Vinyl Redux

 Dear Nick, Brian & Charlie, 

As fathers and sons we are often aware of our generational differences. You hear them often, “When I was a kid, we spent all of our time outdoors, we played stickball in the street, we played Manhunt to all hours.”

I am sure you guys laugh at our generation’s challenges with technology. A lot of the things we look back on with nostalgia are cool. Some, not so cool. The house I grew up in had only one phone, and it hung on the wall in the kitchen! We had NO privacy, and there were five people using that ONE phone. Imagine that. This piece is about something better than trying to talk to your girlfriend while your father reads the newspaper and your mom does the dishes…

Over the past few years, vinyl records, and turntables, have had a bit of a renaissance, a two-fer-Tuesday if you will. Hipsters started scooping up vinyl records at flea markets in Greenpoint Brooklyn, Austin, Texas and Telegraph Hill…As you boys know, I still have my albums in two large milk crates, and they are probably worth some cash. Yet I cling to them, the feel of them, the memories held in them, prevent me from selling them, just yet. 

Access to the entire world’s music catalog on your phone is unbelievably convenient, and way cool. However, one of the things your generation misses as you download music, open up Spotify on your phone, is the act of shopping in a record store. Perusing for a record through stacks of records at a record store: Bleecker Bob’s, Tower Records, Record Explosion, Sam Goody was something to be savored, cherished. I know it’s cliche but, boys you missed out. Take a walk down to the avenue with me as we go shopping in a record store…

There were a few kinds of trips to the record store: First is the Specific Mission. Here, you know exactly what album you want, probably it just came out, and it’s big news. You go to the record store and they have a big display of “Led Zeppelin IV” or, “This Year’s Model” by Elvis Costello…Maybe a friend recommended an album that you just HAVE to get? Those were great conversations to have, and trips to take. Or you were hanging in a friend’s basement and they played an album for you? You decided to make a trip to the record store to buy that album. 

Oftentimes, you heard a song on the radio, a lot, because the record company is promoting the album. You’d hear Carol Miller on WNEW, “And that was the new one from Dire Straits called….”Sultans of Swing.” 

Or, you have an album, or two, by a favorite artist, and decide to dig deeper into their catalog.  All of those scenarios have you heading to the record store with a goal in mind, those were great trips. 

You walk in, you are greeted by the familiar musty smell of cardboard and vinyl. And a feast for your eyes, a variety of displays, posters and album covers by the artists and albums that the record companies are promoting. Usually, especially at an independent record store, they will be playing an album the staff has selected, and will have it displayed by the turntable and cash register with a little hand-written sign, white piece of paper, black block letters, “Now Playing…the debut album by, Boston.” 

There was another kind of trip to the record store, this was a bit more laid back, a bit of happenstance…You and your friends are walking around the mall, or the local commercial avenue, and decide to walk into the record store, to browse. These were also great experiences, that you will never have. It’s a little bit like perusing in a Barnes & Noble or an independent bookstore, only cooler, because this is music. Maybe akin to walking along Main Street Lake Placid, or Bar Harbor, and taking a trip into the toy store when you were little, so many exciting possibilities…

Once inside, you do a quick reconnaissance, to find the genre that you are looking for. The records are stacked in sections: Pop, Jazz, Classical, Rock…As you might guess, I would make a beeline to the Rock section, which was sometimes mixed in with Pop. Like a bookstore, genre sections were organized alphabetically, by artist. Starting with A, there would be a plastic divider for the letter, and then throughout the A’s there would be other plastic dividers for artists that had quite a few albums. So, in the B’s, there was a Beatles divider and about 25-30 Beatles albums. Most of the time, if you had a specific artist or album in mind, you’d gravitate to that artist’s space. 

There was nothing like lightly tipping each album with your finger, just enough to peel the one you were looking at, and pull it towards you, revealing the album behind it. You could go quickly, through an artist, like the Rolling Stones, if you knew their catalog, you could rifle through them pretty quickly: Beggar’s Banquet, Emotional Rescue, Sticky Fingers…sometimes you would uncover a gem, a surprise, and you’d peel that out and pick it up, look at the front cover, look at the back cover, and if you were thinking about buying it, you’d put it in your other hand, and continue shopping. Or maybe, if the record store was not crowded, rest your potential purchases on the stack of albums next to you? By the end of the hour or so, if you were like me, you hit all your favorite artists, maybe working from A to Z, and then you’d have a stack of potential purchases. 

If you went to buy a specific album, that was in the “definitely buying” pile. Depending on how much money you had, that might be it. But if you found a few other albums that were really intriguing, you’d revisit them, and make a decision on each one. Hmmm, how much money do I have? And can I afford all three of these? This one is really special, and I might never find this one again. How many albums can I listen to right now? I should put these back and I will add them to my “list of albums I want to buy.

After making your final decisions, you head to the cash register. The associate might put your albums in a nice bag, and then the fun starts. You begin the trip home with your new purchases in hand. If you were in Greenwich Village, or somewhere else in the city, that means riding the subway home with your new albums. While riding the subway home, if you have a seat, you get to take an album out of the bag, and look closer at the front cover, the back cover, the artwork, the pictures, the song titles…all things you can’t do when you are streaming or downloading. If you were walking home, from Church Avenue, or 13th Avenue in our case, albums under your arms, like you’d carry a stack of books, you’d hope for a red light so you had to stop at the corner, and you could take another look at the albums. Maybe you’d share them with your friends, looking at each other’s purchases, until you eventually get home. Then the fun really starts. You get to put the new album on your turntable. 

Now for the best part, which I really feel is why vinyl has had some staying power. Finally getting the album home, using your fingers to pinch the edge of the cellophane shrink wrap around the album, remove the whole plastic sheet, toss that in the garbage, with some difficulty as it usually has static cling. Holding the album by its edges, you’d look at the album cover again, feeling it’s pristine cleanness, smelling the cardboard and the vinyl, you’d open up your turntable cover, slide the album out of the pocket, remove it from the paper sleeve, holding it, again, only by the edges, you’d review the circular sticker in the middle with the record label artwork, typeface and font. We recognized the labels for Capitol Records, Reprise Records, Swan Song Records, and those labels reminded us of all the other great albums by those artists that we had bought in the past. 

