Pygmalion

My mother was an intelligent, well read women with a good vocabulary, but for some unknown reason, she had trouble saying words with the double “T” consonant in the middle of them. In my mother’s world, a bottle was a bot’l and the word little was pronounced lit’l. Herds of cows were called cat’l and the largest city in Washington was Seat’l. My sister Maureen and I found this very amusing, and we would intentionally ask her questions like:

“What do you call the metal teapot on the stove?”

“You mean the ket'l?” she’d answer.

We would then roll on the ground in laughter, and try to think up more questions to ask.
Occasionally we’d try and make up sentences with all of my mother’s most famous mispronounced words:

“Hey Ma!” we’d say. “Put the cat’l in the ket’l with a lit’l but’r or we’ll have a bat’l.”

“Don’t be fresh,” she’d say.

Some words that didn’t have a double “T” consonant were also a challenge. The word “turtle” comes to mind. She referred to all high-necked sweaters as turt’l necks and to this day I cannot look at one without thinking of my mother.

I came up with the idea for this post over this past weekend. I was at my brother Brian’s house, attending a high school graduation party for his daughter. After pouring myself a cup of coffee, I discovered there was no Splenda (the artificial sweetener) in the house. I knew that my wife (who is always prepared) carries extra packets of the sugar substitute in her pocketbook.

“Do you have any Splenda?” I asked my wife.

“Splender!” My ex-sister in law, Monique screamed.

Monique was married to my oldest brother Emmett. She has been part of our family for forever, and we’re all very fond of her. Since their divorce in the mid 80’s, Monique has remarried, become a grandmother and opened her own housekeeping business. She is a very sweet and intelligent woman and is always a load of fun to be around. This is why we still invite her to our family functions.

“Did you know, that if you have sugar ants on your kitchen counter you can kill them with Splender?” Monique said.

“You mean Splenda,” I said.

“That’s what I said,” she answered. “All you have to do is open a little packet of Slender and leave it on the counter. The ants take a few granules back to their nests and it kills the whole colony.”

“No,” I said. “It’s not Splender and it’s not Slender, it’s called Splenda.” I now spelled it, S-P-L-E-N-D-A. “Come on, you can say it,”

“Plenda” .

“No Splend-AH,” I said, now trying to emphasize the AH sound.

“Slend-AH” She said.

“No! No! No! I was starting to feel like Professor Henry Higgins to her Eliza Doolittle.

My mind wandered back to a day several years ago, when Monique said she was tired. So tired in fact, that she needed "tootpicks" to keep her eyes open.”

“Tootpicks? I asked.

“Yeh,” you know? She said, the little sticks they put in olives.”


Being young, I felt odd correcting her, but I wasn’t going to let it go now. I was a man on a mission. I cupped my fingers around her mouth, and helped her form the word.

“SPLENDA,” I said.

“PLENDISH” she said.

“SPLENDA”

“PLENDA” she said.

“SPLENDA”

“OH FORGET IT,” she said… “USE SWEET'N LOW!”

NewsFlash

My wife left this article on my homepage...HA! HA! HA!

http://www.comcast.net/news/health/index.jsp?cat=HEALTHWELLNESS&fn=/2006/06/26/421532.html&cvqh=itn_gay

You're so vain

A bridge on Amtrak’s Hell Gate branch got stuck in the upright position and our train was instructed to accept all of Amtrak’s passengers. As I stood in the ticket line in Union Station in New Haven, an Amtrak passenger who looked a lot like singer Carly Simon stood behind me. The woman was hidden behind a pair of big sunglasses. She had Simon’s wavy hair, large mouth and those familiar luscious lips that have graced so many album covers. I found it hard to believe that Ms. Simon would be hanging out in New Haven on a Sunday night so I turned around and said:

“Wow, you look just like Carly Simon.”

“Yeah,” she said, “I get that a lot.”

It wasn’t till she and her husband boarded my train that I realized that she was, in fact, Carly Simon. My brother Brian(who happened to be my Engineer that evening) walked back through the cars, checked her out and confirmed my suspicions.

“Aha! I said as I collected her ticket." You are who I thought you were.”

She just smiled and hid her face in a magazine. For the rest of the ride I had to resist the urge to sing, “You’re so vain.”

Raja and Me

I stopped by the local convenience store after dropping my daughters off at school. I poured myself a cup of coffee, picked up the newspaper and decided to order an egg sandwich from the deli counter. While my sandwich was being prepared, I chatted with the Indian family that owns the store. I regularly stop at this store, but I usually only exchange pleasantries with the family patriarch who mans the cash register. This day however, I conversed with his wife.

Me: Hey, I see by the name on your health certificate that your family name is Patel. I work with a woman from India and her name is Patel and her family also owns a convenience store. Come to think of it... almost all the Indian people I know are named Patel.

Indian woman: Yes sir. In our region of India, everyone’s last name is Patel.

Me: That must be confusing?

Raja, the woman’s 24-year old son, now took over the conversation.

Raja: Not really sir.

Me: Well if everyone’s last name is Patel, how do you tell each other’s families apart?

Raja: Sir…we just know.

I should have given up the inquisition here...but I was intrigued.

Me: How do you know?

Raja: Sir…it is just part of our culture. We just know these things. Everyone knows who is related to whom.

Raja then went off on a tangent that didn’t seem related to our conversation.

