The Newell Post

The other morning I was listening to WFUV on my iPhone. I like to mix up my music listening from XM and my playlists to a NY radio station and WFUV is the best there in the adult contemporary world. Hot 97 is not for Jimmy.

I am listening to the DJ introduce a song from a group with whom I am not at all familiar. That is one thing I love about the station, it introduces me to new music as well as playing the hits of days gone by. Anyway, this new song promised to present “Nuanced and Compelling” layers of some sort. At the enunciation of these words I once again remembered why I never became a music critic.

I thought about nuanced and compelling and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to find out what they meant relative to a song. I would hate to find out, for example, that “I Want To Hold Your Hand” lacked nuance while the Byrds were good but short on compelling.

The Boss? Nuanced, no. Compelling? Hell yes.

Pearl Jam? Very nuanced.

Adele?

My mother always used to say if you can’t say something good about someone, don’t say they lack nuance.

Nuance and Compelling brought to mind a song by Harry Chapin, “Mr. Tanner”. It’s one of my favorite Harry Chapin songs. It tells the story of a tailor/would be baritone who tries to break into the singing racket only to be smacked down like some un-nuanced, non-compelling stain-removing, one-hour-martinizing pants presser by a music critic who knew his way around Nuanced and Compelling”.

I remember people telling me back in the summer of 1977 right before I was to assume my duties as a seventh and eighth grade teacher at St. Vito’s that “those who can’t, teach.” I never understood what that meant. It’s not like I was a hitting coach for the Yankees who couldn’t hit himself but had the audacity to teach others. I mean, I was going to teach History, and English, Reading, and Religion. Did these critic wannabes who posed as friends think I couldn’t be a historian and therefore I had to resort to teaching history?

Talk about un-layered people.

Getting back to the morning DJ, I guess all he was trying to say was that the song about to be played was a really good song and I think you listeners will enjoy it. Did he think that he was helping in that regard by putting us on the alert to make sure we don’t skip a layer or miss that compelling, nuanced guitar riff?

Not feeling up to the task and not willing to admit that I could neither identify the nuanced nor the compelling, I went to my Summertime Playlist.

This is probably the first time an author giving a talk can start off by introducing his characters.

First, I would like to introduce my wife Eileen without whom there would be no beginning, end nor dedication to my book.

I would like to introduce my brother John who has promised to keep me honest in my story telling.

My daughter Jeannine

Assorted nieces and nephews including my nephew Michael who is recording this for posting on You Tube.

Now last and certainly not least, The Bronx Boys: Michael O’Connor, PJ Howley, and Fred Cappelletti. John Trentacosta wanted to be here but had vacation plans already made. Another good friend ,Lou Fabrizzio would have loved to be here but business is keeping him away.

Our friends Pat and Paul

The great thing about having this put on You Tube is that many of the women, who I still think of as girls, who were not able to be here will now be able to see this. I hope Jeannie Held Algazzinni, Rosemarie Beitz and Kathy Lynaugh ,as well as Laura Clemente are watching and I wish you all were here in person to share this.

The list of friends that we all had back in grammar school and through high school was too much for me to manage in my writing but they were all there in spirit.

1261 Leland Avenue, Apartment 6

My mother and father raised five children in a two bedroom apartment on the second floor of 1261 Leland. It was paradise. It was hard being humble living in such a glorious place as The Bronx especially on Leland Avenue. You really felt that you were something. I just loved the sound of Leland Avenue whenever I said it. LELAND Avenue! Forget about feeling deprived, we were rich and we knew it.

I had to take Latin as a college student at St. John’s. Apparently the three years of Latin at St Helena’s HS wasn’t enough. Anyway, the professor I had at St John’s would start off each semester (I had him for three semesters) by quoting Ogden Nash, “The Bronx? No THONX”. I made sure never to read Ogden Nash.

Anybody here named Ogden ?

In recent years, my siblings, Maureen, Johnny, Barbara, and Michael would often marvel at my mother’s ability to manage a large family in so small an apartment. Now to be fair Johnny joined the Marines when I was two, so that opened up a bed. Then when he came home from the service Maureen had the good sense to get married to Hank and four years later Johnny got married to Mary. But during those four years when Johnny was still at home you never were quite sure where you were going to sleep or with whom.

