I Can't Find My Way Home

Copied from my Facebook, July 3, 2011 at 6:47 PM
I bought this house three years ago, and since then I've noticed these two cats that roam the neighborhood...I often see one or both of them when I leave the house and also when I come back...they like my yard...probably because I never try to chase them out...I never cut the grass, haha...it's nice and wooded...they're not going to get chased by a kid or barked at by a dog in my yard...



they even like to chill on my front deck and on my back deck...sometimes I open my back door to get some air circulation and I startle them and they run off...they always run when they see me or my car...I didn't know if they are stray cats or if they belong to someone...I always assumed they belonged to someone, otherwise how would they have survived the annual snow storms we get here??...



there's a male and female, I think...I think I know the difference between a male and a female, the females have a more slender appearance...in the face and the body...the males have more of a fat face...I don't know if it's because they actually ARE fatter, or if they carry more muscle, or if their fur is thicker and bigger...or some combination of that...they both have gray fur and the male has some white on his cheeks, and big whiskers...



so last night, I got home from the gym...started cleaning my house...and I hear a very LOUD meowing sound coming from outside...I keep my windows open during the summer...so I walked out on my front deck towards the second staircase and I see the female cat with a kitten...the adult cat didn't run, but just sort of looked at me...and backed off...and appeared to get ready to run...but didn't...finally I got closer and closer and the adult cat ducked under the deck...I didn't get a good look at the kitten's face, he was facing away from me...but I could see he had black and white fur...I figured the kitten was hungry...and maybe the adult cat, too...



I went inside and opened up a can of salmon and put half the can into a bowl...then took it outside...and put it next to the kitten...then I figured maybe the kitten is too young to eat a chunky, solid food like salmon so I went and got a saucer and filled it up with milk...when I got outside the kitten was gone and so I just left the milk next to the salmon...



I was wondering if they would eat it??...or if they had just moved on to someplace and would never realize it was there...Rhace thought this silly, he told me, "cats will always find food"...but I've fed cats before and they've turned down food before...back in the Navy...spring of '91...I saw a cat on the naval base where I was stationed...so I went back inside the barracks and brought out some sliced turkey luncheon meat...good stuff, too...and the cat devoured it...but then I brought back some more and the cat wouldn't eat it...and also back in '98...my friend's mother's cat would take two bites of the canned tuna I would feed it and then not eat the rest...I guess that's the difference between house cats and stray cats?...house cats can be finicky whereas stray cats will eat anything because they know what it's like to be hungry??...



I was guessing that the next day, the food would still be there...I was worried that some other animal would get to the food...or that the bugs would attack it...



so the next day, I wake up...make breakfast...get ready to go to the gym...throw my windows open...and again, I hear this LOUD meowing sound coming from outside...which reminded me...did the cats eat the food??...I was going to find out...and so I went to the two bowls I had left on the deck, and YEP... Rhace was right...the bowls were clean...and so from all the meowing I guessed that my buddies wanted more food...I remember thinking, "is this going to happen all the time??...I better buy extra milk at the store next time and get some cat food"...



I wasn't worried about the adult cat...the thing had survived for a long time before I moved here...but I wanted the kitten to be able to eat...I was guessing that the adult cat could just kill something and eat it??...but that a baby kitten couldn't eat a dead rodent or a dead bird...so no more salmon but I took the saucer and filled it with milk and put it on the deck...



went back inside...STILL..."meow! meow!"...this time, the sound was coming from my garage...I looked all over the garage but didn't see either of them...I grabbed the saucer of milk off the deck and put it in the corner of the garage and went back inside...



I still heard the meowing so this time I went back into the garage, determined to locate these cats...finally, I looked under my car...the adult cat was nowhere to be seen but the kitten was under my car...so I grabbed the saucer and put it next to the car and went back inside...



still more meowing so I was like "what the hell is going on?"...I grabbed a broom and just shoved the kitten out from under the car and next to the milk...and then he stopped meowing...it was at that point that I realized something was seriously wrong with the little guy...then I started getting upset...



I looked at him and he was all fur and bones...he looked like one of those new dog toys...the ones they are making these days with no stuffing...and he was barely bigger than a large rat...it was the first really good look I had of the little guy...I looked into his eyes, they were very light gray...he started making this little motion like cats and dogs often do...sort of stretching motion when they are lying down and trying to relax...then he just stopped...I got this horrible, sinking feeling...this poor baby kitten was going to die in my garage...



I went back inside, continued eating and doing some things...I didn't hear any meowing...then it was time to head out to the gym so I got all my stuff, put it in the car...the kitten was still there, lifeless...right near the driver's side door...I went and  got a snow shovel and tapped him lightly...didn't move a muscle...I took the saucer of milk and went back in the house and dumped it in the sink...then I got the snow shovel and scooped up my buddy...I don't know if he started moving then but I don't think so...he was only sort of jiggling because he was in the shovel and I was walking up the hill...I thought I heard him wheeze or cough but I can't be sure...so I walked to the top of the hill and just flung him into the woods...if he was still alive, I hope he hit something hard and it killed him...so he would be out of his misery...but I'm pretty sure he was dead or near dead...



I felt myself starting to cry...it was so pathetic...I was crushed.  Heartbroken.  Poor guy only had a short time on this earth and he spent almost all of it suffering...why??...what did he ever do to anybody??...nothing...NOTHING...I remember driving off to the gym and feeling guilty...like I should have done more...like taken him to some animal hospital...but I don't think anyone could have done anything...the cat was seriously messed up...it wasn't from malnutrition, I'm sure...I think the cat had blood disease...probably from being bitten by bugs...like this one stray that my cousin used to feed back in 2003...



