FRAMING YOUR OWN NARRATIVE

framing your own narrative

    WRITING    PROMPT

Writing prompt,      I am from ... 

 

I am from flooded rivers at my fence and fallout from nuclear bomb tests. I am from black and white TV and from a bigotry banned home. 

 

I am from the Great Elm and the Nathaniel Foote statue at the foot of the Town Green. Fourth of July horses running up the steps and Thanksgiving smells at Grandmas house.

 

I am From Kitt Peak and Cat Mountain. Hiding from hailstones behind a Saguaro and looking uphill at a herd of Peccary's.     

Peaches in the desert and Peaches at Cape Cod. Peaches in Central Florida where they never grew before. Dead squirrels and live snakes falling out of trees.

 Confidentiality agreements and bankrupt developers. Eucalyptus became Simpson Stopper.

I am from hobos at the train station and hopping the train to get to Mickeys Restaurant.

I am from outhouses that became Condominiums. Skating under the interstate highway during the coldest winters. Ice bombs on trains and rocks in my eye and head.  Running from the police and losing a bicycle in the Connecticut River. 

 

Tommy's friend drowned at Mill Woods and ten years later we toasted him in the park nearby.  I am from vodka blackouts and dragging gasoline station signs in the road and driving the wrong way on highway 84 and picking up a confused hitchhiker. We turned around and drove him to his exit.

I am from ill-fitting poor people skates and rutted driveways. Film tricks with 8MM movies and monster movies shown in school. I am from (censored) and drinking stolen priest wine.

Sunsets in three corners and interrupted acid mowing. Illusions of prosperity and the Independent Majority Party. Pagan Space Yahoo Answers, Witchvox, Treebord and Greenhammer.

Dogs gone mad with diabetes and jumping through windows. Razor blade fights with cats. I am from appreciating boy scouts only as an adult.

 

Driving a bicycle drunk downtown to get home, and cycling 60 miles to the Connecticut Shore. Rain or shine 10 miles to the food co-op and ten miles back with the goods. I am from Black Mountain, Beaver Brook and Cotton Hollow.  Bums at dawn and executives on break. Shiny city slicker elevators and flatbeds.  

I am from the Marian Cult and French slang. Smoking in church and looking out the cellar window as Bridey walked by and the snow piled in drifts. Manly florists and feminine truck drivers.

Pulling the magic down from the air and thrill bumps at the end of Close To the Edge. Druids and Witches and unbridled cultural appropriation. 
         Chills in the graveyard and a mason by trade, born 1666. Finding a bloody ancient dagger with my cousin and leaving it there. Falling in unfinished houses and wheelies on an unbuilt interstate. Gripping girders, hitting one over the fence. 

I am from running right through people and looking past others. Jumping off the roof and climbing 60 feet up the Greer's Pine. Richie slapping frogs on concrete and I was praying when the bad boys tried to drown a cat.

Planting trees for uncertain futures and promoting shrubs and bird gardens. Butterflies as food and Indigo Snakes in my arms. Dead snakes and diapers at the mall.

         I am from Roger Maris and Fran Tarkenton. Concussions and crawling home. Rainbow spokes and Jupiter with my dad. Jupiter much later from Holst. I am from Hail to the Hammer and Tarkus. The Blue Beats and Cry for a Shadow. Elegy and energy. Snow boarding with art class easels and fireworks with cigars.

       My own brown scapula and blessed throats. A John Paul confirmation and Uncle Joe jettisoning bigotry after church. Forceful conversion was slapped upside the head and refusing to work during the blizzard of ‘78. They needed a fourth for cards since it was certain there was not going to be any school any time soon. I would have been stuck with three idiots for three days.

       I have skied from a rope tied to a car on snow covered roads. Drove a go kart with no brakes. Reached 47MPH on a bicycle. Hopped the train regularly to go get a clam roll at Mickeys. Threw dirt bombs but didn’t play “Army” with the boys. Used unsafe bicycle jumps at Kevins and Carlin. Three on a bicycle, and an accident at Mill Woods. Trying to make swings flip over. Found a boat to go fishing in flood waters. Broke windows at the Foundry and the abandoned Railway station.

         Jumped off the elementary school roof to run from Mrs. Walters. Played in abandoned buildings. Walked across Middletown Avenue on the Rt 91 girders and almost fell off laughing at how shocked people were. Threw chunky iceballs on the train and got chased by the police.

         Tried to cook blackberries on the railroad tracks and burnt all the dry grass around the distribution center and ended up with the fire chief talking to my parents. Crawled halfway across the Connecticut River catwalk and spit on the Dolly Madison. When Bruce moved, I became the wheelie king.

             Stole bowling shoes on the Bicentennial and got arrested for 4^th degree larceny. Yesterday was dads birthday, he would have been 92 and pretty feeble. Hope him and Mom are okay. Heaven to him would be to join a good combo. Or maybe a gang of ukulele players.

 At 13, Pete introduced me to Time Magazine which expanded my view out into the world. The rules of the church were hysterically irrelevant. The real world was merely silly. How were women second class citizens; they were the smart ones?

Weights, baseballs, insecurities, forced and boring education; midget football, rainy Saturdays and afternoon movies. Laughing at the boy scouts and their silly para-military uniforms while we were throwing chestnuts at each other’s heads. Jumping on the hay wagon for a gag and found ourselves going 30 MPH down Middletown Avenue … too scared to jump off.

Riding our bicycles behind the annual Paul Reveres ride or whatever it was on the fourth of July. First time this suburban boy saw a large animal other than a cow take a shit. Lifted its tail and it’s a visual I can’t unsee. We had no pets, and I never saw nothing like that at the Bronx Zoo. The horse kept on down to Broad St and the amazing thing was when the post rider and the horse climbed up the steps of a house, went in, and had a beer. Wow! That was a pretty cool tradition. Then over to the Historical Museum and corny as it may have seemed, the Fife and Drum were kicking.

I don’t think I saw a gun till I was out of school. We broke our necks every day in one way or another, but Wethersfield was a damn safe city. I saw the conversion of the farming community into a suburb. There was Ollie, smelling like shit all the time, except when I went collecting on Friday night after he’d had his weekly shower. He had about six cows and near the end, his barn began leaning pretty bad.

When Bruce the wheelie king became an adult, he lived in Freddys barn and we’d party our ass off. Freddys parents were blind and nearly deaf and never knew we were going there at 1:00 in the morning to bring Bruce a buzz and get loud.

The next year I lived myself on the weekends in a barn. I agreed to clean out the barn so I could live there on weekends. Steve the boy was too busy with his slut girlfriend to hang out, though there was some authentic Polish breakfasts I got to partake in with his mother. He’d be hungover with four hours of sleep under his belt and I’d be all perky from sleeping on hay and hiking down the railroad tracks. It was like a house from 1825 or something, one of the newer historical houses. The barn I’m guessing was 75 years old at least.

Five years previous I was recalling Ollie and his barn. Another indelible image is when Ollie paid me one freezing Saturday afternoon and a globous frozen snot looking like a stalactite, hung off his nose. He must have been 80 and someone finally got him to quit. Maybe he worked off the books and had no social security. With his barn leaning dangerously, he disappeared from the scene.

To the north on Middletown Avenue, the Clarks had cows. They retired them a few years before Ollie did and we played baseball in their field there. Me and the Middletown Avenue gang played at the Green and mostly Adams field. The games in the Clarks cow pasture included the girls. One of the best interactions of a group of people. Never a fight, no boy girl tension because from us quiet guys, the girls got total respect. Not much toxic masculinity in our direct neighborhood.