It wasn’t until much later when Barbara married Jimmy and then Michael married Margaret that I had a room of my own…my siblings hated me for that. I was spoiled.

Another World

One of the common reactions my siblings have had to the book is the belief that we may have come from different families. I spent a lifetime hearing stories about people I never knew, cousins that lived with us that I hardly knew and other tales of fun and adventure. Now my brother and sisters were reading stories that they hadn’t experienced or hadn’t seen through my eys.

One of the nice things that I have heard from my own children and some of my nieces and nephews was that they loved hearing about Nana and Pop.

YOU ALWAYS HAVE A STORY

I had an assistant director who once said that I always had a story to tell. I think I inherited that from Pop. Pop was always telling stories and sometimes I had heard the story so often that I didn’t always listen. Sometimes I would just recite the story with him. But Pop had great stories and he had a unique delivery. He was always funny but never tried to be. Unlike me, I always try to be funny and very often miss the mark. But I always do have a story to tell.

A BRONX BOY’S TALE

I had a tremendous time writing the book. I am my best audience and I kept myself amused for quite a long time. I first started writing the book back in 1997 because of a friend I met on the Speonk train.

I met a guy who used to play basketball for St John’s when Mike and I were there. He wrote a book and asked me to read it for him. It was a manuscript, not published, and it was about a college basketball player. It was a pretty good story and well written but what struck me most was that my friend had written about something he knew.

I had been writing for years and never getting beyond a page or two because I wasn’t writing about something I knew, or more importantly, I was writing without a passion for my topic. I finally found a topic about which I was very passionate.

I always appreciated growing up in the Bronx and going to Blessed Sacrament and my last year as a student at Blessed Sacrament was something special. So, that’s where I began. I woke up humming a tune on November 22, 1963. Big D Little A Double L A S

It took me no time to get fifty pages written but then I hit a wall. I didn’t know where to go.

Fast forward to May 1, 2011. I started a blog, The Newell Post. I started writing again. I wrote about everything. I had a few Saturday Morning Rants about politics, religion and AROD and steroids. I also began writing stories.

One of the stories I did was an adaptation of something I had written for the Newell Christmas Party, A Very Newell Christmas. I added other stories and kept writing new ones. Finally, I put my original fifty pages on the computer and began to cut and paste my new stories. They weren’t in any order at this time.

Then one morning Eileen sent me a link for Create Space and told me I should publish my book…now I had to write it.

Create Space is a branch of Amazon that provides self-publishing services. I submitted an eighty page draft for editing and critique and a year later I published A BRONX BOY’S TALE.

LESSONS LEARNED

I used to say that my parents lived at a time when life was less complicated than today, less stressful. They worked hard but they didn’t have to deal with email and cell phones or a ridiculous commute. But then as I continued writing I wanted to make sure to include the historical setting in which the story takes place.

It was then that I realized that raising a family through the Great Depression, World War II and the constant threat of World War III had its challenges. Now I wasn’t around to see how my parents dealt with the depression and World War II but I did hear pretty funny stories about those years. Even when I was old enough to appreciate the significance of the Cuban Missile Crisis we had a laugh or two in between decades of the Rosary.

I guess what I learned was that every generation faces turmoil of one kind or another but if they have a family that loves them, friends, that stand by them, and a community that provides a structure for a life well lived, then you survive enough to create your own stories and to share them with the next generation.

Yesterday I had an appointment with my hematologist/oncologist. I meet with him three or four times a year, usually on the day when I have one of my monthly IVIG treatments. This time I was told that he wanted to see me in between treatments. This raised a red flag in my brain.

I was worried that maybe there was something wrong. I told myself that if there were something wrong he would have seen me right away. Nevertheless, as I drove to Southampton I had my worry hat on.

Going to the doctor never really bothers me or causes me any stress but sometimes I think about the time I took my car in for an oil change and was told my gillhoooly rod was out of whack. My care doesn’t have a gillhooly rod and probably your’s doesn’t either but mechanics have a language all their own and I throw myself on their mercy whenever my car is in the shop. So, despite feeling well and anticipating that I would have a good check up result, I still had a little angst as I was driving for my appointment.

