A Utica Boyhood

[Dave]

When I got to the box, I was so worked up I couldn’t break the glass with my mitten still on my hand. I found a stone and broke the little window. My finger still hurts from the cut I gave myself.

I turned back toward the building, and if I live to be 90 years old I will never forget what happened next. I was running and could see the firemen and people around the bottom of the building, neighbors coming out on their porches in their nightdress, folks still clinging to the balcony railings … and I was beginning to hope no one would get hurt playing acrobat on the balconies, because this might not be a real bad fire …. when the whole place just went wooooosh! It broke out in flames. Brother Barnabas says the word is erupted. Well, that’s what it did … it erupted in flames. One huge sheet of flame shot up from the roof of the building and at the same time showers of sparks blew out the windows. Holy Mother Mary, I’ve never heard or seen anything like it!

All the voices hushed for a moment, and then a loud moan went up from the crowd, the firemen included. I stopped running and plopped down in the snow. But after a few seconds, I got up and kept going back toward the Flats. Oh, why didn’t I go home?

That old poor lady. She was coming down a string of sheets and towels like some others, and she was crying all the way. She wore a hat kinda like the one I used to see on my old mother … God rest her soul as she walks with all the saints in Paradise. A man in his shirtsleeves up on the fifth floor had gotten her on the rope. He must have thought he was saving her life. I yelled up at her to hold on. I ran up to where she would land and I held out my arms. I’m a strong kid. I shouted up to her, “Just a little farther!” She was down to the third floor now, but then she just stopped and hung there. I knew she couldn’t last long.
“C’mon! Slide! I’ll catch ya!” I shouted.

A fireman came out on a nearby third floor balcony and called to her to swing over to him, Maybe he had a plan to get her down the staircase, I don’t know. But I can’t see how she would’ve had the strength for it. All she had to do was slide down to me and she’d be safe.

She looked over at the fireman, and then looked down at me. She looked sick and tired. Brother Barnabas says the word is miserable. Well, miserable is how she looked.

“Over here!” the fireman shouted.

“Down here, lady!” I cried
She didn’t have very good choices, anyway, now that I consider it. But, oh, how I wish I could forget what I said next.

“C'mon! Let go. Let go and slide,” I yelled. But she just let go and fell.

She hit a railing on the second floor, bounced off and then banged down at my side. She came so fast! Right next to me. On the pavement. On her head.
Honest! I tried, I had my hands up. She was past my arms and on the ground before I could catch her.

Oh, I wish I’d just gone home when I got to Oneida Square that morning, taken my leftover papers and my coins and headed back down the hill to the academy. Wish I’d only read about the fire in the paper and not gone there.

Next day the Herald said that poor lady landed on her shoulder and broke it, not her head. Well, I’ve never before heard either a head or a shoulder break. But I have to tell ya. If you ever hear a head bust open, you’ll be sure to know it. It sounds like nothing else in the whole world.

I don’t feel so good.

David Griffin copyright 2009

[Dave]

Since most of the firemen in the world are of the volunteer variety, it's only fair to mention them. I was a volunteer fireman years ago. I'm sure I exaggerate in this story, but it was fun to write.


Hero


The threat of divorce loomed ever so slightly on the horizon while I mounted a shiny new revolving light on the roof of the family car. Next, I made small changes around the house, and watched the scowl on my wife’s face grow deeper. Patiently, I explained to her the duties of a volunteer fireman, and the need to have my car and firefighting gear ready to go at a moment’s notice. My brother firefighters would be depending on me, I told her. She didn’t appear impressed.

Just a few minor adjustments in our bedroom were necessary to accommodate what the kids were calling, “Dad’s latest hobby … again.” I pushed the cuffs of the special fire pants into the boot tops and set it all up at the foot of our bed. This would allow me to simultaneously jump right into my pants and boots when the fire alarm sounded in the middle of the night. For the next few evenings, I practiced the jump soon after we settled down in bed, until Mrs. Dave threatened me with the fireman’s Pike Pole that I had left standing in a corner. The pole has a curved spike on the end of it for ripping boards and roofing off a building. I won’t repeat what she said she would do with it.

