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.

Connecticut Cruisers

This time last year, my family was on a Carnival Cruise in the Caribbean. We had just finished putting a major addition on to our house and really couldn't afford to go, but it was one of those once in a life time chances and we really didn't want to miss it. Four other families from town, (all who had daughters on my youngest's softball team), were planning on going and they were kind enough to invite us along. We decided that this would be a good opportunity to get to know these families better and do a little bonding. My wife hates boats and gets sea-sick very easily but she decided to suck it up, take Bonine (which after considerable research on the internet outdoes Dramamine), and give it a try.

In preparation for the cruise, my wife and I joined the gym and went on the South Beach Diet. We each lost about 20 lbs. Since we are both melanin challenged, we also started going to a tanning salon to get a base tan before laying out in the Caribbean sun. After two months of primping and preening, I started telling the softball moms that I was going to be "eye-candy. "

"Wait 'till you see me in my Speedo!" I kidded them. "You won't be able to keep your hands off me!" This usually got a big round of chuckles from the ladies--Especially from my wife!

After several weeks of preparation, the departure date finally arrived. Our friend Nancy (otherwise known as Julie McCoy, our Cruise Director) and her husband, Kevin, made up yellow tee shirts for all of us. On the shirt's upper left hand corner was a logo that read "Connecticut Cruisers." These shirts served a dual purpose. It helped us stay together and also made us all feel like one cohesive unit.

I remember feeling pretty FRESH as I stood in line waiting to board our ship, the Carnival Victory, at The Port of Miami. I was TAN and I was BUFF. I had even "Naired" the hair off my back. Yeah, I was looking GOOD!

My ego was quickly deflated when one of my fellow Connecticut Cruisers approached me and said, "You really should have tried a tanning bed to get a base tan before the cruise." I told him that I just spent the last two months, three days a week, at the tanning salon and I pulled down the waist of my shorts to show him evidence of my Irish tan. Being Italian, he found this VERY amusing and he doubled over in laughter.

This would not be the my last humiliating experience on this cruise.

After boarding the ship and checking out our cabins, the next thing we Connecticut Cruisers did was put on our bathing suits and head up to the Lido deck for a little sun. All of the ladies quickly laid claim to the nearest row of chaise lounges, a Margarita in one hand and the latest bestseller in the other.

Before I took off my shirt, I thought it only fair to warn them:

"Are any of you diabetic?" I asked. "I don't want to send you into sugar shock when you get a load of this eye-candy."

They didn't even bother to look up from their books.

This was our first cruise and we were a little apprehensive about going. My wife has always hated boats and worried that she would get sea sick. Everyone I talked to about cruising promised us that we wouldn't feel a thing. "Nothing to worry about! Wait until you see the size of the ship," my friend Carl told me. "It's a floating city. You won't feel a thing."

I thought of Carl's statements later that first night of the cruise (right at dinner time) when our ship, heading straight into an enormous storm, swayed up and down while at the same time pitching back and forth. Magically, out of nowhere it seemed, there were strategically placed barf bag holders throughout the hallways and elevators. My wife sat down, head between her knees, crying on the Lido Deck--too dizzy to get up and walk. "What was I thinking?! How am I ever going to survive the week?" She cried. About an hour later, frozen but finally feeling a little better, we headed to the buffet line where she quickly downed the forbidden carbs--bread and rice--with a few others from our group who had never made it to the dining room earlier either.

A little later we went back to our cabin where the room continued to sway. We tried to get some sleep, but my wife grabbed hold of my arm digging me with her newly manicured fingernails, every time the ship smashed into a wave. The metal of the ship seemed to groan and twist. We could almost picture the rivets popping. Water crashed against the picture window. Needless to say, it was a long night!

We awoke the next morning to hear reports on CNN how the Norwegian Dawn had been hit by 80 foot waves that had taken out windows and flooded cabins from the same storm. The rest of our friends, knowing how my wife had reservations about going in the first place, tried to hide this fact from her--not knowing she had already seen the reports. Interestingly enough, she was one of the few in our group who did not actually throw up! She attributes that to her research and the wonders of Bonine!

The second day of the cruise the seas calmed and the cloudless sky turned a deep blue. I met up with my friend Art, who was wearing a green tee shirt that read: I AM THE MAN FROM NANTUCKET (this referred to the limerick about a well endowed man). He told me that while he was standing in the breakfast buffet line, a portly middle-aged woman stood in front of him. She kept turning around, looking at his tee-shirt and smiling. As he piled his plate with scrambled eggs and sausage, the woman turned around and whispered in his ear, "Why don't you come up to cabin 232 and prove it." Being that Art is a happily married man, he didn't take her up on her offer, but she haunted him for the rest of the cruise.

While standing on deck, Art and I discussed our plans for the week. Half of the Connecticut Cruisers had made reservations to go on a catamaran cruise off the coast of St. Martin and Art asked us if we wanted to join them.

"No," I said. "I think my wife has had enough of boats."

"So...What do you have planned for St Martin?" He asked.

"Nothing,"I said.

"You should go to Orient Beach," he said. "It's a nude beach!"

"Oh, I'm sure my wife and daughters would just love that!" I said sarcastically.

"Hey, you're on vacation!" he said.

"Then why aren't you going? I asked, now pointing at his "Nantucket" tee shirt. "Are you worried about getting charged with false advertising?"

After breakfast he changed his shirt.

Kay's Ashes

“All your baby pictures were lost in the fire.”

This is the story my mother, (Kay) told me…and I believed her.

There are various versions of how the fire started, each implicating different family members. Over the years, these conflicting stories have given our family countless hours of entertainment. After a few drinks, different family members start pointing accusatory fingers at one another, but in the end, nothing is resolved.

The one thing that can be agreed on is that my grandparents were called from next door and quickly formed a bucket brigade. It is said that the smoke from the fire turned my grandfather’s white hair yellow. The fire destroyed my parent’s bedroom and all of our family photos.

When I was in 6th grade my teacher asked us to bring in our baby pictures for the class bulletin board. He held a contest to see how many of our classmates we could identify by their baby pictures. The earliest picture I had was the family photo from my brother Emmett’s wedding album. I was four years old at that time and past the age limit for our class bulletin board.

I was very upset. I asked my mother if an uncle, aunt or family friend might have my baby picture.

“No,” she said. “All the baby pictures were lost in the fire.”

“Lost in the fire?!?” my brother Emmett said. “His photos couldn’t have been lost in the fire. The fire was in October of 1957. Bobby was born in 1962.”

My mother was busted!

The sad truth is that Emmett, the oldest in the family, had about 1000 baby pictures. My sister Kathy, the second oldest, probably had 200. Jimmy and Johnny (twin brothers), the next oldest, probably had 50. By the time they got to me, number nine; my parents didn’t even bother pulling out the camera.