I tried to regain my composure...on the drive to the coffee shop and then the gym...but the kitten's cries haunted me...they kept echoing in my head...before, I never really distinguished between the different types of meows that cats make...but now I think I can...this kitten wasn't meowing happily...or even in a way of saying, "I'm hungry"...this kitten was in agony...it was a loud, anguished meowing...it still echoes in my head as I type this...



so I got to the gym and tried to put it out of my head...you can't let outside things distract you when you're working out, but sometimes you can't help it...Sunday is leg day and I did fine with my leg extensions...then on to front squats and the first few sets went well...but then by the fourth set I was so bummed I got barely half the reps I usually do...I just had the kitten's anguished meows in my head and the picture of him suffering and dying in my garage...



on Sundays, the gym sound system plays "classic hard rock"...metal and hair music from the '80s and early '90s...lots of Ozzy Osbourne, Def Lepperd, Poison, Motley Crue, Queensryche, Europe, sometimes some '70s like KISS or old Van Halen...most of it is hard-driving metal or hard rock but there is the occasional power ballad..."Every Rose Has It's Thorn"..."Is This Love?", by Whitesnake...also "I Remember You" by Skid Row which is sort of hard-rocking but also sappy...



so I was getting ready to do my fourth set of front squats and this song comes on...I don't know who sings it but it is by a hard rock band and it is a cover of the old Steve Winwood song, "Can't Find My Way Home"...I'm not sure if he did it with Traffic or with Blind Faith...and then it came to the line, "I'm wasted and I can't find my way home"...and then the notion appeared in my head...this poor kitten never had a home because he spent most of his short life sick and in pain and he died right there in my garage...I think that song will always sadden me...at least for a very long time...



at that point I was ready to lose it so as quickly as I could I went to the locker room and grabbed my stuff and headed for the door...I felt the tears starting to roll down even before I made it to the door...and just hustled out to my car...



I just sat there sobbing for about five straight minutes in the boiling heat, inside a car in the 90 degree weather...it was about five minutes before I had the sense to turn the car on and start the air conditioner...and I was just heartbroken and sobbing the entire ride home...



I remember feeling horrible as I turned on to my street...feeling like I was returning to the scene of a horrible tragedy...I almost wish there was someone I could apologize to for not doing enough...but it's not like a person dying...there was no one who cared about this kitten...well, no people who did...except me...it was just so pathetic...even his mother abandoned him there...at the end of his life it was just me and him...and I was helpless to do anything else but watch him die...



I got home and just sat there wiping my eyes for about ten minutes...just thinking, and planning to call some friends to see what they are up to this weekend...I have several projects going on around my house...part of my deck is not on stilts...it is right on the ground...and then dirt keeps coming up...and then on the other side of the deck where it meets the driveway, that part of the asphalt is falling apart...so every now and then I have to dig up some of the dirt from the one part of the deck and fill in where the asphalt is falling apart...



today when I took the spade and started digging, I had the feeling of digging a grave...I never had that feeling before...and I also had to use that same snow shovel to move some leaves off my driveway and into the woods...



after an hour or so of yard work I went into the house to make those calls and went into the kitchen...and there in the sink was that saucer that my buddy had his last meal from...and it reminded me of him all over again...



I turned on the radio and Chris Rea was singing "newborn eyes always cry in pain with their first look at the morning sun/save your crying for the day"...a line from his one big hit in 1978...



rest in peace, buddy...you're out of your pain, dear friend...



I kind of/sort of feel better when I want to...but whenever I think of the guy I start to well up at times...I never really was able to distinguish between cat meows...they pretty much all sounded the same to me...and there was something disturbing about the way this kitten was meowing...it was a painful cry...it still echoes in my head from time to time, my brain sort of "recorded" it...and plays it from time to time...



and my brain took a "photo" and now I have this image stuck in my head of a half-dead, suffering kitten laying next to a saucer of milk...and I still have this sick feeling in my nervous system of what it felt like to scoop his limp body up with a snow shovel while he might have still been alive and fling him into a wooded area of my yard...



I wonder if I killed him when I pushed him out from under the car??...maybe he was in a fragile condition...he stopped meowing after I did that...I was on my way to the gym and when I left my house to leave, there he was...lying motionless...I thought I heard him breathing after I picked him up in the snow shovel...



it was before I scooped him up that I got a good look at his face...most animals, you can't look into their eyes...dogs are easy to stare down...you eyeball them and they are always the first to turn away...or if they are an aggressive dog they will start to growl at you because looking certain animals in the eye is a provocation...



I never really tried to hold a cat's gaze but I think they turn away, too...for a lot of the same reasons...my cat buddy...in this picture down below...if he was still alive, he was too weak to move...and so before I scooped him up I stared into his eyes...and if he was still alive and prescient then he was looking into mine...and for a moment he wasn't a "cat" and I wasn't a "person", we were just two living things...



he had beautiful eyes...very, very light gray eyes...and cute little teeth...and his paws were folded over as he lay on his back...kind of like a dog who likes to get his belly rubbed...and I looked into eyes, with his eyelids half down...



I wanted to pick him up and cuddle him or cradle him or something...I wanted to do SOMETHING to ease his pain...but who knows if he was dying from poison or dehydration then maybe handling him would have caused him even more pain...and plus I was sort of scared to touch him because of fleas or something...or I was afraid to touch something that was dead...



but I was just helpless to do anything...I couldn't save his life and I couldn't even do anything to ease his pain...the poor dear...he didn't deserve this...what happened to him wasn't right...I didn't but know him for not even 16 hours when he died and it was the first time I saw his face but I wept for him and I mourned him...and still do...