For some reason, my bride objected quite strenuously when I draped an old firecoat over our headboard. I just wanted it handy while I jumped into my pants. True, the coat was a hand-me-down. It had braved many a blaze and smelled like a 3 alarm fire. Woozy, the coat’s previous owner, was dead and gone to that great conflagration in the hereafter, where he would no longer have any need of it. Mrs. Dave was sure he had died in the turnout gear, but I assured her it only smelled like it.

The Fire Chief is our neighbor, so I appealed to him for help. I was sure if he came strutting over wearing his badge and parade uniform, he could persuade my wife to bear some inconveniences in the interest of civic duty. Not to mention the honor of sleeping with a prospective hero … yours truly. But Smokey is a sensible man and declined to intervene.

A highlight of any new volunteer’s career is when he’s given an expensive alarm radio, the device that whistles and screeches to announce a fire at any time of the day or night. I installed it in our bedroom under a small table, covering it with a cloth so the radio would not call attention to itself. I was certain my wife would be happy I’d considered our décor when I hid the radio from view. Since the table is on her side of the bed and I’m a deep sleeper, I cranked up the volume control to full blast. I meant to tell Mrs. Dave the radio was now armed and ready to go, but in the excitement of getting all my equipment ready, I simply forgot.

The radio erupted at three the next morning, a total surprise to her. I suppose that’s an understatement, because I won’t forget waking up to a screeching radio and a shrieking woman. Once I realized where the cries and wails were coming from, I had to coax her out of the closet. I’m not sure how she landed there … we found her nightie caught under the bed. Worse, I arrived late for the fire, and forgot to take along my Pike Pole, leaving it at home with a very angry woman. Later, I was afraid to come home from the fire.

It now became crucial that I prevent Mrs. Dave from throwing the radio and my other gear in the trash. Finally, Smokey agreed to come over and speak to her about the illegal destruction of government property. He stood just inside our front door lecturing my wife, and had progressed to “misdemeanor criminal acts of a malicious nature,” when I sensed she was about to brain him with a piece of official government property, probably in a malicious manner. If he’d worn his uniform as I’d suggested, he might have made a better impression.

I quickly offered a compromise. All the gear in our bedroom went into our car’s trunk, and we agreed the radio would be set to half volume. That certainly wakes my wife more gently now, but she then rouses me rather roughly for each emergency. At the Annual Awards Banquet next month, I’m told Mrs. Dave will be recognized for “Alarming A Fireman By Sleeping With Him.” The firemen are known for their humor. I would say my wife is not, and I don't think she’ll keep the certificate. I’ll tread lightly on the subject, however. I still haven’t found my Pike Pole.

Copyright 2009 by David Griffin

[Dave]

Directions


Back in the 1950's when I was in high school, if you stood in the middle of the Busy Corner in Utica, N.Y. …. I mean the exact center of the intersection, right on the manhole cover that I always wanted to open when I was a kid and descend into the inner workings of the city and meet the mayor and the Common Council … you might eventually get run down by a delivery truck on its way back to the Boston Store or you'd get asked for directions.

Sure enough, as I arrived at the manhole after high school classes on a fine autumn day and said Hi to my Uncle Billy, a man pulled his Ford to a stop and rolled down the window to ask for directions from downtown Utica to Fairfax Place in the southern end of the city.

"Well, you go up this street right here, Genesee …" began my Uncle Billy.

"Do you mean North?" interrupted the driver, confused.

"No, up," Billy replied.

"North is down in Utica," I interjected, “if you’re from Cornhill.”

"Then you make a right on the Parkway ...." said Billy.

"It's called Burrstone Road after it crosses Genesee," I said. I've always believed in being accurate.

"Well, anyway," said my uncle, "where the orphanage is."