About four years ago, Peggy, an old neighbor of mine, sent me this photo. That's me, age 2. Her mom had died and she was cleaning out a drawer when she stumbled upon it. She was kind enough to mail it to me.

I was thrilled!

Although the photo looks as though Matthew Brady took it in Appalachia during Reconstruction, it was actually taken in my neighbor’s yard in West Haven, CT in 1964. West Haven is a small city where the homes are only a few feet apart. Our street was bordered by railroad tracks on one end and one of the city's main thoroughfares on the other. Not rural at all. Mr. Chickla, (our neighbor) raised rabbits and apparently ducks in his backyard. I’m guessing that’s a piece of candy in my mouth and not a hayseed.

“You’re not going to post that picture on the Internet? My wife asked. “You look like a dirty little street urchin standing in front of your shanty in Ireland.”

“That’s what I like about,” I said. “In fact, someday I think I’ll put it on the cover of my first novel. I’ll title it… “Kay’s Ashes.”

Happy Easter!

Tomorrow we’re having 30 people over for Easter dinner. My wife and I have spent the past couple of days grocery shopping, cleaning the house, planting flowers and generally getting ready for our Easter visitors.

My wife really gets into holidays. On top of my computer monitor sits a little white bunny. It must have already multiplied (as rabbits tend to do) because I also see three more surrounding our TV. Even the fireplace mantle is draped with rabbit garland (who knew they even made such a thing!) On the end table stands a duck carting a giant painted egg. Giant cardboard eggs are displayed on the window panes in our family room. An oversized chocolate rabbit sits atop the kitchen cabinet, making direct eye contact with “Sara,” the red goose that we bought at Home Goods yesterday.

We’ve set up three separate tables in the kitchen, dining room and living room. They are already adorned with tablecloths and cute little holiday centerpieces and candles. Yesterday, I purchased two-dozen tulips at Dahlias, a great flower stand in Grand Central. My wife tells me she’ll scatter these around the house to make it look extra festive. She even put daffodils in the bathroom!

Because we’re having such a large crowd, my wife has assigned everybody a dish to bring. She’s cooking three hams as well as cream cheese mashed potatoes. My sisters have been assigned things like; green bean casserole, baked beans and ziti. My brothers have gotten off easier; beer, wine, soda and stuffed breads from the local pizza joint.

My daughters and I just finished dying eggs,(do they ever get too old for this?) Tomorrow is also my older daughter's 14th birthday, so we'll be having chocolate raspberry buttercreme birthday cake for dessert.

With the exception of my brother Brian, who is going to his in-laws, all my siblings will be in attendance, (not an easy feat these days.) We’ll certainly miss his traditional holiday greeting:

“Happy Easter…Up your keister!”

Yeh, I know it’s sacrilegious…but it’s funny!

Live From New York...It's Victoria Jackson!

Saturday Night Live comedienne, Victoria Jackson, was a regular on my late afternoon train in the early 1990’s. She starred as one of the show’s Not Ready for Prime Time Players. She is as sweet and naive as she appears on TV and I always felt a little protective of her whenever passengers approached her for an autograph. At the time she was embroiled in a nasty divorce battle with her husband, a circus performer, who she described as “pure evil.”

Victoria often complained to me that SNL was a male-dominated show, and that it was hard for her to get any airtime. I suggested that perhaps, if she wrote some fresh ideas for the show, she would appear in more skits. Every so often I would try to come up with ideas in hopes that she would propose them during her weekly writing sessions. I remember one idea in particular, it was called, “Victoria’s Secrets.”

This skit had Victoria dressed in lingerie while interviewing celebrities. Each week she would interrogate a star and have them reveal a horrible, deep hidden, disturbing secret about themselves. The twist would be that the celebrity, both male and female, would also be dressed in sexy lingerie. I advised that the first episode should feature actor John Goodman, crying about some childhood trauma while dressed in a teddy.

Victoria half listened to my idea. Her young daughter Scarlet was spinning around the grab poles in the train’s bar car and she worried for her safety.

About six months later, I was watching Saturday Night Live when one of their satirical commercials came on. It featured Victoria, dressed in lingerie, lying seductively on a bearskin rug. “Hi, I’m Victoria,” she said, “and these are my secrets.”

When I later questioned her about this, she said that actor Jon Lovitz had written the skit for her. She hadn’t remembered our conversation at all.

Victoria asked me on several occasions if my wife and I would like to visit NBC studios and watch the show.

"We would love to," I said.

Months past and we never received tickets. I didn't ask because I didn't want to pester her. I assumed she simply forgot. Then one night when I was at work, Victoria called. She told my wife that she was leaving the show and she had tickets for me. Since my wife was pregnant with our first daughter, we thought it better to go sooner than later.

I called her back and made arrangements to go to the show on the following Saturday. We planned that we would drive to Westport, (Victoria’s station,) and take the train into New York. Victoria said we could join her on a chauffeured limo ride back to Connecticut. We jumped at the chance.

All seemed to be going according to plan. We arrived at 30 Rockefeller Center in plenty of time to find studio 8H, (which is surprisingly small,) and find our seats. The guest host that evening was John Goodman and Garth Brooks was the musical guest.

The show was great, but we noticed that Victoria did not appear in any of the skits.
At the end of show the cast and the guest star came out on stage to say goodbye and to thank everybody for watching. Victoria was missing.

I hoped she hadn’t forgotten about our ride home, I thought.

My wife and I went down to the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Center where the show is filmed and waited for NBC security to clear us to go upstairs to the dressing rooms. While we waited, cast member Adam Sandler stood nearby surrounded by beautiful young women seeking his autograph.

Security finally gave us clearance to go up to the elevator to the dressing rooms. We went down a narrow hallway and asked a burly trumpet player where Victoria’s dressing room was. Just as he pointed to a door, I heard Victoria sob in the distance. We knocked on her door and with her voice choking back tears Victoria said, “Come in.” There sat Victoria, black mascara running down her cheeks and an empty wine bottle on the counter in front of her. It seems that during the rehearsal, the show’s producer, Lorne Michaels, had cut two of her skits from the show--she was very upset, and very drunk.

She carried her wine bottle and continued to cry as we went down the elevator through the lobby and into the waiting limo.

It seemed Victoria had offered a ride home to half of the shows’ cast and crew. A makeup artist and one of the show’s hair stylists took her up on her offer. She introduced everyone as we all piled into the limo.

We shuttled our new friends around Manhattan and she continued to wail. We each took turns trying to console her by telling her how funny and talented she was. “Nobody can do a handstand like you,” someone said. “You’re a great ukulele player,” said someone else.

