth, then dripped on my shirt and onto the floor. When I talked the blood sprayed. Fran tried Fran-tically to stop the blood flow (ha ha). My dad came to the kitchen and chewed her out royally. I wasn’t really hurt that badly. My lip felt numb, just a lot of blood, but I played it for all it was worth. Poor Billy. Pity Billy. He has such a cruel bully for a much older sister. (Yeah. I know. I was an ass, but I’m smiling as I write this). I still have that inch-long, white scar on my upper lip after sixty years. No wonder Fran wanted to quit school, get married and get the hell out of that apartment and away from me and my dad. But Larry was too nice. He was concerned for me, so I went to live with him and my sister after they got married. I got along with Larry really well. I liked him a lot and tried not to sass him, though it happened a few times. Unfortunately my newly married sister was not prepared to have me around 24/7 and be a surrogate mother to an increasingly wise-guy brother.

            Fran seldom laughed; so serious, sad, stoic. We were so different when it came to humor. I think she saw it as a distraction, a nuisance, whereas I saw it as a coping mechanism that was fun. The more I felt rejected, the more I teased her and made jokes. I don’t know how many hundreds of times my sister told me that I was her biggest pain in the ass. Almost every time I’d tell her that it could be worse. One time she asked me, “And just how could it be worse?” I replied, “I could have been twins.” I still saw no sense of humor from her. Actually I don’t think that I could convince her even if I stated, for a fact, that there’s not a single atom of evidence that proves that life should be serious. J

            One particular joke I played for a long time. She would say that she was going to Jerry Tull’s store (when we lived on Wade Hill Road, near the towns of Owego and Newark Valley) and I would almost always ask her, “Are you going to the store to get bred (bread)? She usually said yes because it was usually bread and milk that she needed. I would laugh and she would have no idea at all what I was talking about. I thought that eventually she’d catch on and I’d be in trouble again, but I didn’t care. I don’t know how many times I kidded her about betting bred at the store over months of swaying it. She just never figured it out. One day I told her what the joke was about and she tried to slap me. I just leaned back like a boxer and let her hand sweep by me, then walked away. Nine out of ten jokes she didn’t understand. Actually I felt sorry for her because laughter has often saved my sanity.

            My upper lip scar? I told good stories about that. When I was in my early teens, wanting to be macho, I would scare kids by saying that I was in a knife fight and that “the other guy” has a hole in his check and a part of his nose missing. SNOT true, of course, but it was a fun story with good reaction entertainment, especially when I would pull out my folding, black Boy Scout knife. Plus it made me seem tough to some of the older boys who looked like bullies. It made them think twice about calling my bluff.

            I grew to hate bullies. They brought out the very worst in me and still do (though I control it much better). All I wanted was to bloody them as much as possible. I had a bit of a temper problem, often throwing caution (and logic) to the wind and, therefore, I sometimes got my ass kicked hard, though not usually before I got in some shots that produced blood, or swelling, or black and blue marks. I didn’t really care about the injuries. I carried them around as proud battle scars (natures tattoos of bravery). They were effective at keeping some of the bullies away, though, in high school, there were too damn many of them, especially since I went to a merged school (the town of Maine and Endwell having one high school where the Endwell boys disliked most Maine boys). I’m proud to say that in most of my fights with them, things did not End-well for them and that was certainly my Maine objective. Mission accomplished. Don’t get me wrong. I did get beat up a few times, especially by bigger guys such as mouthy football players, which, of course, is something that I would never do. J They, and others, would taunt me about my droopy eyelid. But sometimes, two sudden and hard left jabs followed quickly by a right cross wasn’t enough to end a fight. When that happened I earned more combat scars. But the idea was that word would get around that Bill Sheehan was ready, prepared and would not back-down, so you should be prepared to really fight (not just tease), or just leave him alone. Unfortunately, some bullies wanted to fight (you can’t fool all the fools all the time). J This meant that I needed a different strategy and it turned out to be rather simple. The answer was two-fold: First. Size only matters in a fair fight. Second. “First blood.” (decades before the Sylvester Stalone movie). Drawing first blood usually ended a fight very quickly. So my simple solution to the big guys was, touch me once (usually a push) and I would immediately attack fiercely, and I’d ignore fairness. I deliberately punched for the nose and mouth wanting to draw first-blood (though my knuckles usually got cut up). When the asshole was on the ground, I stood over him and acted crazy, saying stuff like, “Next time I’ll fucking kill you.” I did it in a crazed fashion with actions and words. It worked too (I should have gone to Hollywood and showed them how to act tough). J Even as an young adult, I’d demonstrated the premature onset of crackpot, without using crack (cocaine) or pot (marijuana). J So now fewer bullies wanted to test me, except the really big guys (damn them all to hell. J). However, it was incredible. I was 6 feet two inches tall, only 145 lbs. and I could stare at some Endwell bully and he’d break eye-contact first. Shit, Man! That was worth some blood, scars, and bruises (my knuckles still have many scars showing, though most have gone away from old-age skin changes). I might have been able to talk my way out of a lot of fights, but I was either brave or stupid in having a personal “no retreat” policy. I’m much smarter now.

If you ever see someone being bullied,

speak for them, stand by them. You may

be saving a life.

            The fights took place, mostly, behind the school in a little isolated area where no teachers could see the combatants (Most other kids fights took place there, also). It was expected that no one in a fight would report the fight to a teacher or administrator, and if any observers of the fight reported it, they got beat up. Needless to say, it was extremely rare for a fight to be reported. I know that none of my many fights were ever reported. I know that from the simple fact that I was never approached by a teacher or an administrator about those fights. Fran or Larry could never mention them because they didn’t know about them either. I was into sports so cuts and bruises were easily blamed on those sports activities, or even on gym class. No problem. Fran and Larry never suspected, especially since I always took my glasses off before a fight so they wouldn’t get broken and provide conclusive evidence of fighting. A few grass and dirt stains were questioned by my sister, but I easily explained them away (I lied).

You know that little voice in the back

of your mind, telling you to quit? You

can train that irritating voice. I taught

mine to shut up.

            I was sitting in a college classroom one windy day. I stared out the window into the sky and saw a bird having difficulty travelling against the wind. The wind kept diverting the path of that bird until it had to take a different direction. The wind was an unseen force that could be felt and, perhaps, not understood by the bird. I thought of myself like that bird. Some unseen force, something I could not understand, but could feel it’s pain, gave me a droopy eyelid and I could not go in other directions. Instead I had to take a different path; a path where many fights occurred, where humor disguised my pain, where girls turned away from me simply because one eyelid drooped. I asked myself, What would life had been like if I had had a normal eyelid and had a chance to go in a different direction, to be handsome and not to have all those fights and emotional pain?

            I remember a tall high school kid, much older than I, who constantly called me Hawk Eye, when I was in elementary school, because of my droopy eyelid (I always took it as an insult until many years later when a TV show named M*A*S*H came and one of the characters was called Hawkeye. Then years later the book and movie of The Last of the Mohicans also had a character named Hawkeye). Anyway, this guy was years ahead of me in school and in age so I just took the insult, as long as it was just words, though I kept waiting for him to physically assault me. He never did. He could have kicked my ass, but he never got physical. I always wondered why. It’s kind of weird, but to this very day, I occasionally call up a memory of him walking across the school playground, a tall chain-link fence in the background, with him turning his head to look over his left shoulder with a sarcastic smile on his face as he looks at me and yells, “ Hey, Hawkeye.”

            I did fantasize about breaking his nose. It was good that I started recognizing my physical limits (when I was rational and not emotional and full of anger.) with some bullies, or it would be me with the broken nose. I have a really nice “Roman” nose. It would’ve been a damn shame to have it disfigured, though if it were broken and bent to the left it may have looked like a hawk’s beak. Combine that with the hawk eye and I could have looked scary, like that bird of prey.

            Life is full of strange twists. Many years later, after my Navy years, I went into a clothes store to buy pants. This same guy was the sales person who was helping me sort through the pants. My first reaction was to ask him if he remembered me, then double him over with a short punch to his solar plexus (the result is a polite bow, like in the Japanese fashion, only it hurts the person bowing. Damn shame). But I didn’t do or say anything to him because now I was taller and bigger than he was, even though I was six feet, two inches and still skinny at 165 lbs. In my memory of him, he was much bigger, but now he looked like a frail wimp. I swallowed my pride, bought the pants an left the store. As I opened the door, however, I looked back at him. He was staring at me. I smiled at him because his embarrassed expression indicated that he recognized me. That explained his avoidance of eye contact with me. All of a sudden I felt sorry for him. And me? I suddenly realized that I was almost ready to bully him, the very thing I have professed to hate. Then I felt bad for me. I can remember being a bully myself, in elementary school, but after that I tried hard to avoid it. Sometimes it’s difficult to live up to your own high standards.

            Somewhere along the way, in junior high or the beginning of high school, I simply attacked bullies immediately upon feeling any sort of physical contact from them and it, unfortunately, became a habit. I became the wolf and the other buy my prey. However, as I’ve mention before, sometimes the wolf was surprised and got his ass kicked. But the major goal here was not winning (though I tried, of course). It was to give a clear warning that I’d fight, not back down, not beg or negotiate or cry or run. Touch me in anger, as a bully, and immediately you had a fight on your hands (well, as soon as we could get to the fight zone in back of the school). Only a couple bullies were dumb enough to do it twice before they stopped. Most of the bullies didn’t want to fight; they wanted admiration, they wanted their prey to back down so they could be admired by their friends, be considered tough and carry that reputation around like a badge of honor, but do it with the least amount of energy needed which means pushing, shoving, ridiculing, insulting, but not actually fighting, if it could be avoided. But there was no avoiding a fight, if they made any physical contact with me, so even when I got beat up, the bully almost always did not come around again for seconds. Once a boy starts backing down, it becomes a habit even in the man. Once a bully makes you back down, it also becomes a habit in the man. Both actions soon become personal prisons with invisible bars that are rusted with tears.

            So? Was I now a tough guy? Depends on your definition, but I’d say I wasn’t physically tough. If there was some toughness, it was mental. My thoughts were sometimes hard when it came to verbal insults because, even at that age, I had a way with words and ideas. I could take an insult, twist it around so that it stabbed the bully instead of me, or humiliated him, not me. (Great when you don’t want the bully to make contact with you, right?) J So, unfortunately (stupidity) this tactic sometimes caused the bully to make physical contact because I had bested him. But I was a moody guy, also. At times, I didn’t care if I was being rational. Sometimes I wanted to fight, needed to fight to drain the anger from me. Sometimes I was just a jerk. No. I wasn’t a tough guy. Actually I was frightened, nervous and hated the feeling of vulnerability, but I did not give in to those weaknesses by not retreating from most potential fights.

            Well, back to my living with my father and sister, over Massey’s bar. I remember my water balloon bombs. I’d fill a few balloons with water, then, from the second floor porch of the apartment building, I’d bomb people as they walked by. The bombs would hit in front of them or in back of them, exploding in a spray of water, getting their lower legs, and feet wet. Before they had a chance to look up, I would disappear and hide (The people all looked at the ground first, then the wetness of their clothes before they would look upward. By then I was gone. The swearing was interesting and funny. I even learned some good Italian curse words and phrases. This occurred on the north side of Endicott, N.Y. where there was a high concentration of Italian immigrants, like my grandparents, mother and aunts.

            Next door to Massey’s lived a kid my age named Sonny Dempkovitch. We paled around together and I was often at his house. One day we were playing on his porch. I was standing on the extreme edge of the porch, on the other side of the railing. My hands were in back of me handing onto the railing, so my back was to the porch. When I leaned out there was nothing below me except the ground. My hands slipped off the railing and I fell head-first onto a broken cinderblock. I cut my head and was bleeding all over my face, neck and shirt. I was becoming faint. There were people around me, but I they were all a blur. I was dizzy and could not stand. Suddenly I was with a police officer, bleeding all over the back car seat. He rushed me to Ideal Hospital where I was placed on a wheeled table while only semi-conscious. I remember looking up and seeing bright white (hospital ceiling, nurse and doctor uniforms, I guess). I got stitched up, then brought to a room and placed in bed. The next thing I know, I’m being undressed by two older girls (nurses? nurses aids?). Maybe they were young women, but they were giggling as they undressed me (everything except my underwear). I didn’t say anything mean to them, but they gave me a dressing-down anyway. J Later, when I was fully conscious and alert, I thought, Dammit! Bring those girls back so they can do that while I’m conscious. Life is sometimes unfair.

            My sister, Frances, nine years older than I, quit school and went to work at J.J. Newberry’s department store. I remember that she made $29.50 a week and she gave me the fifty cents so I could see a movie on Saturday and Sunday, plus get candy (especially Jujubes since they lasted the longest due to their hardness).

            Frances started dating a man named Lawrence (Larry) French. She didn’t usually date the same guy for very long, but Larry was someone special for her. I remember once going to a Drive-In theater with them. The 1954 movie was Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, starring Jane Powell and Howard Keel. I sat in the back seat and watched the movie from between their two heads. At the time I thought they wanted to see the movie, too. They both must have wished that I wasn’t there so they could kiss (I was only 9 years old. What did I know?). They were married at the local Sons of Italy building (or maybe just the reception was there). My dad was the bartender (Very appropriate for a functional alcoholic). I remember the animosity that still existed between my mother and father. They didn’t want to get near each other. The building was also located on O’Dell Avenue, between my grandparents’ house and my father’s residence at the Coffee Pot bar/restaurant.

            Fran’s and Larry’s first residence was located in a second story apartment in my grandparents’ house. Fran was about seventeen or eighteen when she married Larry, who was, I believe about nineteen years old and had a job at I.B.M. I never did find out how they met.

            After they were married, I went to live with them because my sister and Larry didn’t trust my alcoholic father. It was a wonderful self-sacrifice for them to make. What would the future be like for a nine year old kid living with an alcoholic father? I sure wouldn’t be who I am today. I’d have been a butterfly in a hurricane. I will be forever thankful for my sister’s and Larry’s kindness. Unfortunately, soon after they were married, as I recall, it is then that my sister started resenting having me around. She threatened me many times with sending me back to live in the Catholic orphanage or back to live with my father, so I came to the conclusion that it must have been Larry than insisted on me living with them, while my sister resented my infringement on her marriage and her married life. Perhaps I’m wrong, but that thought still lingers within me though I’ve never wanted to inquire to confirm if it was true or not. Suffice it to say that from those days and for a decade more, my sister and I never got along with each other. I really never felt loved, like a brother, or even loved at all by her (As far as I can recall my father never once said that he loved me and my sister didn’t say it until I was well into middle-aged adulthood, and even then it was said with a reluctant tone of voice). My reaction to my father’s and sister’s lack of love (or a fake forced love. Forced love is like a fart. If it has to be forced the probably what you’re going to get is crap) for me was simply to return those same feelings to them, though I regretted it. I think it was a self-defense mechanism for me, but an ingrained attitude for them. I can, however, remember loving my sister until years of her arid attitude towards me dried up my well of love for her. I suppose that love became withered, shrunken, wrinkled, but still exists in me, though it’s a sad kind of love; a kind that died simply because she wouldn’t nurture it. It’s unfortunate that she didn’t realize that maybe I was a jerk and teased her when I was around her because she showed no love for me (No hugs, no kisses, no words of love). I wanted it, needed it. It could have been a normal sibling love that we could have both shared and benefited from. I would have cared more for her and about her and probably would not have irritated her as much. The sad truth is that Larry had more to do with who I am now than my own sister.

            One time I got so angry with her that I stormed out of the house (on Wade Hill Road) and as I opened the door I slammed my fist into the wall and my fist went right through the plaster board and left a hole. I think Larry and I fixed it together. So, when nothing seems to go right, go left and when nothing is left, go right, then do right and be right because that’s all that left, right? (Just a little bit of silliness to take the edge off sadness.)

            Now, before any reader might think that I’m being unfair to my sister, I will admit that those conclusions may not be entirely true, maybe only partially true . I was young and the memories of my emotions at that time may be skewed. I was at the age when “me, myself and I” were most important and that kind of thinking lends a biased interpretation to the past. Like a real mother, Fran was controlling and like a real son, I was rebellious. I was a wise-guy that irritated and frustrated her at a time when she was having babies, taking care of them and the home and getting dinners ready for the family. My presence had to have been damn difficult for her. So I understand many things that happened and why they happened, but the bad feelings persisted and gradually got worse with each child she had, though I loved those kids as if they were my own brothers (Mark, Tony, Mike) and sister (Lori). I gave them the love that my sister deprived me of. In my eyes they could do no wrong, while in the memories I have of Fran, I could do no right. So I transferred my love to my nephews and niece. I have great love for them. I truly feel like an older brother to them, though we are not in touch much anymore, except for Mark. Also, I always hoped that I was a trailblazer for my nephews and niece. I was the only one in my family (father, mother, sister) who had graduated from high school. I was driven to do better. After high school I went to college, got a BA in Psychology, a BS in Education and then a Master’s Degree in Educational Theory. All my nephews and niece got at least a partial education beyond high school. I hope my educational path influenced them to pursue more of an education as well. I didn’t go where my path was expected to by many other people. Instead, I went where I wasn’t expected to go, where none of my family thought that I could go and be successful. I was considered to be foolish. My own sister snarled and called me stupid for wanting to quit I.B.M. and go off to college. I have failed at many things in life and have been reminded often, as a young person, and that is one of the reasons that I needed to succeed, and have succeeded (I not only had to think outside the box; I had to crush the box in order to break the accepted confines of my family education level and ancient traditions). In many important ways (college, marriage, Mara, magician, two black belts, writing books, etc.) I made a path and hoped that my wonderful nephews and niece would follow.

