A Utica Boyhood

[Dave]

My first nine years on Planet Earth were spent living in Utica, NY on the 1300 block of Taylor Avenue, between Leah and Square Streets. The West Shore Railroad bisected our neighborhood and provided all a young boy could want for entertainment.

The tracks were a great place to play when trains weren't running, and also a wonderful theater for big and loud and black and rusty when the steam switcher locomotives ran short trains of a dozen or so box cars down the line. And one still memorable day when I was about seven years old, a train accident somewhere down in the valley re-routed silvery streamlined passenger coaches through the neighborhood. All us kids sat on one of the fences that separated a back yard from the tracks and waved to ladies and gentlemen in the club car who hoisted their gin and tonics to our good health. It occurred to me that if there were people on the train they must be going somewhere. There must be something down the track other than the misty nothingness canopied by tall elm trees that was all I could see when I stood on the rails and stared up or down the line. When I got a bike, I promised myself, I'd go and find out. Yup, even then, I put off the future until I could more easily sail into it.

The bike, when it finally came the next Christmas morning when I was eight, was beautiful but temporarily useless as it sat in the downstairs hallway. A Columbia bike glisenting with a bright red lacquer finish, I sat by it in the cold all Christmas week while a blizzard of magnificent proportions stormed outside and left a few feet of snow on the sidewalks. When the storm abated and the old gnomes came out to shovel the walks, I pronounced the landscape now fit for bike riding. Mom and Dad didn't think so.


Thank God for the January thaw! And it came early that year. The side walks were wet and muddy in spots, but at last I was permitted out on my new bike. It was to be used only on the sidewalks. That meant no crossing the street with it, but since I appeared to my parents responsible enough, I was allowed to ride around the block by myself, down to Leah, over to Conkling, up to Square, down Taylor. I stopped, looked and listened each of the two times I came up to and crossed the tracks. I noted that the dirt path running along the rails that led out of the neighborhood was muddy, but clear of snow. As I continued on and passed our house, my mother stood on the porch and waved. Again, she waved on my second tour around the block. On my third circuit, she was no longer on the front porch, having found a chore to do inside. She wasn't there on the fourth circuit either, and the next time I came to the tracks on Conkling, I stopped, looked and made a hard left across the road and down the tracks on the path beside the rails.

Using Google Earth a moment ago, I measured the distance down the old track bed from Conkling to the next intersection, Eagle Street behind where McGuirl's Bar used to be. It's about 1100 feet, call it almost a quarter mile, the same distance you would walk from the old front entrance of Faxton Hospital on Sunset Avenue up the street to just past Rose Place at the south end of what we called Murnane Field.

On this damp and sunny winter day as I rode along the dirt path past Hathaway Bakery, I began to feel guilty. And I wondered if my Mother had simply run inside to get a cigarette and was now back out on the front porch waiting for me, swinging the butt away from her face with splayed fingers like Veronica Lake in a 1940's movie, as though Cornhill was a film noir rather than a neighborhood.


If you have memories of Utica and would like to share them, don't hesitate. I'll probably keep to a theme for my posts, but you don't have to. It's no sin for the subjects to jump from Cornhill circa 1949 to South Utica, 1980. And yours can certainly be a girlhood, too. This is just for fun.

[Dave]

My grandmother came to live with us on Taylor Ave in 1948. She was a great old girl, but maybe a little stiff. She took up residence in the back bedroom facing the West Wind with nothing to fight it with but loose windows and no storms. Any room near the kitchen in that house had frosted windows all winter long. We kept a spatula near the the window in the kitchen to clear off the frost to see the thermometer outside. Knowing the temperature was not at all important, but the thermometer was a gift from my uncle and we felt pretty special owning one and knowing the temperature. For what reason, I don't remember.

We had a radio, too, but that was so Mom could listen to Don McNeil's Breakfast Hour to start her day and get ready for Arthur Godfrey at mid morning, and the soaps at noon. And Mr. Sunshine inthe afternoon when she retuned the radio from WIBX to WRUN. WGAT (later WTLB) offered popular music, but Mom was more in to personalities than music.

The radio stations offered the weather, but as mentioned, who cared? You could look out the window and see what it was doing, and in Utica it probably would continue to do so for the foreseeable future. If it looked like rain, Mom carried an umbrella. If it felt like it might get colder, she brought a scarf. If it was winter and a storm loomed, just get ready to pick your feet up higher as you tramped through the snow. No one except the farmers cared what the weather was going to do. It just did it and you dealt with it.

