Lite Brite

 

 

 

I usually post a Christmas story here if I'm in the mood. Most of my past Christmases fade into the dust as nothing exceptional sticks out. However, there are a few that do. Two of them I'll tell you about here. One is a great memory for me and the other, quite ugly. This is all true

The Good.

Of course I was up early for Christmas morning when I was five. I had managed to beat everyone at that. Even at that age, if I was the first one up, I knew enough to creep around as to not wake the others. So I crept down the stairs and came upon a sight. The whole living room seemed stuffed with gifts. As a little kid, everything in the world seems so much larger. The living room, the tree, the gifts and anyone older than me. Remember how your perspective was very different then? To me, it seemed that the living room had no more room in it when filled with so many gifts.

I walked up to them, trying to figure out who was getting what. I could see my brother's name and mine on most. The stockings hung up were bulging and on the stairway banister, six fist sized ornamental foiled balls were taped to them. I didn't know they were chocolate candies underneath that foil till I was told later.

When everyone else got up we tore into the gifts. It's such a blur that I really don't remember much except for that my Mom was sitting there on the couch, fully dressed and smoking her Newport cigarettes and drinking her fave earl gray tea. My Dad, was over by another chair, still half asleep in his paisley pjs.

“Richard, it's Christmas...aren't you getting dressed?” my Mom asks Dad

“Yeah...later.” If it wasn't for us kids being noisy, he'd easily go back to sleep right then and there, half sliding out of the lounger.

My Mom's style back then was to dress like Laura Petrie from the Dick van Dyke show. I really don't remember if she ever wore a dress back then. Then again, she was the youngest Mom in our neighborhood and I remember most of the other Mom's dressing in dresses, which looked like printed bags. Thinking back on it too, my Mom had a decent figure to wear something like Laura would wear. I know, I know....sounds gross to rate your own Mom, but compared to the other house-coated ratbag Moms I knew on our street, she was the better “looker.” 

 

Laura Petrie

 

 

The best gift that Christmas morning I got was Lite Brite. I had asked Dad how does it work and he said we'd set it up later as too much was going on now. I could be a fairly patient kid and knew he was right. No matter...Santa had brought the one gift I was wanting above all else. I can wait.

Later on that night, a few uncles had stopped by and of course, being Irish, there was liquor for the adults. My brother's friend, Bobby, had come by to play with my brother's new gifts. I was soon pushed into the background as the adults adulted with their Irish whiskies and my older brother with his older friend did what all older brothers do, shove you away.

“Will you STOP pestering us! Go away! Get Dad to set up that Lite Brite! Beat it!”

I was getting a bit desperate to get my Lite Brite up and running. To me, from seeing it on TV, it was a magical machine and I HAD to see it now. I returned to the kitchen and approached my Mom about it. She then got up from the table and with a “I'll be back,” came with me to my room upstairs.

For an adult, screwing in a 100 watt light bulb into a plastic box, snapping on a peg board, then a paper graphic with another peg board on top of that was not rocket science. It was to me. Hell, I'm five, give me a break! She then told me to look closely at the holes as they were printed with the first letter of each color. “B” for blue, “R” for red and to push the transparent colored pegs into that hole. She sat next to me on the bed as we did this and offered just enough help for me to figure it out. She was good for helping me as a kid but also would let me struggle with things to learn it myself.

As I filled the peg board, the outline of a sailboat was forming. I became excited because the colors were glowing right into my face and I kept telling my Mom how cool this all was. Here's the key memory that I still see today. I turned to her, excited, she looks at me and smiles. We were doing something together. I had her to myself and she seemed just as enthusiastic about this as I was. We both were experiencing this magic machine for the first time. My Dad and his brothers in law were getting louder, drunker in the kitchen. My brother and Bobby I could hear in his room thumping away on the floor doing God Knows What but the best scene in that house was my Mom and I. We were two best friends discovering life's miracles together.

Once the board was all filled up, I asked her to shut off the overhead light so to see this glow in the dark. She did and I was shocked. The full wizardry of the Lite Brite had shown. The colors were so deep, so bright that it just saturated our eyes, causing me to utter, “Ooooooh!”

In winter gray New England, this was Heaven, or it looked like what Heaven would look like, the deepest colors imaginable. I and my Mom were there to see it. We two had found another revelation together. We two included one another, enjoying each other. It's at this age you find out that sharing “fun” with someone increases it by so much more.

The last time I had a reaction to color was at a Pink Floyd concert decades later. The opening song, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” had a single, gallium-arsenide laser appear and bounce around inside the Civic Center. The beam had an electric blue color to it and a ghostly feature, a semi transparency with what looked like static within the beam itself. Gilmour plucked away at his guitar as this other-worldly thing glowed and sizzled 20 feet above my head. This was the first time I had ever seen a laser in real life. The five year old in me thought “Oooooh!”

The Ugly.

My brother had was on leave from the Navy for the Christmas of '83 when I picked him up at the airport. While driving home, I had warned him that our Mom was in another depressive episode again, this one stronger than the last. She had fought with depression ever since I was alive and it's cycles just repeated itself. She'd get into a deep funk for about three to four months and then somehow get out of that rut, mostly by herself. The treatments for it were lousy back then in the '70's and she had tired of them not working as promised. Eventually, she gave up on Dr's, psychiatrists and would just tough it out alone.

This bout of depression was worse though in '83. I had known that trying to get her to see a physician was not going to work as she'd completely balk at the idea. So I did what I did most times I saw this in the past, wait it out. She'd come around again in time.

“Holy shit!” my brother says to me when he encountered our Mom again on Christmas Eve. “She's really bad this time around!” He had not seen her in two years so this was a shock to him.

I had told him “Yeah” but was hoping for that turnaround we both had always seen before. It happened so many times in the past like this.

