thespinzone

Regrets Only

2011-12-31T23:03:00.000-08:00

"Regrets Only"

There’s an Eddie Money song from the 80’s called, “I Wanna Go Back.” Eddie Money is connected to the soundtrack of my life. This song in particular is an enigma to me. Upon recognizing the initial notes, I am reminded of great times: it’s the 80’s, my friends and I have just graduated from college, working in Manhattan, the world is our oyster…. However, when I listen to the words, I find it haunting, painful. I think of that younger Jimmy Spinner and today’s Jim Spinner and I get that little twinge. This song provides for me, exactly what Eddie Money is singing about….
“I was listening to the radio
Heard a song, reminded me of long ago.”

So many of us are afraid to admit we have regrets. As if to look back and say, I wanna do something over means that you were wrong somehow. Most people probably say they have no regrets because all of the things they lived through, the successes and the failures, made them who they are today. I understand that sentiment, and I feel that way too, sometimes. But does having regrets imply that you are not happy with who you have become? What does it mean if you look back at your life and realize, I might have done a few things differently? I think most of us do have real regrets; and in our hearts we rewind our lives and kick ourselves about choices and decisions made. We listen to songs that remind us of long ago and say, “I wanna go back.”

Biggest regret I have is my reaction to Kira’s first pregnancy. What a class “A” selfish jerk I was. Knowing now, what I know about having Nicholas and having children in our lives, my reaction would have been so different. At that time, all I saw was: we won’t have enough money, life is going to change, people who have kids are exhausted, we’ll never go skiing…I couldn't see all the positives that Nicholas and all of my children would bring. I should have jumped for joy, stood on the deck and shouted to the tree tops, hugged Kira and danced around like in the movies. “And do it all over again.”

Considering that cigarette smoking killed my grandmother, my father, Shelley Stemmer, Bernie Swierczek and a host of other people that I really care about, I would grab every one of them, by the throat, and beg them to stop. I would tell them of the grandchildren they would never see and fishing trips they would never take. I would show them the hurt and sadness they would leave behind and maybe, just maybe they would stop. “Back then I thought that things were never gonna change.”

I would have been a better student, I would have studied harder, I definitely would have taken an SAT Prep course. I left Immaculate Heart of Mary in 8th grade as a very good student. I went to John Dewey High School, a public high school in Brooklyn and the wheels came off the cart. I loved my high school, but the freedom we had and the anonymity of being one of 3500 students proved too much for my adolescent psyche. I graduated on time, got into a decent college but with even 15% better effort? 30%? 45%? Who knows what my fate would have been? Maybe it would have been SUNY Buffalo anyway? It’s possible that that was meant to be. I can’t help but think that if I hadn’t played Ultimate Frisbee until midnight on the Friday before the SAT’s I might have had more options for college. “I wanna go back.”

In high school and college, I would have taken more classes that I actually wanted to take, I would have followed my passion. I look now at the Wesleyan Graduate Liberal Studies course catalog and I drool at the offerings. I don’t blame my high school guidance counselor, Ms Cilento, she was a sweet, well-dressed, conscientious lady. For her I was one manila folder in a large stack of manila folders. In meeting Ms. Cilento to choose a college and eventually a major, we decided with my quantitative scores on the SAT that I should pursue a career in engineering. I had no idea what engineering was and those of you that know me, know that choice is laughable. I blame myself for not being invested in the decision. I should have done one of those "personal inventories" that help you figure out what you really love to do. My quantitative brain was strong, I was on the math team at IHM, and algebra and geometry came easily to me; but literature and the written word, the creative side of my brain that was what really gave me goosebumps. I switched majors from Engineering to Economics because those classes were easier for me. As I moved toward graduation I realized that I had a boatload of credits in a variety of English/Literature classes from Irish Lit to Shakespeare. To this day, those are the classes that are most memorable to me. I tried to do a double major but it was too late. “And do it all over.”

After graduating from college, I tried for a few months to get a job on Madison Avenue. I figured a job in the creative department at a place like Young & Rubicam would be perfect. I bought a copy of How to Get the Right Job In Advertising. I sought the advice of Amy Lazar, my friend Stemmer’s cousin who worked for Grey Advertising. Then I started going on interviews. I looked for a grand total of 2 months, 7 to 8 interviews tops. I had no clue what an entry level position in an ad agency entailed. In every interview I was asked if I could type 40 words a minute. The answer was a lukewarm Yes. Behind the yes was, I didn’t go to college to type 40 words a minute and I’m definitely not getting someone coffee. I got zero offers. All this time, my college buddies were working dowtown and the siren song of Wall Street began to pull me. I went on one Wall Street interview and got a job offer, on St. Patrick’s Day! I thought it was an omen. For the next 10 years I hopscotched around the financial district. If I could do it all over again, I’d say, “Yes I can type 40 words a minute, sure I can pick up your dry cleaning, I will do whatever it takes to become a part of the creative team here at BBD&O."

Every once in a while I regret not sticking to one thing, just one thing so that I could be really good at it. Of course every great success story is a combination of hard work and talent. What percentage of the population has that talent? No matter how hard someone practices, more than likely, they won't become Michael Jordan. But aren’t we all a little jealous of the Mia Hamms, the Eric Claptons, the Meryl Streeps of the world? There’s a little bit of that feeling in all of us I think, what if had worked really hard at (fill in the blank) What if I hadn’t quit ( ) If I were one of those laser-focused guys, like Ted Williams with hitting, or John Steinbeck with writing...what might have happened?
Growing up in Brooklyn, the ability to defend one’s self physically as well as verbally was held in high esteem. I was a small, fast guy in mind and body. I became quick-witted because quick-fisted would have involved physical pain. On East Fourth Street, besting one of your cronies verbally held pride of place. As I moved off the block, and outside of Brooklyn, I didn't tone this down. I suppose over the years I got some good chuckles at other people's expense. I also know that I probably should have thought about who was on the other end of those jibes. A few years ago, Char, one of Kira’s best friends said, “Jim’s funny and all but did you ever notice that he gets a lot of his laughs at someone else’s expense?” I was kind of oblivious to that, I mean that’s what my buddies and I did, still do to this day. But to see it from another’s point of view was powerful, to be aware of everyone in the audience was enlightening. And now as a teacher, I witness students doing exactly this in the classroom, and depending on the audience and the comment, it can be funny but it can be hurtful too. “I wanna go back.”

I would have played a musical instrument. I would have made the effort, taken the lessons, just a few hours a week, a few classes in high school. I would have made the decision to stick with the guitar or the piano or the saxophone. I love music so much, it’s such a huge part of my life, the singer-songwriters really speak to me, like Lennon, McCartney, Neil Young, Springsteen, Dylan, Petty…to be able to play the guitar would be nice, really nice…”Cause I’m feeling so much older.”

By now I would have been bilingual. I would have continued studying Spanish, one of the classes that I excelled at in high school and college. Any excuse to go to a Spanish speaking country and immerse myself in the culture right? Think about how marketable that would be in today’s America, bilingual English/Spanish.

Obviously we can’t go back, I know. I also know that my 10 years on Wall Street helped me become the teacher and the father I have become, and maybe that was meant to be? I suppose we can take the wisdom that we gained and help our kids right? And can’t we take this tinge of regret and use it to our advantage? Can we continue to move toward the person we thought we’d become? It’s not too late is it? Please reply with regrets only.

I have to go ask Kira if there's money in the budget for my new guitar.

Powerful Outage

2011-11-23T22:08:00.000-08:00

How cool was that October storm? Well sure, I could see that you might see it as a major inconvenience. If the Spinner house is like others, we lost hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars. But you have to admit, to take your life down to brass tacks, to strip it to the bare necessities (light, heat, running water, food, friends and family) was kinda cool. How many of us will never take for granted that when we flick the light switch, we get light? Wasn’t it sobering to be reminded that we are animals on a planet, a sometimes violent, unpredictable planet?

Walking up North Street from The Jorgensen’s that fateful Saturday night, it felt more like Christmas than Halloween. The wind was whipping large flakes of snow, the trees were sagging, some were down already. With my family safely at home, I stopped in the middle of the street. Every few seconds I heard the crack of a tree giving way under the weight of all that wet snow. I thought to myself: this is going to be really bad.

About 10 o’clock that night, Kira and I were sitting on our living room couch, our three boys asleep in bed. The fireplace was roaring and I had a cold ale by my side. Throughout the day there had been flickers of power loss but just after 10 o’clock there was an outage with a POP. Kira and I both knew it was the big one. We sat in silence, then she said, “That didn’t sound good, I’m going to bed.” We said good night. I grabbed my flashlight and continued to read by the fire.

The power was out but so many other things were ignited. Reading my book by the fire I could feel what life was like for our forefathers. I sat, thinking. Immediately, we all started to problem solve. Okay, what do we need to do to get through this?

We started to live our lives by the sun, a primal instinct. For most of us it was, early to bed, early to rise. Once the sun went down, we gathered by the fire to read and play games as a family. All of my boys thought, this is fun. We stoked the fire, we gathered candles and blankets; we lived, like pioneers, by the rising and setting of the sun.

Speaking of Pilgrims. Alright, maybe we weren’t speaking of Pilgrims but at least descendants of Pilgrims, Connecticut Yankees. Many of us were driven by an altruistic nature to help our fellow human beings. We felt the need to help friends and family, neighbors and strangers.

By Sunday morning it was evident that this was a long-term outage, we formulated new plans…I knew that I was welcome in any number of places, which was heart-warming. I knew that if I picked up a phone, or showed up on a doorstep, I had myriad houses I could go to. I would be welcome at my Mother’s or Kira’s Mom’s or Kira’s Dad’s house. We were also invited to: the Weizners, the Grices (which is where we went) and the Swierczeks…

Steve Swierczek texted, “Wow that sucks. Keep it together man, kids are gonna sense your anxiety. Easy for me to say but no one in ur family’s hurt and you guys like camping.” That stuck with me as my wife and I managed our family through the challenge. I had this awareness that my boys were watching, that it was a teachable moment, proof positive about all of the things we’ve been preaching about hard work, persistence and positive attitude.

I failed miserably, at least twice that I know of. Kira and I led the league in hissy fits. My boys were incredible, inspirational really. Of course they were unaware of bills piling up and they could give a rat’s pitooty if they shower at all but they were very helpful, and patient. Not one of my boys complained after hearing the news that Halloween was cancelled. Kira bitched a bit about missing X Factor. They did their best to keep the fire going and did the back-breaking work of cleaning up the yard. As a family we traversed the tri-state area, buying supplies and sleeping in any number of places. The fellas treated it as one big holiday.

We were welcomed with open arms by my friend Ian and his wife Sharon and their two boys. I never got the feeling we were putting them out, which is the key to taking someone in. A lesson I hope we learned. Ian’s boys had school on Tuesday so in an effort to do something educational, I took the boys to Princeton University. What a special place; if you ever get the chance, it’s one of the nicest campuses I have ever visited, even nicer than SUNY Buffalo!

While on a tour of the Princeton campus with Morgan Robinson, one of my former students (another nice outcome of the power outage was a chance to catch up with Morgan) Kira got word to me that the South Brunswick Home Depot had a generator. I high-tailed it off the University grounds and up Route One. In trying to read the GPS and drive the car safely, the tension was mounting. The market for generators was pretty liquid. Nicholas, my oldest son, made a joke from the passenger seat. I started to shoot fire from my eyes, “Nick, now is not the time for jokes!” To which he replied, “Dad, you’ve always said when times are toughest, that’s the time to make jokes.” My heart melted, I could hear myself and I could hear Swierczek’s message, “gonna sense your anxiety…” I slowed the car and said, “You’re absolutely right Nicholas. This is the perfect time for humor.”

Kira and I kept reminding each other, when one of us was losing it, “We’re all healthy, it’s an inconvenience.” I kept saying, “We’ll be laughing about this in the summer on the beach.” I had to duck a few times as Kira tried to bust me one in the mouth toward the end of the week. It really hit home while I was watching the pre-game for the LSU/Alabama game Saturday after the storm. There was footage of a devastating tornado that ripped through Tuscaloosa this past April, killing many. ESPN did a story about ‘Bama’s long snapper, Carson Tinker, who was hovering in a closet with his girlfriend (Ashley Harrison) during the storm. When the tornado sucked their house apart, it tore his girlfriend from his arms. His body was thrown a hundred yards from that spot, he had some injuries. Sadly, Ashley did not survive. Looking at the damage, and hearing the story of this tornado, confirmed the mantra we had been repeating... We’re all healthy, it’s just inconvenient…

So it has passed, and we are starting to laugh about it. We are cleaning up. I am sad for the beautiful magnolias and dogwoods on our property that didn’t fare so well. But I see the trees that survived, like Brian’s pine tree, Charlie’s cherry tree, Nick's Japanese maple and the sugar maple we planted with Papa Bill and Suzanne. Taking inventory, we see the resilience of nature and the toughness of the human spirit; all kindled by our “loss” of power.

Mullin Matters

2011-08-29T13:57:00.000-07:00

Chris Mullin was recently inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. Like it was the Oscars, I watched (and taped) the coverage of the red carpet entrances and the induction ceremony. I changed my Facebook picture to a pic of Chris in his St. John’s uniform, a skinny white kid with a full head of 80’s feathered hair. My son Brian asked, “Dad is that you when you were younger?” I got a kick out of that. “No, Brian, that’s Chris Mullin. Does he look like me?” Yeh, a little bit when you were younger.” That just confirmed for me, why Mullin’s induction was so emotional. My wife could see the glazed look in my eyes, “Did you know him?” How do I answer that? Did I know Chris Mullin? It seems cliché but I feel like I know him. And it’s lame to say, “Well, not really. But I could have.” For guys like me, that is to say Catholic school guys from Brooklyn, The Bronx, Queens, maybe even Staten Island, Chris was ours, he was one of us. During his induction ceremony he said, “This is a long way from Flatbush Avenue but Brooklyn is definitely in the house tonight.” That made me laugh, and it made me proud.

Mullin went to St. Thomas Aquinas out in the Flatlands section of Brooklyn while I was attending Immaculate Heart of Mary in Windsor Terrace. Every morning, Christ the same mornings for 8 years, Chris and I donned our white shirt, blue pants, navy tie with the school insignia as we shouldered our books to head off to school. Guys like us know Chris’s upbringing, because it was like ours. When I see images of his father, mother, and brothers I can see the Mullin family dinner table because it was a lot like ours, red faces, bad food, lots of laughs, sports talk and maybe a few arguments. He played the same street games we played like: stickball, Johnny on the Pony and Scully. I know Mully and his friends spent some time, like us, down Breezy Point during the summer. I know he went to Brennan and Carr's. And when he wasn’t playing ball he hung out with his friends at Kings Plaza. At the end of the night, he probably had a few pints at Nana Daly’s or the Jolly Bull too.

Chris and I graduated from high school in 1981, Chris from Xaverian (where my brother Jeff went) and me from John Dewey. Chris was on our radar early on but once he decided to attend St. John’s University in Queens, his legend grew. Mullin was heavily recruited, he could have chosen Indiana, UCLA, Duke….but he chose to stay close to home. As he likes to say, “I just went 12 miles down the Belt Parkway.” This meant something to us. At a time when white flight was real, when the threat of urban decay was scaring a lot of families to Long Island and New Jersey, the Mullins, like the Spinners, the O'Callaghans and the Savinos, stayed in Brooklyn. 1981 was also a time when not only were white people fleeing the city, on our tv's it felt like there were no white guys playing hoops. It seemed to be common knowledge that black guys were just better, naturally, at basketball. We all kind of believed it, we were disappointed but you had to look at the evidence. And along comes Chris Mullin. (And of course Larry Bird but this piece isn’t about Bird, he’s not from Brooklyn)

Chris was an underdog, a Catholic school gym rat, like Jackie Ryan from our neighborhood, who made it to the big time. We rooted for him for a lot of reasons. Christ, if he could be that good at something then maybe we could be too? When he was good, it gave us hope. The kid could flat out play the game. How much fun was it to watch him? Man could he shoot, but he also had a good eye for the court, could handle the ball and was unflappable under pressure, just like we all aspired to be. How many times did we watch Georgetown, the vaunted Georgetown team with Patrick Ewing, David Wingate, Reggie Williams (damn those guys were good and scary) throw their hornets nest of a press at St. John’s. And Mullin would slowly, he was slow, using ball fakes and feints, putting the ball behind his back, between the legs just “handle it.”

Freshman year at SUNY Buffalo, my buddy Ian, Eric Friedman and I brought our Brooklyn accents and our love of the Redmen, they’ll always be the Redmen to me, to Fargo Quad. And our circle of friends: Lynchy, Conroy, Dunleavy, the descentants of Brooklyn Irish who had moved to Long Island, joined us on the Mullin/St. John’s bandwagon. I remember once in the early 80’s we took a road trip from Buffalo to watch St. John’s take on Syracuse and Pearl Washington in the Carrier Dome. We were a spot of red in a sea of orange. That didn’t stop our full-throated cheering as testosterone and Brooklyn pride took over. The game is tied down the stretch, St. John’s has the ball and Mullin is fouled, big mistake. With 30,000 screaming SU fans doing all they can to distract Chris, he calmly sinks both free throws, just like we knew he would. St. John’s wins. That was a fun walk out of the Carrier Dome.

Magic Johnson, Mullin’s teammate on the ’92 Dream Team, and someone who has to be in the conversation for greatest basketball player of all time said this during the Hall of Fame induction ceremony: “When God looked down and made a basketball player, he made Chris Mullin. That’s what Chris Mullin is, he’s a basketball player.” Magic said that.

It wasn’t a race thing for us, (Magic is probably my fav) we were just so happy to have a white guy out there, doing well. It’s not racism when you see someone like you, and pull for that person is it? White guys are always sensitive to that I suppose. When the Puerto Rican community makes Roberto Clemente their own or the Italians root for Dimaggio what is that? Human nature? It just feels right to most of us. Fitting that Mullin came along and infused Catholic-school Brooklyn, Queens and The Bronx with a little confidence and pride right when Ronald Reagan was doing the same for the country. In the final days of the Carter Administration, with unemployment skyrocketing, and puppet regimes in Iran poking America in the eye with a stick, Reagan made us proud to be Americans again. Mullin was doing the same for guys like us. I know my friends and I played a lot more ball after Mullin came along. And we wouldn’t think twice about grabbing the round ball and heading to any number of courts around Brooklyn to play the city game. Sometimes we won, sometimes we lost. In the end, despite the fact that we walked a little taller and played with a little more heart, who did we think we were? Chris Mullin? Nah, there's only one of him. Congrats Mully, you made us all proud.

The Bald and the Beautiful

2011-07-20T12:20:00.000-07:00

Let me say up front, there’s no anger here. You can’t hear tone of voice in an essay but these are merely observations about men and women about images and life changes. I think we would all agree that women are the more sensitive sex. Women take people’s feelings into account before commenting on someone’s attire or new hairdo. Men? We try, especially married men because we have been trained to be more, sensitive. For the most part though, we are Neanderthals. Most things are fair game, all the time. Most.

When I hear women complain about Hollywood and Madison Avenue promoting images of genetic freaks, women who are supremely thin and buxom at the same time, I feel for them I do. I understand what they are complaining about. You are thinking: those women aren’t real. they have personal trainers, professional chefs, nannies. Real women have: careers, kids, homework, baseball games, recitals, laundry and mac and cheese. Maybe it’s my increased sensitivity? While guys appreciate the beauty of say, a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model, we all know, like many popular video games, that’s not real life. But why does this outcry against unreal imagery, unreal expectations stop there?

Guys are victims in this too. Hear me out on this. When is the last time you saw a bald guy, or even a guy with thinning hair or a chubby guy on “The Bachelor?” How many of Hollywood’s leading men look like the guys you see at the town beach or on the sideline of a soccer game? Even in the Cialis commercials, these guys with limp noodles look like 60 year old freaks. Here’s a guy who can’t cut the mustard in the sack but he’s in unbelievable shape and he has a badger growing on top of his head. Every pharmacist viewing those commercials is saying, “You know those guys don’t look like my Viagra customers; the guys I sell Viagra to look more like, Joe next door.”

I think real guys, guys who are getting older, thicker in the mid-section and thinning on top, need a good public relations guy. What we need is an older guy union, The OGU. If women have been complaining about fashion magazines promoting unreal expectations, there should be an outcry for real men. Shouldn’t we be saying that the image that Hollywood and GQ are portraying is unrealistic? And shouldn’t women be joining us in this?

Truthfully, there won’t be much help from the fairer sex. Actually the reverse is true. How many times have you been at a dinner, and the topic of baldness comes up? At dinner. Want to see a Penn State Linebacker shrink up like a turtle? Bring up his thinning hair while you’re eating your clams casino. I love watching this conversation, simply because women, who are usually so aware of these things, seem so callous and boorish. At one wedding, we were all comparing coverage. I don’t remember who broached the subject but I can guarantee it was someone with a full head of hair or a wife who was very proud of her adequately coiffed hubby. Eventually, the conversation denigrated to something like middle school boys doing push ups in front of the girls. And the wives were leading the charge. “Your husband still has pretty good coverage.” I’m looking at my friend Jimmy thinking, yeh, he still has pretty good coverage, does he have better coverage than me? Suddenly his wife reaches over and pulls his hair back from his forehead and says, “Not really see, he covers it up with this new haircut. Really you can see that he’s losing it, there’s no growth right there.” One minute my buddy was laughing and joking, the next minute he looks like someone kicked him in the balls. And it was his own wife! We’ve all seen guys with thinning hair argue and compare. I was at a bar recently and two "follically challenged" friends were circling each other with their chests out, like gorillas in the jungle, “Well, you have less than me!" "Get out of here, look at your shiny head. Honey, don’t I have more hair than him?”

During these conversations, suddenly women become expert geneticists. “How come he’s losing his hair? His father had a full head of hair.” “You see that doesn’t matter, the baldness gene comes from your mother’s side. What kind of hair does his maternal grandfather have?” “Oh, yeh, he’s bald as a cue ball.” The only people comfortable during this conversation are the women and the guys with all their hair. Usually I’ll keep my mouth shut or toss out some non-sequitur, "Did you hear Joan and Peter are swingers?"

I often wonder what would happen if a group of guys did this at dinner? Imagine if at one of your dinner parties, you are sipping your martini and some dude lobs out this verbal hackey sack? “Julie, your ankles look really good. You are keeping yourself in really good shape” And her husband pipes in, “Not really. See, she’s covering it up with the dark colors and the Uggs.” “Really? I didn’t realize. But her mother has such nice ankles.” “See you have that wrong, the kankle gene comes from your maternal grandfather. Did you ever see Grandpa Guatano’s ankles? Looks like he’s got the gout.” “Yeh but your wife looks great! She doesn’t even watch what she eats, does she go to the gym every day?” “No, it’s the new Spanks-panty hose she has on. She looks good now but she’s a human sausage. When she gets undressed at home her ankles will inflate like a life raft.

Of course that would never happen. Why is that? If women are usually the more sensitive sex? Why do men know enough to stay away from certain topics in public? And how in the world could women be so clueless? And really, why do men care so much? Somewhere along the line a full head of hair has come to be connected to virility, with being in shape. What's a guy to do? Remember the Seinfeld episode where Elaine is dating some guy with a great head of hair and she mentions how important it is to women that their guy have thick lustrous hair. She turns to George who is balding and says, “Sorry George but it’s true.” Crestfallen, George puts his head down and says, “I knew it.”

This is exactly why so many men go to great lengths to make sure they don’t lose their hair. Why not just grow old gracefully? Most of try not to but what choices do we have?

We can shave our heads. That’s a choice for some of us. Once in the 90’s we were watching the NBA playoffs and my buddy Murph says, “You see that’s not fair, Jordan shaves his head and he looks cool.” Shelley Stemmer, my friend Steve’s mom, and our elder stateswoman posits, “It’s all how you carry yourself Murph.” To which Murph said, “It’s easy for Michael Jordan to be confident, he’s Michael Jordan.” “Oh Billy, you just have to be confident in yourself.” “I tell you this Shelly, I’d be a lot more confident if I wasn’t a pasty white guy with the sun shining off my head.”

I’m not one of those guys who will do the Rogaine thing. Not that my body is a temple but a topical solution to make sure you regrow hair seems, less than organic. I guess if I knew it was completely safe…but my fear is that years from now we’ll see guys with penises growing out of the top of their head and we’ll whisper, “Sure he’s got a thick head of hair but...

We can be creative with our haircuts. For most guys, the drawback with thinning hair, besides snickering women and kids, is that in everyday life, lack of hair is a hassle. I spent a lot less time worrying about it when I had plenty. I always tell Marisa, she’s my “stylist,” “You’re the professional, I don’t want to look silly, I don’t want to look like one of those guys who is trying to cover something up. But please do whatever you can.” She’s always so nice and tells me how great my hair looks. Yes I do know she works on tips.

And of course there’s the all-American, baseball hat. As we get older, every time we go to the beach, we have to bring a baseball hat. Actually, every time we are going to be in the sun for an extended period of time, we need a hat. It’s a drag. Or worse, you can reach the point of putting sunscreen right on your head. That’s a sobering moment for a dude. I tend to use some type of spray, unsightly white gobs on your head are really unflattering.

We can be careful with the pics we post on the internet. I love the fact that we all post flattering pics on Facebook. Often I think, if that’s his or her good picture, oh jeez. When my wife posts pictures I am always like, “Hon do you realize that shot really accents my double chin and people will be blinded by the sun beating off my cranium? I appreciate that.” When we find old friends on FB, admit it, the first thing we look at is, did she get fat and does he still have his hair? Those are really the only two worries for guys, bald or fat. One we have control over, one we don’t. They call it male pattern baldness and I have been slightly lucky so far, for the most part it’s been occurring from back to front, so I don’t have to witness it every day. I can delude myself into thinking it still looks good. Once in a while I will catch an alignment of two mirrors, in an elevator or in a bathroom in a restaurant and I’m always like, "THAT'S what I look like from behind?" If there are no mirrors, I have my kids at home, "Dad you should try Rogaine." And I teach 8th grade, so once in a while my students will let me know, as if I didn’t know it already, “Mr. Spinner did you know you are going bald?” I always try to handle this with humor. “Oh, my god, really? When did this happen?” Or sometimes I say, “Did you know you’re failing this class?”

My theory is that this is a control issue. No matter how much a guy works out and no matter what you eat, most guys will experience hair loss. It’s humbling for a guy. It’s connected to aging obviously. Through the Hollywood image-makers, we have come to see it as the autumn of our lives. Like trees, we start to lose our hair as we move toward the latter seasons of our lives. Oh, and that’s another thing, your head gets colder. Maybe all of us "regular" people, men and women, should work together to debunk the images that Hollywood continues to propagate? How about we start a magazine with regular people in it? Then again who would read it?

Doctor's Orders

2011-04-19T19:47:00.000-07:00

Sometimes in the act of writing we learn things about ourselves. Recently this happened in, of all places, a Facebook stream. My friend Craig posted a black and white photo of Gilda Radner and John Belushi. The photographer captured a tender moment, Gilda seated in a chair, Belushi standing behind, leaning in to wrap his arms around her, his head next to hers. It was a provocative photo; in that it provoked, thought. I was one of the first to view it. We all know the pressure of wanting to write a pithy, poignant comment, right then. Myriad emotions coursed through my brain: the tragedy, the love, the talent, the laughter, the inspiration.

My comment was about comedians and how they seem to be drawn to comedy by some larger force. Thinking of comedians who seem to be haunted, like: Belushi, Chris Farley, Richard Pryor, John Candy and more recently Greg Giraldo. These performers seek the laughter of others to fill a need in themselves. At some point, Craig and I pulled off the main Facebook stream and had our own electronic conversation about “comedians like that.” Eventually, we reflected on our own desire to make others laugh.

I know just enough about Freud and Jung to be dangerous, or at least confusing, to myself. If you asked my grammar school friends at Immaculate Heart of Mary, I don’t think it would be a reach for them to place me in the class clown category. If you polled Jean Ann Powers, Robby Sullivan and Chrissy Ryan, they’d probably throw that moniker on me and a handful of others in our class. I started to think about what triggers this desire in me? Like Belushi, am I damaged in some way? Did I have abusive neglectful parents? No. Was my father a raging alcoholic? Well not raging, nothing out of the ordinary for our family, circle of friends, or the 70’s. Why do I feel this desire to make the one comment that will crack up the staff meeting?

After my conversation with Craig, I thought about a morning this past summer….My wife and I had eye appointments. After shuttling our boys off to their respective day-camps, we met at the doctor’s office. As is usually the case, I arrive after my wife. It’s a big rectangular waiting room with multiple practices using the same space. I open the door, take a quick glance around the room and spy Kira on the exact opposite side. While I am glancing around the room, all eyes are on me; there’s not a lot going on in the waiting room. I fight the urge to break into song, seriously. Why? Because it amuses me. I had this vision of me donning an imaginary top hat and cane and doing a little Bugs Bunny/Al Jolson ragtime: “Hello my baby, hello my sweetie, hello my rag time girl…” I don’t have the nerve, I settle for an overindulgent stage wave, acting as if my trans-Atlantic crossing was successful and I am seeing Kira for the first time in months. Kira shakes her head and looks at the floor.

Some eyes are still on me as I make my way across the room. I notice a grizzled WWII vet right next to one of the magazine tables. I make a b-line and survey the inventory. I am looking for material. I already have something to read, I always do. Jackpot! There’s a copy of a magazine that’s perfect for my next performance; a periodical I would have no reason to ever read. I pick up the latest issue of, “Cheerleader.” I feel Sergeant Fury’s eyes on me. I peruse the cover as if I am really thinking about reading it. I put a quizzical look on my face, and say, “Oh, I have not seen this issue yet!” After delivering my line, I display, like one of the models on “The Price is Right,” the cover of the July issue of “Cheerleader” a glossy photo of the captain of the LSU cheerleading squad in all her blonde, blue and gold glory. Nothing, maybe a derisive grunt from my geriatric G.I. Joe. I am stunned. That was good stuff you old codger! I’m not expecting you to spit your coffee out but I was hoping for a guffaw, maybe a chortle, a snort, a chuckle, I would have settled for a polite smirk. But derision?

By now Kira is mortified, a few of the other patients might be as well, especially the women. I am beaming. I think it’s hysterical, especially the fact that Kira wants to crawl under the table. In my heart I know she thinks it’s funny. If she doesn’t, I think it is and that’s what matters to me. If my "Cheerleader" skit didn't work, no worries. I am used to these comedic lead balloons. My batting average for these impromptu jokes is probably like a decent major leaguer, that is to say, around .300. So 70% of these efforts fail, but I don’t care. I take my walk of shame, and sit next to Kira, a cheshire cat grin on my face.

The sliding glass window, behind which the clerical staff sits, is in the middle of the long side of the rectangle, across from the WWII vet. I open my book and do some reconnaissance. The room looks like a Woody Allen movie set. Every age group is represented, 90’s, 80’s, 70’s… “and playing the part of the 40 somethings will be Jim and Kira Spinner.” I know there’s a joke in here about early bird dinner specials but I decide to save it for later. I have this eerie feeling that I am glimpsing our future. Walkers, oxygen tanks, and canes, oh my.

I read and then interest in my book wanes, so I talk to Kira as if I am hard of hearing, “HOW DID THE BOYS GET OFF FOR THEIR FIRST DAY OF CAMP?” She pleads with me, with her eyes, please stop? “DO YOU THINK THEY’LL LANCE THAT LARGE FESTERING BOIL?” I can see Kira is pained, so I back off. Sometimes I know when to stop. I keep glancing over my book, like we all do, playing detective about the other patients…Hmmm, what do you think she’s in here for? She’s 90? I can’t believe she’s 90. She’s sharper than half the people I know. What an interesting lady. I wonder what her life has been like? Oh, look at him, he’s on his last leg, poor guy, now his wife has to wipe his butt for him. That’s not for me. I hope I go quickly, I don’t want to hang on like that….

The patients continue getting called up. There’s one recently retired guy, a sharp dresser, still thin at 60 something, making an effort to make the clerical staff laugh. I applaud the effort. He made some marginally funny comments as he was checking in. But when they call his name, he shouts, “That’s me! What did I win!” I am the only one to laugh, the sound of one man laughing, know it well. I think, that guy’s alright, I bet he’d be fun to hang out with.