I wonder what lessons I can learn from the entire experience...I feel like it made me a better person...I'm not 100% sure how, though...it's not like, "I was bad before, but now I'm good"...I always was sympathetic so certain animals and not to others...I still hate insects and squish them...I still have an undying urge to walk throughout the neighborhood and walk up to the barking dogs who make all that noise and smash them over the head with a hammer...



I suppose it sort of made me more of a cat lover...I like dogs, too, that are nice...but dogs do a lot of annoying things...dogs are schmucks a lot of the time, jumping up and down and acting like idiots...I think people favor dogs more than cats because dogs relate more to people..."man's best friend"...and dogs have more personality...the dog is the first animal that man has learned to domesticate and cats are the LAST...



I don't really know what lesson I've learned from this or how all of this has improved me...



I still feel sad now when I pull into or out of my driveway, knowing that he's down there...at least he's out of his misery now...

the magical mystery tour

there was this new Beatles box set that came out a couple years ago...actually, it was on 9.9.09...they're all on mono now, as if that's something special?  I guess it is.  I thought that stereo was special.  When it first came out, it's selling point was that it sounds a lot better than mono...that it was the newest in technology...and so now is it the case that mono is a lot better than stereo, for purposes of nostalgia?  I don't get it...



it's odd when you listen to a lot of that early stereo music on stereo headphones...you can hear the drums and some vocals in one ear and lead guitar and other vocals in another...like if your equipment is wrong you can get an impropotu special version of like backup guitar and drums only with no singing or an acoustic version of the song...but anywho...Beatles music...I used to listen to that stuff all the time as a pre-teen...when I was like 11 and 12...



my brothers and sister were/are like 10 years older than me and as a kid, I thought that the old music that they listened to sucked...crap from the '60s and '70s...I loved listening to the new music that was being played on the radio and that my young, dumb pisado friends at school listened to...disco and also the rock music of the day...and pop...



then one fall day in the fall of 1979 I got this new turntable...I wanted to test it out and I didn't own any records of my own...so I went out to the living room where the records were...my brothers had their rock albums mixed in with my father's jazz records and my mother's classical music and opera records, and I just randomly grabbed a record from the collection...it was copy of "The Magical Mystery Tour"...



I looked at it and was like, "what the hell is this?"....the four guys were dressed in masks and costumes and one of them still had his glasses on...the colors were interesting...kind of psychadelic-looking..."The Magical Mystery Tour"...I thought it must have been a children's album like from Sesame Street or something, or a comedy album...



but then when I listened to it on the stereo headphones while looking out the window of my bedroom it was the most amazing thing I had ever heard...REAL music...I was like what the hell is this??  and who are these people??  I didn't even really identify them as people...most normal musical acts just got up and played and sang...and were on the radio that everyone listened to and were on TV...the music that I had been listening to since I had been born did not sound this way...it sounded nothing like it...



...and so that was a little over 30 years ago...and from the fall of 1979 all through 1980 and into the fall of 1981 when MTV debuted, that's all I wanted to listen to...the Beatles...and I also started becoming obsessed with and a student of the 1960's...including movies like "Hair" and "More American Graffiti" and "The Deer Hunter"...and documentaries on PBS about the '60s...and I used to read underground comics that were produced in the '60s...at first I became fascinated by the hippy aspect of things...living free, doing drugs, and not caring about a job...but then I soon came to realize that was only a small percentage of the population and I got to a point where I wanted to learn more about what normal people were doing during that period...



so maybe I was born too late?...I listened to a lot of The Beatles during this time period and also started getting into The Doors, The Rolling Stones, and Jimi Hendrix...someone told me that if I liked those groups that I would probably like Led Zeppelin...and so I gave them a listen and I hated it...it was too heavy for me...I like them now but I didn't then...and so The Beatles, and then later The Doors, The Rolling Stones, and Jimi Hendrix...was all I wanted to listen to...for a LONG time...especially after I got my first Sony Walkman in the fall of 1981...damn thing cost almost $100...because of the novelty of it...then someone stole it from me....took it out of my coat pocket in the gym...now you can't even find a tape recorder Walkman-type thingy in stores...it's all CD players and MP3 players, iPods and the like...but when they WERE in stores up until a couple of years ago, you could get one for like $15 or less...for next to nothing...but I thought they were the greatest things in the world at the time...when they first came out...LOL my cousins from New Jersey used to play music on tape recorders hahhah...it sounded like shit but they didn't care...



anyway...getting back to the Beatles...at the time I was listening I was really into the music and not even thinking about the personalities that composed the band...who the people were...it never crossed my mind...I didn't know who they were...I mean they were wearing costumes on the album cover of "The Magical Mystery Tour" and on the front of "Sgt. Pepper's" they were wearing faux military or marching-band uniforms and were among 100 other people...so it's funny as much as I loved the music and listened to it all the time, as a 10-year-old kid I never gave much thought to who these people actually were...



I was eleven when John Lennon was shot dead in December of 1980...a few miles from where I lived...I remember hearing it the news..."he was in The Beatles back in the day"...I was a little kid at the time and to my mind that music was so long ago that I figured they must ALL have been dead by then...from old age...what surprised me was that there were any of them who were still alive to shoot...I wasn't shocked that a Beatle got shot I was shocked that there were any of them still alive...THEN I was shocked that he was shot...that's how a kid's mind works, I guess...the Beatles were all right around 40 at the time...



and so yes at that point I knew who John Lennon was...and after a bit I figured out who Paul McCartney was...I had kind of sort of knew who Paul was because he was still making music during the '70s and it wasn't top of the charts or disco or pop but I heard some of his stuff and sort of put things together in my head...oh, yes...the voice in this Paul McCartney music sounds like a voice I sometimes hear when I listen to The Beatles...and so as I got older I started to realize who they were and YES they were still alive (three of them, anyway) and still making new music as solo acts...