“I don't know man...I don't know.” he commented.

She has lost weight, let her hair turn into a rat's nest and had this completely blank expression on her face most of the time.

“I'm calling her GP tomorrow.” he says.

“She won't do a damn thing, she'll tell the Dr to buzz off...she'll fight any advice he has! She won't on her own accord look for help.” I reply

“Yeah...I know she will, but what else can we do?”

On Christmas morning, my brother gets off the phone, “The Dr says to take the 'bull by the horn' and literally kidnap her to Butler Psychiatric Hospital. He says not to worry about any legal problems with it...and if she fights, just drag her there anyway, anyhow. I'll back you two up.”

So my brother and I come up with a ruse, we were all to just take a ride this morning. She had gone without any resistance. Once inside the main entrance to Butler was when I felt her pulling away from me and him, trying to get back to the car. I just gripped her arm harder and shoved her along towards the ER desk they had there. Within two minutes, three large oak sized men showed up and grabbed her, pulling her along and past two doors that slammed shut behind them. I then heard some mechanical sounds coming from those doors. Automatic locks engaging so I figured. It was that sound of the doors that got me. The gravity of this finally sunk in. My Mom has been locked up in crazy bin.

On the drive home from Butler, my brother turns to me and in his particular black/dark humor says, “Merry Christmas!”

I got the joke. Life was just too absurd at times to make any sense. We both, for some reason, had this kind of humor and outlook on life.

Butler Hospital then, was beautiful. It looked like the best hotel I had ever seen. Quiet, clean with expensive paintings on the walls and other artworks placed in the halls. When my brother and I arrived for a family meeting, we were led by a psychiatric graduate student to the “Locked ward.” On our way there, we had passed through an arboretum filled with bushes, trees, flowers and ivy, all growing inside this large room that led to a staircase and open walkway in the center of the building. It smelled like summer in there, it being just the day after Christmas.

Family meetings include everyone, kids, parents, relatives. I instinctively knew what was about to happen there. This meeting was not about my Mom, it was a surreptitious staged event by the Dr's and assistants to watch the family members as they talked about Mom. They were looking for family dynamics and would find them, I was assured of that. I doubt any other relative knew that they were the subjects that morning. I knew I would be. How? I was a psych major at RIC and had seen this very same thing at a visit to a mental health center we had to witness and then write about.

Dr Martin Furman was her assigned Dr. He had an odd Afrikaner accent which made sense, since he was born and lived in South Africa during Apartheid's heyday, later emigrating to America, landing in Rhode Island as a psychiatric physician at Butler. This guy looked like a German SS officer to me and with that German exactness for detail and mannerisms. This guy wasn't about to fuck around at all, with anything.

Furman starts with me. So I tell him of the past twenty or so years of her illness, life and whatnot. I was fairly truthful but felt a bit defensive as he probed me further on details. It then happened, Furman's match lit the fuse. The interactions of everyone there fired up and accusations, old hurts, bitterness came out. Events happening 20 years before I was born came to light. Three graduate level interns sitting with us then started scribbling away on their legal pads as everyone talked at once. Furman just became quiet and leaned back, just watching everyone else and not really my Mom at all. I myself shut the hell up, not taking part in this as I knew that the people there were dissecting us. I didn't want to be dissected at all. My past, bad decisions and general personality I wasn't about to divulge or even reveal via body language.

Later on, after it was over, my brother and I were checking out that arboretum we saw earlier. It was really nice to see a little, living forest in late December. He then turns to me says, “Oh..I forgot...and Happy New Year too!” Even more of his nihilistic humor!

Things got better within a month. By the times in the early '80s, they had much better drugs and therapies to deal with depression. I would shake Martin Furman's hand today if I happen to come across him. He had managed to make my Mom's life bearable for the next 13 years.

**

It goes without saying that I prefer the Christmas of 1969 better than that of 1983. I had, for a time at least, a Mom who was lucid and stable for it. And when she was healthy, she was there for me and we both enjoyed each other's company. It wasn't all crap and there were times some absolute gems we two had found together. I haven't forgotten about that.

Poles Apart

 

 

The door is halfway open to the hallway. I can see well from my little examination room as a Dr wheels his touch screen up to my room, but before entering it he taps some icon and a song comes on from the overhead speakers. He's pleased and turns it up more by sliding his finger up. Pushing his touch screen in he introduces himself, “I'm Dr SuchnSuch!”

I then say to him because I immediately recognized the guitar solo, “You like David Gilmour??

He stares at me for a second...”You KNOW who he is?”

“Yeah, that's “Poles Apart” from the Division Bell you're playing now.” It's a song where Gilmour tries to patch up the past he had with Syd Barrett and Roger Waters.

He again stares...”How...? None of my patients know of this..you're the first to make any mention of it. I play it all the time.”

We then kill 15 minutes speaking of Pink Floyd, Roger Waters and comparing concerts we've seen, before we get to the task at hand, checking me out.

The tests come back, “Yup, didn't really have to do them but wanted to confirm what I thought. You have lobar pneumonia, lower right lobe, could hear it on the stethoscope. It's pretty common...it can last days or weeks, depending on who you are and in your case, you were probably walking around with it for a week w/o knowing it til the last days it kicked in.”

I think, “Great...same damn thing my Dad would get, again and again,” but he hated Dr's and never would see one. Last time he got the big P, it took him out.

“Go to CVS, get these meds and it'll be gone in a day or two.”

Then...

He's following me through the maze in the office space speaking of other Pink Floyd stories he had. The other patients waiting are sort of looking at us, hearing us speak of things NOT medical. At the entrance, he says...”Kudos for knowing 'Poles Apart!' You certainly surprised me on a Saturday.”

The only other Dr story I have was when my brother was in RI Hospital and his Dr had paperwork for me to sign so they could do surgery on him.