The couples go in together, with the accoutrements of the aging process. Then they call, “Mr. and Mrs. Spinner!” I stay seated, “You go first.” I am thinking I will continue to enjoy some time to myself. Kira goes up to the window and is informed that we should go in together. I wave my hand at the window, “She can go first. I’ll wait here and enjoy some unfettered reading time.” I like to weave the word unfettered into conversations whenever I can. Despite my protestations, we are told to go in together.

We are escorted to the eye exam room and told to wait for the doctor. I begin to play with the equipment. I am like a kid in a candy store. I pick up some unknown eye implement and ask Kira, “Have you ever had the Aunt Jemima treatment?” Kira is a nurse and she has a respect, or a fear, of doctors that I just don’t have. While I appreciate their expertise and their devotion to schooling, there’s a part of me that knows they put their pants on one leg at a time. I also have a little chip on my shoulder because my 3:30 appointment should be 3:30 for them also. But I digress. “Put that stuff down!” Kira whispers, with one eye on the door that says, the doctor could come in at any... And on cue, the doc comes in.

The first thing I do upon introduction is to tell the doctor, “I think you should know, Kira memorized the eye chart.” Kira apologizes for what a jackass I am. Doctor McGillicuddy rolls her eyes, “I have one of those at home too.” The doc deals with me as she would an adolescent, after her cursory comment, she ignores me. I go back to my book. Unfortunately, the doc keeps feeding me lines, “Kira, your eyes are so red. Are they always this red?” Geez doc, if you are going to play straight man… “Doc, I’ve been talking to her about this, maybe you can help? Even though she’s the mother of three boys, she's still smoking the ganja like she's a coed at a frat party.” Freaking doctor doesn’t blink an eye, “Well at least she won’t get glaucoma.” I think, she might be fun to hang out with.

So, why did that Belushi/Radner picture make me flash back to that eye doctor appointment? Why did the conversation between me and Craig prompt this introspection about why am I like this? How come I can’t just go to an eye doctor’s appointment, the supermarket, the park, or a faculty meeting and behave myself? Why this need to entertain, to nudge, to in a sense beg for the attention of others? I really don’t know. My mother or father did not seem to share this quality. In the end, I am going to take the easy way out. Occam’s Razor, as taught to me by Maureen Grice goes something like: The simplest explanation for something is most likely to be the correct one. In the end, I think it’s because I find it entertaining. With our trips to the doctor’s office, food shopping, t-ball games, DMV excursions…life can be, well, dull. What’s a person to do? Something my former principal used to say would work well here. Linda Demikat's spin on a common phrase was “Life is too long to be miserable.”

Face Painting

2011-01-14T21:54:00.000-08:00

Sitting in our living room recently, the Spinner boys were discussing our favorite sports teams. To a man we are all Jet fans. In baseball we pull for the Mets and Red Sox, I have dubbed us MetSox fans. Papa Bill, one of my boy's grandfathers, was in the room but on the periphery. I am sure he wouldn’t mind if I said, "he's not a sports guy.” Bill Duesing, you should know, is an organic farmer of some note. He’s a Yalie, and a published author, and I guess you might call him a hippy in twilight. If my boys ask me a question I can’t answer, particularly about nature and farming, my pat answer is, “Let’s call Papa Bill.” In short, he’s well-educated and wise. So when Nick, Brian and Charlie asked, “Papa, what’s your favorite team?” He hesitated and cleverly said, “The Farmers.” Knowing Bill, I thought Farmers was a great answer but my boys were relentless. “No really Papa. What’s your favorite team?” “Well, I grew up outside of Philadelphia, and my mom was a Phillies fan. So I guess I would say the Phillies.”

For me the conversation was cute but awkward. When I talk to Bill and my mother-in-law Suzanne about sports, I always feel like I have to qualify my fandom. It’s my own insecurity, they have never given me reason to believe they are judging me. I feel compelled to explain to Bill and Suzanne (who don’t even own a tv), what it is we sports fans get out of rooting for our teams. Why does a relatively intelligent, 47 year old father of 3 boys, care if the New York Jets win the Super Bowl? How to explain this? In my head I know it’s kind of pedestrian to be a fan. Yes I am being a snob but part of me thinks I should be above it. The fact that I spend so much time watching grown men play a game seems, embarrassing. I can’t help it though, I am a fan.

On the way out of our house that morning, I thought about ways to explain being a sports fans to Papa in terms he would understand. I wanted to explain that I am not a cliché, I am not a beer swilling lout on a tv commercial. I wanted to show him and Suzanne that what I am doing, a lot of us do, and there are reasons for it. I wanted to make the case that this fandom, because it’s so pervasive in our society, addresses some primal need. It would appear that many of us, especially guys, have to do it. We buy the t-shirt, tune in to games, read the newspaper, learn the lore and lexicon, chat with friends, attend games, and some of us, paint our faces.

That’s when it hit me. The painted faces! I had a hypothesis that would explain fandom to Papa Bill in terms that his scientific-naturalist mind would understand.. “You know what Papa, maybe being a fan is…Tribal? Could it be that somewhere in our DNA, in our hunter-gatherer genetic helix is a code that persuades us that we need to be a part of a tribe of: Met fans, Jet fans, I hate to say it, Yankee fans? If you look closer, these are tribes: color wearing, chanting, with their own histories, idiosyncrasies and customs. We need to be a part of…something bigger than us, protective, inclusive. We are not hunting and gathering anymore so we put our jerseys on and tailgate; or drive to our local sports bar and eat chicken wings, with our tribe.” I figured I was on to something.

After that discussion, my radar was up to gather evidence to support my theory. Shopping for a car just after that I said to my buddy Johnny Murray, a fellow Jet fan, “I saw a used Jaguar XJ6, it was in my price range but it just didn’t feel right to me. I don’t think I’m a Jaguar type of guy.” To which Murray says, “You can’t drive a Jaguar, Jet fans don’t drive Jaguars, Giant fans drive Jaguars.” He wasn’t insulting me, he was confirming my hypothesis.

Then I saw an interview with Jumbo Elliot, former All-Pro Offensive lineman who played for both New York NFL teams. The article was about the Jets and Giants sharing the new stadium and Jumbo had this to say, “Jet fans are…blue-collar, anti-establishment, rebels. Giant fans are older, established, they can be a little much…” Confirmation from an All-Pro?

If we move beyond the borders of the United States, isn't it easy to see our national pride during the Olympics? Or Soccer's World Cup? I don't know that much about soccer fans but are Manchester United fans different from Manchester City fans? Does my theory hold water overseas?

I started to think that there had to be more to this sports fan thing than just the tribal nature of the group. I mean for so many people to be involved, really? I walked after the snow storm recently and I thought of other benefits of being a sports fan. Most important to me is sports as metaphor for life. How we are all learning life’s lessons through playing and watching sports. Things like: hard work and practice are rewarded, sacrificing individual glory for the good of the whole is admirable, sports as the arena of redemption, yesterday’s goat might be tomorrow’s hero, cheaters never prosper, you can be gracious in victory or defeat and of course you can be classless as well.

Of course there is the fact that if you watch, you will be compelled to play. How often will my boys and I go play a sport after watching a game? It puts you, in the mood. Watching sports encourages kids to play and that’s healthy, mentally and physically. Sports figures can also make good role models, helping this and further generations in sports and life in general.

Finally, there’s the goosebumps department. When sports fans know that what we are witnessing is genius. Fans develop an appreciation for the sublime when watching the artistry of the performance. Can we make the comparisons? Michael Jordan to Michaelangelo? Tom Seaver to John Steinbeck? Jack Nicklaus to Jack Nicholson? Sports fans know when they are witnessing greatness, Ted Williams at the plate, Wayne Gretsky on the ice…

That's about what I can come up with. A little help? What other benefits are there to being: Met fans? Yankee fans? Giant fans? and of course Jet fans? Let's Go Jets!

Capo Di Tutti Capi (The Boss of Bosses)

2010-12-04T07:44:00.000-08:00

I know it’s the thing to be thankful for our family and our friends this time of year. I am unbelievably thankful for all of those things. However, I’d like to talk to you about something else I am thankful for; something that a lot of us are thankful for. For me, like you I am sure, the soundtrack of my life is awesome. So many songs, so many artists…Neil Young, Tom Petty, Elvis Costello…But if I had to pick one artist that has provided the music for the screenplay of my life, it would have to be Bruce Springsteen. That’s right, I am thankful for The Boss.

“The screen door slams, Mary’s dress waves”…gives me goose bumps. “The dogs on Main Street howl ‘cause they understand” gives me that little catch in my throat. “No retreat, no surrender” gets me pumped, makes me feel I could tear down walls. “Bobby Jean” helps me reminisce. “Meet me tonight in Atlantic City” makes me cry. Springsteen reminds me of what it’s like to be human. When I am driving in my car he has me trying to, as Bruce would say, to, “Turn the mother up, as loud as she will go.”

What is it about Bruce? Why does he do it for a lot of us? Not long ago, at a local pub, I was talking with Pat Lewis, a fellow Middlebury dad, and a buddy with whom I share many interests. Our conversation turned to music. We ploughed coins in the juke box as we talked of our favorite bands from The Beach Boys to The Replacements. Assuming he would love him I venture, “And what about Springsteen?” Pat kind of grimaced and said, “I don’t know. I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid.” That felt like a punch to the gut. How could Pat Lewis not like Bruce? Which made me think, what is it about Bruce that does it for so many of us?

When Bruce plays, you get the feeling that he’s earnest. Jon Stewart, hosting the Kennedy Center Honors, said of Springsteen, “Bruce doesn’t just sing, he testifies.” With Bruce, you never get the feeling he’s doing it for a paycheck. I think of the Dimaggio quote when Joltin’ Joe talked of why he gave his best every game, “Because there’s some kid in the stands, that’s the only game he’s going to see me play.” It’s that same passion you get from Springsteen, he’s up there, Proving it All Night, for you.

I remember when downloading music over the internet started happening, I was genuinely worried that we would lose our artists. My fear was that the future Lennons and McCartneys might not choose to go into the music business if it meant they couldn’t cash in on their rock star dreams. No reason to have worried though because real artists, are going to have to sing, or play, no matter what. If Bruce never made it big, Bruce fans know, he’d probably be working a 9 to 5 gig in some office complex on Route 1 in Jersey. But you could rest assured he’d be playing on the weekends in some local bars down the Jersey shore. He’s got this rock and roll in him, these songs, and he has to get them out.

And what a gift it is. Whatever music does it for you, from Sheryl Crow to the Counting Crows, we have to take a second to thank the artists. How hard it must be to write a song, from the lyrics to the melody, damn, I don’t know enough about it to even sound like I
know what I’m talking about. I’m just glad they pursue their dreams, they give their blood, sweat and tears, for us really.

I tell my students, I teach 8th grade, that I might not have survived adolescence, were it not for the music of Bruce Springsteen. I can picture myself in my bedroom, gingerly placing Darkness on the Edge of Town, the album, on my Hitachi stereo turntable. Those of you of a certain age will recognize my hi-fi; an all-in-one unit I bought at Macy’s. For $220 I got a turntable, cassette player and AM/FM stereo. Throw in some milk-crate-sized speakers and I was rocking out in my room; much to my Dad’s dismay. Early on I felt a strong connection to Springsteen’s songs. He was cool and vulnerable at the same time. In the same song you got the feeling he could kick your ass or he could be getting his heart crushed. The Boss’s music was the perfect lyrical elixir for an adolescent finding his way in the world. I can still picture 10th grade, in the room I shared with both of my brothers, singing along with Bruce to an imaginary girlfriend I hadn’t even met yet. “Well if she wants to see me! You can tell her that I’m easily found. Tell her there’s a spot out ‘neath Abram’s Bridge. And tell her, there’s a darkness on the edge of town.”

Bruce fans stick together, those of us that are actually drinking the Kool-Aid. I got a call this past week from Glen Gruder, one of my East 4th Street cronies. He called to let me know that I HAD to pick up Springsteen’s recently released multi-disk set. Glen turned 50 this past summer but I could hear the excitement in his voice as he talked about this new version of “Candy’s Room” on the new disk. Our connection goes way back.

Early on, we made Bruce our own. It felt cool to know about Bruce before other people, before he got big. “Darkness” came out in ’78 and there started to be a buzz about this Springsteen guy. Gruder and I were the big Springsteen fans on East 4th Street, buying vinyl versions of The Wild The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle in our local record store on 13th avenue.

It was Glen actually, who took me to my first Bruce concert. In 1980, G-man won 4 tickets to Springsteen’s New Year’s Eve show at the Nassau Coliseum. Springsteen was still relatively unknown or unappreciated in our circles. Actually we couldn’t even get two other friends to go with us. Springsteen on New Year’s Eve! We wound up scalping two of the tix, interestingly enough to Cathy Cavanaugh, a friend of ours from the neighborhood, who happened to be outside the Coliseum, looking for tickets.

When I got a counselor job, at YMCA Silver Lake in New Jersey in 1980, the Springsteen tattoo became permanent. Much to the chagrin of my co-counselor, Jim-Bob Mitchell, I bought a cassette of “Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ” at the Sussex County Fair. That whole summer in Cabin 17, I played that cassette over- and over. “Billy slammed on his coaster brakes and said, anybody want to head on out to Greasy Lake?” Even if the lyrics didn’t fit, I made them fit, Greasy Lake? Silver Lake? “Princess cards she sends me, with her regards...” Bruce’s songs are narratives, telling stories that seemed somehow to work for me. “For you, for you I came for you
but you did not need my urgency…” thinking of a certain girl at camp, someone I have a crush on but she doesn’t know.

One of my other camp buddies who is “drinking the Kool-Aid” is Steve Swierczek. Every once in a while, after the kids go to sleep, the phone will ring. When I answer, all I can hear is crowd noise. Then I can hear Bruce singing “Night.” Swierczek knows, this is the first song I heard Bruce sing live. He calls so I can share the concert with him, me on my couch in Connecticut and Steve in some stadium, thinking of me when he hears, “And the world is bustin’ at its seams. And your just a prisoner of your dreams…” Those calls always mean a lot to me.

After 9/11, Bruce released an album of healing, “The Rising.” It was upsetting at first to listen to it, but eventually it became cathartic. No better artist to write that album except maybe Billy Joel. During “The Rising” tour, I joined Swierczek and a group of his Rutgers buddies for a tailgate before one of the summer shows at Giants Stadium. I had no ticket so I had to scalp a single. Tough to sit by yourself but I just had to go to this show. Second song in, I am surrounded by fellow Bruce fans, but strangers none the less, and Bruce goes into “The Rising,” a haunting tune about America picking itself up after 9/11. “I see you Mary in the garden. In the garden of a thousand sighs. There’s holy pictures of our children...” My mind flashes to people I know, and the horrors of that time and I feel a raindrop. I look up into the graying summer sky and there’s another one, not a deluge, just a few, like tears, falling slowly.

Maybe for you it’s not Bruce? Maybe it’s The Beatles? The Stones? Whoever it is that moves you, give thanks that they followed their muse. When you hear that song that gives YOU goosebumps, take a second to say Thanks to the artist for putting it out there for us, for sharing their humanity with us.

I often think of students that I’ve had over the years, the Jason Kinnards, the Pat Lamothes, the Jacob Calos, the Michael Griffins, middle school kids forming rock bands in their garage. I always think, this kid just might have "it." I say, keep going! Follow your passion, put yourself out there, the world needs musicians. We should all be thankful that they take a chance. “Tramps like us…”

The Postman Never Rings Anymore

2010-10-28T18:03:00.000-07:00

Most of us are optimists. I can prove it. Raise your hand if you look forward to going to the mail box? Come on, be honest. Raise your hand

if when you see the mail truck coming down your street, or the letter carrier walking up the block, you get a little excited. We all have a little lilt in our voice when we say, “Hey, here comes the mailman.” This optimism continues, despite the overwhelming evidence. I mean, Monday thru Saturday, 52 weeks a year, for years if not decades now, you can assume all you will get in the mail is crap. Sure we get the occasional magazine subscription. And those are mostly single people. People I know with kids, quickly let their subscriptions lapse. Give or take a birthday card, or a refund check in April, there’s really no good reason to go to the mail box. So why do we still have a spring in our step as we go to check the mail?

Somewhere, deep in our DNA, we remember a time when the mailbox held treats; letters written by far away friends. Maybe you’d get a letter from a college buddy, a camp friend or if you're lucky, someone you have a crush on? I’m no Luddite, I am all for the forward march of technology. I mean if I had to write this on a Smith-Corona, I despised those machines, I might not write at all. This email stuff is cool, but we’ve lost a little something when we stopped writing letters. Don’t you think? Now there’s nothing to touch; nothing to smell, nothing to reread or savor. How many times have you reread an email?”

I really do miss going to the mailbox and seeing one of those special envelopes, mixed in with all the other mail, that was a letter from a friend. Maybe you were like me? I would tease myself, put the letter to the side, put the other mail in its proper pile, read everything else and then finally get to the letter. I had the pleasure of being a camp counselor during my high school and college years. That’s when the letter writing bug bit me. I made a lot of friends at YMCA Silver Lake and camp people liked to keep in touch the 10 months we were not at camp. At a time when long distance calls were still measured in minutes and fathers policed the phone bill, letters were an economical option to stay in touch. As an avid reader, someone who values his friendships and enjoys writing, letters were a no-brainer.

There was nothing like writing to a friend, trying to entertain, updating them on our lives all while trying to speak in our voice in the process. I loved crafting the letter, snickering at my desk picturing one of my buddies getting a kick out of one of my sophomoric stories. I guess that’s not all that different from email. But part of the joy was the anticipation, knowing the letter was in the postal system, meandering its way to Anytown, USA. For a few days picturing my friend’s mailbox at his or her house, knowing or hoping that they will be excited to receive a letter. Assuming their response is similar to my response when their return letter arrives a few weeks later.

Those of us who were letter writers could recognize letters by their post-mark, type of stationary, maybe a peculiar handwriting or of course a return address. To this day I could tell you that Kira’s, (that’s my wife) home address was 2 Dawn Lane in Ridgefield CT. Mike and Chrissy Parker lived at 62 Rodgers Lane in Sparta, NJ. If the post mark was Kilmer Facility? It’s a letter from Moira Flanagan in Phillipsburg. Bill Dunleavy, who enlisted in the army after college? He could be anywhere from Fort Benning, Georgia to Germany.

Winters in Brooklyn could be cold, months long roller hockey seasons, ice cold train platforms, and touch football games on East 4th Street so a letter from a friend was a ray of summer sunshine. And one of the beauties was we could save letters, not like emails. My letters were in a pair of cardboard boxes. Now that was something entertaining, to come across a box of letters months if not years later. I usually uncovered mine each time I moved. To sit on the basement floor and pick out a handful of letters was special. And again, email? To revisit our personal history, to go back in time, to remember what we were doing sophomore year in college…

Fargo Quad’s mailroom was right off the terrace on the second floor. The mail was delivered every day at around 3:30. And it was a social event. If I was in the vicinity, I’d stick around. Most of the "mailroom groupies," looking back, were probably girls awaiting letters from boyfriends and the occasional geek like me. We had those old-fashioned, little door mail boxes. You know the brass rectangles with the little glass window and the dial for your combo? We’d position ourselves near our mailboxes and watch Cheryl’s silhouette as she moved around behind the mailboxes, teasing us with visions of an incoming letter. Back and forth her shadow’d go, tantalizing us…here she comes, this is going to be for me, she’s reaching her hand up….No or Yes! It was always kinda cool if you got a letter, or maybe even two. It felt a little, I hate to admit it, but a little like, proof that you might actually have friends. That someone else thought you were letter-worthy, sadly, felt a little cool. Those who walked away from the mailroom empty handed, their envy was just icing on the cake. I once parlayed a letter from Robin Omark, a camp friend, into a bit of intrigue with one particularly cute freshman. “Oh, Spinner, who is Robin Omark?” But that’s a story for another time.

So I am not asking you to become a Quaker or to move to Amish country but maybe we could all take out a legal pad, or dust off that box of picturesque cards you bought while on vacation and write a letter to a friend. Think about the smile you will create on the other end when this old friend goes to the mailbox and sees a letter, from you! Wouldn’t that be cool? I know I am being a dreamer. And on that note, I am going to check the mail.

"I Didn't Rub. I Didn't Rub"(Ode to Big Al)

2010-08-29T13:56:00.000-07:00

Daddy do you ever cry?

Nicholas, my eight year old asked me that on a Thursday not so long ago. I only know it was a Thursday evening because the very next day, a Friday, I took a call from one of my college buddies that would prove to him exactly what I was talking about. I told him that, “Surely I cry all the time. I cried when my Dad died. Nick I’m as sappy as they come, just ask your Mom. I cry during the National Anthem, especially after September 11th.” So when I took the call from Billy Murphy, on that Friday morning, Nicholas had his proof.

I could hear in Murph’s voice that something was off. “I don’t know how to tell you this. I picked up the phone last night two or three times to call you, but I just couldn’t make the call.”

I’m thinking, what could be so bad that he wouldn’t, that he couldn’t call me?

“What Murph? Just tell me.”

“Al Duarte’s dead. I don’t know how else to tell you. He went to the Yankee game last night and apparently he had a heart attack in the parking lot. He’s dead. It’s not his father, who is 73, I asked. It’s Al. Al Duarte’s dead.”
“No. No. No way.”

I was standing in the front entrance of my house. I walked into the kitchen. Nick picked up on the emotion, followed me, with his big, blue eyes wide open. During my conversation with Murph I had one hand on the phone and one around Nick’s shoulder as he came over and hugged me. That was enough to start the water works. I knew I should cry. I wanted to show Nick that it was okay to cry.

Murph and I discussed a plan of action, whom to call, when the services might be. I hung up the phone, stood in my kitchen, one arm around Nick’s shoulder and stared out the window. I tried to compose myself, to continue my day. My wife was at work, I had our three boys and we had plans. I figured doing something normal would help. I took my boys to a local library, for a Thomas the Tank Engine Fair. I got the boys in the car and we drive over to Silas Bronson Library in Waterbury. Walking around Library Park with my boys, watching them have fun with all of the different Thomas themed booths; I am in a daze, staring off...Al’s dead. What the -----?

I put on a happy face while I was walking around watching my kids eat fried dough. I thought of Al’s family, a parent's worst nightmare, burying a son. I thought of Al’s friends, What’s going through Murph’s mind? He’s known Al since they were little? And how is Jack Doyle doing? Jack’s on vacation in Nantucket. I am sure he knows by now. Maybe Billy O’Mara called him? I could picture Jack sitting on the beach while his kids frolic in the waves, his wife continues to talk to him about their plans. Jack is trying to maintain some type of normalcy but finds himself staring off into the surf….

And O’Connell? The New York City Firefighter. How much death has Chris had to deal with? How many funerals has he attended over the past few years? I know this one is different for Chris. I called Chris to let him know, figuring if calling me was that difficult for Murph I could call O’Connell.

We got home from the library and Kira, my wife, met me at the front door, “You should listen to the messages, Jack Doyle called, it sounds serious.”
“I know. Sad news, Big Al passed away.”
We hugged for a minute and she asked, “How are you doing?” I wanted to tell her I was fine.
“Not good. I’m having a tough time with this one...... This is a hard one to get a grip on. I need to go for a walk.”
“You better take a water bottle. And Be Careful!” I could see the fear in her eyes, Kira was saying, it’s hot, we don’t need another tragedy on our hands.

I grabbed a bottle of water and walked. I thought of Al; of all of us at college. I smiled. I laughed. I talked to myself. As I passed fellow walkers on the Middlebury Greenway, I realized I was talking out loud. I was aware that people were probably thinking I was weird, I didn’t care. The overwhelming refrain during my walk was, What the ----? I kept thinking of Al, of one of my friends, my peers dying. “What the ----?”

He was a funny guy. Al always made you feel like you were special; like you and he were in on an inside joke but not in a mean way. I pictured us at an off-campus party, he and I against the wall, beers in hand, and Al whispering something goofy in my ear and the two of us laughing. I thought of how this one, this death, was different. Most of the time it’s older people who die. Something as shocking as 9/11 was an anomaly. That’s how we digested it. But college buddies, guys we played intramural football with weren’t supposed to have heart attacks.

I knew that my response was cliché, I thought of: When was the last time I saw him? Has it been that long?I just played golf with him last year…a foursome of me, Murph, O’Connell and Al played a golf course in Dutchess County, NY. We had a riot, busting on each other, not missing a beat, as if we were in college 6 months ago and not 25 years. How glad am I that we made that effort, now!

I always called Al on the last day of school. Al had a job that enabled him to take a weekday off; he managed the pro shop at a local golf course. This was part of our schtick. As a teacher, I always called Al to “announce” the beginning of summer. I am so glad that I did that because that was the last time Al and I spoke.
“Ring the bell Duarte, school’s out!”
“Hey SpinnER!”
The ER, always sounded funny, most of my life was spent in Brooklyn and the Spinner was usually, Spinnah. Al grew up in Westchester County where they pronounce their r’s.

I thought again of Jack Doyle, in Nantucket. I knew part of Jack’s Big Al movie: him and Al living together in college, years of playing baseball for the Panas baseball team, Al saying, “I didn’t rub. I didn’t rub.” This was supposed to be a sign of toughness if you got drilled by the pitcher but didn’t rub the spot and just trotted quickly down to first base.

I thought of other Al memories. Memories that I knew I wanted to write down so that I wouldn’t forget them. Memories that I was storing up so I had some stories for the upcoming wake. A wake? For one of our buddies? What the…?

Al Stories:

On NFL draft day Al would set himself up in his favorite chair (You had to see the furniture in our off-campus house, years, if not decades of food stains) with a two liter Pepsi by his side, a bag of chips and the house phone at his feet. He placed the phone there because he was acting as if the New York Jets might actually be calling. He acted all earnest which made it legitimately funny. Over the years, every year on draft day I would call Al. I would inform him that he was chosen in the 6th round. Al would play along. He’d hold the receiver away and act like he was yelling to his family, “I got drafted by the Jets!”

My senior year, living on 75 Lebrun Road in Buffalo, the five of us in the house would rush home to watch reruns of “Leave it to Beaver.” Those were some of the funniest times. Usually those were the things Al would say to me at a party, “I might be a rat Wally but I’m a rat with 9 dollars.” That’s all Al would have to say and I would burst out laughing.

Al was quietly clever. Early, super-senior year, my girlfriend was coming to visit. Al was great with girlfriends. Every girl I ever dated that met Al, loved him. I am sure Jack, Murph, Weizner and O’Connell would say the same. He had that big Teddy Bear thing going. So, Susan O’Neill is coming to Buffalo for a weekend visit. She was a senior at The University of Michigan while we were at SUNY Buffalo. So after a month and a half of phone calls, O’Neill was on her way. At that point she knew the guys in the house from chatting with them on the phone, particularly Al. Friday night, she says hello to the guys, drops her bags in my room and we go out to dinner. After dinner we go back to Lebrun Road to get ready to go out. Sue and I walk in and we’re hanging out in the living room enjoying some Bud cans before we head to PJ Bottoms on Main Street in Buffalo. O’Neill goes up to my room to “freshen up.”

On the walk to the bar, Al, Jack, Murph and O’Connell are ahead of us. And O’Neill is noticeably quiet. I keep asking if she’s okay. Eventually she stops in the middle of the sidewalk and tearfully tells me, “I want to go home.”
“What?”
“Take me home. I want to go home. I want to go back to Michigan.”
At this point she’s on the verge of tears and I am trying to put out the fire.
“What? What did I do? Do you not feel comfortable? Is it the guys?”
“Who is Lisa?”
“I don’t know any Lisa, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t lie! I read the letter from Lisa. Who is she?”
“There’s no Lisa I swear.”
“I read the letter!”

At that point my housemates come back to diffuse the situation. Al tells Sue that it was a fake letter. They wrote it. They placed it “just so” so she would find it. There’s no Lisa. You had to see the relief on O’Neill’s face and mine as well I am sure. Then we went back to get the letter. Was it a riot. All about what a great lover I was. Which should have been O’Neill’s clue that it was fake. That was Al, he was the mastermind behind the whole thing. I can picture him snickering as he and the guys crafted the letter. It was so over the top, Luscious Lisa, he figured Sue would know it was fake.

As I walk I’m Picturing Al, always a big guy but great hands and very athletic. Competitive but not psychotic about it. Avid sports fan, knows so much about a ton of teams but particularly the Yankees, Jets and Notre Dame football.

My task here is to capture the essence of a friend. And maybe to remind all of us to appreciate our friends while they are around. Because, you never know. Of course it's a textbook case of “you had to be there.” The truth is if you never met Al Duarte, I can’t help you. I can give you a ton of background information, use all of the sensory detail I can think of. I can set the scene with some timely references to pop culture like “Take on Me” videos on MTV. I know I am doomed to fail. The real Al Duarte was an inside joke. An easy to talk to, Teddy Bear of a guy, who made all of his friends feel special.

Now we are all left to contemplate Al. And to confront our own mortality. To live life without Al. It’s funny now that he’s gone, we’re all thinking of him more often. All of my college buddies, independently, have said exactly the same thing, “You know, I couldn’t tell you how often I thought of Al over the past few years but it seems like every day now I see something that reminds me of him.” I know, the things that prompt these memories: songs on the radio, an obscure sports fact, a Leave it to Beaver clip, a quick quip to a colleague that makes you smile. “I didn’t rub.”

I know Al would get a kick out of that.

Sleepy Time

2010-07-21T10:06:00.000-07:00

(This is known as "pulling a Miggie")

In early May I got an evite to Ray Lynch’s bachelor party. Ray is an old college buddy, and at 47, was getting married for the first time. The party was at Connelly’s, an Irish pub, a stone’s throw from St. Patrick’s Cathedral in midtown. My first call was to Billy Murphy to secure lodging. Murph lives on the Upper West Side, he’s also an old college buddy and he has a spare bedroom. I invite Murph to join me, as he and Ray are also buddies and then I confirm that I can crash in his spare bedroom. Visions of a night of uninterrupted sleep dance in my head…

The party was the Saturday night of the Preakness. Early that May afternoon, I kissed my wife and kids good-bye; and with my duffel bag on the back seat and Elvis Costello on the audio, I drove to West 76th Street. Pumped could not begin to describe how I felt. I was flying solo, there were no whiny voices from the back seat, I was secure in the knowledge that my next two meals I would not have to cut anyone else’s meat. Depending on how drunk Murph gets. I was looking forward to seeing old friends, having some decent food and maybe a frosty mug of beer or two. I mean, it was a bachelor party. But near the top of the list, I was looking forward to sleeping, for 8, 10, 12 straight hours.

I exit the West Side Highway, and quickly find a spot. Murph buzzes me in and I climb the stairs to his fifth floor walk-up. I had to stop on the fourth floor to set up base camp in preparation for my summit attempt. Murph opens the door, a quick hand shake, a peck on the cheek for his girlfriend Carolyn, a few verbal pleasantries and I go to drop my duffel bag in the guest room. I stop. There’s women’s stuff on the bed: blow dryer, make-up and something with spaghetti straps. Like a kid who just had his birthday candles blown out for him, I turn to Murph for clearance. “Oh yeh Spin-man, I forgot to tell you, Sara is still crashing here. You can crash on the couch.” I smile, the politician’s smile. Inside I am throwing a temper tantrum my six year old would be proud of, “But you SAID! That’s MY room! You PROMISED!” As I walk towards the sectional couch, I look longingly at the queen-sized bed, my fingers gripping the door knob, Murph and Carolyn are pulling me by the legs….NOOOOOOOOO!

My days of sleeping on the couch ended when Paula Abdul had her last number one hit. I drop my duffel bag at the foot of the sectional sofa. It’s not the first time I crashed on Murph’s couch so I know what it entails. My thoughts are reeling…How do I get out of this? I was SO looking forward to a night of uninterrupted sleep, the kind of sleep I have not gotten since we started having kids. Should I get a hotel room? Will Murph be insulted? How could he do this to me? The Bastard. Doesn’t he know how important this is? He doesn’t have kids, he can sleep all he wants. Should I crash at my mother’s house in Brooklyn? Do I want to drive after a Lynch party? Probably not. . And, his couch is free.

