Y is for Yearbooks

I used to have yearbooks from my three years in high school (I'll explain that later) and one of my two years in Venezuela. I had them clear on up until I decided it was time to move back to New Jersey because of my mother's illness. So, I packed everything I could fit into my 4-passenger Subaru hatchback as well as two kids, two cats and a roof rack full of items. My yearbooks were on the roof.

We left Arizona on February 5 after selling as many things as I possibly could and waiting for the mail to arrive so I would have money and food stamps allowing us to eat and put gas in the car. I had mapped out our journey, including mileage and cost of gas, so I had a reasonably good idea of how much money I'd need to drive from Sierra Vista, AZ, to Barnsboro, NJ. I had just missed a major snowstorm back home, so I was pretty sure that snow wouldn't be a problem when I got out of the sunbelt.

I hit I-10 in Benson, AZ, and drove East into New Mexico. After passing El Paso, I began following I-20 which took me past Pecos, Abilene and Dallas/Fort Worth, TX. Somewhere along the highway southwest of Pecos, we heard a loud tearing noise and I saw and heard things hitting the back of the car. I had no idea what had happened, but I pulled over on this long lonely stretch of road to assess the situation. That's when I discovered that a large section of the tarp that I had purchased in Arizona had disintegrated and the rope that I had tied it down with was in pieces. In fact, the entire tarp looked more like ribbons of plastic flapping and blowing in the wind. My daughter's bike was still there as was her desk, but there was one section on the right rear that was mysteriously empty of belongings.

While I was trying to determine just what we had lost, a truck with Texas plates pulled over behind us and a weathered Texas gentleman stepped out to greet us. He said, "Howdy ma'am. Did youall (one word, yet not y'all) lose a set of speakers?" I just stared at him repeating, "Speakers? Speakers. Speakers. GASP!! My stereo!!!" He then told me how far back down the road I needed to go to retrieve them. I knew there was more than just that stereo, but hoped I'd see the other things when I got there. I didn't. There on the side of the road was my relatively intact quasi-boombox with detachable speakers, detached by now, but with control buttons missing. They, along with everything else that should have been in that corner, were nowhere to be seen. I still had too far to go to be doing a scavenger hunt in the desert, so I left my stereo, like a decaying carcass, along side the road and continued on to go into Pecos to purchase another tarp and sturdier rope. Fortunately, the next exit offered us both a Walmart and a McDonald's. I bought the tarp, rope, and collars and leashes for the cats. We then took a one time break to avail ourselves of the hot food offered by McDonald's since we'd been eating out of cans with pop-tops and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I figured we needed a little "comfort food" while I repaired the damages.

At any rate, to shorten this long story of our little band of gypsies (that's what a friend called us) traversing the continent with limited funds while on our adventure, we managed to pull into my parents' driveway at 12:05AM on February 11 after staying with friends in Louisville, KY, for a leisurely three days. It wasn't until we were off-loading everything that I realized that I had lost every one of my yearbooks in the Texas desert. All those memories, the signatures and good wishes of friends, it was all gone. 

It was all brought to mind this week when my lifelong friend lost her baby sister to cancer. We talked on the phone quite a bit and she mentioned having all of her yearbooks right near her. That's when I asked her if she could scan my Senior picture. I've shared it here. The other picture is of my Sophomore homeroom and I'm in the front row, second from the left. That one I found on a fellow schoolmate's Facebook page.

I can't help but wonder if someone in Texas ever found my yearbooks and if they enjoyed looking through them. It'd be great if they were found and someone actually sent them to my high school for

safekeeping. But, that's not likely. My name was in them and I have classmates who work for the school board and school. I would have heard by now. Oh well.

Still, I've enjoyed going over my little adventure here with you. I might not want to do it again, but I actually did enjoy traveling on a wing and a prayer like that. I actually had enough money that when we reached Memphis, we were able to stay in a motel. We lived it up - we bought TV dinners and used the microwave to have hot meals that night. LOL It actually was fun. We saw a lot of country on that trip.

I just realized that I didn't explain about three years of high school. When I started 7th grade, we were on split sessions. The high school went in the morning until noon and the junior high came in at noon and stayed until 5 - later if you had extra-curriculars. We had outgrown the school they'd built just seven years earlier. A junior high was built and we moved into it January 1969. The ninth grade was one of the grades in the junior high, so we didn't have a yearbook for my first year of high school.

Un-Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad!

I originally wrote this on July 3.

On this date in 1948, my parents were married in the home of Mom's sister and brother-in-law in the town where Mom was born and died and where I grew up. They were married for 55 years before Dad died of metastatic prostate cancer at age 80. Mom lived five more years before succumbing to end-stage emphysema and congestive heart failure at age 92.