I assumed they were all hippies...peace and love and all that stuff "All You Need Is Love", "Strawberry Fields Forever"...that's when I found it weird that they were often motivated by money and that during much of the period of time when the band was together, there was competitiveness, rivalries, distrust, jealousies, and the usual human emotions that a tight-knit group entails...



as I would read the record album sleeves and the records...I had albums and also 45's...one thing I noticed about the Beatles was...other than a few songs that were written and performed by George Harrison or Ringo Starr, the songwriting credit almost always read, "Lennon and McCartney"...as if they were equal contributors to each song...which I found to be was typically NOT the case...I'm not sure why they chose to share credit for all of those songs the way they did...but with many of those songs it's simply a falsehood that they worked together on them...they worked together on some but there were plenty that they didn't work together on...they weren't so much of a team as it may have seemed...



it's quite the opposite...in a certain sense and at certain times, The Beatles resembled four different solo acts...and that aspect of their music became more and more pronounced throughout the '60s...this is always the way that The White Album struck me...as four different solo albums...one thing I read about those "Lennon/McCartney" songs is that you can almost always tell who REALLY wrote any given song based on who sang it...it's that simple...so looking back on the Beatles' biggest hits, or their most profound artistic masterpieces...you could tell who was responsible for what simply by who was singing the song...



during the early '60s "British Invasion" heyday of the Beatles and also in to 1964 and 1965 when they were doing all of those movies, John was clearly the leader of the band...it's biggest and most outgoing personality...George was just the guitarist and Ringo was the drummer...they were both very quiet and in the background...Paul did a lot of writing and singing but he was also more laid back...John was always the most out front...but as the '60s wore on, Paul started to have a larger and larger influence on the Beatles' sound and his creative power became more obvious with each passing year...



in my opinion, the Beatles' greatest work happened in the mid-'60s...from let's say 1966-1968, when Paul started to become equal to and then in some ways surpass John in terms of obvious musical talent...



let's take the 1966 album, "Revolver"...it is, in my opinion, the first REAL modern rock album, as we know it today...it starts out with "Taxman" and "Eleanor Rigby" and ends with "Tomorrow Never Knows"...I think that if this album was released today, it would seem just as fresh and as relevant as a lot of today's music does...it would not seem dated at all...



if you compare the music from the album "Revolver" to the other music that was coming out at that time...say any top 40 songs from the year 1966...the musical genius of The Beatles becomes obvious...at the time, when those songs really WERE new, it must have sounded as if the Beatles were from a different planet or something...they were so far ahead of their time...I mean you had Motown and Frank Sinatra on the charts...they were way ahead...



Paul really starts to shine in 1967..."Sgt. Pepper's" and "The Magical Mystery Tour"...in these two albums John and Paul were about equal in their contributions to the music...these are the two best Beatles albums, in my opinion...and as I stated previously, the 1968 release The White Album resembled four different solo albums...and it's when George and Ringo started stepping up as creative players within the band...



and so this trajectory continued...and from...let's say 1969 onward...John Lennon was so damn cracked out from all of the heroin and LSD...it's a wonder he could do anything...his music was not nearly as good as Paul's and considering how debilitated he was from all the drugs...he left his beautiful first wife Cynthia for that ugly zipper head Yoko...what the hell was he thinking???...it's a wonder John's music was as good as it was at the time...which if you ask me was not very good..."Here Comes The Sun King"???...puleeze...



in my opinion the quantum leap came with the album, "Abbey Road"...I feel that John contributed very little to that album..."Come Together"??...yuck...every time I listen to Abbey Road, I skip that song (it's the first song)...John sucked at that time...and he let the band down because he was being an a-hole...at the same time, Paul was coming into his creative peak and was firing on all cylinders...and also George and Ringo started writing and singing more great songs...and I'm sure that John was an envious bastard...because his importance to the band got smaller and smaller as time rolled on...



and so looking at "Abbey Road", the music...just take the second side of the album...that's ALL Paul...or, I guess since today we have CD's and not record albums...take the part of Abbey Road starting from the song, "You Never Give Me Your Money" all the way to the end of the disc...THAT'S ALL PAUL...and no John...and it's pure genius...I even read that for some of those songs Paul took the sticks from Ringo and actually drummed certain parts himself...



and of course after the Beatles broke up in 1970...John had a few good songs during the '70s but Paul exploded, creatively speaking...his music was always better in my mind and to this day, 30 years after first hearing "The Magical Mystery Tour", Paul always was the biggest talent behind the Beatles and he is my favorite rock musician of all time...

the show must go on.