Maybe I was a nerd. Super Geek George was one of the few other people who were making movies and showing them at school. He was on the AV squad and was far more technical than us but when he went to make a big project about the Battle of Tours, this mini-neighborhood congealed. We used real horses and wouldn’t I love to see that flick again.

The Clarks had one cow left because there would occasionally be a cow pie that had to be avoided “second base..ewww,” and there were some old hard ones from previous months still in the field.

This area was also a cow pasture and was owned by Red Schumann who gave up his cows before Ollie and The Clarks. The picture shows how it began as a grassland in 1955, and by 1965, the field was a mass of large shrubs and small trees when I became old enough to play in the woods. There was a Pear Tree I remember most of all. Tough hard Pears that never seemed to ripen. They were Wild Pears and now Pears from subsidized mega farms all look and taste the same. The basis of my, “what have we lost” theme.

I hadn’t thought about the field behind the house in a big way for a long time. Suddenly tonight I was 12 again and standing around looking at the various plants. Almost tears in my eyes. What else was there: blackberries, Dogwoods and oh yeah 12 Yellow Jacket stings. Learned to watch where I walked.

My working life. Ten years old and we lived on our bicycles. It was 1964 and the Greatest Generation thought nothing of throwing their garbage out the window. You literally saw napkins and other shit thrown out of car windows as people drove by. In this accumulation, however, there were 2 and 5 cent returnables.  So off we’d go with our 42 cents to buy some soda and candy at Dougherty Drugs.

But I wanted more. I wanted to accumulate assets. So when I was 11, I got a Hartford Times paper route. The afternoon paper which I delivered for a year. Then after missing out on playing football and baseball with the boys after school, I decided to get a morning paper route and called the Hartford Courant (est. 1764 “older than the nation, newer than the news”.)

#406 on the Wethersfield Green was available and Gorski trained me for 3 days and I was on my way. Had a small business at 12. When I was 16, I added #420 which was the route on my street, Middletown Avenue.

With both, I had about 70 daily customers and over a hundred Sunday papers in total. I ended up with Dads Caprice Station wagon in 1970 and this enabled me to go to Dunkin Donuts after work after delivering 800 pounds of newspapers.

I graduated high school and we moved shortly afterwards to Bloomfield. I respect my mom and dad, in retrospect, for trusting my judgement the summer after graduation when I wanted to get a motorcycle. I tried Community College and appreciated how much more interesting it was. I often drove my Suzuki 250 for two hours before class to explore the back roads and the October foliage before class.

Then I realized that a career in bookkeeping and accounting wasn’t what I wanted to do with my adult life. Rich Carling, our buddy, was killed riding his motorcycle and when it came time to renew the insurance and do some repairs, I quit the motorcycle and converted to a ten speed after putting 16,000 miles on My Suzuki named Wally.

I would routinely ride from North Bloomfield to the Wethersfield Green on the ten speed. Taking the shortest route possible it was 15 miles in about and hour and a quarter whereas it was 30 minutes and 25 miles by car.

There was 15 year old sophomore Joe Valvo. who had a full beard and looked 25 so he bought us beer during Senior year which was my first year with intoxicants. Then when we graduated there was the perfect storm. The voting age was lowered to 18 in 1972 when I turned 18. Connecticut thought that the drinking age should be lowered to 18 and that was passed. The Blue State realizing that if you go to war and you vote and are out of school, why the hell not have a toddy now and then.

Alice Coopers “I’m 18” was out in 1972 and really we had had enough of school by the end of senior year and we sang Schools Out as we fled the scene of the unspeakable brainwashing amd the stultifying education.

Me and other Wethersfielders would plow through the corn fields in the meadow (fuck their monocultural F1 hybrids.) Wally The Suzuki had highway speed but a thick metal shield under the motor for dirt bike purposes, and it had raised pipes for sharp turns and mud bogging. I loved it and loved those times of unexpected blessings. As October began I did two hour loops in northern Connecticut first and as the fall colors came on followed that with more southerly loops.

But then Ritchie died on his motorcycle and I converted to the ten speed. Thank goodness  I gave up the mortorcycle because as a reckless 18 year  old I would take my classes at Manchester Community then get on the interstate to get back to Bloomfield. I learned in November that if I followed in the wake of tractor trailers it was much warmer. 

Being a statistics freak I noted that the lowest temperature I drove in was 14 degrees. No smart phones, in the old days we use something we called an outdoor thermometer.

1973 “How are you going to get to school when it starts up again next semester”

“I quit.”

My Uncle Gid had gotten my dad a job when we moved to Bloomfield and dad got me a part time job at Vincent School. Cold, snowy, it didn’t matter, I got there on the bicycle. Then I applied for a full time job that came up at the new Bloomfield Middle School. I cleaned up the fifth grade wing and was not disillusioned I was a janitor while my friends went to Boston so they could get the piece of paper that said they were smarter and more qualified as workers, and therefore entitled to  more money. 

 Broke today because I thought the system would have crashed by now and that's why I never bought into it. I don’t regret it and came to the conclusion that this myriad mix of experiences would never have happened without being free of the capitalist system. 

The summer of ’73 and school was out. The big cleanup for the janitors but at least we could work the daytime shift for a couple of months. Strip and re-wax the floors. I was “the mouse” because I was the only one thin and agile enough to clean out under the giant gym bleachers. Also I was the one who climbed the 24 foot ladder to clean all the asbestos dust off the top of the fluorescent lights in the large Shop Class room.

I worked with skinny white Larry who had his own part of the Middle School Complex. I was in the 500 wing and Bob Jones was in the 600 Wing. He would scratch his back on the door frame like a Bear and I got to hear every joke of the previous 30 years. Black Larry was in 700 and he had a handicapped daughter. He got mad at me one day when I made a dumb comment about cripples. Mario was the boss and a total guinea. He talked about his weiner like it was a cartoon character or something.

After work I went to visit the other young man I worked with the summer of ‘73. Forget his name but he was a cool guy from New Jersey and it was a second floor room. He didn’t seem worried about the cannabis smell, “‘ol Mr Lynch don’t care as long as you pay the rent.” In August he told me that he had to get back to Jersey and I got the notion that 75 bucks for rent was easily handled since I made 400 a month. The minimum wage was $?.?? at that time.

Conveniently, I got switched to the second shift Junior High job which was right down the street and though I had gotten the black Econoline Van, Molly, I rode the bicycle. When the cream puff day shift job came up at an elementary school like my dad had, I lost it to Adinolfi. I technically had more time I was assured, and I still have the letter in my “scrapbook” which indicated he had a family and needed the cushy job more than I did.

Honestly, as I thought about it, I can’t remember the sequence of which schools I was a janitor from 1973-1978. High School 75-76. I met Lori with an I and used to get high with yellow eyed Dewitt. “You got?” I think it was the Middle School that was last. This is why I’m writing shit down. In case I’m stuck getting old and feeble, at least I’ll have something to read.

At the Middle School I would put a card or something in the door so I could get back in and would sneak over to Cliff’s house down the street to get high. Neighbors across the way Norm and JoAnne were pretty hip New Yorkers and I met their friend Sherry in 1977, and after a 6 month stint back with my parents I moved to East Granby with her and Cheryl and Eddie and Carls sister.