“Torn down five years ago,” I said to no one in particular.

Billy turned to me and asked, "What's that street where your Mom smashed up the Mercury?"

"It was the Buick," I said.

“That’s where you want to turn,” said Billy to the perplexed man, “but you have to go up Sunset Avenue first.”

“Which used to be called Perkins Avenue,” I added for historical value.

“So a left down Sunset?” said the man.

“No,” my uncle said, “a left up Sunset.”

“Past the fire house,” I said.

“And over the tracks,” said my uncle.

“Stop, look and listen,” I added.

“No trains there any more,” said Billy, as his fingers played lightly across the bullets on his wide black belt.

“Probably no tracks, either,” I said.

“Look for Cornwall Ave. on your left,” said my uncle. “Make a left and go down to the end of the street and you’ll be at Our Lady of Lourdes School.”

“I graduated from there in 1957,” I added, helpfully.

“And your brother, too,” said Billy. “Didn’t he graduate the year before?”

“They were gonna kick him out,” I said.

“The boy just had a little extra spirit, that's all,” said Billy

”He kissed the May Day girl after she crowned the statue of Mary with flowers,” I explained.

“Kind of a romantic kid, I guess you could say,” chuckled Billy.

“Ran up in front of the whole assembly and caught Mary Lou Ryan coming down off the ladder. Kissed her on the lips,” I said, relishing the memory. Half the kids were laughing, the others sat stunned, clutching their rosaries. The nuns for once found themsevles caught with their holy pants down.

“Why did he do that?” asked the man in the Ford.

“On a dare, a bet,” I said. “He won a quarter and a pack of Juicy Fruit gum. And Mary Lou’s eternal enmity.”

“Eternal what?” said Billy, pushing his policeman’s cap back on his head.

Down the street … to the north … I could see cars backed up and a few trying to pull out into the next lane to get by our little conference. Closer, a Boston Store truck was edging out into traffic to get around us.

“Hey,” said the man in the Ford.. “What about Fairfax Place?

“It’s right there,” said Billy. “The school is at the foot of the very street you’re looking for.”

“But not Mary Lou,” I said , “she’s joining the convent.”

“Your brother must be devastated,” said the man, but I’m not sure he was sincere.

“My brother is convinced she loves him deeply, to this day,” I said.

“That’s crazy,” he replied.

"Maybe not," said my uncle. "After all, our hearts ..." and here he paused and stood tall and pulled his gun belt up over his pot belly ... "our hearts are held intact by our egos."

The man in the car looked at me. I shrugged and turned toward my uncle.

“That’s kinda poetic, Uncle Bill,” I said. “Here, hold my Geometry book while I write that down.”

“I can’t,” said Billy, “I’m supposed to be directing traffic.”

“You’re both crazy,” said the man as he pushed down the accelerator and zoomed off up the street. Up would be south.

"I think you annoyed that man," said my uncle.

"Not me," I said, "I just supplied the footnotes.”

“Let’s do it again tomorrow,” he said.

###

[Dave]

My father was an honorable man and honest to the nth degree. He definitely did not believe in story telling or embellishing incidents, so you might consider me to be a balance to his extreme views on the subject. However, in defense of myself, I will say I always point out when I'm storytelling and when I'm not, because honesty is an important part of my life, too.

If you're interested, my views on truth are expressed in an essay that's here:

www.windsweptpress.com/truth.pdf

A year before he left the UFD, Dad sought and won promotion to the Fire Prevention Bureau. He studied hard to become an inspector, he told me years later, and was quite proud to put on his navy blue uniform in the morning and go to work. On his first day, he was given a list of buildings to be inspected and he finished the entire list and all the associated paperwork by quitting time. When he handed it in to his Lieutenant, the man took only two of the reports and gave my father a dirty look. Dad came home mystified. Next day he was told by a fellow fireman that inspectors were expected to do two inspections each day and no more.

"What do I do the rest of the day?" my father wanted to know.