Everybodyhas that time in their life when as a small child they start to developprescience…they start to be conscious of the world around them and they startto remember more…they start to realize what year they’re in, etc…for mostpeople, the period of time when they are born until about the age of 7 is a bigblur…some things are remembered and some are not…I started to really know whatyear it is and develop strong memories in the mid-70s…the early ‘70s are mostlya blur to me…I have some memories from there but most of what I know is what I’veheard from other people…there sure are some stories…some of things I did athome in New York and other things I did at the only other place I’d ever go,Freehold, NJ…which is where my entire family is originally from…



Therewas Halloween at grandma’s old house…I sat on my cousin’s shoulders and theythrew a sheet over us so there was this 7-foot ghost…then when he let me downat one point I was pissing into the street and waving at the cars…and thenthrowing rocks at them…and also flipping them off…I also loved to press thatbutton on the traffic light that pedestrians press when they want to cross…tostop the traffic…I used to think those buttons were fake that they were onlythere to give people something to do while they were waiting for the light toturn green so they could walk…in Manhattan, all the traffic lights are on atimer and so I figured that all traffic lights were that way…so one time inFreehold I was pressing and pressing and pressing that button until I broke thecircuit or something the light on this one street would stay red for an extremelylong time then turn green long enough for one car to make it through…lol…and soI had the traffic backed up for ten miles…people angry…I was a dirty littlebastard I used to do all sorts of bad things…



Therewas the Charleston Chew story…it’s legendary by now…we all went to the beachand my mother bought me a Charleston Chew candy bar…they were just plain whitenougat covered in chocolate…they sold them frozen so you could smack one on theside of a table or something and it would crack up into little bite-sizedpieces when you take the wrapper off…so my mother bought me one…I had it in myhands I was ready to take the wrapper off and eat it, and then my mother tookit from my hands and whacked it on the side of the table…I guess I assumed shedid it for a malicious reason and so in a crowded store full of people eatingburgers and whatnot I shrieked at the top of my lungs, “you broke my fuckinCharleston Chew!!!”…



Iwas in love with fireworks and fire for a while…I would steal matches and lightthem up just to watch them burn…then that became boring so I would take paperfrom somewhere and set it on fire…then that became boring I wanted to go settrashcans on fire but was too chicken, afraid I’d get caught…so I got boredwith the whole pyromania thing…one of my earliest memories was being on theroof of my school in about 2nd grade…not outside on the roof buthaving walked up the stairs of the 3-story building until it stopped…more onthat later, that was another obsession of mine…buildings and stairwells…wherethe stairwells began and ended…basements and roofs…but at this time I was withtwo other kids and I was lighting matches…I was hoping to get caught…I wantedto get caught for small things to get attention but not big things where I gotinto serious trouble…I remember the two kids with me being scared of gettingcaught but I wasn’t scared, I wanted to…I actually got pissed off that noadults happened by so the two kids and I walked down a flight of steps to wherethere were more people and yep, I got caught…then I got pissed cos they didn’ttell my parents…I guess being a little kid I didn’t want to be in school Iwanted to be home so I tried to get sent home…



Throughoutthe ‘70s and ‘80s growing up, I started out wanting to get caught doing badthings…then getting caught became painful so I wanted to do bad things withoutgetting caught…but I always would…and so eventually at some point I hatedgetting in trouble and decided to fly right…but that was well after the 2ndgrade…



Onetime we went to Freehold and we were at someone’s pool…I told my mom I had topee and she said “oh, just go in the pool”…not knowing what she meant, Iclimbed out of the pool, whipped it out and started pissing into the pool infront of everyone…also, idk why but those Styrofoam life preservers, I thoughtthey were something to eat so I bit into one…I guess I pissing issues…I wasalso a bed wetter until a late age…they never thought to get me rubber sheetsso all the time my sheets were wet with piss, lol…



Therewas another time when for whatever reason, just for attention…I climbed up ontop of the hood of my uncle David’s pickup truck and took a leak on thewindshield…when he saw he grabbed me off the hood and threw me to the ground…anothertime, my uncle Billy (who lived with my grandma)…I guess he had just gotten outof the shower and wash shaving…I walked in the bathroom and he had no clotheson, there was his naked ass…idk if he noticed or not but for whatever reason I leftand went and found a belt, came back and whipped his ass as hard as I couldwith the leather belt…I heard it made a very loud noise…next thing my mother inthe other room heard was me screaming as uncle Billy slapped the shit outta me…haha..



Iattended P.S. 163, the Alfred E. Smith school for 1st, 2nd,and 3rd grades…until my mom transferred me…the school was rightdownstairs…I could walk out on my 11th floor terrace and see it…soother than little trips like to see Dr. Moloshok on the east side or up to theGrand Concourse in the Bronx to go to the chiropractor, that block was mylittle world…it was a HUGE block…97th Street through 100thStreet on Amsterdam Avenue had no cross streets…it was a huge block that wasthree blocks long…and so was the street from Amsterdam Avenue to ColumbusAvenue…3 blocks long as were and are all of the east-west blocks on the upperwest side of Manhattan…so that 9 square blocks was my little world most of thetime…the apartment, the school, and the playground next to the school where I wouldplay after school…that was my world in grades 1 through 3….I used to read MadMagazine and the dude on the front every issue’s name is Alfred E. Neuman (“what,me worry?”) and my school was Alfred E. Smith (the dude who ran for presidentagainst Herbert Hoover in 1928)…and so I was kind of like why is that schoolnamed after the guy on the cover of Mad Magazine??...