[Dave]

Messenger

Our Catholic household was led by my father, St. John the Divine, as we boys called him as he got older. We had no pets, but Grandma lived with us. She was a Protestant, the only Presbyterian us kids had ever met. For all we knew, she was the only non-Catholic within miles of our of working class Irish and Italian neighborhood. An older brother said that’s why she had her own bedroom.

Only God knew what Grandma thought as she watched us march to the beat of an old drummer in Rome. She kept her thoughts to herself, mostly, and consulted her Dream Book. Resembling an old bible, the volume had gold edging and a black leather cover. It seemed to accompany her everywhere. In deference to our love for The Saints, she said her book was dedicated to Saint Sigmund. When Grandma infrequently came to Mass with us, she’d bring the Dream Book along and read it, right through the Consecration. “It’s a scandal, Mary,” my father said. Mom replied that it was only a venial sin. The old woman didn’t care what either of them thought. I saw her spunk, but years would pass before I understood her message.

Grandma revered the rugged individualism of her Scots Presbyterian heritage, along with its simple liturgy, and saw Catholicism as a chaotic mess of medieval superstitions. As practiced by Americans in the 1950’s, that assessment would have been fairly accurate. She endured the arcane customs for the sake of my mother, whose father Grandma had married many years before. After my grandfather’s death, the old woman came to live with us in a neighborhood so Catholic she may have felt behind enemy lines. But Grandma remained unmoved by the Roman spirit. No one had tried to tell her what to do since Grandpa threw in the towel and died.

Grandma’s style of religion emphasized an independence of spirit and a definite aversion to centralized management. Presbyterianism didn’t have a Vatican. For her grandsons, however, our Church specified how to live every aspect of our lives. We ran to Masses, said rosaries to the Virgin, checked our movie plans against those indexed by the Legion of Decency, polished our Miraculous Medals, dusted the Pope pictures on the living room walls, had our throats blessed during Lent, threw palm leaves over the battalion of crucifixes throughout our home, considered advice from the myriad of Catholic publications arriving daily in our mailbox (“orders from HQ,” I heard Grandma say under her breath,) and dressed the Infant of Prague statue in his ever-changing liturgical colors as he stood atop our television set and watched over Milton Berle and all the other Jewish comedians of the era. Proggy, as we called him, must have thought he was in the Catskills at a Borscht Belt resort. At the nearby parish school, nuns and priests kept us on the narrow path of catechesis and religious nonsense, very little of it relating to God.

For instance, the church told us to have lots of babies, and as soon as we could, but of course after marriage. Whenever any family in our parish was mentioned in school, the NUMBER of children was always included, with a slight frown for only one child and a big smile if the number approached a dozen. As a third grader, I was quite impressed. So I dutifully trotted home from school and told Mom she should have more children.

"What?" she said, "where did you hear that?"

"In school, Mom. Sister Liquida said good Catholics have lots of children. So I think we should, too."

Grandma, sitting at the kitchen table, retreated into her Dream Book and began to silently read.

My mother threw a look across the kitchen that told me I was on thin ice. It suddenly occurred to me that a nine year old should not presume to give his mother advice on family planning.

"How many more brothers," my mother asked, "do you think will fit in that bedroom with all of you?"

I thought about it for a moment.

"Look, Mom," I said, "I'm not much on details, I'm just a kid."

"I'm aware of that, David," she said.

"I guess I'll mention it to Dad,” I said. “He's a nuts and bolts sort of guy and he'll know what to do."

"Yes," she said, "he'll know what to do."

"And if Dad thinks that ....."

"OK, that’s enough!" she said, her voice beginning to rise.

"Mom, I'm just the messenger."

She left the kitchen then, stepping rather smartly. I looked over at my grandmother to see if she would offer some comment, but she appeared engrossed in Saint Sigmund, slowly turning the pages. Then she looked up at me.

"Maybe," said Grandma , "you should carry a little horn with you when you make an announcement."

“What announcement?”

“The Angel of The Lord declared unto Mary,” she said.

My little brother was born six months later.



From the book, "Heaven" Copyright 2009 by David Griffin

[Dave]

You'll have to forgive my writer-ly excess. Once I get going, through either my narrative voice or that of a character, I often over-do it. I'm aware I poke a lot of fun at the religion I was brought up to observe, and perhaps I wouldn't so much, had that upbringing not been so intense. Nonetheless, it is true that I will sometimes meet a person I greatly respect for their beliefs.