I was their only child and Mom's only pregnancy. This was her second marriage. Without going into great detail, my childhood was a nightmare. I remember waking up on the morning of my 4th birthday realizing that I couldn't remember a single thing from the day before. Nothing. Try as I might, I had absolutely no memory of anything prior to that morning. I remember wondering if I'd even recognize anyone when I walked out to the other rooms. But, I did. My grandfather was sitting on the sofa in the living room and Mom was in the kitchen making breakfast. My father was already at work. But, I still couldn't figure out why I couldn't remember anything. I was a tad precocious, but to me these thoughts seemed perfectly normal - being able to analyze situations like that.

The day, as I recall, went by uneventfully - until night time came. Apparently, it was routine for my father to kiss me goodnight before one or the other of us went to bed. He was going to bed because he had to be at work early. But, I refused to go near him. I wouldn't let him touch me. I refused to kiss him goodnight.

I remember Mom going into the bedroom with him and then coming out to get me. She took me to their room and said, "See what you did to your father? Go give him a kiss goodnight." My father was sitting on the side of the bed bawling his eyes out. I just stared at him. I wouldn't even step into the room. I still refused to go near him. I didn't understand why, but I just wouldn't touch him or let him touch me.

After that day, I was Dad's target. Every single mean-spirited thing he could think of he used on me. He called me stupid, good-for-nothing, lazy. He refused to call me by my name. I was either Ajax or Junior. There were times when we got along OK, but it didn't take much for me to be the target of his rage.

He began not coming home after work. Mom would call the bartender to see if he was there. Seedy had gone to school with Mom and wouldn't lie for my dad, so he'd hand him the phone. Mom would inevitably hang up crying. I grew to hate my father. I even once said to my mother, "why don't you just get rid of him?" never expecting her to snap at me like she did. "Don't you ever say anything like that again!! I never want to hear that from you again!" It was years later before I learned that Mom had been married before and that was a large part of what was behind her reaction.

As an adult, I asked her, "did you ever think of leaving him?" "Yes." "Why didn't you?" "Because I had as much right to this property as he did and I wasn't going to lose it." Her father had given them the land on which they built the house. Because she'd lost everything in her first divorce in 1944 she assumed she'd lose everything again in the 60s. Instead, she toughed it out, living up to community expectations and presented a totally different image than what was taking place.

Dad was abrupt and abusive verbally. On me, it was both verbal and physical. There weren't Child Protective Services during those years like there are now. I had no where to turn. Mom's parents were long gone (her mother died in 1942; her father in 1959). The options for assistance to women in abusive relationships simply didn't exist then. And, you never let it be known that you had problems. It just wasn't done. I lived through all of this assuming no one ever knew anything, other than Dad's drinking. That pretty much was noticed by everyone.

By the time both Mom and Dad were retired and developing various medical issues, they lived in two separate worlds under the same roof. One time, Mom went to a concert with my cousin and his family. Dad didn't even notice she was gone and locked up the house and went to bed. My cousin had to pound on the windows to wake him so they could get in. Dad simply never noticed she wasn't home.

After Dad ended up in the nursing home (following a series of serious injuries from falling), Mom was talking to their neighbor about him. She still visited him daily (it was her duty as his wife) and they were discussing some of his unique behavioral characteristics. Mike was more or less joking with Mom about Dad, so he laughed when Mom said, "He wasn't a nice man." That's when Mom said, "Mike - it wasn't for love that I stayed with him." Mike didn't know what to say and suddenly realized she wasn't joking.

Although on one hand you can say that 55 years for a second marriage is proof that it's worth trying again, unless you're privy to what's really going on in that marriage, you don't know how worth it the entire effort was. Personally, I think I'd have been much better off with Dad out of the picture. He belittled me so much while I was growing up that I used to literally pray to God that I'd wake up a boy because I just knew my father didn't want a daughter. Until I was 31, he regularly told me that when the doctor asked him what he wanted (during Mom's labor), he said, "Anything but a redheaded daughter." Yep - that's what he got! I grew up afraid of my own shadow and always feeling like I was guilty of one offense or another. I'd get in trouble for doing nothing because I "must have done something". I was virtually friendless, had few social skills, was always odd-man out in my classes, last to be chosen for teams, the one called names in high school (until a girl deemed more deserving moved into the area); so I became the one who befriended the underdog, who stood up for those at the bottom of the social ladder. Yet, I couldn't stand up for myself.

So, every year, on July 3, I remember that my parents had an unhappy marriage (the years that I remember - I'm sure it began well) because one man couldn't overcome his insecure selfishness and need to have all the attention. I remember him blowing up at his mother who made the mistake of defending me by saying, "Paul! She's just a child." He went off on a rant about how I never got what I deserved, everyone always protected me, I never got in trouble for anything, etc etc. Years and years later I realized that I reminded him of his sister who was born when he was 17 who had such a dramatically different relationship with their parents than he did that he felt history was repeating itself. Did that make his behavior right? Hell, no!! But, once I was able to connect the dots, it all fell into place for me. I no longer saw myself as the cause of his problems. He had his own demons, but he made me believe I was the demon.