"Get lost," said the man. "Go home. Go to Leubberts (a bar on Charlotte Street … a favorite of civil servants,) but don't screw it up for the rest of us."

And there was the politics, always the politics. Dad cited a guy (I was later good friends with the man's grandson) who had pull with city government and my father was told to withdraw his report. In another instance, he and a fellow inspector decided to go the wall on an apartment house off Whitesboro Street that was a firetrap. They lost their case and almost lost their jobs. After Dad left UFD, the building burned to the ground with a number of lives lost.

Uncomfortable with all of this, my father didn't last long and went back to work at the newspaper which day by day was looking like a better opportunity, especially since some years before the printing trades at the OD had fought hard and won the right to have a union.

[Dave]

According to my late father, in the 1930's when he first worked at the OD, the pressmen and assistants would be called together on Friday evening by the boss and told how much money they were to be paid for that week. For the same hours, it might be $25 or maybe $30 or as low as $17, and very infrequently as high as $35. The pay depended upon how much management felt they could get away with, but ostensibly was related to how well the balance sheet looked that week. This was hard on men trying to put food on the table and raise families. Although the management all had fixed salaries and lived much better than the rest of the employees, the bosses felt this method was fair because the printers and pressman and other workers were thus allowed to participate in the great American myth of self reliance, a concept America's upper classes always lauded, but seldom put themselves at the mercy of, once they got men with less means to work for them. The wealthy had family, money and banks, while the working men had nothing until they discovered they had each other. When they tried to use their concept of America, a brotherhood of workers together asking for better pay and conditions, they were promptly told this was illegal. The rich had gotten to the legislatures first with cash and made sure workers who organized would become criminals. Since the wealthy owned the newspapers, the workers were branded Communists whenever they refused to believe the bullshit that workers and owners had been put on a level playing field in the jungle by a just God and each were given the same tools for success. When management from various companies organized to harass and lock out workers, they called it an Association. When workers organized, the newspaper owners called it a Commie Plot. This would be the same owners who would eventually convince the American Public that newspapers were the guarantors of their democracy.

I suppose I sound like a liberal, but I'm not. I'm a lover of history. I believe everything I said above is true. But you won't get much disagreement from me these days about how some public unions have overreached into the public's pockets. Still, I am mindful of why they came about and I worry sometimes that we may soon have no one left to represent the needs of working people. We may already be there if we are not teachers and public servants.

[Dave]

When we were boys and summer vacation yawned before us with unending days of perfect idleness, life beckoned like a circus of wonderful possibilities. Back To School was a jail sentence coming in September, but we’d handle it when it arrived, settling down and doing the time. And though school might be like a purgatory, it wasn’t as bad as Father McDiddley’s version of that frightening hereafter, where we’d be forced to stand too close to a bonfire fed with old Playboy magazines. I don’t know why sex offended God so much back then, since it produced more of us. Thank God he seems to have become more accepting of it in recent years.

Most summer mornings found my best friend George and I on our way to the public swimming pool, bathing suits tightly rolled in towels and tucked under our arms. You could hear screaming children in the pool from a block away. It’s no wonder adults delegated lifeguard duty to teenagers.

We were each eleven, and the important things in life were just beginning to beg our attention. We had been talking about naked girls since Easter … speculating might be more accurate … and the topic continued to prove fascinating as the summer began. George’s boyhood latency had ended more abruptly than mine, and he seemed obsessed with the topic.

Approaching the pool that morning, I tried to convince George that since he wanted so badly to see a naked girl, he should wrap a towel around his crew-cut head and walk into the girls changing room. I thought he might be crazy enough to try it.

“You could get away with it, George,” I said

"They'd throw me out," he replied.

"No, they wouldn't, George," I said. "They'd never guess. All the girls are just as flat as you."

"Then why don't you do it?" he asked.

"Because, George," I replied, "I'm going to be a saint when I grow up, and we’re not allowed to look at anything naked."