Raja: Sir… yesterday we had a 16-year old girl hiding out behind our store. She was a runaway. We had to hold this girl in our store till the police and her parents arrived. Now, such a thing might not seem like a big deal to you, but it is very foreign to our culture. No offense… but something like this would never have happened in India.
You see…cultures differ.

I finally got his point.

Me: All I meant to say, is that it must get a little confusing when everyone has the same last name. I didn’t mean to offend you, your family or your culture. I was just saying that it has to get confusing. That’s all.

Raja: Well sir…I did send my friend an Email recently. He had to write me back because he had four different friends named Raja Patel. He didn’t know which Raja Patel had written the Email.”

Me: Ha! So it DOES get confusing!

Raja: Yeh!…a little, sometimes.

aka Tania

A familiar looking woman got on the train in Green’s Farms. She looked like your average Fairfield County wife, decked out in preppy clothes and the mandatory blond bob haircut, but there was something very familiar about her. I collected her ticket and then it hit me. It was Patty Hearst, the kidnapped heiress and former member of the Simbianese Liberation Army. She looked a far cry from the bereted bank robber that the SLA christened as Tania.

Because my mind is full of useless trivia, I remembered that Ms. Hearst had married her bodyguard, a man whose last name is Shaw. Being the sensitive type, I didn’t want to draw needless attention to her, so I addressed her by her married name.

"Good afternoon Mrs. Shaw," I said.

There was no reply, but the look she gave me spoke volumes.

I momentarily felt embarrassed and continued on to the next passenger.

“Hey,” I later told a co-worker, “it wasn’t like I said, Yo Tania! Let’s go knock off the Bank of America.”

"THE MOVIE"

I was driving my daughters to school last week, when my daughter C said, Daddy...today we’re going to see “The Movie.”

“What movie is that?” I asked.

“You know?” She said, (now losing her patience with me) “THE Movie.”

“WHAT MOVIE?” I asked. I was still half asleep and I just wasn’t getting it.

“Dad,” my older daughter A chimed in. “You know THE Movie. The one they show all the 6th graders in health class?”

“Oh!” I said. “THE MOVIE!”

I now understood that C was talking about the movie about puberty that the health teacher shows at the end of the school year-- with both girls and boys present. It is one of the most talked about (and feared) events of the school year.

“Are you nervous about that?” I asked.

"No, not really," she said matter of factly.

When we reached their school, I wished my daughter A luck on her finals and then I wished C luck on watching THE MOVIE.

That night I called home from work and talked to my wife.

“How did the girls' day go?” I asked.

“Good,” my wife said with a chuckle. “Did C tell you she that she was going to see THE MOVIE today?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “How’d that go?”

My wife told me that the girls came home from school and sat down for a snack in the kitchen. Just as any other day, she asked them how their day went. That was when the topic of THE MOVIE came up. My wife nonchalantly asked C if she had learned anything interesting or new from the film.

“YEAH!” C said. “I learned that boys have problems too!” She had previously only heard about the problems that girls face at puberty, so this obviously came as quite a shock.

“Like what?” my wife inquired. (Not having the slightest idea of what answer she might hear, but keeping the conversation open and light.)

C scrunched up her face, eyes half shut...dangled her finger in front of her and then, with a rising whistle sound effect (like a firework shooting up on the Fourth of July) pointed her finger straight out and then skyward.

“Yup!" My wife said with a straight face, "They sure do have that problem...and you thought only girls had to deal with changes."

Brian's Song

On a Sunday afternoon in 1958, my parents piled their eight kids into their car, (this was before I was born) and drove up to Wallingford to visit my grandmother. After reaching Nana's house, someone noticed that my brother Brian was missing. Being that he was only about four years old at the time, my parents were quite concerned. My father jumped back in the car and sped home to find Brian sitting on his tricycle in the driveway and crying his eyes out.

Ever since that day, Brian has made sure that his presence be known.

When Brian was a teenager (in the early 1970's,) he and his friends used to hang out in a place they named "Flat Rock." Flat Rock was not as bucolic as it sounds, in fact, it was a just a clearing in the brush next to the railroad tracks that ran behind The Armstrong Rubber Factory. Hidden from parents and the local police, the boys would gather here and drink beer (undoubtedly purchased by an older friend or sibling at a minimal profit). With the smell of freshly manufactured tires heavy in the air and their vocals occasionally drowned out by passing trains, each boy would sing their own signature song.

Crow's tune was "Already gone" by the Eagles. All the boys would join in on the chorus:

I'm already gone
And I'm feelin ' strong
I will sing this victory song
Woo hoo hoo
Woo hoo hoo

The boys then sang a misogynist version of the 1950's hit "Duke of Earl":

Puke, Puke, Puke
Puke on girls, girls, girls
Puke on girls, girls, girls
Puke on girls, girls, girls

Soon it was Brian's friend Phil's turn to sing his anthem. He gave new lyrics to the Harry Chapin song "Taxi":

It was raining hard in Flat Rock
I needed one more beer to make my night

But the evening wasn't complete until Brian, or Big Mac as they called him, sang his signature song... "Tobacco Road."

I was born
Bun num! (All bystanders were required to sing this bass line)
In a dump
Bun num!
My mama died
And my daddy got drunk

Although several artists have recorded this song, no one has captured it quite like Edgar Winter did in his 1970 version (click here for sample) . This is the who Big Mac emulated when he sang:

And I love you
Because you're filthy
And I love you cause you're home

The highlight of Brian's song came when he'd hold an impossibly high note for what seemed like an eternity:

And I lo-oo-ooo-oooo-ooooo-ooooo-oooooo-ve you!

