Memories
Pressed between the pages of my mind
Memories
Sweetened thru the ages just like wine
I don’t believe in fate. I believe that life gives you road signs, something like those that Burma Shave used to put up. Little hints, that should you stop to read them, can lead you in new directions you never would have followed had you not read the sign. Of course, Burma Shave didn’t lead to world shattering events, but it did give a pretty good shave.
One of those road signs was a small classified ad for a dance at Waymart High School on that Saturday night. I put it in the back of my mind as something to do if things were dead in Honesdale, booming metropolis of 5200 souls, compared to Waymart’s 700 or so at the time. As I was heading into town, an old friend whom I hadn’t seen in over a year was coming the opposite way so we both pulled into the parking lot of the old bowling alley. "Hi, how are you", "I’m fine"..the usual chit chat until we decided that we should do something. He had no plans and neither did I so I mentioned the dance at Waymart High, and we were on our way. I had no sooner hung up my jacket when I saw this angel of a girl with the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen. They say if you look in someone’s eyes for 1 minute both of you will fall in love..I think it took me all of 5 seconds. I think I said something clever, like, "Hi"..Then I got involved in a controversy that made me look somewhat like a hero. The band the school had hired backed out and sent another band that was driven to the school by one of the kid’s mother because none of them were old enough to drive. The lead singer was 15. I walked past a couple of teachers who were ready to cancel the dance, and I put my two cents in by saying that they had a band, and even though they were young and not the band they hired, give them a chance. So the dance went on and those kids were good. Jack and the Rippers. I don’t know what happened to them, but that night, they were bigger than the Beatles. I started to mingle..I asked the girl with the most beautiful eyes to dance, and we danced.. and we danced and we danced. We also made plans for the following Saturday night. We stood outside and talked, even though it was February and we were in the midst of another brutal Northeast Pennsylvania winter with temperatures were below zero and had mounds of snow everywhere. It was a clear night that shone with a billion stars, and, it appeared that they were shining just for us.
Of course, all good things must end and we ended the night with my getting her number and address and her telling me that there was a grotto in front of the house. Now, to me, a grotto was a cave. All week I pondered, "Does she live in a cave"..I also did something else I had never really done much of, and that’s study, because I wanted suddenly to prove that I was as smart as I thought I was..And for the first time, almost made the honor roll..I missed that because me, Mr Student Athlete, had flunked gym. I refused to do flips on the trampoline, and Coach made me pay. He told me later that he didn’t know I was going to be making the honor roll otherwise he wouldn’t have flunked me. But I did pull up my other grades and that’s all that mattered, really.
All week I worked on not doing something stupid and blowing the whole deal. There was something in my heart and my soul that told me Patty was going to lead me to another path in my life. One that held great promise, and, at times, great financial reward. However, that same something didn’t tell me she wouldn’t be part of it. She was just there to start me on that journey.
The Summer of ’67
You ask me if there’ll come a time
When I grow tired of you
Never my love
Never my love
The Association-Never My Love-1966
The next 3 months were a whirlwind of activity as we spent every possible minute together and I prepared to become a radio star. There were Proms and graduation activities so we put a ton of miles on my old 61 Plymouth. It was about a 30 mile drive to pick her up and the drive there seemed so quick and the drive home seemed so long. She had, at first, an 11pm curfew that we got raised to midnight, and I never once missed that deadline, as now, being a parent of a grown child, missing curfew is one of the biggest things to turn a girlfriend’s parents against you. However, we did sit in the driveway, sometimes nearly all night listening to Dolly Holliday on WBAL in Baltimore, where I told her I wanted to work there one day, and actually had a job offer from them in 1974. However I turned it down because their format had changed from what it was in 1967, and I sadly realized it wasn’t for me.
I started broadcasting school in New York on the Monday following graduation and could only think how well the Happenings "See You In September" fit what I was facing. My father made arrangements for me to park my car at one of his friend’s house, and I hopped the bus the on Sunday and headed to The Big Apple. I stayed in New York for one weekend, and decided there was nothing that was going to keep me from where I wanted to be.