AnotherP.S. 163 memory I tripped this poor kid named Dan Kirkpatrick…I guess it wasfrom watching too many cartoons which I always did but I got it into my mindthat it would be cool to trip someone running at full speed…and I had myopportunity outside the auditorium poor Dan was bolting somewhere and I stuckmy foot out and he went flying…busted his lip…poor kid had a rough time Iremember a few years later he got beat up by a black kid who was out to beat upwhite kids…there were few white kids in our group…the black kid’s name wasKippy…he went to beat up Michael Petit but the Puerto Rican kids said “no,leave him alone, he’s cool”…then he went to beat me up but the Puerto Ricankids said the same thing…I could tell he wanted to beat me up but he didn’t…hedidn’t like me cos I was white but for other reasons, I’m sure…he looked at meand said something like I’m lucky…and so the only kid left who was white wasDan Kirkpatrick so he bunched Dan in the mouth and it bled and he ran offcrying…if I had had any guts at the time I would have sucker-punched Kippy orsomething…but I was just glad I didn’t get hit…I was such a punk-ass…no oneever taught me how to fight I had to learn it on my own…my parents sure didn’tteach me…damn white liberals…



Iwas a punk-ass…I would antagonize people for attention then get my ass kicked…3rdgrade, this kid named Vaughn…black kid…I pissed him off and he punched me inthe mouth…I still have the scar today on my lower lip…I needed stitches…andVaughn got into a little bit of trouble…he didn’t have any parents he was beingraised by his grandmother and I heard that they made her come into the schooland they told her what happened and instead of being contrite or getting mad atVaughn she was like, “good”, and said I probably deserved it…which I probablydid…



Myfirst grade teacher was Mrs. Fleck…then my 2nd grade teacher’s namewas Mrs. Beck…I was like, “are they all gonna rhyme?  Who will I get for 3rd grade?”…mythird grade teacher was a Japanese-American woman by the name of Miss Takagi…Icouldn’t pronounce it so I called her “Mr. Kagi” and people got a laugh…latermy mother worked hard to get me transferred to another school ten or so blocksaway and my 4th grade teacher was Mrs. Karasik…I used to call herMrs. Carrot stick…and so I sure did giggle the adults with my silliness…



Oneother thing I loved to do was curse…teach curse words to other little kids andalso curse out my parents and other adults…my best friend was Chuck Lesch…myother two friends I had were Boris Krugman and William Lee, Billy…all four ofus lived in the same building…nearly all one floor away from each other…Chuckwas in apartment 10D, I was in 11B, Boris was I think 12G…I know he was on the12th floor…and Billy was on the 15th…I used to curse myparents and 15 years before Bart Simpson had the idea, I was calling my motherand father by their first names instead of “mom” and “dad”…



MyNew Jersey and Virginia cousins, almost all of my cousins were and are againstdisrespecting your elders and using profanity and so whenever I was taken toFreehold for a visit I would have to see “The Ghost”…my older cousins all tookme up into the attic which was very dark and scary and they had a sheet with I guessa basketball in it and a face drawn on it and they had a tape recorder in theback with stuff they had pre-recorded, masking their voices…The Ghost was angrywith me, “Terence, why do you use curse words?? Why do you call your parents Norman and Elsie and not mom and dad”…andit WORKED!!...i guess…not really…I was always scared as shit but then when I wasaway from The Ghost, I did care and went right doing what I wanted to…eventuallyI figured out The Ghost was a fake because it was saying the same things overand over again…so I was like, “hey, wait a minute that’s the same stuff I heardbefore”…if my cousins had bothered to update the things that “The Ghost” said,it might have continued working a little while longer…



Soone time Billy and I found this lunch box in the playground, during recess…ithad little pictures and names of all the major American cities…San Francisco,Baltimore, Chicago, New York…and so Billy and I found an open window on theground floor it was to a teacher’s lounge, we saw a bunch of the teachers andstaff hanging out in there and so we started yelling curse words into thewindow…we took the names of the cities and made them into cursewords:  “San Fuckcisco!!”…”Shitcago!!”…”Balddickmore!!”…Chuckwas my REAL best friend…I think it’s because his parents and my mom werefriends…my dad only had friends he could drink with, lol…not friends with kids…Billyand Boris I think I just met them at school so we were friends but that’s it…Ihad 3 real friends at that time…I’ve always been that way, even since I was akid…just a few close friends but never one of these people with lots of friends…Istayed that way all they way through grade school, high school, the Navy,Brooklyn Brewery, when I moved to Virginia and all the jobs I’ve ever had…



FinalP.S. 163 memories one time we got a guinea pig, and the 1st gradeteacher, Mrs. Fleck, asked the kids in the class for suggestions as to what toname the guinea pig…my erstwhile friend Kenneth…the one who beat the crap outtame a few years before this…his dog’s name was Tender…so I suggested Tender asthe name…I remember the teacher was amazed…she looked at me like I was a genius…eventhough I didn’t make the name up, it was a dog’s name…she wanted to use that…someof the other kids in the class changed the name and they eventually named theguinea pig Baby Tender Love…after the doll that was popular with little kids inthe mid-‘70s…but I always felt like the guinea pig was MY guinea pig and I usedto call it Tender not that other shit…I used to love the thing, I would pick itup and hold it and someone brought in an old toothbrush and we used it as sortof a comb for the fur…stroke the guinea pig…one time the teacher took a picwith me and the guinea pig and then got it printed on a T-shirt…I think she didthat for all the kids…and to this day I still have the T-shirt…



Themid-‘70s was a magical time for TV…I hate TV now but as a little kid I was Mr.TV…other than cartoons there was All In The Family, The Jeffersons, M*A*S*H*,Good Times, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Carol Burnett Show…which alwaysconfused me I wondered why they would start breaking up laughing in the middleof the skits…but the Saturday night lineup from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. was All InThe Family, The Jeffersons, M*A*S*H*, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and the CarolBurnett show…by the time it was over was my bedtime…