I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE YOU!

When Big Mac held this note, his face turned crimson red and his veins bulged from his temples. Legend has it, that after one such performance he gave himself a hernia and that he had to have surgery shortly afterward.

That's rock and roll baby!

Big Mac performed this song at his high school class night in 1973. At that concert he had all his classmates singing the bun num bass line, and at the end of the song he got a standing ovation. That evening, Brian... and his song, became part of West Haven High School legend.

Shortly after joining the railroad and becoming an engineer, Brian and some friends went on vacation(I forget where). He performed Tobacco Road in a honky tonk bar and the crowd went nuts. Before the night was over, a record executive approached him and gave him his business card. He told Brian that he was a talent agent for a major record label and that he would like to discuss a recording deal. Brian figured that the record executive was as drunk as he was and never made the phone call.

Now that my brother is 52- years old, he finds Tobacco Road's high notes a little too hard to reach. His new signature song is 'Danny Boy."After a few beers and a little prompting (the amount of prompting depends on how many beers he's had) he'll make his way out to the dance floor and sing:

But come ye back when summers in the meadow
Or when the valleys hushed and white with snow
Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow
Danny boy, Oh Danny boy, I love you so

It's enough to bring smiling Irish eyes to tears.

A couple of years ago, Brian was running a deadhead train (meaning he didn't have passengers on board) from Stamford, CT to Grand Central. (This ride that takes about 45 minutes.) He had no one to keep him company so he kept himself amused by performing a little concert in the engineer's cab. With one hand on the throttle, the other hand was free to pound out a beat on the cab console. Brian sang from Connecticut through Westchester County, The Bronx, and Harlem. When he finally reached the end of the line in Grand Central, Mark, the chief rail traffic controller was waiting for him.

Brian knew something was up so he pulled down the engineer's cab window and asked, "What's up?"

Mark said that he, as well as the rest of the railroad, enjoyed his 45 minute concert but he was going to have to call in the mechanics to repair the stuck "transmit button" on his engineer's cab radio.

Opie

Actor/Director Ron Howard is usually on the top of other New Haven Line Conductor’s list of celebrity sightings and it had frustrated me that I had never run into him. I had spent most of my life watching him on TV and it felt as if we had grown up together. I was more than a little jealous that others had seen him before I did. Hadn’t we, I thought, spent many an afternoon skipping stones at the fishin’ pond with Pa and Barney. Oh, I’m sure, that while in high school, I shared fries with him, Potsy and Ralph at Arnold’s Drive In.

Then one fateful day while collecting tickets on the Stamford local, a thin red haired man in a blue baseball cap handed me his ticket. It was my old friend Ron. At first, I must confess, I was annoyed when there was no hint of recognition on his face. As I punched his ticket, I told him of the previous Thanksgiving when I had his brother Clint, (the kid from Gentle Ben,) on my train, but this didn’t seem to impress him much. I put his ticket in my pocket and stood in the vestibule to regroup my thoughts.

After our Port Chester Station stop, Ron gathered his things together and walked towards me. Finally, I thought, he remembers me, but he said nothing. At a loss for words, I noticed the Apollo 13 logo that emblazoned his cap.

"Is that your latest movie?" I asked.

"Yes it is," he said.

"What’s it about?" Asked one of the several pinstriped-clad Wall Street barons who were now standing around the vestibule area with suitcases in hand.

What’s it about? I thought. Isn’t that pretty obvious, but being the nice guy that Ron is, he proceeded to tell the cliff note version of the Apollo 13 story. Just as we crossed the New York/Connecticut state line he said, “Houston we have a problem,” and the movie credits rolled as we slid into Greenwich Station where he got off the train. As he walked down the platform I almost yelled:

“ Hey Ron, let’s meet at Goober’s fillin’ station for a bottle of pop,”

He turned on a dime!

I was collecting tickets on the train one afternoon when I came upon an old Irish gentleman. He perked up when he saw my company ID.

Old Irishman: Cheers Mr. Mac Donough!

Me: Cheers! I can tell by your brogue that you're from Ireland.

Old Irishman: Aye! Sure I am.

Me: Do you live here now?

Old Irishman: No laddie, I'm visiting me relations.

Me: I've never been to Ireland, but I'd love to go someday.

Old Irishman: Oh, laddie you must. In fact I'll meet you in the pub and we'll have a few pints.

Me: That sounds great... but I don't drink.

Old Irishman: (Now stern) WELL THEN...YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS BEING IN IRELAND!

Breaking and Entering

While growing up, we never locked the doors to my mother’s house. In fact, none of us even owned a house key. Coming from a big family, it seemed pointless to lock the door, especially when we knew someone would be entering or exiting at any given moment. Guests would marvel at the traffic flow at her front door. It seemed as soon as someone left the house, somebody else would enter. They said that our house reminded them of Grand Central Station and that she should install a revolving door.

Shortly after I’d moved out, somebody broke into my mother's house. Actually more like walked in. Luckily no one was home at the time of the burglary and the burglar, finding little of value, escaped with a jar of coins and some of my mother’s costume jewelry. Her neighbors were in a state of panic. “How could this happen on Union Avenue?” They asked. The telephone lines burned as they called one another with news of the break in at Kay's (my mother) house. With the criminal still on the loose, the neighbors agreed to form a block watch and that everybody should be on the lookout for suspicious looking characters.