Every Monday, my father would deposit 60 bucks in my checking account to cover my share of the room at the Hotel Prince George, as well as eating and other living expenses. It was a fair amount in 1967, but my room was $24 a week, eating expenses should have wiped out the rest, but after one weekend alone in New York, I knew I wasn’t going to do it again. So, I started eating lots of Nedick hotdogs at their place around the corner from school, and when Friday rolled around, I had the $13.75 I needed for the round-trip bus ticket and enough left to take Patty out to the movies. The first time I had to pick up my car which meant walking for about a mile up a very long and steep hill. I also decided that was the last time I was going to do that so I asked Mike if it was ok if I left the car in the driveway and I’d take the bus into Waymart on Fridays, and he offered to take me to the bus in Honesdale on Sunday afternoon. Patty would pick me up in the Plymouth and I told her to use it rather than have it sit. One Friday I got off the bus at the old Tastee Freeze on Route 6 and no car, no Patty. I was less than happy, and as I started to walk, the less happier I got and I actually walked about a mile before I saw my Plymouth crest the hill. By that time I was livid, but too tired from walking to let out much more than a whimper. Besides, seeing her made the anger just melt away.
I guess, in the beginning, just seeing her smile and looking in her eyes was all that really mattered. We were so compatible that it was almost impossible to comprehend how deeply she had reached into my soul. My whole world revolved around her. It was something that most people don’t experience in their lifetime.
After a few weeks of taking the bus, I realized that it would only cost me about 3 bucks to drive into New York myself, plus I could leave later than 5pm. The first time was a comedy of errors. I was just a country boy who had never driven the big city, and to my credit, I left late enough that I didn’t hit the Lincoln Tunnel until a little after midnight, so traffic wasn’t an issue. By that time, I had moved in with 3 guys who were in my class, as one kid’s aunt was vacationing in Europe and he could house sit with some friends. The best landmark as to where were we lived is we were one block over from the subway and 2 subway stops from Shea Stadium. Finding Shea Stadium took me until 3 in the morning, and then backtracking to the house took another 2. The neighborhood looked much different at 5 in the morning. I just had time to clean up and get ready for school. The next trips into the city were very uneventful. Leaving the city at 3pm on a Friday afternoon was a whole different game. Sometimes it would take 2 hours to make it from my hotel on east 24th to the Lincoln Tunnel, a distance of about a mile and a half, if that. But getting home was my only goal and I accepted that challenge with no regrets.
I guess, in the beginning, just seeing her smile and looking in her eyes was all that really mattered. We were so compatible that it was almost impossible to comprehend how deeply she had reached into my very soul. My whole world revolved around her. It was something that most people don’t experience in their lifetime. And when it was gone, it left a gaping hole in that soul that never fully closed. After that love is gone, if it was real, the memories will always remain as vivid as the days you lived them.
They didn’t call the Summer of ’67 "The Summer of Love" for nothing. There was something special in the air that year for those lucky enough to have found that someone special. We didn’t do anything earth shattering that summer. About the most exciting thing we did was go to the Narrowsburg, N.Y. fireman’s picnic on the 4th of July. We parked above the Deleware River and were actually higher than the "bombs bursting in air". A truly differant perspective of exploding fireworks. It wasn’t anything that a thousand other people haven’t experienced, but it was just "Being" that mattered. Being together, Being in Love, Being in a universe of our own.
In August, I was offered the morning slot at a brand new radio station in Cape May, New Jersey. I asked my counselor about taking it and he said my grades were high and the reason I was going to school was to get a job in radio, and that was a job in radio, so what the hell, go for it. I turned it down because I wouldn’t have been able to make it home on my days off and even though the challenge of having my first job be to establish a new station was exciting, Patty was much more important. I was going after a job in my hometown.