I began to think what would happen if I were given bad news. How would my view of the world change? Bucket lists are big these days and I hate that concept. I have been fortunate in getting just about everything I ever wanted. Of course, a Ranger win last night would have really made me happy, but aside from thatI have just about what I need.

But the thing that scares me most about bucket lists is that they seem to be so finite. It’s a list after all and has a beginning and an end. What happens if you achieve all your list items? Do you merely check out and say Ta Ta everyone? It’s not for me.

I have always subscribed to the concept that Wanting is better than Having. How many times in our lives have we pursued a goal or a purchase only to achieve our heart’s desire and say, “Is that all there is?”

Having an unrealized goal keeps us hungry, keeps us in motion, keeps us alive. “I won’t have a bucket list,” I tell myself. But I will see things differently if I get bad news.

It’s a short drive from East Quogue to Southampton but I wasn’t even out of Hampton Bays when, talking to myself (it’s how I write), I say, “Why do I have to wait for Bad News in order to see things differently? Why not let Good News make you see things differently. I finish this thought as I get into the village of Southampton. As I pass the Southampton Movie Theater I note that “The Fault In Our Stars” is playing. Oh Bugger!

This only sidetracks me for a second and I continue my self-examination regarding seeing things differently. I decide that I must change my view of life. Lately I have bemoaned my commute much more than I ever have in the last thirty years. I always was able to put a positive spin on commuting three hours each way every day. The train was my “Den on wheels” where I could read and listen to music and commune with my thoughts. It’s where I could write and record my life experience. I could even have a beer on the ride home. But lately it has been unbearable.

I vowed in my newfound sense of self that I would enjoy the ride.

Then, as I got deeper into the Village, I was just about to let “let little things bother me” as my mother would say. It was like a smack at the back of my head when I knew for certain that the train was not the only ride I must enjoy.

I long for the day when my train ride is over. Retirement seems like a vacation to me. Maybe it shouldn’t? Maybe I shouldn’t be so eager to get off the train? Maybe it’s the ride that matters most when all is said and done?

I had a good report from my doctor. In fact, we talked more about the Rangers than we did about me. He said I was doing great but Nash and Richards had to score.

The ride continues and I mean to enjoy it.

I used to be a fan of Touched By An Angel. I guess it was a time in my life when I really needed a little Divine Intercession. But as I recall, I would no sooner finish watching an episode then switch to the next entry of The Sopranos. Nevertheless, the concept of Angels intrigues me still.

Eileen and I had a recent discussion about Angels and she is a believer in their existence and involvement in our lives. I am not so sure that she isn’t right because I believe in them too and I have a few examples of their intercession in my life and they are the subject of Faith, Friends, And Automobiles.

On the first occasion of Angel spotting that occurred in my life, I was actually the Angel. It was a Sunday evening and I was driving back to the Bronx after dropping Eileen off at St Vincent’s School of Nursing. I was driving my 1973 Chevy Vega. Having skimped on my car purchase by not buying the Nova, it should be no surprised that I avoided the toll on the Tri Borough Bridge and went by way of the no toll Madison Avenue Bridge and 138th street. Those of you who have made this maneuver will recall the ramp coming onto 138th and the lovely environs in which you were deposited.

Just as I was coming off the ramp and making the right turn towards the Bruckner Expressway I saw a stalled car on the side of the street. It was my friend Paul of Pat and Paul fame. He looked at me as I pulled up as if I were a messenger from God. I think I was. I was there just at the right moment. Fifteen minutes earlier and I would have missed him. Had I opted to pay the 50 cent toll I would have missed him. It was God who determined that I would be late and cheap all at the same time. As my wife Eileen is often heard to say, “There are no coincidences.” You will read this statement very often as I proceed.

Fast forward a couple of years and in that same 1973 Chevy Vega Eileen and I are heading into the Bronx from our apartment in Flushing. We were on the Van Wyck heading to the Whitestone Bridge. Just as we approached the bridge my Vega started acting, well, like a Vega. I was able to goose it up the bridge to the last exit in Queens. As we rolled down the Third Avenue exit in Whitestone I looked behind in the rear view mirror and saw Pat and Paul in their car. They just happened to be on their way from Brooklyn going into the Bronx, too. They returned the favor that I had extended a few years earlier. There are no coincidences.