A few days after the robbery, I called my mother to check up on her. She said that she was still a little shaken and that she no longer felt the same sense of security. Now living alone for the first time in her life, she decided to start locking the doors. After days of searching junk drawers, she finally found the key to the front door. She then went to the hardware store to had copies made. She told me to drop by and she would give me one of the new keys.

My washing machine was broken, so the next day, I filled a big blue and white striped laundry bag with clothes from our hamper and headed across town to my mother’s house. When I pulled up, I noticed that somebody new had moved in next door in the house that once belonged to my grandfather. I pulled the laundry bag from the back seat of my Honda Civic and headed up the sidewalk to the front door. I instinctively twisted the doorknob and pushed, forgetting that my mother had started locking her doors. I knocked several times but nobody answered. I then remembered that she said she was going to the beauty salon and then morning mass with her friends.

I wouldn't be deterred, so I walked around to the rear of the house, dragging my overstuffed laundry bag, and tried opening the door to the family room. Again the door was locked. Surely, I thought, the cellar hatchway will be open, but pull as I might, it just wouldn’t budge. I then I had a brainstorm. I knew that if locking doors was something new to my mother, she probably hadn’t even begun to think about locking the windows. I congratulated myself for my brilliance, then climbed on top of a row of trash barrels and pushed the family room window open.

I momentarily thought of how my actions might look to my mother’s neighbors but then I figured that they'd known me all my life and that they would probably recognize me.

When I was half way through the window, I thought of the new next-door neighbor. They didn’t know me. Perhaps I should have gone over and introduced myself before climbing in the window. Too late now, I was already in the family room. I next grabbed the pull strings to my laundry bag and walked down to the basement and began doing my laundry.

After pouring the detergent into the machine, I heard the sound of squealing tires sliding on the pavement in front of the house. I walked back upstairs to see what all the commotion was about. As I peered out the front window, I saw what looked like two unmarked police cars parked at strange angles out front. Instantly, there was pounding on the front door.

It was “ The Fuzz!”

I opened the door to find a West Haven detective, his gun drawn and ready. He gave me a hard stare.

“I was afraid this might happen.” I said.

“You were, huh?...What are you doing in here?

“Laundry!” I answered.

I went on to explain that this was my mother’s house, and how we never locked the doors growing up and that I hadn’t gotten my new key yet and . . .I could tell that detective only half believed me. He raised his hand, as if to say STOP, pushed the button on his radio, and said . . .“Jimmy get in here!”

My brother Jimmy (then a West Haven detective) came running into the house from the back door. He also had his gun drawn.

“What the #$&*@ are you doing?!?! He demanded.

“Laundry,” I said. “The doors were all locked, so I climbed in the back window.”

“You’re an #*@$%&!!!” He shouted.

Jimmy then had to radio his desk sergeant with a report. The desk sergeant that day just happened to be my brother John.

“Yeah, it’s Bobby!” Jimmy said. “He wanted to do his laundry and the doors were locked so he climbed in the window out back.”

“What an #*$%@&!” John said.

It turns out that the new next-door neighbor just happened to look out her kitchen window and saw me prowling around outside. She then called Irene, another neighbor. Irene looked out her window and apparently didn't recognize my rump as it climbed through the window. They called the police immediately.

As they say, the rest is history! This story is now Union Avenue legend.

Renovations

If you’re one of my regular readers, you’ve probably noticed that I changed the template to this blog. It’s not that I didn’t like the old design, it’s just that I was bored and I started playing around, pointing my mouse here and clicking my mouse there and before I knew it, my site had a whole new look. It was simple. Now if only renovating the house could be that easy.

This got me thinking. Wouldn’t it be great if you could take a USB cable from your computer and attach it to the exterior of your home? You could then go to your PC, surf over to the Benjamin Moore paint palette, point, click and Voila’! Your green house is now red.

Imagine plugging a laptop computer into your car’s cigarette lighter. You could visit the Maaco or Earl Scheib website, point, click, and before you know it, you’ve pimped your canary yellow Camry into a metallic neon blue funk mobile.

Rob a Bank? No problem. The cops have an ABP out on a White Bronco but like a chameleon, you've turned your truck fire engine red. Now, if O. J. had only thought of this invention, he’d be a free man today. (Oh wait! He is free.)

Women could point and click to coordinate their Mercedes with their outfits. Tires would be designed to go with shoes and the car’s interior with handbags. All of today’s hottest designers would be recommending accessories to match your car’s trim and jewelry would be made of hood ornaments, (oh wait! They already do that.)

If we could only point and click our gray away, Miss Clairol would be on the unemployment line. Tanning Salons would be a thing of the past. Just imagine George Hamilton pointing and clicking his pale rawhide flesh, into a nice golden brown. Justin Timberlake’s epidermis would be a dark chestnut brown and Michael Jackson would turn his pale white (oh wait, he already did that.)

Spend money on lawn fertilizer? Fugettaboutit! Just bury your USB cable out in your lawn. Go to the Scott’s Lawn Products website, find the right color…say an Arnold Palmer Green, and Presto…. you now have your own golf course.

Even all your neighbors would be green…with envy that is.