Then to place the needle/stylus in the right spot while the record is spinning took a deft touch. The easiest thing to do is to start with the first song, that’s the biggest groove on the album, and let the whole album play. Easy. More than likely, you’d like to hear a certain song, or songs, the ones you had heard on the radio that sent you to the record store in the first place perhaps? So you find that song, see where it is on the album, and adroitly place the needle/stylus in the appropriate groove for your chosen song. 

Wait, it keeps getting better. Most artists, if they were really singer-songwriters, really artists, included their lyrics on the inside of the album cover, or on a sheet that you could remove when you opened the album. The coolest was Neil Young because if you bought the album “Harvest” or “After the Gold Rush” the lyrics sheet was a copy of Neil’s hand-written lyrics!

It keeps getting better! Over the next few days, you will listen to the album, cueing up the songs you like quite a few times, and you will listen to the other songs on the album, oftentimes finding gems that you would have never heard had you not purchased the album. Some artists in the 60’s and 70’s, starting with Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Beach Boys Pet Sounds, many albums were just a bit deeper, artists crafted their albums around a theme, songs connected all to each other, a really “deep” experience. 

So that’s the beauty of shopping in a record store. I have to end this here because I am going to set up my turntable again. Think Mom will get mad at me?

Circle of Life

Preface-My earliest memory of Nanny: 1968, standing in front of the Brooklyn townhouse where my young parents rent the second floor apartment. There I stand with polished shoes, short pants, holding mom’s hand, while watching my Nanny’s white curly-haired head get smaller and smaller as she heads toward the avenue to take the bus home.  After spending the day with my Mom, her daughter, me, and my younger sister Julie, my beloved Nanny is leaving. As she fades into the Brooklyn streetscape, I strain to keep seeing her and  I am saying, in a sing-song little-boy voice,“Nanny come back. Nanny come back. Nanny come back.”

 

The joke in my house while I was growing up was that of the Spinner kids, I was my Nanny’s favorite. All families have those jokes, they are mostly harmless, and usually have some truth to them. I was her first grandchild, so I’m sure that weighs into it. I do know that my Nanny, always made me feel special, as she did all of her grandchildren. As a boy, if I was sleeping over her house on Bay 26th Street, she would always have my favorites on hand. I could count on my Nanny having made a special trip to Bohack’s on Cropsey Avenue to stock up on Tropicana Orange Juice which I loved. Because my Mom was buying for a family of 6, she would always buy the supermarket’s brand of OJ, which paled in comparison to Tropicana. During her shopping spree, Nanny would also pick up Entenmann’s Marshmallow Fudge Cake. The best was, I could eat multiple pieces during my stay. Nanny would also make a special trip to the pork store to buy thin coiled sausage (hot, and sweet) that gave her sauce a nice tang. And the piece de resistance, she’d always buy fusilli, my favorite pasta. That’s how Grandma’s make us feel special. 

 

While visiting my Grandparents over in Bath Beach, we’d often take a walk over to 86th Street to go shopping, or to Korvettes, to pick up some toys.  At night, my grandparents would take my sister and I over to Nellie Bly’s, a local amusement park, where they’d let us ride the spinning tea cups, or the helicopters that you could control with a lever whether you were high or low, a real thrill for a kid. My grandparents would load us up with quarters so we could play some games of chance. Throughout the evening, they’d buy us cotton candy, popcorn, and ice cream. We knew all we had to do was ask nicely, and our grandparents would get us things. This generosity seemed so special, almost extravagant, because my parents, who were also loving and generous,  had to watch their money, and my grandparents seemed to be almost rich in comparison. 

 

Over the years, my Nanny was always there for me. Every birthday and holiday was extra special because she always got us really thoughtful gifts. My grandparents came over every Sunday for a nice meal. My Nanny was supportive of me, one of my biggest fans, so much so that when I got into SUNY Buffalo, she agreed to help our family by paying my tuition, something that I am grateful for to this day. My sister, after my Nanny passed away, was cleaning out Nanny’s apartment (something I probably should have helped with) uncovered letters I had sent to my grandmother  while I was away at college. The letters were typical, filling my Nanny in on the everyday life of a student, with a few “stretchers” as Tom Sawyer would say, about how much time I was spending at the library, but I mostly told the truth. The thing that I am most proud of in those letters, is that I made sure to always thank my Nanny for helping my family make the dream of college come true for me.

 

Now this story is not all butterflies and unicorns, my Nanny, Wanda Plantamura, could be a difficult person, she was set in her ways, and sometimes had difficulty communicating, especially with my Mom. Their relationship was fraught with hidden emotions, trapdoor histories, jealousies…all stemming from the fact that my grandmother conceived my mom, out of wedlock, as a teenager, in the 1940’s. So, my mother was raised by her grandparents, my great-grandparents, until my grandmother was mature and stable enough to care for her daughter, which was when my mother was practically a teenager. So there was a lot of scar tissue there for mother and daughter, that would usually flare its ugly head during the holidays, when emotions ran high. Quite a few Christmases and Easters ended with my mom, my grandmother, or both, leaving the room in tears. 

 

By the 1990’s, after I moved to CT, I would see my Nanny at Christmas and Easter, and occasionally Kira and I would go to her house for a home-cooked meal. Usually pasta with meat sauce, maybe pasta fagioli, or another favorite, breaded and fried chicken cutlets. Then we started to grow our own family, and my Nanny added to her great-grandchildren. Wanda Plantamura was what I would call a “light smoker.” She smoked Kents, and she only smoked a handful a day. If I had to guess, I would say a pack of Kents would last my grandmother about a week. That being said, the damage was done, over the years, and sadly, right around her 80th birthday, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. It didn’t surprise any of us when Nanny matter-of-factly said, “I am not doing any of that chemo, no surgeries for me. It’s been a good life, eighty years is enough, I am just going to let this run its course.”  My sister tried to convince her to try treatment, but I didn’t even bother, I knew my Nanny, and could hear the determination in her voice.  Eventually, over the course of a few months, the lung cancer continued to take over her body, and it was a hospice situation. Those last few weeks, my mother and my sister, were holding vigil in Brooklyn, and visiting her daily. I was in Connecticut, with two young boys, so I only visited a handful of times. 