On Labor Day, Patty and I drove up to WCDL on Salem mountain in Carbondale and I dropped off a tape and resume and later that week I called to see if it had been listened to. I was virtually hired on the spot and again I asked my counselor what to do and again he said go for it, graduation was only a couple of weeks away. So I took the job and my father never forgave me because I didn’t "physically graduate". I don’t know what his problem was. I had my diploma mailed and my transcripts had me in the high 90′s, and I was working the job I was educated to do, as I was the first in my class to actually get a job in radio. But the job would soon start taking it’s toll.
One thing Mama never told me was that radio was a business of whims. WCDL-FM was new to the game, back when FM was "Don’t talk much and play lots of old fart music". The AM had been around for years and was established as a "variety" station. That mean’t, Andy Williams, The Beatles, and Polka’s, not necessarily in that order. My day off was Tuesday. (good luck finding something exciting to do with the love of your life on a Tuesday night) The rest of the work week was 5-11 and then 6-11 AM and 5-11 PM on Sunday. But she stuck with me, which is more than anybody else would have. And I was BAD..Boy did I have alot to learn. I told Patty one day I would be on the air at WARM which was the area’s #1 station and one of the most famous in the country, as at that time they had more listeners per 1000 population than any other station in the country, even more than WABC in New York and WLS Chicago combined. WARM was the stepping stone for the big time and I wanted a piece of the action. But first I had to pay my dues. And that meant a lousy air-shift for lousy dollars. But I was doing something that I wanted to do, just not there
Next came an equally lousy airshift and somewhat less lousy money at a station in Port Jervis, New York. Monday thru Friday I was on-air from noon to 6, had Saturdays off, and then on Sunday did 2-midnight, a killer of an airshift. I was beginning to get a bit disillusioned, and left there to get somewhat of a more stable job. I worked first for a company that manufactured television picture tubes, and then several retail jobs that I disliked but I did have enough money left at the end of the week to do something on the weekends. I missed the microphone terribly but I hadn’t quite paid all my dues, and there weren’t many opportunities left for me to do that. At least not in Northeast Pennsylvania. Patty’s senior year in high school was relatively uneventful. I did miss her Senior Prom because Uncle Sam had sent an invitation that I was fighting like hell not to RSVP. I had developed ulcers for some reason and I supposedly, according to my father, had a heart problem from a youthful bout with rheumatic fever. At the last minute, I was given a health deferment and went home expecting to take her to the prom. She had accepted from somebody else and I was very upset that she wouldn’t cancel and go with me. I guess I hadn’t learned about integrity at the time. In retrospect, she did the right thing because nobody knew I was not going to Fort Dix, and why should she give up one of the more memorable moments of her high school years. I was able to go to two proms with her, and they were memorable, especially when we had a tire go down while heading from one of my senior year events to her prom and had a tire go down in the middle of Carbondale. It must have been a surreal sight to see two guys (we doubled) standing around the car in whiter than white dinner jackets trying to figure out who would pull the fender skirt and change the tire. Luckily, the one person still awake in town walked by and changed the tire for us. We would have given him 20 bucks but he refused any monetary reward.