You know? I might be on to something here.

Happy Anniversary Baby!

It's hard to believe that my wife and I have been married for 17 years. What's even more frightening, is that we started dating 25 years ago. It doesn't seem possible.

Every once in a while my daughters will pull out our wedding video for laughs. They always comment on how much hair I had and how much younger we look. Watching this video brings me back to that day:

(imagine screen getting wavy for flashback sequence)

Being a man, I was more than happy to let my wife deal with all the minute details of our wedding. We had dated for eight years before we got married (I didn’t want to rush into anything!) so my wife had plenty of time to dream and plan for our pending nuptials. Sometimes she'd run her wedding plans by me but I was more of a sounding board. She really wasn’t seeking my opinion but rather bouncing her ideas off of me.

My only real wedding responsibilities were to:

1.) Show up. (Something she wasn’t sure I would do since I was a known commitment phobic!)
2.) Keep my mother happy by getting a Catholic Priest to co-officiate the ceremony.
3.) Pick out the wedding songs.

Tasks one and two were simple. Task three proved to be more of a challenge.

I thought of all the songs I’d heard at other people's weddings over the years: i.e. Paul Stookey’s “Wedding Song (There is Love),” The Carpenter’s “We’ve Only Just Begun” and Dan Fogelberg’s “Longer”. These were all great songs but it seemed they had been used ad nauseam. I wanted to be an original.

I have always been a big Dan Fogelberg fan and I had remembered a song on his Twin Sons of Different Mothers album. It was a cover of an old Judy Collin’s gem titled “Since You’ve Asked.” I loved the lyrics to this song and as far as I knew, no one had ever used it at their wedding. I played the song for my then fiance and she agreed that it would be perfect.

Jean, our wedding singer, sang this song just after we exchanged our vows:

Since You've Asked

What I'll give you
Since you've asked
Is all my time together
Take the rugged sunny days
The warm and rocky weather
Take the roads that I have walked along
Looking for tomorrow's time
Peace of mind --
As your life spills into mine
Changing with the seasons
Filling up the world with time
Changing time to reasons
I can show you all the songs
That I never sang to someone before.
We have seen a million stars
Lying by the water
You have climbed the hills with me
To the mountain shelter
Taking off the days
One by one
Setting them to breathe
In the sun.
Take the lilies and the Lace
From the days of childhood
All the willow winding paths
Leading up and outward
This is what I give
This is what I ask you for
Nothing more.

Who says I’m not a romantic?

My wife and I paid for the wedding ourselves, so we were on a tight budget. We couldn't afford a band so we hired a DJ from a company called Rent-a-DJ. Our DJ, they told me, would be Darren Murphy.

Murphy! I thought, that'll be great. He'll probably play tons of Irish music. I was a little surpised on the day of our wedding when we walked into the reception hall and discovered that Darren was actually African-American. I don't mean to disparage him but his playlist was a little heavy on the R&B/Motown side (at least for a crowd of Irish Catholics and New England Yankees.) This was especially true when Darren spun the Jackson 5 song, Mama I Found That Girl for my mother and I to dance to.

Mama, oh mama, I found that girl

Mama, oh mama, I found that girl

My new bride and I, chose the Stephen Bishop song It Might Be You for our first dance. We walked out to the dance floor as Darren spun the record:

Time...

I've been passing time watching trains go by

All of my life...

Lying on the sand, watching seabirds fly

Wishing there would be

Someone waiting home for me...

Something's telling me it might be you

It's telling me it might be you...

All of my life...

You might think it strange that I picked a song titled, It Might Be You, my wife however, thought that it captured my non-commital spirit.

Besides, the song ends on a more hopeful note:

I've been saving love songs and lullabies

And there's so much more

No one's ever heard before...

Something's telling me it might be you

Yeah, it's telling me it must be you

And I'm feeling it'll just be you

All of my life...

It's you..

It's you...

I've been waiting for all of my life...

It's A Bird...It's A Plane...It's...

One snowy January evening circa 1993, actor Christopher Reeve came running down the platform of track 25 in Grand Central Terminal in New York. He was dressed in a parka and a wool cap. On his feet he wore a pair of oversized snow boots.

“Do I have time to run and grab a beer,” he asked.

“What are you worried about?” I said, “You’re faster than a locomotive.”

He smiled, looked down, pointed to his boots and said, “Not in this weather!”

Seat Checks

Did you ever wonder how conductors keep track of all the people who board and exit the train?

One trick of the trade is the seat check. Seat checks are rectangular pieces of cardboard, 1 inch wide by 4 inches long. They are divided into 11 fare zones boxes so we conductors, depending on how far a passenger is traveling, can punch holes in their station’s corresponding fare box. We then stick this piece of cardboard in front of the passenger in order to remind us:

A.) That they paid.
B.) How far the passenger is going.

This is the railroad handbook’s official use for the seat check. They do however, come in handy as bookmarks, toothpicks and to squeegee sweat off of bald men’s heads, (at least that’s what I hear!).

Another great use for the seat check is to pacify screaming kids on the train. You would be surprised how calm children get when given little slips of paper to hold in their hands. It really keeps them preoccupied and quiets them down. Other passengers in the car, thank me profusely, and ask if I’m a childcare expert.

A few years back, seat check art came into vogue. A conductor with too much time on his hands got creative with his hole punch and cut out a smiley face on a young passenger’s seat check. Word must have gotten out in daycare centers in the greater metropolitan region, because now all the children on the train want them.