 

Those visits were special. I learned many interesting things about Nanny, and our family.  Lying in bed, me sitting by her side, she regaled me with stories of her working in a clothing factory during WWII. This was a necessity for the war effort, women working in the factory while most of the men were in the service. She talked of working hard, and being respected, and moving up to eventually become a supervisor. 

 

She told me about my grandfather (actually my step-grandfather) who started to hang with the wrong crowd in his Carroll Gardens neighborhood. My grandfather’s mother told him, “You are not to hang out with that Purse-Ico boy.” Nanny pronounced it, Purse Ico. With my limited knowledge of New York mob history, I connected the dots and asked her, “You mean to tell me Papa was hanging out with Carmine ‘the Snake” Persico?”  And she said, “Yeh, yeh, that’s the guy's name. His mother knew that boy was bad news and told him he better stay away from him. Probably saved his life.”  

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Over the spring, and toward summer, Nanny’s health continued to decline. On the last day of school, June 23rd, my wife and I planned to take our two boys, Nick and Brian, to the beach the next day, our first day of summer vacation. Kira is a planner, so food was bought, sandwiches made, juice boxes were on ice, towels and beach toys packed. We were ready to hit the road early the next morning. That night I dreamt of Nanny, a dream that was clearly a sign that I needed to visit.. That morning, I sat up in bed, I could hear Kira downstairs finishing up breakfast with the fellas, knowing that this change in plans was not going to go over well.

 

I stood in the doorway to the kitchen and jumped right in, 

“I know we have plans to go to the beach but I feel like I have to go visit Nanny one more time.”

 

“What!? We have plans to go to the beach! Jesus Jim, really?  Just go tomorrow.”

 

“Sorry, I had this dream last night and I feel like I have to go, today. The last thing I want to do is spend 5 hours driving to Brooklyn and back, when I could be on the beach with my family, but I feel like I have to go to Brooklyn.”  

 

‘Fine.”  

 

I leave my wife, fuming in the driveway, with two disappointed young boys staring at me as the car disappears. My thoughts meander as I drive away. Maybe I should just stay and go to the beach? I could go to Brooklyn tomorrow. Nanny will probably be around a few more days? 

 

The drive from Connecticut to Brooklyn is a bear, a  gauntlet of heavily trafficked areas.You might hit traffic at any number of spots, 84 in CT, 684 in Westchester County, further south on the Hutchinson River Parkway, across the Whitestone Bridge to the Grand Central, or the dreaded, B-Q-E. I hate the drive. But I go. I feel drawn to Brooklyn, it feels it’s the right thing to do.

 

In a few hours, I get to Maimonidies Hospital in Boro Park, where my Nanny lies in a coma. Hospitals creep most of us out, the smell, the memories of visiting other sick people. This is even worse because  it’s a hospice situation. The staff is great, the doctor greets me at the desk, escorts me to her room and tells me, “She is unconscious, but it would be nice if you just talk to her. She knows you’re here.” The doctor leaves, I stand awkwardly at her bedside. I begin talking to her, too loudly it feels. “Hey Nanny, it’s Jimmy. Traffic was terrible.”  I make jokes, which is what I do when I am nervous. “Have you been playing any hoops lately?” Eventually, I run out of things to say so I decide to read aloud to her. I happen to be reading about WWII, and my nostalgic radar notices that WWII was the topic the last time I spoke with her. I begin to read from, The Bedford Boys by Alex Kershaw. I would highly recommend it. Bedford, Virginia is the town that lost the most boys on the D-Day invasion, the book is an homage to those boys, and to a heroic and sad time in our country’s history. 

 

While I am reading aloud, her breathing is labored, she’s not breathing at a normal pace, she’s taking in exaggerated breaths every 12 seconds or so, occasionally I think that she has already passed, but then she takes another breath. One of the nurses comes in, a young Chinese woman, she checks the chart, fiddles with some tubes and then stands beside me while I read. Eventually she says, “She’s gone.” I look up, and say, “I thought so too, but watch, she keeps breathing.” We are both staring at my grandmother’s mouth, waiting. Then, she takes another breath. I say, “See.”  And the young nurse shakes her head. We stand there, watching, and then…that’s it. Standing there, with this total stranger, I watched my grandmother take her last breath. 

 

Shocked, saddened, I’m thinking: Have I ever seen anyone die before? It’s a good thing I drove down today. This was meant to be. It’s like she waited to say good-bye to me. 

 

Then I look at my watch, it’s 2:20. I think about calling my family. My sister is a teacher, my mom is a paraprofessional, I know they’ll be arriving right after school. I decide to wait. Now what I did next will entertain my wife to no end.  I took the elevator downstairs, walked out the front door of the hospital, made a left, walked half a block, and got a slice of pizza. 

 

Eventually my Mom and my sister show up. We hug, talk, start to make arrangements. About 6 o’clock, I head back to my car, to make the drive back to Connecticut. In that natural New Yorker way, I just know where I parked, I made the subconscious “note” to myself after I parked. I walk down 12th avenue, to 52nd street and make a right turn. I walk three or four cars in to my car and I stop, amazed.  I look at the houses, the trees, the cars, and I realize, I parked my car right in front of the exact townhouse that I lived in with my parents all those years ago. Not two doors down. Not across the street. Right in front of the apartment that holds my earliest memories, particularly that memory of a little boy singing, “Nanny come back…” 

 

Cosmic Radio

Growing up in Brooklyn, figure around 1975, I had a friend whose mother was half Puerto Rican, half Irish, and fully gorgeous. We were at the age when that stuff just started to matter, and we never talked about it, well maybe not in front of him. We also never talked about something else about her. When I’d go over to his house, we would gallop up the stairs, sliding our hands up the wooden bannister, to the second floor, his room to the left, his parent’s room to the right. His mom would be in her bedroom, with the door closed, and the radio BLARING. She was not listening to WABC Radio, where they played the Top 40 hits of the 70’s, the radio was tuned to a religious show, “Do you accept JESUS as your only lord and savior?” When there was a lull in the show, you could hear his mom talking. At first I thought, Maybe she has company? Maybe she’s talking to his father? Or his brother? Eventually I realized, she was talking, to the radio. I knew that was weird, it made me nervous. I felt bad for her. I felt bad for my friend, who would give me that insecure look that said, Yeh I know it’s messed up, I was hoping you wouldn’t notice. I could tell that she really was talking to the radio, that those voices were really talking to her. That made me think, in the egotistical way of kids, What if the radio is talking to her? I mean who is to say it’s not? I mean, sometimes it feels like the radio is talking to me. It also made me think, Maybe she’s not that far off? Maybe there’s something to this voices in the radio thing? How many times have I been listening to WABC AM or WNEW 102.7 FM and the song that comes on the radio, is directly connected to what is going on in my life? When did I hear The Beatles, “Let It Be” when I really needed to hear it? So many times it seemed that the radio, was talking to me. Does that mean I am like my friend’s mom? Is there something in the cosmos controlling the messages coming through the airwaves? 