I'll bet that would be true were I to ever personally meet Father Cesta. He's the pastor of St. Mary of Mt. Carmel church in Utica and he's quoted on their web page as saying, “For me, the most important work of the parish priest is to preach the Good News of the Gospel and make it clear, understandable and helpful for daily living, to make weekend Mass a Catholic experience that leaves people feeling better when they leave church than when they entered.”

" …. to make it helpful for daily living." That's a big turn-around from what was taught to me as a kid. And, "… to make weekend Mass a Catholic experience that leaves people feeling better when they leave church than when they entered.” Such would have been a truly revolutionary attitude from the pulpit at any church I stepped into in the 1950's.

I suspect my tendency toward apostasy was waiting for me to grow up before getting itself fully in gear. While it was cataloging and deriding all the characters I met along the path of life, from Holy Rollers to fellow pew partners who would swear their support of the church while putting a nickel in the collection basket, the heretic in me wasn't preparing itself for the times when I would meet the real thing … someone who lived their life with an awareness that they were indeed on a spiritual journey.

[Dave]

Brother Jesse in his "Monk In The Cellar" tells the story of coming across someone who knew she was on a spiritual journey. I'll let him tell the story.

" The person who may have taught me the most about living a life of faith is Dolly Parton. We don’t watch much television here at Our Lady’s, but one evening the Abbot wanted to view a televised biography of B-16 ... Pope Benedict the 16th. I turned on the TV a little early and caught the tail end of an interview show just as Dolly was asked if she was religious. Tearing my eyes upwards from the bottom of the screen, I tried to focus on her smile as she answered. She always had faith, she said, but along with it came doubts. So she made a decision each day to lead her life as though her faith was valid and to act like she meant it, even during times when doubts assailed her. I don’t know why her words impressed me so, but I could spend years in theology classes and not come up with a better plan for how to live a life of faith. I’m quite sure everyone who seeks the spiritual life runs into a brick wall now and then. Most of us have what Bother Catherine laughingly calls a “deep and abiding faith that comes and goes.”

[Dave]

I don't think Grandma ever had the chance to read any of Ben Franklin's writings. She would have enjoyed his very practical approach to life. Though not a believer in any particular religion, he felt that its precepts were valuable to most men. (No one cared about what women believed in the 18th century, except women. That women peopled approximately half the earth for some strange reason didn't impress the men.)

Franklin evidently attended services regularly and often provided fairly insightful commentary in his newspapers on the preachers of the day. He was optimistic about the clerics as long as they weren't against the interests of business, Franklin's true god. Most of the clergy understood where donations came from, so that was not often a problem. Except when he was a young man and chafed under the bit of Puritanism when he lived in Boston, Franklin kept his doubts to himself.

Many people of my grandmother's time were like Franklin. Existing in a society that ostensibly placed a high value on religion and church attendance, few chose to go against the grain of society. They went to church on Sunday morning, tried not to swear in pubic, and kept their "base natures" clean of stealing, murder and coveting their neighbor's wife. Pretty much.

But I think Grandma was a believer who couldn't find a creed that made sense to her. And so she went to church, nodded her head during the sermon, entertained her doubts privately and then came home and cooked the chicken while wondering if the Pastor believed all he had said that morning.

[Dave]

Grandma was a real daughter of Utica. I've written of her life in another story, called Blanche. Pulled from school in the third grade in the 1890's to work in Utica's mills and help support the family, she became a very independent woman. She never had children of her own and was divorced as a young woman from a man who abused her, we think. She fled to Chicago, but came back after a few years. My ten year old mother introduced her to my recently widowed grandfather. They married, and so Grandma was actually my step-grandmother.

They lived in a small bungalow built on a foundation from the 1700's next to a bar (The Hollywood) on Steuben Street at the corner of Louisa. Gramps built and installed coal furnaces from his shop behind the house.

I've marked their home in the photo of UFA in the snow, below. The house is no longer there.

Click to enlarge, once or twice.

[Dave]

As I mentioned above, Grandma came to live with us after Grandpa died in 1948. She took the coldest bedroom in the flat, up against the west wind. Still, her room to me was a haven, where I could get away from the crowd of others in the household. Around age seven or eight, I remember just kind of hanging out when she was not in her room, which was most of the time. She had an easy chair by her bed and I'd sit there and read or dream or play with her radio, a small Zenith. Sometimes she would come in for a nap. When I made to leave, she would always invite me to stay if I were reading or otherwise being quiet. That was OK with me until she began to snore.