The next visitation occurred sometime in the summer of 1977. Still driving that same 1973 Chevy Vega which I had just picked up from our Irish mechanic, Sean, I stopped off to see my parents at 1261 Leland. Sean was a great mechanic. I asked him how much it would cost to fix my electric rear window defroster and he replied. “How much could it cost?” I never got a real answer and I never fixed the defroster.

Anyway when I was at 1261 I called my friend PJ to confirm that he was coming out to Flushing so that we could go for a run and thereby justify the beer that we would have afterwards. But PJ cancelled. He wasn’t up to driving, running, or drinking. I was disappointed but what the heck?

I set off for Flushing and as I paid the toll on the Bronx side and reved up my four cylinder, aluminum block animal of a car, the very thing that had caused me to take the car to Sean in the first place happened again. As I accelerated the manifold pipe fell out of the manifold and the car sounded like one of those funny cars that used to pop wheelies nine feet in the air. Noise wasn’t my only problem as I was now dragging this pipe underneath my chassis. Once again I got off the Whitestone Bridge at the first exit.

I didn’t know what to do so I called PJ. He was tying up my manifold pipe fifteen minutes later despite the fact that he had been too tired to drive, run, or drink. Now most people would just see this as an extemely nice thing done by an extremely good friend. I used to think that and, in fact, I used this example of friendship in my religion class that I taught at St Vito’s. Had I known better I would have said that PJ was an Angel that night but he never knew it and, until recently, neither did I.

For the next angelic tale we really have to go back to the future. I was working at Columbia and I was still looking to go back into teaching. I had an interview somewhere in the town of Islip. I was driving into work and in those days I was driving a 1975 Mercury Monarch. This was an eight cylinder car that was bad on gas and that we bought twelve hours before the beginning of the gasoline crisis of 1979. Anyway, it was now 1985 and the car was on it’s last legs.

It didn’t have a check engine light as such but one that when lit stated “You’re killing me you bastard.”

So, here I was driving onto the Southern State Parkway near Babylon and my Monarch abdicates and goes and dies on me. I get to the shoulder and immediately a trooper comes and calls in for a tow truck. Not two minutes later I see this car pull off to the side of the highway and out of it came my nephew Jimmy.

“Uncle Jimmy what’s going on?”

Well, Jimmy was driving his parents’ car who were away on a European vacation. Jimmy drove me to the repair shop where we held a funeral service for the Monarch and then we went to his home in Baldwin. He then gave me the keys to the car for the week.

How did my nephew arrive just at the moment when I needed to be rescued? There are no coincidences.

There have been other instances of Divine Intercession that may be considered mere coincidence but I know better. Two people starting to say the same thing at the same time? That’s a coincidence.

People who just happen to appear out of nowhere when you need them most?

You decide.

To witness history is an extraordinary thing. To live it is even more special. On February 9, 1964 I, and millions of kids like me, got to do both.

Sunday morning started off like many Sunday mornings before it had. I got up for the 10 o’clock High Mass that my classmates and I had to sing in Latin. We sang the Asperges Me, the Kyrie, The Gloria, and the Credo. We listened to the Epistle that was read by one of my classmates and then came the Gospel that was read by Father Gorman. We put our weekly offering that was safely ensconsed in our envelopes into the basket that was manned by one of the ushers. Then we received Communion.

The Mass ended and we were set free to our respective homes and a nice Sunday breakfast. By now the Kennedy Assassination, while still remembered, was no longer something that kept us occupied, The only thing thirteen year olds across the country were thinking about was the Beatles. Tonight we would finally get to see and hear them live on TV.

Nearly twenty years later when John Lennon had been gunned down in front of his apartment building in New York I was taking a graduate education course and I had to explain to my professor why everyone had reacted the way they did to Lennon’s slaying. To put it in a context that I hoped he would understand I said, “It’s as if Shakespeare had been murdered.” He was surprised to learn that John Lennon could have been compared to Shakespeare. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by telling him that Shakespeare couldn’t touch Lennon in the impact that he had on our culture. But back to 1964.