Victoria said,"Lorne is a #%&*#."

Now, had she used this word on the show that night, the NBC censor would have bleeped her. Apparently, the censor was the only person she failed to offer a ride to, so the expletives flew.

When she was finished exorcising her demons, she asked, “Are you Christians?” Followed by, “I’m born again.”

She got on the limo car phone to call her boyfriend Rick in Florida. This was before we had cell phones, we were quite impressed. While she dialed the phone, she explained that Rick was an old high school sweetheart. He was now a police officer with the Miami SWAT team.

When Rick picked up the phone she burst into tears again. She cried through the Bronx and told him that she was leaving show business. She sobbed through Westchester County and asked him to marry her. In Connecticut she whined and told him that she wanted to live the simple life, just like the cute train conductor and his adorable pregnant wife who were sitting across from her in the limo.

I couldn’t help but remember this night, when on a recent evening, my wife and I saw Victoria on a new reality TV show. The show features overweight celebrities in a weight loss competition. The stars are separated into two teams, red and blue. Each week the teams clash in different athletic events. At the end of the each show, each team stands in one of two giant gold plates, which, as the camera pulls back, are attached to a giant scale of justice. The scale teeters and totters while we, the audience, wait to see which team has lost the most weight.

How low can you go?

Katie, Meredith and Me

They’re calling it the worst kept secret in broadcasting: Katie Couric is leaving The Today Show to anchor The CBS Evening News. It was such a poorly kept secret that even I knew about it.

One evening, about a month ago, I had two CBS executives riding my train. One of them reached into his briefcase and pulled out two 8x10 glossy photos of Katie Couric sitting behind a desk in front of the CBS Evening News logo. When I came to collect his ticket, he quickly hid the pictures. It was as if I was his mother and caught him looking at a Playboy Magazine. His partner laughed when he did this and said something like…“You have to be more careful with those.”

This week, when the news was released that Katie took the anchor job, I thought…Yea, I knew that!

The second worst kept secret in broadcasting was that Meredith Viera is taking over Katie’s position at The Today Show.

About five years ago, my older daughter and I met Meredith in a Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Shop on Cape Cod. We had just left the beach and went to grab an ice cream cone. When we went into the shop, there were only two other people in line, a woman and her young son. They ordered frozen fruit drinks then stepped aside to let us order. It was then I realized it was Meredith.

It looked as though they also had just come from the beach. She was wearing a white tank top and a pair of gray sweat pants. Her hair was wind blown and she wasn’t wearing any make-up and yet she was still very pretty. Her voice sounded somehow different than one she uses on TV.

“Meredith Viera?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Hi” I said, “My wife and I watch your show all the time... Do you have a house up here?”

“No,” she said, “My in-laws have a place down the road and we visit every summer.”

We bantered back and forth like this for several minutes while she waited for her fruit drinks to be prepared and blended. I was struck by how down to earth she seemed and how unforced our conversation was.

Before she left I told her that I couldn’t wait to tell my wife that I met her and I confessed that I had a little bit of a crush on her.

“Oh, you’re sweet,” she said.

When I returned to our motel, I told my wife how we had met Meredith and how I had confessed my crush to her.

“Oh great!” she said, “Now she probably thinks you’re a stalker.”

A few months after our meeting, I read an interview with Meredith in some women's magazine I found on the train. She told the interviewer that she sometimes wishes she could retire from broadcasting and move to Cape Cod.

For ten million dollars a year, I'd change my mind too.

First Annual Blogger Convention

The First Annual Blogger Convention was held at The Villa Bianca Banquet Hall in Seymour, Connecticut on Saturday. Conventiently, this was also the setting of my nephew John's wedding to his lovely bride Lindsay. Bloggers in attendance at this year's event were my nephew Justin, author of "Things I Like" and his lovely and charming wife Cara, author of "No Agenda".

We had a deep and profound conversation as the DJ played in the background:

SHE'S A BRICK-HOUSE

Me: I call to order, the First Annual Blogger Convention.

SHE'S MIGHTY MIGHTY, JUST LETTING ALL HANG OUT

Cara: What?

SHE'S SUCH A BRICK-HOUSE

Me: I SAID...I CALL TO ORDER THE FIRST ANNUAL BLOGGER CONVENTION!

THAT LADY'S STACKED AND THAT'S A FACT,

Justin: OH!... I THINK WE NEED AN AGENDA!

AIN'T HOLDING NOTHIN BACK, OW SHE'S A BRICK-HOUSE

Me: NEED I REMIND YOU OF THE NAME OF YOUR WIFE'S BLOG?

YEA, SHE'S THE ONE THE ONLY ONE

Cara and Justin: WHAT?

BUILT LIKE AN AMAZON

Me: OH FORGET IT!...MEETING ADJOURNED.

How To Get To Sesame Street

When my daughters were young they would occasionally, like most children, watch Sesame Street. One day while watching along with them, I noticed they had introduced a new character named Ruthie, played by Comedienne Ruth Buzzi.

Buzzi was a cast member on the 60’s variety show, Laugh In. Her most well known sketch was that of an old women who sat on a park bench. Every week this character would use her pocketbook as a weapon to beat a dirty old man that sat next to her on the park bench. This skit always made me laugh, so I was very excited to see her late one evening on my train.

Ms. Buzzi could not have been more pleasant and struck me as more of a benevolent schoolmarm than one of the flower power hippies who regularly appeared on Laugh In.
I told Ruth how nice it was to see her on TV again, and that I had two young daughters who watched Sesame Street. After hearing this she demanded that I write down my daughter’s names, as well as my home address.

While I was doing this, she told me that sometimes, (now looking around to see if anybody was listening,) Big Bird loses his feathers, when this happens, a seamstress has to sew them back on.” “Every once in a while,” she said, now in a hushed tone, “ I can get my hands on one of those feathers, and if I do I’ll mail it to you. I doubt I can grab two so your daughters will have to share the feather.”

“That would be great,” I said.

I figured that she probably would forget about our conversation as soon as she got off the train, but a week later a manila envelope arrived in the mail. Inside the envelope was an autographed picture of Buzzi, along with an index card with two small yellow feathers taped to it.

Ruthie had come through.

I raced into the kitchen to show the girls the package. They would have been much more impressed with dead scales from the hide of Barney the dinosaur, but they seemed to like the feathers all the same.

Well, I said, we’ll have to send Ruthie a thank you card.

A week passed and we hadn’t sent a thank you card, then a month, then six months.

Six months or so, after receiving our package Ruth Buzzi appeared on my train again. I was extremely embarrassed that we hadn’t sent a thank you card and wondered if she would remember me. As I collected her ticket, I reminded her of our history, the Big Bird feathers and the failed thank you note.