Sometimes, weird things seem to happen… Somewhere around 3rd grade, I have a crush on a pig-tailed bespectacled girl named Susan, and it feels like whenever I am thinking of her, when I am sitting by the pool on vacation, driving in the Chrysler New Yorker with my father, Elton John’s, “Crocodile Rock” comes on the radio. Coming from the speakers I hear the words I really want to hear, “I remember when rock was young, me and Suzie had so much fun, holding hands and skimming stones…” I just know, in my grammar-school brain, this is a sign, some supreme being is sending me a message that Suzie and I are supposed to be together. Alas, that was not to be. 

 Many times in my life, the radio seemed to be talking to me, a Wizard of the Radio waves communicating with me, I swear. Or was it coincidence? 1990. I am a few years out of college. My buddy Dave Gordon and I are on a road trip from Brooklyn to Notre Dame; a pilgrimage to see Touchdown Jesus, Lou Holtz, and Rocket Ishmael. It's the final installment of those iconic Fighting Irish vs. Miami Hurricanes games that came to be called, “The Catholics vs. the Convicts.” We are in the car for HOURS, talking about all manner of things. Somewhere in the flatlands of Ohio, Dave, who I have known since high school, brings up my father. 

In 1990, it had been five years since my dad’s passing and Dave wants to know how I am doing. He asks, “Do you ever feel that your Dad is around? Does he ever give you signs?” I think about that question as the Ohio countryside goes careening by; after a minute I say, “No. Never. Nothing specific. I can hear his voice in my head. I know what things he would say to me at points in my life when I need his advice. And that’s a comfort, but I don’t feel like he's around. I don’t feel like he is watching over me or anything like that.” 

 Those words are hanging out of my mouth, a word-filled comic book bubble suspended over my head…and what comes on the radio next but THE song that reminds me of my father’s passing, “Heaven” by Bryan Adams. If you look it up, that song came out in 1984, and was all over the airwaves in the summer of 1985, when my father passed. It’s a romantic song, but as we do sometimes, we “customize” songs to have meaning for our lives. When I was 22, that song was helpful to me, as I was dealing with my father’s passing. Whenever it came on the radio, it was a salve, a comfort to me, thinking about my father, maybe in a better place called, “Heaven.” 

 I turn to Dave from the driver’s seat of my ‘88 Sentra and say, “This is really weird Dave, you are asking me if I ever get signs from my father and I say ‘no’ and then this song comes on the radio.” 

 It does not stop there. Because I am skeptical, as many of you are, I was thinking right then, Wow, that’s weird, but it’s just a coincidence. Right? Those thoughts are floating in the chemistry of my brain when what comes on next on the radio is the other song that is most connected to my memory of my father, and of the summer he passed. A song by Corey Hart called, “Never Surrender.” I always thought that my father had quit, that he had given up after he got his diagnosis. The doctors told him he had atherosclerosis, a severe case of hardening of the arteries, they told him it was a death sentence. And he just took it. He didn’t quit smoking his Marlboros, didn’t start exercising, didn’t start eating right, just continued to do what he was doing that got him in that fix in the first place. So I always thought that he had given up, and that’s why, “Never Surrender” always made me think of my dad. Those two songs, back-to-back, right after Dave asked me if I ever got signs from my father, and I gave him an unequivocal, no. Somewhere near Akron, Ohio. 

There are other songs… “Blackbird” by The Beatles holds a special place in my heart, and is connected to my early days of fatherhood. Summer 2001, hiking at Steep Rock in Washington, CT, along the Shepaug River with my trusty yellow lab, Seamus at my side, and Nicholas, my two and a half year old in the blue, Kelty Kids backpack. Taking in the greenery, the fresh air, keeping Seamus near me, I am pointing things out to Nicholas as we walk. At some point I see a crow land on a dead branch just above the dirt road we are walking and I begin whistling, “Blackbird.” Not singing it mind you, whistling it. Nicholas, all of two and a half, recognizes the tune from my whistling and says, “Daddy, why does the blackbird have a broken wing? Why can’t he fly?” I am astounded, a sign of my new son’s genius? How did he know what song it was? And how does he remember that specific line? Nick and I have a whole conversation, walking along the river, about the blackbird, and the broken wing. I went home that night and wrote about it in my journal. 

Over the years, whenever I hear that song, it takes me back to that moment. I shared that journal entry with Kira, my wife, and when Nick got older I shared it with him. So now “Blackbird” has some Spinner family history to it. 