I don’t remember much of the rest of the day except as we got closer to 8 PM. The afternoon was prelude to the greatest moment of American History, well at least my subset of American History. I probably played some football. Maybe I had a hot chocolate at Hoch’s candy store? I may have talked to my friends about the upcoming Ed Sullivan Show anticipating the songs that the Beatles would sing. Whatever I did it was all very agonizing just trying to pass the time until the magic hour of 8 PM.

My brother Michael had a portable record player that operated on batteries, a birthday gift from his girlfriend Margaret. Rather than annoy my mother and father with the repetitive playing of “I Want To Hold Your Hand” and “Please Please Me” I sought the quiet and privacy that our front bedroom offered. Finally, the moment I had been waiting for had arrived.

I was on the couch; my parents in their respective chairs. The introduction to the Ed Sullivan Show in the form of electrons beamed onto the big TV tube that was our TV screen hit my retinas and the theme song reached into my ears. Then Mr Sullivan came into view. For the first few moments I was back in the Loews American watching Bye Bye Birdie and Ed Sullivan was introducing Conrad Birdie. How prophetic had that movie been. Here was Ed Sullivan getting ready to introduce the Beatles who would soon make Conrad Birdie look like the opening act in a second rate music hall.

To be honest Ed Sullivan could be a little old fashioned and just a tad slow in getting on with the show. Tonight, however, he out did himself. First, he told us that the Beatles would entertain us two times, now and later in the show. In addition, the Beatles would be on next week and the week after. He then talked some more about how everyone had never witnessed the level of excitement that had occurred this week. Then, he introduced the Beatles and I was proven wrong.

Instead of opening with “I Want To Hold Your Hand” as I had predicted, they began their first set with “All My Loving” but no one was disappointed and nothing was ever quite the same again.

It’s hard not to get emotional when I think back to that night. So much changed afterwards that I can’t begin to describe. The music was exciting. The girls screaming were exciting and how I ever got to sleep that night I will never know.

I do remember school the next morning and thinking that at our weekly music class with Father Toplitsky he would surely have the Beatles to demonstrate one of his lessons. Sadly, I was once again proven to be wrong.

A couple of New Years ago I made a resolution to stop saying Two Thousand Twelve and start using Twenty Twelve. I reasoned that the new millennium had been acknowledged long enough. Here I am, two years later, and writing Twenty Fourteen seems as strange to me as saying Two Thousand Fourteen. I can’t believe that people back in Nineteen Fourteen experienced this same weirdness. Maybe it’s because that whether I say Twenty Fourteen or Two Thousand Fourteen, it still winds up being the year I turn sixty four which is still as hard to write as 64. That’s why I have given up on resolutions. The  calendar is urging me on to New Year’s Evolutions instead.

One of the common criticisms of good science fiction is that the author has not presented the world of the future within an evolutionary context. How did we get to this future world where a Federation creates a star ship capable of interplanetary flight and peopled by men and women who don’t mind dressing alike? The reader is required to suspend his or her dis-belief and just accept that all of the world’s problems have been solved except for those pesky Romulans and Klingons.

I propose that we start to fill in the gaps of this literary oversight. Let the evolution begin! At least mine.

Here are my evolutions for Twenty Fourteen:

1. I will no longer watch MSNBC; CNN; and FOX (this one will be easy to achieve.)

2. I will try to smile more.

3. I will try to worry less about what people think.

4. I really will try to eat less red meat.

5. I will enjoy sporting events without getting outraged that any team I root for could possibly lose.

6. I will appreciate the things that I achieve and not dwell on the things I could not.

7. I will rejoice at being sixty-four and 64 and I will play “When I’m Sixty-Four” on my sixty-fourth birthday.

8. I will make reading The Newell Post fun and not just a “Here he goes again” kinda thing.

9. I will vary my routines so that they no longer seem so routine.

10. I will learn to play “Words Of Love” on the guitar.

I am going to stop at ten. I think they are all doable. I know I will have to remind myself of  them from time to time and re-commit myself to achieving the evolution I deserve. There will be others mostly dealing with my spiritual growth but I am not ready to share them just yet. I am confident, however, that if I focus on these ten, I will be on my way to a better me which is all that we could ask of evolution.