We had an epic band with Paula the flute player and Bernie on drums and Cliff on folk guitar, me on bass and an amazing vocalist who sounded just like Lee Morse. We played a gig at Trinity College, but that band broke up after the gig we practiced three months for and so Carl joined Bernie and I and we became a bit more metal doing songs like Electric Funeral by Black Sabbath. Bernie saved a recording of it.

So losing the plum job to Adinolfi nudged me into thinking more seriously about the vacation in Tucson. Maybe there was opportunity there. The union fracas with the town of Bloomfield was interesting but when new guys got hired they started at 132 dollars a week, and there I was still making only 125 a week after like two years.

Just so much bullshit, I had enough. Connecticut’s economy was clotted with hierarchy, nepotism and entrenched favoritism and I had had enough of how crowded the state was.

Hold the phone. I just checked on what the minimum wage was during those years. It was $2.65 in 78 and $2.90 in ’79. So off we went to Tucson, the Three Musketeers. My first job was at the Triple T Truck stop on Interstate 10. Like a diner, I don’t have many memories of that other than the Scorpion I found behind the paper box and mopping the floors and observing some skeevy nightlife. 

Look at me I’m at an old style diner on RT 10 in the middle of the night! This is why you have to let it go sometimes and try something new. Moving to the west side of Tucson brought something new every day.

The truck stop reminded me of the diners on the Berlin Turnpike back home, but more oriented to long distance truck travel.

Then I got hired on with Larry Sadowski doing third shift janitorial work at Kings Tables and Village Pizza. He was a mean bastard to his kids and wife but respected my effort, while keeping me productive and on my toes. One day we had a bit of a philosophical talk and he said I was not on a career path and asked what I really wanted to do. Tom and I did a lot of gardening on our patch at Flying A on the west side of town and suddenly I found myself recalling my dads influence with gardening via osmosis.

I’d like to do gardening I told him in 1980 and a month or two later he got me the garden maintenance work at the Kings Table we were working at. I learned about how Barrel Cactus’ grew towards the Sun and I had to replant a bunch of them so they could be better seen out of the window of the restaurant.

Larry lost the Village Pizza account and laid me off but with that gardening experience on my resume, I parleyed a job with a landscape company. Not sure if I qualified for unemployment at that point but the state unemployment service had a most excellent way of listing jobs and soon I got on with Casa Verde Landscaping. That was a great crew with Rick and some others and John Bloom the blonde surfer dude boss from California.  found his little niche of profit in Tucson. We all got high and also did the very best accounts in town as it turned out.

Meanwhile Sherry got laid off and while looking for a job we came across the caretaker positions at the Kingston Ranch. We applied, what did we have to lose? Beating 125 other applicants we moved to a 40 acre ranch and lived in a converted tack room which was quite luxurious. At Casa Verde my gardening skills had served me well and I was promoted to my own gig at Park Mall as the indoor and outdoor gardener. No more singing “Tube Steak Boogie” with the boys as we went to the next job but some work I could really sink my teeth into. 520 sprinklers heads in an area so vast I had to use a bicycle to get to the stations I turned on.

So in 81-83 I had the Park Mall gig and the outdoor work at the Kingston Ranch working about 50 hours a week in the desert sun and life couldn’t be sweeter. The only between us and the 8000 ft plus Catalina Mountains was Paul McCartneys house. A 40 foot by 8 foot pool kept us cool in the summerThen the Mall job was underbid, and I was looking for work and got hired on by Jeff as an electricians helper. When I say I talked to a lot of people in my life, I mean to say we mingled with other contractors and ate lunch together as just one example.

Electrical work was interesting running wire in a bunch of different kind of buildings and I really got to understand how houses and housing complexes are built. We even rewired a college dorm which I remember well.

Alas, we became bored with Arizona, despite having seen and experienced a whole new world in those six years, but still yearned to be New Englanders again. I was once again the scout looking for a place to live while living at Norm and Joannes. They had gone off for a month somewhere and it was just me and Freedy the dog for three weeks then the cats came in on an airplane.

Looking for a New Englandy place to live I went to the Boston area first. I got pulled over by a cop trying to find my way around a tight little neighborhood in Boston in my search for a home and the only way out was going the wrong way on a one way street… and there’s a cop. I talked my way out of it and went on for a quieter town between there and Salem.

Then I realized that maybe Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts were far from the people we knew, and Enfield Connecticut was quite New Englandy in its own way with its old houses and farm stands. At the end of April I had been at Norms for two weeks. They spent a month or something in Cape Cod and I was house sitting which, all in all, was a pretty cool transition to New England. Taking care of Freddy the dog and shepherding the arrival of Dickens and Rocky, our cats.

I applied at Tarnow Nursery which was down the road about a half a mile and got a job. Minimum wage had risen to $3.35 an hour and despite a pretty good horticultural resume by this point, I started at $3.50. Owner John was a well known skinflint as I found out from his nieces Nancy and Susan who had set up the nursery the previous fall and ran the place. He barely paid them 4 an hour to run the place, and they were kin.

There’s that pattern emerging that most guys wanted to be millionaires. The nursery owner probably became a millionaire eventually, on the backs of 100, mostly dedicated young people of course. As did Tom Collins in later years with lots of turnover and probably 1000 employees at Captain Hirams. As did the owners of Rock City leaving 500 disgruntled employees in their wake at least.

Joe from Springfield came along at Tarnow Nursery and he was a young, but old looking, college grad and he became the boss and Susan and Nancy went back to the main store to work, except weekends when Joe was off, and they were the bosses. We spent a lot of time talking on the weekends and there was quite a bunch of interesting kids that came through that summer. That was a good crew.

At 32, I was the oldest at the jobsite and should have been well on my way to a capitalist career and accumulating assets and investing for retirement, but I wasn’t buying into this system. I had learned quite a bit about plants the previous four years with the mall and caretaker job, and I quickly learned about Connecticuts favorite plants.

I thought I had quite a good sales approach and we were taught to handle two customers and go between them while, you know, keeping the elbows and ankles flying when Joe was there. I started by being a loader and met many of the Enfield people who frequented the store who lauded the variety of the plants. This was no vegetable stand with plants, it was a slick professionalism that mostly people like and Tarnows quickly became Enfields favorite nursery.

The end of the summer came, and it was pumpkins and fall decorations and selling the fall planting concept. The kids went back to college and I became the main sales person (except when the college edumacated Joe and that lazy guinea schlub from the Main store worked there). He was lazy as fuck and immediately had an effect on productivity. By November Michelle ran the Christmas shop and I was the everything else person. She was sharp and knew how to please the little old ladies buying Christmas fluff.

So my first winter since 1977-8 was set to arrive. We came back to experience the seasons, right? My partner and I had moved to the Thompsonville section of Enfield and it was like a slice of Boston, a dose of “Southy” that had dropped down in the Connecticut River Valley. There was Ragnos where they served the food I had missed out in Arizona. A little further away was the best Polish Deli I had ever hoid. Our daughter was born and then baptized at the very old church down the street. A little further on a Norman Rockwell Christmas emerged at Freshwater Pond when the ice froze. There was talk of the giant mill being converted into condos.  

It was exciting and I realized at this point that I had truly created my own path. My peers were buying houses and working in cubicles but I decided to carve my own path. I was creating my own horticultural college experience in a pull up your bootstraps way. There was Tiny’s Little criminal enterprise next door in a pool hall and a host of characters living in 8 rentals in two large houses. Add loose soap opera here.