            Also, Fran and I never seemed to see eye-to-eye on hardly anything. It was as if we were not related, or even the same species. We were so different in our thinking, attitudes, opinions, desires and goals that, in retrospect, it’s easy to understand why we not only didn’t love each other, but could not even be friends; just too damn different from one another. Hell I thought the funniest thing in the whole universe was a loud fart and she acted as if it were the most disgraceful and disgusting act that a human being could ever commit (actually I don’t really fart at all; I do have frequent anal sneezes). Now, as she’s in her late 70s and I am in my late 60s, she’s the one who farts as she walks and/or sits, then smiles about it. Maybe now she finally realizes that the image of a stream of odoriferous gas, under pressure, shooting out the anus and fluttering apart the buttocks cheeks is, in fact, funny. Oh. One more thing about farting: In high school I told Fran, jokingly, that only other peoples’ farts stink and that your own farts are as bouquets of flowers floating on and refreshing the air all around you (Maybe that was an odoriferous joke to her, but I continued to tell her that my own farts are a bouquet of fragrant, red roses (But that fragrant bouquet grows at the top of a fresh manure pile). J. High school study halls were often orchestras of shrill arm pit farts.

            Larry was very good to me; very understanding, sympathetic and kind, as far as I can remember. I formed a closer relationship with Larry than with my own sister. I’m not sure how it even happened and I’m not quite sure it even went both ways. I just viewed Larry differently because he seemed a bit different from my sister, both in thoughts and in actions. Maybe it was just male bonding. It’s still hard for me to believe, though, because irritating my sister ended up being more trouble for him due to the fact that my sister always dumped her anxieties and frustrations, concerning me, into Larry’s lap when he got home from work. But Larry was usually calm. He would talk to me about not teasing her (I used to ask her if she had to go to the store to get “bred.” Or if she felt like getting bred at the store. It took her forever to figure out that I was substituting “bred” for “bread.” But when she did, she was furious), not irritating her, staying out of her way, etc.

            During one stretch of my adult years I really tried to cement a better relationship with Fran, but it was too late. But I won’t blame her. In hindsight, it appears that it was mostly my fault. Some kinds of damage just can’t be repaired, get healed properly and made better. As I write this I realize that I do love my sister and she probably loves me, but we are restrained from showing it due to our experiences while growing up. I used to try to hug her, but she’d get rigid, as if something dreadful had grabbed her. As a teenager I tried once or twice to give her a brotherly kiss, but her shoulders hunched, her face contorted, she’d push me away and tell me my breath stinks. I remember how badly that hurt me. I’ve never attempted to kiss her again and it’s been more than fifty years. To this very day I’ll only kiss certain people on the lips (Sandy, Mara, Lori, Lily and Slone). It’s a sad, regrettable Gordian knot since we only have each other and, at our ages, we may not have each other much longer.

            One of the worst feelings (for me) that accompanies my long life is the memory of a long list of wrongs, errors, regrets; each one having a sting to it but, taken as a whole, most regrets are painful shocks, infestations of guilt, accumulated sadness, longings to have done better, cancers of the brain. I’ve learned that some things can be said in an instant that can cause emotional pain for the rest of your life. Getting older can be lonely. How lonely would it be to outlive all your friends? All your peer relatives? I definitely don’t want to live to be one-hundred. Seven is my lucky number, so how about if I die quickly sometime in my 77th year?

            I often view life as a river constantly moving, alive. The origin of the river, in the mountains, is my birth and youth and where the water empties into the ocean is old age and death. But in between there are always calm waters, turbulent waters, many unexpected twists and turns, traveling over muddy beds or rocky beds, hot and cold sections, fast and slow sections, destruction (floods), pleasure (swimming), sometimes clear, pure (youth), sometimes contaminated (old age). A beginning and an end, neither of which is the most important; the travel between the beginning and the end, the journey, is of utmost importance.

            I actually joined the Navy for two reasons: (1.) To get away from my sister. I needed to get away from her criticisms, scowling, and disapproval, so when some friends and I talked about joining the Navy to see the world, I readily joined. I think my sister and I must have both understand that we got along best when we were apart (Just like our emotions for each other.) and only see each other a couple of times a year; and (2.) To get the GI Bill benefits to pay for college.

            So, what do I remember while living above my grandparents On O’Dell Avenue? I remember having a puppy that died because I was negligent taking care of it. It is one of my many regrets. The poor puppy only had me and I should have been more responsible. I berate myself because I can’t even remember the dog’s name. That seems to added extra negligence to my irresponsibility. Very callous of me.

            My grandparents driveway was about sixty feet long and covered with thick vines of concord grapes. It was like a shaded tunnel. I played there when the sun was too hot; ate a hell-of-a-lot of grapes, too. It’s a wonder that I didn’t have the shits with grape juice staining my underwear. I ate so many bunches of grapes that my pee was purplish. Later on in life I found out that eating a lot of beets turns my pee a reddish-yellow. Looks like blood in the urine. And asparagus makes my pee stink. Whoa! Sort of got off the track there. Oh well, an autobiography isn’t a train so once in a while I’ll get derailed. Choo-choo! J

            My grandfather and grandmother picked the grapes (I helped pick bunches that were closer to the ground, but started eating so many that my grandfather would chase me away.) I didn’t want to work and I knew that if I kept eating grapes, grandpa would send me away and I could play with other kids ( I was a rascal). But don’t get the wrong idea; I love work. I could watch other people doing it all day.J

            One day I pretended to help bring the grapes to the cellar where my grandfather had made a circular, cement pit about two feet high, with a groove for a drain that emptied on the other side of the wall and into a bucket. The pit was scrubbed clean, rinsed thoroughly and dried.

            I watched, fascinated as both grandparents removed socks and shoes, then washed their feet with a garden hose and soap. Then Grandpa rolled up his pant legs, and grandma hiked up her dress before they both stepped into the pit that was about half-full of grapes. Even now I can picture my grandpa Frank and grandma Mary slowly stomping around in the pit to squeeze the juice out of the grapes. Every now and then one of them would show an expression or make a sound to indicate pain. It was cause by the stems of the grape clusters. I think grandpa mumbled curses because grandma would sometimes look displeased at him. I was fascinated by the stream of juice slowly pouring into a large wooden bucket.

            Now-a-days cellars under garages are almost non-existent, but grandpa Frank had one. The door was locked and I seldom had a chance to see the inside. I was a very curious kid. Inside there were four huge wooden barrels where grandpa made his wine, each with a wooden spigot from which grandpa poured his wine into a ceramic jug. I think he alternated the wine-making barrels; two barrels were full while two empty ones were used to make new wine, then alternate the process the next year.

“A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much

ammunition.” …….Rudyard Kipling

            One day, while playing with my puppy, I noticed that the wine cellar door was not locked. I entered and found grandpa’s tasting glass and tried some juice. It was tasted awful. I was terribly disappointed, but I drank more just to see what the fuss was all about. After half a glass I felt good — unusually good, a strange kind of good. I pretended that I was my grandfather at a party and telling the party-goers to, “Drink up. Have more.” My imagination saw well-dressed people dancing and the images made me dizzy. I started giggling but didn’t really know what I was laughing at (myself?). I thought, This is not spoiled grape juice. This is a whole different kind of grape juice. I had to sit down on the floor because I was too dizzy. I thought, Grandpa makes some strong stuff; not for sissies and little kids. But I smiled, proud of my first drunk. Luckily I was smart enough to pour the rest of the wine down the floor drain. I made it up to the shaded driveway, surprisingly off balance and sat down with my back against the house. It took an hour or so to clear my head. It was a close call for this bad boy. I had a foul taste in my mouth and I had to spit frequently, though I was sort of proud. But the feelings of nausea convinced me that if half a glass did that to me, I’d better stick to ordinary grape juice. It certainly tasted a lot better. And I was not caught doing it. How lucky I was not to like the stuff. I could have liked it and turned out to be my father’s drunken side-kick.

            My grandparents came from Sicily and “Mafia bred,” I fantasized. I was proud of them. Now that I look back, I wish I could see them once more to know them as an adult and not as an ego-centric child only concerned about myself. Too bad most children are that way. They don’t care much about grandparents (I didn’t either) until they are older and wish they had a chance to know them better while they were still alive. But that’s how it usually works. Also, children are stubborn in their cherished ignorance. You can’t get them (I know. Me too) to understand how few things really mattered in life and how little the ones that matter, really matter. They will live two or three (maybe more) decades before they learn to blow away most of the idealized chaff of their idealized thoughts and actions and understand how very few are the important kernels of truth and happiness in life.

            One night I was out late with some friends, riding our bikes, looking for something to do. We stopped at a construction site that was across the street at the rear end of St. Anthony’s church. There was both a wire fence and wooden fences to keep people out (dangerous place). But we were bored, and kids that are bored get into trouble. One of the guys climbed a wooden fence and accidentally knocked it down, so some of us (me included) entered the construction site also. There were these volleyball sized, round, black and heavy containers that were filled with oil and a thick wick stuck out of the top. When the wick was lit on several of these, they lit up the construction site. But tip one over and there’d be a fire. Anyway someone called the police and they came. I never ran so fast in all my life. I zoomed up the lawn in back of the church, swung around the side, blasted out the front and jetted down the street until I was back at my grandparents’ place. I ran up the stairs and entered my bedroom. I close the door and started getting undressed. I changed my mind and decided to run away from home. Fran and Larry just got home so I didn’t want to leave my bedroom and have them see me. At one end of my bedroom was a door and a small porch (about 10 X 12 feet). A tree grew up next to the porch and I was going to climb down it and run away. It was an easy climb down, but, I thought, what would I do? Where would I go? Where would I sleep? I didn’t have any money. I was really scared the police would come and arrest me. I took off my cloths and climbed into bed, then pulled the covers over my head. I think my sister came in and asked me what was the matter with me (I was in bed and didn’t have to be told to go to bed, which was unusual). I told her what happened, she got mad (for good reason), then called Larry. Fran and Larry said that if the police came, they would talk to them. The police never came and I stayed away from that construction site . . . for at least a week

            Onward. I was bored and on the second floor porch one morning and didn’t know what to do with myself. I was lazily playing with a rubber band when I noticed a string of birds sitting on the telephone lines. I lifted the rubber band and pretended that it was a sling-shot. Bam! An epiphany. I ran into the apartment and grabbed a roll of Larry’s copper wire. On my way out the door I was bending a short piece back and forth until it broke off. I bent it into a “U” shape and attached it to the rubber band and pulled it back, as you would a sling-shot, took aim and shot at the birds. I must have done it ten times and never came close enough to even make the birds feathers flutter. Back to boredom. Then I saw a teenage girl in jeans walking away from me on the sidewalk. No, I thought. Yes, I thought (devil’s and angels sometimes did that to me but I like the color red and often lean towards devilish actions). Yes I will. Yep, yep, yep. The girl was getting farther and farther away. It would be a really long shot, but, I rationalized, I can’t even hit a bird in the ass. I doubt I’ll even come close to her ass (her jeans fit well). This is Ridiculous, I thought. A million to one shot. I thought again, What the heck. Just do it. So I loaded the sling-shot , pulled it back, aimed really high and let the copper fly. After a second, when nothing happened I thought, See? Didn’t even come close. But as I thought that, all of a sudden the girl jumped, rubbed her rear end (the right side dumpling) and said something (too far away for me to hear her). I was in a fit of surprising astonishment followed by hysterical laughter, though I muffled it with my hand over my mouth. She never saw me and I laughed harder as she turned her head to look all around herself, then continued to walk away and rub her right buttock (I think that I was too young, at that time to have any sensuous thoughts about her butt rubbing). I must have had a smile on my face for an hour afterward (My stomach muscles ache for about an hour also.) I’ll bet that after that pain, her ass was so tight that when she farted only dogs would be able to hear it.

            Now, who would think that something like that is funny? Giving a girl what must have felt like a bee sting in the ass. Probably only someone who would think that farts are funny. They would laugh and giggle childishly, maybe even so hard that their eyes would water. Yep. That all happened to me. Farts (ass whistling) are so funny.

            But what goes around, comes around to bite (sting?) you (me) in the ass. Not long after that, I was riding my bike down the road and one of the neighborhood bullies was walking on the sidewalk. “Hey! Droop Eye,” he called to me. I gave him the finger bird and laughed, but not for very long. I didn’t notice him picking up a two feet length of dead branch until it was too late. He threw the branch as I turned my head to laugh at him again. I saw the wooden missile coming toward me, thinking, Shit. I’ll just slow down and let the branch go right by me. Wrong! Sure, I slowed down, but the branch got caught in the front wheel spokes and I sailed (At the time I didn’t think of it as a prerequisite to becoming a future “sailor.”) over the handle-bars as the bike flipped over, doing a cart-wheel. Suddenly I saw the world differently. The damn place was upside down and whirling around. I landed on the hard asphalt . It was my own dumb ass fault. J Geez, my middle finger salute to him was just an innocent gesture of friendship. Why did he want be so mean to such an innocent kid? J. Luckily I landed on my ass (which was already split), not my head, or I may have two droopy eyelids now. I got scrapped up pretty good. I heard the guy running away as his frenziedly laughter receded. Man! What kind of guy would laugh at something like that? (Hey! Why are you thinking of me?). Life is just a sunny-day parade. Yeah. Right. The reality is that sometimes you’re the bat and sometimes you’re the ball. That time I was the ball. Someday I might be the bat. We moved away soon after that and I never saw the kid again. Sometimes life is unreasonably unfair, like me passing third grade with not problems in the Maine school, but having to repeat third grade when we moved into an Endicott, N.Y. apartment with me father. I guess they though that the teachers and school in Maine were a bunch of shit kinking farmers with achievement standard that stood no higher that a plop of cow manure (that was why I was one year older that all me peers).

            Moving on now with indeterminate determination. Yes, I heard the guy laughing loudly as he was running away. I looked down the street and the bastard was still laughing (if you could take all the bad out of him, he could sleep in a teaspoon), but he was walking backward and pointing at me. The prick was really rubbing it in. I sat up (Wow! My ass hurt) and gave him the double, middle-finger salute. (It’s what I save for special people on special occasions) When I did that motion, my elbow hurt almost as bad as my ass. I bent my right arm so I could look at my elbow. I saw the color white. Not white, like I was going to faint. A white bone. Holy shit! My elbow bone was poking through my skin. Interesting, I thought. Not many people get to see part of their own skeleton. I looked again and saw the color white . . . but this time it was from feeling faint. I moved to the curb and remained seated until the dizziness went away. The dizziness went away, but the pain arrived, but I didn’t try to look at my elbow bone again.

            Fran and Larry decided to move to a farm house in a very rural area, close to a town called Maine (N.Y.). The farm was where Larry’s dad (Leon) and his wife (Catherine)lived. It was a big house, but the attic was unfinished. Larry and his Dad fixed it up to make a second story apartment. For me, it turned out really well because Larry’s much younger brother, Mike, was my age, so we had each other for playmates. It worked out well and we became good friends for a couple of years. I enjoyed it there. It was near other farms, fields, forests and streams. I feel comfortable in that kind of setting.

            One year Hurricane Hazel came roaring through the area; a blustering, female bully knocking things down and carrying things away. A really big blowhard. She broke off a large tree limb that fell on the roof and crushed it. Debris was blowing by the windows as if it was the tornado scene from the Wizard of Oz movie. Luckily the house roof was the only serious damage done, but anything that was lying loose around the house, was gone, except the smell of cow and pig shit in the barn. Good smells though. Refreshing . . . but certainly not as good as farts.

            Mike French and I used sticks and/or straight branches to play rock baseball. We’d see who could hit a rock farthest, or who could come closest to an object, or how many rocks we can hit in one minute. We’d climb up a hill in the back field to pick blackberries, then come back, put milk and sugar on them an feast on the delicious desert. Mike taught me to eat raw potatoes with mustard. (Not as bad as you may think.)

            There was a basket for basketball set up in the garage/barn so we played games together (Mostly games like HORSE and competitions about who could make the most foul shots), and sometimes we’d play a game with Mike’s older brothers, Keith and Willis. Larry’s younger brothers and sisters were very nice.

            I remember that I had a crush on Mike’s sister, Linda, who was a year or two younger that I. Her older sisters, Judy (sometimes called Sharon) and Gloria were nice to look at, too. The whole French family was really nice to me. They accepted me as part of their family and I don’t remember any one of them ever teasing me about my droopy eyelid. I was lucky to have Fran, Larry and the rest of the French family, or I very well could have gone bad. I sometimes feel that a life of crime was prevented by these circumstances. And it came easily for me to feel as if I were their children’s’ (Mark, Tony, Mike and Lori) older brother. I mean the kind of brother that really loves them dearly, and didn’t want them to think badly of me, which a life of anger induced crime could have happened if I’d been sent back to my father or been sent back to the orphanage). Thinking of myself as a concerned older brother made me think about being a good model for them, which made me think twice before I did something crazy.