Apparently Ms. Buzzi is a stickler for manners. When I apologized, her eyes flashed in anger and her lips pursed. She turned her head away from me as if to say, “ you’re dismissed.” I felt much like the old man on the park bench and half expected her to start beating me with her purse.

Some years later I recounted this story to Marty, one of my regular commuters and an actor/puppeteer. He held two jobs at this time. One as a man eating Venus Flytrap in the Broadway production of Little Shop of Horrors and his regular gig, appearing on Sesame Street as the giant wooly mammoth, Mr. Snuffleupagus or Snuffy as the kids call him today.

In recounting this story to Marty, I had hoped that he would diminish the value of the gift and make me feel a little less guilty for not having sent a thank you card.

Big Bird feathers! Marty said. Do you know how valuable those things are?

No, I said, I guess not.

‘I wonder what the statute of limitations is on a thank you cards?’ I asked.

Top Ten Reasons I Failed On The South Beach Diet

(drum roll please!)

10. Belatedly discovered Milk Duds NOT on diet...Go figure!

9. You can't deny an Irishman his potatoes.

8. I figured...if gaining it all back is good enough for Oprah, it's good enough for me.

7. When they said "no starch," I thought they were talking about the collar on
my shirt.

6. Krispy Kreme: Nuff said!

5. Apparently, blogging not considered a cardio workout.

4. "Give us this day our daily bread"... Who am I to argue with the Lord.

3. I'm not only the Girl Scout Cookie salesman... I'm also a client.

2. Three words: Cadbury Mini Eggs.

1. Me love me them carbs.

Shocking e-mail

Hi Bobby,
It is so nice to hear from you! I cant believe that it has been five years since we communicated via email in which you gave me some very interesting information about you father e.g. that he actually had a heart condition which he died from a few years after participating in the obedience exp.I was able to use that information in my Milgram biography "The man who shocked the world" (p.76) and credit you as the source of the information in the Notes section of the book(p. 317) I don't know if you have read it, but it has generally gotten a good reception from critics, and Discover magazine judged it one of the top books of 2004.
I enjoyed reading your piece about the experiment and your father's part in it.
Thanks for getting in touch.
With best wishes,
Dr T Blass
University of Maryland

See the biography of Dr. Thomas Blass:http://www.stanleymilgram.com/blass.php

SHOCKING!

Something shocking happened to my brother John one Sunday night in 1974. He was at his girlfriend’s house watching the CBS news show 60 Minutes and half paying attention to the screen when correspondent Morley Safir started a segment titled “Following Orders.” Safir introduced the piece by showing black and white footage of a psychological experiment that was conducted at Yale University. John was about to turn the channel when he noticed that one of the men in the film looked exactly like my father. My father had died nine years previous to this broadcast, so he was perplexed. He jumped off the couch in order to get a closer look.

As Safir narrated, the film showed a short, stocky and bespectacled man. He was middle-aged and wore suspenders. He was seated in a stark white room while a man in a long white lab coat attached electrodes to his arms. When he finished connecting the wires he asked the man if he had any questions or concerns.

Man in suspenders: About two years ago I was at the Veteran’s Hospital in West Haven.
While there, they diagnosed me with a heart condition…nothing serious, but as long as I’m having these shocks…how strong are they? How dangerous are they?

Man in lab coat: No, although the shocks may be painful, they are not dangerous.

THAT GUY IN THE SUSPENDERS IS MY FATHER! John shouted. He called home and my mother answered the phone.

Mom: Helllooo!

John: Mom, quick turn on 60 minutes. Daddy is on there…and they’re electrocuting him.

Mom: What are you talking about?

John: It’s some kind of psychological experiment and every time he gets a word association question wrong… they shock him.

Mom: Oh THAT experiment (as if my father had been in several experiments.) Yes, I vaguely remember him doing an experiment at Yale about 12 years ago.

The shocking truth is that in 1961 through 1962, my father, who worked as head auditor for The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad,(predecessor to the railroad I work for) took a part time job with a Yale professor named Dr. Stanley Milgram. The railroad did not like their management employees taking part time jobs but my father had nine mouths to feed and was employed at Yale for about a year.

Milgram, a social psychologist, took out an ad in the New Haven Register that offered to pay volunteers $4.00 for one hour's work, to participate in a psychological experiment at Yale University in a study to investigate memory and learning. Participants were told that the study would look at the relationship of punishment and learning. Volunteers would work in pairs; one would be the teacher, the other a learner. The two men would draw straws but it was fixed that my father (a confederate) would always draw the short straw and be the learner.

My father was strapped to a chair and electrodes were attached to his arms. It was explained to the teacher that the electrodes were connected to an electric shock generator and that the teacher was to shock my father for every wrong answer he gave in a series of word association questions.

The teacher was then brought to a separate room and sat in front of the shock generator. The machine had about 30 switches. The switch farthest to the left read 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 volts (severe shock). The switch farthest to the right was simply marked XXX. Every time my father got a question wrong, the learner had to give him a shock that increased in severity with every wrong answer (in reality, my father never received any shocks). My father’s groans and screams were pre-recorded and played each time the teacher gave him a shock. Many of these teachers expressed concern for my father’s well being, some even protesting about continuing, but the researcher in the lab coat urged them on.

Milgram’s results were shocking. He found that 65% of participants, even after hearing my father’s screams, zapped him all the way to the last switch. This study proved that everyday normal people could cause pain and suffering to another person under the right set of circumstances (think Nazi Germany). This experiment is still talked and written about today. Just last year The New York Times ran a piece on it, after US soldier Lynndie England said that she was innocent of Iraqi prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, because, she said, “I was just following orders.”

Shortly after the 60 Minutes broadcast, Dr. Milgram, who then chaired the Psychology Department at City University of New York (CUNY), appeared on the Phil Donahue Show. He had finally released the findings of the experiment and had written a book about it. It was titled, “Obedience to Authority.”

As we watched the show, we were all in a state of shock. They ran the footage of my father being strapped to the chair and we could hear his protests when the teacher started flipping switches and doling out discipline.

“Let me out of here!” He cried, “You can’t keep me here! Let me out!”

We still weren’t certain if my father was really getting shocked or not. We wondered if this might have had something to do with the fatal heart attack he suffered less than three years later at the young age of 49. After the show, my mother contacted CUNY and asked to speak with Dr. Milgram.

The next day our phone rang and I answered it. The man on the other line said, “Hello, this is Stanley Milgram, is Mrs. McDonough in.”