It took me a while to master the smiley face. In my initial design I was spacing the mouth holes too far apart. This made the smile look more like a bunch of random holes in the paper or possibly that my seat check person was British.

I could tell by the expression on my young passenger's faces that I had somehow failed them and they never would ask me for a second seat check, like they did with the other conductors.
After some much needed instruction from co-workers, I finally mastered the smiley face. Kids, no longer satisfied with just one seat check, now wanted handfuls.

A few times, I've made the mistake of giving one child more seat checks than his/her sibling. Whenever this happens it starts a big brawl. One kid will start taunting their brother or sister…“I have three smiley faces and you only have two-o-o!” Physical violence then ensues and the crying kid cycle starts all over again.

So much for me being a child-care expert!

The latest trend in seat check art involves seat check paper dolls. I believe my friend Scott may have started this. A reporter from the Stamford Advocate Newspaper was on one of his trains and wrote a column about how gracious his conductor (Scott) was, and how his kids just loved their seat check paper dolls.
(My daughters think that the following story is the funniest ever!)

This past Christmas, I saw an adorable five year-old girl looking out the front window of the train. As I approached, she turned around and began staring at me with her big brown eyes.

“Hi!” I said.

No response, she seemed to be in awe.

“Would you like a seat check?” I asked.

Blank stare.

Wow, I thought. This girl must really be enamored by my uniform.
I took a seat check out of my ticket pouch and punched a silly little face on it and handed it to her.

“Do you like that?” I asked.

She said nothing. Just two big brown eyes staring up at me.

“Mister,” she spoke finally. “You have a real long hair sticking out of your nose.”

Bobby Gump

“Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

Last week my family and I were watching Forrest Gump on UPN or TNT or one of those cable stations in the high double digits. Anyway, I couldn’t help but notice a similarity between Forrest’s bench at the bus stop and my humble little blog here.

You, the reader, sit down next to me as I babble on and on. I offer a piece of my life here and a piece of my life there. I tell you about my brush with celebrity and some of the funny and touching things that have happened to me along the way.

I hear that I make some of you laugh, some of you cry and some of you just want to get on the dang bus (figuratively speaking of course). It feels somewhat cathartic to share these stories (sometimes it’s darn right draining) but I guess it’s cheaper than paying $100 an hour to a therapist.

“And that’s all I have to say about that.”

Author! Author!

I’ve seen the author Dominick Dunne on my train several times over the years. He is always very impeccably dressed and looks as if he is headed to a polo match or some swanky country club. I recognized him from his eyeglasses, which are horn-rimmed and round. They make him look oh so much like a senior member of the Harry Potter fan club.

The first time I met Mr. Dunne was on the eve of the two-year anniversary of the Nicole Brown Simpson slayings. He had a garment bag slung over his shoulder when he got on the train in New Haven, which is about a 40 minute ride from his home in Old Lyme.

I knew Mr. Dunne’s work mostly from his coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial in Vanity Fair Magazine. During the trial he always sat with Nicole Brown Simpson’s family and became more than just a reporter—he became a friend to the Brown family. I was addicted (like much of the rest of the nation,) to the O. J. trial. I worked nights at the time and I spent my days glued to the TV, watching gavel-to-gavel coverage.

The opportunity to speak with Mr. Dunne was very tempting and although I usually don’t like to bother celebrities, I just had to talk to him.

After exchanging pleasantries, Mr. Dunne told me that he was on his way to New York to do the Today Show live the next morning. He said that he was in the process of writing a book on the O. J. trial.

“What happened to the NASA satellite photos of Nicole’s neighborhood on the night of the murders?” I asked him, “I heard they were going to present them into evidence.”

“You know,” he said, “ I’d heard that too, but for some reason they never presented it as evidence.”

We continued to discuss the aspects of the trial, but it was soon time for our train to depart and I had to make announcements and close the train’s doors.

I noticed that when I collected Mr. Dunne’s ticket, he was recording some notations in a small green journal. I wondered if he was recording our conversation and if it would make it into his new book.

Several months later I came down with pneumonia and ended up in the hospital. Before entering the hospital I went into a bookstore to pick up some reading material. Mr. Dunne’s new book about the O.J. trial was on display. It was titled, Another City Not My Own.

The novel was Dunne’s thinly veiled memoir about his experiences at the O. J. trial and how he, somewhere along the way, lost the objectivity of a reporter and became emotionally involved in the case. The novel’s protagonist’s name is Gus Bailey.

In the last chapter of the book, page 343 to be exact, gossip columnist Liz Smith asks Gus if he ever gets sick of discussing O. J.:

“Yes, I get sick of him. Deeply sick,” replied Gus………..
“I talk about him to Deb at the gas station when she puts gas in my car.
I talk about him to the train conductor on Metro North.”

Linc Link

If you had asked me what a Link was a year ago, I would have said that Linc was Clarence Williams III from that 1970’s “fuzz” show “The Mod Squad.”

If you had asked me 6 months ago what a hyperlink was, I would have told you about the episode when Capt. Greer took Linc, Julie (my first crush!) and Pete’s badges away from them. “Linc was really upset,” I’d say, ”but he was way too cool to be hyper”.

Now that I know the new millennium definition of link and hyperlink, I’ve decided to post a few of them here.