I bought some really choice little evergreens and had planted them on the side of the house. Rocky and Dickens would run up the steps to come in because the back steps were missing. I was planting in this grey dust they called soil and people were digging it. “Looks good” said local murderer Wilmer Paradise told me.

My partner was working downtown and I went to the local employment agency to find another job when I got laid off after Christmas. When you make peanuts, the unemployment was very minimal and a couple weeks before Valentines day I got a job with a wholesale Greenhouse.

Former Ball Seed Vice President Peter Stanley was one of the most manic people I’d ever met. He had reconstructed two 440 foot greenhouses and was striking out on his own with his patented concept called Jet Plugs. Instead of the usual 75 cent plugs these were much smaller and only about 35 cents if I recall, so that was 40 cents a plant profit. I learned the long road from producer to purchaser. One day running between greenhouses I caught the top of my head on a round eyehook. Shouldn’t tear my head open since it wasn’t sharp in any way but that was a trip to the emergency clinic and 13 stitches. My nickname was Zipperhead for a while.

So there I was off to a new job in early February with the temperature around 10 degrees and a dry wicked wind was blowing so it felt like it was well below zero and I was reminded of one of the reasons I moved to Arizona. It was COLD! Everything was frozen and the loading dock area looked to be abandoned with 4’x4’ flattened boxes blowing around and other litter was being blown around. I was looking for a job here? It looked like a disaster area.

Peter was short on employees and this was his problem. So he hired me on at $4.25 an hour which was 25% more than I was making at Tarnow Nursery. An employee was walkie talkied to come and give me an orientation. She was one of those fantasy Nordic women who cursed very fluently. We got on pretty good, I was always monogamous, so there was never sexual tension with the female co-workers.

In the world of capitalism, men are sheltered from the minorities and they were the bosses of the women and this is why so much sexism remains. At the Mall job in Tucson I had lunch on the regular with the three prettiest women in the whole place. You treat a woman like a dude and they respond in kind. At the mall I also talked with dozens of the employees from every demographic. I reject the notion that I “don’t know how to communicate”. At Tarnow Nursery I met practically everyone in town who came to check out the place. I had the gift of gab when I was younger.

I don’t remember the flaxen haired Valkyries name but she walked me to the first Greenhouse and it was a moment like no other. People with glasses know how they fog up in changing conditions. Ten below zero with a wicked wind chill and it was like Dorothy opening the door to the colors of Oz.

Tropical plants as far as the eye could see and a temperature to match. Plants poised for the Valentines Day sales. Here was a new experience to jump into, fer sure. Many tales I will relate later and just one to keep the flow. Bosses such as Jim the asshole came along and Dwight from out of state who was a hired gun and a spectacular dude. No college for him either and he was older than me and was also into a wide variety of job experiences. He and his friend from Pittsburgh completely refurbished the greenhouses.

When all was said and done, our little family moved to the field office of Consolidated Cigar that Dwight and Marian had lived in. There was always a boss over me and they all got fired or quit and I was a constant for Stanley Greenhouses and now lived across the street in the cutest little white house you ever saw.

Summer of 86 with my first biological child was a fun little baby and it was an exciting time. I believe the wife quit her job to be a mommy since I was putting in 60 hours a week and making enough. A typical day would have me at 7:00 walking over to begin venting around 15,000 sq. ft. of greenhouse.

By then the Weather Channel had become the bomb, and I would vent accordingly, depending on that days conditions. Rolling carts waited on the very large loading dock and sometimes I took a smaller truck and loaded from the greenhouse. Then I would drive and deliver for ten hours going to Mattapan or Poughkeepsie or over Mt Adams. I’d come back and close the vents to keep the greenhouses at 75 degrees, then walk home after a 13 hour day. But it was interesting, you know. I set up plant displays at BJ’s Wholesale and delivered to every Paperama in southern New England out to the Hudson in New York.

Work hard and be rewarded was the message of my youth but then I learned from a friend that I had to work smart. That made sense. But did it mean conniving to scratch and claw my way above other employees? Yes it did. The secret to the American Dream, if you wanted financial security you needed to be the boss. To be able to manipulate people to work harder than they should without because we aren’t machines. Squeezing productivity from underpaid employees was never a lure to me.

The boss at Walmart making sure no one talks to each other. The warehouse manager not caring about workers injuries. The head nurse that all the CNA’s hate. My philosophy is that I don’t like being bossed and I don’t like BEING the boss.  

So here I was with caretaking experience, a difficult mall gardening job that included irrigation work, and then some electrical work. A nursery job and greenhouse experience. I was training myself in Horticulture. So, by 1987 Peter ratcheted down his business because his mercurial bossmanship just wasn’t making the money he expected, although of course he blamed the employees.

He even had me set up a retail shop the spring after Dwight left and people recognized me from Tarnows. Then there were the BJ Wholesale sites where I set up the indoor displays and returned weekly to replace plants in ‘86. I even drove to Syracuse a couple of times.

I reckon it was the summer of 87 and I decided I needed indoor plant experience on my resume. The good thing about interior plantwork was that it was a way to work through a New England winter. I spent nine months at Plantations who had some very professional training. I forgot how I left that job.

Then there was the Plantscape job where I was the only dude. When they went big on a pink and black theme with uniforms and stickers and what all else, I found it amusing and they found a way to frame and fire me.

In spring of ’88 I got a job with probably one of the best crews ever. There was the boss, another Lori with an I, who was a dairy farmers daughter. She had grown up with machines and tractors and got the notion to start a landscaping business. Dwarf Evergreens were trending and the plant selection was minty and the boss was calm and organized.

There was Bob the biker. A big bear of a guy with a big beard that the boss described as more a Teddy Bear than a Grizzly. There was Randy the Redneck and there were many interesting discussions altogether between all of us. A big gun enthusiast and one of the first Preppers I ever met. He had enough food for a year at least and even an underground gasoline tank. Randy and his Super Swampers were such a caricature.

Armageddon happens and people are hungry roaming the land for food and shelter. We asked him what he would do if dozens of hungry people and their children were walking up his driveway looking for assistance. His answer was that he would “mow them down like zombies.” Then there was Mike Two Hawks, who said he was derided as “only” a quarter blood Mohawk by his peers, but who seemed to be fully authentic. He taught me ceremony and quite a bit else though he was younger.

There were always side jobs such as Tony and “big boobs” Barbara who often wore a sweatshirt that asked, where did you get those tomatoes with two big tomatoes on the front. There was Dat Shenoy and his family. He was a tech dude who quit the biz and wanted to be a landlord so he would be buying houses and I would renovate the landscaping and help him clean and paint the indoors. I’ve like Painting ever since.

I don’t know what years those were with Dat and his lovely family and where they fit in with all those other Connecticut jobs I had, but it was certain that no one could cite my lack of hustle. A 50 hour week was quite normal for me in the 80’s. I had packed in quite a bit of training in horticulture and with Lori I had the classic experience of driving a 1949 Ford tractor down the state road creating a traffic jam.

With my greenhouse experience I stayed on with the landscaperwhen it got too cold to plant Junipers in the frozen ground. There was Joe Gidvelas with his mafioso persona. He cursed all the time and was very gruff, except when he was planting tissue culture jet plugs and he treated those like newborn babies.