Dr. Milgram could not have been more pleasant. He told my mother how much he enjoyed working with my dad and he reassured her that he was unharmed in the experiments. He sent my mom an autographed copy of the book that was inscribed:

To Mrs. James McDonough,
I thought you might like to have a copy of this book.
As you know, your late husband was part of the
research team at Yale University. It was a pleasure
to work with him, and he was a very fine man.

Sincerely,
Stanley Milgram
April 1974

After her conversation with Dr. Milgram, my mother rented the 8mm reel to reel version of the “Obedience to Authority” movie so we could all watch it at home. We gathered in our living room as my brother Jimmy set up the projector and hung a white bed sheet from our living room wall. I really didn’t remember much about the movie, probably because the quality of the projector was so poor. It had no audio and the picture was grainy (perhaps the sheet just needed washing.) I do remember making some great shadow puppets on the wall though.

My father had died just two weeks prior to my third birthday and I have no recollection of him. We used to have an 8x10 picture of him that hung over the TV in the den of my mother’s house. This picture was an icon for me, a photo of someone from the past, not known but idolized. Much like the pictures of Jesus, Pope Paul and John F. Kennedy that my grandfather had hanging on the walls in his house next door. When anybody spoke of my father this was the picture I had in my mind’s eye.

In 1994, when I purchased my first VCR, I wanted to get a video of the “Obedience to Authority" movie. I contacted Yale University which in turn referred me to Penn State University who now own the rights to the movie. The librarian told me that they normally only sell the video to institutions of higher learning and that they never had an individual request a copy for home use before. He said he could sell me a copy, but the going price was $1000.

I explained to the librarian that I was the son of one of the experiment’s main participants and I just wanted a copy for the family archives.

The librarian told me, that under the circumstances, he would talk to Alexandra Milgram, Dr. Milgram’s widow (he died in 1984 at 51 years of age) and see if they could give me a break on the price.

I was shocked, when a few days later I received a call from the librarian at Penn State. Mrs. Milgram said that I could have a copy of the movie for free, as long as I paid shipping and handling. The video arrived in the mail a few weeks later.

Unlike the 8mm home movie we had watched, this video was crystal clear. The hair stood up on my neck as I heard my father speak for the first time (he sounded nothing like I suspected). I had never seen his picture taken from behind before and I inspected his bald spot. I had to laugh when I saw that we had the same smile and mannerism. I pushed the play button over and over again as I wiped the tears from my eyes.

Recently, I had a middle-aged woman on my train, a Yale name tag hung from her neck. We began talking and she told me that she was a psychology professor at the University. I asked her if she was familiar with the Milgram experiment.

“Of course,” she said.

I then launched into the story I’ve just told here and how I received a copy of the video from Milgram’s widow.

“How strange,” the psychologist said, “ that the only memory you have of your father is that of him being a victim.”

“Shocking really,” I said.


For more information on the “Obedience to Authority” experiment, please visit: stanleymilgram.com

Be A Pepper

Remember this jingle?

I drink Dr. Pepper and I’m proud
I’m part of an original crowd...
Be a Pepper, drink Dr. Pepper.

Is this all it takes to be an original?

I think not.

There is a funny scene in the Monty Python movie, “The Life of Brian” when Brian, who lives in the time of Jesus, gets mistaken as the Messiah by a large group of followers. Brian tries to tell his new disciples that they’re mistaken and that he would like them to leave him alone.

Followers: A blessing! A blessing! A blessing!

Brian: Look. You got it all wrong. You don’t need to follow me. You don’t need to follow anybody! You’ve got to think for yourselves. You’re all individuals!

Followers: Yes, we’re all individuals!

Brian: You’re all different!

Followers: Yes, we are all different!

One follower in back: I’m not!

A lot of the passengers that ride my trains think that they’re originals too.

At least once a week, I’ll get some guy who’ll pretend to be asleep when I come to collect his fare. After I “wake” him, he’ll smirk and hand me his ticket. These passengers truly believe that they’re the first person that has ever thought of playing this game. I used to be patient with these people, saying something like… “Oh! You got me that time” or “That was a good one!” but after 20 years of these lame games my patience has worn thin. Now I’ll burst their bubble by saying something like…“If I had a nickel for every time somebody pulled that, I’d be a rich man.”

Boyfriends and husbands love to play the lost ticket game. The foreplay begins when the man acts as if he has misplaced his girlfriend/wife’s ticket. He gives me a sly wink as he quickly starts patting down his shirt. Just as the women starts to go into panic mode, he’ll pull the ticket out of his pocket and says something like…Gotcha! The woman then usually slaps the man on the thigh and screams…“Oh Bill!”(John, Dick, Harry etc.)

The frequency with which I've seen the above scenario played out makes it unoriginal. However, the whole teasing spouse thing is one of the strangest mating rituals I’ve ever seen. Perhaps I should contact an anthropologist at National Geographic or Wild Kingdom for further study.

I started thinking about originality at the convenience store last week. I purchased a cup of coffee and a chocolate chip cookie. While I was waiting in the checkout line the cookie spoke to me.

Cookie: Bobby, I’m chewy and hot from the oven. Eat me.

Me: Cookie, I can’t eat you. I haven’t paid for you yet.

Cookie: Oh come on… just one little nibble.

Me: Oh, if you insist!

Crunch!

When I got to the checkout counter, I showed the cookie to the cashier and asked if I could get it for half price.

"If I had a nickel for every time somebody pulled that," he said "I’d be a rich man."

I guess I’ll never be a Pepper.

OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY

I dedicate today’s post to the memory of my mother who would have turned 87 today. She loved St. Patrick’s Day and was proud to be an Irish-American.


I wonder which window it was, I thought, as we looked out at the sagging sashes of the dilapidated little yellow house.

In the fall of 1992, I took my mother to Chicopee, Massachusetts to visit her birthplace, the former home of her grandmother, (my great-grandmother) Catherine Ahern Linehan. I had become obsessed with my family history and I asked her to come with me in the hope of jogging her memory and learning more about my maternal roots.

As we sat in the car looking out at my great-grandmother’s home, my mother shared a disturbing story with me:

“Sometime around 1893,” she said, “My mother’s 14-year-old sister Ann was trying to open a stuck window in this house. Try as she might, she couldn’t get it open. They say that she pushed so hard that she burst a blood vessel in her brain. Because it was the late 19th century, the doctors could do nothing for her. She lingered in bed for days and slowly bled to death”.

Ann’s younger sister Bridget (my grandmother) sat vigil at her deathbed. Bridget tried to pray but she was distracted by the sack of candy that hung on the back of Ann’s door. She couldn’t wait to get her hands on these confections and because of this, wished her sister a speedy death. By the end of the week she had her wish.