When did I become such a wuss? Don’t answer that. There was a day when a crumb-encrusted couch in Belmar, NJ would work for an entire summer weekend. Like most of you, not so long ago my mantra could have been Warren Zevon’s “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.” Over the years, things changed. What the hell happened to the Jimmy Spinner I used to know? Murph and I go for a bike ride along the Hudson River and I am shooting hate daggers into his back as we ride….and I think about sleep, and how my opinion of it has changed over the years. I think of my first visit back to college…

After graduating from SUNY Buffalo, my buddy Dave Gordon and I use the Bills-Jet game as an excuse to visit the campus. Big Al Duarte picks us up at the airport in his sky blue Granada. Al drives us to an off campus house, a house similar to one we had shared less than a year before. We walk in, get a raucous hello from the housemates, most of whom I know, and grab a can of Bud as it flies through the air. Dave and I drop our bags and begin to party. As the night moves, Gordo and I, independent of each other, are doing reconnaissance on the lodging. I am peering in bedrooms and looking at the living room furniture, which looks like it might be the couch I slept on in that shore house in Belmar. Grabbing another beer out of the fridge I see pats of butter on the door, some take-out tins and a single onion in the produce drawer that might have been there when these guys moved in. Was our house this bad? How did we live like this? This is disgusting. After using the facilities I bump into Gordo in the foyer on his way to the latrine. We exchange a look. He glances both ways and says, “What do you think?” Whispering, so as not to insult our college student hosts, “There’s no way I’m staying here.” Gordo emits a massive sigh. “Oh thank God. I was worried there for a minute. What should we do?” “Don’t worry Gordo, I’ll think of something.” We party for a little while longer and eventually I throw Gordo under the bus. I pull Murph and Big Al aside and I say, “You know guys, I’d love to stay with you. Dave, he’s a little soft. You know, he’s been married for a few years, he’s got a nice house, he’s used to his creature comforts. Thanks for the offer but Gordo wants to get a room at the Marriot. I can’t in good conscience, let him stay there alone.”

So it looks like it started once I got my BA. Over the years I have become more enamored with sleep. For the first couple of decades of life I didn’t need much sleep. Adrenaline seemed to work just fine. Even today, if I get six solid hours, I’m good. The problem is the solid part. I haven’t had r.e.m. sleep since the Clinton administration. You have to understand, not only do I have three boys, age 11, 9 and 6. My wife is also auditioning for Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Right now we have two dogs and one cat. And that’s only because I have steadfastly held to THAT line in the sand. Over the past 10 years I have said NO to countless: dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, gerbils, chickens, goats, (I swear) ferrets, salamanders…If it were up to my wife, we’d have our own freaking petting zoo. You can figure out what these pets do for our sleep.

On any given night now: the cat will walk ON me, or he’ll snuggle up in some crevice next to me. There’s a word that I have added to my vocabulary, snuggle. If the cat doesn’t purr or claw me awake, the pooches will become ninja-like watch-dogs. Or worse, they will “talk” in their sleep, chasing an imaginary squirrel, woof woof woof, while there legs are scraping on the hard wood floors.

If by chance I am sleeping soundly, maybe our fire alarm will go off. It’s one of those systems like you have in schools or town building. Every unit is connected to the system and it talks to you while it’s blaring some ear piercing horn in your ear. I would imagine someone might die of a heart attack before the fire, if there ever is one, actually gets to them.

If miraculously, none of those things happen, the phone will ring…a friend who is three sheets to the wind will call me from a bar in some ski town. I pick up the phone, bleary-eyed at 2 in the morning, praying it’s not bad news only to hear, “SPINNER! WE’RE IN VAIL, COLORADO! WE WERE JUST TELLING THE STOry…” Click. Finally, I probably don’t have to mention all of the interruptions to sleep 3 boys bring: bad dreams, wet bed, upset tummy, can’t sleep. To make matters worse, my wife is hanging on to Charlie, "the baby" so he's in our bed twice a night. And guess who has to move him back to his bed? The boys are into Greek mythology now and I heard Charlie saying something about a guy who killed his father....So those are just the interruptions in our house.

Outside the house…At five in the morning the garbage man comes. At 7, on most Saturdays some pea-brain in the neighborhood who has no kids, has to get a jump on the yard work. We have a wealthy neighbor, an heiress, the kind that has streets named after her family in our town. This woman has more money than Bill Gates and she uses it to hire all manner of men. I imagine that she peruses the section of the Yellow Pages for “guys with really freaking loud equipment.” Over the past 4 years she has had landscapers with backhoes, masons with jack-hammers, chimney fixer-uppers with…you find it in the yellow pages, she’ll put the poor bastard and his sleep deprivation machine to work.

My love of sleep has evolved slowly, I guess you might say it has sleepily progressed. Coinciding with marriage, I have become more tame. And that’s not a bad thing, well not too bad. I have started to take naps. Yeh, there’s the après dinner, dozing off during Jeopardy nap, which I LOVE. We call that “pulling a Miggie” after my friend Mark Migliaccio (in the photo at the beginning) who gets a lot of zzz’s on his couch. But I’m talking about REAL naps. The kind my wife takes…I am talking, middle of the day, kids are out of the house, close the blinds, forget about riding the bike or doing the yard work…napping. And it’s great! It’s energizing. I am a little groggy when I first wake up from one of these naps. And initially, I wouldn’t admit that I take them. Someone would call at 3:15 in the afternoon, “Spinner, did I wake you?” “Oh, no, I just rode 15 miles on my bike, and I was just about to go chop down this big tree or do something really manly….”

If you are going to become a sleep maven, you have to know the terminology. Starting with snuggling, spooning….Now I know about stuff like thread count on sheets. Whenever I see advertisements for new mattresses (The Dux bed, the Sleep Number bed) my ears perk up. Christ, I spent more time researching our mattress purchase than I spent on our tv/stereo purchase. Well, all of this writing has made me sleepy, I think I need a nap.

Token Memories

2010-07-02T16:10:00.000-07:00

Lying in bed here in Middlebury, CT my mind begins wandering. It’s early summer, bedroom windows are open. I smile at the concert of crickets outside. I think of the contrast, the sounds my boys hear while falling asleep, and the sounds I heard. Open windows on Brooklyn’s East 4th Street meant we dozed off to: the occasional car lolling down the street, far off sirens and the most distinguishing sound, the subway. The F train, which traveled down McDonald Avenue, some four blocks away, changed from an elevated train to a subway on its way into Manhattan. My boyhood friends would tell you that the rhythmic, slowly decreasing, clankity-clank of the subway was the defining sound of our summer evenings.

For New Yorkers, the subway is always just underneath, literally and figuratively. Growing up in the 70’s it was part of the fabric of our lives. After falling asleep to our urban lullaby we could keep time on a summer morning by the predictable faces, the waves of professionals, Wall Street traders and secretaries for Ad agencies flowing toward Manhattan.

At school and on the street, we heard stories of the subway; urban legends of rats the size of cats, or tales of the power of the 660 volts of electricity flowing through the lethal 3rd rail. Scariest were the rumors of roving, knife-wielding gangs wreaking havoc on unsuspecting innocents like my friends and I. This was New York in the 70’s, the New York of graffiti, and squeegee men, the New York of Abe Beame, well before Rudy Guiliani cleaned it up. New York and the subway in particular was a scary place.
Thanksgiving 1972, and Mr. Tracey is taking his son John and I to the Macy’s Parade. Two nine year olds, jumping out of our skin, going to see Snoopy floats and Santa Claus. The fly in the ointment is, we have to take the subway to get there. Wide-eyed, we stay close to John’s dad as we buy our tokens and head down the stairs of the Church Ave station. On the platform, giggling nervously, John and I scan the tracks for the legendary rats; all we see are scraps of newspaper and some stray soda cans. “Which one is the third rail dad?” “You see the rail against the wall? With the plank of wood over it? That’s the third rail.” Disappointing, not exactly what I pictured.

The train arrives and we take our seats. The two of us read the advertisements for Broadway plays and dermatologists, we swing on the poles, do chin ups on the hand holds. John’s dad takes us to the front window so we can watch the tunnel as the train’s headlights light the way. We spend most of our time looking out the window. At each new station, we watch passengers getting on and off, keeping a wary eye open for the much feared gangs. Nothing. Warming to the trip, we hit Carroll Street, Jay Street, Delancey Street…arriving eventually at 34th Street. I can only speak for myself but if John was anything like me he had a sense of relief. We had made it! We had run the gauntlet of NYC’s big bad subway. For now.

After the parade, we make our way back downstairs to the Herald Square platform. Once again our minds begin to wander. Maybe on the way home we’ll get mugged? Maybe some bum, in the 70’s we called them bums, will push us onto the tracks as the train is arriving? Maybe we’ll slip and hit the third rail? Or maybe one of those gangs will catch up to us? After standing in the cold, drinking hot chocolate, we both have to visit the bathroom. Panic! If the subway is scary, the subway bathroom has got to be even scarier. Tweety says, “Dad, I have to use the bathroom.” Scanning the area, Mr. Tracey takes us back towards the token booth. The three of us walk right up to the door and John’s dad stops. Is he crazy? He’s going to let us use the bathroom ourselves? Hesitating, we look at each other and back at Mr. Tracey. We’re too little! I want to scream. He’s oblivious to our plight. Slowly, glancing from side to side, looking for random psychopaths, we make our way into the bathroom. Should we use a stall with a door? Should we go together? Should we use the urinal? I suggest, “Why don’t I use the stall and you stand guard, then I’ll stand guard while you use the stall?” That’s our plan. We finish our business quickly and head for the exit. We wash our hands and both scan the bathroom, one of us notices a flesh colored mass, something that used to be round but is now squished in the fetid ooze around the urinal. Tweety points, “Do you think?” “I don’t know. Looks like one!” Ahhhhhhhhh! We run out of the bathroom screaming in Mr. Tracy’s face, “Daaaad, there’s a ball, someone got his ball cut off and it’s squished on the floor in there. Let’s get out of here!” I am sure Mr. Tracy got a lot of mileage out of that story at Hurley’s bar…My son and his friend think they found a removed testicle...

@@@@@@@@

Around the middle of 8th grade, a group of boys from our grammar school, Immaculate Heart of Mary, were chosen to take the entrance exam for Regis High School. Regis is a scholarship only, boys only, catholic school, on the upper East Side of Manhattan. Regis boasts an impressive reputation and an equally impressive list of alumni. To be “chosen” to go to Regis, and then to attend for free, would be a big deal for any catholic school boy. The exam was on a Saturday morning, in late fall. Following the city axiom of safety in numbers, Sister Elizabeth organized us to meet on the Church Avenue platform at 7:30. We would be escorted by Bobby Snow, a freshman at Regis, and a graduate of our school. Poor Bob had to spend his Saturday going back to school!

We begin to trickle in from all corners of our neighborhood with our bag lunches. There’s Jimmy Quinlan, Mark Bowen, Timmy Boyle, Matty Milbauer & company. It’s funny how we all look different without our school uniforms. “Anybody see the Ranger game last night?”
“What I saw was Lorraine Baldwin’s skirt yesterday. Man! I can’t believe she didn’t get in trouble for wearing it that short.”
“You know Sister Florence would yell at her if she noticed, probably jealous she doesn’t have legs like that.” “And she doesn’t have boobs like Laura DelSorbo, man I think those things are getting bigger daily. She needs a new school uniform.”

Eventually the conversation turns to our trip on the subway. Timmy Boyle is an old pro as his dad works for the Transit Authority. He regales us with tales of something called the dead man’s lever. “You see, there’s a safety device on the train so that anyone controlling the train has to keep squeezing this lever. Then, if the “driver” of the train dies, the train will come to a stop because he can’t maintain the pressure. You see, dead man’s lever.” Jimmy Quinlan tells us a story of his older brother, Johnny, fending off a gang of kids around Brooklyn Tech with a fire extinguisher. “Broke one guys arm in four places.” Jimmy claims as he makes the swinging motion with his arm. Waiting for just the right moment to reveal my secret, I pipe in, “Nobody’s going to mess with me, cause I brought THIS!” I pull out my garden-variety pocket knife. You know the one, with the faux wooden handle, stamped with Pocono Mountains. “Ooooh.” Impressed, the boys circle closer; then I hear Bobby Snow, our escort, with derision in his voice, “Put that thing away Spinner, as a matter of fact give it to me. The only one’s going to get stabbed with that thing is YOU when someone takes it off you and stabs you with it.”

@@@@@@@

I didn't get in to Regis but I am admitted to John Dewey High School, out towards Coney Island which means a 50 minute train ride on the subway. By senior year I am an experienced straphanger. I know how to position myself to get a seat on a crowded train. My friends and I from our neighborhood, still travel together but now we cause our own mischief. Over the four years of high school, the only roving gangs I witnessed were fellow high schoolers, usually from FDR or one of the other schools our train passed during our commute. Senior year, I got a job at Barnes & Noble right around Union Square in Manhattan. As a senior I could leave school when my classes were done. I rigged my schedule so that I could be in B&N around 1 p.m.. This required that I travel the B train from the next to last stop, through many Brooklyn neighborhoods, across the Manhattan Bridge, through Chinatown and the lower East Side to Union Square. The issue here was the time I was traveling. At that time of day, almost nobody takes the train, nobody.

If I ran out of my English class and ran, I could just catch the B as it pulled in to the station. Winded, I would walk through the cars to get to the front car. Not because I wanted to look out the front window, I was a jaded New Yorker by then. No, I would walk to the front car because when we got to Union Square, the front of the train would be closest to the exit I needed to get to 18th Street and 5th Ave. One day, early spring, I catch the B, and out of breath I begin to weave my way from car to car towards the front. But…. as soon as I enter the second car, I get slammed in the face with the smell of pot. It awakens me, I look up and I am surrounded by three guys, about my age, clearly cutting school and looking for trouble. I try to act cool, nod to one of them and keep walking to the front of the car. I prepare to enter the first car and put some distance between myself and the thugs but the door is stuck, or locked, but either way, I’m screwed. I walk back a few steps, pull out my copy of Stephen King’s Christine, put my foot up on the metal pole in front of me and slouch down. I act like I am reading but I am listening to the potheads talk at the other end of the train. It’s not 20 seconds until I hear one of them say, “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go get me a quarter off a white boy.” Gulp. I thought it odd that he only wanted a quarter but, whatever. So the leader saunters over and stands over me. His compadres quickly join him and sit on either side of me. They are toying with me, having fun. “What’s that your reading?” “Nothing, Stephen King, you know the horror writer?” “No I don’t know.” The guy standing over me takes his hand and slaps my feet off the pole. I sit up. They are about my age, I'm thinking I could fend them off and make a break for it at the next stop. The dude on my left tries to go through the pockets on my denim jacket. I try and keep his hands away. He persists. I look up to my left and standing in the first car, taking in the whole scene, is a cop. A big meaty, cop with his hands on his hips snickering at the whole situation. I can’t believe my luck. I point and say, “Don’t look now but there’s a cop in the next car.” At first they snicker and then the leader does a double-take puts his hands in the air and says, ‘Don’t worry, we’s cool, we’s cool.” At the next stop, the cop moves into our car. Doesn’t say a word to me, slaps the cuffs on one of them and takes all three of them off the train. Whenever someone says, “There’s never a cop around when you need one.” I tell them that story.

After college, I worked on Wall Street and became a regular commuter, one of the guys walking down the street that my friends and I used to notice I suppose. The subway became part of my New York lifeline. As with a lot of things we fear, once I got to know it, the subway was not something I was afraid of but something I needed and appreciated. In my decades of commuting on the subway, I was only accosted twice, the story you just heard and one night I took the train home late at night when I should have taken a cab. But that’s a story for another time…

The Grasshopper

2010-05-07T17:24:00.000-07:00

Preface: This is a piece I wrote right before Nicholas was starting kindergarten (2004) at Middlebury Elementary School. Now he's in fifth grade and about to graduate, I thought I would reprise it. A handful of you may have already read it.

The Grasshopper

It was moving time. We sold our house and bought a new one about three miles away. Our family is growing you know. We called the movers, packed the boxes, swept the floors and left nothing but memories. Actually we took those with us. With the house empty I did one last melancholy walk-through. A melodramatic father on the verge of tears meandering through the only house my boys had ever known. A rapid fire 8mm family movie scrolled across my mind: late night feedings, Winnie the Pooh Halloween costumes, Christmas mornings…

Then I began thinking about the new people who would be moving into our house and changing everything around, just as we had done. I gravitated to the room of my five year old, Nicholas. The room I had painstakingly painted; Nicholas’ favorite color blue and then we stamped little yellow moons and stars all over the walls. This was the signature room of our first house, the room where Nicholas and Brian, my three year old, spent so much of their time.

I stood in the room wondering, Will Nicholas and Brian remember this room? What memories will they have from this house? Will Brian, the three year old, remember anything?

I left what we now call “the Arden Road house” (Waterbury, CT) for the last time. In the car on the way to our new house, about 3 miles away in Middlebury, I realized there was a Spinner family circularity to the move. My parents had moved into a new house on East 4th Street when I was 5 and entering Kindergarten, just like Nicholas. I was worried about how the move would affect my boys, I felt like I was tearing their world apart. So I took some comfort in the fact that I moved when I was five and everything turned out okay. I reminisced about my first house:

• Walks along Brooklyn’s Fort Hamilton Parkway to go food shopping with my mom and four your old sister. A mom, her two kids and a squeaky wheeled shopping cart

• Slices of Boar’s Head baloney passed across the counter to eagerly awaiting hands by Patsy our neighborhood butcher

The timing of the move made me keenly aware in everything we did that Nicholas just might remember this. Many of us have memories from that time in our life, right? Our Saturday morning ritual trip to Ami’s Bagels just might be something Nick remembers for the rest of his life. What he actually will remember I don’t know and I can’t control. I do know that I want his to be pleasant memories, like mine.

In the midst of all of the chaos of moving my wife Kira and I took Nicholas to kindergarten orientation. Pulling into the parking lot at Middlebury Elementary School, I’m thinking, What a quintessential American scene: Mini-Vans and SUV’s, moms, dads, boys and girls partaking in this right of passage...first day at the new school.

For the first time in three years, Nicholas, the oldest of three boys, has his parent’s undivided attention. He revels in holding both of our hands as we amble toward the building. And my mind’s working…I wonder what’s going through his mind? I envision that he must be anxious and I want to ease his fears when I spy this copper weather vane in the shape of a grasshopper atop one of the buildings. “Hey Nick look a grasshopper!” I say. Which leads to the futile search and frustration. “Up there. No by that tree.” “But DAAAD I can’t see it!” I have not gotten it through my thick skull that kids can’t follow directions to something as noticeable as a metal grasshopper. Eventually, he saw it.

Walking into the school I have this epiphany, This will be one of Nick’s memories! I was sure of it. Shortly thereafter I sat in the cafeteria, scrunched into one of the seats as the principal drones on about bus schedules and healthy snacks and I build a scenario in my head. I jot down some thoughts on a napkin. That night I write a story in my journal…

In this story, the weather vane grasshopper from that first day comes to mean so much. On Nick’s first real day of kindergarten he’s scared and alone as the big yellow bus pulls into the school loop. As the building looms in the foreground Nick spies the grasshopper, our grasshopper. He remembers that day, just a week before, when he walked hand-in-hand with his mom and dad into the building and he feels better.

In my glance into the future, Nick is a second grader on a raw and rainy November morning sitting in the nurse’s office with the sniffles, waiting for his mom to come pick him up. As he rests his head on the cold window he stares up at the gray sky and picks out our grasshopper. And little second grade Nicholas smiles and feels secure, knowing his parents love him and that his mommy is coming to get him. I know it’s sappy but just stay with me.

Fourth grade arrives and in my forward reverie Nicholas is out on the soccer field during gym. As the action moves to the other end of the field, he daydreams halfheartedly, pawing at a butterfly fluttering by. As he follows the butterfly’s flight up into the sky his eyes catch the grasshopper, our grasshopper. And he thinks, Wow there’s the metal grasshopper from my first day here. I’ve been here at Middlebury Elementary School a long time and what a great time I’ve been having.

Then we are all dressed up for 5th grade graduation. My prepubescent 11 year old is clinging to his childhood as the world around him and biology conspire to rush him toward the scary world of the Middle School. Dun-Dun-Dun. On this sunny June day, six years in the future, Nick is surrounded by his friends, goofing around during the ceremony as the principal drones on about hope for the future and hard work… Nick begins to reminisce about his time at MES, as he leans back in his metal folding chair his eyes catch the grasshopper. He thinks about what a long time ago it was that he first saw it on that August day many years ago.

Finally, my story coming to an end, we are heading to the parking lot surrounded by parents and students celebrating. Nick is between his parents once again, not holding hands this time, as that wouldn’t be cool. As we pass the now mythical grasshopper Nick glances at me for a second, gives me a knowing look before he turns to his youngest brother, Charley, who is starting his MES career and says, “Hey Charlie you see that grasshopper up there. That’s a very special grasshopper.”

I read this fictitious story from my journal to my wife and Nicholas the night before his first day of Kindergarten. Kira and I were blubbering, sniffling idiots as I read it. We looked at each other and then at Nick when I finished, eager to see his reaction. He stared at me for a second, tilted his head and said, “Daddy. What grasshopper?”

By the time we stopped laughing I thought, I don’t know what my son’s memories will be. Obviously not the same as I envision but I am keenly aware that these memories are forming now and I only hope they can be as good as I imagined.

Post Script: Now Nick is graduating, I know he enjoyed his time at MES. Special thanks to all the Middlebury Elementary School staff for helping mold our life long learners.

Currency Exchange

2010-03-28T14:25:00.000-07:00

I recently received a forwarded email from a friend. One of those, “If you are upset, pass it on” kind of things. This one had to do with Americans being upset with the fact that “In God We Trust” might not be included on the new dollar coins. It turned out to be a hoax like many of these things. Of course this email resulted in a series of emails back and forth among the addressees on the list. I thought I might add my two cents, from what I have gleaned in my years of reading about the founding of our nation.

As most of us know, our early colonies were settled for a variety of reasons. Early efforts to establish a foothold in the new world were to make money for the home country or the company that was financing the colony. And of course, many colonies were founded as religious havens for colonists who fled Europe to come to America. People like the Pilgrims were trying to set up a place where they could worship freely. Somewhere between 1607 (the founding of Jamestown) and 1776 (the signing of our Declaration of Independence) the melting pot that is our nation began to take on its present form.

Over this span of 169 years, people of many ethnicities, religious backgrounds and cultures settled all throughout the 13 colonies. Admittedly, many of the early colonists were Christians and devout at that. It would be hard not to admit that many of our Founding Fathers were Christians and that their Christianity affected their philosophies but here is where the genius of the Founding Fathers emerged. The Framers of our nation were able to be objective, to see past their own world views and realize that, in America there had to be room for anyone’s world view, especially where religion is concerned. We can see this in the First Amendment, arguably the most important amendment.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

We can see how important the Freedom of Religion is as the Framers listed it first. If the founders are saying that Congress shall make no law establishing a religion, doesn’t it hold true that even if their own Christianity was paramount to them, they had the foresight to realize that America was a polyglot nation and that there was room here for followers of all of the various sects of Christianity as well as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism etc…and even people who don’t believe in a god. That is why it is really not necessary to have “In God We Trust” on our money. Having that printed on our currency implies certain beliefs and as the founders understood, maybe all Americans don’t share those beliefs.

In 1801, a group of Baptist ministers in Danbury, CT wrote a letter to the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. They congratulated the new president and then they had a favor to ask. The Baptists were a minority group and they were nervous. The Baptists could see how powerful the firmly established religions were and the Baptists were being persecuted and made to feel unwelcome. They asked Jefferson, “Our constitution of government is not specific with regard to a guarantee of religious freedom that would protect the Baptists. Might the president offer some thoughts on that, like the radiant beams of the sun, and shed some light on the intent of the framers.”

In his reply Jefferson said it was not the place of the president to involve himself in religion and he expressed his belief that the First Amendment’s clauses-that the government must not establish a state religion (the establishment clause) but also that it must ensure the free exercise of religion (what became known as the free-exercise clause)-meant, as far as Jefferson was concerned, that there was, "a wall of separation between Church and State.”

You can decide what the scribe of the Declaration of Independence meant for yourself. Isn’t it obvious that he is offering the Baptist minority of Danbury, CT the protection of our First Amendment? And isn’t he really offering it to every American, including those who don’t believe in god? It seems obvious to me that something like “In God We Trust” on our currency would break this theoretical wall of separation that Jefferson wrote about. That’s just my two cents on the issue.

The Birds & the Bees and the Fairies

2010-03-07T13:39:00.000-08:00

Well the puberty talk popped its little head up again. You know that’s a little funny.

On a recent Saturday morning I am laying in bed reading. Kira, my wife, walks in with my oldest son Nicholas in tow. “Nick needs a little help with something. Go ahead Nick, ask your father, it’s okay.” I have an inkling what it’s about, Kira has been trying to get me to talk to Nick about the birds and the bees. Nick looks out the window, he shuffles his feet, eventually, he looks at me. “I don’t know. Dad will make fun of me.” I assure him, “Nicholas. If this is a sensitive topic, I will treat you with respect. You can ask me anything. I promise I won’t joke around.” Nick concentrates on his slippers. I still don’t know what the topic is, so I prompt my wife, as she sits on the side of the bed. “What does this concern? Is it something that happened at school?” “No, Nicholas has some questions about puberty, about how his body is going to change.” After some coaxing, Nick asks his question. “Dad, where does pubic hair come from?” How to answer this? We’ll come back to this later..

Usually my boys will ask these questions at the most inopportune time, causing me to spit my pea soup out in front of the waitress. So far, our efforts in the Spinner household to teach our boys about puberty and sex have been a series of feints, deflections and awkward non-sequiturs. Sitting in the living room I’ll hear Kira say, “Go ask your father, that’s his department.” My pat response has been, “Your mother is a nurse, she knows about stuff like that.” Usually, if I’m pinned down, I make jokes.

The boys are just as uncomfortable, I suppose the parents are supposed to be the mature ones right? I call the conversations Nick and I have had, The “You Know” Tennis Match. We’ll be watching “2 ½ Men” and Charlie Sheen will make a joke about sleeping with women and Nicholas will laugh. I’ll pause the TV and ask, trying to figure out how much he knows.

“Nick, why did you laugh? Why is that funny?”
“Oh, you know Dad.”
“Nick I know why it’s funny but why do you think that’s funny?”
“Oh, you know. He’s talking about sex and stuff.”
“What does that mean Nick? Sex?”
“Dad, you know.”
“I’m not sure what you know is the point. And I want to be there for you if you have any questions about this stuff. So what does it mean? Sex?”
“Daaaaad, You know.”
“Just talk to me Nick.”
“You know, hugging and kissing and stuff.”
“Yes I do know. But it’s the and stuff I want to know if you know.”
“Yes DAD I know. Can we leave it alone?”
“Sure we can. But know that you can always ask me anything.”

Truth is, I am as relieved as Nick when these conversations end. I want to be the understanding father who my kids can come to and talk about anything. There’s also a part of me that doesn’t want to be that father. My father and I never talked about that stuff. Shouldn’t it be a little uncomfortable to talk to your dad about boners and pubic hair? Parenting is interesting because we want to take all of the good things our parents did with us and we want to tweak the things that maybe we see could have been improved upon. I grew up in a Catholic neighborhood in the 70’s, my father and I never talked about that stuff. And I think I turned out okay? I’m just not sure where I stand on this sex talk thing. I’m sure I’m probably dropping the ball. I act like I am there for my boys, I say all the right things, but at this point, in terms of the bird and the bees talk, I’ve been pretty slippery.

I avoid it because my friends and I learned it on the streets. Shouldn’t Nick learn about puberty like I did? Johnny Palladino, who started shaving for his Confirmation, pulled me and my buddy Tweety into the bathroom of my boyhood home. “Pssst, check this out!” Johnny Boy pulls his skivvies down revealing his adolescent starter kit. Now isn’t that better than some brochure from the school counselor? Or worse, something to be learned from his father?

I remember exactly where I was when I learned what the “F” word really meant. We were in 5th grade and my friends and I were on our walk to school. A few doors down from my house, we stopped in front of Mrs. Brody’s house. The Brody’s had this really cool climbing tree that the branches hung over the sidewalk. We used to hide in the tree at night and drop rubber bats, tied on fishing line, down on unsuspecting pedestrians. And it was under this tree that, with the help of my friends, I connected the dots on the sex act. My buddy Tweety was there again, explaining the science of it he says, “I’m telling you Spinner, look at how they are shaped! They go together, like this.” The evidence was overwhelming; I knew he was right. Then I had to gather myself for the walk to school. What a scene, me in my Catholic schoolboy uniform, thinking about my mom and dad doing it. Ugh! At least how many times? And my teachers! Ewww! Do I want to deprive Nick of these memories?

Of course you want your kids to have a healthy respect for the opposite sex and you want them to protect themselves etc…I’ve been taking an impromptu poll as I have been writing this piece and my friend’s stories are all similar to mine. Their responses, eerily the same. We recently visited an old Wall Street crony of mine, Steve Boyle. In discussing this topic over a few beers Steve said he had recently embarrassed his 7th grade daughter with a discussion of first base, second base. It sounded a lot like mine and Nick's verbal tennis game. I asked Steve how he learned of the birds and the bees growing up in Verona, NJ... “My father and I would never talk about that stuff. He didn’t help me with that at all.” And Steve's been happily married for longer than I have.

I know the old method is not foolproof. We all made some mistakes along the way. I know I bumbled and fumbled my way through puberty but didn’t we all? I remember in 8th grade, the scuttlebutt was that Kevin J and Debbie V were “doing it.” Whispering in the hallway between classes someone told me that “Kevin had a condom in school!” I wondered, sitting there in my next class, if Kevin had to wear the condom all day long. And if so, would that be uncomfortable. So, maybe I could have used some help. Not sure how much help though. And should it have come from my dad?

My worry today is how much information is too much? Nick still believes in Santa Clause, do I want to take him to a birthing unit? Is it my responsibility to connect the dots for him? Nick believes babies come from hugging and kissing. Should I leave it at that for now? Do I want him to associate ME with this crashing of his innocence party? My fear is that I am going to give him a description of the actual act and of placentas and fluids and C-sections and he’s always going to connect that to me. I can’t have that. It’s too much pressure! His images of this should be more like mine. Don’t you agree?

When our dogs are humping on the front lawn as the yellow school bus pulls up in the morning, the windows are filled with laughing elementary school children. The dogs are both fixed by the way. In the Spinner house, the euphemism we use is the dogs are “dancing.” Nick says to me recently, “Dad, you know even Lenny the bus driver laughs when our dogs do that on the front lawn. And I know it’s not dancing.” So despite my avoidance and my ham-handed efforts to help him, he is learning something. I’m just not sure what.

We’ve all seen what happens when kids get too much info from their parents. The guys will know this. Weren’t we all lucky enough to date a girl who said, “My Mom and I are best friends. We tell each other everything.” Every guy can tell you, if you hear that while sipping margaritas you are in my friend. Kids and parents should be close, but best friends? Eating Mexican food at Panchito’s in the Village, I had this girl tell me that her mom took her for her diaphragm when she was 15. "Check please!"

I do know, as I am avoiding this talk, that I have to do something. I have sought help. Recently I went to a friend, Lee Hubbard, the Health teacher at my school. Lee teaches classrooms full of 8th graders about hormones and menstrual cycles. She hands out mimeographed pictures of the male and female genitalia, to 8th graders! She is the parent I want to be. Lee is accessible, patient, intelligent and mature; all with 25 giggling, squirming students in her class. Right now, I just want to do it with ONE. So one lunch period recently I stopped by the Health room, “Lee, Nick is asking questions, stuff comes up when we are watching TV. How much should I tell him? And when?” Lee told me this joke…Mom is in the kitchen with little Johnny, explaining to him in detail about sex, about where babies really come from. Johnny stares wide eyed during his mother’s lengthy, graphic lecture. When she is finished she asks, “Do you have any questions Johnny?” To which, Johnny says, “No Mom, that’s all very interesting. I was just asking because Brendan next door said he came from Ireland. I was just wondering where I came from?”