In ’89 we got an offer to come to Florida to be manipulated by my in-laws who felt a need to manipulate our life when we got there. My dad drove my rusted pickup and I drove a Hertz rental truck like the ones Stanleys had and my dad drove my Datsun King Cab. Without cell phones and global positioning satellites, we always had a place where we would meet if we got separated. This was important going on the six lane I-295 around Washington DC.

I felt pretty confident and adaptable in a new state and got a job within two weeks while wifey got depressed after not finding weed or a job after two and a half months. Then she met my soon to be ex second wife and they ran a group home for retarded people and we were finally acclimated.

I got a job at Atlantic View, a seven story condo with ocean views. Well one day the boss was caught smoking crack on the fifth floor. He got fired and my New Age buddy Dave was suddenly boss. Turnover such as it is in Arizona and Florida, Dave was funny and smart but definitely suffered from IED. Intermittent explosive disorder. He ended up getting fired too and there I was two months in Florida and I became the boss.

South American investors with alleged old school drug gang connections, it was reputed they were laundering money. Fred Stresau had done the landscape design and I learned he was a bestselling author. He wrote “Florida, My Eden” which remained the landscape bible through the nineties for many in Florida. He had died before the project was finished and I never met him, but Fred Stresau Jr. visited the site, and was such a dick.

 

 

            The project manager was also a dick. A developers hired gun he fucked with everybody but respected me for some reason. On December 24^th, one of the worst freezes in decades was predicted for all of Florida. It snowed on Christmas Day in Titusville we found out and even though I had a difficult time whipping the boys to be 100% productive, arms and elbows flying, I negotiated with them constantly to increase their productivity.

There was nothing we could do to protect the 70 Coconut Palms out by the street but we had many plants in pots that weren’t going to get planted and were bound to be frozen by this freeze. This was one of those worker moments when the workers grabbed the initiative. Paul the pot dealer and a seriously redneck dude from West Virginia and the guy that looked like Jesus. A 6’4” Jesus. All great sincere men who respected each other and they got the notion to build a greenhouse.

 “Are you kidding” the developer said but we didn’t need to buy a thing. They made a 15 by 10 foot greenhouse to house the more rare material.  I planted tree seeds I had ordered from catalogs in 89 I had hoped to grow in Florida. I forgot how we heated it but they built the entire thing from what was in the dumpsters. Plastic and wood, it was a work of genius with this incredible cold front headed our way. Clamps and nails from home, everything survived, and my seeds even germinated. Mesquite Palo Verde Acacias from around the world, Poinciana and others. What didn’t fit in the greenhouse we placed next to it where it was warmer.  Our fifth guy, a young troublemaker but a good egg, didn’t have anything to do at xmas so he came in checked on the heater.

By February or March, I got tired of the fancy condo landscaping and so I quit and got hired by Biogreen. He had an interesting pamphlet on his methods that I still have. Feather and Blood Meal. Natural fertilizing materials I’ll discuss later. Azalea Lane Apts with his much older but foxy girlfriend. His scattershot methods became scatterbrained and it was the Organic experience I needed to get back to my roots and I went into full research mode about Florida plants though I ended up getting laid off .

On May 30 1990 I got hired on to Orchid Island and worked there till June 2001. More horticultural things than I can encapsulate happened, and these issues will blow up this story later.

By the spring of ’01 my ankles and arms were on the verge of total spasm after five years of mowing greens and heavy landscaping with a chain saw and my tractor and trailer. The knee problem had healed in large part to Doctor Dave who lived in Orchid Island. But then one day after 5 years of professional greens mowing, I was going to mow the practice putting green and when I brought the gate down from the trailer my back went into total breakdown. So much pain I had to sit on the ground and wait for help. My strong back was ready to snap. I had had enough precision mowing for one lifetime.

I had been in discussion with Rick about my pending departure at Orchid Island and he promised me 15 hours. So I was paid for like six more weeks and after six weeks of physical therapy I quit. Take this job and recycle it elsewhere. With my ten years I had just qualified for three weeks vacation and was making almost 11 an hour which only long term help earned. 22,600 a year. Kind of a lot for me and why would I risk all this wifey asked.

I already had Delval and three other side jobs and Ricks 15 hours and the Flower Girl started getting me work and I ended up making 22,600 in ’01 and ’02 and like to feel I didn’t miss a beat going to self-employment. Support instead of doubts would have helped, but I persisted.

I picked up Crawfords at Orchid and Reynolds too and then the funny dude who lived between them. Orchid customers like that I could talk greens or fairways and the short holes on #8 and #15. I explained to them some of the environmental issues I’d failed to get implemented in my discussions with management.

I said that the invasive pest plant Brazilian Pepper needed to be removed and native plants put in their place. I tried to promote these mainstream environmental standards but couldn’t make a dent with the profit machine.

Meanwhile the children are 19, 18, 16, 12, and 6 in 2002. Three teens, Master Gardener volunteer and Tree Board Advisor, while planting small plants for future growth in the yard. The ones from the rare fruit council seemed to be doing great at that point.  

Needless to say, maintaining a customer base for twenty years leads to a lot of communicating. More so than working with the grumpy nurse demographic, I’d guess.

I AM FROM Hartford Hospital and Pepe’s Lincoln and learning how to go to school in miserable conditions and how there had to be something better than wet galoshes for the foul weather. Taking naps in first grade and peeing my pants in second grade. Staying in class through lunch that day and I was driven home by the principal since mom had no license.

Another day that I got driven home was when I fell flat into a big puddle at lunch break outside in our play area on the pavement. Completely wet, but not embarrassed, they called my mother who was one of the few people in town that didn’t drive. Colleen and Paula in fifth grade made me realize love was in the air. Mr Domino was a male influence finally as my sixth grade teacher. Dad seemed great, both parents were always busy but a boy needs positive male influence. Girls need mentors too I’m sure.

Too many rural kids are raised with killing things and learning boys will be boys and that misbehavior can be excused. The dude who brought me my bundle of papers at 430 in the morning was pretty cool and sometimes I’d get out there early enough to see him and have a little chat. Then teenhood came along and it became about sports and being a feral child on my bicycle.

 

Adult world stuff I remember was the trouble Auntie had with Uncle Eddie who beat her with a phone in one cruel incident and was finally forced out. This was racist Joe’s son and my cousin Dennis’ dad.  Two cousins near my age, they showed me different things like abandoned buildings and driving a go-kart on the sidewalk along route 3. With no brakes. Thrills that parents would find unsafe today.

Favorite hiking places. Back yard Meadows. Bloomfield tracks and Pennwood. Eagle Cloud Mountain. Somewhere southwest Of Tucson. Coronado National Forest. Rt 5, Hazardville Freshwater Creek watershed. Sebastian Greens and the Stormwater Park.

The Portuguese side always had good suppers and a bathroom with all the fairies wallpapered with an aqua blue background. Another younger cousin was retarded but he ended up working at Tony’s corner market. He died at 18 from complications with his brain problem that sounds like encephalitis. He greatly benefitted with Governor Dempseys programs.

I like to say I don’t like being bossed and I don’t like being the boss. So by the age of twenty I was done with mom controlling me and she told me I was going to be a pall bearer for Daves funeral. Not really feeling grief for my dead cousin or even knowing what a pall bearer was so I said no. Tired of being told what to do. Maybe if Tony asked me or something. But, another mistake I made from immaturity.