Although her only need of money was to buy sweets for the household (my father would accept nothing more), Grandma could not sit still and probably felt independent only if she had her own supply of money. She was usually gone from the house in the daytime to do domestic chores for people who were better off than us, although some of her customers were aged or sick and of little means. These she called her friends, and did their washing and ironing for free. We found that out after she died. They were old neighbors from when she lived on Steuben Street and relatives so distant most of us would have not called them relations. Her more substantial customers paid the going rate, but probably it was the rate from the 1920's, the last time she had worked outside the house.

At night Grandma sat glued in front of the television set in the living room. Her favorite shows were Milton Berle during the week and The Big Story on Friday night followed by the highlight of her week, televised wrestling.

One of Grandma's customers was the Kernans of Rutger Park, their home now sitting empty these past few years. Fiona and Bobbiez and I visited the house one day a couple of years ago. Fiona was able to talk the Oneida County Historical Society into opening it up especially for us because of our project, "On Genesee Hill." We toured the entire house, climbing from the cellar to the attic, and spending a few moments in Mrs. Roscoe P. Conkling's little office that overlooked the valley. Down in the cellar is the remains of an extensive laundry room and I imagine that's where Gram worked when she wasn't helping out upstairs in the kitchen.

[Dave]

I'm a storyteller, not a historian and certainly not a biographer. I say that by way of introduction to the following piece. Much of it is true and I think I captured Grandma pretty accurately.


A Trip to the Zoo


A trip to the zoo was not an adventure my grandmother would have chosen herself. I’m sure she had very little interest in the “filthy animals” inhabiting the smelly buildings on the south side of the city of Utica. But, recently widowed and all but forced to live with our family of Mom, Dad and three young sons … a circus she often called Boys Town under her breath … the old woman was learning to live with compromise as well as chaos. A widow didn’t have many choices 60 years ago.

My grandmother never bore children of her own. Instead, she married my widowed grandfather, bringing
up Mom from age seven as if the two were girlfriends. I can think of no better way to describe Grandma than as a married spinster. If you’ve seen photos of Eleanor Roosevelt, you have a good idea how my grandmother looked and dressed … whether on her way to church, at the beach or wearily digging for spuds in the garden … a big floppy hat, old-lady dress and “sensible” tied shoes adorning her large feet. Her closet held under a dozen dresses, most a buff color with large pockets for work or
play, and the others polka-dot on navy blue silk for church and funerals. Overly formal most of the time,
Grandma thought of herself as an educated and properly raised lady, which was hardly the truth.

I wasn’t very old when she came to live with us on Taylor Avenue, but as a child often will, I had no problem sensing her frustration. As an adult, I now realize a strange resentment burned in
her toward those for whom she had become a burden. Terribly frustrated at being destitute, Grandma was
unable to voice her anger and rage. From time to time she would act it out. On a sizzling afternoon in August of 1953, the entire family crammed into the old Ford and began our way
home from Sylvan Beach after swimming and a picnic. When my father suggested we stop at the zoo to see the newly acquired buffalo, Grandma’s jaw set itself into a hard line. She was tired after a full day of family frolic, but said nothing.

Soon the hot, sticky smell of animal waste rose up to greet us as the car bumped its way into
the parking lot in a swirl of road dust and humidity. The family toppled out of the Ford and walked to the
buffalo’s pen, tripping over tufts of grass on the way. Unannounced visitors should always be prepared for anything, and the buffalo had evidently been too busy to finish his toilet before we arrived. However, he was enthusiastically unburdening himself as we began to assemble along the rail. My parents reacted by observing the blue jays in the trees, while my brothers enthusiastically attempted to partially imitate the beast. Grandma swooned, steadied herself on the fence rail for a few seconds and then grabbed my hand and marched the two of us away.

to be continued

[Dave]

A Trip To The Zoo (continued)

Grandma habitually rescued me from one déclassé situation or another. She regarded me as a sensitive and intelligent 9 year old. “You’re the only other inquisitive mind in the neighborhood,” she said, “and that’s not saying much.” We frequently discussed cultural matters like Margaret Truman’s voice or conundrums like Arthur Godfrey’s refusal to wear a parachute, and mysteries such as whether Desi Arnaz could really play an instrument or if he was faking it while Lucy sang and danced. Grandma said we walked a narrow civilized path together through the jungle of our working class neighborhood. For a woman interested in the social ladder, she was not very sociable.