After her graduation, Patty and I went through a few peaks and valleys. We broke up a couple of times and then got back together again. I had begun to treat her more like a possession than the soulmate she was. The term soulmate is getting a bad rap of late as now it’s anybody you can stand being with more than 10 minutes without fleeing is your soulmate. But in reality, some cultures believe the soul lives on after death and finds another body to live within, but the personality traits still live on as well, and so, if two people were lovers in a previous life, then if they meet in their new life, they will subconciously be drawn to each other. Radical theory but in reality, it does make some sense. But for whatever reason, she was my soulmate in it’s purest terms. But something started to go very wrong and either I didn’t notice it or I noticed but ignored. Maybe it was more my taking her for granted. My love for her never changed..If anything it got stronger, but I showed it less and less. I began to think more of me than of her. Looking back, I think that even though I was running in place, I was trying to find some way to move my career to a higher level and none could be found. I knew I wanted to give her everything she deserved but it became more and more apparent that Northeast Pennsylvania was not where my future lay. But I also knew that Patty would not make the journey with me so to keep her, I had to put my dreams on the back burner. That probably did more and more to alienate her against me, and one night after we broke up for the first time, I was driving home and on a long straight stretch of road called the Seeleyville Flats, I decided to pass a car that was going much slower than I would have liked. I missed an oncoming semi by no more than 3 feet. I think God gave me an extra 10 horsepower that night, because no way I could have missed running into it head on. That calmed me down and I drove slowly and sanely back into town. As I pulled away from a traffic light in town, I hit a pedestrian in the crosswalk, breaking his leg. We both had green so nobody was at fault. I called Patty and she stood by me as I was very shaken over the accident. I couldn’t go visit the person I’d hit because he was somebody I did know fairly well..The brother of my Father’s company attorney. I was afraid because I didn’t know what to say or do. Patty stood beside me as I made the visit to the hospital and strengthened my own courage as it wasn’t really needed as Bud Wenniger held no animosity and didn’t hold me to blame. Suddenly we were back together again. But I didn’t learn my lesson. I was still being myself at my best and sadly, my worst.
Patty then went on to Lackawanna Junior College which, while not the greatest school of higher education, served as a pretty decent springboard to the business world. A degree from there wouldn’t open many doors in the New York or Philly, but it was well respected in Northeast Pennsylvania and, after all, it isn’t the education that makes a career, it’s the desire to learn from your successes and mistakes, more so the mistakes. I have no doubt that she made the best of of her talents and abilities, although I wasn’t around to see how high she soared. I don’t know when the end started. I knew the end was coming and one habit I had, and occasionally still have, is the believing that goodbye is forever. Keep your pride, walk away, no regrets and don’t think twice. A week after we said farewell, I did try to go back to try to put things back together but things went badly. Maybe I was too cocky. Maybe I didn’t hear what she was saying..or more than likely, the words I wanted to say either came out wrong, or didn’t come out at all. That was the day I walked away, and soon was being chased by the ghosts of a memory that quickly made me leave my home area, and try to spread my wings. I didn’t realize at the time that I wasn’t just walking away from someone I would never forget, who became a part of my very being and wouldn’t leave, but I also learned too late that I had lost my best friend..my confidant..my very being. At first, very briefly, I thought that I could now fly with the eagles. But my flight skills were bad and I crashed badly..I basically took a couple of airshifts with stations that couldn’t afford what they said they would pay, and I began a quick spiral down to the deepest depth of dispair I could never have imagined. I was in Bath, New York working at a station where my hours were cut in half and money was quickly running out. I knew the only place I could go was home. My car had been impounded because I couldn’t pay the taxes to get it registered so it was hop the bus and head home. I made it as far as Carbondale when the money totally ran out. It was early February and night temperatures were below zero. With no money, and no place to go, I had to do the only thing I could think of. I turned myself into the Carbondale Jail and declared myself a vagrant. That was when I finally realized I had to do something, but I still didn’t know what that was.
I had thought, in the past, that getting my radio engineering license was the answer and the holy grail was a school called REI in Fredricksburg, Virginia which didn’t teach you electronics, it just taught you the answers to the FCC engineering exam. The license was needed to be on air at higher powered stations and I had thought that was my salvation. So after a very cold and very unnerving night in jail, I swollowed my pride the next night and called my father and told him I was stranded and broke. He sent a cab and the trip home took about 40 minutes and I went back to where I had sworn I would never spend another night. I was the ultimate prodigal son. Broke, unshaven, and as dirty as a Bowery bum. My father didn’t say much to rub it in. I guess he figured that I had been through enough. A couple of days later he gave me a 100 dollar bill and a bus ticket to Fredricksburg, Virginia to get a job and enroll in REI, neither of which happened. Instead, I realized that to turn everything around, I had to make a drastic change. And that was to see what Uncle Sam had to offer me. Maybe that change would help me win back the girl who wasn't just a girl friend, but my best friend which is worth so much more. That didn't happen either.
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