Fast-forward quite a few years and Nick is heading to college. August 2017, the three of us go to Bloomington, Indiana for Nick’s college orientation. We are touring the campus, sitting in lecture halls, learning about: college life, underage drinking, and financial aid. Some meetings the three of us are together, sometimes they separate the students from their parents. At one of these separate meetings, the IU staff hands out paper, pen, and envelopes to the sixty or so parents in the lecture hall. The woman at the podium explains, “Write your student a letter, to say hello, to give them advice, to make them smile. It can be something serious, funny, whimsical, an inside joke, something to let them know that you are thinking of them. We will keep these letters safe for about three weeks. Then when they are settled in, about mid-September, we will spring this little surprise on them. Spread out, go out onto the campus, find a quiet spot under a tree, or by the fountain, and write your letter. Have fun with it, no pressure, just a note to be shared later.” Parents move around the room, some sit on the floor, others spread out to quiet spots. I stay right where I am, and ready my pen. Then the IU staff pipes in some light rock music to the lecture hall’s speakers, to make us reflective. The first song was, “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac, and the tears were welling in many an eye as we tried to focus. As soon as we recognized the song, Kira and I glanced at each other. It was brutal, we were about to leave our first-born son 850 miles from home, all alone on this college campus. “Landslide” if you know it, is about handling the, “seasons of your life.” Tough stuff. To make matters more melancholy, more nostalgic, the next song that comes on is, “Blackbird” by The Beatles. How? How could they have known? Who is choosing the songs? With all the songs out there, why choose, “Blackbird?” Kira and I shared another knowing glance as the waterworks increased. At this pivotal moment of Nick’s movement toward manhood, out of all the songs in the world, what comes on but the one song that is most connected to Nick’s childhood, for me. 

Fast forward just a little more with me? Nick has spent four wonderful years at Indiana, growing, learning, changing, and he’s graduating. He’s leaving Bloomington for good. So I agree to drive our SUV from Connecticut, out to Bloomington to help him move home. I’ll spend the night with Nick, let him enjoy one last night with his boys, and drive back to Connecticut in the morning. Nick and I go to Uptown Grill, our favorite Bloomington restaurant for a nice steak dinner. After a delicious meal, a few cocktails, we walk down Kirkwood to, “The Tap” my absolute favorite Bloomington haunt. It’s not really a college bar, there’s no sticky floor, no smell of stale beer. The Tap is the bar for parents, or graduate students, it has an amazing selection of beers on tap, and two walls full of refrigerators filled with bottles and cans from all around the world. Nirvana for a beer lover. We always go to “The Tap” when we visit Nick, and this will be our last time. There are baseball games on the tv’s, it’s Memorial Day Weekend. A nice crowd of people are talking at high tops, and at the bar. Some twenty feet above, and behind the bar, is a small stage where there’s occasionally a solo guitarist playing. That night the guitarist plays some great music, our kind of music: James Taylor, Tom Petty, John Mellencamp….we have one or two beers and I am going to head to the Marriott. Nick is heading out for his final night in Bloomington. It’s 11:30 and I am paying the check, and the singer says, “I have had a great time tonight, please remember to tip your bartenders and wait staff, I’ll be here next Thursday. I’d like to play one last song for you.” Nick and I are standing, about to walk towards the door, and we hear the first few chords of, “Blackbird.” We look at each other and smile a knowing smile. Coincidence? Or Cosmic Radio? 

On Learning to Ride a Bike (In Brooklyn of Course)

We learned to ride bikes on the sidewalk, with our fathers running alongside, their hands extended, keys jangling in pockets, “Keep going Butch, pedal faster. You got it! Keep pedaling! Faster.”  Back then I was Jimmy Spinner Jr, but my father’s nickname for me was Butch. Don’t ask, I never knew why. There was risk in learning to ride a bike on East 4th St. Scraped knees, elbows, hands, and pain. City sidewalks are unforgiving, I guess all sidewalks are unforgiving. Our block had little pebbles mixed into a lot of the squares of sidewalk concrete to give it some texture? Because it was really painful, you HAD to pick it up quickly. 

For the first few months, most of us started with training wheels, but even at that young age, training wheels were embarrassing. Big boys and girls didn’t use training wheels. We all knew you had to start somewhere, so we knew in order to not get all scraped up every time we fell, training wheels were a necessary evil. The one cool thing about training wheels, after you swallowed your pride and understood that you needed the help, was if you positioned the training wheels correctly, on a spot of the sidewalk that was raised by a tree root let’s say, you would have one training wheel higher than the other. That would suspend the real back tire in mid-air and you could pedal furiously, faster and faster, spinning the tire and going nowhere. We’d do that and sometimes feed fallen leaves into the space between the tire and the fender, if the bike had one. We’d put sticks on the tire to watch them shoot out. In the ways of little boys, this was fun.

Our first real bikes had just one speed, metallic paint, banana seat, maybe some streamers flowing from the grips on the handle bars. These bikes only had rear brakes that you engaged by pedaling backwards to stop. After a few weeks, we lost our training wheels, and gained a few rules, but of course we wore no helmet, not in the 70’s.  Our parents told us that we had to stay on our block, as first or second graders we were not allowed to cross the street by ourselves. With this limited universe, our block, there were still plenty of adventures awaiting. Speed being held in high esteem on East 4^th St, as in most places, we raced each other. Short races, 50 yard dash. Long races, down half the block. Longer races. Up and down the whole block. Eventually we tried relay races. After that got boring, we were creative little guys, we’d create a steeplechase with wooden boards and milk-crate jumps and other obstacles.

One thing we prized was the ability to skid on your back tire. You’d head down the block, three or four houses down, maybe to Tommy Brennan’s house or even Bobby Wilson’s house and turn around. You’d wait until the coast was clear, we had a decent amount of pedestrian traffic on East Fourth, then pedal like crazy, standing up to go really fast, pumping, pumping, pumping, 30-40-50 yards, at maximum speed, choosing a primo spot, slamming on your brakes. Schhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, skidding, leaving a black rubber parentheses on the sidewalk. If you were really good, you could fish-tail the bike, something fancy to impress your friends.

We quickly discovered the parts of our slice of East 4^th Street sidewalk that had some character, where there were dips and bulges and maybe even something akin to a “hill.”  As soon as we were competent at riding bikes, we rode faster and we tried to jump stuff and pop wheelies. Some guys could pop a wheelie and keep going for a while, that was really cool. I never could get the wheelie thing down. A few doors down towards Avenue C, Toni-Ann Chiarello’s driveway had a bit of an incline. We could race down the block, and turn right, up her driveway and ride all the way into the back as there was never a car in the driveway. Then we’d turn around and race down the “hill.” Just an aside, Toni-Ann had the best, the absolute best, Matchbox Car collection on our block. We were all envious. Her father was a Milk-Man, he delivered milk and other necessities to families on his route. Mr. Chiarello and his daughter collected Matchbox cars, and it was a massive collection, in pristine collection, they even kept the boxes! Toni-Ann had a bunch of carry cases, these little light blue suitcases, with plastic separators in them, to hold ALL of her cars. It didn’t seem fair, to have that kind of a collection and not really enjoy it, she never even played with the cars! She just collected them. Left them in the boxes like little trophies. None of us had a "collection." Our cars were played with, that's what you were supposed to do with Matchboxes. My cars were scratched up, dirty from all the dirt tracks we made, and all the jumps and crashes we created. I know I seriously thought about befriending Toni-Ann just to play with her Matchboxes but decided it wouldn't be worth it. I bet you a few gallons of milk that collection is still intact somewhere.