After the joke, Lee gave me some really good advice. She said to fish around to find out what Nick knows and then give him the additional information that you think he will need. This way you won’t give him more than he can handle.

Armed with Lee’s advice, let’s go back to my bedroom. Remember Nick had just asked me, “Dad where does pubic hair come from?” I put my book to the side, I sit up in bed to give this some thought. I am so proud of Nick for feeling comfortable enough to finally talk to me about it. I can feel Kira’s eyes watching me. Eventually I think of the perfect way to explain it. I suppress a smile, “Nick, you know how there’s a tooth fairy? And you put your teeth under your pillow and the tooth fairy comes at night and gives you money for your teeth? There’s also a Pubic Hair Fairy. And when you are asleep, this big hairy guy comes around and sprinkles pubic hair on you while you are sleeping.” Nick and I thought it was hysterical, Kira, not so much.

Caught by the Catcher

2010-02-16T07:55:00.000-08:00

Sometimes we choose the books we read; sometimes the books choose us. We’ve all had serendipitous reader moments when you are reading and thinking, what are the chances I would be reading this book at this very time in my life? Did something align in the cosmos to place this book in my hand at the very time that I am dealing with this situation? Relationship break ups? New child on the way? Family health issues? Moving to a new home? Happy stuff and tough stuff, it doesn’t matter, sometimes we find solace in printed words on bleached white pages. An author’s words, written days, years, decades or centuries ago, provide healing, answers, a chance to feel less alone.

That’s the way it was for me, and many readers apparently, when I read J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. At a time when I was maneuvering from the shallow end of the pool, under the rope, down the slippery slope toward the adult end of the pool, I found Holden Caulfield. Scared and exhilarated at the same time, Holden and I were kindred spirits. I could hear my voice in his.

Sophomore year at John Dewey High School, 1979, I sign up for Generation Gap with Mr. Levy. Mr. Levy was part linebacker, part motivational speaker. He had meaty hands, an adam’s apple the size of a real apple and a booming voice that would wake any snoozing teen. We had multiple deans to handle discipline at Dewey and Levy was one of them; he was scary but smart. He was the kind of guy you don’t want to let down. Early spring in Brooklyn, the air is warm and full of blossoms, hormones are coursing and high schoolers are acting goofy. It’s Friday, our English class has just finished The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (also one of my favs) and Levy goes into the closet and takes out a stack of paperbacks. I recognize the maroon rectangles, stamped with JDHS on the binding from our school hallways. He passes out our next book, The Catcher in the Rye printed in yellow on the cover. A few students groan as Mr. Levy gives us an assignment for the weekend.

No need to have assigned anything; I crack the book on the F train on the way home. I had my homework finished before I reached the Church Ave stop, 50 minutes away. Back home on East 4th, I toss my books on my bed, grab a snack and head outside. I play roller hockey with my buddies for a few hours, and then we knock off for dinner.

After dinner, my sister Julie says to me, “I am staying at Sandra’s tonight if you want to use my room you can.” Julie, 15 months younger than me, is the lone female of the Spinner siblings so she had her own bedroom. My brothers, and I shared a room, three boys, one bedroom. It wasn’t too bad sharing a room but Jeff and Jerry were significantly younger so if I wanted to stay up and read or listen to music, my sis knew her room would be a nice option. I always appreciated that.

After curfew, I came in, watched Fantasy Island with my parents for a bit and then went into Julie’s room. It always took a few minutes to remove the pillows and stuffed animals, my sister loved frogs. After setting up the bed, I tune the stereo to WNEW 102.7, to hear Carol Miller playing the latest rock. And I picked up The Catcher in the Rye. I continued to be intrigued by Holden. He talked like me. He used words like crap, and his sentences ended with and all. Like this, when we find out he's leaving school...“I forgot to tell you about that. They kicked me out. I wasn’t supposed to come back after Christmas vacation on account of I was flunking four subjects and not applying myself and all.” He had opinions and theories about everything. Holden, clinging to his childhood and hurtling to adulthood at the same time: rebellious, content, confused, angry, happy, sad. A lot like someone else I knew.

I loved reading Holden, talking to me as he picks apart the hypocrisy in the advertisement for Pencey Prep, “You probably heard of it. You’ve probably seen the ads, anyway. They advertise in about a thousand magazines, always showing some hot-shot guy on a horse jumping over a fence. Like as if all you ever did at Pencey was play polo all the time. I never even once saw a horse anywhere near the place.” Salinger had me, I had never read anything like it.

This wicked-smart underachiever was figuring out the world. He had some answers and he was confused about a lot of things. He was cocky and immature all at the same time. He categorized people, just like we all were doing. I remember thinking, he’s funny and all but where would Holden fit in with my friends? Would I even hang out with him? I loved when he talked about his suitemate in the early scenes. Salinger is opening up a world of prep schools, rep ties and Park Avenue but it seems eerily similar to my world, boys finding their way. Thirty years later, I don’t even have to return to the book to know that Holden toyed with his suitemate, the ever annoying Ackley. Ackley was 18 and a senior, picking his zits and hovering around the room, never knowing when to leave. Holden was 16 and a sophomore but Caulfield insisted on calling him Ackley Kid, just to needle him! He’s doing it on purpose! How freaking funny is that?

I read the book in one night; the first time that happened, besides Where the Wild Things Are. I don’t know what time I finished…2:30? 3:00? I just know I couldn’t put it down, I read until my eyes were burning. I couldn’t wait to get to school Monday morning to discuss the book.

Class on Monday, surrounded by other sophomores; was my first experience with what felt like literary analysis. In our class discussions with Mr. Levy I was on point; I knew the book, and the characters. I could see the many symbols; like Holden clinging to his childhood, typified in his relationship with Phoebe, his little sister. A whole new reading world opened up, like removing the training wheels on my bike. And Mr. Levy validated my feedback, he was impressed. Years later, when I was in his dean’s office for burning Dolores Sigelakis's picture of her boyfriend (that's a story for another time) he said, “Spinner, what are you doing? You’re a smart guy. You should know better.” He looked me in the eye with a little disappointment and sent me on my way, didn't even punish me!

At the end of the book, I was echoing Holden when he said, “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.” When I was 16, I wanted to call J. D. Salinger and thank him. I wanted to tell him that I was glad that he wrote Catcher and that it helped me through some tough times. I envisioned, in my 16 year old egotism, that I could be the one to pull him out of his self-imposed seclusion. I would take the bus from Port Authority, kind of Holden-like I suppose, and zip up to New Hampshire. I’d just hang around the post office or the General Store until I bumped into old Jerome David Salinger. And I’d look him in the eye and tell him how much his book meant to me and all.

Rest in Peace J.D. Salinger.

Tell me about the books that moved you, the books that spoke to you, the books that changed your life…

One in Eight Million

2010-01-29T16:22:00.000-08:00

Preface: In the early 90’s, I was browsing in a bookstore along the Maine coast. The owner of the store recommended what appeared to be a home-made book. It was 75 pages long, with a plain brown wrapper for a cover. The book was entitled "One in a Million." It was an elegy from a son to a father. Dad was a family man who lived his entire life fishing and farming in this small Maine town. And except for the son writing this book, about a fairly uninspiring life, I would have never heard of the father. I always thought that was pretty cool. As many of my readers know, (cool to think that I have readers) my father, Jimmy Spinner Sr. passed when I was a senior in college. He lived his entire life in Brooklyn, leaving his impact on his family and friends. I know this will feel like hero worship, so I should dispense with the fact that I know that my pops had his demons. I am sure I could do an essay about that too. There were reasons he died at 46. But that’s not what this is about.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was the end of the greatest Christmas break of my life. I am sitting next to my father in our Caprice Classic station wagon as he drives me to the airport to catch a People’s Express flight back to Buffalo. I begin to replay the vacation in my mind. Glancing at Jimmy Spinner Sr. in his ever present flannel shirt, wavy brown hair and sad grey eyes I smile. It all began a few weeks before as we left this very same airport terminal at the end of December, 1981…

I had a late final at the end of my first semester. The dorms were silent and depressing as most people had already gone home. Coming off the plane, in a more innocent time of lax security, I spy my dad in his red and black hunting jacket. I give him a hug, which was always awkward for my dad but I never let that stop me. I picked up the hugging habit at summer camp and to this day I need that closeness. We walked together through the old terminal my dad looking out of place amid the business travelers as he slouched to put on his knit longshoreman’s cap. Sitting in traffic on the BQE, we talk about school, the family and the Jets. Eventually my father says, “I got you a job down the shop. You’ll be going to work with me in the morning.” Most college kids would have bitched about the grind of the semester, about all-nighters and final exams. I didn’t even think about not having a vacation. My response, “Cool.”

I didn’t have to ask what time we would be leaving in the morning. You could set your watch by my father for the years he worked at ExhibitGroupNY. Our morning school routines timed to his coffee cup clanks, the starting of the family car to warm it up…That first morning I decide to take a shower, I know Dad scoffs at that idea, You’re just going to get dirty again he’s thinking. I don’t really have work clothes so I put on my Herman Survivors, a flannel shirt and a pair of Levi's. We’re off. I climb into the back seat and sit on my hands to warm them up. I knew the front seat was reserved for Sammy Yannonne, the father of one of my boyhood friends. Some years before, Sammy had lost his job. My father knew Sammy was handy, so he got him a job as a carpenter. Over the years they became friends; going on fishing trips and out for beers every payday. I loved watching the interplay between them. These were men who called a car or boat “she” as in, “She’s running good lately.” To this day if I do that I sound like a tool. Most of their communication was semi-verbal, a series of grunts and groans, kind of like whales. Morning Jim. Morning Sam.

That morning, like every morning, we weave our way through the Brooklyn streets toward the waterfront, stopping at a deli for a cup of coffee and a corn muffin. Real food, for real men, no foofy café lattes. Looking back now I am sure Sam and my dad were excited to have me tag along. Must have been a nice break to their routine to have this 19 year old kid, full of energy, bouncing off the back seat, taking it all in. As a non-driver, I was duly impressed with the trust they had in each other. We’d get to a stop sign at 36th Street and 6th Avenue and my father would look left and Sammy right. Sammy’d say, “Sgoodthisway.” And my father would go, wouldn’t double-check, he'd just go.

Arriving at the “parking lot,” we bump our way past trucks and loading docks until we park right up against the fence. Getting out of the car I see white caps and the Statue of Liberty. The canyons of Wall Street are visible across the harbor but a continent away from this rough and tumble place. ExhibitGroupNY was in a block-long factory on 44th Street just North of 1st Avenue. Those of you who drove the Gowanus back in the 80’s might recall the “Whale Fuel Oil” advertisement on the smokestack. That was my father’s workplace. A place where the cobblestones are for working and shipping not walking and shopping. It’s freaking cold. We park in the same spot every day, far from the front door. We were supposed to be in by 8 and that’s what time we’d get there. There was a punch clock with punch cards. If we were a few minutes late, someone would have punched us in. The guys looking out for each other. You see, union guys get paid in ¼ hour increments; so at 8:08, you lost the first quarter hour. The guys always assumed my old man and Sammy would be in, I never remember him taking a sick day, well until…again, that's a different story for a another time.

My father was the foreman of the carpenters. The most important part of his job was designing wooden cases to ship exhibits. At ExhibitGroupNY they built exhibits for conventions like the car or boat show. The guys would build the exhibits in the warehouse; shiny-aluminum and plexiglass-temporary structures designed to impress. Exhibits would be built in such a way that you could take them apart in big pieces. These pieces would be put into “my dad’s” wooden crates and shipped to the host city, St. Louis for instance. The goal was to make it easy to put the exhibits together at the convention site.

A few days into the routine, I notice there are only three people in the company who have their own parking spot. I see Tony’s Cadillac parked right in front; seems about right, he’s the big boss. There’s a placard on the wall with Tony’s name on it. To the right, an identical placard reserves a spot for Tony B, foreman of the electricians. Finally, to the right of Tony B’s spot it says Jim Spinner but someone else’s car is parked there. I warehouse this info for the right time. I wait until Sammy’s not in the car and I ask, “That’s pretty cool dad, you have your own parking spot! Out of all the guys in the company, only three guys get their own spot.” I get no response. “And someone else is parking in your spot.We gotta park all the way by the fence. Whose car is it? Why don’t you say something?” My father must have been chuckling, leading me right where he wanted me to go, “That’s not an 8 o’clock spot.” “What do you mean by that Dad? That’s your spot.” “I mean, those spots are for people who get in early, the guys who open the shop at 6:30 when it’s really cold, like Joe Brown, that’s Joe’s spot. Those spots against the fence, those are 8 o’clock spots.”

Throughout the month I kept picking up tid-bits about my dad. As I watched him play poker with his buddies at lunch or saw him in action during the work day, I could see he was an integral part of the Exhibitgroup hierarchy. Already prone to hero worship, he was my father, I am still impressed with what I learned. One day I was working on the loading dock, riding the back of the forklift with Lou and Louis. This father and son team from Sunset Park were in charge of getting the large wooden crates with the exhibits in them, onto and off the trucks. Big Lou hid bottles of rum among the crates around the warehouse, so the two were usually half soused by 11 o’clock. Thursday was payday, and these were the days before direct deposit so one of the girls from the office delivered our paychecks. At the end of my second week, Diane, this cute little Italian girl from Bensonhurst uses my name as she hands me my paycheck, “And for Jim Spinner Junior.” I smile and put the envelope in my pocket. As she walks away, Louis turns to me and says, “Yo, your father is Jim Spinner?” When I say yes, father and son look at each other and the son says, “The fuck you working on the loading dock for?”
“I don’t know, it’s a good job.”
“Bullshit, you should be working with the other carpenters or in the office with the shirts and skirts.”

As I said, Thursday was Payday. Every payday Dad, Sammy and I would go to Ulmer’s, a neighborhood bar. We’d each put up a 20 and sit at the bar and talk. Those were some of the best beers I've ever had. Both Sam and my father were Schaefer drinkers. In 1981, I was a Bud drinker. The entire month Sam, Mary Quinn the bartender, and my father busted my chops, telling me I couldn’t tell the difference. Sammy really loved to rag on me, “Snot-nosed college kid, doesn’t know Budweiser from Schaefer. I bet you you can’t tell the difference. Turn around and let Mary pour you one.” They’d make me turn around and Mary’d pour a few beers. I would have to pick the Budweiser. In the entire month I never got it wrong. In the way of working class dads, I could see my father was proud of that.

I continued to fly under the radar at ExhibitGroup as most people did not know me. I loved to overhear conversations about my father, to find out that my dad was respected, that he was important, especially to Tony, the owner. Now you have to remember, this was the beginning of the go-go 80's. One night dad and I are in the living room at home and I ask him, “You know Louie and Lou say I shouldn’t be working on the loading dock, that you should have gotten me a better job with you, or in the office.” My father thought about it for a second and said, “You’re making good money on the loading dock?” “YEH, really good!” “You know what happens I get you a job in the office? You start to make real money, you won’t want to go back to college. Don’t worry, you graduate, Tony’ll give you a sales job in the office, if you still want it.”

My last week there, my last payday at Ulmer’s, I begin to make the case for my dad to ask for a raise. I cite evidence about how much Tony really needs him, how much the company needs him, how everyone respects him.
“You should ask Tony for a raise.”
“Why do I need a raise?”
“Because it’s like more money.”
“What do I need more money for Butch?”
“You know, more money! It’s a good thing dad!”
With a few beers in him my dad is willing to open up, to get emotional, “Why do I need more money? I have a wife who loves me, a job that I like, the respect of my peers and my children. I have a house and a boat. What do I need more money for. I’ve got peace of mind.”

That whole month's vacation my father was teaching me life lessons. I am most proud of the fact that I went to work willingly, subconcsiously maybe I knew I wouldn't have many more vacations with him. I chose the title in a nod to the fact that my dad was a New Yorker so he was One in 8 Million.

You Say You Want a Resolution

2009-12-30T14:54:00.000-08:00

It’s that time of year again! If I ever felt like Sisyphus, the tragic Greek figure destined to roll the stone up the hill just to have it roll back down, it should be around New Year’s. The truth is, I’m the eternal optimist, I am a Met and Jet fan you know. Every year I turn over a new leaf, or leaves, and every year I think, this is the year some things will change!

Right around this time, we’ll be confronted with our friends who say, “I don’t do resolutions.” Don’t you hate these guys? So confident, so definitive, so self assured. When I hear, “I don’t do resolutions” I think, you bastard, who do you think you are? I contemplate what could make a person say “I don’t do resolutions.” Any of the choices make me hate Joe Noresolution. First, this person is happy with himself just the way he is. Imagine that! How come they aren’t guilt ridden and insecure like the rest of us? What did your parents do to you Joe? Second, Mr. Noresolution doesn’t care or is non-reflective in his personality. Ugh, that might be worse than the first choice. This Joe is more than likely a neanderthal, an obnoxious dolt who is just not smart enough to figure out that he’s a jackass and that he is in desperate need of change. I left Brooklyn to get away from guys like this. (Not necessarily named Joe) The third Joe thinks he’s perfect or close to it. This Joe is also deserving of our contempt and I would advise him to be careful or bone up on his Greek mythology. The gods will smite you for hubris.

There are people out there who “don’t do resolutions” and I am paralyzed by all the stuff I have to work on. I am consumed with thoughts of how can I become a better: father, husband, teacher, friend, son? New Year’s makes me think, this is my chance to wipe the slate clean, to start over. How can we not resolve to do something? Wouldn’t it be like giving up? Inviting complacency? Shouldn’t we all continue to strive to be better? Isn’t that what our country was founded on? This is the land of fresh starts, that’s what it says on the tablet the Statue of Liberty is holding. Bet you didn’t know that. We are the land of Jamestown and Pilgrims, Ellis Island and immigration? No resolutions? How un-American Joe! I always make resolutions, and my list looks eerily similar every year. Occasionally, I keep a resolution, usually my success rate is not so high. And next year, I’ll make a new list of resolves, I should just recycle the list from this year. This is what Jim Sisyphus, I mean Spinner, is working on this year…

Be a more patient father. I vow to stop yelling. Invariably, New Year’s Day rolls around, and my fresh promises are already in danger…if it’s a typical New Year’s Day I might have had a few cocktails the night before; my boys will be annoying each other about some inane topic like, “Yeh Nick, when we were in the car on the way home from the Adirondacks this summer, you said that you liked Derek Jeter.” “No I did not, I’m a Red Sox fan. Why would I say that?” “I don’t know but you did.” “Did not.” “Did too.” “Did not.” At which point I will calmly counsel from the couch, “Be nice to each other. Let’s get along.” As their conversation heats up and repeats itself over and over and over, their volume increases. After calmly telling my boys to “just get along” 17 times…I lose my temper, bolt upstairs, newspaper in hand and scream at my boys, of course I see the irony when I scream, “STOP YELLING! JUST STOP! HE DOESN’T LIKE DEREK JETER! AND WHAT DO YOU CARE WHAT THEY THINK? WHAT IF YOU DID SAY THAT???? WHO CARES? IS IT THAT IMPORTANT?!!!!!!!” January 1st, I return to the couch, red faced, wiping spittle from my lips…Now you see why my success rate is not so high.

Many of us resolve to cut down on our vices, whatever these might be. If you are like my wife and I, you rationalize, you agree to cut down. We decide that it might be impossible to go cold turkey on our palliatives. Our rationale is, if we cut out our vices entirely, life won't be tolerable. Sadly, my wife says, “Sometimes my morning coffee is the best part of my day.” Doesn’t say much for me I know. My boys already recognize what happens if Kira doesn’t have her morning coffee. As soon as that person’s head starts to spin they say, “Dad, Mom needs her coffee.” But this is about my vices. Coffee is not my beverage of choice, I am a tea drinker, my father was a tea drinker, most of the guys I hang out with drink tea. And I am not giving up my tea. I enjoy an ice cold tea once in a while. I do realize it would be healthier if I drank less tea. Every year I resolve to decrease my tea intake, and I have. Once you have kids, you have to drink less tea. I do see the benefits of drinking less tea; more productive the next day, more patient with my kids, healthier, do more writing…but like my wife, I can’t see cutting tea out of my life altogether. Life is a grind sometimes, as my former principal used to say, “Life is too long to be miserable.” A cold tea makes life more fun, it's relaxing. Often times I have a few teas and I laugh a lot with my friends. Don’t tell my wife, but sometimes a cold tea…

One of the many things I respected about my father was I rarely heard him swear. Apparently the swearing gene skips a generation. Regrettably I have a mouth like a drunken sailor. I do have the ability to clean it up though. I have been teaching for 13 years, and have been swear free within the confines of the school building. At least there’s nothing in my file anyway. I am equal parts Irish, Italian, Polish and German. Don’t know about that mix but I need help in this %$#@in’ department. Because I respected the hell out my dad, every year I resolve to clean up my language, to no avail. Recently, I hit rock bottom. My buddy Ian and his oldest son Ryan treated Nick and I to a Jet game for Nick’s 11th birthday. Two dads with their first born sons in the Meadowlands. We had a great day, tailgaiting in the parking lot, whooping it up with other Jet fans, hot chocolate and hot dogs. On this most recent Sunday, the Jets have the Falcons on the ropes, all they need is a few first downs to run out the clock and win the game. With each missed field goal and each Jet mishap, every green-draped fan could feel the victory slipping away. It’s a performance we’ve seen before. It’s third down, late in the 4th quarter and the next play could ice the game. And 40 some odd years of Jet fan frustration erupts. I scream out to the Jets rookie quarterback, from the upper deck mind you, “Come on Sanchez make a *&%in’ play.” Both boys turn to me, mouths agape. Embarrassed doesn’t begin to describe how I felt. Luckily, Nicholas broke the tension with, “Dad, you have to put a quarter in the swear jar.” Every year I resolve to cut down on my swearing. We’ll try again this, um, year.

For years I resolved to become a morning person. Jealously, I noticed over the years that a lot of ultra-successful people, in all walks of life, seem to get up well before the crack of dawn. These type-A people all seem to run six miles, do a kickboxing class, write the next chapter of their novel, then shower and go to work. Why is it that all I can manage to do before every work day is hit the snooze bar three times? I am supposed to be in work at 7:14 and a few times a week that’s enough of a challenge!

Ah, but the resolution list, like our country’s Constitution, is amendable, it’s fluid. Sometimes we have successes. This blog, which I have been doing for one full year (And Ray Lynch said I wouldn't stick with it) was a result of last year’s resolution…pretty cool right? If you have been enjoying it, please keep reading. Maybe you could sign on to become a “Follower?” Or recommend it to some friends? I digress. Sometimes we accept ourselves for who we are. About 4 years ago I was reading a book about various writers and their writing lives. While a lot of writers did seem to get up early, I was relieved to see that there was some variety in these "writerly" routines. I read about writers who read the newspaper or their favorite author first, then write. I read about writers who only write in certain rooms. There were even some writers who do their best work after 10 o’clock at night! That was all I needed to hear. “Become a morning person” disappeared from my resolution list forever. This was step one, after years of fighting it, of accepting who I am. Maybe someday I will get to “I don’t do resolutions?”

Happy New Year! And let’s hear your resolutions.

A Nice Jewish Goy

2009-12-14T16:26:00.000-08:00

One of my former students posted a clip from Southpark on Facebook. It was called, “A Jew on Christmas.” Knowing the show, I figured it would be stupid or crude and moved on. I paused to think about Jason. A recent graduate of Brown, Jay was in the first class I ever taught. I thought again of the South Park clip and realized, Jay’s Jewish. Intrigued, I scrolled back to watch the clip. As expected, it was about a lonely Jewish boy surrounded by all of his Christian friends. There was a series of jokes about dradles and not playing reindeer games. Some of it was funny, some of it made me cringe.

I thought about Jason growing up as the only Jewish kid in his group of friends in Woodbury, CT. I know Jason and his friends, they’re nice kids. I know he had a very happy childhood. I also think there had to be the occasional slip, the “Oh I didn’t mean anything by that Jason” comments. And outside Jason’s group of friends, the comments might not have been so benign. I thought if any of Jason’s gentile friends posted that clip, people might get mad. I thought about this age of political correctness and my own Jewish friends who might post something like that. Dave Gordon and Steve Stemmer came to mind, guys I joke around with all the time about our “differences.” I thought of my other Jewish friends who would never post something like that, who would have been insulted by the clip. Which response is better? Isn’t it hard to judge with humor? The Irish and the Jews have been making fun of ourselves for years. And when we are poking fun at some of our stereotypical behavior, if it’s meant in fun, if it’s not mean-spirited, is it okay?

My mind wandered to relationships I have had over the years. I could think of a lot of my friends, who happened to be Jewish, who seemed to hang out with a lot of Catholic, mostly Irish, guys. I thought of Glen Gruder, Dave Gordon, Eric Friedman and how their experiences were probably similar to Jason’s. Boys enduring the lighthearted ribbing, ignoring the occasional slight and sticking up for yourself when it’s warranted. I pondered the attraction between the Irish and the Jewish people. You could make the case that the Irish and the Jews have always been kindred spirits in their shared history of persecution, having for the longest time been second class citizens. We share an ability to laugh at life, to use our sense of humor as a tool, a weapon, a coping mechanism. Is it this shared sense of humor that brings us together?

Jason made me think of one of my best friends, a real mensch…Around 5th grade, 1974, I was living what can only be called a parochial existence. Our neighborhood was mostly Irish and Italian. I attended Immaculate Heart of Mary, the local Catholic school. Considering I grew up in New York, I didn’t really know a Jewish person until Glen Gruder and his family moved onto East 4th Street. Thus began the education of a gentile in the ways of the sons of Abraham. Glen, 8th grade at the time, hung out with the older kids on our block. He was a curiosity to my friends and I for his newness and his Jewness. Come on that’s funny. We found him intriguing, we taunted him and he gave it right back to us. We’d pull a sneak attack with snowballs and he’d track us down and pummel one of us, usually me. Over the next few years, through the gauntlet of athletics and the verbal sparring of the street we began to learn about each other and respect each other. I often think, on our block, Glen was a Jewish Jackie Robinson.

As our lifelong friendship grew, Glen dispelled some of the myths about the Jewish people and confirmed a few of the stereotypes I suppose. First, he was a great athlete, something we found hard to believe. How can he be that good at football, he’s Jewish? I remember one of our jokes at I.H.M. was, “What’s the shortest book in the library?”Answer: Great Jewish Athletes. Glen was smart, we knew he was in “SP” classes at Ditmas Junior High School. Those classes were reserved for the brightest kids. Glen was hard-working, argumentative and had a boisterous personality. To top it off his father owned his own “candy company.” This confirmed for us New York City kids, the malicious rumor that Jewish people just might control a lot of really important things.

I don’t know how to tiptoe around this one, the elephant in the room. I have to address the scuttlebutt on the streets of Brooklyn and in the hallways of our Catholic school about Jewish people being “careful with money.” Starting with Glen Gruder, I have never found this to be the case. Three years older than me, Glen carried me financially until I was old enough to get a job. While I can say that all of my Jewish friends are very successful in their careers, and I suppose that they manage their money adeptly, I have found my Jewish friends, like my Irish friends, to be very generous. Maybe I’ve just been lucky in my friendships?

As I headed to John Dewey High School, my education about all kinds of people continued. Taking the F train out of our neighborhood, suddenly we weren’t in the majority anymore. At some point the boys from Windsor Terrace met Dave Gordon. Like Jason and Glen, Gordo was the only Jewish guy in our clique. This was my first exposure to class differences. Dave came to Dewey on the bus from Mill Basin, dubbed by most Deweyites as the J.A.P bus. Of course Neil O’Callaghan, one of my older buddies had to tell me what a Jewish American Princess was. In my Enriched Algebra class I was surrounded by Allison Mann, Tina Hoffman and Stacy Rheinhardt. These girls were a lot different from the girls in my neighborhood; starting with the Izod shirts, perfectly straight teeth and Stan Smith sneakers. Dave’s father, like Mr. Gruder, started his own company. The Coffee Holding Company, a family owned business that buys, ships, roasts, packages and sells coffee. I think of his father, Mr. Gordon, driving us all home from a Sweet 16 party around 1979 or so. In the car we had Vin and Dave Tomasi, Andrew O’Callaghan, Jimmy Dario, Dave Gordon and myself. The boys and I were duly impressed with the Gordon family station wagon. Maniacally clicking the power windows and door locks I shout from the back seat, “Wow Gordo, you must be rich!” I think about how far out of the way it was for Dave’s dad to drive us all home.

1986, as a recent college graduate I was having trouble finding a job on Wall Street. The Gordons were instrumental during the search, letting me use the office equipment at Coffee Holding to do my resumes and cover letters. As my search stretched from weeks to months, Mr. Gordon could see I was getting disheartened. So one day Dave gets all serious on me and tells me that his father advised him to offer me a job. I get vechlempt just thinking about that gesture. Sterling Gordon built this company by himself. He knew I didn’t know anything about the coffee business. But Mr. Gordon was willing to take a chance on me. He was willing to bring me into the fold of his family company. I will never forget that as long as I live. The funny thing about that is the reason I didn’t take the job. I thought about it overnight and told David that I appreciated the gesture but that I valued our friendship too much. I was sure we would all work well together but the slightest chance that it wouldn’t work out and alter the friendship was not worth the risk. Dave and I are still friends.

My buddy Steve Stemmer jokes that I am an honorary Jew. When I hear that I can feel his mom, Shelley, pinching my cheeks and calling me bubeleh. I suppose my honorary status really can be traced to…sophomore year in high school. I got a job at a kosher deli just outside of my neighborhood. Simon Althaus hired me to be a bus boy, waiter, delivery boy, porter, stock boy….While I was there I learned a lot about life. I learned words like shmate (rag), landsman (someone from your country) and schmuck. I hate to say this but for the owner of the Cortelyou Deli, that was my nickname. For the two years I worked there Sy called me, “Schmuck.” To my face! If he wanted me to refill the napkins or deliver an order he’d grunt, “Schmuck, put down the shmate, we’ve got a dewivery.” It was a few years before I realized what schmuck really meant; boy was I pissed.

What an interesting place to work. Can’t you see it, an aging Jewish counterman, a black cook from Harlem and a couple of Irish/Italian kids from the neighborhood as the cast for a new sitcom? Sy was a Holocaust survivor. I only knew this because he had a faded number tattooed on his forearm. I knew enough not to ask about the tattoo, and Sy never talked about it. That faded blue number probably explained his penchant for scotch and water. Every night around 7:30 I’d make Sy a scotch and water. Some nights he’d have more than one. And like my Irish/German father, that’s when Sy would get emotional. He’d slur his words and tear up and tell me that he wanted to take me up to the family vacation house in the Catskills. In a nod to my ethnicity he’d say, “Ach, Jeemy, vee gott awl kinds up dere, Irish, Italian, Polish. Jews and Gentiles. Ach, awl dah pretty girls, you have to come spend the weekend wit my family.”

Every day at the deli I was allowed a sandwich, soup and a soda. For the first three months I ate roast beef or corned beef. One afternoon the restaurant is empty, Sy and I are sitting at the back table and he says “Schmuck, why is it that all you eat is roast beef? Why don’t you try sompteeng else? Pastrami? Chopped liver? How 'bout I make you a nice tongue sandwich?” My answer to that was, “Sy, I’m not tasting anything that might taste me back.” Sy thought that was hysterical. He turns to Henry, “Henry, did you hear what the Schmuck said?” What a pair those two were.

It’s funny that Stemmer would dub me an honorary jew. I mean with all of the really close friends I have, who happen to light the menorah; at times in the gentile world I feel like an ambassador. When the jokes start flying in the locker room, “Did you hear the one about the priest, the minister, and the rabbi?” I always feel like an interloper. If the jokes are harmless, I laugh and say nothing. If they are mean spirited, if I can tell the person telling the joke really dislikes the people he is making fun of my response is usually different.