“Oh, There's Dr Adair now, she'll take your papers”

I turn around and see this little girl scout in a white lab coat emblazoned with RI Hospital/Brown U emblem. She looks 17. I almost say, “You're a Dr...really?” I didn't but was stunned at how young she looked. It then reminded me that I was above the median age for Americans..way above it. The chances of me running into anyone older than me were getting shorter and shorter. It looks like most I meet are younger than me. Well of course they are....statistics back it up. But damn, she looked like jailbait. And apparently she was the one who did the laparoscopic surgery on my brother. Sigh...this little girl has far more talent, degrees and money than I will ever see. 

 

Poles Apart

 

A Little Fun

 

 

That was a first. I crashed a high school reunion I had no business attending. It was the 1982 Tolman High school 40^th. I, instead, was a St Ray's 1982 graduate. The reason I went was because I figured I'd run into kids (now old adults) I knew in Goff Jr High back....in 1979. When we all left jr high, most of the ones I knew went to Tolman. You get older, you look back a lot and these people I knew then did figure in my life to some importance. I wanted to see how they turned out.

A few did recognize me and a few others did once they learned my name. After looking at them sort of intently, I could recognize their eyes. They were amazed by my white shock of hair I sport now. Their last memory of me was of auburn/reddish haired Irish kid.

Dave asks: “So, what are you up too?”

I then tell him I have to compress in 4 minutes 40 years of my life. I tell him of my career path, domestic life and how I just ditched a job and the whole scene a year after covid ravaged the nursing/rehab homes. I stayed “retired' for about a year. His eyes widened when I told him that and I caught it. If you work with the deaf, you learn to read people quick.

“You're retired? He asks, with a bit of surprise.

“No..well...sort of..maybe...I don't know yet.” I tell him. “I am working again and the future I kind of leave open ended as to what's next. To tell the truth, I don't know what the future holds. No one does. Work till I drop, quit, retire and feed the ducks at the pond...take up water color painting? Who knows?”

He then tells me of his three daughters that he's pushing through college. I then think, “No wonder he was surprised at me, he's working to pay off what the state won't.”

A situation occurred where I had the same reaction at my 35^th reunion for St Ray's. I was introduced to a guy I knew back then and then tried like hell to hide my light horror. The guy, I'll call Phill, looked like he was 69 years old. He was bald, covered in old age spots and sort of hunched. I tried, really tried not to look shocked but you can't hide it all. There are days where I feel that old but I don't look like this guy. We spoke for a few and I just scanned him as we talked. “God...how some people age badly” I thought.

I then looked around at the women. There were a couple of Sloppo-patomuses there but most were average. Though there were a few cheerleader types who must've spent 45 minutes trying to wriggle themselves into a pair of skinny jeans. The desperately thin at 59 years of age.

Since I crashed this party, I had no name tag. When I arrived I just sort of walked past the registration table, got a beer and started schmoozing. I wondered how long I could get away with it. Not too long apparently.

Thirty minutes in a guy comes up to me and asks, “Who are you? You have no name tag? Alot of people seem to think they know you but you have no tag.”

“Nope. I am a 1982 graduate of Saint Rays, but I figured I'd see people I know here.”

“Did you pay?” he asks.

“Nope.” I tell him.

“Well,” he goes on, “don't you think it's unfair that these people paid and you didn't?”

I then tell him why would I? I never attended Tolman high, and I was there for a short time anyway and had NO intention of eating their food. I'm not that much of a leech. I too, have some pride.

“But..the rules...you didn't pay!” he tells me.

I lift my glass of Blue Moon beer to him, sort of toasting him and say, “Ain't it funny how life turns out? How these things occur? You enjoy the party, I know I will.” And I walk off.

I knew that he'd rejoin his group and in about 28 seconds my crime would be broadcast to all there. No problem. I headed downstairs to the bar and ordered a greaseburger. There, I am no longer trespassing on the temporary property of Tolman's 40^th that's going on upstairs and I managed to continue my chats with some who were downstairs as well.

Crashing events you were never invited to can be fun. When much younger, a few of us would stumble across a wedding reception at some restaurant or event place and we'd slide ourselves in. The lure of falling down drunk bridesmaids was usually the motive. Or, the reception was really hopping and we'd invite ourselves anyway for a good time.

The best crash was at a Bruce Sundland, Governor of RI event. My brother at the time was a writer and he had written a scathing, satirical piece about Sundlund's dating habits. It was titled, “Bruce Sundlund's Dating Guide” and in it, my brother makes him come off as the sleaziest, woman using, male slutting, whore mongering prick you ever met. My brother managed to get away with it because at the bottom of the piece was written: “This is a spoof, a work of comedic fiction. In no way should anyone take this as a serious piece of journalism. All statements in this article are wholly made up” But it was written in teensy-weensy script so more than a few people never read that part of it and thought the piece was real and just an ugly political hatchet job on the governor. You have to be extra-specially STUPID not to get satire, but there are more than a few in RI who are dullards.

How did my brother know people took it as a real piece of journalism? The paper he worked for received dozens of pieces of hate mail. The editors thought it a goof and it sold more copies. Since the piece was stated to be a “work of fiction,” the paper was barely not liable for libel slandering.

Soo, my brother wanting to enjoy a good time, wants to shake the Governor's hand. The event was at the Biltmore and we go down, dressed sort of business casual and we drink, rob the buffet line and my brother is waiting for the moment to place himself in front of Sundland.

He gets his chance.

“Hello Sir, I'm Ken M____, I was the one who wrote that piece in the Providence Monthly.

It took the gov about 12 seconds to figure it out and then just icily stared at my brother.

My brother and I retreated to a corner of the room, trying not to laugh. I managed to finish off a beer when two very serious looking guys come up to us.