Back to the bikes. One day, Michael Turin, one of the older guys on the block, discovered a jump.  About 5 houses down from my house, the last private house on the block, was Dr. Langsam’s house. Michael’s family rented the attic apartment. Their driveway was an anomaly, it had, what appeared to our 7 year old brains, a legit hill with a little concrete lip on the bottom, right before the sidewalk. We pedaled wildly, heading for the lip, a few final pedals and then coast into the ramp, whoop, you’d be airborne. The one fly in the ointment was the landing area was small, it was just the walkway to Dr. Langsam’s front porch, maybe 7 yards across. Pedal too hard, get too much air, and you’d be eating fence. 

After a few months of tooling around on our bikes on East 4th, we need a change of scenery. “Mom can’t we ride around the block? It’s getting soooo boring just riding up and down the block. We’re doing the same thing over and over. Please Mom? Please?”  Eventually, the reins are loosened, we are allowed to go around the block, at least some of us are. Some parents keep a tighter rein on their kids. These kids, if they didn’t want to risk the wrath of their parents, would have to stop at the corner of Avenue C. There they'd straddle their bikes and watch us pedal across the avenue, past the Longmore’s house, we'd give a glance to P.S. 179 lurking across the street, and zip out of sight down East 3^rd Street. Biking down East 3^rd, we didn’t explore as much, we knew we were interlopers on this foreign block. Whizzing past Big Mike Sylvestri’s house, we'd look to see if Mike was petting his big Collie on the porch. Our crew really liked Mike because he was one of the older guys that was nice to us. He’d even stick up for us when some of the neighborhood toughs in the P.S. 179 school yard messed with us. Past the Carpenzano’s, their house was directly behind mine, I’d glance at the rear view of my house as I raced past, that was always so cool, to see your house from a different perspective. Further down, we’d pass by the Paragallo’s house, in writing this, it certainly seems like East 3^rd Street was the home of several large, Italian families. Rolling to Beverly Road, coasting in because there’s more foot traffic on the Avenue, pedestrians from the F train station on McDonald Avenue and shoppers returning from Church Avenue, our neighborhood’s Main Street, we make a right turn.  Across Beverly Road, in front of the Glenn Briar Apartment Building, its symmetrical orange-brick mass, entrance in the center, even number of windows and floors on either side providing the backdrop, it felt like you were going really fast as the windows whizzed past. Our route almost complete, we come upon the mail box that marks the beginning of our block.

At first we were excited with this accomplishment: we had gone around the block! One thing that never entered our mind, which would definitely enter the minds of kids today, was a fear of being abducted. Don’t get me wrong, in the Brooklyn of the early 70’s we had plenty of things to fear: stray cats, neighborhood tough guys, dogs, cars, but non-descript white vans patrolling for unsuspecting victims was not on our list. Heading back up East 4^th Street, along the side of the Glenn Briar, listening in on conversations in some first floor apartments, under the fire escape, and you begin to feel at home, safe, back on our block.

Riding bikes, so much fun, so many adventures. The progression continued, next we were allowed to cross the street, and then ride our bikes in the street. Somewhere around 6^th or 7^th grade, our parents let us start exploring the neighborhood on our bikes. This opened up a whole new universe for us. New blocks, new kids, and eventually, new neighborhoods and adventures. The bicycle, our vehicle of freedom. Summer of 8th grade we were biking down to Breezy Point to go to the beach for the day. Or biking down to Sheepshead Bay to go fishing. From an early age, that movement, the speed, was an escape for us. To this day, when I get on my bike, there's a little bit of that kid still in me. 

On Parenting & Taking a Child to College

Having never been a parent before, there were quite a few surprises in the early years of raising three boys. Removing an overflowing diaper and a poop-smeared onesy was a doozy. There were a few times I decided to cut the onesy off with a scissor and peel it off because I knew, from prior experience, my son could wind up with mustard colored crap all up his back and in his hair. How needy kids could be in a restaurant was another rather interesting surprise. We learned about the child’s penchant to want to do, or say, the same thing over and over and over again. My God! Luckily my kids never got stuck on one book, which apparently happens fairly often. They did however have their routines. Heading North on Interstate 87 for our annual Adirondacks Vacation, we would always stop at the same Wendy’s just north of Albany in Clifton Park. We always, if it’s open, stop at Donnelly’s Ice Cream, just northwest of Saranac Lake on County Road 86. And once we got to the house, EVERY day, EVERY day, the boys would want to pile into the row boat or a flotilla of kayaks and canoes, and paddle to the dam.

The dam was ¾ of a mile away, and there really wasn’t much to it, if you were an adult. If you were a 3 or 4 year old boy, the concrete structure, the water rushing over the top and crashing on the rocks and sticks 15 feet below, was impressive. It was my idea to go to the dam, the first time. Then it was the boys’ idea to go to the dam the next two hundred and eleven times. We would row over, paddling around Nick’s Island, (my boys took to naming the islands around the house after themselves) tie the boats up, climb onto the clean-lined concrete structure, throw sticks into the water to watch them float down the waterfall, to go careening down amidst the spray and onto wet rocks below. The first few trips to the dam, Kira and I would hover over our boys, hanging onto a collar or hand to make sure they didn’t go the same route as the sticks. But as they got older, we relaxed. Over the years, I started to wonder, with each trip to the dam, do my boys not desire novelty? Why don’t they want to do something NEW? As I rub my eyes, exasperated with the next day’s request, my inner voice is screaming, “Jesus Christ, another trip to the dam?” Now of course I smile and would give anything to go back there and take one more trip to the dam with those little boys.

