A Utica Boyhood

[Dave]

I knew enough musical techniques back then to keep from getting fired. I liked the adulation that sometimes came from audiences and our teenage rock and roll band certainly brought me more money than I might earn delivering newspapers. Plus, I never had a paper route customer scream with delight when I came to their door with the news. And it happened that I could sing, after a fashion. Although Brook Benton and even Gene Vincent were surely not worried about competition from me, my golden voice may be why the band didn’t fire me when I flubbed my keyboard solos.


Gene Vincent and his Blue Caps.


My desire to be noticed by girls as I played in the band didn't work out quite the way I had planned. The ladies who came up to speak to me between sets were older or drunk and they always advised me to find a better crowd to hang out with, evidently including themselves in the comparison. Some were more free with their charms. But the only girl who ever swooned over me also threw up on me.



Still, playing to rowdy young women was a lot of fun. I'm reminded of that when I occasionally sit in church while the music ministry sing their hearts out or play the guitar or kazoos at a Folk Mass. I assume they are enjoying themselves, but with no young women screaming when you huff out your low notes, I can't imagine singing in the choir is as much fun as belting out a song to dozens of beer drinking sorority girls.

[Dave]

It is true I met my wife as a result of my short career of fame in two small towns. She noticed me in the band one night and recognized me from our college. When I approached her some months later, it served as sort of an introduction and we hit it off, something that didn’t always happen to me with many young women who understandably had second thoughts about bringing a musician home to meet Mom and Dad. What I needed and found was a very brave girl.


The Red Elvises. How I wish we had found this group’s tailor! I should say their Art Director. Cool! I would have worn the suit on the left the first time I met Mrs. Dave’s parents.


I had toyed with the notion of working seriously on my playing and becoming a career musician, but no one in their right mind would choose a life of wandering around looking for work and playing music in side street pubs for people who expressed their appreciation by sitting there and getting drunk. I didn’t want to find myself on a Greyhound bus every week touring the worst parts of one town after another as I played out a career in all the cheap dives on the east coast. Some of my band friends got regular jobs and played evenings and weekends for extra money. That must have cut into their family life.



An honest assessment of me as a musician would say I wasn’t very serious and I certainly wasn’t very good. My time of being “almost famous” didn’t last very long, only from my junior year of high school until my second year of college. At age 19 I was done.

One hot and sticky night in July of ’62, after playing in some crummy club at Sylvan Beach, I was odd man out when the management gave us an overnight room that slept only four. I woke up on the sandy beach at about 7 the next morning to a bright sunny day that was giving me a terrific headache. As I rolled over and tried to get comfortable, sand trickling down the back of my pants that were wet from the dew, I sensed my life as a musician was over.


Next: conclusion of My Short Life As A Musician

[Dave]

I sat up on the beach and looked around in the bright sunlight. A young mother some distance away looked at me and instantly called out to her young daughter to come to her. I should have paid for a room somewhere instead of lying out on the sand.



I looked down the beach to DiCastro’s, where I had fallen in love with the whole idea of becoming a rock musician. I wished I had been invited to play there, but they were an upscale bar and never hired us, preferring older bands from the Syracuse area. My old friend and neighbor Petey got a great job with a band from Buffalo. Eventually he quit his accounting work and took off for Nashville with them. Today he is a studio musician and has credits with well known bands. His Aunt Dominica left her bedroom and Uncle Angie and joined Petey down south. I never knew what she was to Petey, aunt or lover. He calls me now and then and asks me if I remember how many window panes were built into each of our houses.

For me, my musical ambition was limited and there were other adventures in life to pursue and places to go. I wanted a life with interesting work in computers, a terrific girl and kids and a house in the country and money to spend. I'm pretty happy with the way my life turned out, but it's fun to remember those golden days … well, some of them … when I was a "rock musician."


From the book, Big Ideas, copyright 2012, David Griffin

[Dave]

Devilish


It may be true that the less mature a mind, the more likely it will see what isn’t there. That’s probably why the only time I wondered about devils was when I was a kid of about ten years of age. My boyhood friend George and I thought we saw one at the foot of our street on a hot and sultry summer night, flitting around the front porch of the Granelli house. We saw devils everywhere after that, not knowing Mrs. Granelli wore a Halloween devil’s costume on Friday nights when her husband came home off the road.



I’m sure the dog that stayed with us for a short time that summer was a devil. But I didn’t know it until I lived with her for a week, just as my brother would say about his wife years later. Belonging to Freddie the paperboy, Tapioca was a beautiful Golden Retriever that was far superior to the ordinary mongrels who lay around our neighborhood like welfare recipients … which they were. But Tapioca was indeed a devil.