“You two have to leave...now!” they say.

“Why? Asks my brother.

“There's no why, youse two have to go!”

So we leave. Why spend the weekend at the Intake Center at the ACI?

Anyways, I managed to see a few I knew from so long ago at that reunion I might not have otherwise. Where and when would I be able to find them all stuffed into a single room again?

 

Swerve

 

 

I've been quiet huh? Well, there hasn't been much to talk about that I figure would interest anyone. Believe me, I could write about pretty much anything but I am sure the subject matter would bore the hell out of people. Who cares about the Battle of Agincourt except me and a few Medieval history professors? Quickie note on that battle, the English use of the longbow skewered thousands of French knights. It was a slaughter.

So, something new.

I am startled, look up and see I'm halfway into the middle lane on 95N just before I get into Providence. I swing the car back into my lane and wonder why I'm nodding off so many times driving home. I feel soo damned tired that my eye lids, if they close halfway, will drop all the way and I'm half asleep again. I do it again just past Providence center right after the bridge construction.

Not good.

I force myself to stay awake as much as I can and make it off the School street exit and am glad because swerving the car at 25mph is “safer” vs. doing it at highway speeds. I make it home but don't get out of the car. I shut it off and lean my head back and fall asleep for about 15 minutes. Anyone walking by might think I'm dead. I never sleep in my car. I wake up, finally get out of the car, make it into the house and start to get done the tasks I had promised myself I'd do once home.

I barely get the laundry started when I give up and go to bed at 3PM and don't get up till 9PM.

I think I just of been really tired today, that's all.

A day or so earlier...

Halloween night, I could feel a molar on the lower right side heating up, a slight pain. That's nothing new to me. I have tons of fabricated teeth and on occasion, they act up a bit. But on November 1^st, that tooth started to scream. If you've never had a full blow HOT toothache, it's damn near impossible to explain that kind of pain. Ever stub your toe in the middle of the night? Ok, sort of like that but also set it on fire with no real way to calm it down. It just persists. My only go to remedy was ibuprofen which takes the edge off that agony. It's enough where you can't focus on the day's tasks. And that's the crux of the problem. You cannot focus on too much of anything else well when a tooth is pulsating in your mouth. It's deep bone pain under pressure, sharp, heated and throbbing. At work , we have two lines that you can reach us by, both “rings” are kind of similar but differ in cadence. So, the phone goes off and there I am, focused on the tooth making itself VERY known and I pick up...and no one's there. A friend, then asks me, “Are you alright?” He meant that why the hell did I pick up on a call that wasn't directed toward us. I stood there and realized what it was, the damn tooth had me elsewhere.

Unrelenting pain does a great job ruining your attention span and motivation to get other things done.

So I ate another ibuprofen, mindful not to pop them like candy mints. They'd last for about 3 hours and the label says four till you take the next one. Well, I shaved an hour off that. I'm no hard core drinker so my liver is in decent shape to handle that. I wait an hour and finally that loud mouthed tooth is shut up for a bit. Great, now I can focus.

Here's something about toothaches that I found odd and it's probably only me. If I can fall asleep, they don't bother me at all, even if it's a super stinging one. The trick is to pop some pills before bed and hope you zonk out before they wear off.

But...

The next morning I wake up, I'd say, give it about 15 minutes and my body's nervous system kicks in to tell me “you have a toothache!” and does it come back with a vengeance.
The pain is in concert with your heart beat... BANG...BANG...BANG!

I'm up and it's 5AM, I sat here, staring at this screen, occasionally out the window sort of hazed out. My jaw felt swollen and I was getting tired and spacey. Shit...is it spreading? Are we going to have nice systemic sepsis problem I can be admitted to a hospital for? That's the big worry about tooth infections. Will they spread and if they do, then tend to ape. I've never had that happen but I am acutely aware of the danger in that if you wait too long. I then realize the flesh on my right cheek, chin and lower lip is starting to sting. Fuck! It IS spreading.

By 9AM I was wiped out again. I was juggling the next options I had. Call the dentist and fork over about $1000 to $2000 of copays as the upper limit of my insurance would be wasted in seconds. Or, go to the clinic and cheat by getting some antibiotics which will kill the problem but it's only a few month temporary fix...or..go back to bed and see how I felt when I got up.

I went to bed.

A few hours later I get up, waiting for my body to start that cycle again. 'Hey, he's awake, start up that pulsing pain on him again!” But...it didn't happen. As I write this, I knocked on my maple wood desk here as a precaution that it doesn't come back. I hope my immune system won this battle, this time around. My face finally stopped stinging a day later.

I then thought of the time before antibiotics and pain killers and how the hell anyone then managed to tolerate a very hot tooth. . Alot of prayers to God? Booze if you had it? A witch doctor who waved a dead wombat over your head to cure you? You had nothing really but your own immune system which either fought and won or did not. Ugh..

Thank God for Louis Pasteur and medical SCIENCE..thank my lucky stars for being born at the right time too.  Not that I availed myself to them though, but they're there. Cheap prick that I am figuring out cost efficient options. 

I then figured out why I was driving all over the highway that day. Now that I'm older, illness's first symptoms hit me differently. They all seem to start by my becoming dead tired. The other usual symptoms, coughing, puking or turning various colors of red, happen secondly now. I sigh in my mind...”Great, it happens to me on 95 now...”

A paraphrased conversation with Dr. Casarella a couple of decades ago.

“I see your brother too you know...you both have similar teeth...soft enamel.”

Then he asks. “Did you have a lot of fevers as a kid??

I mumble..”Yes” and am very curious as to how he knows. So I ask.

“The molars...and the further back they are, have a dusty white color to them...it's indicative of high fevers...and softening...and it stays for life.”

I think, “Gee, what luck!”