I said it with a straight face. I did not smile. I wanted George to think me serious and wish me luck, or say anything to indicate he believed me, so I would know I had fooled him. Then I could whoop and shout and fall on the ground and kick my feet up in the air and roll around laughing, telling him over and over and over again that I had gotten one over on him. I could look down on him from that lofty height of superiority. These are important transactions in the business of boyhood, and come to think of it, in the social lives of chimpanzees.

But he only looked at me and didn’t say a word while I waited for him to speak. I had to go to the bathroom and the delay was becoming difficult. I needed to whiz, preferably in the pool where it was more fun. But first I wanted to pull this off.

George continued to stare at me in silence. I decided he knew I was kidding, and was attempting to frame just the right answer. Or maybe he wanted me to admit I wasn’t serious, so he could feel superior. But he was taking his time and I really had to go bad.

I scrunched up everything I had down there. I stood on one leg, then another, slightly bent over. I stopped breathing for a few moments, hoping that might help. Still, George said nothing and continued to stare. Then his eyes suddenly darted off to the horizon and his face lit with a smile as he loudly farted. He’d been waiting for his large intestine to catch up with the dialogue. I laughed so hard I wet myself.

If there's a lesson here, I guess it would be, "Don't wet your pants waiting for wisdom from someone who will only generate a lot of hot air." I should have kept that in mind when I later began my business career. And come to think of it, each time I look in the mirror.

[Dave]

I am always amazed today when I drive through downtown Utica. It's empty! When I left in the early sixties, shoppers filled the sidewalks and there were so many drivers on Genesee Street that a traffic cop was needed to keep order under the traffic lights on the Busy Corner. (That patrolman was often my Uncle Billy.) It seemed impossible that suburban malls could so completely empty out the commercial center of the city.

And I understand that the Hotel Utica is now a "destination." It was always a premium place to stay, but today couples in New Jersey pore over colorful brochures and plan a weekend in "upstate New York," where they can spend the day floating on the Erie Canal that my ancestors may have built, and then spend the night between satin sheets, and later wake to breakfast brought to the room's door by liveried waiters.

But I remember the Hotel Utica somewhat differently. It was a place where my friend George and I at age 13 kept an eagle eye out for the Russians.


The Russians are Coming


During the second world war, everyone mobilized for the conflict in one way or another. If you weren’t fighting in the skies over France or slogging up the boot of Italy, you were back home dealing with rationing and black-out shades and air raid drills. You could have been climbing fire towers or standing on the roofs of tall buildings waiting to spot enemy airplanes if they chanced to come over U.S. territory. In Utica, the citizenry felt especially vulnerable to air attack, because we were only a hundred miles from Canada and you couldn’t trust those damned Canadian Frenchies to do anything right, much less shoot down an enemy plane before it flew down our valley and dropped a load of bombs on us.

This fear from the skies persisted into the early days of the Cold War as folks continued to climb tall buildings and watch for menacing aircraft. But by 1957 damned few citizens thought it worthwhile to sit perched atop a water tower to watch a supersonic Russian bomber scream by overhead with an atomic bomb hanging from its belly. Better to be high-tailing it out of town. However, bureaucracies never die and the Civil Defense Department continued to enroll anyone interested into the Ground Observer Corps. My friend George and I were two 13 year olds who were definitely interested. We figured a U.S. Government assignment would be much more exciting than working on our Boy Scout merit badges.

[Dave]

Mr. Huudak, the man at the Civil Defense office on Genesee Street, gave us a condescending smile, but he signed us up. He explained the Observers’ duties … report any enemy planes we might see. While on duty we would be in telephone contact with the Strategic Air Command in Syracuse, 50 miles away. We knew the SAC guys would be hunched over their big radar screens and scanning the skies for “bandits,” but they needed our help. We were the men on the scene, able to call out the tail numbers … or something. I asked Mr. Huudak if enemy airplane tail numbers would be in Russian, but he appeared to not hear me. Instead, the man handed us a clipboard and said to fill our names in any time slot we wanted to work. The schedule was empty. We were the only volunteers for that month and may have been the only volunteers all year. George and I were probably performing one last hurrah for the Ground Observer Corps in Utica.