[Dave]

I talked Dad into letting me care for her when Freddie left with his family for a week in the Adirondacks. Hell Week, my father began to call it by Monday night. The dog stole my socks at night and constantly begged for food. Not just any food or the garbage, but the food on our plates, while we were trying to eat.

All day long Tapioca ran up and down the street with no apparent purpose in her small mind, except possibly to bother the neighbors. At night she tore through the house, bursting through doorways, skidding and scraping her nails across my mother’s immaculate floors. Each day Tapioca shed hair in great fistfuls, yet never went bald. Mom, a fastidious housekeeper, ran the vacuum cleaner every few hours. Dad thought a haircut might help. But shearing the canine bundle of energy was like trying to paint an unguided missile in flight. To contain her, I had to get hold of the dog around the neck and drag her into bathroom and flop her into the tub. And to keep her there, I had to get in with her. Cooped up in a tub with a dog whose breath stinks is no fun. It was worse than when she woke me up in the morning by barking in my face.




Tapioca’s only talent was speed. For an animal she was not very agile. She seldom caught a ball when I threw it to her. I’m sure there are turtles that could play catch better than Tapioca. But the dog was extremely sociable. Tapioca thought she was human, except she could run faster. Presuming to be a member of our family, she wouldn’t leave anyone alone. At night she nuzzled her way under my covers and in the morning she was first at the breakfast table where she could be counted upon to ask for seconds of everything, please.

[Dave]

“That dog is the devil himself,” Mom said the second day Tapioca was with us. I could only agree. Girl or boy dog, Freddie should have named her Lucifer. I can’t think of anyone else who would stand up to God, not back down and do as she damn well pleased. Must have been the redhead in her.

Dad’s blood pressure rose steeply by Wednesday.

“Does the damned animal ever stop panting?” asked my father as he tried to eat his supper while Tapioca sat under the table between his legs, drooling on his knee.



“Tonight,” he said pointedly to me, “I want you to take the dog around the neighborhood for a few hours and show her off to everyone. You know, let everyone see what a beautiful dog she is.”

“They already know her,” I said.

“And don’t come back till it gets dark,” he added.

So I went up to George’s house. I let Tapioca roam the neighborhood, because George had two rabbits in a cage in his back yard. The night before I had tried to console him after his father broke the news that Harvey and Speedy were never intended to be pets. They were to be Sunday’s dinner.

[Dave]

Both George and I were now completely dejected. The rabbits weren’t much happier, somehow sensing their doom coming Sunday. Idly, we stuck pieces of celery and bits of bread through the chicken wire cage to feed the rabbits and calm them down, not thinking we were probably fattening them up for the feast at which they would be the entrée.

A thought occurred to me. I turned to George and said, “If the Devil wanted to come up and make a mess of things in our neighborhood, how do you think he would appear?”

“I thought the devil lived on Mrs. Granelli’s front porch,” said George.

“There may be more than one,” I answered, the hair prickling up on the back of my neck.

George was silent for moment, then he spoke.

“As a pretty girl,” he replied “who would tempt us and fool us and have us paint our tree fort pink and hide our baseball gloves.”

“Tempt us to do what?” I said.

“I don’t know exactly,” he replied, “but I read something about it in a magazine my cousin Billy gave me,”




He had my attention.
“Do you still have the magazine?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “my sister found it and gave it to my mother. Maybe that’s why they’re murdering my pets,” he said and his voice choked up a little.

[Dave]

I said nothing for a few moments, wondering if I wanted to be tempted by a girl to do anything. I decided I’d probably want to try it, whatever it was. Tapioca could be heard running through the neighborhood, barking a hello to every man, woman, child and miscellaneous creature. A few angry shouts accompanied her travel.

“I think the Devil would appear as a friendly dog,” I finally said.

“Oh, OK,” he said. “Like Tapioca?”



“Maybe,” I said, “but for sure friendly and panting. Following me around and jumping on my lap and getting up close to me while I eat my supper, sitting on the floor at my feet and rubbing up against my leg.

“Yes, yes” he said enthusiastically, “and she can have my baseball glove!”

“No, I meant …”

“Pink isn’t all that bad a color,” he interjected.

“George! I’m talking about the Devil appearing as a DOG!”

“Be more fun if it was a girl in a … bustier,” he said.

“What’s a bustier?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” he answered. “someone tore the picture out of the magazine before I got it.”


###

[Dave]

I read recently the Olympic Committee has from time to time ordered athletes to undergo gender testing. I guess the reason is so male athletes don’t parade around as females and win the competition unfairly. I’ll bet there are many tough women who couldn’t care less about that, and are willing to take on contenders of either sex. However, I always liked girls who expected to be treated like girls.