Freehold,N.J. was a magical place to me…and the trip there was an odyssey…my dad was themanager of a chain of dry cleaning stores and the chain had a van they used todo deliveries…and my dad used it like a personal vehicle (with the boss’permission) and so we used it to drive out to Freehold…when I was REALL younglike four or something he had this Oldsmobile Cutlass…I guess he got rid of itat some point…you don’t really need a car in the city and it costs money…butthen he got the job with Ned King Cleaners managing all the stores and so wegot to take the van down to Freehold…



Iguess for most kids growing up in a normal, suburban atmosphere, going to thebig city must have been an amazing journey…but for me, growing up in Manhattanit was the opposite…I would go to Freehold and things that are normal were likeWOW! To me…everyone had a car, and a driveway, and a house with an attic andbasement…and there were trees on the streets…and no tall buildings…people tookcars to school…and there were wide-open spaces…and the kids were all whiteunlike where I went to school where most of the time there were only a handful ofwhite kids…



Butit wasn’t just the amazing drive there and being in such a weird place, it wasalso the people…back in New York, nobody liked me except for my three bestfriends…but in Freehold my two cool cousins actually wanted to hang out with me…andso for much of the ‘70s and beyond I idolized them and wanted to be like them…soit was at this early age, in the mid-‘70s, where I got it into my head thatthere were other places to live besides the big city…I didn’t think I’d ever beable to leave New York, and it was another 15 years before I actually found away…a quite amazing 15 years…

Pick Up The Pieces

Alot of this stuff, I can’t remember exact dates…this was a long time ago…shouldbe interesting anyway…1975 was the year I switched schools…I had been going toP.S. 163…cool as shit…I could walk to school without crossing any streets…Icould see the school from my 11th floor terrace…but then my momswitched me to P.S. 75…two “long blocks down” (east-west blocks on the upperwest side of manhattan are about 3 times as long as north-south blocks)…whitekids!!...there were only a few white kids at P.S. 163 but going to P.S. 75 atleast half of the kids were white…it was weird…after going to P.S. 163 for solong, I didn’t really know how to relate much to white kids…I had two goodfriends that were white but I mean relate to white kids I don’t know…or a wholegroup of them…1975 was the last year I had my first best friend, Chuck Lesch,with me…I don’t recall how I met him, I think my mom was friends with hisparents…I don’t know where he went to school…he lived one floor below…apartment#10D.. and there were two other kids I used to pal around with, Billy and Boris…wewere like the proverbial Four Musketeers…but Chuck and I were closest…



theysaid my mom worked hard to get me transferred there…dealing with the publicschool bureaucracy…that kind of makes her out to sound racist…worked hard toget me out of the school where there were like 4 other white kids that I knewof to the school to a school that was over half white…but no…it was just abetter school…I remember at the time appreciating it…someone went through a lotof work to do something good for me? Yes…it was an odd concept but I rememberthinking it was cool…even though I didn’t want to go to some school that I hadto walk about almost half a mile to…



Mylast teacher at P.S. 163 was a Japanese-American woman named Miss Takagi…I hadtrouble pronouncing it, I used to call her “Mr. Kagi”…I think she transferredover to P.S. 75 after I did…my first teacher at P.S. 75 was Mrs. Karasik…I usedto call her “Mrs. Carrot Stick”…not making fun of her, I just had trouble pronouncingthings…or maybe not…



Iwas really “making the rounds” during the summer of 1975…most of my best ‘70smemories were from the summer…NO SCHOOL!!...once you get into the work forceand especially if you keep the same job for a long time, the years tend to runtogether because there is no major shift in what you are doing like when youare in school, going through the grades, having summer off, etc…



Earlyon in the summer, my mom took me up to Lake George, in upstate New York…she hada friend up there named Robin Dewinder, who let us stay at her place for a fewdays…she had a huge jar full of pennies in her living room and when I met her,first thing she told me “see this jar, there are exactly a thousand pennies inhere and I count them every day to make sure none are missing…now if you takeone I’ll find out about it”…freaked me out…but I believed it…and so I didn’ttouch any of the pennies…I didn’t go near the jar…except on the last day, Itook a few J



Iwent fishing for the first (and only time in my life)…got a bite, too…wow!!...atest of strength vs. a fish…I swore I was going to reel this one in but then itgot away…managed to get itself loose…I guess it’s the same for a lot of kidsbut summer activities almost always involved beaches and swimming pools…so atone point during the little vacation my mom and Robin took me to a swimmingpool, where I almost drowned…



Iwas always fascinated by the “drop-off” in a swimming pool…there’s a shallowend and a deep end to most pools and so you get in at the shallow end and makeyour way towards the deep end and it either gets progressively deeper or moreusually, there’s a big drop-off…I used to love to go to the drop off point…tothe point where it’s too deep…to the point where I should go…and sort of staythere, and dance around…only this time, I slipped into the deep end and startedto feel myself sinking…



It’sfunny, as young as I was I knew certain things instinctively…I knew i couldpossibly die right there…I also knew that the power to save my life was withinme…that if I used all of my strength I could get up to the surface, breath, andkind of dog paddle my way to the shallow end which was not far…and I totallyassumed that none of the adults knew what was going on…that they were all up ontheir beach chairs relaxing and reading their books…



Theentire thing happened over the course of a few seconds but it seemed muchlonger…what I told myself I was going to do was actually let myself sink alittle more…and then with all the power I could muster just thrust myself tothe top of the water and just dog paddle to the shallow end of the pool…at thatpoint there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to live…so I sank a littlebit…maybe a foot and a half…and I was ready to explode myself up when just thenI felt two hands grab me under my armpits and then we both went shooting up tothe surface…the lifeguard must have seen what was going on, and so he got meout of the pool…