I recall a few years ago we were talking current events with my 8th grade history class and I mentioned the fact that this world leader was Jewish. I distinctly heard a handful of snickers in the room. So I jump in, “Why is that funny? I mention that this guy is Jewish and you laugh?” I get indignant, as I should, I get protective. A discussion ensues, and one of my students, sensing my anger asks, “Why Mr. Spinner are you Jewish?” I hesitate, I don’t know how to answer that. Should it matter? I want to say yes, but that would be lying but lying to make a point. In trying to answer my students I want to say, “I am not Jewish but I have many Jewish friends.” And how lame does that sound?

I feel bad for my students at these times, sequestered in their Connecticut world, snickering about somebody being Jewish. I know that before I met Gruder and Gordo, Sy and Stemmer, Kaplan and Woody that I was the snickerer. And the teacher in me recognizes that I was a product of my seclusion, that through exposure to all kinds of people I have benefited. Well, considering this is Hannukah, and thinking of how my life has been enriched by my Jewish friends, I’d have to say, I couldn’t have asked for a better gift.

A Veteran's Day Salute

2009-11-11T12:13:00.001-08:00

At the Woodbury Middle School, we recently held a day in recognition of our veterans. My colleague, Scott Parkhouse, a veteran himself, arranged the day with the local VFW. A group of veterans, of multiple generations, came to speak to our 8th graders. Our kids were unbelievably respectful as we listened to the personal stories of D-Day survivors, guys who were deployed to the rice-paddies of Vietnam and today’s National Guardsman.

Early in the morning, as we were setting up the presentations in Scott’s empty classroom, our principal came on the loudspeaker to recite the pledge. “I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of America…” To be standing there, in a Connecticut classroom, with my hand on my heart, surrounded by generations of men who had shouldered the burden of freedom for the world is a memory I will never forget.

My mind raced throughout the day as we heard people’s living history while surrounded by the trappings of a history classroom. Men in camouflage, standing in front of posters of the signers of our Declaration of Independence seemed particularly fitting.

I sat in the back while Sergeant Wilfred Cabana regaled our students with stories of Normandy Beach and German 88’s. All eyes were on the gravelly voiced octogenarian, in his full dress uniform, as he talked about the medals and citations he had received. Some stories, a lot of the stories the boys wanted to hear, he would not tell. He seemed to particularly enjoy telling us about the kindness of the people of the French countryside. His memory of an evening when a pair of mud-caked GI's were offered a hot bath in a wine cask by a scared French farmer and his young daughter made the Sergeant emotional every time he told the story.

I have four history sections so I listened to the same stories multiple times, and my mind began to wander. The history buff in me, with these Connecticut vets in front of me also thought of another Connecticut Yankee, Israel Putnam. Putnam, whose statue graces the grounds of our state house, has been credited with the phrase, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.” A grisly veteran of many battles, Putnam knew the inaccurate nature of the American musket. He also knew for the Continentals to repel the Redcoat charges at Bunker Hill, the colonists would have to wait until those bayonets were gleaming, until they could hear the grunts of their adversaries heading up the hill, before firing.

Putnam’s story has always resonated in Connecticut as he literally left his plow in the field and grabbed his musket. According to the web site Connecticut Society for the Sons of the American Revolution, “The intelligence of the recent battles at Lexington and Concord roused the whole country in April of the following year. Putnam was employed in ploughing a field of Indian corn when the news reached him. He was swift to act. Leaving the cattle and plough in the furrow, not stopping to change his clothes, he mounted a fleet horse and was soon well on his way to Cambridge, which he reached at sunrise the next morning, and his gallant steed galloped into Concord later the same day. At the same time that George Washington was appointed commander-in-chief, Putnam was made brigadier-general and given command of the army-center at Cambridge.”

I continued to watch the eager eyes of my students and I thought of how we had recently discussed Nathan Hale, another forerunner to these Connecticut vets. Most of you know the story of Nathan Hale, barely in his twenties when George Washington asked him to spy on the British in New York City. After getting caught and tried for treason, as we were still British Colonies then, Hale was sentenced to be hung. All Connecticut students can recite his famous words, “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.”

A Yale graduate in the 1770’s, Nathan Hale became a teacher in New London, CT. But the cause of Liberty had a strong pull on the young school master. Nathan put down his books and his chalk to fight the greatest military power in the world at that time, the British empire. In a hasty farewell address to his students as he was leaving for Boston, Hale said, “Let us march immediately and never lay down our arms until we obtain our independence.”

Nathan Hale, not only was one of the first to mention our fight for independence, but also was at the vanguard for women’s rights. The Connecticut Society for SAR website also has an excellent biographical sketch of Nathan Hale. The site mentions that Hale went so far as to volunteer to teach the young women of the town on his own time. I bet there were a few cute ones I suppose. “And, in the arrangement of the Union School at New London, it was determined that between the hours of five and seven in the morning, he should teach a class of “twenty young ladies” in the studies which occupied their brothers at a later hour.”

How much has our country changed since 1774, when Nathan Hale was forced to teach these young ladies well before the sun rose? And now today, after years of struggling, we see everyone over the age of 18 has the right to vote. Everyone who would like to, participating in our democracy, and if they choose, serving in the military.

Our military looks a lot different than it did in 1776. President Obama’s words recently at the memorial services for the victims of the massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, seem to resonate. “They are man and woman; white, black and brown; of all faiths and all stations — all Americans, serving together to protect our people, while giving others half a world away the chance to lead a better life.”

Listening to our president tell the stories of all 13 of the victims, it was the story of Amy Krueger that stood out for me. How similar her situation was to Israel Putnam, Nathan Hale or the waves of veterans who have put down plow and pen, hammer and firehose, to take up arms to protect freedoms around the world.

Amy Krueger, who joined the military after 9/11, as many before her had done in the wake of Pearl Harbor. Whose mother, Janet Krueger told this 20 year old from Keil, Wisconsin, “You know you can’t take on Osama Bin Laden all by yourself.” Only to hear her daughter, full of the bravado of the American soldier say, “Watch me.”

Baseball Dreams

2009-10-28T18:20:00.000-07:00

“Hey Dad, wanna have a catch?” I have a Pavlovian response to these words. I can’t say no and I don’t think my boys have realized this yet. Not only do I hear their simple plea but through the decades I hear my own. I think of all the times, and all the ways I accosted my dad. Usually he was just returning from a hard day of banging nails and squaring boards. Physically spent, Jim Spinner Sr. would park the family wagon on East 4th Street and slouch toward the front porch, drained by another work day. I can’t imagine what his thoughts were as he was greeted by me, the Energizer Bunny of children…“Hey Dad, wanna have a catch?” “Not right now Butch, maybe later.”

I am a glass is half full kind of guy but the times my dad said yes, the times that we smacked that leather back and forth are so vivid in my mind I know it’s not as many times as I would have liked. Of course, if I was anything like my boys, maybe I was insatiable? Maybe my timing was off? Too eager, I probably should have waited until he actually got out of the car? Maybe during his after dinner cigarette on the porch would have had better results? What I think now, as a father, is how can you say no? This I am sure is connected to the fatalist in me. My father passed when I was in college and that peppers all the things I do, or don’t do, with my boys.

Now don’t get me wrong he was a great father, he coached my teams, he took me to ball games, he taught me things, about our national pastime. Taught me how to keep score. Taught me how to “bribe the ush” if we bought upper deck seats and we wanted to move down. Taught me that a pitcher will waste a pitch if he’s ahead in the count. Now when I watch the game with my boys I pass on the same knowledge to them. “No way Lester throws Guerrero a strike here. He’s a bad ball hitter, you really gotta waste one here. He’ll throw him a nasty curve low and away and Guerrero’ll whiff.” And when it happens my boys give that wide-eyed, Dad how did you know look. My dad taught me, that’s how I know.

I have an old cassette tape of my dad and I on the phone. It’s a one sided conversation. I was in 407 Fargo Quad, SUNY Buffalo, futzing around with a tape recorder. I was working on a class project when I made my Sunday night call home. For some odd reason, I never turned the tape recorder off; so I captured my end of the conversation…“Hey Padre, what’s up?” Many of you would recognize the conversation because as soon as we run out of things to say there’s a pause and I say, “Mets look good.” It must be 1984 because we are talking about Darling, Gooden and Fernandez as young pitchers. But the rhythm of the conversation is what strikes me. At first listen you might hear a desire for closeness but an unwillingness to delve into anything of substance. Dad and I seem to stay on the surface, with, baseball. But those of you trained in guyspeak would hear something different. The perceptive ear would recognize that’s not surface, that’s us, that’s tribal. I know Woody Allen or Billy Crystal has done this conversation in a movie with subtitles below it but...”Mets look good.” Really means, I miss you Dad, it would be nice to sit on the porch and watch the game with a few Schaefers. “Yeh, if the pitching holds up.” Means, I hear you and it would be really nice to grab a pair of tickets and head over to Shea.

"American Heritage" magazine deals with American history and a few years ago they conducted a poll. “If you could travel back in time to any moment in American history, where would you go?” Number one on the list was to travel with the Lewis Clark expedition. There were a lot of cool answers like Walk on the Moon with Neil Armstrong or On the dunes at Kitty Hawk with the Wright Brothers. The history teacher in me might say Philadelphia for the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. On a more personal level…

It would be my own Field of Dreams, one of the greatest baseball movies of all time by the way. One of the few movies guys will admit makes them cry. As I am traveling back in time, I can hear James Earl Jones’s deep voice as I enter Prospect Park at Park Circle, walking across the park towards the Eastern Parkway side…”The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.” I travel back through the years, past Three Devils Hill, past the band shell, as I travel the trees are changing, people's fashions change, the automobiles are getting bigger, shinier...

When I emerge on the other side of Prospect Park, it’s 1955 and the Dodgers are still in Brooklyn. I walk along Eastern Parkway and head east toward Ebbett’s Field. Closer to the ballpark, I follow the crowd, all in Dodger blue. I smell stale beer and peanuts. Engulfed in the pre-game bustle I am struck when the ballpark emerges organically, like Fenway, from the surrounding neighborhood. Trying to buy a ticket for the game I meet a 17 year old with a James Dean haircut; a wiry kid with blue jeans, a white t-shirt and a pack of smokes rolled in the sleeve. He spies me, “Wanna catch the game?” “You bet I do!” “Follow me.” His movements are familiar to me, the hair, the slouchy gait, the gray eyes. He’s only 17 years old, but I recognize my dad, Jim Spinner Sr. before life beat him down.

We sneak into the game, and root for Dem Bums, Brooklyn’s beloved team. It’s a game for the ages and I know the details from the stories my dad told me…Pee Wee Reese at short, Jackie Robinson at second, Carl Furillo (could throw a strike to home plate with his back against the right field fence) in right, Duke Snider in center, Johnny Podres on the mound. I smile at the Abe Stark sign in right field, “Hit this sign Win a Suit." In the end, the Dodgers beat the hated Yankees. Brooklyn goes crazy. Leaving the ballpark cars are honking, people are hanging out of apartment house windows banging pots and pans, strangers are dancing in the streets, dad and I are caught up in the mayhem. Together we cross Prospect Park. And as we near Bartel Pritchard Square prepared to go to our respective boyhood homes, my Dad turns to me and says, “Hey kid, see you in a couple of years and we’ll have a catch.”

I know it’s a bit hokey but it’s my Field of Dreams and on the opening night of the World Series I thought it would be appropriate. I'm going to have a catch with my boys. Play Ball!

A Time to Reap, a Time for Reunions

2009-10-15T15:11:00.000-07:00

Recent evidence suggests that my friends and I are at the age (46) for reunions. Not sure if it’s a product of age or these new internet social networks like Facebook. Over the past few months I’ve gotten invitations to all manner of reunions. Like many of you, I have a decided ambivalence to these get-togethers. I know that I'd love to see some of the people I have lost touch with over the years. There’s also a part of me that thinks maybe there’s a reason why I’ve lost touch with many of the people I will see. I think I keep in touch with the people I want to keep in touch with. Why do I want to go?

This past weekend, my wife and I headed off to our camp reunion. Kira and I were counselors together at this amazing place, Silver Lake, a YMCA camp in Sussex, County NJ. Our jobs at Silver Lake were formative to both of us, ending with our marriage I suppose. Many of my best friends are people I met at Silver Lake. Saturday morning, I grab my duffel bag and head towards the door and Kira says to me, “That’s what you are wearing to the reunion?” Befuddled I look down at my “outfit” and say, “Yeh, why? Gutlerner (our camp director) said we are going to play basketball.” Kira just shakes her head and heads to the car.

North on Route 206 the conversation is flowing, Who do you think we’ll see? I hope so and so is there….We stop for a bite at the Chester Diner. Walking up the steps to the diner, Kira broaches the subject of my dress again. “Are you sure this is what you want to wear to the camp reunion?” Chuckling I say, “Yeh, I don’t feel like putting on long pants and then having to change when I get there.” To which Kira shakes her head and says, “You’re not normal.” Enjoying the fact that she’s flustered I say, “What? Should I change? What should I wear?” She huffs, “Jim you are going to see people you have not seen in 25 years and you are wearing a pair of stretched out Champion shorts and your “Ride for Rick” give-away t-shirt. That’s not normal.” She walks into the diner. I glance at my reflection in the diner window before walking in. I wish I could say I just didn’t care what people would think. Or maybe it would be better if it was a carefully calculated insouciance, but I can’t take credit for any of these things. Truth is, my outfit was dictated by comfort and convenience.

By comfort I mean comfort in the people we were going to see. My camp friends know me, they know the real me. What am I going to hide behind a new JCrew sweater, a pair of jeans and some shiny cordovan oxfords? I might not be this comfortable with other reunions but a camp reunion is a no-brainer. In Connecticut I am a suburban Dad in a town Kira and I moved to about 6 years ago. And we’ve made some really good friends, mostly people who moved there recently too. At times I can’t shake the feeling, as I stand on the side of a soccer field on any Saturday morning, that I am a caricature. That the people I know only know what I show them. But as a counselor, you live with your coworkers, and the campers, 24 hours a day 7 days a week for two months.

An example might help...I knew at the Silver Lake reunion I would see Craig Calzaretta. My first year as a counselor, (1980) Craig was a camper in my bunk. I was a 17 year old wise-ass from Brooklyn, leading trail rides for our ranch camp. I knew less about horses than most of the campers. Craig was a fairly accomplished 13 year old equestrian, from Wayne, NJ. I can still picture him with his 70’s afro and his aw-shucks manner. He was the best camper I ever had, him and Randy Giles. What he and Randy shared was a zest for life, an engaging sense of humor yet the maturity to be responsible when the need arose. A counselor’s dream.

Starting with my first summer, Craig and I shared many adventures, created many inside jokes. All I have to say to Craig is, “Stupid American fish” and he’ll laugh. I know that even though I’ve only seen Craig a few times in the last 10 years, Craig and I are tighter than many of the guys I see every day. When you share a cabin or a tent with someone for two months straight, during high school and college, a bond develops. At camp we all shared a bathroom that was more like an amphitheater, so there was no privacy. That seems a fitting metaphor for the fact that we had no secrets. Sleeping in a platform tent, talking ourselves to sleep at night, you really get to know the guys you bunk with.

The first day of a new session at camp, you get your bunk together and you head down the dirt road to "flagpole" for a camp orientation. On the way down the camp road we come into contact with other bunks heading down for this all-camp meeting. I can see Craig and I observing our campers getting to know one another as we walk. We smile at the familiarity of the routine. Invariably some wannabe-tough guy from Anytown, NJ announces, “I know Karate.” Every session some kid thinks he has a clean slate, he figures that nobody knows him at camp and decides to create a new persona. Craig and I will smirk. The smart kids in the bunk will be skeptical and a few of the rubes in the bunk might actually buy it. “Really?” And here’s the thing you learn about living at camp, You can’t tell people you know Karate if it isn’t true. Eventually, who you really are shines through.

That’s why, this past Saturday, I didn’t care that I had on a pair of stretched out Champion shorts. Because I know my camp friends, guys like Craig and Steve Swierczek and Mike Parker and Glen Gruder already know me. People like Julie Anzel. In an email exchange in the wake of the reunion, Julie mentioned that she is a single Mom and that at the reunion it felt like she was with family. She mentioned that for her and her son Jackson to be around Silver Lakers was a feeling they don’t get often enough. That’s what I am talking about, comfort. It’s so funny that Julie would say that because I was looking at her photo albums this past Saturday night in the dining hall. Julie was at Silver Lake every summer I was there. And Julie and I always seemed to have a love/hate thing going. We flirted with each other, we teased each other, and we comforted each other. In looking at Julie’s photo album this weekend we came upon photos of Julie as a 5th grader, and she said, “Oh, those aren’t camp photos, you don’t want to see them.” But I did want to see them. To see Julie, someone I feel I really know, as a wee 5th grader was pretty cool. Kind of like family.

Now I really don’t consider myself a “reunion guy.” I prefer to remember everything as it was. It’s nice to have this image of everyone as young and full of promise. Yet I have never gone to a reunion and regretted it. Although Time the Avenger is taking his toll on us all, underneath our graying temples and thickening bodies those twenty-somethings are still there, just below the surface. You could see it as many of us took on familiar roles: standing around the campfire trying valiantly to come up with the next one-liner that will make everyone laugh, Glen Gruder taking charge on the basketball court and telling us what the teams are, the camp stoners disappearing occasionally to alter their state of consciousness. There’s a comfort in this predictability. I smiled when I matched up with Larry Gutlerner, knowing without even thinking about it, after almost three decades, that I have to defend him differently because he’s lefty. For that moment, on that b-ball court, and around the campfire we were 40 something and 20 something at the same time.

As the Silver Lake alumni were leaving the dining hall Sunday morning after our final meal together, I so wanted to turn to Calzaretta and say “Did you know I know Karate?” But the moment passed and I didn’t get a chance to float that one-liner out there. I am sure he would have gotten the joke, he knows me so well.

The Memory Fades

2009-09-10T13:43:00.000-07:00

My FDNY/Ladder 118 t-shirt is fading, it's torn, it's tattered. I hardly wear it any more. You see this shirt was given to me by a true American hero and I can't let it go. I know it's a piece of history, my history, our history. And as it fades, it saddens me. I notice that my receding memories of 9/11 seem to parallel the decline of Pete's t-shirt, and for this I feel guilty.

Pete Vega, Ladder 118, literally gave me this shirt, off his back. A group of us were vacationing on Block Island the summer of 2000. We were getting ready to go to the beach and I walked into Pete and Regan's room. I noticed he had on a long sleeve, navy blue, FDNY shirt complete with the Ladder 118 logo and the fire department's Maltese Cross. Figuring a lot of guys asked Pete for shirts, I never did. I knew firemen didn't make much money and I was sure giving away all those shirts could set you back a bit. Plus back then, it seemed kind of "girlie" to wear a FDNY shirt. Especially if you weren't really on the job. Most of the time it seemed the shirts were worn by wives or girlfriends kind of like an old hockey jersey. But this shirt was impressive, you know long sleeves and all. So without thinking I said, "Man that's a nice shirt Pete." Without blinking, he pulled it over his big head (Pete was known to have a big head) and tossed it across the room to me. "You want it Jimmy, it's yours."

Wearing that shirt before 9/11, if someone came up to me on the beach and said, "Are you a fireman?" I'd lie, I'd say yes. It seemed kind of fun, pulling the wool over some unsuspecting rube's eyes. I'd use the terminology that I had picked up over the years living in an Irish neighborhood. "Sure I'm on the job. 118 truck. Been there since '85, almost got my 20 in." Kira, my wife, would get all flustered, looking back and forth nervously during the conversation. Embarrassed by my fibs. She would clearly break under questioning. After the conversation, as my straight man walked down the beach, I would always hear, "Why do you do that? You're not a firefighter." "No I'm not. But when I wear my Michigan t-shirt I also tell people I went to Michigan. It's just more fun. My life's just not that interesting I guess."

In our post 9/11 world, wearing my shirt in tribute to Pete and his 342 fallen comrades, when someone asks me if I am a fireman I say, "No." As you can imagine, it doesn't feel right to lie; to take credit for all that those men sacrificed. Instead, if the time is right, I use the occasion to say, "No, this shirt was given to me by my friend Pete Vega, Ladder 118. His house is also known as Fire Under the Bridge. Ladder 118/Engine 205 is on Middagh Street, at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge." I tell people to Google "Pete Vega" or Ladder 118 FDNY and they will find a wealth of stories about how brave he and the other guys from 118 truck were on that fateful Tuesday. I add that a number of survivors, in an article in the Daily News, talked about how they were... "Guided through the lobby of The Vista Hotel to safety by a bunch of really tall guys with the number 118 on their helmets." That was Pete and his crew, none of whom made it out alive. I might add how the Daily News showed a picture of 118 truck crossing the bridge as the towers burned. And how the paper featured Regan, his widow, in a series of articles as she shared her grief with the rest of New York and in doing so helped us all get through that national tragedy.

Now, 9/11 is starting to feel like history. I know, we know, that at some point in the distant future, it's going to take it's place alongside Pearl Harbor Day. Eventually, 9/11 will be a sad day that fewer and fewer people really remember. How many of us really give pause on December 7th? In an effort to forestall that or to assuage my own guilt, I thought it might be nice to once again take a minute to remember Pete and some of the other heroes of this sad day from our not so distant past.

http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/2001/10/05/2001-10-05_ladder_118_s_final_run__into.html

http://www.fallenbrothers.com/community/showthread.php?t=755

Yes, we are there yet!

2009-08-27T17:43:00.001-07:00

Standing on the lakeside, the Spinner family is partaking in one of our family traditions. At the close of our annual summer vacation to Mossflower, our family’s camp in the Adirondacks, we walk together to say good-bye to various parts of the camp. “Good-bye boat house. Good-bye lake. Good-bye hot tub.” Kira's father John, and his wife Lucy bought this camp ten years ago. And it has become a special place for our whole family. We started talking to inanimate objects when our boys were little, in an effort to ease their sadness at vacation's end. Of course I feel silly talking to a canoe but I always get a little catch in my throat as I come to the realization that never again will Nick, Brian and Charlie be 10, 8 and 5 respectively. I know, because everyone tells me, that in the blink of an eye, they’ll be 22, 20 and 17.

Driving home, the boys give the running commentary as we pass our landmarks, “There’s the dalmation at the Saranac Lake Fire House. There’s Tail of the Pup! There’s the big beaver!” I always snicker when they say big beaver. Kira backhands me in the ribs and tells me to grow up. Some day the boys will think, “There’s the big beaver” is funny. Eventually they settle in to watch a movie, Kira begins to nap and I begin to the think, about family vacations past…

In the blink of my mind's eye, we are in the Spinner family station wagon. We are finally leaving East 4th Street (my father was a notoriously slow starter) en route to Beach Lake, Penna. Have to use the old abbreviation. Going to "The Country" as we liked to say. It was maybe a three hour ride but boy did it feel like forever. Makes me appreciate how my kids feel driving 6 plus hours to The Adirondacks.

Like most of you, memories of my childhood vacations are seared into my brain. Just like our kid’s will be. I always thought it interesting that there were 51 other weeks, but for all of us, memories from that week are turbo charged. Our landmarks were different going from Brooklyn to PA. (Of course, we were not in seat belts, didn’t have a movie system in the car and hand held Gameboys were something out of The Twilight Zone) But this is more about similarities than differences…My father would take the Battery Tunnel, to the West Side Highway then to the Lincoln Tunnel. Along the way we’d pass the new Twin Towers, the gritty meat packing district while the Hudson River rolls to my left. To this day I take comfort in the fact that Yale Trucking still has the same replica truck up on the second floor of their building. Although it’s weather beaten, it’s a connection to those trips from long ago.

The Spinners were introduced to Twin Willows Cabins, by John Tracy, my best friend at the time. Because of our friendship, our fathers became tight and coached our baseball team together. I can imagine the conversation after practice, Mr. Tracy holding a can of Schaefer, telling my father, “You have to come up, we’ll have a great time, there’s a ton a things for the kids to do.

As soon as we get to our log cabin, Cabin 4 on the far right side, we are greeted by the familiar smell; a combination of moisture and pine needles. We pick our respective bedrooms. After we unpack, we run around the horseshoe of 14 cabins, looking to see “who else is here?” A haven for working class families from Brooklyn and Queens, we see a lot of the same families every year. Always hope to see Danny and Kevin Reilly from Rego Park, Queens. Mr. Reilly and my dad became fishing buddies. Usually we’d see Linda Wagner and her family, she was a little blonde tom-boy and her dad looked like John Wayne. My friends and I would all vie for Linda’s attention.

Like Kira and I today, my parents knew this week was special. Mom and Dad seemed to smile more, they said YES more often. One of my fondest memories,if you can believe it, is food shopping. We'd go to the Giant supermarket in Honesdale and Judy Spinner would finally throw financial caution to the wind. “Mom, can we get Skippy Peanut Butter please?” “Sure.” Name brand items were a luxury. “Mom, how about Wonder Bread?” “Why not?”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Out to dinner at Belly's in Mountain View, NY and the boys ask, “Can we get soda dad?” Kira and I exchange a look and a shrug of the shoulder, “Alright.” Brian, Nick and Charlie, in unison squeal, “YES!” I see them exchanging giddy looks that say, Can you believe our luck? Who are these people we are on vacation with? They wise up, they recognize, it’s Vacation Mom and Vacation Dad. “Can we stop for ice cream? “Oh alright.” “Yaaaaay.”

Back to the Poconos. After helping unpack the groceries we would don our bathing suits and head to the pool. Walking across the grass field that was the center of the horseshoe of cabins, in bare feet! We never did that in Brooklyn! The built in pool was the center of the social scene at Twin Willows Cabins. Like the cabins, the pool was not the greatest, the diving board was home-made, wood covered in some type of vinyl protection, but it was ours. The water was cold and refreshing. John Tracy would usually bring a friend, Jimmy Quinlan, and we would play for hours. Tag around the pool, relay races, diving contests (cannonball, pencil dive, flips) and occasionally someone would get thrown in the pool by a particularly exuberant father. Sometimes we would try to throw Dad in! The concrete housing for the pool's filter was where all the teenagers sunbathed. It was here that the Billard sisters, Lisa and Lynn would place their radio and tune it to WABC, a.m. Today, listening to Sirius 70’s on the satellite radio, songs like "Afternoon Delight" or "Band on the Run" come on and I am transported poolside to Twin Willows Cabins.

Walking back from the pool, asking “Dad can we have a catch?” Vacation Dad always says, “Yes.” Or even better, we would organize a baseball game on the big field with all of the kids and the fathers. I always liked the fact that my dad was pretty good, even if he did overswing and try to cream the ball all the time. This was one of the few times of the year my father would don his sneakers. They were "no-name" sneakers my mother bought him. I used to think, don’t you care enough to buy decent sneakers? You let MOM pick them out for you? You had to see these sneakers; black with little car racing checkered flags on each side of the foot. I think those sneakers might still be in the bottom of my Mom’s closet. The sound of a man running with keys and change in his pocket makes me smile as I see Jimmy Spinner Sr. gamboling around the bases like a graceful janitor. Never knew why he had so many keys, he was a carpenter.

Vacation Mom and Dad did other fun stuff with us too! We’d head down to Cosmos, a combination mini-golf, go kart, batting cages, arcade, ice cream, hamburger joint. What a gold mine for a kid! As we got older, sometimes, we were mischievous. One year, I guess we were around 12, 7th graders I suppose. I teach middle school and I am pretty sure 7th graders send their brains out for maintenance for the year. So Quinland Tweety and I decided to play a practical joke on the guy who ran the go-karts. It was an oval track with tires around the outside and on the inside just on the turns. On the straightaways, there were no tires. So my friends and I decide to ride across the grass infield of the oval. You had to see that carny dude running after us. Looked like a Little Rascals episode. Three go-karts going this way and that and one guy in his Cat Diesel Power hat trying to catch us. Carny guy got the last laugh. Turns out he wasn’t some tobacco-chewing carny guy, he and his brother owned Cosmos. The next summer, 51 weeks later, we buy our tickets and wait on line. Mr. Cosmos waited for us to get to the front of the line then wagged his tobacco stained finger at us and shook his head No. Never did ride those go-karts again.

Beach Lake was a novel town for Brooklyn boys. Even things like walking seemed more fun on vacation. One of the things we did was the “four mile walk.” If you left the Twin Willows Cabins, made a right turn and then walked to the end of each road and just keep making lefts, you would eventually go in a big square. Scuttlebutt around the cabins was that this was four miles. And we would do this, for fun. We spent the walk looking for turtles and frogs, chucking apples at trees and most of the time just talking about things little boys talk about.

We loved to walk to The Beach Lake General Store, it was like going to the store with Half Pint from Little House on the Prairie. Dusty wooden floor, proprietor selling sundries, place smelled like Teaberry gum, remember that stuff? Basically they sold the same stuff we could get at home, but these Beach Lakers knew city people would pay a premium for shopping at The General Store. The best was being old enough to pick out a pocket knife. Then my friends and I would become " little hicks" for the week, whittling sticks and carving things. We'd swear when we got back to Brooklyn that our accents had changed a little. I bet they had.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As the summer nights are growing shorter and cooler, and the school year nears, this was my effort at remembering some of my family vacations past. I was hoping my musings would remind you of the family vacations you used to take. I would love to hear about them.

P.S. Thanks Vacation Mom and Dad! You were a lot of fun!

Among the Great Unwashed

2009-08-10T22:10:00.000-07:00

“Daddy this year I am jumping off the cliff at the waterfall hike,” Brian pipes in from the back seat. We are on our way to our annual camping trip to Hickory Run State Park. I smile, put my book down and look through the windshield. Before I reply, Kira pipes in from the driver’s seat, “Oh no you’re not.” I am wondering why my wife is taking the bait. Brian, my middle boy, the self proclaimed “risk taker,” is looking to get a rise out of us. I am not sure if he is really an 8 year old adrenaline junky or if he has created this persona in an effort to differentiate himself from his siblings. This birth order stuff is awfully intriguing don’t you think? “Daddy almost did it last year! I’m jumping off the cliff. I think it will be cool.” Now I pipe in. “Brian, you might recall that I went to the edge of the cliff. I looked at how far the jump was. I listened to your mother shrieking, If you get a spinal cord injury don’t think I’m going to take care of you ‘cause I already have three kids! It was then that I did something called risk/reward analysis Brian. I decided the thrill of flying through the air for a second and a half, to land in a pool of ice cold water was not worth the bad things that could happen. Maybe I would land safely and swim away. Or I might wind up braking an arm, a leg or wind up spending the rest of my life in a wheelchair.” “Or Worse!” Kira shrieks again. “You could DIE!” “Well your mother is being melodramatic but that was why I decided the reward was not worth the risk.”

I leave Brian to ponder that. He stares out the passenger window as the Pennsylvania countryside rolls past. After a few minutes he says, “You know, maybe I won’t do it.” Kira and I exchange a knowing smile as we continue west on Route 80. I thought about how this was an apt analogy to explain why we go camping. A handful of our friends enjoy tent camping as much as we do but the majority seem to look askance at us when they find out we enjoy camping in tents. It’s similar to the look you might get if you say you enjoy going to the dentist. A neighbor will pull up in my driveway and say,

“Hey, you guys packing to go on vacation?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you going? Camping? You mean like in tents?”

I had one friend get out of his car, come over and ask me, “Is everything okay? You know, financially?” I assured him we were fine that we were choosing to camp.

I see the drawbacks, or risks of camping. I do. For the most part I am with the majority. I am an admitted germophobe. Usually it would take an act of Congress to get me to use a public restroom. I tell Kira I don’t like to play “away games.” I’m a teacher and I don’t even like to use the faculty bathroom. Then again, you should see some of my colleagues. On that note, you should see some of the clientele at some of our nation’s parks. I have never seen more donut boxes and body ink in my life. My boys always wind up bike riding with the requisite kid with the “hair tail.” What I like to call, "the mullet starter kit." The thought that we are sharing a restroom with Mr. and Mrs. Marlboro red pack and their children is not enough of a deterrent, even for me. Camping is still worth it.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, I’m really not a big bug guy either. Who is? I don’t have the patience for every flying, buzzing, biting, annoying creature that seems to love to spend time with ME every time I am communing outdoors. Sitting on my porch, reading the paper, I high-tail it inside at the first buzz. While camping, you just lather yourself up with some Deet-enhanced liquid and hope for the best. Mosquitoes, black flies, deer flies, horse flies, yellow jackets, white-faced hornets…still worth it.