Cary Potts
www.touchingbassmusic.com

I met Cary when he was a regular on the 11:22 p.m. train (the theatre train) out of Grand Central. At the time he was playing bass in the Broadway production of All Shook Up (an Elvis Presley tribute show.) In addition to Broadway, Cary has appeared in several commercials and TV shows. He has traveled all over the globe, playing bass for Ben E. King, Chuck Berry and Elvis Costello (just to name a few.) Now that Cary has children, he wants to stay close to home. He has begun writing and recording his own music (sort of Jazz Fusion) on his home computer and hopes to market it as bumper music for radio, TV and video. Be sure to check out the sample tracks, I think you’ll agree…he’s quite exceptional.

Vinnie Penn
www.vinniepenn.net

Those of you that live in Connecticut, might recognize the name Vinnie Penn. For several years, Vinnie was the better half of the morning radio show on WKCI-KC101 in New Haven. I met Vinnie on the train a few years back when he was headed down to audition as one of Howard Stern’s new sidekicks on his morning radio show. Vinnie didn’t get the job but Howard didn’t forget him. On May 10th, 11pm, he debuts his own radio show, (a Howard Stern Production) on The Sirius Satellite Radio Network.

In addition to being a funny radio personality, Vinnie is also a great writer. He frequently contributes columns to The New Haven Register and recently had a short story published in the book Danger City.


Geoff Fox
www.geofffox.com

Geoff Fox has been our local weatherman at WTNH in New Haven for the past 20 years. Those of you that don’t live in Connecticut might recognize him as the substitute weatherman on Good Morning America. He and his family were on my train a couple of weeks back, returning from a day in the big city. I recognized him when I collected his ticket and I reminded him that we had met once before at Vinnie Penn’s book signing at a local Barnes and Noble store. He said that he remembered me…I know he didn’t.

I have watched Geoff’s forecasts for several years and knew he was a technophile and self-proclaimed computer geek. He seemed surprised when I told him about my blog (I guess I don’t look like the blogger type.) He told me that he also had a blog and it has something like 1700 posts (where does he find the time?) We exchanged our web addresses and he promised that he would visit my site. I figured he was just being polite. The next morning I awoke to find that he had left a comment on my Victoria Jackson post. I was thrilled!

As Linc would say..."Solid!”

Foot In Mouth Disease

Last week I was boarding my train in Grand Central with a co-worker named Abby. Abby had just come back from vacation and was thumbing through a pile of pictures she had picked up from a one-hour photo store.

“What are the pictures of?” I asked

“Jamaica,” she said. “We just came back.”

“We?” I said inquisitively. “Who are we?”

“Me and Gary,” she said, “You know, Gary…the ticket agent.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, “He’s that flamboyant gay guy...right?”

“I hope not,” she said, “He’s my fiancé.”

“Uh! Er! Um” I fumbled, not knowing what to say next. I tried to redeem myself, “I just assumed… he’s older and…Uh! He’s never been married and…Er!

Open mouth...Insert foot!

One afternoon, I was collecting tickets on my train when I noticed a bearded man placing the classic David Brubeck CD “Time Out” into his portable CD player. I wanted to show off my great celebrity knowledge, so I said, “David Brubeck… he’s dead…isn’t he?”
The bearded man took off his headphones and smiled. “No” he said, “He’s very much alive. I should know…He’s my dad.”

“Uh! Um! Er!” I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I was thinking of Vince Guaraldi, ”(another great jazz pianist). "Yeah that's it, Vince is the dead one."

My favorite “put your foot in your mouth” story doesn’t involve me (that’s probably why it’s my favorite) It was told to me by my sister Sheila.

Sheila and her then-boyfriend Vinnie had a friend named Bill. Bill had made a fortune franchising restaurants in Connecticut, so he decided to retire early.He and his wife Sally moved to a palatial home somewhere in California. A couple of years after moving, they invited Sheila and Vinnie on an all expense paid vacation to visit them in their new home.

On a hot California summer day, Sheila and Vinnie arrived at Bill and Sally's home. Sally answered the door. The last time they had seen her she was model-thin and in great shape. The woman that now stood before them was 40 lbs over weight and had more chins than a Chinese phone book. They were shocked.

Sally said that Bill was out running some errands but he would be home soon.
“Since it’s so hot,” she said, “Why don’t you get into your bathing suits and hop in the pool. They thought that this was a wonderful idea. Sally served them drinks while they floated around on rafts in her luxurious kidney shaped in-ground pool. After awhile, Sally excused herself to go and change into her bathing suit. After she left, Sheila and Vinnie paddled their rafts next to each other.

“Do you believe how much weight she’s gained? Sheila asked in a hushed tone.

Vinnie mumbled back, “ I can’t believe it. She’s twice the size she used to be.”

A few minutes later Sally appeared poolside in a one-piece bathing suit. She was obviously self-conscious about her weight and began to pull at the spandex in order to conceal the rolls of fat that were now peaking out from their hiding spots.

Vinnie could sense she was uncomfortable and wanted to pay her a compliment. His mind wanted to say:

“Wow…look how tan you are!”

But his mouth said:

“Wow…look how fat you are …UH! ER! I mean TAN…Look how Tan you are!

It was too late. The damage was done.