Although quite different in age, my grandmother and I shared a variety of interests. On family outings, we might wander off together to spy on the birds or inspect an unusual plant or flower, while the others threw a ball back and forth endlessly or nearly drowned themselves in the lake. We often carried on a spirited dialogue, my Timaeus playing to her Socrates. But it was decidedly limited in scope, since neither of us had finished the
fourth grade.

We left the group as they ogled a steaming pile of dung and hunkered up the hill to the zoo’s Animal House to see the monkeys and whatever the hell you call those things that look like giant rats. Dimly lit, the menagerie baked like an oven inside, and smelled much worse than the buffalo pen. Strolling down the aisle past the caged jackals and vermin, Grandma began to chatter through her complete zoological body of knowledge, which
would have taken no more than eleven seconds.

But time moves slowly for a child. I wanted to get home and change into dry clothing. All my squirming around in the back seat on the drive here had done nothing to shake the sand loose in my britches. For reasons still inexplicable to me, the Irish did not allow themselves to disrobe in public bath houses and so we always arrived at the beach with swim suits under our clothing, and went home the same way. We were sometimes dry when we put our pants back on for the ride home, but more often our bathing suits were wet and sandy and terrifically uncomfortable … in places on the body we were told to seldom touch in private and never scratch in public.

to be continued

[Dave]

A Trip To The Zoo (continued)

As we came to a cage smelling so bad the breath caught in my throat, an eerie huffing sound issued forth and echoed around the concrete interior of the building. A huge form lay at the back of the darkened cage.

Attached to the railing in front of the heavy bars, a small sign identified the inmate as a male North American Timber Wolf, one of the largest of the species. I couldn't see well into his shadowy den, and the smelly behemoth gave us no sign of recognition. Easily bored, my attention turned to the monkeys across the aisle. I soon became enthralled with the frisky little fellows, but a little puzzled by the intensity of their play. I glanced over at my grandmother only when I noticed her attempts to entice the Goliath out into the light by leaning over the rail and swinging her purse wide to swipe at the bars.

My grandmother was a wonderful woman, but somewhere in her past the fairy of self-importance had touched her a little too hard with the uppity stick. Grandma could stand insult and injury, but never disinterest. You could not purposely fail to notice the old woman and live to tell about it. Unbalanced by the beast’s inattention, Grandma opened her purse, pulled out a pack of Tums, peeled one off and flung it through the bars at the animal. She certainly hit him, because I heard a loud grunt, but he remained at rest. She shouted at him, but got no reaction. Something now snapped in my grandmother’s soul and she became infuriated. If her mind had been able to make a sound, I would have heard the click-clack of a bullet being chambered. Spittle formed in the corners of her mouth and her breathing grew short. She hauled off and fired the entire pack of antacids at the huge shaggy beast. A sharp crack sounded inside the cage and the Tums could be heard bouncing around in the dark. The entire zoo suddenly went silent, and even the monkeys came to a dead stop. A feeling of fright ran down my spine. In my mind’s eye, I saw Mr. Wolf thwacked hard on a large canine tooth jutting out from his jaw. This is the main dental hardware a wolf uses to tear apart his victims, like poor innocent kids and annoying old women. My grandmother succeeded in her quest. The beast reacted, but Grandma got about 400 pounds more than she had bargained for.

Maybe he was having a bad day. Maybe he was fed up or maybe his tooth had a cavity. Maybe the big cat didn’t like being moved into the cage of a long departed wolf so his own cage could be re-painted. One thing for sure, the King of the Jungle did not gladly suffer an old lady hitting him in the head with a pack of Tums. Mr. Leo Lion lunged off the floor of the wolf cage with a great tearing scrape of his cigar-length claws and flew forward into the light, crashing against the bars in a huge orgasmic rage of roaring, spit and very bad breath. Grandma wet her pants.

next: Conclusion

[Dave]

conclusion: A Trip To The Zoo

Lions have an uncanny sense of smell, perhaps 20 times more sensitive than humans. Grandma didn’t know it, but her aggression and urine produced the best imitation of a mating overture this 600 pound male lion had seen in a long time.