Undaunted in our enthusiasm, we walked out on the roof of the Hotel Utica the next day after school. The wind whistled around us and blew stray leaves and scraps of paper up against a dangerously low wall that ran around the perimeter of our gravel surfaced aerie above the town. If not careful, we could easily trip and plummet to our deaths in the street below. We used the key from Mr. Huudak to open a grey box mounted on a pole next to a skylight glazed with whitened glass and frosted with fresh bird poop. In the box were binoculars, a booklet of silhouettes for identifying airplanes and a grey colored phone with a label above it reading “Report.”

While I was wondering what to do first, George picked up the phone and spoke into it with the officious voice of a junior grade lieutenant.

“Reporting for duty … Sir!! What? OK, thank you. Sir!!”

A Sergeant named Carmodelli had just said he wanted us kids to behave ourselves up here on the roof. Kids? We were official government plane spotters!

[Dave]

Utica is ten miles from a former US Air Force base and five miles from the county airport, so the sky was quite busy with aircraft. But soon, among the commercial DC3’s and the Air Force F-86 Saber Jets engaged in training flights, we spotted a Russian MiG 15. We were pretty sure of it. Of course, now that I reflect on the odds, it seems unlikely that a Russian MiG had penetrated the North American Air Defense Shield and was flying around the sky over Holland Patent unnoticed by the American F- 86’s. But George was certain the bogey he was peering at through the old binoculars absolutely matched the silhouette in the booklet. In fact, he was thoroughly convinced of it. And he pointed out that as duly sworn plane spotters we were not to question procedures or to analyze likelihoods, but just report our findings. And he was sure we were looking at a Russian MiG 15 fighter jet.

Trying to stall the inevitable, I asked, “Does it have bombs on it?”

“Would it matter?” asked George.

“Well, yes,” I ventured. “After all, it might be a peace mission or they might be surrendering.”

“I don’t see a white flag,” said George.

“Well, at that speed a MiG 15 can’t just hang a flag out the window, George,” I whined.

“Are you refusing to perform your sworn duty as an official Ground Observer Corpsman?” he asked in an intimidating voice.

“No, of course not,” I said. “I just think we should give this some thought.”

“You think about it,” he said. “I’m going to take out an enemy plane before it hurts somebody.”

George picked up the phone and spoke loudly to Sergeant Carmodelli.

“Sir !! My associate tells me that a Russian MiG 15 is in the air over Utica. Intentions unknown! Sir !! What? No, sir, my associate has perfectly good eyesight and he thinks you should scramble a squadron of fighter jets, pronto! Sir !!”

I could hear an obviously angry voice squawking on the other end of the line. George listened intently and then he spoke into the phone.

“How much?” he asked. He nodded and put the phone back in its cradle, a serious look on his face.

“Well, what did he say, George?” I asked.

“The sergeant says you’re to be court martialed and hanged in the morning,” he said.

“What!? Well, what about you?” I cried.

“I’m getting a reward for bringing you in to the Air Base,” he said. “I’ll split it with you, if you get your father to drive us.”

As I said, bureaucracies never die and they seldom get it right. A year later I received a large envelope from Washington with a letter inside saying the Ground Observer Corps was now and forever a scrubbed mission. Attached was a scroll that announced President Eisenhower’s appreciation for my 10 years of devoted public service. I was 14 years old.

[Dave]

Remember when it was cool to smoke? In the 1950’s that seemed likely to be true when each of us was about eleven years old. Many of us began smoking by 13. And by the time we got a bit older and developed some sense, we were already hooked on nicotine. After that it didn’t matter what our more developed minds told us, because the addiction centers in our brains had taken over everywhere south of our crew cuts.

















And my all time favorite!