When the boys were all under 6 years old, we started going on an annual camping trip with our friends, The Boyles. The first trip was such a hoot, it became an annual trip to Hickory Run State Park in the Pocono “Mountains” of Pennsylvania. One of the highlights of raising our boys, these annual camping trips, when the boys were in their single digits to early teens, out in the fresh air, roaming the campground, discovering streams and making little wooden rafts, seemingly away from the watchful eyes of their parents, was worth the effort. Like our Adirondacks trips, the camping trip had its patterns and traditions. Every year we’d book the entire cul-de-sac so that there were no other campers near us. Elaine Boyle had found a secluded area, shaped like a fish hook that held only 6 campsites. The spot was far from the teeming citronella and Marlboro-infused masses.

Our meals were convenient, tasty, and we had plenty of good beer. Often we’d bring chili, stew, something that could just be put on the campfire, and of course the staples, hot dogs, hamburgers and steak. After dinner, we’d sit around the fire and play games and talk. Every camping trip, that first Saturday afternoon, we’d convoy the cars over to the Boulder Field, this cool geological anomaly, “placed” there by a massive glacier, some 12,000 years ago. Does it seem like everything is caused by glaciers or is it just me?  We would hike, hopping boulder to boulder, under a relentless July sun, a half mile across the Boulder Field and back. The kids always finished faster than the adults, they’re more nimble and not worried about turning an ankle or breaking a leg.

After the Boulder Field, we’d rest, hydrate, and drive the snake of family roadsters to another trail head. We’d hike in about a mile to a very cold pool of water that you could swim in, for about 4 seconds. The selling feature of the swimming hole was not the swimming but the cliff diving, as there were multiple areas in this ravine where you could jump into the ancient Appalachian pool. Our boys started on the smaller 7 foot cliff, and aspired to jump off the higher ones. The pool was a natural amphitheater, and people from all around would come to jump off the various cliffs. There were always some locals who were really good and fearless and could do all manner of tricks, flipping, somersaulting, twisting, and landing, whoosh, in the pool. If these guys put a hat out like the breakdancers in the city in the 80’s and 90’s, they would have made a fortune. Every year after watching the show, and jumping off successively higher cliffs, the boys would swear, “Next year I’m jumping off the highest cliff.”

By the fifth or sixth year, my desire for novelty was beginning to surface.  The trip was always fun but the Bill Murray/Groundhog Day thing was driving me out of my freaking mind. Driving to the Boulder Field again, jumping from boulder to boulder in the hot sun, I’m thinking, Is this the fifth or sixth year we’ve done this? Next year we need to do something new. Let’s go to Acadia National Park in Maine? Then we go to the waterfall, again. And we’re traipsing down the trail and I’m thinking, Jesus Christ, aren’t our kids getting bored doing the same thing every summer?

That night, our final night at Hickory Run, we’re relaxing around the camp fire, and I broach the subject, “Next year we should try something new. Let’s go to Acadia National Park up in Maine.”  Lisa Quilty says, “Yeh, that might be fun. Let’s find some new adventures.”  And then the kids, looking as if I suggested putting down our perfectly healthy dog, chime in. Nick, in an adolescent’s sing-song voice, “We HAVE to come back to Hickory Run. I mean, we ALWAYS go to the Boulder Field.” 

Brian his echo, “Yeh, we do this every summer. We have to hike to the waterfall and jump off the cliffs.”

Declan, “We HAVE to come back to Hickory Run to check on our camping spot and check for our initials in the tree, and hike to our stream, and float things over the waterfall.” 

So I surmised that a new camping spot was a bad idea…

Sadly, the tradition of our Hickory Run Camping trip came to an end, not because the kids got bored but because our beloved friend Elaine Boyle, the driving force behind so much, but especially of our camping trip, passed away suddenly a few years ago.

Fast forward a few years….The Spinner family had a blast during Nick’s college search. We made adventures of each campus visit. We started at University of Rhode Island during early summer, and we hit New Hampshire, Maryland, Delaware, Penn State… over the next few months. We started with a, “One Day’s Drive Rule.” Because there are so many great schools around here, the rule was, we had to be able to drive it in one day. Well Nick was pretty much settled on a big school and was fairly excited about some, Delaware, New Hampshire seemed like nice options to him but he wasn’t gaga over any of them. So when he got into Michigan State and Indiana, he asked, “Dad, I guess I could see myself going to Delaware, or New Hampshire, but I’m not feeling it just yet. I got into Michigan State and Indiana. You said if I got in, we could go visit them. So?”

Nick and I plan a three day trip to Michigan State in East Lansing, then we’ll cruise over to Indiana University in Bloomington, before heading home. Early on day two we are pulling off the highway in East Lansing, I’m getting really excited for Nick but also for me. Hey, I’ve never been to Michigan State either, a place I had only heard about on TV and in college football/basketball lore!

As you are heading into the Midwest, an interesting thing happens to the radio. Right around western Pennsylvania, Jesus and Blake Shelton take over the dial.  Every time I hit the scan, we heard twangin’ songs about beer and trucks and a whole lot of Jesus talk. So I told Nick to hook up the Iphone to the car radio. I was expecting a Rap vs. Rock battle but Nick says, “You can choose Dad, I actually like some of your music.” I decide this should be a teaching moment, to expose him to more cool music. Based on the fact that he likes Tom Petty, and The Beatles, and that the rolling plains of the Midwest are whizzing past I say, “Pull up some John Mellencamp, I bet you’ll like him.” So we hear “Pink Houses” and “Small Town.” As we’re pulling into East Lansing, you can start to see some of the campus buildings, I hear the beginnings of a song called, “Key West Intermezzo.” That probably doesn’t mean much to most of you, some of you will know it, especially by the chorus where Mellencamp says,

“I saw you first,

I’m the first one tonight.

I saw you first

Don’t that give me the right

To move around in your heart

Everyone was lookin’

But I saw you first”

This is one of those songs that tugs at my heartstrings. When Nick was a baby, I would play music and dance with him in our living room. There were a few tunes that would get him animated and this was one of them. Must have been the tempo, but for me, it was the words. It’s a romantic tune about Mellencamp and a girl but in the ways of music and meaning, I had made the song my own. For me, the song was connected to Nick’s birth.