 

Snake Den

 

 

 

 

I once worked for a summer with a start up financial firm back in '91ish. Equity Ideas was housed in a single large room above a knife sharpening shop on that shit hole of a street, Cranston St in Providence. It was a legitimate business, just barely incepted by Tom C., who quit his mortgage job at Citizen's Bank to make a go of his own doing mortgages, hence the lousy digs because he was just starting off. Tom was affable enough, with just enough sincerity to make him believable, most of the time. I found most others in that business to be lying sons of a bitches who would back stab their own Mom for a profit of $3.

The idea of Equity Ideas was re-financing loans. Tom's company would scan the mortgage deeds in New England, get the personal details, which is public information, and call them up and hopefully get that person into a lower interest rate mortgage. Of course there would be a fee but still the homeowner would save thousands on the life of their current rip off bank mortgage.

The problem was calling them and that was part of my job. The success rate was two sales out of one hundred “leads.” That's not many. But I was selling a product that was in the area of $100,000 to $200,000. It requires some real tenacity to listen to hang ups, swearing and having to explain to sometimes morons how a mortgage works and how they were getting shafted by their current bank. The 2% I managed to sell were grateful beyond belief when we managed to lower their rates a few points. My commission was based on the size of the mortgage, 1% of the total. So refinance a loan for $150,000, I walk away with $1,500. I managed to sell two before I quit at the end of the summer.

It was also then when I learned that the sales manager felt it was his duty to put his hand into my pocket and clip a few dollars for himself. I was a newbie in the field and my protests really rattled that guy when he tried to walk off with $400 of my commission. The thing being, it was sort of expected that these guys dipped into your own profitable work. If you didn't allow it to happen, your good leads, support and general status in the organization would fall. So, bend over and allow it was the rule if you want to continue to survive. But I didn't know and my complaints got me $200 of it back, but after that, I was a dirtbag according to the sales manager. I wasn't “playing along.”

Tom had three partners, Tom himself, some loud mouthed Guido and this really prematurely bald young Italian who was so quiet and secretive it set off my own “smoke detector” and I was wary of this guy. Luckily, I didn't have to deal much with him. They spent their times at their desks making quiet phone calls or plotting their next profitable kill.

In August of that year, Tom comes to me and offers an idea, “Let's go white water rafting!” I thought it a cool idea as I had never done it before and it sounded fun. We'd be rafting down the Lehigh River in the Poconos in Pennsylvania and partying in rented condos nearby. It was one of those private bus trips where a bunch of people signed up, paid about $150 and you'd get three days of condo and rafting. What Tom told me then, was that it would be mostly young bankers, financiers and similar types he knew in the Providence area. Tom and the other two partners would be going too. Tom takes me aside from all the others and quietly tells me not to talk about any business with anyone as I would probably be pumped for any info at all by the others. Other competitors would like to know what we were up too.

So we board the bus and drive out. On the way out, I meet others in the RI banking industry. Most were sales guys, all braggarts and liars. What amazed me was that they were always “on,” always in that role no matter where they were or what subject came up. “I'm the best. I'm the richest/smartest/hottest/ and above all that, they projected the vibe of “You can trust me.” I realized I was riding on a bus full of snakes.

There was one guy NOT in finance but an owner of a jewelry store on Mineral Spring in North Providence. We got to talking and for some reason he felt comfortable opening up and confirmed to me he was just another kind of thief. He was amongst friends on that bus. He had told me that not only he overcharges for his stock and repairs, but he stole from the customer's jewelry as well. Here's how he managed to do it. If you brought in a gold chain that snapped or the clasp wasn't working, he'd fix it, but he'd also snip off two or three links of the chain, solder it back together and charge you for fixing it. “They never figure it out!” He proudly claimed. He also had tools for abrading the gold on rings. He'd sand off a bit of gold from them, polish them back up and again, the customer would never know. “At month's end, I'd have a nice little pile of gold, enough to make a 22kt ring I could sell w/o having to purchase any gold myself to make it, 100% pure profit!” He seemed rather proud of himself as he told me this story.

I sat there, being the only non business guy there and quietly thought, “You god damn thief!” Actually, most of the guys on the bus were all proud of their ability to BS people out of their money.

By the end of August, I had had enough of that job. I quit. Though I remained friends with Tom for a while longer. He struck me as being the least thieving of the lot I had met in that crowd. As life does, people drift apart and in time I don't see Tom for a few years except at a chance meeting at the Hot Club down at the river in Providence.

We have a short conversation when Tom tells me, “Remember those two others I was partners with? Well, they downloaded all my files, clients and prospective customers and sold out of the company. They used that information I had collected to start their own refinance business. They also stole a few piece of office equipment too”

“They stole your client base? Is that illegal?”

Tom tells me it probably wasn't as nobody signed any confidentiality agreements and it wasn't worth the years in court trying to prove it. He didn't want to blow that money hiring lawyers to recover as it would probably be a wash in the end. He'd recover but in essence, be in the same place he was to begin with. Tom did tell me he started another refinance business, doing the same thing. This time he was the sole owner.

More Stories...

 

 

 

I tried three times to learn a musical instrument. Firstly drums at 10 but the teacher was not too patient with my progress and I came to dislike him. Secondly with guitar, with my brother teaching me but that fell by the wayside as I had to memorize, by ear, the position of my hand on the fret board. My hand wouldn't cooperate. And lastly piano, and again you have to have coordination to pull that off. What my problem was....propioception. It's the ability to know where and what your body is doing at all time. Sports figures have this in abundance. I however, was a complete klutz and could never get my arms or legs to do those finer movements w/o it looking like spasticity. No ballerina was I.