[Dave]

It’s a wonder my ten year old lungs survived Thanksgiving dinners at Aunt Margaret’s home in the 1950’s. Coal miners would have cleaner chest x-rays than any of us kids and adults who together inhaled at least a carton of cigarette smoke throughout the festive dinner and the long afternoon of televised football games that followed. My mother smoked. Grandma, Aunt Margaret, and Uncle Harry, too. Great Aunt Rose, Uncle Bob and the Geary’s who lived next door. On their way out to dinner in a restaurant, the Geary’s stopped by to wish us Happy Thanksgiving, leaving behind their contribution to the growing toxic plume of tar and nicotine.

We thought nothing of it. No regard to the health hazard marred the celebration of the day. The Surgeon General was asleep through the ‘50’s, or wasn’t born yet, and the danger of first or second hand cigarette smoke was somehow not important to the media moguls who depended so much on tobacco for their advertising revenue. A popular magazine ad of the day pictured a physician smoking while he held up a pack of his favorite cigarettes, a pack of lies.

As the meal began the smoking lamp dimmed and flickered out. The air cleared slightly as turkey and giblets and mashed potatoes and gravy and squash and rutabaga and peas and cranberries and biscuits and mint jelly were brought from the kitchen and heaped on the dining room table.

As the smoke abated and the food began to arrive, I sat in famished anticipation, waiting for my mother to let go of my arm and allow me to reach for whatever dish came my way in the merry-go-round of food about to be set in motion.

Uncle Harry pronounced the blessing. He was given the task because he was a bachelor. True, the logic of that is not apparent, but neither were a hundred other family traditions I’d always meant to ask about.

Uncle Harry’s way of “saying the grace” always intrigued me, especially when he was drinking. Polishing off his third high ball before dinner at half past noon, he stubbed out a Camel cigarette in the gold inlaid ashtray beside his dinner plate and began his invocation.

[Dave]

Voices around the table subsided as he raised his arms above his head, bringing them about in a great circle to touch his finger tips together, as if he was performing an impromptu field sobriety test. His arms then dropped to his chest, his hands folding in prayer.

“And now,” he intoned, “we thank the Great God Jehovah and all his angels. And His son, Little Baby Jesus. And all the saints, from Albert to Zachary, as well as all the Prophets, too numerous to name, but they know who they are. And, uh … we wish everyone around this table a joyous Christmas shopping season. And we wish all of you a fine dinner on Margaret’s fine China. Eat hearty and stop when you get to the plate. Uh … live a long life. Amen, and please pass the turnips.”

The food now began to travel around the table and I practically inhaled a serving from each dish as it arrived. I loved every kind of food and wasn’t at all picky. I was always a good eater. I still am.

Dinner over, the Luckies and Camels and Chesterfields and Pall Malls and Old Golds came out. The snaps and clicks of all the Zippo lighters firing off at once sounded like a company of riflemen cocking their weapons. As I worked on my dessert of pumpkin pie, smoke rolled across the table and reminded me of a Civil War battle film I had seen in our fourth grade class. My mind’s eye saw soldiers stumbling through the woods, banging into trees, hacking and coughing as they struggled to find a breath of air.

There were no casualties here on this day, but the long-term effect of all that smoke would have consequences. Despite his command to live a long life, Uncle Harry did not himself survive to a ripe old age. He suffered a fatal heart attack at age 50. The week before, he told my Mom his chest felt tight and he would switch to a milder brand of cigarettes. But that didn’t halt the rush of the prophets coming to meet him at heaven’s gate, nor all the saints from A to Z following close behind.

At his funeral, old friends and relatives gathered to remember a dear friend and brother and uncle. They slapped each other on the back in greeting and told the same old family stories, a harmless pack of lies that glossed over the hurt and loss and struggle and stumbling in all human life. Most of this hail-fellow camaraderie took place outside where they could smoke. Inside by the casket were those of us too young for tobacco. We were old enough to learn bad habits from our elders, but not smart enough to heed advice from the dead. Right before our eyes was a lesson that few of us were noting. Some lies came twenty to a pack.