Junior High was like 1966 and the spring and summer before was filled with tales of horror. “Ninth graders, like, knock your books out of your hand ‘n shit.” “You gotta be naked after gym”. Oh no, everyone was going to know about my hairy legs that I had managed to keep hidden.

Somehow I shaved them where they could be seen between socks and thigh pads in midget football. That naked bullshit was downright weird. Suddenly, a class full of boys were naked with each other, after being taught modesty at home? Then what was REALLY creepy was high school where the coachs office was like, 15 feet from the showers.

“So they can make sure no hanky panky is going on.” I’m told. Another what the hell moment that only crystalizes into adult awareness. Now I look at the Jerry Sandusky scandal and the abuse in the boy scouts class action lawsuit and now I wonder if there is some sort of homo-erotic thing with men. When Randazzo the neighbor saw a huge stump one day he goes “bicep contest”. Everyone put their elbows on the stump and flexed and I’m like WTH is this?

Luckily I was bereft of any sort of male influence regarding guns and sex and being told killing things is OK. Like I said Ritchie with his beating frogs on cement was beyond my comprehension. He done kilt a rabbit and chopped its foot off and showed me one Saturday. I was like what in the fuck is this? This is why I assumed he was in jail as I got older. Or dead. My psycho friend.

The disaster with Janis did yield some insights. The boys were all about coercing the girls for sex she told me. You know the upstanding citizens of Wethersfield High School like Mike B. She mentioned other names but I forgot them. Then there was Ed Duggan the King of coercive assholes. I read his comments on facebook and I’m like how do these women tolerate this misogyny and even find him endearing?

Now he’s dead and people are like what an adorable guy and bought him, like, a park bench or something. A memorial plaque. More like a royal plague.

There was 10^th grade football and the Charleys and Jims of our 1-7 season in 1969 were being hyper jocks, but somehow always had lots of excuses for missing practice. One thing I distinctly remember is that I didn’t miss a single practice. Smallest dude on the team at 5’6” 140, I certainly took my lumps but did the running up and down the bleachers with a uniform on …barely. Then rode my Roddy one speed 4 miles home.

So this is a pattern I like to think I created. Tough everything out. I was blinded by Jimmy Pierces rock and the doctor said no football or baseball for a year, so I sat out 9^th grade Jayvee football and when I could play baseball again it was with all the neighborhood kids in Clarks cow field. I realized I’d never be a baseball player at that point, the pitching was just too fast. Another form of bullying. One year of senior league in 8^th grade and I was 9 for 39 with a strikeout in the world series.

I could nail a runner at home from center field but when a 14 year old is throwing 85 MPH from 30 feet away (66 feet in the major leagues), it was downright scary. I couldn’t swing fast enough. I also learned about branding when I found out the name of my team was Wethersfield Optical. We were The Opticals? That was like Shaun playing soccer for Riverside Lawns. “Go Lawns” I’d shout at the games. “Get psyched”.

 

Back to 2020, I see these male creatures with their “I just broke a beer bottle and I’m going to kill you in a barfight” attitude, and  the dudes with their gym muscles and I am not getting it. They need a constant reassurance of their manhood or something but now I realize it’s a show. Everybody working on their brand, marketing their masculinity. Everyone craving fame and greatness.

So to me it’s your actions that make you a man. While the boys were talking tough with their pints in Beantown, I was riding my bicycle through the poor part of Hartford to get to the Green quickly and then further out in West Hartford on the way back, when I was tipsy from downing my six pack of Pabst. A 30 mile round trip easily.

  In my 30’s I doggedly created a two mile trail that connected all the patches of forest that remained in Hazardville during the 80’s. Looking back on all my efforts, I am so thankful to be still standing all these years. Truly grateful I had the sturdy legs to do these things like hiking and biking. Didn’t like that weird leg hair though, then disappointment when I never developed beard hair.

Twenty years of teenagers and 30 years of (guiding raising?) 

Now at 68 comes a dilemma of not buying into the system. Leaving 25 years of blood sweat and fears in a house that was never mine and not even getting a pittance for my effort. I took our tax refund one year and got a loan for the rest to buy the lot next door for $6400. What do we need it for  the wife asked? Only you need it she complained. And complained.  An investment, maybe, dear sweet wise queen of mine? Now it’s worth $28,000 and still without a penny to my name. Looking at sleeping in my truck I still need to buy.

 

All these expectations about being a man, but I feel that, at least to myself, I proved it.  In 2020 all these boomer dudes talk about is how many people they bossed or how much property they accumulated. Endlessly gossiping and bragging and bearing false witness against others. Mowing people down like zombies with their verbal guns I absolutely cannot bear to hear another boomer life story

As an aside here, I know somebody who is particularly annoying with the bragging about themselves and how they are loved wherever they go he tells me (unlike me, it’s assumed I am a grumpy old fuck). Come to find out they stroll down the boardwalk repeating their life stories to five people a day. The same old schtick is wearying. People always virtue signaling to me that they are either a better person or a good business person (unlike me who doesn’t even return phone calls) or beat me at things that don’t make me feel I want to be competitive.

It's time to toughen up again and endure. September 12^th 2020 and the cool weather is within reach. Five months of glorious weather and perhaps my last year in business. November 12^th and night time temperatures are still 10 to 15 degrees above normal in the high 70’s. Florida is finally getting old and I am shaking it up in 2021. I know I sound defensive in my stories here but that’s why I call this FRAMING MY OWN NARRATIVE. 

People are no longer interesting to me so I spend my time writing to try and entertain but also to open myself up as to who I really am. I only tell stories once and I don’t remember who I told what stories to, but just the same, no one knows more than 10%  of me so imma write this in case someone does.

I’m leaving myself open to anything, but I am telling myself this is my last summer outdoors. Anything can happen but opportunity only knocks when you’re out there doing it and immersing oneself in the world and … well… networking. Looking like I will give up my three Orchid customers on January 1^st and that will be 30 years. There. Thirty years going to Busy Bee and Moody Tire. I sense a change coming on but I need to mingle with people again but I am so not into meeting people. I’ve literally had enough of people. Conundrum or imbroglio?

But I probably still have a lot to learn about relationships. Started with Joyce. On a paperboy trip a dude named Paul picked up a “chick” at the park. A long story short, they broke up but I dated Joyce and I’d take the bus to Windsor and go to the movies. Then there was a pressure about getting her a ring and I was chastised on the phone by one of her friends. I didn’t have a clue. One awkward kiss was a relationship?  Nobody needs this.

Sports. I write about a lot in …

“ENVIROMENTAL LEGISLATION

 DESTROYED MY FIRST CAREER”

Life Story writing prompt continues on page 40, or so

The paperboy of yesteryear was a wonderful option for boys in the 60's. It was a skill building, freedom loving occupation; with the obvious benefits that came from learning about small business at a young age. If you were never a paperboy, there was also a social component involved with this job that was critically important.   

       When I had to go collecting for the weekly bill, I went to nearly everybody’s house, exchanging pleasantries and enjoying talking with the many different kinds of people and listening to what they had to say and always adding my youthful two cents. Now it’s funny to look back and realize I had my own small business with 40 customers such a long time ago, one of the last of the door to door peddlers.                                                  

By 1971, I was 17 years old and getting many questions; derisive questions from my peers wondering when I would get a real job. You know, being a 17 year old paperboy was so uncool to them. The minimum wage back then was $1.25 an hour and when I got the second paper route in tenth grade, I made 40 dollars in about 13 hours a week. Over three dollars an hour! It would be like making 16 dollars an hour today, in 10^th grade! I thought I had it going on, because work and school were over at 3:10, and when that school bell rang; I was free! “Tell me when you’re making forty dollars a week” I told my peers, “from your real job.” They spent 20 hours a week in the hot Connecticut sun, working shade tobacco, to make 22 dollars.