What’s the difference between an Catholic orphan

and a watermelon?  One can be smashed with a sledgehammer for entertainment; the other is just a watermelon.

            A couple of times I almost messed up, though. In high school I worked at a restaurant as a dish washer and table cleaner. I remember that I was paid $1.20 an hour, plus one meal on Sunday. I didn’t have much money, but I saved a long time and I bought a 1953 flat-head V8, Ford. It was cobalt blue and I treated it as if it were my life. But I needed gas and oil and sometimes little repairs and was often short on cash. So, to prove how really stupid I was I got my close friends to come with me to make trips into the neighboring farms, late night and early morning, to steal gas. I kept about ten gallon containers of stolen gas in the trunk. We did that when I needed gas, unless the guys could chip-in for a gas purchase. So the guys either pitched in for gas, or they helped me steal the gas at farms. Word got around that someone was stealing gas, so I told the guys we had to stop doing it. They I told them that they would have to contribute to buying gas since I was the one driving them places.

            Another time I needed an expensive part, a clutch, if I bought it new (though it would probably be less expensive than the labor would cost at a garage). I got used parts from Mr. Rhodes because they were cheap and his junk yard was only a couple of miles up the road on route 38B. From having been up there and around the junk yard while purchasing other parts, I knew where there was a pile of used clutches that were in good condition for selling (but still too expensive for someone who only made about ten or twelve dollars a weekend). Around midnight, my closest friend, Brad Burdick, and I parked by a deserted barn about a mile down the road from Rhodes’s car junk-yard. We snuck through the field and entered the junk yard from the side that was farthest from the house. We got the part and ran all the way back to my car. In a couple of days we started hearing rumors about a thief being in the junk yard and that I was suspected because someone passing by late that night had seen a blue Ford parked up the road. Shit! That was trouble. Serious trouble. I had to do something so I talked with my group of friends (Brad, Doug Bruce, Mike Winkler and Danny Weatherwax) and told them that I was going to the junk yard to deny that it was my car that was seen. Two of the four guys (Doug and Mike) freaked out, thinking that it would be calling attention to ourselves. I told them that attention was already on us. Danny Weatherwax, the youngest member of my crew (and shortest), had the guts to volunteer to come with me (I would have gone by myself had none of them wanted to do it).

            When we got to the junk yard, the next day, after school, I saw Fred (Rhodes) working on the tail light of a car that was in his driveway. I walked up to him and said, “Mr. Rhodes. I’ve been hearing rumors that someone stole something from you and that you think it was me. I came to talk to you about that.”

            Through a suspicious smile, he responded, “Well, yeah. Your car was seen parked up the road on that very same night.”

            “My car?” I stated. Why do you think it was my car?”

            “A blue, 1953 Ford was seen. Just like the one I sold you.”

            “Like my car? Like means similar, not exactly the same. I also heard that it was a blue Ford. Did the person who saw that blue Ford say it was a 1953 Ford? And if so, How did he determine the year was 1953. Could it have been a 1952 or 1954, or any early 1950s blue Ford?”

            “Well. To tell you the truth, he didn’t say it was a 1953. He just said the car looked like the one I sold you.”

            “OK. Thanks for being honest with me. Now if you will tell me the license plate number that the person wrote down then we can clear up this confusion about whose car it was.”

            I saw that Danny was standing between Mr. Rhodes and my cars, then I asked, “What was the license plate number.”

            Fred glanced toward my car.

            I said, “No. that’s not fair looking at my car’s license plate. Certainly, if he said it was my car, then he reported to you what the license plate number was. You must have it written on a piece of paper somewhere. Could you please get it and compare it to my license plate? (Big bluff. I as betting my ass on the fact that I was fairly sure that no license plate number was ever written down or the police would have come to the house; therefore, Mr. Rhodes could not have the number written down. In essence I called his bluff with my bluff. Turns out that his bluff was a king and mine was an ace.

            “I have no license plate number,” he said, somewhat irritated.

            “Well, in that case, then that car could have been any one of hundreds of cars in the area that are blue Fords in the 1950s range. It was not mine, so you need to look elsewhere.”

            “Looks that way,” he said, looking more confused and angry now than suspicious.

            “Good,” I said, then I had an idea. “While I’m up here I need to buy a used tire for my car. Something that still has some decent tread on it. You got any that’ll fit my car?”

            “Sure do,” he answered exuberantly. “ Just follow me to the shed.”

            I think that buying the tire was the clincher (a thief that steels something, then comes a couple days later to buy a tire? Not likely, right?). No. Absolutely not. I’m not proud of any of that.

            Danny was perfect. We hadn‘t gone over his part in this, but he looked surprised at the right times, looked indignant at the right times and looked upset at the right times, and never said a word (And he’s the one who ends up making the big bucks as the head of some department at I.B.M., probably making four times what I made each year as a teacher. The smart guys are often the quiet ones (We are still friends to this very day though we lost track of each other for a decade of so until my nephew Mark French started working for Danny and Mark got me back in touch with Dan).

            Like I said, I’m not proud of any of that. It was cool and gutsy at the time, and my friends were amazed. They were disappointed that I told them that they could not talk about it. They wanted to brag about me and Dan, but I knew that if word got back to Mr. Rhodes, then he’d know that it was really me and that I had made a fool of him. I told the guys, “You tell, you go to hell. You’ll no longer be my friend and you’ll never ride in my car again.” No one ever told and no one ever figured it out.

            At the time of the incident and shortly thereafter, there was a certain thrill to it. I got away with stealing, but I was smart enough to know that learning from mistakes very often comes only after you’ve been caught and punished. I decided to be smart enough to skip the “caught and punished” phase and just stop doing that kind of stuff. And I did. Stupidity comes with being a rogue teenager, but me and my crew never did that stuff again (Not while I was with them, anyway).

            I got these same high school friends into the local Drive-In theater by putting them in the truck, then paying just for my single entrance. One time I had fun going up and down the humps that lifted the front wheels of cars so that he windshields are aimed at the movie screen. I started at the front row and drove over each hump until I got to the last back row. They were bouncing up and down in the trunk and yelling at me to stop, which I did, then let them out. Man, I got cursed at, swore at, had middle fingers stuck in my face and saw red, angry faces. Another instance to prove how stupid and inconsiderate I was. But, the next day the anger was forgotten and stories told by them was all about what a good time they had bouncing in the truck, elbowing, kneeing and head-butting each other. I ask you, How could that have been fun? But, hell, I didn’t say anything to change their minds. That time I was smart, and they were the stupid ones, but they were my close friends so I laughed with them. While saying, “You guys must have caught the stupid, furniture disease.” When they looked at me with confused facial gestures, I stung them with, “Yeah. You know. It happens when your chest falls into your drawers and then you feel like a cheap hotel without any ballroom.”

            Another time we went to the same Drive-In, but this time I drank too much and I was the driver. Doug Bruce came with us, but he could not drink due to his epilepsy, so he became the designated driver. Mike Winkler, and Brad Burdick were crammed in the front seat with Doug driving. I was in the back seat lying down, feeling like a stupid, shit-dicking, dumb-ass (maybe the Endwell guys were right) who was trying not to puke in the car, and stop the car from spinning around in the road (actually it was me feeling like I was spinning around in the back seat, as if I was on a carnival ride). Anyway, wouldn’t you just know that Doug went off the road and into a ditch way out in farm country (a shortcut for going home). Doug had not had an epileptic seizure in months, so now he has one while driving my car. The last seizure he had was as we were running away from a house where we had stuck the horn as a Halloween prank. We were running as fast as we could when Doug just fell forward and slid down the road on his face. He was banged up badly, but healed fast. But this seizure made him stomp on the gas pedal so we didn’t just got off the road slowly. We went fast and crashed into the ditch, bounced back onto the road as the car flipped over and on the road while the car was on its roof. Since I was in the back seat, and the car flipped over, I found myself lying on the inside of the roof which was dented and banged up. Some of those dents and bangs were sharp and I felt the sting of them cutting my back as I slid over them. When the car stopped I remember smelling smoke. Gas had poured onto the car engine and flared up. The guys were screaming at me to get out of the car, but I was too drunk, too disoriented, too sick and could hardly move. Then I felt hands around my ankles and I was slid across the roof (ouch! Again) and out of the car. It was a series of lucky break that might have saved me from not living this long (that day I was so lucky that I could have dove inhto a sewer and surfaces with a treasure chest while grinning with gold teeth J). First the guys risked themselves (the fire and the car could have exploded), second the farmer who woke up came out side and grabbed a garden hose (his house was unusually close to the road) and put out there engine fire. I was lying on the farmers front lawn when the State Troopers arrived. We were all taken to the Maine justice of the peace and guess what? The number three lucky break was that he was our bus driver. He called the parents (for me it was Fran and Larry) to come and pick us up. He lectured us, then let us go with whoever came to get us (I clearly remember the two troopers looking at each other with a non-believing look on their faces. Holy cow (the Pope’s sacred milk cow) we got off with just cuts and bruises. The judge’s ruling was that the accident was caused by unforeseeable circumstance (Doug’s epileptic seizure) and had nothing to do with drunkenness). Talk about luck. Well, except for my 1953 Ford; it was totaled. But the accident happened on a weekend in June. The school year would be over soon and in August, Doug, Mike and I were going to join the Navy. After a day or two, we all had to the slaughter house to get new asses. Our old ones had been chewed out (off). J I don’t know about time factors, but eventually Doug was OK and helped Mike and Brad out of the car (they were drunk too, but not as bad as me).

            Segue: I mentioned Halloween and it reminded me of a contradiction that most parents don’t see at Halloween time. A vast majority of parents repeatedly tell their children, for their own safety, not to accept candy from strangers, then they send their kids off so that strangers can give them candy.

            Wow! Another memory has surfaced, and not a good one. Brad and I had spent one summer building a tree house that was in the middle of a cow pasture, not far from the barn. We got the wood from an old abandoned house. It was tongue in groove boards so the tree house was well built and sturdy. I guess it was about twenty feet off the ground. We also waterproofed the roof and insulated the walls with newspapers between the boards and the cardboard wallpaper. We built two bunk beds and had electric lights (we ran a electric cord on the top of fence posts all the way to the tree, then up to the tree house. And we had a Coleman stove for when fall and winter came. It was the best tree house I’ve ever built or even seen that was built by a couple of sixteen year old kids. We slept there on weekends in the fall and winter; it was cozy with the Coleman stove burning. Since we had lights, we played cards, joked and goofed around mostly (we may have had some beer. J The following summer, Brad and my other friends and I went out drinking (I had a license and a car now) and somehow I got a bottle of vodka, while they had beer. I was drunk like I’d never been drunk before (Lily. Slone. Don’t ever do this). I parked the card at Brad’s house and went to the tree house to sleep it off. The next morning Brad came to check on me and I was so sick I could hardly lift my head up. I told Brad to tell my sister where I was and that I’d be home later. Brad left and a good thing because I started vomiting our the trap door and all over the ladder. I was so sick I wanted to just die and end the awful feeling (headache, dizziness, stomach spasms, vomiting until only bile came up in thin ,yellow spaghetti streams). I didn’t start feeling better until about 6:00 P.M. Then I went down the puke-sprayed ladder and walked home. I don’t remember my sister or Larry saying anything, but my sister scowled at me (and I deserved it). I washed my face and hands and went to bed, not rising until the Sunday morning, when Fran made her feelings known. I didn’t reply because I had been a dumb-ass jerk again and, again, I could have died. I’m surprised that I made it out of my teens because I did some really stupid stuff. Needless to say, I’ve been drunk a couple times since then, but never that drunk and never feeling that miserable. L

            The summer after we built the tree house, Brad and I built go-carts with angle-iron and lawn mower engines. Brad’s dad b brought home welding equipment (he was a boss at a General Electric factory) and taught us how to use it. I bought wheels from Mike French (wheels that he used on his…………………….). Since they were larger, ball-bearing wheels, my go-card could go a little faster than Brad’s. We had a great time with them all summer. One other thing worth mentioning was the fact that, at that time, electric drills were made of iron (a conductor) instead of plastic (a non-conductor). One day I was drilling a piece of angle-iron and the drill shorted out sending electricity through the iron drill and into me. Brad and I almost always worked together. We’d start together and finish together, but as bad luck would have it, I was alone this time. As the electricity passed through me my arm and hand muscles contracted, my fist clenched and I could not let go of the drill. In my panic I tried to pull the drill away with me left hand, but then that hand was stuck to the drill. I knew I couldn’t stay like that much longer, but the only thing I could think of was to fall backwards and hope the electric cord pulled out of the electric socket. I struggled to look up at the ceiling and tip my head back as far as I could to be off balance, then felt myself falling. I landed hard on some iron metal and was dazed, but the plug had pulled loose and I was OK. I told no one but Brad. We disassembled the drill and fixed the short with electricians tape. We laughed (it became a private joke the rest of the summer) and passed the incident off as minor when it could have been serious, tragic and/or fatal. A shocking experience for anyone. J

            Segue: speaking of fire, Why is the mythical dragon called a “fire eating” dragon? It doesn’t eat fire, it expels fire, just as a person doesn’t eat vomit, he expels the vomit.

            Speaking of a bus (did I mention  a bus someplace? Oh well. Here’s the story anyway) it reminds me of a kid who rode our bus home. His name was Matt (Mathew) Bates. I made up the name to call him Master Bates (masturbates). Again I thought I was being cool and funny, but Matt’s feelings were hurt and I stopped. The hard part was getting my other friends to stop. I did that, but there were some hard feelings for a while. The guy with the most hurt feelings started calling me Bill Shit-eehan. I told him that I was funny and he could keep doing it as long as he no longer picked on Matt Bates. The name calling really didn’t bother me. I just laughed along with my other friends and soon the friend with the hurt feeling let it go and it was all forgotten.

            Sorry. The train got side-tracked again.

            During summer vacation, Mike and I would go a mile down the road to the Louis Ledbetter dairy farm and help all that we could to get a quarter or fifty cents. He told us to call him Louie so we did. We helped Louie with the hay bailing and stacking, as much as possible (we were still rather young and the bales were difficult to lift). We had just gotten the hang of milking the cows when Louie bought an automated milk machine system, so we gather the cows, brought them into the barn, put them in stalls and fed them while Louie hooked up the suction cups to their teats. He seemed to like us being there to help him, though I believe he liked the company most because we weren’t actually that much help. He was a solitary man; quiet and calm. I don’t think he ever got mad or married. (Maybe he knew that he’d go mad if he got married.) J I don’t ever remember being invited to his house, or meeting his parents (I think he lived with them and took care of them in their old age) or even his older sister (She was married and gone, but he occasionally mentioned her few visits. Louie always met us in the barn. Now-a-days that scenario would sound dangerous. Back then it was no big deal. Louie was always nice to us.

            It was fun, though it only lasted during summer vacation and a little of fall. It was fun being around a World War II hero. (As if heroism could rub off on those close to the hero). Louie was a paratrooper in Europe. One morning he parachuted out of the plane, then somehow caught a man, in mid-air, whose parachute did not open. Louie said he heard the guy screaming, looked up and the guy’s body nicked his parachute. He instinctively reached out and somehow caught the guy’s partially opened parachute strap and saved his life. He was famous in the local area for doing that, but kept mostly to himself and didn’t seem to enjoy the attention. That in itself made it an honor for Mike and I to be accepted by him and be allowed to help him. As I got older I suspected that he had seen some brutal fighting, killed some of the enemy and was a witness to some bloody scenes and, perhaps, that was one reason for his solitary life, after the war. I imagine many Vietnam veterans had similar experiences and similar reactions.

            Louie taught us about dairy farming, but the most fun (before automated milking machines) was manually milking the cows. We’d see Louie grab a teat, point it at a barn cat and squirt the cat with a stream of milk. A few times he hit the cat in the face and it would look delightfully surprised, then lick its face for five minutes with such a contented look it its eyes. Other barn cats would gather around and even when Louie missed them the cats were ready to spring at any stream of milk that flew toward them. Hilarious images of cats licking their faces with long tongues (The damn, little perverts would even lick their “privates” while they waited to see if Louie would squirt more milk at them). I don’t let cats lick my face. (Nasty images occur).

            Perhaps the most important thing he taught us (I’m not sure how or when he did it. In small, gentle increment, perhaps) was that most of the bad things that are happening in the world are hidden from us; we simply are not aware of them as we romp through our happy lives. Almost all of it we really would not want to know about. But, and I paraphrase, “The smarter you are, the more you are aware, the more you observe, read, think and, thus, become aware of the horrors and insanity that occurs all over the world.” This sounds like a sophisticated message to teach us at our young age, but somehow, he did it and, I’m positive he did it without the vocabulary that I just used. Sometimes he had the saddest eyes you may have ever seen. He said that the most important duty for Mike French and I was to make him laugh to chase the sadness away. I wonder if Mike remembers this the same way that I do. Probably not. People usually remember different things (sometimes vastly different) about the same events.

            Louie seldom talked about the parachute incident, and when he did, he acted as if it was no big deal. He said it was simply a combination of luck and instinct that helped him save the other guys life, not heroism and that too much of a big deal was made of it. Actually, for a hero, he acted sad when it was mentioned. Years later, during the Vietnam War, I saw, on TV and movies, plus pictures in newspapers and magazines, what kinds of images might have cluttered up Louie’s mind about WWII.