As we drove away from the little yellow house, my mother told me how her mother always hated the name “Bridget.” It seems as though, New England Yankees used to use the name “Bridget” as a synonym for their Irish servant women (i.e. Mrs. Cabot asked Mrs. Lodge, “How many Bridgets do you have working in your mansion.”) She insisted on being called “Bessie” apparently not realizing how many farmers had given their cows this same name.

I held my mother’s arm as we trudged through Calvary Cemetery in Chicopee. We were looking for my Great-Grandparent’s gravestone. As we searched she told me about her Grandmother Linehan. She was only seven-years-old when her Grandmother died but she remembered her fondly.

“I can still picture her wrapped in a shawl, knitting while huddled around the wood burning stove in her kitchen. She was a very devout Catholic and when she wasn’t knitting she was praying the Rosary. She was a kind-hearted person,” she continued, “ I like to think that I inherited my grandmother’s personality and not my mothers.”

Apparently my Great-Grandmother Linehan did not have an easy life. She was born Catherine Ahern in County Cork, Ireland. As a young girl she immigrated to Boston to escape the great hunger of the potato famine. She found a job working in a cotton mill in Chicopee and at the age of 23 married John Linehan. He also was an Irish Immigrant, who by all accounts, was a stern disciplinarian who drank too much.

They had ten children and only four grew to adulthood. Margaret, their seven year old daughter, died of pneumonia at the tender age of seven. Their only son John Jr., inherited his father’s love of the drink. He ended up destitute, homeless and dying of Tuberculosis in 1910 at the age of 30. They say that the ragman carted him back to the little yellow house into the arms of his despondent mother.

She was quoted as saying, “My son has finally come home…to die.”

After walking past several rows of granite tombstones, we finally found my great-grandparents grave. Their daughter Ann (the window opener) is buried with them. The gravestone is surprisingly ornate and modern looking.

Standing at the gravestone stirred something in my mother’s memory. She said, “When Grandmother Linehan died,” her last words were… “Over the hills and far away.”

”These words painted a mental picture for me. I envisioned my Great-Grandmother on her deathbed. Her last thoughts of being a young girl, running through the peat-covered bogs and fields of her native Ireland. She ambles up the green hills and runs into the arms of the God that she so fervently prayed to.














May the roads rise to meet you.May the winds be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
The rains fall softly on your fields and until we meet again;
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Pat Boone and Mother Love

The Ticket Receiver’s Office (or TRO, as we conductors call it) is just off the main concourse in Grand Central Terminal. This office is basically a bank, where we conductors turn in our cash, cash fare reports and tickets. This is also where we get our change; pick up new tickets and cash checks.

The TRO isn’t very fancy, in fact it’s basically a hallway with two windows covered in bulletproof glass. Behind one of these windows works a short and portly African American woman who is in her late 50’s. We conductors sometimes refer to her as “Mother Love.”

The name “Mother Love” was given with a sense of irony, much the same way 400lb men are called “Tiny.” I say this because Mother Love is not the warm and fuzzy type. In fact she frightens me. She is a no-nonsense woman who doesn’t suffer fools lightly. When you enter her office you better have your cash fare report ready and your money neatly stacked and facing in the same direction, if not… be prepared to suffer her wrath.

Those of you who know me personally know that I’m always singing. I consider myself an off-key troubadour of sorts. One day I entered the TRO doing my version of Michael McDonald singing the Marvin Gaye song, “I heard it through the grapevine.” I was really getting into it, contorting my face the way I had seen Michael do on those MCI commercials.

Oooh I heard it through the grapevine
Not much longer would you be mine
Heeey I heard it through the grapevine
And I’m…

I looked behind the bulletproof glass and there stood Mother Love, frozen at her cash register. She pulled down her glasses to the tip of her nose and looked over the rims. She gave me a stone cold stare till my face turned bright red in embarrassment.

“C’mon Marvin,” she finally said, “Give me your money.”

“Hey,” I said, “I’m just trying to give you a little blue eyed soul.”

I not sure...but I think I detected a smile.

The next day when I walked into the TRO, Mother Love said, “Hey Marvin, you got anymore Motown for me today?” I then launched into a Smokey Robinson falsetto.

Ooooohhh baby baby
Ooooohhh baby baby

To my amazement, Mother Love started dancing and swaying to my soulful sounds. She began calling over her co-workers and saying, “This boys got some soul.”

“That’s right,” I said, “I’m a regular Pat Boone.”

Mother Love doubled over in laughter. From then on she has called me Pat Boone.

Since that day, Mother Love and I have become good friends. She even once brought me an authentic Philly cheese steak from her neighborhood in Philadelphia, (She commutes from Philadelphia to NYC every day.) She recently changed shifts and I don’t see her much anymore. Now when I enter the TRO singing, I hear that same old joke:

Co-worker: What did you do with the money your mother gave you?

Me:(playing along) What money?

Co-worker: The money she gave you for singing lessons.

Ha! Ha! Ha!

At least I know I have one fan.

Punch Buggy

In October of last year my family, along with my sister Eileen and her 18-year-old son Kevin, drove down to Maryland to attend my nephew Justin’s wedding. It was supposed to be a five-hour drive but it took eight, due to traffic, the torrential rains, and a “shortcut” given to us courtesy of AAA. This drive felt even longer due to the fact that Kevin, who was sitting in the front seat next to me, would sporadically tap on the sun visor that was above his head. I tried to ignore it at first, thinking that the boy had Tourettes that had gone unnoticed or, possibly, he was obsessive/compulsive.

By the time we reached the Tappan Zee Bridge, I couldn’t take it anymore. Just when I was about to say something, his mother asked from the backseat, “Kev, what are you doing?”

“I’m playing padiddle,”he said.

“Padiddle” I asked, “What’s that?”

I found out that there are many versions of the game padiddle (even strip padiddle) but according to www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=padiddle, padiddle is a game played while riding in a car. When you see a car with only one headlight on, yell out ‘padiddle!’ and punch the person next to you in the shoulder if they don’t say it also.

Kevin: Padiddle!
Me at the same time: (quiet)
Kevin: (punches me on the shoulder)

Luckily, Kevin learned a kindler/gentler version of this game and he never did punch me on the shoulder. He may have had mercy on me since I was driving. This was a good thing since Kevin stands about 6’4” and weighs about 280. Instead, he would knock the sun visor. Still the same, by the time we reached the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, I wanted to shove his padiddle down his throat.

My daughters have been playing a variation of padiddle lately. Their version is called “Punch Buggy.” Whenever someone in the car sees a Volkswagen Beetle they have to yell out “Punch Buggy—No Punch-backs!” They then deliver a punch in the arm to the person sitting next to them. Once starting this game, you’d be amazed at how many VW beetles there really are out there on the road.