 I spent three hours of the thirteen total collecting what was due, but that turned into 6 hours a week, with all the diversions and wanderings I pursued , but fun didn't count as work hours. I was running loose in the morning in the dark delivering papers and on Friday and Saturday evening I  didn’t have to account for any of my time with my parents. Nice to be trusted. Now it’s like, “ why were you at the store so long>”                    

Eventually, I did get curious to see what a “real job” was like. Remember my work was done by 7 in the morning. So I had time to be a “soda jerk” at Dougherty Drugs after school. I only made 20 dollars a week there, in about 16 hours from 4 to 8,  4 days a week. Who needed that, not even half of what I made as a paperboy?  I’m glad I didn’t give up my morning job.                    

Back even further to 1965 when I was 11, my very first paper route was an afternoon paper route. Back in those days there was a competition in all the cities between the morning and afternoon paper and the paperboys were voraciously active selling their product, and there was no advertising needed. My parents approved of this activity, and thought if this worked out, I could start my own college fund. I just wanted to make ten dollars a week and ended up making 11 or 12, and having more fun than I expected.

   Back in those days banks gave between 5 and 6% interest. Today most “banks” don’t deal with savings accounts that are small, and they get away with the legal corruption of eliminating many savings accounts for young people by instituting the "Inactive Account" scam throughout the nineties.

    People thought they had put aside 400 dollars, for instance, for a newborn child’s future, only to go back 10 years later to see that there was nothing left in the account! Today, banks never pay more than 1% interest in savings, stifling the teen entrepreneur at the very least. In fact, if you do not have a minimum of $400 in the account these days, there is a penalty.

   In the old days, you could put money in the bank and every quarter you would check how much interest accrued, so my mother set aside 8 dollars every week to go in the bank and I kept the rest. I got a few new customers and got my income up to 11 or 12 dollars a week which gave me some jingle jangle in my pocket. I had 3 dollars to spend as I chose from the time I was 11 onwards. Usually for bicycle parts or sports equipment that wasn’t available in the paperboy contests but I can say I’ve been buying my own shit since then.

   My bundle of papers was dropped off at the apartments where half of the customers were. Sure enough, I was up and down those elevators thousands of times.  Friends seemed to like to help deliver the papers if they got to mess around with the elevator. "Dude, that's the last time" I'd tell them as the elevator opened up to a generally friendly old person.  "How are you fellas doing today?" “Great Sir, we forgot a paper on the third floor and we’re going back. Rodney Kolodny here (pointing to a friend) still doesn’t know how to operate an elevator.”

I had businesses on the Silas Deane Highway; along with a couple remaining residences on the Silas Deane that refused to sell to developers. Customers included the gas station at the light, Western Auto (where I got tires, spokes, and ball bearings) and a wide variety of other customers. A place called Carlin Inc. had the WORLDS MOST PERFECT BIKE JUMP.

    I had a stretch of customers down the other side of the light including a hardware store.  Burger Chef, the first fast food to arrive in Wethersfield, was where I would give 25 cents now and then to the teen age panhandlers Tony and Tommy.   Every day I cruised through the Carlin INC. loading dock, setting up for the jump. I only had to fall once at the beginning, to be much more careful.  Back when we could have unsupervised rough play.

   Then I'd drive over the tracks and over to Mill St.  A wooded swampy area with some very dilapidated housing.  They were very poor families, much like you’d see in Appalachia; people that still had outhouses. One generation removed from potato sack clothes, they were former mill workers and it was a stark atmosphere that was hard to forget. The mill had been closed more than ten years and these families were impoverished by the paltry pay from the predatory capitalist fat cats, no doubt. 

The Mill Street Appalachia was demolished a year or two later and there was a rumor something different was coming to that site. Something we’d never seen before. During the summer of ‘66 I was 12 and decided I couldn’t go another school year working the afternoon paper and miss all those baseball and football games after school. I made the phone call to sign up with the morning newspaper, The Hartford Courant, which was established in 1764. Their motto was and still is, “Older than the nation, newer than the news.”

  Two weeks later came the phone call; route #406 was available, was I interested? “Yeh!”  Dude named Gorski was giving up his route, being 14, a big kid who was going to get a “real job” working tobacco. In Connecticut we know about “working tobacco”.  Shade grown for cigar wrappers, it was hot and horrible work, but what a pile of cash at the end of the week and 14 year olds were allowed to work it. 50 dollars! In one week! All you had to do was resign yourself to exhaustion, sunburn and summer fun only on the weekends.

                 

                

     Gorski told me about the customers he liked on the route and made sure I treated them right and they WERE great people. I went with him for two mornings and that was it. He passed on the collection book and told me I’d make 14 a week from it. This route was in historic Old Wethersfield and I did make 14 a week and built it up a little bit to 16, and then something big happened at the former Appalachia site.

     Eventually, there were sixteen buildings and 64 living units on the site. What a bonanza, so many potential customers in such a small area. I could drop five papers in a minute. Mill St. Appalachia gave way to something I’d never seen before.  It looked like the Jordan Lane Nursing Home, but everyone grew to love it despite its bricky nothingness for architecture. These homes were called “condos”.  Condominiums.

 I had been like any other fierce, territorial CEO. As they were being built, I hovered around them territorially while letting Izard and Joe, the two closest paperboys, that this uncharted Hartford Courant territory was mine, because, after all, I had customers on both side of the project. Permanent residents I once had on the Hartford Times afternoon paper route, I converted to the morning paper, the Hartford Courant.

So Gorski went off to work tobacco in the blazing sun and humid summer heat. 50 bucks! 44 after taxes… he had big dreams.      Saving up his pennies saving up his dimes to buy a 409.     

  The Hartford Courant had good contests for getting new customers, and I often won basketballs and gloves and bats and newfangled collecting books. With these condos; I got enough new customers to qualify for numerous day trips to New York City. In the winter, the Courant took us to a ski lodge in Massachusetts and when I had gotten enough new customer points; there were the three day trips to D.C. or Cape Cod. You see; this is a form of enlightened capitalism.  Or what an open free marketplace should be. When things go well and sales are up, everybody prospers.

    

       Customers were all pretty nice, and everyone had their own little gig to talk about, and it was fun getting a peek into other people’s lives, and there were lots of people to talk about the issues of the day.

        “We buy our milk from the store now," I remember people telling me things like this as we were transitioning into the modern age. The local dairies began having trouble competing with the avaricious new dairy corporations bent on excessive profits and converting the family farm into the factory farm.

          “The fruit peddler used to stop here," was another comment I remember.  He had a rolling fruit stand, and when I was about 12 with my new morning route, he had 10 or 15 customers on our street and I would wave to him, though he was a grumpy sort.  A couple years previous he even had a horse that pulled his cart, for real, with horse poop (road apples) in the road and everything. Nobody cared; you went around road apples in those days . Today you sue the horses’ owner.