            One year I read over forty books concerning the Vietnam War, Vietnam’s history, notable battles, sieges, air raids and combat in the hottest and densest of jungles, etc. It was only then that I could actually imagine the things that he may have seen (or done) that seemed to haunt him. Perhaps that’s why one instinctive, unplanned act, that saved someone’s life, was not enough to alter or replace hundreds of acts of inhumanity during wartime. Those thoughts make me glad that I was just a Vietnam Era Navy veteran and not a Vietnam combat veteran. Teenage dreams of glory, heroism and a chest full of medals seems so unrealistic, petty and ego-centric now. I had a friend that was killed in the jungles of Vietnam (Dave Conklin), another killed when his base was attacked (Jim Johnson), and one (Mike Winkler) who was almost killed aboard his aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Forrestal. Mike’s stories of burning men running around the huge runway, some of them jumping into the ocean, or men lying on the runway, their flesh melting off their bodies while their own fat provided fuel to keep them burning, the horrible burns that he saw on dead sailors, and worse, the melted features of those who survived (134 killed and 161 injured). He was like Louie in that he didn’t talk much about those horrors, just with really close friends, and even then it was reluctant talk. The graveyard of a person’s memories is so much worse than a cemetery. People only think about the surface area of a military cemetery, not so much about what’s six feet underneath it, where hundreds of thousands of bodies lie; each one with a horror story to tell that most people don’t want to hear (me included).

            One year Sandy and I drove to Washington, D.C. I visited the Vietnam wall with over fifty-eight thousand names of those killed or missing in the Vietnam War. It was raining that night so only a couple people were there. I walked up and down the sidewalk that’s next to the wall. A flash of light caught my attention and I looked at the spot where the light had reflected, then placed my hand on the spot. Out of over fifty-eight thousand names, the one I was looking at and touching said “Charles Sheehan.” For a second I could not breath. I ran my fingers over the last name and wondered, If things had been slightly different, had I been drafted into the Army, or had enlisted into the Marines. Then another “Sheehan” might have been listed on that wall. I cried with the sky, tears of pain for those men killed in action.

            Well, I went off on another tangent. So back on the path. It seems incredible that I can still remember Mike French and us going outside, to the well, to get water. There was no indoor plumbing at first, then a pipe was placed from the well to the kitchen sink, but there was an old fashion pump that was hand-operated to get water to the sink area. A bathroom? Hell no! We had to go to an outhouse and shit or pee into a hole cut into a wooden bench. (shit by sitting over the hole and take a dump; grunt and expel your body waste into the black hole and smell the worse that a human body can produce). Worse still, when that hole in the ground filled up, it had to be emptied. Thank goodness I never had to help with that kind of crappy job. Nothing more disgusting than human poop, especially poop in a ground pit that’s full of the shit/piss from nearly a dozen people. It becomes a disgustingly brown ooze of incredible stench, speckled with white, wet toilet paper, some of which is yellow from urine, hitting or splashing onto it. Made me not want to poop anymore. And in winter? Oh, man, that was an awful time to have to pee or poop. I’d walk outdoors onto a snowy path. Pulling my penis out into the frigid air was like holding onto a squirting icicle. And much worse, sitting down, over the hole, to crap, was torture for the butt, balls and weenie. It must have been even worse for the females.

            One summer, my sister, Frances, (married and living with Larry in the remodeled attic) went to the outhouse and came back screaming while trying to pull up her panties and pull down her dress. She’d been stung on the butt a few times by frolicsome, butt-biting (yuck, that sounds awful), butt-stinging, shit-eating bees. Doors were closed, groans of pain were heard, as Mike and I struggled to muffle our laughter. We wondered who was attending to my sister’s ass and if she had wiped herself before being stung (another yuck). Damn! I was sure glad the door was closed for her privacy. I sure as hell didn’t want to be exposed to that kind of sight, or I’d probably have had disgusting nightmares for years after that.

            Taking a bath was also a delightful event. It was done in the middle of the kitchen floor, inside a big, barn-animal, drinking-water tub. The other kids were kept out, but that didn’t prevent adults, who needed to quickly get something from the kitchen from walking in. Young people now-a-days have no idea what it was like to have to live without plumbing. Plumbing brings water into the house for drinking, cooking, cleaning, for privacy in the bathroom with a toilet and bath tub and/or shower with heated water from a water heater. Could they imagine being without those modern conveniences? I doubt they’d even want to imagine it because the results would make them blush brightly with embarrassment. Kids growing up in those days knew, early, what the body of the opposite sex looked like and how it functioned.

            Anyway, in those days, the water for the bath-tub( now you can understand how the bathtub got its name) had to be heated on the wood burning stove and poured into the tub first.

            It was difficult to get used to because wherever we had lived before, there was indoor plumbing and a bathroom with privacy for dumping your brown logs into the toilet water, then simple flushing them away. No lingering mess, no unsightliness (if you don’t look too closely before you flush), just the temporary smell and look of what’s stored inside your own body. At times it disgusted me to think that everyone, every living organism on earth is walking, crawling, flying or swimming with crap stored inside their bodies, just waiting to be dumped somewhere. The rich, the poor, the sinners and the saints are all full of shit. I wonder how Christians’ view their Jesus/God. Do they think either or both of them have to pee and/or shit? They say that we are all “created in the image of God” so, apparently Jesus/God do have to shit and pee. Kind of puts them in a lesser light, I think.

            So, getting naked and sitting in a barn tub filled with hot water that is heated on a wood stove (made warm by pouring cold water in too) was no fun. But now that I think about it, it was funny. I don’t know about how the other kids/adults felt, but being in the kitchen with doors closed, and knowing there were three boys and three girls, plus a few adults on the other side of the door, and nothing covering the windows, was humiliating. I suppose it would have been a delight for a weenie-wagger, but due to embarrassment, I kept my own shriveled weenie under water, as if I were trying to drown a worm.

            I mentioned the kitchen, wood burning stove, but there was also a converted wood burning stove in the living room; converted to burn coal which lasted a lot longer than wood. Those two stoves were the only sources of heat in the house. That meant that going to bed was like lying between two sheets of ice until your body heat defrosted the sheets and blankets. But body heat did not do well defrosting the pillow. It was like placing your head onto a soft mound of icy slush.

            I slept in a double bed with Willis, while Mike slept with Keith. I swear that those were the only times I ever went to bed with a guy (ha ha..J..really). Luckily for me, I was too young to know about homosexuality, and twice as lucky that Willis was not inclined that way. Anyway once between the sheets, my weenie shriveled up, getting close to the body for warmth and looking like the head of a mouse peeking out of a hole while shivering.

            A couple years after that my sister and Larry moved to an apartment in the small, rural town of Maine, N.Y. There, I met a boy whose nickname was “Itch” because he sometimes had an allergic reaction (To what?” I don’t remember.) and got hives on his body, which made him itch a lot. His name was Bruce Merrill. We became very good friends. If you saw one of us, you’d probably see the other one. We decided to be blood brothers so we cut our wrists (really just bleeding scratches) and pressed our cuts together.

            We played a lot of ping pong in his cellar. We played his dad, who was really good. That kind of competition made us good players. There was an elementary school competition in ping pong. Bruce got eliminated before me. For the championship, I had to play a guy named Billy Billet. He beat me four games to three in the best of seven championship games. I took second place. I guess it was meant to be because I enter the ping pong championships when in college also, but finished fourth that time (out of more than thirty players. The guy that eliminated me ended up being the champion). If I’d finished in third place I would have gone to Albany, N.Y. for the state championships. The guy who finished in third place didn’t want to go and didn’t tell anyone, so arrangements for me to go in his place were never even attempted. That pissed me off for a long time.

            It also turned out that Bruce and I became good friends with Billy Billet and were better than he at just about everything else. The day after he won the ping pong championship, he came to school with a silver dollar sized bald spot on the crown of his head. I asked him what happened and he told me it was not big deal; that when he got nervous his hair fell out in that spot, then it would grow back. Billy was a really funny kid. He was always saying or doing something funny so we liked him. He usually had the bald spot before a big test or when we played another town for the basketball team. He wasn’t self-conscious about it at all (like I was with the droopy eyelid).He didn’t live near us so we only saw him in school.

            About all I remember of my lower elementary grades experiences is that I actually did put the end of a girl’s pig-tail in my ink well (we used them in those grand old ancient times). I thought it was a good joke (so did every student but the girl). She sat in front of me and always seemed to have her hair (lose or in a pig-tail) on my desk, so I took the cap off my ink container (which was inside the desk’s ink well) and dipper the tip of her pig-tail into it. It was indeed a misguided action because then her hair, like a paint brush, painted the front of my wood desk black when she turned her head sideways. Then, even worse, she leaned forward and the paint brushing pig-tail started leaking ink on the back of her shirt. I had to pay for the shirt (actually my sister paid) and stand in front of the class and apologize (while others giggled). I had a crush on the girl and wanted her attention, but, after that, she would only scowl at me (I forgot to mention that she requested a different seating arrangement. I was a quickly developing and roguish black sheep even at an early age.

            In that same classroom (can remember if it was before or after the ink well incident) I was combing my hair and rolled the comb around my hair. Shit! Now I couldn’t get it out of my hair. The laughter interrupted the teacher and she saw my predicament. My punishment was that she would not help get the comb out of my hair, so I sat there with other students laughing, giggling and craning their necks to see how hilarious I looked. Luckily for me, the comb was plastic, not hardened rubber, because I started breaking it into little pieces and finally got it out of my hair. The pulling on my hair was painful, but I was determined. At lunch time I was a comical sensation so it was all worth it. J

            In grade 4 or 5, I was walking home one day and I was in a bad mood (don’t remember why and I still feel the same of my actions). There was this younger kid, named Clark, walking ahead of me. He was younger, smaller and timid. He was carrying a paper bag in his right hand, which was down by his right leg. I walked quickly, caught up to him without him noticing me and I kicked the bag, not knowing what was in it. He cried. I laughed and walked away. The next day I found out that he had sea-shells decorated in fancy ways inside the bag and he’d brought them to school to show the teacher and his classmates. My terrible actions broke many of the shells. I was furious with myself. I was exactly what I hated. A bully. I think I was twelve years old and he was about ten years old. I felt miserable for a week or so, knowing that no excuse could alter the fact that I was not only cruel, but also a damn hypocrite. I apologized to Clark and offered to pay for the damage. He accepted my apology out of fear, I suspect, which made me feel worse (deservedly so). He would not take any money, saying that he’d make more. I was never reprimanded or got a phone call from his parents and Fran and Larry never knew anything about it, though I suspect that I was harsher on myself that others would have been on me. Life is full of many regrets. After that, I watched out for him on the playground, in the hallways and on his walk home. Now I was determined to protect him from assholes like me. I got a bully away from him once on the playground and once in the cafeteria and told them if they did it again, they’d have to fight me. It’s been 55 years since then and I still see the images of my cruelty toward him. I am embarrassed to see myself as the bully that I was that day. But that incident may have been a seminal one, setting me on a course to not only hate bullies, but to do something about them whenever I could.

            I loved sports and played basketball, baseball and soccer in the middle grades. However, in high school (Maine-Endwell Sr. High) I switched from soccer to football (no soccer team in high school). I was too skinny for football so I only did a year. I was a second-string player specializing in the rigorous position of left-out. I was on the track team (the mile relay team) and baseball team (I played center field, mostly. I could cover a lot of ground with my speed, plus I had a “rocket” for an arm and could throw the ball from center field to the catcher at home plate most of the time. I could also hit from both sides of the plate, which made me an amphibious hitter J). My strongest sport had always been basketball in the elementary and middle grades, but not in high school. There were guys much better than I was. To be honest, I wasn’t really very good at basketball in high school. I was a second-string, back-up player with not much leg strength. I was just tall and tried to get rebounds, then pass the ball to a shooter. I was one of those white man can’t jump kinds of guys. I think that over 3 years of basketball (9th, 10th, and 11th grades), my average was about three points per game. I had to play without my glasses because I’d broken them a couple of times and my sister said if I broke them again I couldn’t play basketball anymore. My senior year I did not play because I had a car and a job. I would have quit anyway because the single most humiliating thing to happen to me occurred during a basketball game with my sister and Larry watching me. I was sent in to replace someone, got the ball at the top of the key with no one to pass it off to. The defender was over my right shoulder so I took a hook shot over my left shoulder. As I ran down the court, now on  defense, the cheerleaders were arguing about who would cheer for me after I made the basket. I pretended not to notice but it was a devastating feeling. I don’t believe the team missed me at all, nor I them, especially the cheer leaders. In all honesty, in all my sports efforts, I think I was only really good at playing goalie in soccer. I was tall and fast and had great success defending the goal. I was a star in the team.

            The only really exciting and lucky thing that happened to me in high school basketball was a car accident. One night I was returning home from basketball practice with a friend who was also on the team. Between Endwell and home was a road called Twist Run and it really twisted its way down a steep hill. It was winter time, the roads were icy. At one spot there was a vertical rock wall on to he right side of the road (were blasting had occurred so the road could be built and on the left side was a wide, stone-bottom creek. The road twisted around between rock wall and creek like a drunk staggers from side to side around corners, when there are no corners. Any way Larry Petite wasn’t going slow enough and the car slid out of one curve and no matter what Larry did (turning the steering wheel or braking) the car just went straight) it had no effect. The car banged into the stone wall, the front end rose up onto the wall, then slid down and landed on the driver’s side. I was on the passenger side so I ended up on top of Larry. I reached up and rolled the window down, then climbed out. Then I helped Larry get out by pulling him up and out the window. We didn’t get hurt, but Larry was without a car for a while so we had to get alternative rides home after practice (in theory there’s no difference between theory and practice, but you better believe there’s a big difference in practice J.

            I remember a likeable teacher named Mr. Robertson, or Robinson, (sixth grade, I think). One day I made a smart-ass (an intelligent fart?) comment in class so he drew a chalk circle on the blackboard, head high, then had me touch my nose to the center of the circle (That was easy enough). Then I had to place both hands behind my back (This was just too easy), and then I had to move both my feet two or three feet away from the blackboard (Oops! Not so easy now). My leaning weight was all on my nose and it squeezed against the chalkboard so that I had to breathe through my mouth. I think he regretted doing that to me because at the end of class I left him with a mixture of booger-slime and chalky-white saliva-drool on the blackboard.

            I think that sixth grade may have solidified my reputation as a wise-guy, joker, and prankster type of character ,or simply put, the class clown. The laughter in the hallways went on for a week when kids walked by Mr. Robertson’s classroom door.

            One other time, in Mr. Robertson’s history class, I had to give an oral report about the early establishment of some local town, or city in the 1700s.

            When I got up in front of class I mentioned that the Indians and white men were frequently at war with each other, plus I gave some other factual info, then I said that the Indians saw that the white men were too strong to defeat, so the chief said, “Oh. We go.” Then smiling, I continued by saying, “ That’s how the town of Owego, N.Y. got its name.”

            The whole class busted a gut laughing and it took several attempts by Mr. R. to get the room quiet. But I could see that this time he was trying hard not to smile (actually he was my favorite teacher in elementary school). If my memory is accurate, he was too busy keeping his smile in check to talk, but he did stare at me with eyebrows raise, as if he couldn’t belief what I had just done. I looked back at him and said, “What? It could have happened that way.” Then I held my open right hand up, palm outward, as if taking an oath in court, and imitated the deep-throated voice of an Indian war chief, saying, “Oh. We go.”

            The class got hysterical with laughter, again, as Mr. R. shook his head at me and rolled his eyes, then said, “Billy. You’re the weirdest student I’ve ever known.” I’ve heard that word “weird” a lot during my life (Also the word “strange.”) I guess it’s true. It must be true because even my grandchildren, Lily and Slone, think I’m weird (they need to remember that families are like fudge, mostly sweet, but with a few nuts). Slone just stares at me knowing and accepting that I’m weird, but Lily? She’s more vocal. She screws up her pretty face, lips pursed, eyes confronting me and says, “Daaaa,” (she drags out the word “Da,” which both kids call me, instead of grandpa). Sometimes after the “Daaaa,” she’ll say, “You’re odd.” When I thank her for the compliment she does the same routine all over again, with a big smile.

            Segue: I just thought of the time that Lily asked me if I would help her “defecate” something. I told her that the correct word was “decorate.” Then when she wanted to know what defecate meant, we laughed for so long that my stomach cramped.

            I do worry about both of them; their futures, especially with the world appearing to be on the brink of economic, political and religious wars that could easily lead to a nuclear holocaust (sometimes I hear people you the phrase that starts, “In a perfect world” . . . They simply don’t realize that in a perfect world there would be no people. Duh! Non-thinkers like that, you just have to take with a grin of salt J).Kids growing up today may be the first generation of Americans who are expected to do less well than their parents and grandparents. I always expected and pushed myself to do better in life than my grandparents, my parents and my sister, but now the economy of American is shriveling-up for young people. American produces less and less every year, millions of jobless and homeless people walk the streets; even those who get jobs don’t make enough to pay their bills. People are slowly forced to use smaller cars, live in smaller houses with smaller mortgages, smaller family size is necessary to coincide with smaller income. Then comes the smaller hopes and dreams of a bright future.