I’m seldom in the company of males or females whose sex is a mystery. But since boys and girls in early high school mature at different rates of growth, questions did arise, especially in the winter in snowy upstate New York when we wore lots of heavy sweaters and coats and the kind of hats you pulled down over your face. I remember mornings in high school when I got up, peeked at the thermometer and jumped back in bed. When Mom told me to come out of the bedroom and go to school or she was coming in after me, I said I would, but only if I could wear everything I owned.

Kids of all ages bundled up like Eskimos in so many layers of clothes we began to lose our shapes and identities. True, no one seemed to care as we stood on frigid street corners waiting for a bus to take us from Cornhill to some other destination on the polar ice cap we knew as Utica.




And later on such days in the dark late afternoon, I waited for the James Street bus on the Busy Corner at minus 4 degrees. As I stood in the crowd shivering under my coat, vest, sweater, plaid shirt, striped tie, and two undershirts, I got to thinking. How could I tell if a girl I was thinking of flirting with was really Mary Lou or her younger brother Bruno?



Not wanting to make a monumental mistake so early in my career of speaking with girls, and to delay the always difficult task of saying Hello, I spent my time on the bus stop looking at my boots and devising a foolproof method to determine gender by way of conversation. All of this was just in case I got up the nerve to speak. I figured a guy could ask the following questions instead of having to inquire, "Are you a girl?" Confining his inquiries to people shorter than himself would greatly increase the odds of success.

So, here are the questions.

[Dave]

"What do you think of my new boots?" A boy will ignore the question. A young woman will always be polite.

"How is your mother?" A girl will look guilty, then immediately begin to complain that her mother doesn’t understand her.



"Do you like the new books in the library?" A young man will often look confused, then embarrassed.

"What's the weather for tomorrow?" A guy will reply with specifics, like wind velocity, dew point or thermal convection quotients. A young lady will likely choose more personal words like comfy or horrid, suffocating or chilly. And then she may mention her mother again.



"Have we met before?" A girl … even your sister … will invariably say no.

"How much do you weigh?" A young woman will ignore the question or quickly stamp on your toe.

"That's a pretty outfit you're wearing." A girl will move her hips once, very slightly. A young man will flare his nostrils.

"I like where your outfit bulges out." A young woman will walk away, but if not she’ll move her hips two or three times. A guy will laugh or walk away or sock you. Any other reaction should cause alarm.

I haven’t found anyone yet who believes this story. When I first told my wife the yarn on our second date, she said I could make anything complicated. Then she stamped on my toe.


from Sleuth, copyright 2010

[Dave]

I remember summers in West Utica where I lived almost at the foot of Hager Street, down near Lamb Ave where Mrs. Granelli wore her devil costume on Friday nights. Except for George, there weren't many kids in the neighborhood who appeared to have the same interests as me.



Even George and I differed greatly, with his keen interest in sports and mine in books. But for some reason we were friends, while the rest of the kids only to wanted to destroy their bikes and toys or beat up one another. There were no grand operas as had been organized by older kids on Taylor Ave. I have no idea why Taylor Ave. was so thespian, but someone would organize the entire neighborhood into a war game, with uncles and older brothers making and painting rifles from old boards, or a complete cowboy town where everyone had a role to play, and where each front porch was a saloon or a livery stable or a grain elevator or a jail.



On Hager Street, the fun seemed to have left town. Of course, I was part of the advance wave of the Baby Boom and the kids I'm referring to in both locations were my age, so maybe it was our age that defined our interests. Maybe the trouble with Hager Street was that most of the kids had moved beyond their boyhood latency and were now hormonally disposed to Sturm und Drang. Or maybe, since we were at the height of the cold war, we were all in a bad mood, waiting for the atomic bomb to drop. In Utica, not far from a U.S. Air Base, we were constantly reminded by the fighter jets overhead.

[Dave]

I was ten years old the summer the jet fighter crashed into the little intersection south of Rome called Walesville. I can’t imagine what he was thinking, but my father took my older brother and myself to see the aftermath of the crash the next day. I will never forget it. The smoke and flames had mostly died out. People … gawkers like us …were milling around the destroyed homes. A Chevy that had held a family happily on their way to a picnic less than 24 hours before sat burned to a crisp up against a heavily damaged house. The police didn’t rope anything off back then. A man stood guard over the partly destroyed house of his elderly mother, who was sitting in shock ten miles away at the home of a daughter, unable to comprehend the fire from the sky that had almost killed her.

(The front of the old woman's house was never re-built, but the rear half of the house was later remodeled into a finished home. The completely destroyed residence across the road where a young mother was killed as her children played outside has never been rebuilt. Google Earth shows that spot still empty after more than fifty years.)