Big guys like Leo make certain movements when they are ready to mate. These are obvious to any species, even humans, unless you’re a youngster whose attention is elsewhere. Despite Leo’s heavy breathing, the monkeys still grabbed my attention and I lost interest in the Big Bad Boy-Toy. Grandma didn’t. When the family joined us in the Animal House, they found my grandmother had taken out her glasses and was standing at the cage in rapt attention, chewing nervously on her fingernails in time to the lion’s grunting. Across the aisle, I stood transfixed by the monkeys. The little guys and girls were sure having a lot of fun, but their games were getting more and more peculiar.

My father joined me at the monkey cage.

“What’re they doing, Dad?” I asked.

“A War Dance,” he said. “We’d better leave before they attack.”


My mother led Grandma away from the lion. I’m sure I saw a look of disappointment in his eyes.

I don’t believe my parents ever fully understood Grandma's feelings of loss and desperation in her first years with us. But they had the good sense to give her more attention after our day with the animals. Eventually my grandmother came to accept her new life with us. And for whatever reason, Mom and Dad never took us back to the zoo.


From the book "Storyteller," copyright 2008, David Griffin

[Dave]

This one's for Jay.


First Gig


In 1959 I was finding it hard to believe I was actually in a rock and roll band. I put on my best black chinos, my new shoes without laces (a leather-covered industrial-grade clasp slid up the tongue to close the shoe) and a white shirt. We'd all had a pretty loud discussion about what to wear for our very first gig. An announcer from WTLB invited us to play a few songs at a local dance where he was working as the DJ. That afternoon we stuffed ourselves into Hank's car and drove out to the New Hartford shopping center. We found a store and each purchased identical bright red sleeveless sweaters. Those and the white shirts and black pants would be our band outfit, until we had enough money to buy tuxes. We promised ourselves to set aside any money we made from playing to buy the tuxes. When we drove home that day by way of King Cole Ice Cream in South Utica, we were feeling like real musicians.

But now, Friday night, we were setting up the drums and amplifiers behind the curtain on the stage of Our Lady of Lourdes School at the annual Children of Mary Dance for 7th through 12th grade students. We were about to go on, waiting for the DJ to announce us. I wasn't feeling like a musician at that moment. I was just a 15 year kid who played mediocre piano and agreed to sing one of the songs … in front of an audience of kids who knew me and would probably laugh. Why didn't I at least bring a fake mustache in case I screwed up and later tell everyone that was my uncle on the stage?

The DJ started another record and came behind the curtain.

"You guys ready?"

"We're so ready and able we're about to tear our clothes off!" shouted Jimmy. Thank God for Jimmy's bullshit. He lived life pushing through the weeds, and would push chest to chest with anyone who stood in his way. If he hadn't talked me into this … well, I'd be sitting home watching Gunsmoke, I guessed, and this was certainly more fun … if I didn't sing off key or forget the chords and riffs I'd practiced over and over for our three songs.

"Davey, give me B flat," said Lowell, our sax, wanting to get us tuned up together.

I tapped the key on the old piano we had rolled out from backstage.

"That's not a B flat," said Lowell.

"Lowell," I said, "I'm on the brink of becoming a rock and roll star, and I would never forget where the B Flats are on the keyboard."

"Then we're in trouble," said Lowell.

Actually, I was in trouble, not the rest of the band. Mike had his little blow-through guitar tuner and we quickly concluded the piano was about a mile and half away from international scale. What I always played in E would tonight have to be in A flat. A flat? Who the hell can play a piano in A flat? I could transpose quickly enough, but all the riffs and double bumps (as I called them) were out the window.

to be continued

[Dave]

Popping his head between the curtains again, the DJ called back, "You're on at the end of this record. Dave, when I announce you guys, you pull the rope and open the curtain and then come out and join the band."

What the hell! We had planned to start playing as the curtain opened. I'd have to come out after they started our first song, a Duane Eddy instrumental.

"We're changing our first song," said Jimmy. We'll let Dave do "For Your Love" first. It's got a long intro and that'll give him time to get out here to the mike."

"Are you kidding?" I said. "I'm gonna pull on the freaking curtain ropes, then run on stage and start singing?"

"We'll make it a big build up," said Jimmy. "While you're coming on stage, I'll introduce you … "And now, directly from the Men's Room at the Waldorf Astoria ... Deadly Dave Griffin!" He broke up laughing.