            One year there was a new math teacher in whose class I only joked behind his back because a friend of mine Mike McQuaid once joked openly during a math lesson and this extreme, hard-ass, no non-sense and humorless teacher approached Mike’s desk, picked up Mike’s new math textbook, closed it, then hit Mike over the head with it so hard that it cracked the hard cover of the book. I was rather closed-mouthed in his math class from then on. It frustrated me to be close-mouthed because I had been waiting for him to call on me for some math problem so that I could say, “I’m not so good at math, but I’m great with figures . . .girl’s figures.” Good thing I didn’t say that because a book slammed over my head would have left me more addle-brained than I am now and, perhaps, more weird.

I did, however leave an anonymous note on his desk one day.

It said:  2n + 2n is 4n to me.

This math teacher was so bad that if he caught you with a

rubber-band pistol he’d accuse you of having a weapon

of math disruption.

            Mike was more of an acquaintance than a close friend. We had a friendly rivalry on the track field. I made him better and he made me better with the competition, but he was the better and faster runner. I swear that he must have had a jalapeno pepper up his ass because he took off from the starting line of a race like a rocket We ran on the same mile relay team and cheered for each other, although off the field we did not hang out together. A couple years later he got TB and had to have one lung removed. Then he could hardly walk fast without breathing hard. Soon after the operation his right shoulder sagged where his lung was removed. I felt terrible for him. From then on, his eyes showed bitter sadness and loss. He was a good-looking guy with flirting girls always around him. After the operation the girls stayed away from him, no more flirting, but acting as if he was now a freak. I remember thinking that, compared to him, I was glad I only had the droopy eyelid.

            I had plenty of male friends all through elementary school and middle school, so at that time school was fun. I don’t remember any enemies except for a guy named Bill Cole. We had a fight in the locker room one day. It was after we had showered, so we were both only wrapped in our towels. I guess it would have been the funniest of all funnies if our towels had dropped and our weenies had flopped up and down as we fought. Wow! What a comical sight that would have been. Bill was a big, strong guy and we had been friendly, but something happened to make him angry at me (probably my joking around and saying something offensive). He was like human spontaneous combustion. He kept throwing round-house right hand punches at me, which I ducked under. When I rose I struck his face with a waist-twisting, hard left jab. He kept doing the same thing so I kept reacting the same way. He had a bloody nose and lips before the coach (Mr. Bradley) broke it up. We were no longer friends, but he never confronted me again. I never even found out what set him off like that. I’m truly sorry to say that a few years later, he was killed in a motorcycle accident.

In Middle School I had a principal who said she knew everything that

was going on in her school. No one could pass her in the hallway without

smiling because her name was Mrs. Claire Buoyant.

            High school was not nearly as much fun for me. The towns of Maine and Endwell had no high school, so the towns merged a year before I got there and formed a high school. That meant that only one class was ahead of my class. The H.S. grades were 9th through 12th grades, so only the 10th graders were ahead of my class. There were no 11th and 12th grades, at that time.

            For some reason (probably because the town of Maine was rural, with many farms) the Endwell students considered the Maine students to be inferior, shit-kicking farmers. Therefore, there were a lot of personal (If you are a person, then it’s personal, in spite of the idiots that keep saying, “This is not personal.”) clashes between the town of Maine kids and the town of Endwell kids, especially the boys, though there were some fisticuffs and hair pulling between the girls as well.

            I could write a lot about all the fights that I was in from 9th to 12th grades, but it’s a boring story of routine bullying, fear, anger, blood and bruises, and my unrelenting stubbornness to never back down from the Endwell bullies, though, once in a while, in the face of overwhelming odds (like a group of bullies backing up the leader bully) I did back down and took the humiliation and taunting. To this day I have minor, white scars on my knuckles and hands that resulted from those fights. I would venture to say that those four years of high school were the most consecutive days of fear in my whole life (fear of various degrees). But I was susceptible to fear due to my physical insecurities (tall and skinny, thus not strong) and especially the emotional insecurity of having a droopy eyelid, which was the major focus of most taunting. I think it would be brutally honest (and revealing) to say that I’ve never conquered the insecurity created by my droopy eyelid. I’ve only improved upon it. But I no longer have physical insecurities because of my long experience with karate and, by that, I don’t mean that I could never be defeated; just that I am not fearful of physical confrontation. (I fear no man; just kids with squirt guns because I’m a sweet guy who’s made of sugar. J) Also, I must remember that those who live by the sword get shot by those who are smarter and better equipped.

            But one fight in particular stands out as a seminal moment in my life, even affecting a current activity of mine that I’m still involved with now at age 67 (at 67, I’m still young at heart, although I’m much older in most other places, plus the usual aches and pains from an older body. But age and treachery will usually beat youth and skill, though it’s probably a good idea for me to eat many more foods that have higher than average contents of preservatives in them. J I often think that perhaps people (me too) don’t really get smarter with age. Maybe older people simply run out of stupid things to say, think and/or do. I guess I fit that category a lot, especially with the same old tired jokes/puns. Sure, I’m older and wiser now, but I’m older and wiser because of a youth that was immature and crazy.

            One day, in the high school cafeteria, I was eating lunch with friends. Suddenly one of the Endwell boys (Charlie Miller. This guy was so full of shit that, if you gave him an enema just before he died, he could be buried in a thimble) started throwing food at us, me in particular, combined with nasty comments about my “goofy, retarded-looking droopy eye-lid.” His constant chatter made it seem as if his racing mouth was on wheels, going along the one-track mind of a simpleton. I got up, emptied the contents of my tray on the table, walked up to him and slammed the empty food tray over his head. It made a hell-of-a loud, but dull sounding noise (an echo, no doubt, from having a large head, but a tiny brain). His head shot forward nicely, his forehead almost hitting the table. His friends were in bug-eyed shock. He put his hand to his head, where I’m sure a bump must have appeared later. I grabbed some of his peas, shoved them down his back, then slapped him on the back to crush them.

            He stood up and was both embarrassed and furious. Later I would wish I hadn’t made him get so angry because it furnished him with extra adrenaline for energy. We stood face to face. I said, “Let’s take this outside.” As we walked outside I was confident that I could kick his ass with my boxing skills, and my superior, long-arm reach. Unfortunately for me, he had been aware of my boxing skills so he bent over and charged me and tackled me. He was a wrestler and my style of fighting was not good for ground fighting. We wrestled around, exchanged headlocks and a few ineffective punches, but, to my dismay, he ended up on top of me and I was helpless. What a terrible, unusual and humiliating feeling that was. He punched at my head and I blocked all his punches away from my face, though they hit my shoulders and chest due to my twisting, humping and kicking movements. But I could not get him off me. I realized that he would eventually strike my head. Suddenly my courage, my determination and indomitable fighting spirit deserted me.

            I had been far too overconfident and got fooled. He was on my chest ready to punch my face again and again until he connected. I saw no way out so when he asked me to give-up, I agreed to the hugely humiliating defeat. I couldn’t believe that I’d quit, given-up, became cowardly. To this day I wish I had fought on, taken the punishment and not given-up. A beating would have been less embarrassing than quitting.

            Before that, I had only lost fights to far larger opponents. (Which didn’t take much because when I graduated from high school I only weighed 149 pounds). Except for those fights, I can’t remember having lost a fight. I was now devastated. In a moment of weakness, my pride, courage and determination had been tossed away carelessly and I lost a fight against Charlie Miller, who was slender, like me, but a few inches shorter.

            This defeat never left the confines of my head; always there in the background until many years later, after getting tired of being a part-time magician for eighteen years, I finally decided to take karate lessons.

I like Chuck Norris a lot and have read a couple of his book about

karate. I was disappointed when some toilet paper manufacturer was

going to advertise a new Chuck Norris toilet paper because it would

tougher that other toilet papers. But the toilet paper was not a success

because it wouldn’t take any shit from anybody.

            So, that’s how getting my ass kicked in a fight with Charlie Miller lead me, years later, to earning my first black belt in the Okinawan karate style of Isshin-Ryu while in my forties. Now, at the age of 67, I have earned another black belt in the Okinawan karate style of Uechi Ryu. It was easy once I remembered that karate is 80% physical and the other half in mental. J

            I notice my environment much more. I look around to see if there appears to be any danger. I look at people, especially, men and think of ways to defeat them in combat. I am much more careful and defense conscious, not just for me but for Sandy, Mara, Lily and Slone. I know that at my age I no longer have a lot of stamina, which means striking fast, with harmful intent; aiming at more vital areas of a person’s anatomy. At the same time I know that I have to be careful not to abuse my skills because those skills give me a feeling of being like a hammer and all the irritating people start looking just like nails.

            While I was working on my first black belt, I was also learning how to correctly throw a throwing-knife and ninja-stars. I built a four feet by six feet (one inch think) target out of pine boards. I put it in the cellar and practiced almost every day (Mara liked to watch me). Mara was fascinated that I could do such a thing. I got so good at it that Mara would shout out the location (for example, she’d shout “upper right” or “center,” or “lower left” and I would throw a knife at that circle. And 90% of the time I’d place the knife within that black softball size circle (I had five black circles painted on the boards). I was only about 50% accurate with the Ninja-stars, but never far off. Mara and I had fun and it’s a pleasing memory of our closeness.

            One of the reasons Charlie Miller disliked me, I found out, was that I verbally picked-on a friend of his who was in my drafting arts class. His name was Theodorf (I can’t remember if that was his first or last name). I teased him often in that class. At that time, though, I saw it as joking around, but he thought of it as me bullying him and, guess what? He was right, though I did not think about it that way at the time because the definition of bullying for my had been physical confrontations. But you can bully someone verbally, so I was guilty, again.

            What happened was that, after Theodorf mumbled some nonsense that we all laughed at, I said, “You know what Theodorf? I’d really like to see you get ahead in life, . . . you certainly need one.” (a head). I embarrassed the poor kid because we all laughed at him; even the teacher laughed. Yes, I know. It was wrong and I got what I deserved, especially for a guy who kept saying that he hated bullies. This incident taught me that words can hurt much more than fists. I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was; not as funny either. You know the saying that, “He who laughs last, laughs best?” I was just thinking that, “He who laughs last is the slowest thinker.” Just a thought.

            As an adult, it’s memories of failures and regrets that haunt me; not in any serious way, but in a way that makes me wish I had acted differently. Those regretted memoires appear in each room of the house and live as the ghosts of my mind. Ghost memories of actions or words that you wish you’d never done or said. And some of those ghosts are more scary than others and thus must reside in the cellar or the attic; the places that are best sealed with the doors locked securely. I don’t believe I have any that must live in the attic or cellar, but watch the TV news, read the newspaper, listen to the radio and you realize that there are a great many people who do.

            In high school I took a French language class. Man, I was just terrible at it, so it should be no shock when I say I disliked that class. The teacher believed in total emersion so she only spoke French in that class (I had thoughts of “total immersion” for her, too . . . in the school swimming pool to see how long she could hold her breath in French). It was embarrassing when she talked to me and I had no idea how to respond. So I memorized how to count to ten in French and when she talked to me, I simply counted to ten. She was a bit thick to catch on, but eventually she stopped talking to me. Also, the class was so big that a few of us had to stand, which, of course, made us “stand-out” for ridicule. After a few weeks I dropped the class. It was a wonderful relief, like holding back farts all day with frequent buttocks squeezes, getting stomach cramps and anal spasms, then finally being able to relax, release and fill the air with a day’s worth of flatulence. Like being in heaven and floating on a smelly cloud.

            I was one of those guys who did not like to read. I had no trouble reading, just didn’t find it interesting, worthwhile, etc. That changed during the second half of 10th grade. Every student had to take a whole year of English classes. The first half of that class involved grammar, the study of words and their relationships in sentences (Verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverb, pronoun, prepositions, punctuation etc.). I disliked that part. It bored me, but it was the diagramming of sentences that really shattered my motivation in that class. I just barely scraped by with a passing grade.

In high school I was terrible at grammar. I was stressed, anxious, and

irritable, but it wasn’t until after my Vietnam Era Navy experience

that I realized that those feelings came from post-grammatical stress

disorder.

            Then came a personal surprise and another seminal moment in my life. I had a book report assignment and was able to choose a book. Since I didn’t like to read, I chose the shortest book I could find on the teacher’s list of acceptable books. I’d written book reports before (elementary school), but I always did them my way, which means not reading the book, except for the first and last chapters, plus a book summary, either on the book itself or info. from the library and, sometimes, from a friend who had already read that book. From this info I wrote that book report, but made the mistake of handing it in too soon and the teacher got suspicious. (A boy wise-guy who doesn’t like to read is the first one to hand-in his a book report? Stupid and youth are sometimes synonymous) She asked me if I really read the whole book. I knew that she knew that I didn’t, so why lie? I told her the truth. I tried to joke my way out of the situation by saying, “You know of course that half the lies people say about me are no true.” She grinned, but didn’t say a word. (Much later in my life I discovered that some people’s lives are built around lies. Everyone lies, of course, though we hate to admit it, but to hang on to those lies as if they were precious possessions, instead of pernicious demons waiting for a time to embarrass you in the future must cause much stress and anxiety.) The teacher assigned another book, of her choice, this time. She said something close to, “A person who won’t read really has no advantage at all over an illiterate person who can’t read.” She didn’t punish me in any way (except that terrible look of disappointment that teachers everywhere must practice for years to get it perfectly). The book that she assigned was William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies. The title looked terrible. I looked at the cover, then at her. She smiled up at me (She was sitting at her desk) but did not say a word. I thought that I’d better not say a word either (getting smarter); not out loud anyway. I waited until I left the room before I silently said a curse-word to myself. I think, after a few strides, I said some more profane words to express my dissatisfaction.

            So, can a book, a collection of papers and ink, bound together, change the direction of a life? It did mine. The book was interesting and made me want to read more, learn more. I never thought of going to college before reading that book and many others in high school. But, at first, it was only a pipe-dream because I had no money for college (my mother’s schooling only went as far a second grade, due to polio, my father finished at sixth grade and my sister left high school after tenth grade, so there was no money for such foolish dreams as a college education, yet I could hear an echo of an echo calling me to try college). So someone else had to pay for it. The solution was to give-up four years of my life to the Navy to get the G.I. Bill that would pay 90% my college expenses. I took a scholarship test at RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) and surprised myself when I won one of the awards that would pay the remaining 10% of my college education. Then at Geneseo college I met Sandy. So college rewarded me with career as a teacher, and Sandy rewarded me by saying yes to my marriage proposal, then rewarded me with the wonderful gift of Mara. Without their love I’d be lost.

            Speaking of college, I took a speed-reading course in my sophomore year. I remember vividly that we read the book, Of Mice and Men. Then we read The Grapes of Wrath. Wow! What an experience. I can honestly say that there are men in the first book and grapes in the second. An amazing class. But seriously, probably the most important thing I learned in college was how terribly uneducated most of us are. For everything we can say that we know well, there are thousands of thing we know little about, some things that we know nothing about, and so many things that we don’t even care about. I was a teacher, but only knew a little about math, science, reading, history, etc. and little or nothing about advanced philosophy, advanced math, science, history, computers, and just the uppermost veneer of psychology, etc. For six years I was a the skyscraper of knowledge, yet I graduated from the first floor and when I got my Master’s Degree, I graduated on the second floor of that one-hundred story skyscraper of knowledge. I’ve learned so much more after college than I did in college because I’m curious.

            The most important thing I’ve learned from life is that we are all liars, frequently and incorrigibly. It sounds bitter of me. I even thought that I could always tell the truth, but it’s not possible. All you have to do is say something, for any reason, that you know is not true and you are a liar. People do it every day, several times a day. Even a “white lie” is a lie coming from a liar. So the use of the word “liar” as an accusatory word really doesn’t mean that much. (the accuser is also a liar).

            Then, after I retired, Mara and Todd gave me two wonderful grandchildren: Lily and Slone Bonnewell (my treasures). Yeah. A book sure can change the direction of a life.

            In the Navy I had read many of Ayn Rand’s books, especially Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, plus four or five shorter ones (Atlas Shrugged is more than one-thousand pages long). These books strengthen my belief system about “individualism,” plus the Objectivist Philosophy of Rand (as well as many other philosophy books: Epicurus, Aristotle, Socrates, Zeno, Plato, Descartes, Hobbes, Thomas Aquinas, Locke, David Hume, John Stuart Mill, Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche. I’ll stop here. There are too many to go further) influenced me greatly.

A philosopher and a theologian are discussing the relative merits

of their disciplines.  The theologian says, “Philosophy is like a

blind man in a pitch black basement looking for a black cat that

really is not there.” The philosopher replies, “Perhaps, but somehow

theology always claims to have found that cat.”

            My persistent regard for my own individuality has often caused problems. To conform, to obey traditions and customs has their necessary place, but if they do not accept the individual’s right to think and act freely (though not unlawfully) according to common-sense, reason or preference, then I tend to be a non-conformist. I feel that it is my right to accept or reject ideas, traditions, customs, etc. and this has caused many of my relatives to see me as a foolish rebel, maybe even a traitor to the family rules and long established manner, attitudes, ethics that are mainly based on a “We do it that way because it has always been done that way,” kind of reasoning. “We are all Catholic. All the Sheehan’s have always been Catholic. We need to remain Catholic.” Why? Because we were brainwashed as easily molded children to believe whatever our parents and forefathers believed? Nonsense! I’m a Sheehan. I was Catholic until I started thinking and reasoning, using logic, reading and then decided that I’m not only not Catholic, but that I am an atheist. Most people simply accept their parents’ traditional religion without question.