My daughter’s 11-year-old friend Gwen has added another step to this game. She says that when you yell out “Punch Buggy—No Punch-backs!” you then need to include the color of the VW beetle you see.

Gwen: “Punch Buggy—No Punch-backs! Red!” (Delivers a punch in the arm)

Gwen’s nine-year-old brother invented another variant he calls “old man-no punch backs.” I hope this game doesn’t catch on. We have a lot of senior citizens in our town and we’d all end up with black and blue arms.

It’s gotten to the point that even my wife and I play this game when the kids are not in the car. She ALWAYS beats me—in fact, I finally got her, once, this week! My wife is only too happy to report to my daughters how many punch-buggy punches she has delivered to me each day!

Now it’s to the point where sometimes I’ll even play this game when I am alone in the car.

Me: Yellow Punch Buggy—No Punch Back! (Punching an imaginary person next to me.)

Sad, very sad—but at least it keeps me observant and awake.

Luckily we have no long road trips planned in the near future.

Dad Scout Cookies

Every March for the past six years or so, I’ve been pedaling Girl Scout Cookies up and down the railroad’s New Haven Line. I usually leave a couple of cases in the stationmaster’s office in New Haven and bring a couple boxes with me to sell to my coworkers in New York. The cases are adorned with signs that my wife prints up. They have pictures of the cookies on them and read: “Please support your local girl scouts” $4 a box. I leave an envelope and use the honor system for payment.

My daughters and I used to sell these cookies the old fashioned way. We’d go door to door and call up relatives for orders. Now my daughters complain that the driveways in our neighborhood are too long and that dad insists on stopping and talking to all the neighbors.

It was hard to generate many phone sales this year. My wife’s Aunt Ginny, who was one of our best customers, passed away last year. My brother Jimmy, who was also a great customer, now has to watch his sugar intake. We could always depend on my nephew Danny but this year he is on a gluten-free diet. Even my wife and I didn’t order as much as we usually do. We’re watching our carbs.

It’s against company policy for me to solicit cookies on my trains plus the panhandlers don’t like the competition. Occasionally a passenger will see me carrying a case of cookies and ask to buy a box and who am I to deny them the pleasure of Thin Mints, Samoas, and Do Si Dos.

If you’re not familiar with the different varieties of Girl Scout Cookies, let me give you a run down.

Thin Mints: This cookie is about as American as Mom and apple pie. In fact, if you don’t like this cookie, George W. Bush will call you an evildoer and route you out.

Samoas: The best coconut, chocolate, caramel cookie, ever named after an island in the South Pacific.

Trefoil: Boring shortbread cookies for boring people with boring lives. They are also big with the toothless population (i.e. small babies, senior citizens and rednecks.)

All Abouts: Basically a Trefoil on a bed of chocolate. A cookie that’s trying to say, “Look at me, I’m not boring, I have a layer of chocolate on one side” But ultimately, it’s the Bryant Gumbel of the cookie world.

Do si dos: Peanut butter sandwich cookie with a really stupid name.

Tag a longs: Another peanut butter cookie that judging by its name, must be Do si dos kid brother.

Lemon coolers: The low fat cookie. I figure if you’re going to spend $4 on a box of cookies…you might as well pile on the fat.

Café Cookies: The new cookie on the block. The kind of cookie that thinks it’s too good for the rest of the cookies. The kind of cookie that hangs out at Starbucks and demands to be eaten with a $5 Vente.

I’m not sure how I became the main salesperson for these cookies. It may have been when I arrived early to pick up one of my daughters from their troop meeting. I believe her cult…ah I mean troop leader may have indoctrinated me. Against my protests, she demanded that I join them at circle time at the end of the meeting. We stood in the circle, crossed our arms and held hands. I expected to start singing Kum-Bai-Ya but instead we started squeezing hands. The scout on my right squeezed my left hand and I in turn squeezed the hand of my 11-year-old neighbor on my left. We took one step forward with our right foot as the troop chanted the Girl Scout Pledge. This whole exercise made me feel like a cult member at Jamestown. I prayed they wouldn’t bring out the Kool Aid next.

On second thought…I’d never have to sell Girl Scout cookies again.

Teacher Man

I recently finished the book, “Teacher Man” by Frank McCourt. It’s a true story about his life as a New York City schoolteacher and I found it hysterical. His Irish wit and wisdom had me laughing and crying on the same page. This book stresses just how important good teachers are in our lives.

My sister Eileen has been a schoolteacher for about 25 years. She has been teaching across the hall from Mr. Cappetta, a veteran teacher in his mid 50’s. After several years of teaching together they discovered that Mr. Cappetta once taught at St Lawrence School, the Catholic grammar school where my older siblings and I went. There is about a 40 mile distance between St. Lawrence School and the school he and my sister teach now.

Eileen asked him if he possibly taught her younger brother Bobby (me) as a student.

Mr. Cappetta said that yes, way back in 1973, he did have young Robert as a student. It was his first year of teaching and he remembered me fondly.

I told Eileen that I remembered Mr. Cappetta fondly as well. He was one of my favorite teachers. I decided to send him a thank you letter, some 32 years later. Here is an edited version of that letter:

September 29, 2005


Dear Mr. Cappetta,

I told Eileen that you are in the upper echelons on my favorite teacher’s list.

In my mind I think back to the first day of 6th grade, 1973. I picture you standing before the class, the young teacher with a sun streaked pageboy haircut. You have Stephen Stills’ style sideburns that border a handsome face. You’re wearing a red striped oxford shirt that is open at the collar and is draped by a wide yellow tie. Your dress pants are brown corduroy and they hang from your thin frame. On your feet you wear brown Earth shoes.

You roll up your sleeves, pick up a piece of chalk, and go to the blackboard and write: “MUTUAL RESPECT”.

You propose a contract of mutual respect between yourself and your new students, a class that is notorious for being disrespectful. Although I recognize this new philosophy as a derivation of the old golden rule we learned in religion class, I can’t help but be impressed by it’s simplicity, and that a teacher would speak to us like adults. “ He’s very cool,” I think.

Sure, Mr. Moore, our 5th grade teacher was cool, (after all he was quarterback for the football games at recess) but he tended to talk down to his students and he was a serial chalk thrower. I was pretty much the class mute, and I tired of listening to his admonitions that were directed toward other students.

I remember you taught world history and you gave us our first major assignment. We had to write an essay/art project dealing with our favorite era from those we studied.

Colleen Coniff chose Ancient Egypt, and she made a paper mache Siamese cat and she painted it gold. Any Egyptian would have been proud to bow before it. Laurie Giannotti designed an ornate sundial that proved as accurate as any Timex on the market today. Angelo Pizola buried the good citizens of Pompeii in mounds of plaster of paris.