Sheila quickly paddled away from Vinnie, trying to disassociate herself from him. She bit her lip in order to avoid bursting into laughter. She even tried to think of sad moments in her life, but she just couldn’t contain herself. Her body began to convulse, sending ripples along the pool’s surface. She finally decided to roll off her raft, so she could break down underwater.

It made for a very long vacation.

Wiener Beach

This is the third and last installment in the Connecticut Cruisers trilogy.

We had some misgivings about bringing our families to Orient Beach because we heard it was clothing-optional. We’re a pretty conservative group (and we had our children with us) so we wanted to keep our bathing suits on. We did a little research and discovered that the beach had a nude side and a prude side. So as not to be embarrassed, families could choose to go to the prude side. We thought this a splendid solution and piled in a taxi at the St. Maarten docks.

Our taxi, which was actually a van, climbed narrow dirt roads on the Dutch side of the island, past small pastel colored homes and several roadside fruit and vegetable stands. As we crossed into St. Martin, the French side of the island, we discussed our trepidations about exposing our children to a hedonistic beach and we worried about causing some kind of Freudian damage to their little minds.

As we pulled into the Orient Beach parking lot our Taxi driver spoke:

“ I’m not one to judge mon,”he said,” but I don’t understand why all dese people come all dis way to spend dere vacations in dere birtday suits.”

All the men in the van chuckled like 6th graders.

“ Now mon, If you want ta let it all hang out, you go to da right,” said our driver, “through dis hotel. I’ll drop you off right dere.”

“ I’m not one to judge, mon.”He repeated.

“Now if you folks is a little more modest,” he continued, “then you can go to the left side… or the ‘prude’ side as they call it”

We told the driver that… yes; in fact we were prudes and would like to go to the beach on the left.

“That’s good,” he said, “I know all da cabana boys over dere, and I’ll get you good deals on the beach chairs.”

We followed our driver across the parking lot to a small wooden hut at the edge of the white sand beach. It was there that he introduced us to Ludwig, our cabana boy.

Ludwig looked like a tanned, blond haired, blue-eyed California surfer dude and we were a little surprised to hear him speak with a German accent. The only bit of clothing he wore was a pair of brown cargo shorts that hung from his thin frame and a strand of puka shells that he had around his neck. He waited on his customers shirtless to better display his six-pack abs, which assured him good tips from the ladies (and by the looks of it, some men too!) He made what I professed to be my eye-candy, look like an eyesore.

While Ludwig was positioning our chaise lounges on the beach, we looked around and noticed that half the women on our “prude side” were topless. “I guess the Caribbean definition of “prude” differs from the American one,” I said.

My wife caught me staring at a woman in front of us who obviously had breast implants. I knew I was busted because I got her, “stop leering” look. I recognized this look from 13 years earlier, when we (before kids) were on vacation in Aruba. One day a topless woman lay in front of us at the beach. When she got up on all fours to adjust her blanket, her breasts, which resembled two long water balloons, dangled and began swaying back and forth like a hypnotist’s pocket watch. My eyes soon glazed over, and I couldn’t help but stare straight ahead at her swinging pendulums. It was then my wife gave me “the look.”

Ludwig served drinks, while the men stood and enjoyed the scenery. The ladies were slathering sunscreen on their daughters while two island women wove cornrows in their poker straight hair. The boys, who were all around eight years old, were busy building sandcastles and totally oblivious to what was going on around them.

I tend to get restless sitting in one place too long, so I asked a fellow dad if he wanted to go for a walk along the beach. After strolling for a while we came to the infamous clothing optional sign, a virtual Mason/Dixon line of modesty (some might say morality). We opted for clothing and crossed into unknown territory. It is said that on nude beaches, the people who are nude shouldn’t be…and the people who should be nude, aren’t. As if to prove this point, the first nude person we ran into was an obese woman in her sixties. Let’s just say that gravity has not been kind to her. A few feet away from her stood six bikini-clad college co-eds who were posing for a photo with a 50-something man whose only bit of attire was a Panama hat. As we walked on we saw naked surfing, naked fishing and (most disturbing) naked Frisbee.

It was time to leave.

When we returned to our beach chairs, the rest of our group reported that they had seen several old naked men walking past. My wife snapped a photo of one of these men's behind as he was waiting to be served at an outdoor café. His gluteous maximus was now more of a gluteous minimus and when he turned around and displayed his shriveled “package,” our whole group burst into laughter.

This is why the Connecticut Cruiser kids now refer to Orient Beach as Wiener Beach.

CT Cruisers pt. II -San Juan

Today’s post is the sequel to “Connecticut Cruisers.”

On the third day of our cruise, we pulled into San Juan Bay in Puerto Rico. We were getting dressed in our cabin, when the spires of Fort San Felipe Del Morro suddenly appeared out our cabin window. The Spaniards built El Morro (as the locals call it), in 1539 to protect the island from the likes of The Dutch, Sir Francis Drake and the bands of Caribbean pirates that sailed the open sea. It’s cannons were now trained upon The Carnival Victory and it’s own band of scurvy dogs…The Connecticut Cruisers.

The weather clouded over as we prepared to disembark from the ship. By the time we walked down the plank, a fierce thunder and lightning storm had begun. The wind whipped and the thunder crashed as we ran down the cobblestone streets of Old San Juan. Suddenly, a bolt of lightning pierced the sky. I said, “OK, now we can say we’ve been here.” We took refuge in one of the port’s duty free shops and then, like soaked rats, ran back on the ship.

Once again the island was saved.