“Casting an eye on the education of children from whence I can make a

judgment of my own, I observe they are instructed in religious matters

before they can reason about them, and consequently that all such

instruction is nothing else but filling the tender mind of a child with

prejudiced.”  George Berkeley (1685-1753)   So what appears to be universally

true is that for several millennia, religious brainwashing almost always

begins in the tender confines of a child’s comfortable home by parents

(words and italics are mine).

            But not questioning is tantamount to limited knowledge. Skepticism, questions, curiosity and then research lead to knowledge, but it’s time-consuming work and sometimes damn hard work. But to reason with closed minds is a waste of time, so a simple answer to people who question me is that I am not a group oriented human. I’m an individual amidst a group; I am in charge of my own life, not a group life (though in some ways I have to be). I control my life by making decisions about individual choices. That, of course, excludes being what others think that I should be. My life choices are not based on family opinions or traditions (though most of them are useful to me). As an individual my choices are based on common sense, logic, reasoning (though none of them are fool-proof). That means that group (community, state, national) thinking is secondary in importance to me. What is of primary importance to me is my family and my individuality; my right to be different simply because it’s the way I think and reason about the world around me. The danger of that philosophy though is egotism, but the risk of too much ego, to me, is far better than unquestioned, unreasoned conformity. I conform to existing tradition, customs, rules and laws 95% of the time; I’m entitled to that 5% of non-conformity (unless it’s illegal and even then I sometimes break the law by driving my car 65 mph in a 55 mph zone (or jay-walking, underage drinking, oral sex is still illegal in some states, illegally downloading music and movies, littering, not using the car’s turn-signals, etc.). The philosopher, Aristotle, was a proponent of the good life coming from a “moderation in all things” (the middle ground between excess and deficiency). He must have been using moderation in his own common sense (moderation in one’s common sense is not a compliment for anyone).

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed

by the tribe. To be your own man is hard business. If you try it, you will be

lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for

the privilege of owning yourself.” …….Rudyard Kipling

            While in the Navy, I also learned that being a patriot is being loyal and loving of your own country as well as defending it. But being a stupid patriot is always agreeing and supporting the government of your country. It’s not a matter of love it or leave it. It’s a matter of love it, try to change what you don’t like, and then love it more.

            So, to get back on track, I thought, OK. This time I’ll read the first two chapters, the middle two chapters and the last two chapters. That should do it. Then I thought, What if she asks me, again, if I read the whole book? Ah, Yes. I came up with an answer for that. The chapters that I didn’t read, I would scan quickly. Then, if she asked, I’d say, “Yes ma’am. I went through the whole book.” I could say that honestly, I reasoned, because I would have gone through the whole book; I just didn’t read the whole book.

            So, that night I dreaded to start reading that damn book. I had my other homework done, so I said, What the hell. Get a chapter or two out of the way. I reluctantly open the book and read the first chapter slowly, waiting for the awful feeling of boredom to fill my brain. But then, as the book got interesting, I read the second chapter more quickly. When I flipped the page to start the third chapter, I stopped and thought, “Holy shit!” (that’s when the Pope takes a crap), I’m about to read more of this book. What the hell is wrong with me? But I read chapter three with a disbelieving smile on my face, excitedly wanting to know what happened next to those kids. I was hooked on the story about British boys. (All of them twelve years old or younger). The boys were stranded on a Pacific island after their plane crashed during WWII. A gang of them turned into physically and mentally savage bullies. It dealt with human nature, power and what happens to kids with power, plus the needs of the individual versus the needs of the group, and the emotional damage that bullying does to self-concepts and self-confidence.

            Needless to say, I was fascinated by this book and read every word on every page. I realized then that reading can be a joyful experience and did not have to be drudgery. I’ve never stopped, averaging one book every week to ten days (give or take a couple days), over a half-century of time.

            My book report? It was twice as long as was required and I got my first ever “A” grade in English (In literature, not grammar, but I did learn that double negatives were a no-no). I also got some ego-stroking comments from the teacher about my excellent understanding of the plot and the main characters. Wow! I wasn’t used to that. I felt pleasantly light-headed, as if someone stuck nozzles in my ears and filled my head with helium. I read more and more the rest of the year, enjoyed library class much more, spent much more time in the library and checked-out books which, previously, was something I only did if I had to, was forced to do.

            That lady teacher (forgot her name) always seemed to remember me and as I progressed to the upper grades, she would see me in the hallways and say, “Hi Bill,” and wave (I wasn’t called Billy any more). I always smiled at her and returned her wave. Once in a while she’d stop me and ask about how I was doing. She was wonderful. I certainly wish that I could remember her name, though I do remember her face.

            My best friends in high school were basically the same as they were in elementary and middle schools, in Maine, N.Y. They were Brad Burdick, Doug Bruce, Alice Spawn, Judi Murray, Shirley Truax, Mike Winkler, Jim Decker and Dan Weatherwax. Doug and Mike are dead now. Jim is in an adult home for assisted living (After high school he used drugs until they messed up his brain and he couldn’t take care of himself). I’m no longer in touch with Alice Spawn and Judi Murray, but I occasionally get an e-mail from Shirley. A couple of years ago, Brad, Dan and I had a mini-reunion in Boca Rotan.

            Now that my mind is on friendships, the subject makes me sad. Most of my best friends are in my past: in grades K-12, then the Navy and college, but sometime after college (maybe a long time) I realized that friendships can’t last very long; they are fragile butterflies that are blown away by the slightest breeze. Most friendships get blown away by time and circumstance. Friendships are mostly based on the way things were (the past), but the past always gets left behind by the present and the future. Change is unavoidable, so changing friends is also unavoidable. Friendships come into and out of our lives like butterflies blown away by sudden and shifting breezes. They very rarely last a lifetime, though some wonderful memories of them do last a lifetime. Change is inevitable, but in many ways I don’t like “change” especially when the change increases the size of my underwear and my weight. Also, “change” is inevitable except in vending machines. J

            In a way, it was sad graduating from high school, though it was a relief getting away from the Endwell snobs, pseudo-intellectuals and the violence. It got tiring having to look over my shoulder, looking out for the Endwell’s endless assholes. I guess it’s natural for a clash to occur when two towns merge for the purposes of a high school. But, in this case, natural was not pleasant. I doubt that it’s anything like that now. But in most cases, it’s best to leave your past behind you. (That’s just an example of my towering intellect. J No. Not the Tower of Pizza. Oops! I mean the Tower of Pisa, though a tower made of pizzas would be damn interesting) J

            Many years later, when I was somewhat smarter, I realized that humans have a propensity for aggression and violence. What people don’t understand, they fear. What they fear, they will normally hate. What they hate, they will need to dominate, conquer or destroy High school was a mini-version of that, but since then, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve seen it and/or experienced it too many times. History is mostly an example of it.

            After high school (August of 1964) I joined the Navy. Mike Winkler, Doug Bruce and I took a bus to Albany to get a physical. Doug did not pass due to a history of epileptic spasms (even though medication kept them under control), and Mike was rejected for having too much albumin in his blood (albumin is in eggs and all three of us had a big egg breakfast). I was the only one that made it and I was flown to the Great Lakes Naval Training Facility (Boot Camp) in Illinois. The next weekend Mike took the examination again and passed. I never saw Mike when we were both in the Navy. I was in the Azores, then on a ship (U.S.S. Courtney, DE-1021) out of Newport, RI (DE = Destroyer Escort), while he was stationed on an aircraft carrier out of Norfolk, VA. A few years later, I saw him a few times before he died prematurely of heart failure. I think he died in his mid-thirties. Good friend. Sad end.

            While in boot camp, I got into some minor trouble because the upper classmen (UC) thought they were God’s gift to the rookies who had just arrived. They would order us around and have us do bullshit jobs (and we had to obey them or face disciplinary measures). I quickly learned that the only think separating their mouths from their assholes was a few feet of intestine. Come to think of it, that’s probably where they all got their shit-eating grins.

            One night I got up in the middle of the night an went to the bathroom to pee and to spray a large amount of shaving cream into my left hand. Then I sneaked up to the bunk bed where the leader of the UCs lay. With my right hand I scooped up half the large pile of Gillette shaving cream (I had to spray the shaving cream into my left hand while in the bathroom so that the sound of doing it next to his, or anyone’s bunk, wouldn’t awake him) and placed half the pile onto his pillow, next to his head. I did the same with the remainder of the shaving cream, only on the other side of his head. When he moved his head either way he’d push his own face into one or the other pile of shaving cream. This procedure also gave me time to get away, in case the wet cream woke him too soon.

            The next morning both sides of his head had dried bubbles of white cream plastered at each temple, cheek and chin. It was a fantastic joke for the remainder of the day. So, instead of feeling depressed and angry, caused by the bullshit exercises and activities (like washing your own clothes and having to tie those clothes to a clothes line with a special six or eight inch long cord and with a special knot instead of with a simple clothes pin), the guys were joyful and curious as to who did the hilarious deed The UC’s leader was angry and wanted revenge. He tried very hard to find out who did it, but failed. After a few days some of the guys who suspected me of being the prankster, told me their suspicions, but I never confirmed it. If I had, then word would have gotten around and I’d have been accused of it and gotten into more trouble. But where there’s no proof, there’s no fair and justifiable revenge, though I did receive some evil-eyed stares from the upper-classmen.

            A while after that, one of the other UCs ridiculed and humiliated a shy, somewhat overweight kid until the kid cried. The UC called the shy kid a crybaby and told him to wear diapers at night in case he peed the bed. He took pleasure taunting the kid all day. Does that sound like bullying? You bet it does. Here I go.

            That evening, before bedtime, I peed, but saved some of the urine in a small plastic bottle with a tight cap. I placed the bottle under my pillow to hide it. I didn’t want to fall asleep, but I did. I startled myself awake about 1:15 A.M. I quietly rolled out of my bottom bunk and snuck to that UC’s bed. I slowly, carefully lifted his sheet and blanket. I slid my hand underneath them, with the open bottle of urine in my hand. When I had it close to his butt I very slowly poured the urine onto his bottom sheet and mattress. Then I placed the bottle under the bottom bunk of a different UC.

            In the morning I got up and had to walk past the guy’s bed to get to the bathroom to pee, shower and shave. Other early risers were with me. When I passed the UC’ s bed, I paused, wrinkled my nose and asked the other guys, “Anyone else spell that? Smells like pee, like maybe someone peed in their bed. Then I remained quiet as the other guys sniffed the air and followed the stench to that UC’s bed. The groggy UC pushed his sheet and blanket off of himself and his bed reeked of urine. His underwear was soaked. A cloud of urine smell wafted over the area now that the covers were off the exposed and wet area of his bed.

            That UC was laughed at and humiliated (behind his back) with sentences that included the words: diapers, cry baby, pacifier, bed wetter, etc. The laughter and giggling lasted a long time.

            Someone came up with the derogatory name of Pee-Wee, so that became the guy’s nickname from that moment on.

            All the UC acted enraged, angrily yelling warnings and threats (Man. The place needed a little levity. You’d think they would appreciate a little humor).They went around searching the bunk beds until someone pointed out a bottle under the bunk of another UC. Once opened, it smelled of urine and that seemingly implicated the second UC. The UC who found the empty urine bottle under his bunk and all his friends knew it had to have been planted there. The leader threatened to give the bottle to the MPs (military police) to check for finger prints. He tried to scare the culprit (me) into confessing. But I was pretty sure he was bluffing and didn’t even believe that the MPs had the capabilities to do that, not at a boot camp base, anyway. Anyway, it’s not easy bullshitting a bull-shitter so I said nothing. But I was starting to feel a little uneasy now, like maybe I had gone too far.

            When no one spoke up, all the UCs faces, out of frustration, looked as if they had applied too much rouge. I think that if you got them all together in one spot, then threw a tent over their heads, you’d have a ready-built, circus clown show.

            However, there was a nice benefit to the prank. For the rest of the day the UCs were obviously angry, they were also fearful of something embarrassing happening to them. It made them all hesitate to harass any of us lowly trainees and be subjected to the revenge of the anonymous night stalker.

            Hell yes. I wanted to tell everyone that it was me pulling the pranks. I wanted the glory, the attention, the admiration, but I remembered a quote that said, Two people can keep a secret only if one of them is dead.(Ben Franklin, I think) So I didn’t tell anyone. Pats on the back by my friends wasn’t worth stabs in the back by the UCs.

            Unfortunately, and unknown to me, someone else had been up that night and when returning from the bathroom to his bunk bed, he saw me. He let me know at lunch time that he saw me. I thought I was monumentally screwed because he would tell all the UCs. Instead, he admired me. I told him not to talk about it, but soon, most of the guys knew it was me. The UCs heard the rumors that I was the night stalker and the UC leader confronted me. I pleaded my innocence. He had no proof so he said that he and the other UCs would be watching me. I had to stop my pranks and be extra cautious.

            Even though the UCs had no proof, the leader still sent me to extra physical exercise classes. One day, while I was at that class, one of the other guys (the guy who saw me that night) put drops of white cream (Corn Huskers hand lotion, I think) on the UC leader’s sheet. When it had dried it looked like the remains of an ejaculation (so I was told). Apparently another guy(s) made a sign that said something like I LIKE TO JERK-OFF AT NIGHT, and placed it on the UC’s bed. When I returned, exhausted, from the demanding physical exercises, my section of the dorm was in an uproar. The sign had been previously spotted and yelling was occurring, coupled with continuous, loud laughter. The UC’s sheet and blanket had pulled away and there, plain as day, on his sheet was a spot, looking like an amorphous ameba under a microscope, like a “wet dream” had occurred the night before and had dried.

            It turned out that some of the guys were attempting to save my ass with a distraction that made the UCs start doubting that it was me who was doing the nighttime pranks, and that I had nothing to do with the “wet dream” prank, especially since I hadn’t even been in the barracks. After another day, the extra physical exercise classes ended and the UCs stopped scowling at me, which, of course, meant they no longer suspected me or, at least, they were much less certain. As a result of this, surprisingly close, but temporary friendships developed.

            Also, because of these nighttime (and one daytime) pranks the UCs acted intimidated, thus more lenient, less harassing. I suppose they feared the embarrassing consequences of the night prankster. A few more pranks were performed, but only minor ones, by some of the other guys who wanted their own taste of revenge. One careless guy got caught, but never gave any info about the other pranksters. He was, however, transferred to another unit, but faced no serious disciplinary actions. He spread the word about our unit (no names) and our unit became semi-famous in all the others barracks at the Great Lakes Naval boot camp.

            After boot camp graduation, I was sent to the Azores, a group of Portuguese islands about 900 miles off the west coast of Portugal. The Air Force and Marines were also there.

            I was part of an ASW group (Anti-Submarine Warfare). The Air Force flew C-130 airplanes over designated parts of the Atlantic Ocean in search of Russian submarines. Occasionally Canadian planes and personnel assisted. The information was passed to us and we sent it to dozens of places around the world that helped keep track of where all the Russian subs were located. We mostly communicated via teletype, but also used voice transmitters and Morse Code (mostly to assist civilian ships that were in trouble, usually due to storms). These civilian ships, when in trouble, sent SOS signals in Morse Code, on a certain frequency, that we received via receivers (speakers) that were on the four walls Radio Shack (command center). It was rare to get SOS signals, so they were a very minor, and also the only non-military part of our responsibilities. In the two years that I was there my section only received about half-dozen SOS requests for emergency assistance.

            The drawback to learning the Morse code and using it constantly for four years is that now it drives me crazy to listen to tap-dancers. I don’t know what the hell they are trying to tell me and it drives me crazy. J

            After I was there for about six or seven months, I became a section leader (one of four). Each section had five or six people. The Radio Shack operated twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The morning and afternoon shifts were busy, but the night shift, especially the graveyard shift was usually silent, inactive and deadly boring. We would write letters, read books, but absolutely no one was allowed to sleep (That was the hardest rule, especially when I often felt drowsy myself.) I often had to get up from my desk to circulate around the rooms to make sure people were awake. We usually did a good job keeping each other awake. There was always some bullshit story to tell, so nasty jokes to laugh at, or a time when a guy who got a “Dear John” letter needed to talk.

            One night (graveyard shift) we got a teletype message that was in encrypted so it was a secret or top secret message. I had to take it into the cryptography room to decode it. Everyone called this bank-vault like room, the Crypto-room. It was indeed built like a bank vault; both a key and a combination were needed to open it. Only and officer could take the key from the Radio Shack, after he signed for it. The officers and each section leader possessed the combination and each section leader was given the key by the previous sections leader (after it was signed for).

