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…”