Buddy Holly's "Oh Boy" ended and we all looked at each other. I turned and ran to the side of the stage and began pulling on the curtain rope. Jimmy played two chords from the Duane Eddy song, realized his error, and not too smoothly slid over to the opening chords of For Your Love. I was still pulling down on the rope and the curtain was slowly separating. My hands were so sweaty they slipped on the rope. I imagined the kids down on the floor were watching the curtain open in spurts, stopping and starting, as if the thirty year old fabric wasn't sure it wanted to be part of this disaster.

I hadn't even gotten the curtains halfway apart when the music stopped and Jimmy began to speak into the mike. I could see him quickly glance over his shoulder at me. I was still pulling on the rope. He waved for me to c'mon and launched into an impromptu monologue about how the piano player had been dead for a month, but was now resurrected so he could come back and sing "For Your Love" in honor of the family he had killed when he drove his 1957 Buick into a picnic table while coming around a turn too fast in Frankfort Gorge, and then ended up killing himself when his car dove into the creek. No one was laughing. The kids took him seriously.

I stopped pulling on the curtain, which was now most of the way open, and took off for the front of the stage. The band was clapping frenetically, but the kids in the audience had that deer-in-the-headlights look on their faces.


next: conclusion

[Dave]

First Gig - conclusion

I stopped pulling on the curtain, which was now most of the way open, and took off for the front of the stage. The band was clapping frenetically, but the kids in the audience had that deer-in-the-headlights look on their faces.


Running fast, I rounded the Hi Hat, jumped over the cables and reached the front of the stage terrifically out of breath, hardly prepared to sing my first song in public. Jimmy gave me the chord, I grabbed the mike stand and pulled it toward me and the worst feedback I'd ever heard in my life ensued, squealing like a pig with its whatevers cut off.. Jimmy and I backed away from each other and I began to sing ….."for you love." Out of tune.

Now I began to realize the key … whatever the hell key we had settled on using Mike's guitar tuner … was way too high for my voice. I knew I'd never hit the high notes when I got there. But fear and adrenalin are wonderful miracle drugs and I hit the highs pretty well, surprising myself.

A few couples were dancing, but since the audience was mostly junior high kids, they stood around whispering in groups of girls looking over at the groups of boys.

I heard a girl scream. When I think back, she was probably testing out her vocal chords, as young girls will often do, getting them greased up for a future of teenage rock concerts. Or maybe she spotted a rat running across the floor. But my first thought was that the school was on fire. As I sang "more foolish I grow," I began to wonder if the band had to stay until everyone got out of the burning building, like the orchestra on the Titanic. I wasn't sure I wanted to stay and wait for the other kids to leave. Did I need to? After all, I wasn't really a professional musician, was I?

More girls screamed. I realized they were screaming for me, but they were twelve years old and I felt completely silly. And so, "with each heartbeat" the song was soon over, but not before the tune's hallmark ending where the accompaniment stops and the singer croons a final "For-or-or-or-or Your-or-or-or-or … Luh-uv. Every time I sang the ending I mistakenly put in one less or one more "or" and this threw the rest of the band off. Instead of one final crash of all the instruments, when I got the number of syllables wrong the drums and rhythm guitar and sax would each dribble in separately like weary travelers. So eventually, under his breath, Jimmy sang it with me and took a big breath before the last one so I'd know when to stop. But this night at our first gig, when he inhaled sharply, he hiccuped. Hank and Mike and Lowell laughed and I stood there wondering where the hell to put the Luh-uv.

The audience applauded anyway, I thought enthusiastically. The girls were still screaming, but now their classmates were telling them to shut up.

Yes, I was feeling pretty good about my performance, and figured it would be no time before I shared the limelight with the likes of Frankie Avalon and Freddy "Boom Boom" Cannon . Dion would have no need for backup by the Belmonts if he decided to duet with me. And I'd written a few songs myself. I just knew they could be hits. I'd offer one to Fabian so that he wouldn't have to sing the dumber songs in his repertoire, like "David and Goliath."

Back to the piano for the rest of our set, I could not figure out what key everyone was in, so I lightly tapped on the keys and smiled without playing a single note through the next two songs. Hank said afterward that I was at my best on the piano when I faked it and no sound came out.

Someone … I don't know who … closed the curtain. Back stage after we finished, the DJ said to us, "That was terrific! I mean the introduction of Deadly Dave. And the hiccup! Jimmy, you were born for the stage!"

He never mentioned me. I got upstaged by a hiccup.

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