            These coded messages didn’t happen often, but I had decoded a couple of secret ones previous to this one. No section leader liked getting these encrypted messages because they involved tedious work with a few top-secret code books and the complex and also top-secret, crypto machine. A mistake could have dire consequences and/or humiliating embarrassment if you awakened the Naval base commander in the middle of the night by mistake. Many secret messages were considered almost routine and could wait until morning to call the appropriate officers. But if you had to call the base commander himself, you had better be one-hundred percent sure of your decoded information. The two coded messages I had received previously had an “8MOR” designation which simply meant that they had to be delivered by 8:00 A.M. (morning) so I called at 7:45 A.M. But this damn message was prefaced by the letters ICC. This was no “8MOR” secret message; ICC meant Immediately Call Commander. But I knew that the first thing the commander would ask me was, “Did you decode the classification?” So I continued to decode the message until I decoded the words TO*P*S*E*. Then I immediately stopped and called the commander at approximately 3:00 A.M. His first question was, “Sailor. Did you decode the classification:” I responded, “Yes sir. The classification is Top Secret ICC. He said, “Shit! I’ll be right there.” He was hoping that he would not have to get out of bed and come to the Radio Shack. It was humorous to hear him say, “Shit!” because the decorum for officers is not to swear in front of the enlisted men (Who, of course, swore and cursed like whores).

            The commander gave me a list of names of officers to call, to help him expedite the process of notifying everyone that needed to be aware of the message, chiefly the lieutenant in charge of the Radio Shack, and other lower ranking officers whom he also wanted to report to the Radio Shack immediately, without taking the time to make those phone calls themselves. He had not asked me to do that on the previous occasions (It was not normal procedure to have enlisted men do that, but who the hell is going to reprimand the Commander of the whole base?). He seemed to recognize this, paused on the phone, then said, “If anyone gives you a hard time over this, I want to know, and I’ll deal with them later.” (It was as if he already had a list of asshole officers in his memory and knew they would pounce on a lowly Radioman 2nd Class.) Yeah, man. Holy crappola. Now I had a once in a lifetime opportunity to boss around the officers that boss me around each and every day. I still had to be polite, of course, but they couldn’t see me grinning (laughing at them ) and they couldn’t hear the derogatory thoughts that I was thinking. Great fun for Wild Bill (My nickname in the Navy was Wild Bill for the same reason that Robin Hood’s friend, Little John, was called little).

            You can’t type the regular way on a crypto-machine. The keys were like a typewriter, but about twice or three times the size. (Yes, we used typewriters back then, not computer word-processors like I’m doing now). You had to push down hard on the keys, about two inches downward, for every letter or number in the code (So the inner gears and other mechanisms would move). That made decoding the message tedious, time consuming work, while being unable to keep track of the workers in the main rooms (Usually the section leader who was being trained took over that job, but if they were at that timid stage where they couldn’t give orders to their friends, then problems could arise). Anyway, a secret message always started with the word secret, large and bold like this: S*E*C*R*E*T (sure makes sense, right?) and almost always followed by the “8MOR.” Anyway, with this awkward and bulky crypto-machine you have to keep on typing in this unusual way, and if the message is long, it takes a long time to decode it. Then the message has to be typed up with carbon paper copies (Another thing that’s out of existence). It had to be signed by the section leader and the time that it was decoded. Then it was locked inside the Crypto-Room until the morning call was made and it was signed for and picked up by a communications officer.

            When I saw the TOP SECRET ICC, on this particular message, I felt like my eyes were bulging out. I think I swore, and then I’m positive I said, “Oh. Shit!” I had been there for about six months and never heard of any section leader getting a top secret message. I do remember my mentor (Jim Johnson) telling me he never got one. Section leaders could entirely decode a secret coded message, but not a top secret coded message (It’s up to the commander of the base.), even if they have a top secret clearance designation (The FBI does a thorough investigation of you in order to receive that designation.) Section leader had a top secret clearance but we were not allowed to fully decode a top secret message because of the all-important information being sent that concerned itself with Russian submarines. So having a top secret clearance was useless, at certain times. Navy Intelligence is probably like Army Intelligence; the second word has derogatory implications. So the Navy Base Commander had to get out of bed, come to the Radio Shack and decode the remainder of the top secret coded message.

            That made it a very serious matter. I pressed the speaker button to access the speaker system in each room and told my guys to gather around my desk. I explained about the top secret message and that very soon the Radio Shack would be inundated with officers. So they were to hide all their books and letter writing materials, or anything not having to do with their job (We weren’t supposed to allow reading or writing or games, but to keep guys awake, section leaders usually allowed them to do it, especially since no one could get into the Radio Shack without knocking and everyone knew that when you hear a knock, you hide that stuff.) I advised them to comb their hair and straighten up their uniforms. I told them to use the bathroom immediately, before the Radio Shack is mobbed by officers, full of questions and giving semi-panicked, short-tempered orders and duties to be perform yesterdays, if now quicker than that.

            My heart was like a baseball bat hitting a series of home runs against my rib cage. I remember feeling short of breath (triple damn wimp). I continued to pace back and forth as I waited for the onslaught of officers who would be coming into the Radio Shack very soon My immediate boss (Lieutenant Sourpuss. He always looked like he had just bitten into a lemon, but I don’t remember his last name.) arrived first, about 15 minutes after I called the commander. He pounded extra loudly on the steel door (No one. Absolutely no one, the base commander included, can enter the Radio Shack without visual recognition. There are recent pictures on the wall, near the door, of every officer that’s allowed into the Radio Shack, otherwise a pass is needed from Lieutenant Sourpuss.) There’s a small, circular window, bullet-proof window about the size of a softball head-high on the door. The short officers stood on tip-toe and the tall officers bent over so they could look through the window. A swinging, circular, metal plate covered that window. You swing it right or left to look at the person wanting to enter, and when you let go, it falls back into place, once again covering the window.

            In another 15 minutes there were about ten officers in the Radio Shack waiting for the commander (He lived off base and had to travel farther.) When he did arrive, he came with the commanders of the Air Force and the Marines. Those commanders accompanied the Navy commander into the Crypto-Room. The other officers paced back and forth, except the highest ranking officer who took my chair and desk. If the guy wasn’t a grade-A asshole then he was the next thing to it and I think that would be a smelly, tumescent hemorrhoid. (An ugly hemorrhoid, too. If I had beaten him with a claw hammer, it would have improved his crater-pocked face. Yeah. I know. Sometimes I’m not nice.)

            Segue: On the ship, if we didn’t like an officer, instead of saying “Sir,” we would say

“Cur.” After a while they figured it out, but Sir and Cur sound too much alike to prove that we were being disrespectful, or even that we had even said the word Cur. The Captain was called Captain Queeg (character in a book and movie called The Caine Mutiny), the Executive Officer (second in command of ship) was called The Executioner. There we other officers that we gave special names, but I no longer remember them.

            Man? I was so glad to end my shift and turn it over to the next section leader and his crew.

            The top secret message had something to do with a group of Russian submarines and ships gathering together at some location (The Mediterranean Sea, I think.) that could threaten American interests and/or the interests of its allies. I never learned the specifics (And didn’t give a loose bowel movement either.) I was tired and had had enough of that scene. All I wanted was breakfast and then sleep. It would have been nice to have been catered to and have breakfast in bed. But I’m sure I’d have gotten the same answer to that request as Sandy would have given: “You want breakfast in bed? J Then you better sleep on a cot in the kitchen.” Anyway, I believe this all happened sometime in 1965 or 1966 (During the height of the Vietnam War?) Here’s another bit of nostalgia. Once, at a Pavillion School faculty party, Sandy introduced me as “Bob.” Embarrassing. She probably wished that she had put one more “O” in “Bob.” And now that I think of it, Sandy sometimes tells people who ask how we met, that “I chased her until she caught me.” Too cute. Perhaps nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

            I was trained for that job by a good guy named Jim Johnson. He had been my section leader, then, on his recommendation, I became his section leader in-training. He was a great guy and we became close friends. He was an ultra-patriotic guy and wanted to be reassigned to a Navy base in Vietnam. He had requested the transfer twice (once before I even knew him) and but his requests had been rejected both times.

            We talked a long time, one quiet night in the Radio Shack. I told him that if the Navy sent him to Vietnam naturally he’d have to go, but why keep requesting to go there? To help his country fight communism and dictators, to do his duty, maybe save some lives, etc. That’s what he wanted. His third request was accepted and he was assigned to the command base in DaNang. He received a month of vacation time before he had to report for duty. (I took his place as section leader). He got to DaNang in 1969 and after only about two months being there, the Viet Cong’s TET offensive began (TET is a Vietnamese word that refers to their New Year). Jim’s base was overrun by these local rebel soldiers (Often called VC, short for Viet Cong) and he was killed.

            The VC wanted to disrupt as much U.S. military communications as they could. Of course, Jim was a Radioman and worked in the heart of the communication center. He was in the heart of the invasion and his heart stopped forever.

            When he first got there, he wrote a letter to me and mentioned the awful heat and dirtiness of the living conditions. Some military personnel were still sleeping in tents and indoor plumbing was almost nonexistent (except for some officers). Jim wrote that using the outhouses was an ugly, humiliating process by which he urinated through a hole in a wooden bench. To take a shit, he sat on the hole and shit into a 55 gallon oil can while the eye-watering stench of hundreds of peoples’ shit wafted over him, like having a procession of shit-maggots crawling up your nose and stinging your sinuses.

            I didn’t find out that he had been killed until a month or two after he was killed. I remember getting really depressed, then not socializing, not going to movies, even losing my appetite for a few days. At that time he had been the best friend that I had in the Navy (except, perhaps, for my roommate from Louisiana whose name was David Soileau – pronounced “swallow”). It took me a while to climb out of that abyss of roiling depression.

            A friend getting killed started me thinking about the possibility of my own death, if I’d made a different decision. What if I hadn’t joined the Navy and had been drafted into the Army? Apparently I had an aptitude for the job of a Radioman, in the Navy, so would I have also been a Radioman in the Army? Probably. Then instead of being on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean, well away from Vietnam, I would have been a Radioman in the jungles of Vietnam. What’s the big deal? Well, on the ship I was safe, protected from enemy fire, but if I was an Army Radioman I very likely would have been fighting in the jungle. But, worse than that, I’d be wearing a large radio on my back (the size of a small suitcase), like a back pack. That radio would have had a fifteen feet, whip antennae connected to it (like a flag waving in the air, telling the enemy exactly where I was and what my job was). And who was usually killed first by the enemy? That’s right. The Radioman was the first one killed in any enemy attack simply because to kill the Radioman was to kill communications, which usually negated the ability to bring in ground reinforcements, helicopter rescues and air attacks. Statistics have shown the Radioman’s job to be more dangerous than being an officer (Army officers were the second most often killed in the initial attacks to create confusion and to disrupt the tactical command process). So, the question remains unanswered: Would I have been killed or maimed if I had been in the Army instead of the Navy? The probably answer, though speculative, is “Yes.” A daunting thought concerning how certain decisions and/or choices in life, seemingly benign, can actually, and unknowingly, be life or death decisions.

            I’ve also come to realize something else about death. It’s contagious. It sure as hell is, and I can prove it easily. All the people you once knew and will know in the future will die. That cannot be a coincidence; therefore death is definitely contagious. Currently I’m married to life and till death do us part (a little black humor can’t hurt J).

            One Navy friend of mine was killed when the communications base that he worked at was overrun. Another Navy friends ship was almost sunk in the Gulf of Tonkin. And one more friend waited until he was drafted into the Army, became a Radioman and was killed in the Vietnam jungle, not long after he arrived. I was the lucky one of the four of us.

            After spending two years in the Azores I was assigned to the U.S.S. Courtney DE-1021 (DE = Destroyer Escort) whose home port was Newport, R.I. Destroyer Escorts were small, very fast ships that protected the larger Destroyer class of ship (from torpedoes and small gun-ships) while the Destroyers surrounded and protected the aircraft carrier. However, the Destroyer Escorts were so fast that they were mainly used to track enemy (Russian) submarines.

            Food? On the Courtney, we always had two choices for food: take it or leave it. Sometimes I simply couldn’t take it so I had to leave it. Lost some weight. The food was  awful and the drinks were mostly Kool-Aid and powdered milk. Yuck.

            One time, while on the Courtney, we were assigned to follow a particular Russian submarine. The Russians knew we were following them, of course, but they seemed to be trying to get away from us with zig-zag maneuvers and various depth ranges, and sharpness of turns, but we stuck to them like brown on shit. They had to know that our ship was faster than their submarine, so maybe they were experimenting or just having some fun with the American ship. We followed the damn thing all over the Atlantic Ocean, but eventually we knew that it had to come to the surface to recharge batteries, allow fresh air for their sailors, etc., so when the submarine finally rose out of the water a couple of their sailor carried something and walked along the top of the sub. It looked like a heavy bag. They set it down and started hanging wet clothes on the long antenna wire (a long wire that went from the front of the sub, up to the highest point of the middle of the sub, then down to the back of the sub. It took the shape of a triangle. The top of the sub making it a severely elongated base of the triangle). Those guys waved to us and smiled, then more guys came out of the sub to sit by the conning tower (A raised platform on a submarine often armored, from which an officer can conn, command, the vessel by giving orders to anyone on the sub, especially the helmsman).

            This whole fake routine turned out to be a hell-of-a laugh for us and them. It was as if it was a game. I could hear the laughter coming from the Russian seamen and our sailors (those who could see outside). A few years later I saw an old 1959 comedy movie called Operation Petticoat (staring Cary Grant, Tony Curtis and Dina Merrill) that used this “clothes on the antenna wire” (women’s underwear) scene with the submariners coming out of their sub to hang up clothes, to lie and sit in the sun, pretending that they didn’t really have stop to it and didn’t care who we were or what we were doing. Funny memory.

What’s the difference between a Russian

submarine and a scrotum?  The scrotum

has live seamen in it.

            Another time I got sick while on the Courtney and had to be transferred to a Destroyer, which was large enough to have a real doctor aboard (the Courtney only had a” medic,” which was like having a male nurse) and a medical facility and equipment. But that didn‘t mean that my ship and the Destroyer were going to stop in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Hell no. They were going to transfer me from one ship to another while both ships were travelling across the Atlantic Ocean. The two ships came parallel to each other, maintained the same speed, then a cable was strung from one ship to the other (about 100 feet long) and a pulley-seat was attached to the cable. I was pulled across with only the ocean below me. It was a little scary. I thought for certain that I’d have to be treated for explosive diarrhea before the doctor attended to what had originally made me sick. I had been sick with a cold and apparently I was allergic to the codeine in the cough syrup (I thought that was bullshit. I think I was allergic to the absence of women in my diet and all I really needed was for a corpsman (medic) to give me a shot of chicken soup directly into a vein for quick results). We stayed in the ocean for long periods of time, and I’ll say no more than that.

            I got back to my ship via the same procedure, but it was much more fun, just like riding a bucking rodeo horse is tons of fun.

            Some of us guys started singing (to the tune of Home On The Range) a song that I made up that denigrated our ship and its officers. We’d sing it immediately after an officer of chief departed the Radio Shack. It went like this:

“Home … home on the Courtney,

Where the officers and chiefs all lie,

Where seldom is heard,

An encouraging word,

And the skies are cloudy all day.”

Note: To us “lie” meant two things. To lie down (be lazy) and to tell an untruth, although some of the untruths we accused them of were lies. J We just wanted to have fun so the guys followed my lead. But some of the guys took it further by making-up other words that continued the song.

What happens to a liar’s body when s/he dies?

They lie still.

            Speaking of lies, once in a while I like to read about different versions of the Liar’s paradox. As an example, What if I say, “This sentence is false.”

If "This sentence is false" is true, then the sentence is false, which would in turn mean that it is actually true, but this would mean that it is false, and so on without end.

Similarly, if "This sentence is false" is false, then the sentence is true, which would in turn mean that it is actually false, but this would mean that it is true, and so on without end.

            Maybe there’s more than meets the eye (and brain) with truth and lies. Paradoxes are interesting and entertaining, though.

            I got back to my ship via the same procedure, but it was much more fun, just like riding a bucking rodeo horse is tons of fun).

            Another incident occurred in the Mediterranean Ocean. Russian trawlers were following our group of ships. They were collecting our garbage bags that did not sink into the ocean as they should have. They did this routinely hoping to find confidential, secret or even top secret messages that mistakenly were not shredded (It happened more than you’d expect, so I was told). Like I said, it was a Russian routine. This one was routine until two Russian jets started diving at our aircraft carrier. The whole fleet of ships went to General Quarters (the Navy’s stupid name for an emergency situation involving the enemy). Does anyone, outside the Navy think “emergency” when they hear the word “general?” And “quarters is a name that usually refers to the sleeping areas of a ship, or a coin, or a fraction. The Navy was loaded with moron terms like bulkhead that refers to a wall, a head that refers to the toilet (I love the symbolism of that one), the overhead which is the ceiling, the deck which is the floor, etc. If normal people thought about walking on the “deck” they’d think of “playing cards” or a backyard porch.

            Anyway, those Russian planes must have had dozens of guns aimed at them from a dozen ships, as well as several, very large caliber, anti-aircraft gun and heat-seeking missiles. It was a tense 15-20 minutes. Luckily, I happened to have been called to the bridge (the upper-most part of a ship, where the command center is) by the Executive officer (the person who’s second in command of the ship) with a question about a message (messages frequently used many abbreviations and acronyms). He was too embarrassed to ask for the info over the phone. He had done this before (to damn lazy to memorize them, or to look them up when he can easily order an enlisted man to give him the answer).