As Nick’s due date neared, Kira and I had discussions about my role in the birthing process. There’s a bit of old-school in me so I said, “My father wasn’t in the delivery room when I was born. Christ, he was in a bar waiting for the phone call. And I turned out okay.” Kira was adamant, “I’m going to need you there. I want you there. This is your son too.”I parried with a few lame arguments and Kira was having none of it. When the time came I was there, and like so many things Kira has MADE me do, I loved it. Here’s where Mellencamp’s song comes in, Nick comes sliding into the world, they hold him up like so much blue fish, clean the schmutz off, and swaddle him in the hospital-issue blanket. Because they are working on Kira, they hand him to ME! I was the first one to hold him. So every time, over the course of our lives, when I hear, “I saw you first” it means so much to me. I was the first one to see him, to hold him. Doesn’t seem fair because Kira did all the hard work. So “Key West Intermezzo” comes on as we approach East Lansing and I flash back to those memories. And I am thinking about all of the times, as he was growing up that I would put that song on and dance with him. And now here we are, 18 years later, driving to visit Michigan State, looking at COLLEGES! Geez, it had to be THIS song?  I turn my face to the driver’s side window. I don’t want Nick to see me sad. This is a happy time! We’re excited! We’re going to see Sparty. Nick’s radar is pretty active, “Dad are you crying?”  I have to come clean. “Mmmm, Hmmm, pretty much. This is a song….”

Fast forward to the summer of 2017, our boys are now all teenagers. 2017 was the summer of, “Remember When.”  We couldn’t get around it, something was looming there all summer long. Departure date. August 15^th. We circled it on the calendar, the day we were to take our oldest boy, Nicholas, to Indiana University. By all counts: weather, family trips, tasty meals, fun times, it was a great summer. But August 15^th was there, a dark purple cloud in the sky, for all of us. Dark purple cloud is a bit extreme I suppose because we were also looking forward to August 15^th, excited for Nick’s, our family’s, next adventures. So, a purple cloud with a rainbow?

My boys are naturally nostalgic, it’s in their genes, so summer 2017 also became the summer of, “Remember when we used to do this…” Nick and his high school friends savored every minute together, every pool party at Rob’s or Mike Murg’s, every trip to the beach or to play hoops at Community House Park, was cherished with the knowledge that, next summer things will be different; they’ll be college boys. Some of the boys in Nick’s crew might be moving; leaving behind their high school days, and their hometown, which added a bit more urgency to their dwindling days together.  

Nick kept asking questions, “Dad, do you think I will keep in touch with my high school friends?”  He looked for my high school yearbook. “How do you lose touch with someone?”  As if it didn’t seem possible. Another interesting thing about parenthood is it makes you relive some of your childhood. I recalled, just like Nick, as I was graduating from Immaculate Heart of Mary, a school I had attended with the same neighborhood friends for 8 years, that I became nostalgic. May 1977, I was wondering the very same things Nick was wondering. I knew, because many of us were scattering around to high schools all around Brooklyn and Manhattan, that we might lose touch. So I found my mother’s yearbook and asked her about the young boys and girls who wrote all those endearing things in her yearbook. It was heart-wrenching to find out that my mother had no idea where many of those kids, in those black and white photos, were. It pained me to think that I might get to the point where I wouldn’t talk to Jimmy Quinlan, or Bobby Sullivan, or Chrissy Ryan, or Jean Ann Powers, or Carolyn Leaver…people I had seen every school day for 8 years. So I had to say, “Nick we do lose touch with people but the friendships that matter will endure.”

Then it’s early August, it’s a week and a half before Nick leaves for Bloomington and the preparations are making it very real. The thoughts are flying, and the memories keep surfacing. The boys are caught up in it too. Nick and Brian and Charlie and our neighbors, The Jorgensens, talking about, “Remember when we used to go hang out in the Secret Fort?”  “Remember when we used to play Manhunt and Kick-the-Can?”

Listening to these conversations was rewarding, powerful, to realize how much our boys loved their childhood in Middlebury. Brian said to us, “Dane and I were talking about what a great place this was to grow up in. About how we wouldn’t change a thing. That we had a great childhood.”  Music to my ears. To see my boys looking back so fondly, on all of these things we’ve done together…

Having a son go off to college makes you reflect, on the job you’ve done. Is he ready? Will he succeed? Christ, he loses his wallet and the car keys three times a week how will he handle a full slate of classes, doing his laundry, eating right, making good decisions….? You start to think about the Big Ideas about family. What is my role as a father? What is Kira's role as the mother? And the role of the family unit? I’m thinking about all of these special times from our lives, the things that the boys really appreciate, the stuff that they kept talking about that was so special to them, the annual camping trips and our Boulder Field hikes and Cliff Diving excursions, the picnic lunches in the secret fort, kick-the-can games…all of those simple things, the 211 trips to the dam in the Adirondacks...I realized then, that my boys were not allergic to novelty, they were just finding comfort in the traditions, in the predictability of our lives. And I thought, in this sometimes crazy world, maybe that’s one of the things kids really need.

We had a Graduation Dinner/Going Away Party with The Jorgensens; we have been raising our boys together, Joel and Carrie also have three boys. Nick and Peter are leaving the nest, Nick to Indiana and Peter to Iowa State.  Kira bought sparkling cider for the boys and adult libations for us. I knew I wanted to say something special to Nick and Peter as they are readying to leave. And the comments the boys were making all summer about “remember when we used to” made me realize what we have done for our boys, the role of the family. What our kids appreciate is the predictability of our love, they are thankful for the safety, warmth, and caring, that we have been providing. They didn’t have to worry about anything, not about food, or road side bombs, or the business cycle. We were very lucky, they were free to be boys, to fret about school work, the bus ride, sports team tryouts, to just hang out with friends and play. I remembered a quote from a Greek Philosopher that I thought would be perfect for a toast. So I found the quote, read it over and over and readied to say it on the Jorgensen’s deck after dinner, “I now know what we did as parents, and our job, with Peter and Nick is close to over. Raise your glasses. Archimedes once said, ‘Give me a firm place to stand, and I will move the world.’ Well boys, that is what we gave you, a firm place to stand, now it’s your turn to move the world…”