At my brother's funeral, his best friend, T.M., Esquire (a lawyer) spoke of Ken's highlight of his life, when he was in a garage band called the Felbs.  The real name of the band was "The Paul Felber Mutha Fuck Yo' Ass Brown Bitch Biscuit Blues Band." However, even for the 70s which allowed anything, this was going too far. So they shortened it to The Felbs.  For the late Boomer generation, being a rock star was a dream as the 60's proved to be so incredibly prolific with creativity. You were adored and girls flung themselves at you. After playing local colleges and nightclubs, they slowly moved up to larger venues like Rocky Point and the Arena in Providence. Instead of playing in front of a few hundred people, it was creeping into the low thousands.

Where was I in this? A tagalong who humped equipment at times. A basic roadie and some tutoring from Mr Felber about acoustics and how to run a mixing board. Being a part of this and the ability to get into clubs, bars and colleges at 15 was fun. If lugging a cabinet and head into a venue, night as well stay as I looked semi official and could say...”I'm with the band.” In truth, no one really cared back then.

It was as close as I could get to rock stardom or near any musical talent. OK. Good enough I thought. I was part of it somehow.

It was at the Rathskellar at RIC in '79 when I saw my first A&R people from what I found out later was Capitol Records. Record companies had “talent scouts” crawling all over to find the next hit band aka: The Gravy Train Money Making Monster Profit Bonanza Hope. I was ordered by my brother not to fuck around nor get too drunk as the band had to put their best foot forward. He also suggested I sit near them to hopefully overhear any conversation. There was a man and women in their late 20's. She looked normal but the guy looked like he stepped off a Hollywood game show set. He had perfect hair, ala Deney Terrio, a perfect tan and the first silk suit I had ever seen. He also never took off his Raybans the entire time he was in the bar.

So I sat there and the band played. The two A&Rs didn't say much at all during the first set till the end when I overheard. “God...they play too loud!” They got up, shook the hands of the guys in the band with an excuse they had to check out a band in Boston. Well, maybe they did, maybe not. Anyways I quietly tell the band what they said and Mr Grzych, the singer, gets back on stage to apologize to the audience for playing too loud. A general shout of “NO! Play LOUDER!” rose up.

Still for a 15 year old me, it was cool to have witnessed this.

So the band keeps plugging away, playing and trying to get noticed by say, WBRU's Rock Hunt where The Schemers beat them out. Oh well.  

But then...

The band managed to to gain some notoriety and get a song played in the Boston radio market, WBCN, WVBF,WBZ and WAAF. “Stop & Go World” was the song. It was a combined style of the Young Adults and David Byrne. How anyone in the Boston area knew of this band or this song was a mystery to us all, but there you have it. There was some rotation of the song on the play lists of those stations.

And...two weeks later it was as if the song never occurred. Poof! Another regional one hit weekly wonder disappears.

Hoop Dreams. Only the very, very few ever get to hit it. Thousands start out and the top 5% perhaps makes it, even less have any staying power.

Still at my age now I can still be enthralled by it all. The ability to 1: Play an instrument and 2: Be able to write well crafted songs is amazing to me. Some people really do have this innate talent but not I. Oh well, I did have as small part in it at one time. What happened to the Felbs band? They all graduated college and got “real” jobs. Today they are all eligible for Social Security. I bet they, like I, hark back. 

 

 That's them. That's my brother covered in envelopes, aping the New Wave style then.

 

 

Breakfast at Tiffanys

 

Certain Things Redacted as These People Are Still Alive and Kicking.

A conversation I had with Nicco while we were driving the company van around the West Bay.

I was about 30, she 24. Nicco was an Audrey Hepburn gamine, RI style that is. Change the hair color to auburn and there you have her. She was born pretty and quickly realized that fact as I was told by her not-born-as-pretty sister.

We were passing Freedom Boat Club in Warwick, right by Chelo's Waterfront, when she nearly crawled into my lap as I was driving to look out the window for a particular car.

“Ohhh..he's not there...his car isn't there....his boat is in dock though.” she lamented.

I ask, “Which boat is that?”

She points to one of those cabin cruisers that had long tinted windows that seemed to wrap around the ship. My first reaction was lottery winnings. Nope. She went on to tell me he was part owner of the marina there and had numerous homes in West Greenwich and worked as a managing associate at IDS Financial. Which struck me for a bit because I had interviewed with them years prior when I was toying getting out of social services.

She then opened up an odd conversation with me that she never broached before. We had known each other at the job for about two years. She then dropped the following into my lap.

“Do you think it's wrong to be a 'kept woman?'” she asked.

“I guess so if you delude yourself into thinking you're not when you are, it'll be a problem.”

That was a polite way of softening my original thought: “If you're open to yourself as selling yourself as a high priced whore...I see no problem.”

She goes on.

“We met a few weeks ago at Christie's Landing in Newport. After a few dates, he said he'd pave the way for me. I could quit this job and never work again. I'd have everything I'd want if I...” and she trailed off.

“...fuck him as his personal 'lil' slut?” I almost wanted to say.

Nicco could come off as naive and innocent but I was told it was all an act. Her pissed off sister told me so once. Nicco had spent her dating life constantly “trading up” boyfriends as she discovered richer ones. Her sister, who wasn't ugly by any means, seems to have held a grudge against how easy Nicco's life could be at times, as guys fell over themselves to ingratiate themselves with her. Those same boys did not fall over for the sister though.

Nicco was a Days of Our Lives soap opera addict. She had told me a few years earlier she had gone to a “Meet n Greet” of those actors there in LA. Specifically to meet the character “Tony DiMera.” aka: Thaao Penghlis, a Greek actor that was sort of tall, dark and handsome. It sort of reminded me of those girls who wait in the greasy back alleys of concert venues, hoping to be picked by the lead singer/guitarist for a chance to have at an Alpha Male with lots of MONEY!

She wasn't the only girl there and managed to meet Thaao for 88 seconds before they moved the line of women along. A lost chance.