[Dave]

I don't have a fixed plan for this thread. I was trying to keep my posts in chronological order, but I guess I've opted for some other kind of order that is sometimes topical, sometimes chronological and at other times chaotic.

Another thing: it isn't MY thread. Anyone can post and I hope you do. It would be nice to hear some of the YOUR childhood exploits, whether they happened in Utica or not.

[Dave]

I certainly should mention what a terrific place a cemetery can be for kids to play in, as well as learn to drive. I taught both my teenagers to drive in a cemetery. I told them to be careful as we edged our way down narrow lanes between the headstones, but as the teacher I was much more comfortable than on city streets. In a graveyard most of the pedestrians are already dead.

In the 1950's we spent many days and evenings over in St. Agnes Cemetery, playing one game or another among the headstones. On the way home from Blessed Sacrament school in the afternoon, I often cut through St. Agnes. Along the western perimeter of the graveyard was an open flat field that Mr. McCarthy kept mowed. We played baseball on the grass in the summer and trudged through its deep snow in the winter, pretending we were not far from the North Pole. (Wasn't that up Route 12?) Eventually, after I grew up and left Utica, that field became an extension of the cemetery. My parents lie there today.

Along the edge of the field were homes that fronted on Conkling Avenue, below Arthur St. I remember a man often sat there in a tiny building at the back of his yard and looked out over the field.

[Dave]

War Wounds

The boy was 8 or 9 years old and Walter could see him crossing the snowy field that lay between the cemetery and Walter’s shed. The man guessed the youngster was coming from school, and a moment ago had looked up from his workbench when he heard the boy yelling hilariously at the top of his lungs. Needle-like ice particles blew against the kid’s face, as he shouted into the mouth of the storm and kicked up the snow with his boots, making his way through the storm like a young explorer crossing the Artic wastes.

Inside his tiny shed, Walter moved closer to the window and watched the youngster struggle through the drifts of the snow, his legs lifting one after another as if deeply mired in mud. To be that young and innocent, thought Walter, was truly the gift of one’s lifetime.

The stomach-twisting fear began to lift a bit inside the man. He coughed and cursed the weather and wondered once again why he chose to sit out here in the shed behind the house on these days when the snow slapped down on the land like a blizzard of vengeance. But it was cozy by the little coal stove, and he didn’t have to listen to his wife sigh and snort through the invented troubles of the soap opera characters she followed on the radio each afternoon. So here he was once more on a snowy day, bringing his fear out from some dark closet deep inside, where he was able to feel it again, but not see it.

Walter stayed by the window to watch the boy stumble on through the snow. The lad abruptly stopped and peered back over his disappearing footsteps. He turned, staggering back to where he’d been, and was soon flailing in the snow as though searching for something. Walter saw the boy’s bare foot and realized he had lost his boot.

As the snow came down furiously, the man bolted out the door, grabbed the boy, found the lost boot and carried them both back into the heated shack. The boy was shaken by the almost violent rescue, and Walter was a bit stunned by his over-reaction to the little emergency. He coughed heavily before he was able to catch his breath. Walter didn’t often forget to limit his exertion, as he’d been advised by his doctor at the Veteran’s Clinic. But he noticed the fear that seemed to arrive with the snow was now gone.

The boy looked around the interior of the little shed and thought it was pretty neat. Everything including the workbench was smallish, like a playhouse, and all of the tools were lined up precisely where they belonged on the wall at the back of the bench. The tiny coal stove pushed out a welcome warmth. After they introduced themselves, Walter put David’s wet socks on the stove to sizzle and dry. They talked of school and the weather and even soap operas. Soon David could see the storm let up as he gazed out the window, a French door mounted horizontally with lots of glass panes and a wide view of the field. When his socks were dry … actually singed a bit … he put on his boots and continued his way home. David was pleased to find a new friend. Walter was, too.