Tookme over to the side where my mom and Robin were…I was feeling like it was nobig deal…I felt like I had been in no danger of drowning, once I knew what I hadto do…but my mom and Robin were so upset and freaked out (“oh my god terry areyou alright are you breathing?”) and they were also thanking the lifeguard…andso it was too much drama for a little kid and I burst out crying…



Abit later I wanted to go back into the pool but they were like noooooo, no morepool for you…for a while I remember regretting that the lifeguard did that…I wantto “save” myself…



BeforeI left Lake George I got this little bank…”cuss” bank…allegedly whenever yousaid a bad word you had to put a certain amount of money into the bank…it was asmall wooden cup, about the size of a small tea cup…it had a cool smell…cedarshavings like what people would put in the bottom of a hamster cage…it had thesmell of a cigar box but without the cigars…on the outside it said “cussing iswrong and it just ain’t funny and if you cuss it will cost you money”…”damn,and such = one cent; egads and such = five cents; @#$%^& = ten cents (itwas for kids, so there were no REAL cuss words)…it had a plastic or rubber topwhere the slot was where you were to put the coins…I lost that part of it andso I used to keep the cup upside down in order to lock in the cedar smell…I woundup losing the damn thing but I think I was able to hold on to it for a longwhile…lost it in the early ‘80s…



Thevast majority of summertime activities for city kids involved getting out ofthe city…it was always good if you had a friend who lived someplace niceoutside the city…I would visit my aunts, uncles, cousins in Freehold, N.J. andwe’d go drive the two hours to Manasquan Beach…from 1976-1980 I had sleepawaycamps to go to…and even the day camps were all about going someplace a littleupstate or going to the beaches of Long Island or Westchester County…after thetrip up to Lake George, I went someplace in upstate New York and I think tothis day I’ll never hear the end of it: The Fresh Air Fund…



MyNew Jerseycousins made so much fun of me…for YEARS afterwards…because the Fresh Air Fundwas considered to be mostly for black inner city kids…on the bus and subway adsfor the Fresh Air fund there was always a picture of some black kid or anotherenjoying himself in the country…



Whatthe Fresh Air Fund was, or is, is that families from nice, country or at leastsuburban areas offer to take in city kids for a week…poor, inner-city mostly ifnot all minority kids who “don’t have a chance” to get out of the city…and sothey stuck me on a bus to who-knows-where, probably a few counties up north ofthe city but to a little kid it’s like a million miles away…



Thefamily that took me in was The Scofields…us city kids all got on a bus for atwo plus hour trip upstate and we got to this one bus station and each familywas assigned a kid ahead of time and each family had the kids name on a pieceof paper…so it was chaos it was kind of like a planned meeting someone you’venever met before, at an airport, I guess…so some adult asked me my name and I toldhim and then he found the family with my name on the piece of paper and therewe were…



I stillremember how the big room was where we slept…the family had 5 kids, if I remembercorrectly…I gravitated to the two older kids…it’s funny, but the oldest onesort of looked like my cousin Tony a little bit, and the second oldest onelooked a little bit my cousin David…they reminded me of my cousins from Jersey…wasI thinking all country people and suburbanites looked alike??...and there was alittle kid named Mark and they called him Markie but he could pronounce itcorrectly, he called himself “Mercy”…I was already cussing a little by then andI so taught the little kid some curse words and he went and told his parents…butit was fun…we used to eat hot dogs and we’d get milk and cookies before bed…nicepeople…the mom would come up and kiss me goodnight…



By 1975 I wasa full-fledged baseball freak but didn’t know how to play…I was scared of theball…I was totally into watching it on TV even though there’s no action most ofthe time…I still loved it…I guess I had been to a game or two…and I lovedbaseball cards…more on that later…I had a huge collection, I loved them…readingthem, looking at the pictures, the stats…I also liked hitting but when it cameto fielding I was scared of the ball…all you had to do to get on base was hitthe ball to me cos I was gonna miss it and I couldn’t throw for shit…



It was kindof like Lupus from “The Bad News Bears”, even though this was before that moviecame out…someone would hit the ball towards me and I’d stick my arm out and tryto not let the ball get near me…



So one timewe were in the yard playing baseball and the second oldest kid hit the ball andit went towards me but it wasn’t going towards my head, it was low…I rantowards the ball a little bit, stuck my glove down and caught it!!...first timeever…I stood there looking at the ball and the older brother said “what are youdoing?”…and I said “I caught it”…like it was the most amazing thing in theworld…and he said, “so what? People catch fly balls all the time.  Now throw it!”, which I did…but I felt alittle more human after that…I don’t think I had ever felt that accomplished inmy life up to that point…



Later thatsummer, in August of 1975…I went to visit my cousins in Freehold like myparents and I used to always do during the summer…it felt odd being around themafter spending a week or two with the Scofield boys…like I said, the two olderkids reminded me so much of Tony and David and then here I was with them…surrealin a way…



That October,I watched the world series, every game of it…It was the Reds vs. The Red Sox…easyto remember!!...they were both Red…and it’s funny how mature I was at that age…Iwas starting to realize that in pro baseball, 90% of it is boring…the dramaticaction like someone hitting a grand slam to win the game happened only once ina blue moon…and I was cool with that…I was never like “this is boring” andwanting to not watch…it was all amazing to me on some level…watching theplayers…Dave Concepcion (why a white first name and a Spanish last name?),Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, one dude named Foster…and then for the RedSox it was Carl Yastremski and Carlton Fisk…



So I watchedthe game every night with my mom and had an apple each night…that was myroutine…even then…I was still the biggest candyface you’d ever seen…I was sortof once in a while thinking I should eat healthy…