For a few months after the crash, I would shudder whenever I heard a jet flying low over our neighborhood back in Utica, a frequent occurrence 12 miles from an Air Base during the Cold War. One morning a jet engine’s roar was so loud I was convinced we were about to be hit and I ran out of the house. Into the garden, I think. Go figure.

[Dave]

Walesville

A true story of the July 2, 1954 tragedy.


Mary Peck put down her copy of Utica’s Daily Press and wondered what the world was coming to. At age 79, she had seen a great deal in her life, but all of this craziness about flying saucers and little people from Mars just about took the cake when it came to people’s gullibility. All through the year there had been news reports of flying disks, cigar shaped tubes and a variety of saucers in the skies over the United States and Europe. They were calling it the "Great UFO Wave of 1954." And now people in Utica and Oneida County had reported seeing silver bowls in the sky! Silver bowls! Soon they would be seeing milk bottles up there. Too much time on their hands, thought Mary. Not like when she was a young woman and worked all day taking care of her children, helping with the milking and the haying and keeping a garden. All those chores on the farm kept your mind on the ground instead of up in the clouds.



Mary rocked back and forth in her chair and launched herself up to a standing position, tottering a bit, but after a moment she was steady enough to begin the short walk from her living room to the back of the house. As she entered the kitchen, a whining noise began. Sounding like a siren, it grew louder, as if something was approaching. Unsure if the screech came from out in front of her house, she started back toward the living room, then changed her mind and went back into the kitchen to the side window and looked up at the sky.

In the house diagonally across the intersection from Mary Peck, Doris Monroe hummed softly to herself while she laid bread slices out on the counter and plopped on baloney and American cheese as she made lunch for her children. She had called out to them twice now from the backdoor, each time checking on one year old Betty Lou who was playing happily in the small patch of grass a few feet from the screen door. The young mother had worried a bit when the older three left the house and immediately headed down to the creek at the back of the property. But now she could hear them laughing and making their usual noise as they came back and she felt a little easier.

[Dave]

Doris and Floyd were pleased to find this house in Walesville and had moved in just 3 days ago. They came from Franklin Springs, further to the south and were happy they could move in a week earlier than expected when the landlord finished rebuilding the structure ahead of schedule. He had converted it from an old large garage and Doris thought it turned out quite nice. The home was near a small general store where the kids could get cokes and sit on the steps in the afternoon and it was much closer to Floyd’s job at the foundry in Westmoreland. Everything inside the house was new because of the renovation. The family would have more room here and the kids were thrilled with the creek and surrounding countryside. They were also closer to shopping and doctors in nearby Whitesboro as well as other family amenities.

The whining sound Doris had begun to hear a moment ago now got so loud she could no longer hear her children coming back from the creek. Outside the back door, Betty Lou began to cry and scream. Doris ran across the kitchen and flew out the door, looking around the yard and then up at the sky.



About twenty minutes before and ten miles from Walesville, Bill Atkins had barely lifted his F94 fighter jet off the runway at Griffis Air Base when the Ground Control Intercept Officer cut in on the flight’s mission controller and directed the 24 year old Lieutenant and his radar man, Lieutenant Hank Coudon, 26, to fly due north to intercept an unidentified aircraft. The ordinary training flight had just become a real mission.



While Hank began to work the radar controls, Bill swung the nose over from east to north and pointed the plane at the Adirondack Mountains. As the fighter jet gained altitude, the pilot could see the edge of Lake Ontario come into view and he adjusted his heading to 310 degrees. The Strategic Air Command at Syracuse and Rome’s ground control radar were guiding him to the unidentified craft. In the back seat, Hank was waiting for his screen to light up with the bogey.

[Dave]

“It’s ahead,” said the radar man.
“I see it,” said Bill. “It’s a C-47 and it’s Canadian. We’re not at war with them yet, are we?”

The Douglas C-47 “Skytrain” was the workhorse of armed forces around the world, carrying 7,500 pounds of freight or 28 fighting troops into combat. The planes, known as DC-3’s in civilian aviation, remained in service among the Allies and airlines for many years.




Bill and Hank called the C-47’s tail numbers into Mission Control and advised of the obvious friendly status, never knowing why the Canadian transport plane had been unable to identify by radio. They turned back toward Rome, each quietly happy to have not met a Russian MiG. But the GCI officer gave them a further assignment. Yesterday’s UFO reports, like those Mary Peck had just been reading about in her morning newspaper, were believed by the Air Force to have been caused by a deflating weather balloon as it slowly dropped down through the atmosphere over central New York from where it had been seen at 20,000 feet by a Mohawk Airlines pilot. The F94 and its crew were ordered to find and investigate the unidentified flying object. They were told it might look like a silver bowl.