You Say You Want a Resolution

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

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

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

“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

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

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!

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?”
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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.
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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!