Like most of you, particularly as we head toward our “advanced years,” I love my creature comforts. There was a day I would sleep on a Funyun-caked couch just to spend the weekend partying in Belmar, New Jersey. Now I will drive to Manhattan for dinner and unless I am guaranteed a bed at my buddy Murph’s apartment, I drive the 90 miles back to Middlebury, CT so that I can sleep in my own bed. I like ice in my soda, crisp clean sheets, preferably of a decent thread count, on a nice firm mattress and a hot shower. These are all things that you eschew once you decide to go camping. Any given camping weekend you might wind up with a root in your back or with your tent on a slope so the blood rushes to your head all night. A "nature call" in the middle of the night is really a hassle. You have to zip out of your sleeping bag, put your shoes back on, grab your flashlight, unzip the tent, crawl out, zip the tent back up, then traipse to the communal bathroom or find yourself a nice tree. Then back to the tent.....Still worth it!

Checking in at Hickory Run State Park, the lady with the Smoky the Bear hat tells us that we have to watch for black bears. As if the numerous signs printed on neon green paper weren’t enough warning. Apparently bears know that campgrounds are a gold mine for food,. She recommends that we keep our food locked safely in our car overnight and take other necessary precautions. “Please make sure your kids don’t hide any sweets in the tent, we had a bear pull two boys out of their tent a few years ago to get to their Hershey bars.” Wide-eyed I stare. She looks back at the trail map and says, “Hate to tell you this, but they were staying in your campsite, site 11. Bear came right down the hill. You see you guys are the most secluded, the closest to the real woods, so be extra careful. Enjoy your stay.” Gulp. Still worth it!

So what is it about camping? Sleeping out in tents? Carousing with other campers, who I like to call, “The Great Unwashed.” Since Memorial Day, we have camped out a grand total of 9 nights. Luckily for us, one of the things I failed to mention, mother nature for the most part has cooperated. Camping in tents is a bitch when it rains. Actually this year’s trip with The Boyles, The Quiltys and The Grices to Hickory Run was pushed back to Saturday morning after we looked at the local forecast and made a communal decision to pitch our tents on Saturday morning. Some risks are not worth taking.

Like any vacation, you have to pack, a lot: tents, sleeping bags, bug spray, sunscreen, flashlights, clothes, food and beer. Then, like any vacation, you have to drive. Here’s the kicker. Then you have to, as a family, create your lodging. In addition to building your weekend home, other things become more difficult as well, like cooking, doing dishes, showering. That being said, our network of national and state parks that allow camping are really quite good. They know what people will need while sleeping outdoors and they do their best to make everything, let’s say, reasonable.

What are the rewards for all this hard work? First is a feeling of accomplishment, of working together as a family and or a group of families. Mom, Dad and the boys, packing and unpacking the car, pitching the tents, and then breaking down camp is a challenge we enjoy. “Braving” the great outdoors, sleeping in a temporary shelter of your own creation, binds everyone together, kind of like a team.

The best reward is seeing the kid’s faces as they run excitedly around the campground. They have the feeling that they are free, that we are not watching, but we are. At Hickory Run, Elaine Boyle, the architect of our trip, ensures that we have our own little cul-de-sac of campsites. Running along the left side of our campsite oasis is a stream. The boys play in the water all day long. I love to watch them building dams and racing makeshift boats of sticks and leaves down the stream. Kids being kids. There’s nothing like watching a little boy’s face as he expectantly turns over a mossy rock in the hopes of finding a salamander. THAT makes it all worth it.

Fire! One of the rewards is the community fire. Boys, big boys, girls and big girls, love the fire. We build it and tend it together. As a group, we gather the wood. Then we teach the kids how to build the fire from paper, to kindling, to bigger sticks, to logs. There’s something intrinsically human about the process. We are cavemen again, We build fire. You can see the kids gaining a respect for the power and the dangers of fire. This year, 11 year old Brian Quilty pulls a stick out of the fire and burns his hand on the hot embers. After that mishap, he or any of the other kids won’t make that mistake again. Fire! Beats another park and rec soccer game.

Staying with the caveman connection, while camping….people get dirty. Covered in bug spray and sunscreen, smelling like campfire, wearing the same t-shirt for a while is par for the course. Mark Migliaccio, another friend and fellow camper, didn’t take his Yankee hat off the entire Memorial Day weekend. I think he might have slept with it on. We'll have to ask his wife. Memorial day weekend this year, at the end of the first night, we realized the kids had not brushed their teeth. And this would mean traipsing the lot of them to the communal bathroom a few hundred yards away. Melissa Migliaccio made an executive decision and said, “Ah, it’s alright, we’re camping, it’s only one night right?” There’s something liberating about that. Shower or no shower? Brush teeth or no brushing of teeth. Who cares? You feel removed from civilization, leaving behind the ties, the bounds of everyday life. And it feels really good.

Speaking of severing ties…there’s no internet! No TV! No Gameboy. And nobody notices. Not once this summer did I hear my boys say, “I’m bored,” while we were camping. Too many adventures to be had, mushrooms to discover, trees to climb and waterfalls to traverse. They don’t have Wii Hiking. You have to go camping!

Of course there is a bit more in it for the adults. We are not THAT altruistic. After a communal dinner of marinated London Broil, cooked over an open fire, assorted salads, topped off by smores, we sit around the campfire satiated. The last activity of the night, the kids play flashlight tag. Around 10 or so the kids go to bed. Comfortable in the knowledge that our offspring are exhausted from the day and snug in their sleeping bags, the adults then sit around the fire and enjoy a cold beer or two. Ensconced in a hooded sweatshirt, looking up at the stars, there’s no better way to spend an evening as the “truth syrum” begins to take effect. Steve Boyle usually orchestrates the conversation by tossing out what I would call a “Kumbaya” prompt. You know the, “Tell us why you love camping out.” Or, “Say something positive about each of your kids.” Sitting around the campfire with a group of close friends, I would highly recommend it. The risk is definitely worth the reward. “Hold on, I think I hear a bear!”

Confessions of a Lapsed Catholic

2009-07-30T19:35:00.000-07:00

Confessions of a lapsed Catholic

The wheels fell off the religion chariot very early for me. Not sure if I was a cynic in the womb but shortly thereafter for sure. I know that I drove my parents, especially my Mom who is myopically religious, crazy. It was right around the time I realized that Santa Claus was a fictional character, created by the adults, that I realized that this Jesus character might need a closer look too. I figured, if adults made up Santa to make Christmas a little more enjoyable for us kids; well maybe they were making up some other stuff too?

At Immaculate Heart of Mary School in Brooklyn, in the early 70’s, we received the sacrament of holy communion in the second grade. Then in third grade we practiced to receive the holy sacrament of confession. If you asked me, I thought this was backwards. I mean they taught us how bad we were. The priests and nuns taught us that our virginal white souls were pockmarked with the heinous taint of “original sin.” Glancing over a few rows at my angelic Susan Shaughnessy, in her maroon plaid skirt, patent leather shoes and white socks, it was hard to picture that she could be tainted with ANYTHING. Sitting there in my desk, playing with my blue tie with the little IHM embroidered on it, I’m thinking, Shouldn’t we have purified our souls of this horrible imperfection before we received the body of Christ? Just one of the many questions I had.

Sister Christine, my third grade teacher, was an ancient, elongated, veiny woman. What I remember most was her skin was practically see-through. And that after she blew her nose, a fog-horn, phlegmy sound, she kept her handkerchief tucked up her black and white sleeve. I wasn’t sure why, I guessed they didn’t have pockets on the nun’s habits.

About mid-year, Sister Christine is preparing us to receive our first confession.
Monday morning comes, our class walks down Fort Hamilton Parkway, to IHM church. We gather in the little side pews next to the confessional booths; and Sister Christine is teaching us step-by-step directions to receive confession. “Now boys and girls, you walk into the confessional. Kneel on the cushioned kneeler in front of the screen. Wait for the priest to slide the screen open. Then say, “Bless me father for I have sinned. This is my first confession.” Sister tells us that then you are supposed to tell the priest all the bad stuff you have done. As we are waiting in church to “practice” my friends and I are whispering and snickering, Sully says, “What do you think you get for cheating on a test?” Timmy Boyle pipes in, “Or stealing a Milky Way?” Chrissy Ryan, “What if you stole a car!?” Mark Bowen, always the smartest of us, ”What if you murder someone? Do you have to tell the priest? And if you tell him, does he have to turn you in?”

Something about confession just didn’t sit right in my third grade brain. All during the practice week I pester my mother with questions but her answers have been lacking. After a few days of practice, I am annoyed with the power this gives the priest. The major fly in the ointment for me is, Why does he have to know what everyone is doing? Sitting in class one morning, I raise my hand. “Yes, James?”

“Uh, Sister Christine, I just have a question about this whole confession thing.”

“Yes?”

“Well, I don’t understand why I have to tell the priest everything? Why does he have to know?” “You see Mr. Spinner, the priest is like the mailman. He brings your sins to god.”

“Well, didn’t you teach us that god was all-seeing and all-knowing?”

“Yes, and what is your point?”

“Well then doesn’t that mean that god sees and knows all of the bad stuff, and good stuff, I am doing? So couldn’t I just confess my sins to god?”

“No, it doesn’t work like that. You have to tell your sins to the priest to get absolution.” That explanation didn’t sit well with me.

Towards the middle of third grade, we all started to connect the dots on the Santa Claus thing. Sitting in the school cafeteria, eating our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, my friends and I are discussing…Sully, ”How does Santa know the houses that have Christians? I mean how does he know how to skip the Jewish kid’s houses? Is there a star of David on the roof?” Jimmy Quinlan, “How does he fit down the chimney? And what if you don’t have a chimney?” Mark Bowen,“How many people in the world? And he gets to them ALL in one night?”

From Santa, my thoughts turned to Jesus. Exactly how did he turn a few loaves and fishes into enough food to feed the hundreds gathered to hear him talk? And if he really had this power, why was Jesus so selective with the miracles? I thought, If I could just make food out of thin air, and turn water into wine, then it would just be a miracle frenzy! I envisioned that Jesus had a little “Barbara Eden/I Dream of Jeanie” twitch he would do and BAM, Lazarus rises from the dead. I couldn’t imagine how anyone with this power wouldn’t be miracle happy. Wouldn’t you just be sprinkling miracles around pell-mell for the masses? If I was Jesus and I came upon a sick boy in the village. "How sad, you need a kidney?” BAM “There you go kid. Ah, don’t mention it, it was nothing, I’m the son of God for Christ sakes. Ooops"

The more I learned, the more questions I had…If Jesus could perform miracles in biblical times, why is he so stingy with the miracles today? Why do we still have people starving all over the world in 1973? People have been praying to him for almost 2000 years. And god has been, for the most part, saying no for 2000 years! Think of all the unanswered prayers! In 4th grade, in Mrs. Gaglio’s class, we joined “Friends of Animals” to prevent the clubbing of the baby seals and other atrocities against animals. Why couldn’t Jesus help us with the baby seals? Our whole class, pious little boys and girls, praying for the baby seals; and still the baby seals become fur coats. How could god say no to all of his little uniformed disciples?

I envisioned that god was up there in heaven, cooking dinner and watching t.v. and stuff and he ignores pretty much every request he gets. Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit (don’t even get me started on the Holy Trinity) are up in heaven trying to watch Password and they keep getting interrupted with people’s prayers… “Ah, what’s her name is praying for her husband again. Why doesn’t she just leave me alone? Take that thing off the hook will ya?”

The more I learned about world history, the more I thought of all the horrible things that god could have prevented. And didn’t. I mean if he was a merciful and christian god…He couldn’t step in during the Holocaust to save 6 million jews? How many wars could have been prevented? Couldn’t god step in and make sure Archduke Ferdinand doesn’t get shot? Why wouldn’t you make sure Hitler got into art school? Then he wouldn’t have been so angry. I mean if he had an outlet you know?

At the end of my days at IHM, by papal decree, they took away Limbo. We were taught there was heaven, hell, purgatory and limbo. Limbo, we were told, was this nebulous place for unbaptized babies. I pictured all of the cherubic babies floating around on clouds. One day the priests and nuns just told us that limbo was "out." We weren’t doing limbo anymore. Gazing up at the ceiling in my classroom I wondered what happened to all those babies floating carefree in the stratosphere? I worried that they might get hit by a plane or a rocket. Did these babies get an automatic upgrade to heaven? Was it a lateral move to purgatory for a few years? Or maybe worse?

So many questions…Hmmmm, if they could get rid of Limbo, just like that. I had the feeling then that heaven and hell, like Santa Claus, were constructs to make life a little more enjoyable. I thought, If Thomas Jefferson and Abe Lincoln and Thomas Edison and Lou Gehrig and my grandparents, were all in heaven, I mean, how crowded would it get? If all the people, who EVER lived were either in heaven or hell, I mean, that's a lot of people. If you did go to heaven, what age would you be? If you died at 96 would you be 96 or would you be able to choose? The thought of our loved ones up there, with all of the other people we knew who died was just so appealing. I mean what a nice thought. But then I realized, similar to Santa Claus, this heaven thing was just to make us feel better. Death itself makes us sad, it’s hard to grasp the concept, so we create this nice place in the clouds where everyone is happy and that makes us all feel better.

Catholicism is not a religion that cottons to questioners well. The answer to most questions is, “It was God’s will.” Or, “You just have to have faith.” If you don’t get what you want by praying, you still have to keep having faith. Despite all of the evidence I accrued over the years that prayer did not work, and this Holy Trinity just might be the same as Zeus and Poseidon, people would say, “You just have to have faith.” If you ask too many questions, if you are unsure, they call you a Doubting Thomas. Now Thomas was the first guy in the bible, that I had any respect for. Here was a guy with a brain. Here was a guy thinking like me. All Thomas was saying was, “Alright, if you really were crucified and came back to life, let’s see the scars, let’s see some proof." The little cynic in me liked Thomas. I knew if I was there, little Jimmy Spinner would have been right next to Thomas saying, “Wait, Jesus, I just have a few questions about this whole 40 days in the desert with no food thing.”

Baby Face Finster

2009-07-17T18:35:00.000-07:00

The summer of 1980, I packed my Brooklyn wise-guy self off to the woods. That June, I started a junior counselor job at a YMCA camp in Sussex County New Jersey. According to the brochure, the camp was in the Hamburg "Mountains." But those of you familiar with geography in the east know that they were, I would say, "verdant hills." I jumped into the Silver Lake culture whole-heartedly. There were many people to meet, traditions to follow and camp songs to learn that added to the fabric of day to day life. To this day, Silver Lake was the best job I have ever had.

Most of the skits and songs were connected to various personalities. During my time at Silver Lake I recall-Glen Gruder with his Oscar Gamble afro and Larry Montanye with his bushy, boy-scout troop leader mustache as they donned their togas to spit water on each other in “the Greek Water Boys.” And I see a red-faced Steve Swierczek, feathered blonde hair in 80’s style, sneakers, shorts and a two-colored baseball shirt as he leads the Silver Lake dining hall in a rousing rendition of "Little Rabbit Foo-Foo." I could go on about the personalities I met at Silver Lake, still some of my best friends to this day. But this piece is about someone in particular…

The family name Quinn at Silver Lake was a brand-name. As a counselor, you knew if you had a Quinn in your bunk you got a whole bunch of freckles, a permanent smile and a kid who would brush his or her teeth before bed without having to be asked. The Quinns: Judy, Corey, John and Connor were from Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. I can still picture Mr. and Mrs. Quinn dropping their brood off in the wood paneled station wagon. The scene always made me smile because I knew the Quinn house was a warm house, an active house. I always pictured a house where the muddy soccer cleats were piled near the door, opening a closet meant a surprise of baseball gloves and or Christmas ornaments. I pictured big meals of Irish stew with a lot of laughter, the Quinns poking fun at each other for their various idiosyncrasies. And of course I see the scene after dinner. The table would be covered with school books because Mr. and Mrs. Quinn ran a pretty tight ship. Yes there was time for laughter and a hug from Mom and Dad too but you don’t raise four responsible kids without some expectations.

This past March, decades removed from Silver Lake, I was skiing Mount Snow Vermont with a few friends. We were, three dads in their mid-40’s, enjoying a St. Patrick’s Day weekend without our respective families. Late in the day, I was scanning the crowd as we inched our way toward one of the ski lifts, and I see a familiar face. I spied Corey’s Quinn-ness through her hat, goggles and parka. I yelled across four lines of people. Actually I had my buddy Ian yell because for some reason I was being shy. “Corey!” She turned, looked around. I waved. She peered through the crowd and I said, “Spinner, it’s Jim Spinner.!” She dragged her husband and their two kids across the entire ski-lift line, to say hello. Those Silver Lake bonds are strong.

We continued to inch toward the lift and after some introductions, Corey and I played catch-up and I said… “Last I heard, Judy was in Rochester, New York and she was a nurse......Last I saw Connor, I had gotten him an internship with me at The Carson Group............

I can see now that Corey had to know what was coming. That the subject must come up all the time and it must cost all of the Quinns a great deal of anxiety. I continued, “Last I saw John, we were up here. I rented your mom’s ski house for the weekend and she asked if it was okay if John and his friend overlapped with us for a day or so. Of course I said that was okay. We had a great time skiing for a few days. If I recall, John was about to leave for Central America to do some work for the Peace Corps or something.” As her family schussed to be the next on the lift Corey said, “Oh, you haven’t heard, my brother John was murdered.”

What do you say to that? I stammered something, I think? Corey added some details and then she and her family were on the lift. I was left standing there with my two buddies, baby-stepping our way onto the lift with the sound of “My brother John was murdered” echoing in my head.

I knew my buddies didn’t know John, but they had heard enough of my camp stories to have some clue. “Jesus. I don’t believe it. John Quinn was murdered.” I proceeded to tell them a bit about John and the word Sweet kept popping up. John Quinn was truly one of the sweetest guys you'd ever want to meet. The kind of guy who'd help you move. The kind of guy you'd want your daughter or sister to date. I mean why else would he be down in Honduras teaching kids to speak English? What kind of a guy graduates from The University of Vermont and decides that he wants to help people in a third world country have a better life? John Quinn, that’s who.

The news weighed heavily on me as we continued to ski. I’d look out at the snow covered mountains, enjoying the view and I would think, John Quinn was murdered. Doing the après ski beer thing, we were singing along to "Brown Eyed Girl" and the thought pops into my head again. How? Why? Who would do such a thing? To John Quinn?

After I got back to Connecticut that Sunday night, I felt the need to connect with some old camp friends who knew John. I didn’t want to be the guy who calls with bad news, but I really had to talk to someone, someone who knew John. Eventually I got in contact with Gray Goldfarb, he and John were the same age and we all worked in Ranch Camp together. I knew he would want to know, and that it would be good to talk to him. Gray’s a New Yorker, born and raised on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Gray was one of the first white kids I knew who was really into rap. I stumbled through the conversation to eventually reveal, John Quinn was murdered. I had uncovered some of the details of John’s death through Corey’s emails and a few Google searches. So I told Gray--that as far as the family could tell, John was living in Honduras, his second trip down there, and someone stole his CD collection. John and some friends were at a bar in Honduras when John recognizes the thieves. And in his "Aw Shucks" manner confronts these apparent gang members and one of them shoots him in the face. Gray’s response, in his cynical New York way was, “You see that makes sense. John Quinn would get murdered in Honduras. That wouldn’t happen to you or I. First of all, John would be the one to go down there to help people, something you or I wouldn’t do. And then, he would be just naïve enough and just pissed off enough, because John always knew right from wrong, that he would confront these gang-bangers from Honduras. You see Spinner, you or I would have seen these guys for the bad people they were and we would have said, they can keep my CD collection.” I knew that Gray was upset. And I was shocked at what Gray was saying. I felt as if he were trampling on his grave or something. And I was glad that Corey or the Quinns couldn’t hear it.

Then I realized, Gray was saying, that’s how pure John was, that’s how innocent, he couldn’t imagine a world, or a person evil enough to shoot someone in the face over a CD collection.

I just wish we lived in a world where John Quinn was right.

John’s story was so touching and so heart wrenching that the local Jersey congressman, whose district includes Franklin Lakes, talked at length about John on the floor of the House of Representatives. Do a little searching on the internet, take some time to remember or at least think about John Quinn. In talking about John, my buddy Gruder said to me, "Didn't we used to call him "Baby Faced Finster?" I told him, "Yes we did...but that nickname never stuck, he was too sweet a guy."

Ahhh, Summer Reading

2009-06-24T18:52:00.000-07:00

Winter:1990/1991. I was a ski bum in Colorado. After work, most of the guys that worked the mountain at Beaver Creek would go to The Coyote Café. If you were a local, you got a mug with your number on it and it was dollar drafts all season. The Coyote was an interesting combination of hippy-infused, ski bum dudes and the well-heeled clientele who could afford to ski Beaver Creek on vacation. At some point, mid January, I am at the bar, talking to Billy, the bushy-haired bartender. As is the way in bars sometimes, I eventually wind up chatting up this woman as Billy walks away to help another patron. If I was 27 she was probably early 50’s. We got on famously, we chatted, animatedly for two hours. And the entire time, the stoners I worked with on the mountain, combined their brain cells to try to figure out what I was doing. I know this, because my companion and I could hear every word the shredders were saying. "Dude, what do you think Spinner’s doing? That chick’s gotta be twice his age.

"Man she’s really old. Do you think he’s actually attracted to her?"

"Man, somebody’s gotta stop him.”

At the end of our conversation, I tucked a bar napkin into my wallet and walked calmly back over to the guys.
“Yo, you got her number?”
“No.”
“You talked to her for two hours and you didn’t get her phone number?”
“Didn’t ask for it.”
“So what did she write down on that napkin?”
“Something better, a list of book recommendations.”
“I told you man, Spinner’s weird. He reads books.”

I thought that was an appropriate story to begin a blog about…Reading.

Ahhh, summer, time for unfettered reading time. That’s the second best thing about teaching. Of course I have to say, all that extra time I can spend with my family is number one on the list. That’s why I am in the local library typing on my lap top right now. The best thing about being a teacher, I get to read anything I want, all summer long.

What is it about reading that does it for so many of us? I can tell you, the second thing I packed for my honeymoon, was a stack of books, that’s how much I love reading. If I am buying a gift for someone I really care about, I will go to the bookstore and spend quality time to find just the right book. One of the best gifts I ever gave, (if I do say so myself) was for my buddy Jim Conroy and his wife Zoe. They got married right after 9/11, out in San Francisco. In an effort to do something thoughtful, I gave the newlyweds a Barnes & Noble gift certificate and enclosed a list of recommendations. Composing that list was a labor of love. I walked around the bookstore for 3 hours with a yellow legal pad and, with Jim and Zoe in mind, jotted down numerous titles I thought they would enjoy.

After I have chosen a book for someone, I become a literary pit bull. (It’s on my list of things I have to work on) I will hound them every time I see them, “So, did you read it yet?” A few years ago, in her continuing effort to better me, Kira (my wife) says, “Jim, don’t you think if they read it, knowing that you gave it to them, that they would say something without you asking?” So, I stopped asking.

Taking a class at Columbia a few summers ago, I like to put the Columbia thing in there because I have a state school guy’s insecurity. Truth is anyone could have walked in off the street and taken this class but I think it makes me sound smarter. “I was taking this class at Columbia….and the keynote speaker, in this huge, old, lecture hall walks over to the podium. She waits, and waits, while 800 teachers quiet down. Teachers are worse than the kids. When we are all quiet she says, “Writers write and readers read because they are searching for soul-to-soul contact.” Silence. In unison, 800 teachers shook our heads in the affirmative. I reached for my journal, to write down verbatim what she said.

She was right. That’s one of the reasons why I read, to feel less alone. I always think back to the first time I read a whole book in one night. (Besides anything featuring Curious George) I loved Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye because in the midst of my teen angst, here was Holden Caulfield, speaking the same language and feeling the same things I was feeling. At some point Holden talks about finishing a book and wanting to call the author on the phone. I knew what he was talking about because I wanted to call J.D. Salinger to tell him how much I loved his book.

Of course there’s more to it than soul-to-soul contact…I read to learn “stuff.” Knowledge is power and over the past 15 years or so, most of my reading has been non-fiction, it makes me feel like I am doing something worthwhile. I got hooked on non-fiction when I picked up a copy of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s No Ordinary Time. It’s narrative history about the FDR White House during WWII. That book is one of the reasons I became a history teacher.

We also read to see how others are playing the game of life and in turn to reflect on how we are playing the game. Isn’t it fun to read a biography of someone we admire, say Lou Gherig, and find similarities in our lives? Hey, the Iron Horse played stickball on the street just like we did! We make judgments of character’s actions. We put ourselves into the book’s situations and decide, what would I do if I were Ponyboy Curtis and Johnny stabbed the Soc?

We read to stir our emotions. Roddy Doyle is one of the few writers who can make me laugh so that fluids come out of my nose. I remember reading The Van on the F train on the way home from work during my Wall Street days. It’s about these bumbling, working–class, Irish guys who buy a delapidated fish and chips van. They hatch their capitalist scheme as Ireland is making a run in soccer’s World Cup. The protagonist and his compadre figure the entire country will be drinking and thus eating more fish and chips as Ireland continues to win soccer games. Picture Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton move to Ireland. Reading Doyle’s novella during my evening commute, I was snickering to myself and eventually burst out laughing. When I looked up, the other passengers were moving away and staring at me as if I might be deranged. Of course, having a looney on the subway would not be out of the question but I remember thinking, “You are all crazy, you should be reading this book, it’s that funny.”

We read to be sad…English teachers always talk about three dimensional characters, whatever that is. I liked Vonnegut’s advice to aspiring writers, “Give a reader at least one character to root for.” I love that! That’s what I am looking for. How can you not root for McMurphy against Nurse Ratched in Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? I cried at the end of Edwin O’Connor’s The Last Hurrah. That’s how much I cared. O’Connor created this fictional world, based on Mayor Curley’s old-ward Boston, where I really cared about the people in it. To think that he could do it so convincingly that I could be moved to tears, shows you how powerful these little paper rectangles are.

We read to live vicariously through others. I read to be a Kennedy, if for just a few hours. To be in the room with Jack and Bobby while they are deciding what to do with Castro and Kruschev during the Cuban missile crisis is enthralling. I read to be there when Paul McCartney meets John Lennon for the first time at the church fete. Talk about a moment, “This is my friend Paul, he plays a little guitar.” I read to explore the new continent with Lewis & Clark as they see the Great Falls of Montana for the first time. To be on the dunes at Kitty Hawk with the Wright Brothers and to climb Mount Everest with Jon Krakauer…

We read to be inspired. How many times when I'm moaning because my 4 year old spilled another juice box in the car, and I am sitting in traffic, do I think to myself, Morrie Schwartz (from Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie) would love to be sitting in traffic, he would relish the chance to clean up another juice box spill. Here was a guy fighting a losing battle with Lou Gherig's disease and appreciating every day and every moment for what it was, something he was never going to get back.

We read to escape. We want to visit fanciful worlds, sometimes full of wizards, werewolves or vampires. That’s why Harry Potter and the Twilight series are so popular. Reading takes us away from the stresses and or the boredom of our humdrum lives as we join Bilbo on his quest.

To think that these little symbols on this white page can make us laugh, cry or hold our breath in suspense is nothing short of a miracle.

William Blake once said, and I am paraphrasing, “My wish for my granddaughter is that she will enjoy reading and writing as much as I did.”

A few friends asked me to do a post about reading. My friend Tracy said she wanted to know what books I would recommend. That’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever asked of me. Maybe I don’t get that many compliments. So my friends thank you for reading my thoughts about, well Reading. Can I leave you with a few summer reading suggestions?…and then you can share yours with me?

Novels

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Trinity by Leon Uris

Memoir

The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer
Final Rounds by Jim Dobson

Nonfiction

The Bedford Boys by Alex Kershaw

And That is Where the Children Play

2009-05-28T18:20:00.000-07:00

It’s the end of the evening; the homework is done, the dinner dishes are drying in the rack. Now it’s reading time. I send my two oldest boys, Nick who is 10 and Brian 8, upstairs to read by themselves. I tell Charlie, my four year old, to go upstairs and grab us a book. We usually read in the living room. You see, I read aloud with Charlie, and my one foot voice is really more like a twenty five foot voice. We read downstairs so as to not disturb the big boys.

Charlie scampers down the stairs with Margaret Wise Brown’s Big Red Barn. I smile. He’s excited, “Hey dad, I found this book! It looks like a good one.” Somehow, in the reading rotation, we have not seen this classic in a while. I say, “I know Charlie, that’s a special book. It’s been in the Spinner household for a long time. Nick got that when he was a baby. It’s gone through all three Spinner boys.”

Something clicks. What are the chances? I think. A few hours before, Nick got off the school bus and asked me about “the movie.” We have been hearing about “the movie” for a few years now. Apparently towards the end of fourth grade, the boys and the girls go to separate rooms to see The Puberty Movie. As Nick says, "We learn about growing hair in weird places. And we are not allowed to laugh or we get sent to the principal’s office.” Not allowed to laugh? I’m having suppressed laughter just thinking of this "ABC After School Movie"/knock-off about growing up. A movie starring some Mister Rogers-type dad where they say words like penis and pubic hair. Not laugh. Fourth graders?

My sentimental moment radar is tingling. I notice that Charlie and I are about to read a book we received as a gift when Nick was first born. And tomorrow morning my little Nicholas is going to learn about perspiration and hormones. I hug Charlie a little closer and I begin to read,

“By the big red barn
In the great green field…”

While I am reading I am thinking…who gave us the book. I think it was Murph, Nick’s godfather, I'm thinking it was one of Kira's high school friends, Heather Burke.

“There was a pink pig
Who was learning to squeal.”

What house were we living in when I first read this book to baby Nicholas?

“There was a great big horse
And a very little horse.”

How many houses have we lived in? The “River House” in Oxford. When did I first read this book to Brian? Arden Road in Waterbury? Then the move to Middlebury...

“And on every barn…”

I hear footsteps on the stairs. Nick peeks his head into the living room and says, “Dad I have to get my…Hey, I remember that book.” And he walks over, head tilted, with a quizzical look on his face. So I say, “Nick, you want to read it with us?” Because he’s ten, I’m thinking he might say no.

“Sure.”

Nick snuggles up next to Charlie and I. I think about how long until Nick recognizes this moment too. Those apples don't fall far from the tree. I continue to read. Nick says, "Hey I remember this part! On the next page the bats come out of the barn." I'm thinking this is going to be it. I continue to read, looking at the back of Nick's head and my voice cracks. Nick picks his head off my shoulder to look at me. He doesn’t say anything but I can see he’s getting emotional too. Charlie hears the emotion in my voice and cranes his neck and says, “Daddy, why are you crying?” To which I say, “I was just thinking about how long we’ve had this book. And that my Nicholas is growing up and sometimes I don’t want him to grow up.” And Charlie says, "I know Dad, me too." Then it’s three boys, a group hug and quite a few tears.

Parenting’s a lot of work but moments like that make it all worth it.

“There was a big pile of hay
And a little pile of hay,
And that is where the children play.”

Road Rage

2009-05-06T12:48:00.000-07:00

Road Rage

Kira and I were sitting on our front porch recently with another couple as our six boys played football in the backyard. Something I like to call a family play date. Melissa Migliaccio, our close friend asks, “Jim when’s the last time you washed your car.” She wasn’t being rude, just trying to point out that it needed a wash. Like you would point out to your roommate that his shirt was wrinkled as he was leaving for work. I smirked because I knew the reaction my response would get. Melissa and her husband Mark, both successful lawyers, drive fairly nice cars and make an effort at upkeep.
“Never.”
Mark’s head snapped. “Never!? You’ve never washed your car?”
“Not the outside. The rain does it for me.”
“What about road salt!? That stuff will eat at your undercarriage, it will cause rust.”
“Miggie, it’s a ‘98 Nissan Altima for Christ sakes, it lasted this long, what do you want from me?” Enjoying the game a little I continue, “I wash the inside; every once in a while I take a little Windex to the windows. That counts right?”