I, on the other hand, considered myself a minimalist. I drew the outline of a Trojan horse on a block of wood and my brother cut it out for me with a jigsaw. I then glued the horse to a square piece of plywood that I had found stuffed on a shelf in my basement. I took little plastic football players from my NFL electric football game; spray painted them silver, and declared them Trojan warriors. I was quite proud of myself.

When all your students’ projects were completed, you held a world history fair. You invited other classes from the school to come in and see our displays. I remember that my Trojan horse looked a little pathetic, dwarfed by the spires of giant clay pyramids and an imposing cardboard Parthenon that surrounded it. You had to chuckle, when on closer inspection, you realized my Trojan warriors were actually two running backs and a wide receiver. But you told me it was a good effort and you gave me a B.

When we did the unit on sea life, you displayed your prized seashell collection on a card table in the corner of the your classroom. You lovingly arranged sand dollars, sea sponges, coral and starfish on a bed of beach sand. In the center was the flagship of your collection, a big pink sea urchin. On the table there hung a sign that said, “FRAGILE, DON’T TOUCH.”

One morning upon entering your classroom you found your prized sea urchin sprawled upon the beach sand in several fragmented pieces.

Now if you were Sister Alice you would have dusted for fingerprints and then told the class that you knew who the perp was. “You might as well come forward and make it easy on yourself,” she’d say.

Sister Adele would have used the fear of God: “You know who did it, I know who did it, and the good Lord above knows who did it, so you might as well come forward and admit your guilt.”

Nobody did.

We all feared a class reprisal and each of us expected to be interrogated, but instead of doing this, you blamed yourself for being foolish enough to leave something so delicate around 11 and 12 year olds. “It was bound to happen,” you said.

“Cool,” I thought, “Very Cool.”

As far as I know, someone’s guilt still hovers like a black cloud over that brick building on the corner of Main Street and Union Avenue.

Eileen tells me that you are still a wonderful teacher. She said that your fellow teachers are amazed with how well behaved your classes are. “ What’s his secret?” She asked.

“It’s all about MUTUAL RESPECT,” I told her.

The Theatre Train

I have worked the 11:22 p.m. train from Grand Central to New Haven on and off for the past 20 years. The official name for this train is 1594 but we railroaders call it the “Theatre Train”. It has earned this moniker for three reasons: the most obvious reason is that it is the first available train for theatre-goers to take back to Connecticut after their show lets out.
The second reason is that Broadway actors and stagehands take this train home as well.

The last reason is that several passengers on this train are intoxicated. This always causes a lot of drama (sometimes trauma).

I have become somewhat of a Broadway pollster on this train. When I see a passenger reading a Playbill or discussing a show, I’ll ask: "What did you see? and "How did you like it?"

In all of my years polling people, I don’t think anyone has ever said, “ I hated it!” The degrees of like vary though, from the tepid, “We liked Mama Mia,” to the gushing, “We LOVED Wicked.” I attribute this to the fact that these people just dropped $100 a ticket on the show and probably went out to an expensive dinner beforehand. Add in the cost of the train ticket and they have just spent a bundle. I’d force myself to like the show too.

Two weeks ago, I had a group of five women returning home after seeing “The Pajama Game.” This is a new show that stars Harry Connick Jr. It also stars Mike, one of my regular commuters. That evening, Mike was sitting directly behind these woman as they flipped through their Playbills and critiqued each actor’s performance. I whispered to Mike that they were talking about his show. He gave me a knowing nod and put a finger to his lips as if to say, “Don’t say a word.”

They must have given Mike rave reviews. Just before he got off the train he stopped by and introduced himself. He happily posed for photos and signed their Playbills. As he got off the train he thanked them for seeing the show and for all their kind words.

There is a pod of about 15 stagehands that ride my train every night. They always sit together in the head car of the train so that they can commiserate and conspire against me. I have known most of these guys for years and we have a lot of fun bantering back and forth with each other. Jack, Richie and Guy work on The Producers, Pete works on Jersey Boys. Jeff is the head carpenter on The Light in the Piazza. Justin and sometimes his brother Bill, work the computers for Avenue Q. Mike and Kenny work on The Lion King. Giancarlo was a stagehand in his native Italy and now works for Phantom of the Opera.

One of the benefits of knowing so many stagehands is that whenever I go to a show, they get me house seats. These seats are always in the orchestra section, center stage. When we went to see The Producers, Guy gave my wife and I a back stage tour. When we went to see Phantom of the Opera, the Phantom himself (my friend and former passenger David Gaschen) gave us the backstage tour.

Whenever the Knicks, Rangers or Yankees are in town, my normally civilized theatre train becomes decidedly uncivilized. Middle-aged frat boys wearing their beer muscles, sometimes want to pick a fights. Sometimes with me, sometimes with other passengers. Occasionally they get out of control and I have to call the police and have them removed. Other times they pass out and miss their station stop. Sometimes by several miles. (hee!hee!)

Drunken party girls who ride this train tend to get loud. When I ask them to quiet down they cop an attitude and give me dirty looks. These nights usually end with them crying to friends and then getting sick in the aisle. It’s then when I call this train by another name…”The Vomit Comet.”

This is the finger my wife broke

This is the finger my wife broke.

This is the infection
That lay in the finger my wife broke.

This is the bacteria,
That caused the infection
That lay in the finger my wife broke.

This is the fingernail all crumpled and shorn,
That held the bacteria,
That caused the infection
That lay in the finger my wife broke.

This is the leaf one November morn,
That got in the fingernail all crumpled and shorn,
That held the bacteria,
That caused the infection
That lay in the finger my wife broke.

This is the leaf blower my wife had adorn
That blew the leaf one November morn,
That got in the fingernail all crumpled and shorn,
That held the bacteria,
That caused the infection
That lay in the finger my wife broke.

This is the motor it was so worn
That was in the leaf blower that she had adorn,
That blew the leaf one November morn,
That got in the fingernail all crumpled and shorn
That held the bacteria,
That caused the infection
That lay in the finger my wife broke.

This is my wife’s finger straight as the day she was born,
That got caught in the motor since it was so worn,
That was in the leaf blower that she had adorn
That blew the leaf that November morn,
That got in the fingernail all crumpled and shorn,
That held the bacteria,
That caused the infection
That lay in the finger my wife broke.

This is my wife all forlorn,
That once had a finger straight as the day she was born,
That got caught in the motor since it was so worn,
That was in the leaf blower that she had adorn,
That blew the leaf that November morn,
That got in the fingernail all crumpled and shorn,
That held the bacteria,
That caused the infection
That lay in the finger my wife broke.