All in all, though, I'm grateful for the last five years of Dad's life. The head trauma he suffered changed his personality in such a way that I got to see a different side of him. Gone was the angry, sullen, miserable and insecure man who'd always held ME accountable for his own problems. This new man was someone who came to depend on me for answers and for help and had replaced his "neediness" with genuine needs. While I wish I'd seen that man during my childhood, I'm grateful that I was able to see him at all. It changed so many things about our relationship.

So, unHappy Anniversary, Mom and Dad. I'm grateful for the things you taught me without any of us realizing you were teaching me, such as the acceptance of ALL people of ALL colors or religions or social statuses as equals. Despite the bitterness amongst ourselves as a family, that lesson managed to come through loud and clear. I've never forgotten it.

Photos are mine. The black and white is their wedding day and the color photo is the last photo ever taken of my parents together. Dad passed just months later. He never spoke to my mother again once he went into the home.

The Bakery - GBE2 #8

The bakery in this story is the Elite Bakery in Glassboro, NJ, where my mother worked for at least 11 years while I was growing up. I know she still worked there when I graduated high school and only quit because she learned she had glaucoma. It was also where I got my first job. If I were to do it now, I’d enjoy it, but at the time, I hated it. I had to wear a white uniform (a dress – no pants) and white “nurse” shoes, which to a teenage girl who was just discovering fashion of any sort was like being made to wear her grandmother’s clothes (which I actually did later in life, but that’s a different story).

Mom’s first bosses were Russell and Mary D’Amico. My image of employee/employer relationships through my parents was that of true friendship. Mom and Dad were invited to their home for dinner more than once and Mary knew she could count on Mom to fill in when needed.

Later, the D’Amicos sold the bakery to Charlie and June Johnson. Charlie had worked for Russell, so he was the perfect person to keep the business alive and the dream the D’Amicos had envisioned alive.

Mom would always bring donuts home from work when she was done her night shift and we would freeze the cream donuts to keep them fresh. Dad and I would eat them right out of the freezer, they were that good. The butter-crumb cake was a type of coffee cake that was about the diameter of a medium pizza and less than an inch thick. It was topped with a streusel-like topping and in the middle of the cake was a buttery, moist layer that was my favorite part. Charlie was the one we counted on to create my son’s birthday cake for his 3^rd birthday. None of the ones in the books he had on display really seemed suitable, so Charlie created one based on my explanation of an airport runway with a jet taking off at the end because Paul loved to fly so much. He loved that cake! (He’s 30 now and still loves flying.)

I think I was in Junior high school when we learned that Russell D’Amico had committed suicide. Apparently, he had invested heavily in a scheme that promised great returns and he had talked many of his friends into investing as well. When he learned that it was all a sham, he couldn’t live with the thought that he had convinced his friends to lose their money. Mom went to Mary’s side immediately.

Years later, Charlie fell from a ladder in the warehouse and had serious head damage. He tried to continue the business, but it became more and more difficult, so he eventually sold out to a larger bakery enterprise called Liscio's.

Gone were the days of the butter-cream filled donuts coated with powdered sugar, cinnamon buns heavily topped with raisins (aka sticky buns), “torpedo” rolls (I didn’t like these, but my parents LOVED them – very hard crusts and very pointy ends, the entire roll was maybe 6” in length), plenty of Italian bread with crispy crusts (you rarely find that today), the éclairs that my father loved so much and the delectable butter-crumb cake that I loved. Gone are the breads that were donated to St. Bridget's and the nuns that hadn't sold the day before.

I recently learned that the new owners sold out to a construction company who is helping the city of Glassboro completely rebuild the downtown area to tie it in to the growing Rowan University. Glassboro has long been a college town, but there was a complete disconnect between downtown and campus. It was two different worlds. Many of the old buildings and homes, including St. Bridget’s school across from the bakery, are gone to make way for an almost mall-like business center with large promenades and direct access to campus, which had not existed before, as well as extensive student housing.

Although the city had deteriorated quite a bit over the years, there were certain staples that held things together. Elite Bakery was one of them.  It’s a piece of my childhood that no longer exists. My parents are gone, the glass plant (which is how Glassboro got its name) where Dad worked is gone and now the bakery is gone. Things maybe improving economically in that small college city, but some things are lost forever.

Amazingly, there is a bakery just over the county line built with the same design as Elite’s building design. The only thing different is the name. I think I’m going to have to check them out.