Honestly, I never saw the sense in washing the car when I could be reading a book or playing basketball. Most of the guys I knew in Brooklyn who washed and primped their cars were usually doing it to impress women. I always thought, You really must have no personality if you have to use your car to get a date. I could never fathom wanting to date a girl who would be attracted to you because you drove a shiny car with some nice rims and a spoiler.

As you can see, I’m not a car guy, for me, a car is a conveyance. I suppose the utilitarian nature of the automobile was ingrained by my urban upbringing. In Brooklyn, you didn’t need a car. I took the F train to get to high school. When I joined the work force after college, the F train proved very handy then as well.

I would have loved it back in the day when Henry Ford’s assembly line was pumping out Model T’s in only one color, black. I wonder what the early car entrepreneurs would think of all of today’s makes, models and accessories. When did this movable appliance become so caught up in our image? Why does this material possession seem to say something about us? I suppose in America, this kind of thing was bound to happen.

100 years or so of mass-produced cars and some interesting things have happened. People use their cars as mobile bulletin boards. Let’s dispense with the most obvious, the cost of the car telling everyone how successful you are. Given that, it also seems that certain makes and models seem to attract certain kinds of people. What this amounts to is one giant high school clique…clearly the worst are the Jeep owners.

“You wouldn’t understand, it’s a Jeep thing.” I see this phrase on the tire cover of some dude filling up at the pump in front of me at a local gas station. I’m not sure but I think I may have laughed out loud. I may have even said, under my breath, “How cool are you?” Have you seen these Jeep people on the road? One giant fraternity/sorority waving to each other as they drive past each other? What they are saying is… “Hey, you’re a Jeep guy, I’m a Jeep guy aren't we so cool?” Big deal. So you bought the same car. And now you are compelled to make goo-goo eyes at all the other 4.5 million Jeep owners on the road? I mean how hard is it to get into this club? You go to the dealership, fill out some paperwork, and wallah, I’m a Jeep guy! Puhlease. These guys are one step away from the dork in your office who always points out when you are wearing the same shirt.

Speaking of making goo-goo eyes. When the nice weather comes to the NW corner of Connecticut, it’s time for riding motorcycles. And apparently, like the Jeep guys, if you join this frat, you must wave at every other motorcycle guy or gal you pass. And there's a lot of them! What’s up with this? I mean I am all for being friendly but, shouldn’t these motorcyclists keep both hands on the wheel?

Back to the cars. Not only are we buying our cars to impress, or to make a statement, Americans use their cars to tell us all manner of things about themselves. Bumper Stickers? Do you think this is what James Madison and our Founders had in mind for the first amendment? Was the Constitutional Convention fighting for my right to free speech so that I could tell you that I Cruise? Like I care? A lot of people choose to brag on their bumper about all of the really cool places they’ve been. ADK, BI, ACK. If I were to put one on my car it would say, BFD.

Once I was behind a mini-van cueing up to school and I read, “Don’t even think about talking to me until I’ve had my coffee.” I chuckled and I’m thinking, How much would I have to love a beverage to go to all that trouble?

I guess Ben Franklin and company would be heartened by Americans using their vehicles to persuade fellow voters to choose their respective candidate. (Obama/Biden, yes!) I do see some benefits to bumper stickers, at least they give us something to look at while we sit in traffic. I often wonder at the wisdom of espousing radical opinions on the bumper of your car. No matter which side of the Pro-Life/Pro-Choice issue you land, we all know there are zealots on either side. If these people get worked up enough about this issue to blow up a clinic, what do you think they might do to the Honda Odyssey you left unattended in the mall parking lot while you went to pick out lawn furniture?

I laugh heartily at the red-necks who drive their pick-ups around all-white, rural, enclaves with their Confederate flags announcing their rebel (read racist) nature. I’d love to see Mr. Lynard Skynard wind up with some car trouble in Hollis, Queens on the way to Kennedy Airport. Wouldn’t that be a scene? Big old pick-up rumbling off The Van Wyck Expressway in a neighborhood that would not take too kindly to the Stars and Bars.

And aren’t some things private? Why should we be announcing our sexual leanings on our vehicles? Do I want to know what you are doing in your bedroom as you careen past me on the Merritt Parkway? It’s mostly members of the gay community that feel compelled to show their true colors to other motorists. Should heterosexuals do this too? My buddy Steve likes his wife to dress up as a cheerleader. Should he tell his fellow commuters that? I mean just to be fair?

Lastly, I have to talk about Vanity plates. Just the name itself is a turnoff to me. If I even get past that, I can’t imagine purchasing something that would have me spending more time in the DMV. Is there any word or phrase, composed of 9 characters or less, that I would want on my car for the life of the vehicle? Isn’t this tantamount to a tattoo for your car? I am paralyzed trying to think of some witty phrase that I could use to entertain and impress for the next 3 years or 36,000 miles.

What’s the deal with people who talk in code on their license plates? How the heck are we supposed to figure out what all the letters and numbers mean? Well, if I did get a vanity plate, I suppose I might actually do something in code. I think I would like, FA Q. If that is taken I suppose I would settle for FA Q2.

Happy Motoring!

Victory Garden

2009-04-17T20:11:00.000-07:00

Out Plowing the Back 1/4 of an Acre

As I hopscotched the canyons of Wall Street my first ten years of employment, I actually learned a few things. One of the most important, which I use often in teaching 8th graders, involves the ability to sell. The Dean Witter brass taught us to “sell the benefits.” Mark Kelly, my manager, would say, “You are not selling a stock, bond, or mutual fund. You are selling the benefits of buying that investment. It’s a different kind of sale, you are selling an intangible. If your client puts down 40,000 dollars on a car, he or she gets a car, something they can touch, sit in and drive. You are asking them to give you $40,000 for an idea. You have to sell the benefits.”

Considering the fates of the markets recently…I have something I would like to sell you that has myriad benefits. I like to get the word myriad in whenever I can. This product is really more of a system, or life change. I DO NOT want to be preachy, I can only tell you what it did for our family, you can make your own decision. I can tell you if you try what I am asking you to do you will: 1) Get more exercise, 2) Bring your family closer together, 3) Save money 4) Live a Greener lifestyle, 5) Teach your children valuable life lessons, 6) Decrease our country’s dependence on foreign oil, 7) Become the envy of your friends and neighbors 8) And gather hundreds of dollars of fresh, tasty produce.

Of course I am suggesting that you start a family garden, if you have the space. I have to say, as we were putting away the beach toys and cleaning out our locker at the town beach this past September, Kira, my wife, asked me, as she always does, “What was your favorite part of the summer?” This time it was a no-brainer, as we stood on the sand of Lake Quassapaug with the late summer sun setting I said, “The family garden.”

There was a certain vindication in my answer. For once I was right. I have been asking to do a garden for the past 5 or so years. My motivation being that I HATE to mow the lawn. I figured if we had a garden, less grass to mow. I also figured at least we would get something for our labors besides poison ivy. Standing in our kitchen last April 5th, I know the date because it’s my son Brian’s birthday) I said to Papa Bill , (My boy’s grandfather is an organic farmer of some note) “I’d like to do a garden with the boys, what do I have to do?” To which my lovely bride chimed in from somewhere else in the house, “It’s a lot of work. Don’t think I am going to help you with that because I’m not!” Kira was obviously thinking of the Jim Spinner who despises yard work, who hates to continuously hack back the encroaching forest, who once a year gets poison ivy so bad he needs intravenous steroids. She could not have known that Farmer Jim was a different Jim, a motivated Jim.

So with Bill and Suzanne’s (Kira’s mom) expertise, support and their compost, the Spinner boys started a garden. Believe it or not, the boy from Brooklyn actually put down The Times, got up off the couch and did some farming. Whenever I say farming Kira laughs. "Jim, when your farm is the size of your living room, it's called gardening." So every time I do farm, just to annoy my wife, I put on my overalls and my farming boots. It's always funny too.

The hardest part was removing the grass, we had to spade it out by the shovelful. Admittedly, it was back breaking work but Nick, Brian and Charlie helped me. It felt like we were doing something healthy; all of us sweating in the sunshine, clearing the land for our “crops.” It was a lot better than working the rowing machine at the Waterbury Y.

Usually I have to beg my boys to feed the dogs; a job which takes 47 seconds, I timed it. To get one of them to fill the dog’s dishes with a few morsels of chow is like trying to get the Israelis and the Palestinians to throw a block party on the Gaza Strip. But this farming stuff, they were doing it willingly. I can’t tell you how many times, once the garden was planted and fenced off, that I would ask Kira, “Where’s Brian?” and she would say, “Look in the garden.” I’d look out the window, and there’s my little toe-head, up to his wrists in dirt, weeding the furrows.

It did bring us closer together. Threee generations, working together for a common goal, a family garden, proved motivational. We talked while we gardened, about all manner of things. And to see the boys put their elementary school science lessons to work, not using a mimeographed sheet but real live earth worms in the soil was really cool. Having the boys explain to me the benefits of earthworms in the soil gave me hope for the future. To see them identify the stages of the water cycle as it relates to our garden, just confirmed that we were doing the right thing. Of course Charlie wanted to know, “Daddy, where does pee come in on the water cycle?”

If you are rolling your eyes at this point, I apologize. I have actually been avoiding writing a piece about our garden because I could not figure out a way to do it without sounding like a Hallmark card. But with the planting season on us, I really wanted to get this one posted. If this sounds like one of those saccharine Christmas letters that your friends send you about how perfect their family is (just once don’t you want to hear about their neuroses?) that is not my intention. I promise I will do another piece about how neurotic my family is. But I digress.

All we needed was the cost of the seeds (which Grandma and Grandpa Duesing thankfully paid for) and the family’s labor. To think that our tomatoes did not have to come prepackaged and shipped on a truck from Florida made all of us feel good. As gas prices were skyrocketing last summer, not only was a lot of our produce free, we didn’t even have to drive to get it. And I was conscious of the fact that this was good for the environment. And in some small way, it was good for the United States, that we were doing our part to decrease our country’s dependence on oil. Not to mention how good everything tasted. I have not had a tomato since last September that was even close to what we grew in our little patch of land. The heirloom tomatoes were my favorites. Of course as the first few ripened I told Kira we had some mutant tomatoes and I thought we should throw them out. Those heirlooms wound up being my favorite, once I got past the look of them.

Eventually we got so much produce, we got to give it away. A little bit of Christmas in August. We would dole the veggies out to our friends and family. I’d fill up a little brown bag and tell my boys to head over to the McNamara’s next door. And it made us feel good, we wanted to share our bounty. We’d go to see Kristen and Pat Lewis for a barbeque and just before leaving I’d say to the boys, “Go grab Miss Kristen some cucumbers and tomatoes and put them in this bag.” And I could see my boys beaming, choosing some choice cucumbers and some heirloom tomatoes to give to our friends.

So if I could try and sell you on the benefits of the family garden, from someone who hates to work in the yard. This garden was a rousing success. We learned about working hard, about working together as a family, about caring for the earth, about how veggies grown taste just a little better than veggies bought. Gotta go. Out to plant the back 1/2 of an acre.

P.S. We really could not have done this garden without Grandma and Grandpa Duesing. If you need a little advice from Papa Bill Duesing or Suzanne I am sure they would be glad to help, as this is part of their life's work. If we all do our little part to make the earth a little healthier it might go a long way.

Innocents Ablaze

2009-03-24T19:27:00.000-07:00

March 25, 1911 was an early Spring Saturday. Kate Leone, age 14 rose early in the fourth floor apartment she shared with the rest of her family. Careful not to wake her little brothers as she got dressed, she double checked that she had her lunch as she closed the apartment door behind her. Walking down the stairs Kate is warmed by the smells of breakfast cooking as she passes the apartments of the other, mostly Italian immigrant families. She smiles at the pleadings and the familiar voices she hears of her neighbors getting ready for another day in the big city. Waiting for Kate on the front stoop of 515 East 11th Street are the other girls she walks to work with most every day. As they walked west on East 11th Street the conversation turned more than likely to some holiday celebrations as Passover and Easter were both on the horizon. Probably they talked about boys. Fanciful thoughts of a new skirt or hat for the holidays would not have been out of the question as Saturday was a day of possibilities, Saturday was payday.

Sadly, Kate and her friends would never cash their checks, or buy those special holiday treats. At about a quarter of five, as the girls packed their belongings at the end of a long work day, a fire broke out on the 8th floor of the Asche Building, home to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. It was a perfect storm for an industrial tragedy. The factory was crowded with seamstresses packed close together to maximize profits. The women were told to dump the scrap fabric right at their feet to limit time away from the machines, leaving an abundance of fuel. Most of the girls were Italian like Kate or from Eastern Europe like her friend Ida Brodsky, age 16. The girls had never been trained in what to do in case of a fire. So as the conflagration spread, they panicked. Screaming, hundreds of young women headed for the exits. Most Americans familiar with this story have heard that the owners of the company locked the doors to keep the girls at work and to keep them from stealing fabric. Investigations later revealed that the doors opened inward and the crush of bodies in a panic prevented the girls from simply stepping back and opening the door. The owners of the factory were later aquitted of manslaughter charges.

Some workers found a way to get down. A few lucky girls rode the freight elevator which apparently made only one trip. With the elevator stalled, some girls attempted to slide down the elevator cables, some actually made it, many were found later in a crumpled heap of bodies on top of the elevator. A number of girls found their way to the only working fire escape. This worked for a while until the fire escape collapsed under the weight of so many women. Killing many who were so close to saftey. With the fire spreading quickly and the FDNY ladders only reaching the 6th floor, many girls were left with no choice. According to an eyewitness...

"I walked through Washington Square Park to get closer to the commotion. As I neared the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place I noticed a bale of dark dress goods come out of a top floor window. I thought that someone was trying to save expensive cloth. Then another bale came down, and another. One caught the wind and opened. It was not a bale of goods, it was a young woman." Driven to the choice of burning to death or plummeting 8 or 9 stories to the concrete, many girls chose the latter. Many of the girls, too scared to jump alone, actually held hands in pairs or large groups and jumped together. It was this image, seared into the minds of so many New Yorkers, that proved symbolic of the tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire.

I first learned of this fire in History of The American Labor Movement, a class I took at SUNY Buffalo. Haunted by the stories of these girls I continued to read all I could about the fire. Home on break my junior year I took a pilgrimage to the very spot. I worked on the assumption there would be a small museum, or something to commemorate the 146 people who died in the fire. Before 9/11, this was the worst workplace fire in New York City history. I got off the F train, and like the eyewitness, I walked through Washington Square Park. As I neared the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place I felt myself looking up towards the 8th, 9th and 10th floors. Once in front of the building, I checked the lobby for a list of tenants, figuring the museum would be listed there. Nothing. I asked a few pedestrians, all I got was blank stares. And then I saw it, as I was standing on the corner, the only thing to remind New Yorkers as they pass this historic spot during their workaday lives, a small commemorative plaque on the corner of the Asche Building.

November 22, 1963

December 7, 1941

September 11, 2001

Kate Leone and all of the young women who died that fateful Saturday deserve to be remembered. March 25, 1911 should take it's rightful place alongside the other dates we rightfully commemorate every year.

I would imagine Kate's family and the families of the victims could eventually take solace in the what happened after the fire. News of the fire captivated New Yorkers immediately. A huge public outcry called for: safer working conditions, mandatory fire drills and sprinkler systems among other things. And change came quickly. The FDNY started the Fire Commission, and the State of New York gave it some authority to actually enforce the new laws.

P.S.

I can't explain why I have been so drawn to this story. One of my more "mystical" friends says she thinks I must be related to one of the victims. If you have any interest, Cornell University has a great site devoted to the fire. And David Von Drehle's book was very readable narrative history.

Triangle : The Fire that Changed America by David Von Drehle

http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/

Happy St. Patrick's Day

2009-03-16T13:52:00.000-07:00

"Ah, I blame your father." My mother would say. It is partially my father's fault that I feel at home in a bar. Some of my best memories are of my dad and I going to get a haircut up on 9th Avenue in Windsor Terrace. This was back in the day when they still used hot foam and a straight razor. Both of us, closely shorn, me with a lollipop in my mouth, would find our way into one of our neighborhood pubs.

Early on a Saturday afternoon we'd walk into Rattigan's, Gerard's, The Terrace or more than likely Ulmer's. No matter the joint, my father knew everybody. I thought that was pretty cool. We'd walk in and my father would get a big hello from the bartender and the sprinkling of regulars at the bar. "Hey Jimmy howya doin'?" "Hey, Jimmy Spinner, cold Schaefer? If it was Ulmer's, Mary Quinn would usually be behind the bar. I always remembered Mary's name because it was the same as my Dad's mother. She'd place my dad's Schaefer on a coaster. Then she'd peer over the bar at me, "And is this Jimmy Jr. I see here? The little baseball player? We can't get your father to stop talking about you. What do you want young man?" Climbing onto the stool next to my Dad I know the routine. I order a Coke and Mary gives me a high ball glass with ice in it. After some conversation, Mary walks over with a marker (usually a coaster or an upside down shot glass) to say, "Next one's on Billy." And my father would raise his glass in Billy's direction and nod his head. When my Dad has some change on the bar he'll ask, "Hey Butch want to play a game?" Usually the choice would be pinball but in Ulmer's they had Flash Bowling with the heavy metal disk and the sawdust on the lanes. You know the game where the pins pop up into the machine? This was Nirvana for a kid. I had an endless supply of Cokes and quarters and the attention of all my father's friends. It felt like home.

So, it is my father's fault. I remember when my friends and I were just out of college. Flush with cash, we'd spend our weekends partying in Manhattan. Most 20 somethings would be going to "clubs." Sure my friends and I would occasionally go to Limelight or Palladium, but we all seemed to prefer a night at McAleer's, The Emerald Inn or Farrell's. I blame my father.

Considering it's St. Patrick's Day, as a tribute to my old man, (he passed in '85) I figured I'd give you the recipe for a good Irish-American Pub as my father taught it to me. Like a good drink, you have to have the right ingredients:

The bar itself has to be made of wood, marinated in spilled beer and whiskey, aged with the tears and laughter of past decades. You should be able to tell that someone loves this bar, that someone cares for this bar. More than likely it's a family place. Behind Farrell's there's an Eddie Farrell. At Peter McManus's (7th Avenue and 19th Street), there's a McManus family. Usually, if it's an old joint, the woodwork behind the bar is coordinated with the wood of the bar itself. The mirrors, the molding, and the wooden architecture around the bar were usually built by the same company. The name of the company, can usually be found on the center mirror behind the bar. At Boru's, here on West Main Street in Waterbury, Connecticut it says, Brunswick, 1934. Growing up Catholic, the bar and the church always seemed similar to me. In both places there's one person in charge. The decor is similar, the varnished wood of the pews and the bar. Both venues use dim lighting and hushed tones (sometimes). The stained glass of the church, always eerily similar to the colors of the liquor bottles reflecting off the bar mirror. Both places are steeped in their routines and customs.

Next add your Irish bartender. At Farrell's we had Eddie, and we had Houlie (pictured) , which if you're Irish you know is short for Houlihan. Farrell's always had a soft spot for civil servants too, mostly FDNY guys moonlighting. Guys like Vinny "the bartender" Brunton. Vinny bravely paid the ultimate price on 9/11. Happy St. Patrick's Day Vinny. Nowadays we have Duffy. It's been my experience that Irish bartenders come in two versions. You have your smiley, full of Blarney, happy go lucky bartender (Houlie). Or you have your surly, curmudgeon bartender, (Eddie). This guy acts like he's doing you a favor every time he sees you. It's really just his schtick but he's letting you know that it's his bar and you're on probation. It's a select few who are allowed into his "club" and the jury seems to be out on most patrons, especially you.

You also obviously have to have the right crowd. Looking back now, my Dad probably picked working class bars that tended to have more Met fans than Yankee fans. I can also see now, that the patrons of the bar were so happy to see my Dad because then they were not alone. It was their social outlet, their country club. There's a cameraderie in frequenting the same pub on a regular basis. You have to feel the crowd out, it might take a few trips and multiple conversations to figure out if it's the right place for you.

A little lower down on this list of ingredients is music. Tunes are important but not crucial. For years Farrell's had no music and we didn't even notice. You're there to lubricate the vocal chords for conversation. But over the last few years, in a nod to the more refined crowd encroaching from Park Slope, even Farrell's has added music. More than likely it's the music's volume that's the key; and most bartenders will work with the crowd. If music is key for you then it used to really matter if a bar had a good jukebox. Nowadays, with computers and cd's, the volume of choices available make this a non-issue. As long as the patrons play the right tunes, you're in for a good night.

Connected to music on the entertainment spectrum would be sports. This is probably, in an Irish-American bar, a little more important than music. For me, and I hate to say this, but if it's a sports-oriented bar, it's probably going to be frequented by guys I might actually like to have a beer with. So, sports and tv for my friends and I, pretty important.

So there you have it. A simple recipe for an Irish-American pub as gleaned from my father. This might help you find a place to unwind with a frosted mug and a few friends. I hope I wet your whistle for tomorrow. Unfortunately, my wife is working the evening shift Tuesday, so I'll have to be with you in spirit. Happy St. Patrick's Day.

P.S. If you want to read a good book, look for a book by Gwendolyn Bounds called
Little Chapel on the River: A Pub, a Town and the Search for What Matters Most

Joe Cool

2009-02-25T21:24:00.000-08:00

Thank you Joe Cool

“He’s just such a cool guy. All my life, I never got to hang out with a cool guy.”

Seinfeld fans will recall this George Costanza line from the episode where Dan Cortese guest stars as Elaine’s boyfriend, Tony. Tony is cool. He’s good looking, athletic, confident, likable. George becomes enamored with Tony, begins to mimic his mannerisms. Sitting in a booth at Monk’s diner, Tony is telling a story and he takes his baseball hat off and puts it on backwards. George does the same. George’s admiration for Tony becomes obvious and Kramer says, “You’ve got a male crush on him.” Watching this I always squirm with George, I see myself, in George.

I think about, as the oldest boy in my family, how important those “relationships” were in my life. I look back and I laugh at Jimmy Spinner, the puppy dog, looking up with admiring eyes at various “cool guys.” Guys who taught me stuff, good and bad, about being a guy...

My first exposure to cool...Sitting in my 7th grade classroom listening to Sister Mary Pat drone on at the end of the day. I am distracted by gathering teenagers in front of Gino’s Pizza across the street. It’s leather jackets and t-shirts, cigarettes and punches in the arm. The bell rings and my friends and I walk over to the pizzeria. It’s a mob scene, kids dying to spend mom and dad’s money on a slice or a Coke. My buddies and I are younger, we are relegated to the fringes. I observe. I notice Charlie Lumia. (Lou me ah) There’s something about him. Slouchy in his leather jacket, leaning against a parked car, hands in his pockets, black hair parted in the middle. He’s funny, he’s got that look in his eye that says, I know just a little more about what’s going on than you do. Cathy Cavanaugh is there, the cutest girl in the 7th grade, in her maroon plaid skirt and white blouse. She’s talking to Charlie, wrinkling her pert, freckled nose at his jokes. She sees it too.

Over the next couple of months, my friends and I begin to hang out with the guys in front of the pizzeria. Sometimes we go to the park and play football. Most of our time is spent making each other laugh and showing off. As 7th graders we are newbies, learning the ropes from the older guys. We begin dressing like the older guys, talking like them. At some point, my buddies and I are walking down East 3rd Street, after hanging out all afternoon. I have my hands in my pockets, my fake leather jacket on, (derided by most as pleather) and one of my best friends, Jimmy Quinlan, says,
“What are you doing Spinner?”
I know I’m nailed, Jimmy doesn’t miss a trick. “Nothing, what are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about! Look at him Tweety, he’s walking like Charlie Lumia! You don’t walk like that! That’s Charlie’s walk.”
Switching back to my normal gait I say, “What? This is how I walk.” I want to say, “So what, I think Charlie’s cool and I want to walk like him. He gets all the hot girls. You noticed that I was walking like him. That means you know how he walks too.” But in 7th grade you don’t stand up for yourself all the time.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Writing in my journal after watching that Seinfeld episode, I wrote about how important those “relationships” are for us. These were our role models. That’s how we learned how to handle ourselves in a fight, how to talk to girls, how to smoke a cigarette. We watched and we learned. The guys who were successful, we mimicked, and the guys who weren’t, well they were models too.

I have had a few of these, cool guy friendships, (sounds much better than male crush don't you think). And one of the most important was Neil O’Callaghan. Neil was to be a senior when I was entering my freshman year at John Dewey High School in Coney Island. Late August in the summer between 8th and 9th grade , my friends and I on East 4th Street were in the middle of a touch football game. Neil appears, hovers over the game for a second and says, “Spinner, I hear you’re going to Dewey.” Turning my head as I walk up to the line of scrimmage I say, “Yeh.” Neil glances over his shoulder as he walks away and says, “Meet me in front of my house at ten after seven tomorrow. And don’t be late, Freshman.”

He says freshman with a little edge to it, poking fun at me. He wasn’t being mean, he was busting on me while inviting me into his club. And this is the thing about someone who is genuinely cool, Neil could pull it off.

John Dewey High School was a world away from our Irish/Italian working class neighborhood. Neil decided to attend Dewey I am sure for the same reasons I did, the local catholic high school would have been expensive. Neil was one of ten O’Callaghan children, and I was one of four Spinners. Truth be told, I was closer with Andrew O’Callaghan; who was closer to my age than I than I was with Neil. If we were to choose up teams for stickball or touch football, Andrew was more in my circle of friends than Neil. Neil hung out with the older guys on Ronny Lopez’s porch. Guys who occasionally beaned us with snowballs or maybe asked us to play roller hockey only if they were short a guy. Usually our groups were like two ferry boats in New York harbor, we saw each other a lot but rarely did we connect.

All of the guys in Ronny Lopez’s crew were good guys and I love them like big brothers but there was something charismatic about Neil. The fact that he was a senior and he took me under his wing when I was a freshman always meant something to me. He was fun to hang out with, he made stuff exciting.

First day of school, I show up on time, aware this senior is doing me and my fellow freshman, Vinny Tomasi, a favor. Neil’s best friend, Bobby Slesarcik, another senior and a great guy meets us in front of the O’Callaghan’s house. We walk over to take the “F” train for the 50 minute trip to John Dewey. “Now freshman, the way you know the train is coming is you look down the tunnel towards Fort Hamilton Parkway, you can see the lights way before you hear the train.”

“Now freshman, the train always comes at the same time and it lands in the same spot. If you want to get a seat, you gotta line yourself up with where the door will land so you beat the other riders into the train.”

Neil and Bobby taught us to cut through the Marboro Projects and into the back door of John Dewey. Something a cool guy would know, a short cut. That first day Vinny and I were escorted to our respective homerooms and I figured that would be the last we would see of Neil and Bobby. I knew seniors didn’t want Vinny and I tagging along. But that’s where the coolness factor comes in. After a matching up of schedules, Neil and Bobby tell us to meet them in the caf for lunch.

Like I said, they taught us stuff. Two wide-eyed freshman, Vinny and I were prepared to follow all the rules. I was assigned a locker in what amounted to Siberia. Neil gave me a combination lock, put it on a locker right near his and said, “Don’t worry about it freshman, nobody uses their assigned lockers after freshman year.”

Walking to class a few weeks into the school year, I find out I have a substitute teacher. As I head into the class, Neil grabs me by the collar. “Mr. Wolfson’s not here? You have a sub? You don’t have to go to class.” Free period!

Watching Neil and Bobby I learned about women. I learned not to run after them with my tongue hanging out. Neil and Bobby seemed to be surrounded with beautiful upper classman. Two who come to mind, Helene Halperin and Lisa Goldglit, I swear that was her name. These girls were my first exposure to (JAPS) Jewish American Princesses. They were exotic. They dressed so nicely, Jordache jeans! They had perfect teeth. After a month or so of Neil and Bobby flirting with Helene and Lisa, dancing around each other, we are on the train on the way home. Vinny and I watching the conversation like a tennis match.
“Alright, so Helene gave me her number Bob, when should I call?”
“Well you knew this was coming. Don’t want to seem too eager. Wait a few days, call Wednesday and try to set up something for the weekend. What are you going to do with her?”
“ I was thinking ice skating at Sky Rink and then dinner and drinks in The Village.”

Vinny and I were in awe. These girls were untouchable. And Neil and Bobby had their choice. They were in charge, they were deciding when to call! I would have melted if Helene Halperin gave me her number.

Both Neil and Bobby worked. Neil was an actual soda jerk at a local luncheonette. He made the best chocolate egg cream I have ever had. Bobby worked in a local pharmacy. Vinny and I learned, if you had more money than the next guy, you buy. Those guys treated us all the time, and to this day I appreciate that.

Truthfully, I owe a debt of gratitude to Neil and Bobby and all the cool guys who "mentored" me along the way. Right around 8th and 9th grade I started to get into what we today call “high risk behavior.” These guys were there to corral me. To show me that roller hockey was better than rolling doobies. That an adrenaline rush was better than any other rush. That going to college was a realistic option. And I thank them for that every day of my life!

Coerced by Quaint

2009-02-12T20:04:00.000-08:00

Einstein defined insanity as, “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” If there was any doubt, by that definition, I am insane.

Around Valentine’s Day, about every three years or so, I surprise my wife with a romantic weekend at a Bed & Breakfast. Coerced by quaint, and waylaid by warm muffins, it’s once more into the breach my friend. When I do come to this decision I envision it sets in motion some cosmic Candid Camera. And I turn into Chevy Chase in National Lampoon’s Bed & Breakfast.

Our first time..“The Inn at Lareau Farm is a classic Vermont farmhouse nestled on the banks of the Mad River.” Nestled? How can you resist nestling? After a long drive, Kira and I pull off Vermont 100 North and are greeted by the soft-spoken owner of the inn, “Welcome to the Lareau Farm Inn, I am Sue, my husband and I bought this place 15 years ago and fixed it up. This is the main sitting area, feel free to come downstairs in your pj’s and sit by the fire and read your book…This is your room...Tomorrow’s breakfast will be Canadian Bacon and Vermont cheddar cheese omellettes, served with….”

The first night goes fairly well, and in the morning the breakfast is unbelievable. We spend Saturday skiing Sugarbush. Satiated by skiing and enlivened with an après ski buzz we go back to the inn. Kira opts for a nap. I don my sweatpants and sweatshirt and head downstairs. There are a few guests reading around the fire and looking very New Englandy. Cheese and crackers are laid out, hot chocolate and cider, are available. Sue and her husband are flitting in and out of the room. I hear them snipping at each other in the kitchen. A few door slams and some sharp words later, Sue comes in.

The other guests head off, eventually it’s Sue and I. I can tell by her unsteady gait, and ruddy complexion, she’s been drinking. I figure her for 60. Her faded Levi’s and work shirt, show me the flower child still in her. She lies on the rug in front of the fireplace, and begins to pet her gorgeous, golden retriever, Orvis. She’s snuggling with the dog, and feeding him crackers. We chat about the Mad River Valley area. She suggests we have dinner at American Flatbread. Sue begins to feed the dog crackers from her mouth, slowly, teasingly. “Did you know that a dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human’s?” She says. I have seen people feed their dogs like this before and it always strikes me as odd. At some point she lays on her back, tilts her head and Orvis begins to lick around her mouth. I can see the pooch knows the routine, reacting to her cues. Next, she opens her mouth wide and sticks her tongue out. Orvis was rounding first and heading for second as I high-tailed it upstairs.

Dinner at American Flatbread almost cured my “hair of the dog.” It was that good. Sunday morning we were up and out early for the long ride home. I swear Orvis was checking Kira out as we crossed the parking lot. On the way home we recounted the weekend, the pros and cons of the B & B. Kira, not wanting to ruin my little gift, tip-toes around the issue but she keeps saying, “Do you really think we are B & B people?” Not picking up on the clues, I keep saying, “What’s not to like? Beautiful house, nice bed, great food?” To which Kira says, “Yeh it was nice and all but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I was in someone else’s house.”

Valentine’s Day a few years later, always the optimist: the inn I chose was recommended by a friend. It’s another ski trip for Kira and I. This time to Sunday River. I don my Chevy Chase costume and we are set for scene two of National Lampoon’s Bed & Breakfast. For brevity’s sake we’ll dispense with the description of the inn.