In that van that day, with her admission, which was sort of her thinking out loud if anything, cemented all the pieces of the puzzle together for me. She was a gold digger. An up and coming pretty face that had to make it by 30 or the game was over for her. She wasn't well educated by any means, kinda dumb but she was “girl street smart” as hell. She knew exactly which career path to take and had a definite goal. I came to find out her personal social skill set was devastating too.

Soo, time passes, I move on with my job/career and people I knew from then drift away, which was about 30 years ago now. But, I love to look up people and see “where are they now” and I found her.

She did it. She found that one CEO to marry. A guy involved with oil company computer security with ARAMCO..the giant Saudi/US oil conglomerate. I also came across a few pictures of her, by accident, on one of her friend's site. There she was, older, but sitting in a Gulfstream G7 private jet, holding a thumbs up sign, smiling into the camera as they flew to Gstaad Switzerland.

My mouth nearly dropped. Gtsaad! A private jet! Holy Sh*t thought I. She really did hit the husband lottery. There were just four other women on that plane and I tried to think what it costs to rent a G7...or perhaps use as a tax write off as a “business trip”...a rich wives' adventure to a very exclusive town in Switzerland.

She was probably the only gold digger girl I knew to have “made it.” All the others I had met blew it by screwing up the romance or didn't realize they'd be traded in for a younger, fresher version when they hit 28. I've seen that happen a few time as the boyfriend wants to trade in his old hag of a lease for a perky fresh 20 year old one.

So, did I try to get her when I knew her then? Yes. She was floating in between boyfriends when I started working on her. I got a well crafted “kiss off” in the parking lot one day after I had asked her out. I admit, she was really good at getting rid of guys who didn't measure up and I didn't. I didn't own a yacht nor did my career path say “Hamptons on Long Island”

“Oh..thank you.” she says, tracing her finger up and down my forearm, “But I'm not looking for a relationship right now...you can understand right?” And she leans in for a quick kiss on the cheek.

That face. Those eyes. That lion's mane of hair. The way she cocked her body as she listened to me. All of it disarms a guy in seconds. It did me.

After that blow off, I had told her sister what happened and how amazing Nicco's skills were. The sister, just rolled her eyes, “Dammit...she's been like that since she was FIVE! She ALWAYS got her way!”

Ticking Fast!

 

 

 

This isn't a lesson in cosmological time but unfortunately for you, you're going to get one to prove another point. Carl Sagan, in order so you could grasps the past 13.9 BILIION years of time, compressed it all down to just one year. It's a a lot easier to apprehend that than anything in the billions. 

 

 

Click for Larger.

It kind of jolts you when you realize our Earth formed in September. It feels kind of late but that's when it happened compared to the rest of the universe's births. Even more startling, compared to the rest of time, is that the first real humans formed on December 31, 11:52PM on the last day of the year. Just 8 minutes ago..if today was New Years eve and you're seeing the ball drop now.

I wondered, could I apply this to my own life? Show my own life compressed on a one year calendar? You bet you can if you sit there and figure the damn formula out. The one I came up with may be wrong and off. I know it's not entirely accurate down to the exact day but it's enough to have startled me. I have to make one supposition though, when was I going to kick the bucket? I used a site, “Living to 100” to get a “range” of when I may pop the twig. Due to the males in my family kicking it wayyy before their time and I have those genetics, I probably ain't long for this world as well. Then again, I could be wrong an beat the genetic averages of this family but in order for the calculation to work, I need a life span in years.

According to Living to 100...which I won't and the calculation pegged me to quit at 74.

So, I'm 58 and a half now, what day of what month do I live at?

I start with my age, 58.5 x 365 = 21,353 days. Multiply that by .0138 (my personal dead factor) and that gives me 294.7. Divide that by the average number of days in a month (30) and I get 9.82.

That's 9.82 months. Nine months (September) plus .82 of the next one. That comes out to about October 25^th. Holy Mother of God. I'm in late October now! Two months left, abouts, if I actually hit it at 74 on December 31^st.

If things hold true and I float away at 74, my life on a calendar looks like this:

I started kindergarten at 5 on January 29^th.

First Communion? February 10^th at 8.

At 13, I saw the first Star Wars movie on March 8^th. That's how old that flick is!

Add to that is when I saw Apocalypse Now (1979), which fell on March 19^th. Another oldie. 

March 18th was my first concert seen, Frank Zappa.  

I got my license at 16. Which fell on March 24^th.

A certain fun something happened at 17 and a half, that was March 29^th.

High School graduation? April 3^rd.

College graduation? April 27^th (I did the FIVE year plan. It would've been April 22^nd had a relative not going completely crazy requiring me to play nurse for a good time).

Best concert I saw?  Pink Floyd, April 29th of my calendar. The Delicate Thunder tour.

I then noticed many of the great fun things I had done, all the major milestones I reached in my life, happen in my youth. Why did I notice that, because the rest of the calendar gets more sparse as I and it age. I was then a working schlepp and the fun moments were more and more spaced out. Also, I cannot recall every damn day I worked because...why would I? Why would anyone? What possible mileposts can be found with, “Sigh...another Monday again” can I peg on my calendar and why would they stick out?

My Mom died in 1996, or June 11^th. My brother in 2003 or July 21^st. That also be the time I had a nice summer fling with Roberta, who was far out of my league monetary-wise.

My dalliance with Lori of Cheyenne Wyoming? July 2^nd.

I got my first dog, a maniacal German Shepherd in 2005 which was July 26th.

I had a great free, state paid for summer vacation in 2012 which fell on abouts September 4^th.

I hit 50 on September 12^th

The last technical real mountain I climbed, Willard (which is a kid's hike vs. Mt Washington), was on or abouts October 12^th.