            Instead of walking back to the Radio Shack via inside passageways (hallways), I wanted to see what was going on so I took an outside route. I stopped to watch. I was just in time to see two Russian jets taking turns diving at the aircraft carrier’s upper superstructure (the bridge) and coming close the carrier’s huge antenna (more like an extra tall, metal telephone pole). They did not shoot, just dived on the carrier like they were pulling a prank (the dumb shits could have started a war). Then one of the pilots (the dumber one, apparently) swooped too close to the carrier, made a misjudgment and the tip of the his jets wing hit the antenna and shears off. I could see the wing tip flying away from the jet (it looked like a large dot to me, but it was clear to me what that flying dot was).

            The sheared off wing tip drastically changed the aerodynamics of the jet (like the wheel falling off a car drastically changes things. Segue: That actually happened to me. I was in someone else’s car, going downhill when the right front wheel came off his Chevrolet Corvair and rolled ahead of the car, like in a cartoon. As you can tell, I survived, though it made me singularly “tired,” but at least I wasn’t two, three or four “tired”). OK, back on track. The Russian pilot could not keep the jet level. It kept losing altitude until the good wing tipped down too far and struck the water. The jet literally cartwheeled at such a high rate of speed that it became a blur. The centrifugal force became too powerful and the jet came apart, throwing off small and large pieces of the jet, like shrapnel from an explosion, in every direction. In a few moments almost every metallic part sank into the Atlantic’s watery abyss. A few things floated, mainly the dumb pilot and his navigator. An American helicopter, from the aircraft carrier flew out to pick up the floating bodies. It then delivered them, in pieces, to one of the Russian trawlers. We were all ordered not to mention this damn serious episode to anyone, or we could get court martialed (a bullshit bluff, but it seemed to work). When I went home on vacation leave, no one that I asked had heard of it). I asked Larry French, who reads the newspaper almost word for word, and he didn’t know anything about it, so I told him (I was never very good with orders. Ask my sister, Fran).

            Once, we were a couple of hundred miles off the coast of North Carolina and trying to avoid two hurricanes. Apparently, the Captain’s best choice was to try to slip between them (magnificent choice, Captain. Now we can get hit by the outer edges of both hurricanes, squeezed and rocked about like sitting between two hyperactive, obese people, in an airplane experiencing severe turbulence). And that’s exactly what happened. We got our asses kicked from every direction because the hurricanes were larger that supposed and the outer edges of each blasted us, like a cork thrown into white water rapids. The ship rocked and rolled violently (like Elvis’s Presley’s pelvis).

            I was on the bridge (the highest structure of the ship, from which the Captain could view the ocean with a 360 degree view from his elevated Captain’s chair) with a confidential messaged for the Captain (Its origination? The Pentagon). Just getting to the bridge was difficult. Even in fairly calm waters the ship rocked up and down an sideways. So if you are going up stairs, you get thrown into walls, railing and sometimes off the metal steps (especially when wet). Anyway, I nearly puked in the Captain’s lap when I saw what the ocean looked like, and since I was at the highest point (except for antenna, rigging, etc.) that’s where the movement was the worst. While the Captain was studying the message I looked out the front window as the ship was coming off a huge wave. I nearly shit my pants when the front of the ship dove into the ocean so that I could no longer see the front third of the ship. Then the front rose out of the water higher that I’d ever seen, even in movies. I looked at the back of the ship and it was sinking into the ocean, the back third of the ship disappearing under the blackness of the hellishly turbulent water. As soon as the Captain and the Executive officer signed the message board to indicate that they had read the message, I gladly departed the bridge area, still feeling as if I might vomit. I make it back to the Radio Shack, sat down, then vomited in my own personal vomit bucket. The people who did not get sea-sick had a good laugh, while I felt miserable (I still had to empty and clean the bucket or the Radio Shack would stink of my puke. Go Navy. Travel the world. Have fun (After a while, though, travel can become boring when you realized that no matter where you go, there you are.) J Furthermore, if you don’t know where you are goinbg, you are almost definitely going to end up somewhere else. J

            I noticed that I wasn’t the only one puking. Some of the other new guys were puking in their buckets, also. After that, for comic relief, we formed a Puke Club (a small group of members, but it was easy to be admitted . . . you just had to puke in a bucket). The members teased the non-members, asking them how they could resist such a prestigious club when all they had to do was to stick their fingers down their throat and bring up a little of their disgusting vomitus. We members consoled each other and helped each other when the ridiculing laughter started. Actually it was really all in good fun, although, at the time you’re feeling miserable, it isn’t fun). To get our pseudo-tormentors back, we threatened to not empty our buckets and let the stench gag them. That usually ended the laughter and snickering.

            Another time we were near the Arctic Circle. I was, again, on the bridge with a message for the Captain (most messages were routinely classified as confidential and did not need to be delivered to the officers, just the secret ones. For the routine, confidential messages the officers came to the radio shack, read their messages, signed the original and took the carbon copy (if they wanted it), then left, sometimes not even saying a word to anyone). So, as I was saying, I was on the bridge. The Captain was busy. Probably something to do with the fog. It looked like we were passing through a cloud. The Captain and the Executive officer looked worried and I wondered, What the hell is going on? So I stood silently, not wanting to interrupt them and get my ass chewed. The situation got worse and it seemed that I was the only one who didn’t know or see what was happening. Holy shit, the regular enlisted Navy guys on the bridge even looked mildly panicked. They were looking out into the ocean. Apparently I was not close enough to the surround windows to see what they saw. I didn’t feel any bump, so we didn’t run into anything. The I could feel that the ship was slowing down, but the captain wasn’t on the phone talking to the engine room officer either which seemed to indicate that there was no engine problem, So I waited.

            I recognized the Radar/Sonar officer (the Radar Shack also operated the sonar pinging system which found submarines by bouncing back signals after they the hit hull of a submarine) talking to the Captain and the Executive officer. There were a triad of confused expressions on the three officer’s faces. What the hell? I remained silent. Piss on it. The damn message can wait, even if it is secret. I wasn’t going to interrupt the Captain. Not now. At least not until I knew what was going on. Whatever appeared on the radar screens (detecting objects in the air) or the sonar screens (detecting object in the water) was confusing them. The only two things I could think of were that a Russian submarine was close to us or maybe an iceberg (though I didn’t think we ever went far enough north to encounter icebergs).

            Suddenly all hell broke loose on the bridge. The captain started screaming orders to the helmsman (he steers the ship according to the Captain’s or Executive officers orders). Now there really was panic. I stepped away from the Captain’s chair and stood near the back where there was a support pole to hang on to. The Captain and Executive officer were walking hurriedly around the bridge, looking out the windows, checking speed, compass direction, etc.

            Well, hell! You know what it was? You really want to know? Shit, man. When the fog cleared up a little, we all saw a huge whale a little ways ahead of the ship. Well, that unknown object had surfaced and was probably spouting whale laughter at all of us out of its blowhole. Oh well. We all had a whale of a good time, so no use blubbering about it. J

            Join the Navy and see the world. Yeah. I did get to travel a lot (travel is fun, so my advice is, when you come to a fork in the road, take it instead of using your fingers at mealtime J). I went to Norway (the winters are like dusk = depressing so there is a high rate of Depression and suicide), Denmark, Sweden (didn’t get to go to Finland), Spain, Portugal, Germany, France (Bordeaux and Cannes), Italy (Naples, Rome and Palermo, Sicily), Malta, Canada, Florida, England, Puerto Rico, Ireland and Belgium (I think that’s all of them).

            The only country that I can say that I did not like was France. I went to Bordeaux (famous wine country) and the outskirts of Cannes (here the yearly international film festival is held. It was all lit up like Las Vegas). Both places, in France, were unfriendly to Americans. Even now, after all these years, I prefer not to go to France (I’ll go only if Sandy really wants to go). A few years ago travel representatives from France came to large, east coast American cities to drum-up tourist visitors to France. The reason? Fewer and fewer Americans were going to France. What their ungrateful, unfriendly, superiority complex is, I don’t know. I don’t even care to drink French wine even though it’s said to be a very good quality wine. There’s too many other excellent wines available to have to seek out French wines.

            Also, while we were in France, we decided to stop at a local bar to drown our poor reception with beer. We (four of us) walked into the bar wondering if we’d get a better reception from the women in there, since they must have been drinking and slightly inebriated. We sat at a booth and waited for service, but none came so I went to the bar and as if we could have four beers brought to the table. We were all in uniform so it was easy to see we were American sailors. The bartender looked at me and smiled. He spoke accented English but I understood him when he asked me, “Do you know where you are?” I thought that was a damn silly question, but being polite I said, “Well, it appears that we are at a bar that serves beer and we thought we’d stop and have a drink, maybe dance with some women.” The bartender smiled again (damn friendly guy for a Frenchman), then he asked, “You see any women in here?” Oh shit! I thought. I looked around and for the first time I could not see a single woman (neither single nor married). What I did see was a roomful of men, all men, staring at either me or my three friends (they hadn’t noticed either). The bartender leaned forward, with that damn silly smile, saying, “This is a gay bar.” I was startled; didn’t know what to say, so after a pause, I pushed myself away from the bar, said, “Thanks. Goodbye,” and walked back to the booth. I was so utterly embarrassed that I wanted to shrivel-up and hide inside my own scrotum (kind of like pulling a sack over your head). When I reached the guys, I said, “Let’s go guys. This is a gay bar.” Man, you should have seen their faces: shocked, embarrassed flustered, and at a loss for words, any words at all. We walked out of the bar casually, as if nothing was wrong (Brave American sailors), but when we got outside and were walking down the sidewalk we busted our guts in laughter. Since I had picked the bar, I never heard the last of it. Shit! After a few days everyone on the ship knew that I had chosen a gay bar so they (both friends and guys I did not even know) teased my about my possible latent gay tendencies. Talk about a few days of going almost all day with a red face. I was occasionally teased about that until the day I left the ship, in August of 1968, to get my discharge from the Navy. It was all in good fun, but at my expense. It still seems hilarious, though, out of self-preservation, when I walk into a bar, my eyes look for women. Once was far too much for walking into a gay bar (though I guess there could be lesbian couples).

            One year, either 1967 or 1968, my ship went to the Belgium port of Antwerp. In 1944 the American army and some of its allies defeated the Germans and took control of the port of Antwerp, freeing the people, town and port from Nazi control. Later that battle became known as The Battle of the Bulge. Some friends and I got to go into the town of Antwerp. Almost the first thing we noticed was the huge, American Sherman tank (The primary American tank used by the American and Allied armies in WWII) displayed at the entrance to the town (probably it’s a city now). The tank was kept in immaculate condition; it gleamed in the daylight. The was a large bronze plaque that thanked the Americans and its allies for saving them from Nazi control. And the people were wonderfully friends when they saw our uniforms Every young woman that we saw actually smiled at us. Too bad we were only there for the day. The languages were a barrier also. Belgium has three primary languages: Dutch, French and German. But the people waved to us and greeted us. It was an incredible reception; far different than we received in both French cities. It was thrilling to see that the length of time between 1944 and 1967-68 had not jaded the people to the American and Allied sacrifices that freed their mothers, fathers and other relatives.

            When I got out of the Navy, in August of 1968, I was thrilled, like I had never been before in my entire life. It seemed as if those four years would never end. I disliked the overall experience, but it was not all bad either. I got a college education out of it with the G.I. Bill, and now that I’m retired, I can go to the local Veteran’s Administration hospital for medical care (plus hearing aids, glasses, prescriptions, etc.). So I have benefited by having served my country in the military and I’m glad I volunteered for it.

            My discharge was in early August, 1968. I believe that in late August my nephew Mark and I traveled in my 1968 Volkswagen to Newport, Rhode Island to get my German stereo equipment from my ship. It was a memorable time having Mark with me on that trip. His excitement was contagious and carried us through the long trip. I got the stereo equipment loaded in the back of the VW, then I got a room at the local YMCA. We went to dinner, then went to a drive-in movie (I wish I could remember what movie we saw). The sad thing was that I could not bring Tony with us. I needed the VW back seat for the stereo and our luggage, so that only left the passenger seat for Mark since he was the oldest and more able to handle the long trip.

            Now I was entering my post-Navy life. My goal was to get a good paying job and/or go to college so I could get a good job. But I really wasn’t ready to try college yet; I wanted to have fun, freedom and pleasure, though college remained a future goal. I wanted the freedom of a regular job, nights and weekends free, my own apartment, etc. I got a job quickly at I.B.M. I helped manufacture the circuit boards for I.B.M.s extremely fast-growing computer business. I worked nights (that was the only bad thing, though I got paid more for working the night shift). I liked my job and since some of my relatives (my father, the janitor; my brother-in-law, the government production facility, my brother’s-in-law father) worked there and like it, I figured I’d like to give it a try. So when I.B.M. offered to hire me permanently, I was ecstatic. I got my pre-hire physical exam and was all ready to start working permanently, and what happens? My X-rays showed an unnatural spot. I was told that, most likely, it was cancer or tuberculosis. Wow! Great news. My happiness deflated like a pin-pricked balloon. That job was unattainable now.

            I had to go to the Homer Folks TB hospital in Oneonta, N.Y. where, after a month of culturing my sputum, it was confirmed that I had TB (From someone overseas who was contagious. I have no idea how or who). When our ship pulled into different ports, the native people would come out in row boats to sell soft drinks, candy, souvenirs, shirts with their country’s logo on them, etc.). Maybe that’s how I came in contact with the person who or object that had TB. I keep thinking of all the Coke soda bottles I bought from an Italian guy (while we visited Italy, but were anchored a quarter-mile off shore) who rowed his boat to the side of our ship and sold items. Sometime later I found out that one of the Radar/Sonar men contracted TB also. (And, NO, I did not get TB from kissing him so get your thoughts corrected, whoever is reading this. Ha ha.)

            I was in the hospital for nearly a year. I was allergic to the primary medication, but the secondary medication worked, though slower than the primary medication. I received a needle every day in my buttocks until eventually they bled. I had so many needles that scar tissue built up a leather-like layer under the surface fat and skin. So every day it was more and more difficult to push the needle through the scar tissue layer. That feeling was awful. Sometimes when I sit and feel pressure on my buttocks, I get flashbacks to that time (but no physical pain). The nurse put a bandage on the puncture, but it bled though my pajamas, then onto the bed sheet. So now, after each shot, I had to wear a thick piece of gauze, with an outer waterproof layer and taped to the spot where I had the shot.

            It was a depressing, dismal place to be. The patients were mostly twenty to fifty years older than I was and they died frequently. In the morning I’d walk around my particular dormitory and see empty beds where there was a patient the night before. Sometimes I walk around and talk to the older people. They had some good stories to tell. But, to often, I’d find that their bed was empty the next morning and so I was not as regular visiting them as I used to be. I made a friend of a middle aged lawyer who was moved in directly across the hall from me. He was not old like the others and seemed spry and talkative. I spent a lot of time talking to him. A real interesting guy. He told me some stories that were fascinating (without mentioning any real names or places). I enjoyed talking to him and he seemed to enjoy talking to me. I looked forward to seeing and talking to him each morning so one morning I got up, washed, ate breakfast and rushed to his room . . . his bed was empty. How could he have died overnight? I went back to my room and stood by the window. My radio was on, but I just stared out the window, I don’t know for how long. Then I became aware of Kenny Rogers singing the song, Ruby Don’t Take Your Love to Town. Whenever I hear that song, I get a chill down my spine. Also, my mind keeps substituting the word “gun” instead of the word “love” in the title and in the lyrics. I don’t know why. Furthermore, if anybody asks me questions that I don’t know, I won’t answer them. Nope! J

            There was a woman (Amelia) in another dormitory that I liked to talk to about books and poetry. She was on the second floor and since I was usually lazy I took the elevator. One day the elevator doors opened and a nurse and orderly stood next a stainless steel table with wheels. A body covered in a white sheet lay on the table. They wheeled it out, then I got in the elevator and went up one  floor. I was thinking, “That screws up my good mood for my talk with Amelia.” I walked down the hall toward Amelia’s room. A nurse walked toward me and said, “I’m sorry. She died a little while ago.” Amelia was the body on the table in the elevator. I walked back to my room, closed the door, listened to the radio and read, trying to get the images out of my mind. I didn’t try to make friends with anyone after that, except for one person.

            That one person was a lady teacher there who helped me review high school math, science, and writing skills. Her name was Anne Mohar (Changed to Leech after she married Dr. Leech). She kept on prodding me to apply to college, so I did. I only applied to five New York State colleges: Oneonta (the TB hospital was right across the street), Geneseo, Oswego, Fredonia and Binghamton (I didn’t really want to go to Binghamton because it was too close to home and too big, unless, of course, it was the only college that would accept me). When I departed the hospital for good. I got acceptance letters from all those colleges and was invited to visit, take a tour of the campus and talk to students and administrators. The first college I visited was the State University of New York in Geneseo. After that visit, I was thoroughly impressed and excited because I knew that Geneseo was where I wanted to be. I had previously taken a couple of courses (math and science) at the Broome County Community College, but I can’t remember if Geneseo accepted them for transfer credit. It didn’t matter to me.

Speaking of high school math, I had a geometry teacher who was

very shapely and easy on the eye, but she was really hard-on her

boy students.