After a 7 hour drive, we are escorted, coldly to our room. Finally in our room I say to Kira, “Did we do something wrong? Were we supposed to be here earlier?” Kira says, “I don’t know but I definitely got the feeling we were putting her out.”

After unpacking, we head down to the living room. The place is quiet, we are the only guests in a very large Victorian. The husband is stoking the fire as Kira and I sit down. “So what’s the weather supposed to be like for the next couple of days?” I ask in my friendly-tourist voice. The owner, still staring into the fire says, “Supposed to rain for the next 4 days, last time we had rain like this we had a guy from New York lose one of his ski boots in the parking lot. Never did see that boot again. If you guys get all muddy, I’d appreciate it if you come in through the mud room.” He says this with an edge, emphasis on New Yorkers and you guys. I look at Kira and gesture what gives? Kira tries a volley, “What a beautiful home you have here, I’ve always loved old Victorians.” Ethan Frome then begins to tell us that they have owned it for 15 years and that the only way they could afford the house, was to run it as an inn. Then his eyes focus right on me and he says, “And you two are our last guests. We never have to do this ever again. The mortgage is all paid for and we can have our house all to ourselves.” I could see as he looked past me that we were going to pay the price for all of the obnoxious guests who had ever stayed at the The House of Mirth.

When we are alone, Kira says, “This is ridiculous. We are paying good money for this place and these people are treating us like crap. Why don’t we go somewhere else?” I agree. At some point I pull the owner aside and I say, “You don’t really seem like you are up for guests. Maybe we’d be better off if we went to another inn?” To which he says, “You’re not getting your money back. We won’t give you a refund. We will provide the services you paid for, if you stay.”

On Saturday, Kira and I skied in the 38 degree rain, for about two and a half hours. I don’t know if you’ve ever skied slush but you really don’t ski it. And after driving 7 hours and envisioning a winter wonderland, you can imagine our moods. At some point, ski clothes saturated, a couple of drowned rats, we cut our losses and head back to the inn. Edith Wharton is there to make sure we come in through the mud room. Reluctantly, she agrees to dry our ski clothes for us as they would never dry in our room. No snacks, no hot chocolate, no smile. We slink up to our room to seethe and snooze.

Dinner that night was at some Mexican place right in The Village of Bethel. We wind up closing the place, which in Bethel, Maine was midnight at best. Back at the gates of hell, buzzed and obnoxious, we clomp and giggle our way up to our room. At the door to our room, I realize I don’t have the key. I check all of my pockets. “Do you have the key?” I ask Kira. She pats herself down. “No.” “Shit, we have to go back to the restaurant.” Off we go, 4 miles down the road and by now they’ve pulled the sidewalks in. We pull up and I realize the staff has cleaned up and gone home, already. I place one hand on the window to cut down on the glare. I place my face against the glass. There it is, right next to the napkin holder and the small bottle of Tabasco sauce, our key.

So we head back to see Beelzebub about how we can get into our room. We are in the living room, calling out quietly, hoping to wake someone. This doesn’t work and we begin to get annoyed. Kira coaxes me to explore the house. I walk through the French doors into the kitchen area. I could swear I saw a rabbit stewing in a pot. You have to know that it’s dark, really dark. As I walk I am calling out to the owner, “Hello. Hello. Can you help us? We seem to have lost our key.” I am reaching and probing my way around. Through a door, no luck, it’s the pantry. Back into the kitchen, through another door, I call out again, “Hello, anybody…” Suddenly a dog barks viciously at my feet but I can’t see him. I bump against something. A woman screams, “WHO’S THERE?” She sits bolt upright in bed and pulls the sheets up to her chest. “WHO IS IT? HONEY DO SOMETHING!!!!” I am frozen, hoping Cujo doesn’t decide to bite me, praying Ethan Frome doesn’t have a gun in his bedside nightstand. “It’s Jim Spinner, it’s Jim Spinner.” I stammer. “I’m really sorry, it seems that Kira and I left our key…..I’ll close the curtain on this scene here.

At breakfast the next morning, I apologized profusely, and they didn’t say anything, not a word. No, “Don’t worry about it.” No, “It’s happened before.” Nothing, just thrusting of breakfast plates at us. I am sure, some nights in Bethel, Maine, Ethan and Edith recount the tale of their last guest in The House of Mirth.

The ride home from Bethel, Maine was a long one. At that point I was 0 for 2 on the Bed & Breakfast front. You have to understand my wife, she gets so keyed up for these trips. And truthfully she’s relatively easy to please. In the car, we replay the weekend, seething at the treatment we received. Again that phrase, “You know Jim, maybe we’re not B & B people?”

Of course you can figure out now I’m not a quick study. I must have this mythic Bed & Breakfast weekend in my head. A few years go by and I try AGAIN. In retelling this I don’t believe it myself. Back to that Einstein thing…

Another Valentine’s Day and I am going to surprise Kira. This time it’s going to work. New Hampshire is the answer. I do research, I check websites. I find, The Cutter’s Loft Inn. This is the one. I read the reviews, both of them. On the drive up, Kira is quiet, I try to reassure her, “Don’t worry Sweetie, this place is great, you’ll love it. Look at the pictures! And it won an award!”

Kira and I, playing The Griswolds again, arrive at The Cutter’s Loft around dinner time. We are greeted by our hostess, and by the smell. I look at Kira, we both notice it. Not sure what the fragrance is but my synapses recognize it. Sadie escorts us through her living room, up the stairs to a bedroom over the garage. It’s clear that this room was put there for this express purpose. I can see that our inn keeper thinks she is an entrepreneur; that she has been reading all of the B & B trade magazines. Entering the bedroom, I am expecting to see her son getting out of bed and heading to the shower in his boxers. Sadie is telling us about the gas powered fire place, which is on wheels. I am wondering why she fails to mention the pink, fly swatter hanging on a nail by the door. No need. I can see that, either someone was a crack shot or nobody has been in this room since the Clinton administration. All of the flies are dead, more than likely of old age.

As soon as we are alone, Kira gives me the look. The, you screwed up again look. “I am leaving. I am not spending our only weekend away in this place.” I don’t even try the, It’s not so bad tack, I agree. I also know that I can’t tell this woman, who is so proud of her business acumen, that after our initial look at the indoor/outdoor carpet and the upright aluminum shower with the plastic curtain, we would like to check out. I just couldn’t do it. “I don’t care.” Kira the shark says, “I’ll do it. I’ll tell her. This is bullshit. This is false advertising! We are staying in her guest bedroom! Look at the dead flies!” We sit on the bed, and it sags, Kira gives me another look. I hear Pat Sajak selling someone a vowel downstairs in the living room and I say, “Let’s go get a bite to eat.”

We go to a local pub/restaurant for dinner. Kira is fuming. You have to realize, by this Valentine’s Day we have kids. This is our first weekend, first NIGHT away in a really long time. Wild eyed she says, “We’ll tell her we got an emergency call on our cell and we have to leave. Then we’ll go get a room somewhere else.” I hesitate. I think Sadie will see through it. I feel so bad. “I don’t think I can do that Sweetie. You can see how hard she’s worked, she’s so proud of herself. She’s such a sweet little old lady. She reminds me of…” And it hits me. “I know what that smell is! It smells like your Aunt Ann’s house.” The light bulb goes on over Kira’s head, “My god, you’re right! That’s what it is!” Now this isn’t a bad smell so much as a family smell, a Thanksgiving with relatives smell. NOT the smell you want on your first romantic getaway in two and a half years.

After a nice dinner and a few drinks I convince Kira that checking out would break Aunt Sadie’s heart. She relents and we make the best of our stay at The Cutter’s Loft. On Sunday morning as we are checking out, Aunt Sadie is begging us to sign the guest book. With Kira looking over my shoulder, we read the names in the guest book, both of them. And I realize that my guess that the last person to stay at Cutter’s Loft was during the Clinton Administration wasn’t far off. Wanting to write something funny, but not wanting to hurt Aunt Sadie’s feelings I write, “Just like staying with family.”

On the way home Kira puts her foot down. Never again she tells me. “We are not B & B people. Next time you want to surprise me call 1 800 Marriot!”

Snow Day

2009-01-30T12:29:00.000-08:00

Snow Day!

When it snows, when the weather is really bad, teachers get the day off. Of course we have to make the day up in June but who doesn’t want to sleep in on a bitter, cold, January morning? This past Wednesday I was outside shoveling the snow; fully invigorated by the cold air and the exercise. I was thinking about how much I love to shovel snow. It’s mindless, and that’s why I love it. In this frenetic life, I can turn my brain off for 45 minutes and just move mounds of white powder.

Whenever my neighbors see me shoveling the snow, by hand, they invariably feel charitable. Nicely, they offer to use whatever machinery they have to help me out. Sensitive to being less than gracious I say, “Thanks anyway Doctor Parker, I like to do it.” I get the obligatory No Really look and I say, “I do, it’s a great workout.”

As Doc Parker pulled away from my driveway this past Wednesday I had to laugh. My thoughts turned to all of the really simple things, that I really enjoy. I thought it would be cool to start a conversation, in these tough times, about little things in life that we could take a little time to notice… Simple things that could help put a smile on our faces as we face another day…

Snooze alarm
A hot shower
The Local Library-Thank you Ben Franklin!
New book smell
A roaring fire in the fireplace
Thin crust pizza
A walk in the woods
A bike ride
Cheeseburger with lettuce tomato and onion

Irish Pubs
Sledding
Scan/search on your car radio
Cruise control
The sound of kids laughing
Camping Out
Newspaper delivery (NY Times is $17.60 per month for teachers!)
Cheese cake!
Jimmy Buffet tunes and a cold mug of beer

Good Friends

I would love to go on but it's your turn...I hope the Comments Box is working....Would love to hear from you...and again, thanks for reading, Jim Spinner

Seamus and Me

2009-01-22T13:31:00.001-08:00

A recent ad for the movie Marley & Me says, "Still tugging at America's Heart." That title could not be more appropriate for my life.

In the Spinner family we have all been avoiding going to see Marley & Me. Kira, my wife, and I know it will be too tough for the family to watch right now. This past May, we mourned the loss of Seamus, our big lummox of a yellow lab.

***We now have another yellow lab puppy, McGee. A birthday gift for Kira's 40th from her Dad's family, and he looks eerily like Seamus. He's just the cutest thing. And I go through the motions with him, I give the ball a quick toss across the lawn occasionally but my heart isn't in it. And I feel awful. I am nice to the little guy but try as I may, my heart is still closed to this little ball of fur. They say that writing can be cathartic. Maybe in writing about Seamus, I'll be able to let the big guy go.

***"He was our first son." That's what my wife and I say. Very early in our marriage, Kira called me from work, "My friend Ann can get us a dog! A yellow lab just like we want! And he's free!" My Spinner sense started tingling. How many times had we gotten a dog during my childhood and my father would say, "She's a pure breed she just doesn't have papers." I spent most of my childhood, on every walk around the neighborhood hearing, "What kind of dog is that?" My response would be, "Well we were told she's mostly Springer Spaniel but we don't have papers." As soon as Kira said free dog I said, "No, I don't want some knock-off dog. I want a pure bred, barrel-chested, put his picture on the Labrador Retriever calendar dog." Kira countered with, "Beans was a free mutt and look how much you loved the Beans." This was true, I loved Jelly Beans, the Spinner family dog. I waivered, "But we just got married. We like to ski and travel, a dog is going to cramp our style." With an only-child's persistence Kira was not done..."Come on it wil be OUR dog. For the first time in your life it will be YOUR dog."

***We drove out to a small farm in Eastern Pennsylvania. It wasn't exactly "Deliverance" but I wouldn't be surprised if they had a copy of it on VHS. The mother dog was tied up to a stake in the backyard, inches away from a styrofoam replica of a deer with arrows sticking out of it. We went into the basement to look at the litter. I told the woman in the dirty, Simpsons t-shirt that we wanted a male. She gave me the three males and we headed outside. I put all three on my chest while I laid on the grass. One little guy inched his way up and nibbled on my ear and I said, "That's my guy." I often think of the life we had with Seamus and he had with us and it all came down to that moment. Little guy didn't know how close he was to living with pin-cushion Bambi.

***Ann dropped Seamus off Spring of 1996. We fawned over the little guy from the minute we got him. We bought him toys. We took him to the park nightly. I tossed that tennis ball to him when it was bigger than his head. Kira thought we had ourselves a gifted pup. She was impressed with my training abilities. I didn't have the heart to tell her it was in his DNA. We took photos of things like "Seamus's first swim." It was at the foot of Mount Washington and again Kira thought he was some kind of genius, "Oh look at him Jim! He knows how to swim already!!!" Again, the DNA thing.

***We spoiled him. We'd go out for soft-serve ice cream and we'd buy him his own cup of vanilla. Because of my boy, we took up hiking. We bought trail books and most weekends you'd find us, two dorks with our L.L. Bean fanny packs heading into the woods.

***We got Seamus early in my teaching career. I would tell my students stories of Seamus. Eventually my 7th graders, in their sing-song voices would say, "Everybody Loves Seamus!" whenever I would say that line in one of my stories. It became part of the give-and-take between us. Running into some of my former students today, now recent college graduates, updating them on my life I have to tell them, "Sadly, Seamus passed away."

***When we knew we were bringing Nicholas, our real first born, home from the hospital; we treated Seamus as if he might be a jealous older brother. The night Nick was born I took home that little hospital-issue, blue hat and I let Seamus sniff it. I let him sleep with it so he would feel close to the baby. Seamus was great with Nick, a lot of sniffing and curiousity. Once, just once, he growled at the baby. I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and said, "Zero tolerance for that Seamus, zero. I will pack you off to the farm so fast if you ever do that again." Three boys later and countless eye pokings, tail pullings and Seamus never uttered another aggressive sound to any of my boys. The pictures we have of him that I like the most are of my boys using Seamus as a pillow as they read in front of the fire on the living room floor.

***Seamus did everything with us. He was a member of the family. The front seat of my car was so covered with dog hair it was never an option if we were deciding whose car to take. I can hear Adam Brutting, one of my colleagues, "Can't take Spinner's car it's got Seamus hair all over the front seat." God I loved riding with him in the car, him looking out the windshield, taking it all in like he was a person. I'd pet him and talk to him. He was my buddy. Man's best friend.

***The average labrador lives about 10 years or so. Seamus was a beast, he was in awesome shape until about the age of 10. Then it came on quick. He got arthritis in his front shoulders. He was a gamer though, he'd swim all day in the lake up in the Adirondacks but then he'd pay the price. Kind of like me after playing hoops on Monday nights. At some point the vet recommended we get a puppy to perk him up. A few Christmases ago I brought home Holly, a black lab puppy. That worked for a while. Seamus got another good year and a half or so. But the end came quickly.

***One afternoon I was tossing the tennis ball for Holly on the front lawn. Seamus lumbered down off his sunny spot on the porch. He looked up at me to toss him the ball. I knew that Holly would be too quick so I had to get a second ball. I tossed the first one and she zipped after it. Then I soft-tossed the second ball about 30 feet or so. Seamus lurched, caught his hip or something and shot me a look that I could only categorize as fear. I made a joke,"Come on old man, can't cut the mustard." He stared at me, imploring me to go get the ball. 12 and a half years of faithfully fetching, thousands of balls and sticks, and my Seamus could not go get that ball. I watched him turn tail and head back to the porch. Tearing up, the moment scared me. I thought of Lou Gehrig, the Iron Horse, after all of those years, hanging up his spikes and pinstripes.

***The last day or so was brutal. I got home from work around three. Kira was leaving for the hospital and she said, "Something's wrong with Seamus, he hasn't moved all day." I took one look at him and realized he must have had some type of a stroke. His head was lolling to the side and he could not see me. He stayed on our living room floor for a few hours. I brought him some food and some drink and he lapped lazily at the water. After I put my boys to bed I carried him outside because I knew he had to go to the bathroom. It was pouring rain and he's standing there, legs splayed, shaking and looking up at me. To see my once proud Seamus, this Ox of a dog reduced to that. If I could have put him down right there I would have, just because I loved him that much. I carried him into the house and he made it through the night.

***The next morning I carried him downstairs and laid him in the driveway. Here's the most amazing thing, he pissed as soon as I laid him down. As bad off as he was, Seamus would NOT pee or poop in the house. That's the kind of dog he was. It was 7 or so on a Saturday morning, I woke my boys up and told them they had to come say good-bye to Seamus. That was some scene the whole family wailing on the driveway around our beloved Seamus.

***I know that in mourning Seamus, looking at him struggle through his final few months that I was mourning our life too. In saying good-bye to my best bud I was saying good-bye to that part of our lives. Perversely, I did the math. If dogs last 10 to 12 years, how many dogs will I have in my lifetime? I can tell you this, no matter how many I have, there won't ever be another Seamus.

"Please Don't Call Me That"

2009-01-15T19:34:00.001-08:00

Kira, my wife, has dinner plans with her college friends this weekend. I ask her who is going and she says, “Mara, Lisa, Karen, Kathy, Trish, Ann and Tom.” Don’t ask how Tom got in there, must be a masochist.

Kira asks me who is playing in our upcoming poker game and the list sounds a little different: “Bags, Pots, Murph, Peg-Nose, Weekend, Eric, Big Bill, Lynchy.” I am in the middle of the list and I realize she’s not blinking an eye. Juxtaposed (always like to work that in when I can) with her list, my list sounds odd, childish even. I am 45 years old and I hang out with Potsy, Murph and Peg-nose.

What is it with guys and nicknames? Conversely, for the most part, women don’t do nicknames. I suppose, sometimes there’s the one really cool chick that has a lot of guy friends, and she warrants a nickname. I’ve been working on this piece for a week and I have yet to think of one. It’s been my experience, and I don’t want to disparage all women, I know there are exceptions but female nicknames usually feel forced. Women for the most part can’t be bothered. They probably have better things to do. Guys? We live for it, we try to be the one to plant a nickname on somebody.

It starts at an early age. I would postulate it starts in gym class. The Gym teacher is usually some drill-sergeant type with a crew cut, a gray sweatshirt and a whistle. They like to use last names to take attendance, Smith, Spinner, Sullivan, Tomasi…. During the term, Smith becomes Smitty, Sullivan becomes Sully. And boys take it from there.

We did it on my block even before we could cross the street. Tommy Brennan listened to Hank Williams. So of course, Comper (a mutation of Compietello) called him Clem Cadiddlehopper as befits a “country boy” from Brooklyn. Speed being essential on the mean streets of Brooklyn, we shortened it to Clem. One of the guys in our crew had a slow metabolism, we called him, Bubba. Somehow Bubba turned to Yucca when that Yucca Dew shampoo came out….see, there’s history in them there nicknames.

Now if I’m at any social function, and I hear a cool nickname, I am intrigued to find the story behind it.
“His name is Richie Dunn. Why do you call him Scary?”
“Just why do you call Pete Sigismondi Meat?” Maybe I don’t want to know.
It might be cool to do a collection, "Chicken Soup for the Creatively Monikered Soul."
Let’s take a look at some of my favorite stories…

One of my college buddies at SUNY Buffalo, Jimmy Conroy, always had a knack for hanging the right nickname on someone, like…Raymond Lynch. Steve Lynch’s younger brother, Ray, transferred from the University of Rhode Island after his freshman year. The name Lynchy was already taken in our circle by his brother Steven. Initially we called Ray “Little Lynchy” but we all knew that wouldn’t stick.

Ray is a wise-ass, a quick wit and a pest, he likes to get under people’s skin, in a very funny way. He and Conroy have an interesting relationship. Ray looks at Conroy and says, “What’s the matter pal?” while he imitates Conroy’s various mannerisms (smacking his palms rhythmically on his thighs) and facial tics (pursing and unpursing his lips) and eventually Conroy belts him. Picture Ed Norton and Ralph Kramden. One Saturday, in early September of my sophomore year, we spent the day out on Fargo Field playing softball. Most of us are Irish so at the end of this very sunny day there were some red faces around. That night, down at the campus pub we’re having a few beers and a few laughs. Standing in the circle I notice Conroy, who was red coming out of the womb, staring intently at Ray. Eventually we all turn toward Jim and he says to Ray, in his Long Island, iron worker voice, “Eh, look at your nose. What’s going on with your nose? It’s all red. It’s stuck on the end of your face, like somebody put it there. Kind of like a PEG. Yeh, that’s what it is, it’s a Peg. I am going to call you Peg-Nose.” That was 1982, and Ray Lynch is still Peg-Nose.

It’s best to ignore it if somebody tries to hang a nickname on you that you really don’t want. Guys can smell that fear like sharks and blood. It’s in our DNA, we recognize the facial movement of Please don’t call me that, I really don’t like that name. If you display this face it’s automatically too late. For example…We are at a keg party in some apartment building on Columbus Avenue, Upper West Side. It’s post-college, we’re in our late 20’s so maybe it was more of a “cocktail party.” I am there with pretty much the same group of college buddies whom I mentioned earlier. At some point our circle begins to interact with this group of single women. Introductions are made, “This is Bill and Bill and Jim and Ray.” Trying to sound mature we avoid the nicknames on the initial interaction. As the beers flow and the hijinks ensue, one of the girls, this ditzy blonde keeps hearing us call Billy Murphy, Murph. But she hears it wrong and she asks in her high-pitched voice, “Why does everyone keep calling him Merv?” At this point everything moves in slow motion. Murph, who has been saddled with a relatively cool nickname his entire life (Murph) springs into action. Sharp on the uptake, he recognizes in that instant, in the chemistry of guys and nicknames, that he has to nip this NOW or he might wind up being Merv for the rest of his life. Murph’s mouth is open, he’s slowly mouthing the word, “NOOOOOOOO.”

At the same time Weekend Weizner’s head is turning toward the girl with a huge grin on his face. A grin that says, Yes, there’s years of torture ahead, “What did you say? What did you call him?”

Murph jumps in, frantically, “Nothing, she didn’t say anything. You said Murph! Right? Tell him you said Murph?”

It’s too late. Weekend turns to the rest of us and in unison we yell, “MERV!”
And that’s how you go from Murph to Merv. It happens that fast.

Which brings me to Bill “The Weekend” Weizner, currently my favorite nickname story:

Bill Weizner was still living in Porter Quad his 6th year of college. Most of his friends, Murph, Jack, O’Connell and Big Al had moved off campus. Their off campus house was on Minnesota Ave which was right near the Main Street bars we frequented. That year, a pattern developed. Weizner would pack a duffel bag and crash on their couch for the weekend in order to party. The dorms were a nightmare bus ride away. At some point, Al and the boys could tell what day of the week it was (usually Thursday) by when Weizner showed up at the house. The scene was similar for the first few weeks of school. Big Al, sitting in his favorite recliner, would bare witness and announce, “Must be the Weekend because Weizner’s here!”
Which shortened to “Here comes The Weekend.”
Finally to, “Weekend’s here.”
Bill Weizner is approaching 50 years of age and even my kids call him The Weekend.

Why do guys do this? How come Kira doesn’t have anybody named “Double D” in her crew? I have a few theories. Guys are fairly simple creatures. First, we like to get a laugh, there’s a little class clown in all of us. Second, we’re also competitive, it’s a source of pride to hang the right moniker on somebody, to be part of your group’s lore. Third, it’s how we show affection or admiration. Conroy liked Ray, so he called him Peg-Nose. Kira always says, usually to someone that I am poking fun at, “I can tell that Jim likes you because he makes fun of people he likes.” Women don’t need to use nicknames, they don’t have any problem showing admiration or affection for each other. Guys? We bust balls, we make up names for each other. A nickname says, I dig you man, you are my friend. I like hanging out with you, so I am going to call you this goofy name for the rest of your god-given life!

So, tell me your nickname stories. I’d love to hear them.

Mr. Fux It

2009-01-08T18:25:00.000-08:00

Mr. Fux It

Sitting on the couch reading the paper and getting ready to watch some playoff football, I hear the sing-song voice of Kira, my wife.
“Honey. You never fixed the towel rack in the upstairs bathroom. It’s been two weeks! Can you do it today please? Otherwise I am going to call Fred.”

Fred. Why does she have to throw him in my face all the time? Fred’s our handyman, the guy we call when I can’t handle some fix-it job around our 100 year old house. Fred is number 6 on our speed dial. I hate Fred. Particularly that look he gives me. You know the, “I can’t believe you are such a useless member of the man tribe that you can’t even fix a towel rack” look. Occasionally Fred feels so bad, for Kira, that he doesn’t even charge us. How do you think that makes me feel you bastard! Actually Fred’s a good guy but he is a constant reminder of the man I am not.

Why Kira has not called Fred already is beyond me. She’s a psych nurse, doesn’t she recognize avoidance behavior when she sees it? Maybe her patients are rubbing off on her because she must be delusional to think I can actually fix the towel rack. Hasn’t she been paying attention for the past 18 years?

Doesn’t she notice that in order to put together a Lego Star Wars Tie-Fighter with 327 pieces I need to be sequestered in a sound proof room like a scientist working with anthrax? Doesn’t she remember any of my myriad house fixing mishaps?

If she’s been paying attention, as I have, she would know it will go something like this…

I will pick up my brand spanking new tool box, traipse it upstairs and place it beneath the towel rack. I will stare at said rack. Shallow breathing will begin, my left eye and cheek will begin a twitching dance. A movie of my past home improvement failures will scroll across my brain. My favorite is the tightening or maybe loosening of the nuts on my son Charlie’s bedroom radiator to allow for more heat. Apparently, I loosened or tightened too much not only did I have to call a plumber to fix that radiator, we had to call Bob the painter (speed dial number 7) to fix the dining room ceiling where the leaking water ruined the paint job.

Back to the towel rack. Eventually, screwdriver in hand, I will begin to jiggle the rack which is only loose on the right side. A nickel sized hole has developed and I can start to see the screw and the little blue, plastic sleeve that is supposed to keep the towel rack snug in the ancient plaster walls. I will unscrew, jiggle some more, get frustrated, bemoan the fact that I suck at this, get more aggressive with the towel rack, pull really hard and eventually half the towel rack will come loose along with an Australia sized chunk of plaster hanging on the end of the aforementioned screw. Horrified I will stare at the head sized hole in our plaster walls. For a nano-second I will contemplate tearing the rest of the towel rack out of the wall while screaming every four letter word I know. But cooler head prevails. I will realize if I throw a hissy fit, my three boys, Nick, Brian and Charlie will come running. I will be standing there red faced with the remnants of my bathroom in my hands and at my feet. All of the lessons I have been teaching them about patience and hard work will be for naught.

If the past is prologue as they say, this is more than likely what will happen. Why doesn’t she just call Fred?

As usual with any job that requires tools and wood, thoughts turn to my Dad. If only my Dad were around….I can’t believe Kira doesn’t realize with her psychological insight that my Dad is why I am like this. He’s the cause of my baggage and I am not blaming him this is not one of those things but I do see that the man I am now, is interconnected with the man I thought I should be. My frustrations stem from the fact that in our neighborhood you wore your balls on a tool belt. But I knew early on I wasn’t wired like that. Now that I am a homeowner, it would be nice to know my way around that tool box.

I grew up in a blue-collar Brooklyn neighborhood. Jim Spinner Sr. my father was a union carpenter. He was Mr. Fix it. On any given weekend my dad could be found hanging kitchen cabinets or replacing windows, he even built the hockey boards that became our roller hockey rink. As a kid I was surrounded by guys like my dad. When our car was on the fritz, my Dad would park it in front of 434 East 4th Street, pop the hood, do a little reconnaissance, chat a little with the neighborhood dads who would be drawn to the exposed engine of our Chrysler New Yorker. The conversation would go like…

“Jimmy whatcha doin’?”
“Looks like I gotta replace the carburatah.”
“That’s not so bad. I just had to replace the alternatah and the…”
They’d love to spend the day up to their elbows in grease, to rebuild something just for the fun of it but I have to paraphrase these conversations as I was never there. I couldn’t stand that stuff, I had no idea what they were talking about and I didn’t care. My thoughts were captured by the advertising execs and the Wall Street guys walking up our street to catch the F train to and from Manhattan. I knew at an early age that I would wear a white collar. No, my balls would be carried in a brief case.

Now I live in Middlebury, Connecticut, far removed from the Brooklyn of my youth. I can’t even imagine if I had car trouble today, why anyone (read me) would pop the hood? I can picture, if I were to pop the hood Ian, Pat and I would stare uselessly at the engine.
“What do you think is wrong?”
“I don’t know. See any loose wires?”
“Everything looks okay to me. Better call somebody.”

Realistically the only way my car would get fixed would be if they made cars like copy machines. We could use that little electronic picture to tell us exactly what’s wrong with the car. Otherwise, gotta call Sean at Middlebury Garage. Speed dial #8.

I could choose any of my buddies to show how useless we are but I chose Ian Grice and Pat Lewis because they might actually be less handy than me. It's close. It's something we've talked about, laughed about. I choose those two because I recall our respective wives discussing, in my kitchen, about who was more useless around the house. Talk about emasculation. The conversation went something like this…

Kira: “I just accept it. Jim’s not very handy.”
Kristen: “Oh you think Jim’s bad, you should see Pat, he calls the plumber if the toilet is running!”
Sharon: “I can beat that, my husband, Ian tried to fix our roof. I wound up with black tar sneaker prints all over my brand new carpet! No thanks! I don’t even ask him anymore. I wait until he goes to work and then I call my father.”
Kira: “Kristen, I should give you Fred’s number.”

My Mr. Fux-it fate was sealed early on. I tried to work with my Dad, I really did. In a nod to the genetic gods I took woodshop with Mr. Feuer freshman year at John Dewey high school. I had to show my Dad that I could tell a Philips Head from a flat head screwdriver! Our Final Project was to make a paper towel holder. Freshman Woodshop, a lay-up, especially for the son of Jim Spinner, foreman of the ExhibitGroup NY carpenters. We would be graded on three things. Our paper towel holder had to have a spindle, a shelf and it had to sit square against the wall. For an entire semester I lathed, I gouged and I planed. My shelf fit pretty well in the grooves I gouged and my spindle was basically round and would, Mr. Feuer pointed out, “Thankfully be hidden by the paper towel roll.” It was the planing and the squaring I had trouble with. The more I planed the more off square it got. A shaving here, a shaving there, I just couldn’t get it right. The shavings mounted and with each shaving, there’s less paper towel holder. Regretfully, the next to last day of class, I put my paper thin excuse for a final project in a brown paper bag and took it home on the F train. Talk about a pregnant pause. Sitting there with this glorified toothpick next to me, worrying about how to tell my old man, a man born with sawdust in his hair, that apparently I was unworthy of my birthright? Looks like University of Buffalo!

That night my Dad and I went down to the workshop. Surrounded by circular saws and scraps of wood I removed my paper towel holder from the A&P bag. Couldn’t tell if my Dad wanted to laugh or cry. Imagine how Michael Jordan might feel when his son keeps putting up bricks. He grimaced, tried to make a joke but remained conscious of not trying to crush my spirit, “Well Butch, not sure how much paper that thing can hold. Maybe we should start from scratch.” We decided we should build it together, as it was my school project. Eventually I wind up, like always, being a glorified gopher. The extent of my helping was to go get my father another Schaefer and to feign interest as he explained what we were doing. If only I had paid attention. Then maybe I wouldn’t be Mr. Fux it.

New Year's Resolutions

2008-12-31T14:41:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year! Time once again to confront our imperfections. What a humbling experience this is right? What are the things I need to work on to make myself a better: person? dad? teacher? friend? husband? It's a bit easier for those married guys out there as we have a constant reminder of our imperfections. Funny I didn't hear anything about this part of our verbal contract during our wedding ceremony. Kira and I have taken to calling it "The List."

More than likely, by the time you read this I will have broken a majority of my resolutions. Being a creature of habit I can tell you that on New Year's morning I will...wake up slightly hung over (one resolution down), sleep late (doh, that's two), yell at my kids for fighting (there goes the more patient dad resolution) and if I swore at my kids to "Just learn how to share the %$@in' computer!" I just might be out of resolutions...wait....there's still hope!

At least I started this blog right? This is something I have wanted to try for a long time. I invite you to access this blog occasionally and hopefully you will find something entertaining in my rants and ramblings. Welcome and Thanks for reading, Jim Spinner