Covid hits the US solidly..(St Pats Day in 2020) about October 14 ish,

Today, I'm in late October...Wow.

All of this just underscores the fact I better get that bucket list checked off faster than I thought. All those days I have left ain't gonna be with a great, agile and working body come late December. Or...I may get hit by a bus tomorrow...either way, time to regain some of that fun I knew in my youth. It's time to cue that old saying they have about older men who try to grasp vitality and youth one more time, it's usually said after they make a huge mistake and create a fine mess of their lives...”You foolish old man! What were you thinking?!!”

 

No Brakes

 

Click Pic to Play!

In the shuffling madness
Of the locomotive breath
Runs the all-time loser
Headlong to his death

Oh, he feels the piston scraping
Steam breaking on his brow
Old Charlie stole the handle
And the train it won't stop
Oh no way to slow down

 

 

I guy I know who is much younger than I, in his 20's, made a great comment on mate selection.

“Does this train have brakes that work?” Translation: “Can this girl stop herself from careening towards destruction?” I thought the saying novel, comical and right. This doesn't mean guys are immune from living lives that bounce from wall to wall, but H. and I were just talking as guys do and the subject was women.

We both agreed that some excitement is needed, some unpredictability, but not the 'Cops at 3AM in the morning arresting your girlfriend because she's setting fire to your car' kind of adventure. But..more of a positive kind of fun, think Six Flags in a way. The price for that kind of person, if her brakes DO work on her train, are probably some crashes, but they're not fatal to life or the relationship.

Being much older my advice is sometimes warranted but certain areas I steer clear from advising anyone about due to the fact I sucked at certain decisions I made. One area was my choice in women. I tended to find the kind who would stand on the roof of her Acela train, arms waving in air...and had questionable brakes. Luckily for me, I never crashed too hard but it was enough to be painful at times but no broken bones nor massive payouts in any divorce case.

Except one time where my desire for “fun” over rode my usual chicken-shit-scared of any variable I can't control in life. (Sheesh, at this age you'd think I'd ease up on it, but I was warned that the older you get, the more cautious you get about everything!) Anyways, I tossed my reconnoitering of situations, my cost/benefit analyses when it came to some accessible pretty thing who seemed to promise fun I never saw before.

I've written about her before, Lori, the one who lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming. She had grown up in the Attleboro's and by chance, I found her in a chatroom on the internet. She was married, bored to death and she too liked speed and thrills and other boisterous activities. She flew back to meet up and we have our “fun.” Well, that didn't last long because looking back on it, she wanted her husband to find out. Whatever the reason why I don't know but when you leave travel plans, addresses and the such around the house for him to trip across easily, you're really not trying to hide anything, are you?

It was my one and only time an irate, seriously pissed off husband who called my house and spoke to me in the most sarcastic tone ever. Well, I can understand why. I was lucky enough to have 2,000 miles between us and he wasn't about to jump in any car, rail or plane to come here to pull my skin off bit by bit. Last I heard, and this was years ago, they divorced and she found another guy and living in Denver, CO now. I wonder if he notices her train brakes are useless?

Lori, was Queen #1 'No brakes at all on her train' kinda girl I knew. I'm not a big fan of the Spooky House at the fairgrounds. Being scared to make me jump out of my skin ain't my idea of fun. I have come within 50 feet of a lightning strike once, fallen off a bridge 40 feet down into a scummy algae ridden river at 13. I have lost my grip on a branch and tumbled far to many yards down a slope of rocks and to be stopped, by a larger boulder in the way of my descent. None of those times have I reminisced on as fun. Fright does not do it for me. They're war stories to tell is all.  Lori's kind of fun was a bit over the limit when it included her hubby in the end. 

I did have a time with an exact opposite of the female kind too. Karen, who was the most stable, normal, predictable and boring women I was with. The brakes on her train were inspected daily, upgraded yearly and her train never went faster than 30mph. It made sense, she was a parent of two girls who did quite well with that stability. They did excellent in school and were involved in many other social activities that promised a normal upbringing. I have to give Karen that. She was a good Mom who was home...”there” and was going to be there for a long time for her girls. There were no drugs, booze or low self esteem bulimia to contend with when it came to her life as a parent.

However, like I said already, Karen was a crushing bore a lot of the time. I'd come up with some adventures and she'd back off or..”wanted to think about it.” One was to take her and the girls to Ausable Chasm in in the Adirondacks, a miniature Grand Canyon. It had a maintained trail with guides and Park Rangers and silly safe family friendly areas and hotels. I made the mistake of telling her there was one rope bridge we'd have to cross over a part of the Ausable river that was all whitewater. Well, that killed that idea in her head. I think the brakes on her train may have had frozen calipers that always gripped and slowed the entire train down no matter what. 

 

 Ain't that bad...I did it once. The walk along the cliffs is scarier. 

I finally told H, as we talked, that “don't go by my life...it's way different than what you experienced.” IE: Don't go by my example of looking for the rides that you'd find at questionable fairs that pop up in large Walmart parking lots....or those ill maintained chlorine tanker trains in the Mid West that like to hop the track.

“You've had some years of that kind of girl...who couldn't slow her own train down...don't go looking for another” was all I could say.

Now had he asked me about oil futures, why American refineries are mainly heavy crude distillers of Canadian and Venezuelan slop oil and not the nice light sweet crude the USA itself is awash with...I'd be happy to chat him up. That I am very stable and rational about and take so few chances with . By the way, it's true, the USA pumps out incredible amounts of light sweet crude till we're up to our ears with it.  But, there are many refineries in Texas and Louisiana that are built just to handle heavy sludge oil.  The private oil companies are too scared to invest in refineries that can crack down light sweet crude. Why? One day the price of oil will drop and they'll be standing there with high cost refineries that will take forever to pay back on.