I don’t know about you but Christmas Eve seems to be coming a lot faster than when I was a kid. Back then it seemed that the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve was an eternity. Now it seems that once Labor Day comes Christmas Eve is right around the corner. I know that getting older warps your perception of time but it really is getting out of control as far as I’m concerned.

But I guess time going faster does have its benefits. For one thing, it must mean that you are having fun.  It is a proven fact, after all, that bad times or at the least, unpleasant times, never seem to end fast enough. Whether it was waiting for the three o’clock bell to ring when you were in grammar school or the whine of the dentist’s drill as it was burrowing into your jaw to sound its last painful chord, you just couldn’t wait for the clock to fast forward you out of the chair and on your way. But as I have gotten older, I realize that what my Mother used to say when I was back on Leland Avenue in the Bronx, “Don’t be wishing your life away”, was sage advice.

Cherish the slowness of time’s passage. Enjoy the moment. Live in the moment. Christmas Eve is here again so you should drag your feet just a little to keep the New Year in its place. It wont be long until we’ll be struggling with using 2014 instead of 2013. (I don’t know about you but I still haven’t given up on using “19” and we are more than a decade into the new century!)

Now, as to making the season bright, here are my suggestions:

Mix up your Christmas music a bit. Don’t play the same old songs or sing the same old carols.

Watch something else besides White Christmas and A Christmas Story.

Read Bleak House in lieu of A Christmas Carol.

Have a milk shake instead of egg nog. By all means don’t have any whiskey!

While the above recipe for celebrating Christmas Eve may, in fact, make it last longer, it certainly will not make it worthy of remembrance. So, do as you have always done and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas…and a little Jameson while you’re at it.

https://www.createspace.com/3870864

Read about growing up in the wonderful world of The Bronx during the ’60’s and 70’s. Starting on November 22, 1963, Jimmy Newell guides you through life as it used to be and how it forever changed during this post war, baby boomer age.

National Cancer Survivor Day.

Sunday was National Cancer Survivor Day and Eileen and I celebrated it by attending a meeting of survivors. The day started off with a definition of “Survivor”. The broadest would include not just the cancer patient but the patient’s entire team. Family, friends, health care providers make up the team and when I think that Eileen and I each had our own team, the number of our combined team members is staggering. It continues to grow.

The next thing I learned is that I was embarrassed listening to the experiences of the panelists who offered their experiences with cancer and being a survivor. I had it so easy compared to many of the people who spoke and those in the audience who merely nodded their heads in agreement. When I think about what my own wife, Eileen, endured during her treatment and what she continues to endure, I feel kind of silly and ashamed thinking about the times I was feeling sorry for myself.

I also learned a new mantra. Victor not Victim. Again, I was humbled by the few times in my thirteen years of surviving when I felt sorry for myself. I will now try to live up to the concept of being a Victor and leave the Victim behind. I should have learned that lesson from Eileen but I have been known sometimes not to listen.

The other thing I learned is that Eileen and I have a story to tell. We started talking about it before yesterday’s meeting but Eileen got a head start at 3 AM this morning. An idea for a title of of the book that we will write is His Story Her Story: A Couple’s Guide To Survival.

The concept is that we will each write about our own cancer and that of each others’. We will each write from the vantage points of patient and care giver. I was the patient first and I never knew how hard it was being a care giver until it was my turn. Eileen has already started writing her view as a patient and I am not sure how I can match here poignancy and emotion. She gets right to the heart of the matter while I have a tendency to worry more about how I write rather than what I write.

Though we may differ in style and, at times, subject matter, I think we both will accomplish illustrating the importance of family and friends and health care providers who make you feel it is their life’s mission to make your day. I would never have imagined going into an oncologist’s office and being happy to see the people there. It is one of those blessings I mentioned earlier.

My guess is that if you are reading this you are a member of our team in some way. You have either supported Eileen and I directly or, perhaps, you have supported members of our family or one of our friends. You certainly have supported other cancer survivors. It’s a big club.