      Business was bad since the A&P opened up in 1964 and by 1968 he was gone. Mrs. Gangi, who was handicapped, was his last steady customer and one or two others. A & P became the place to shop.  Then Popular Market in 67 across the other side of the Silas Deane Highway.

        Two small business institutions I saw fade away; the milkman and the fruitman, and eventually the paperboy seemed to have disappeared.  But I was thriving by 1969, making about 20 to 24 dollars a week and I think my mother was making me save a minimum of 16 dollars per week at this point. She’d show me the passbook now and then. Astonishing, approaching 2,000 dollars when I was 15! The 5.5% interest helped the savings build faster. In this world of 2020, you need to save thousands of dollars in long term notes, to barely get 1%.   Did I hear someone say ‘pit of vipers?’                                                                                                                              

     What then of the milkman and fruit peddler now? Our local dairy was probably 8 miles away in Rocky Hill. Every 20 miles or so, there was a dairy, I’m sure. Locally grown eggs and milk from cows you could wave to as you drove by. "John-get your head back in the car!"

One of my jobs was leaving out the milk bottles to be picked up; then bringing in what the milkman left, since I was the first one to wake up in the morning. Looking back, what was the greatest generation thinking when they let progress trample over this and other old fashioned but useful traditions? Predatory capitalism has torn apart the social fabric with the greatest generation as willing dupes.

          How old are our eggs now and how far have they traveled? What chemicals have been applied to feed? How crowded are conditions with the chickens? Our modern food production kept food prices artificially low, but at what social and moral cost?  Too much lost…landmarks, wetlands, ancient forests, and the fine network of small brooks and streams were compromised or destroyed as the greatest generation ravaged resources such as Southern Forests for cheap homes in the fifties and sixties, and the Atlantic ocean for fish on Friday.

       That white Cadillac, so many aspired to, symbolized purity and wealth and the façade of prosperity. Corporations tore apart the family farm and the self-sufficient homestead during the alleged post war prosperity. Much of what makes a community tighter was destroyed by the Greatest “can’t do anything about it” Generation. “Can’t stop progress” the cathode ray instructed them.

         Where are the paperboys now? I don’t think I’ve seen a real paperboy for 20 years. What a great way for children to learn about profits, and loss, productivity, and efficiency along with customer relations. Something has most definitely been lost. Now our pollution spewing death wagons are used in paper delivery. I could always throw a newspaper within two feet of the door. No one wants to get dressed to go get their paper at the end of the driveway like we do today. The death wagons spew carbon monoxide in the early morning stillness.  My morning hair could really frighten someone and many get their paper before they are presentable. Some customers demanded I put the paper inside the screen door, and usually these people tipped pretty well.

       I was deadly accurate, even at 15 MPH on the bike, so my customers opened the door just a crack to get their news instead of going down to the street in their jammies. A lot of youngsters like me had an income and my money circulated through the economy via Western Auto and Mad Magazine and Nestles chocolate, while saving 4,000 dollars by my senior year in 1972.  Take that …  real job.

 

 

       Before being a paperboy I had my first career picking up soda bottles. It was 1964 and littering had gotten out of control. People thought nothing of just throwing out garbage of any sort as they drove, the Greatest Generation, right? The privileged 'we defeated Hitler' generation. Unbelievable now to think how our roadsides used to look like garbage at the dump. Most frequently littered were soda bottles. Some were worth 2 cents, bigger ones were 5 cents.... America was discovering soda in a big way and we brought in bottles frequently.

       Business got real slow in ’65 because of the littering laws that were being passed and ironically; environmental legislation drove me out of my first business. It was worth it though; a new consciousness was arriving, questioning the strictures of the Old Society.  The Greatest Generation felt they deserved anything they could get, and the resources of this country and planet was theirs to use: seven generations worth of consumption in one. Consume they did                          

        One day, to make some money,  me  n' Richie got the notion of picking blackberries and selling them to the produce manager at Popular Market. With a spaghetti saucepot half filled with berries, we walked into the store figuring we could possibly make 75 cents. It would be like finding more than 20 bottles, all at once.   

    The produce manager looked at our fruit and for perhaps for a second, a bemused smile crept over his face as he thought about tasty local fruit…………………..but then he looked at our crud encrusted fingernails and said, “I appreciate this fellas……….but uh, I'd need to see a business license.”  What hath the corporate world wrought?

                  *****************

WRITING PROMPT CONTINUES

       

    We lived on our bicycles. Going to places like under 91 near the dump. Best of all was the Meadows. Woods Corn field and then the Connecticut river. Eventually we got to crossing on the Rocky Hill Ferry and over to Cotton Hollow when I was 16 to 20. I often came back even after I moved to Bloomfield.

           Perfect, a peaceful running stream you could walk across. Lots of rocks to jump from. As good as the Rockies without the mountain views of course.

    In Bloomfield Pennwood is very similar to a knob in the Appalachians. I could ride my bike there. Then my motorcycle, then my bike again and finally the black van. Young man with lots of energy. Lots of sports and paper routes gave me some sturdy legs. No gym muscles here. So I went for long hikes at Pennwood.

       Going to Arizona and living on a street called Flying A, I felt like I was in the middle of the desert, another kind of wilderness.

           I’ll put that picture of mary Lou walking in view of Cat Mountain right here. One day I was sitting on a rock doing a number and looking at all the views of different mountain ranges and saw a cloud that looked like a classic eagle shape and I had some sort of revelation that day.

           We moved into town after a year and a half and lived there for a year and a half. Not much hiking but some amazing walks with Mary Lou, Dickens and our new cat Rocky.

           Rocky was a stray we fed. Skinny with very long legs he went missing for a couple days just after we decided to adopt him. It became five days and we thought we had lost him. Went back to his owner or something.

           Then there was the day we heard a muted mewing at the back door. It was him. His fur was all matted and oily but he seemed uninjured. If only animals could talk he could have told us what a degrading experience he had. His fur was scraped off if I remember correctly. He looked like he got run over by a car.

           So my cat buddies and I walked all over the neighborhood. Seriously really far, we were truly a pack. I remember the cats darting from one concealed spot to the next as we went further and further each time. Mary Lou would do what I told her and we had hiked before and drove cross country. Dickens always had a knack for running and hiding and Rocky was the boy from the streets. Truly one of the greatest memories for my mind.

     Then we got the job as caretakers at a 40 acre ranch. One of 125 applicants but we seemed like the right fit.   250,000? 170,000? acres in the Coronado National Forest to explore and the next town was called Gammon Gulch and is 43 miles away miles away. Interesting were the dry stream beds where the occasional roaring torrent went through. One favorite memory was when me Sally and Sammy went through a mini valley. Forty-foot cliffs on both sides and one day coyotes started yippin’ and yappin’ from up above. I knew they would never attack an adult human and two large dogs so we continued without fear.

           Of course, there was my most exciting nature moment ever and that was when I was alone one day, kind of lost and I looked up at a small hill and saw about five Peccaries. I stood there and they stood there. This could be a problem.

           They decided to keep on doing what they were doing and that was looking for food. Insects roots fruits prickly pear. It was out there where I gave myself to the land. Whatever sexless deity there was out there. I rejected all religion and made a vow to educate people regarding that.

           Not log after I came across a little oasis in the middle of the desert with some really green soft grass. A magical place and I found some antlers there that day and I still have them. Another exciting day I was in the Sahuaro Monument east of where we lived. A real black cloud crept over the horizon. I was too far out to run back to the house I figured I’d tough out whatever it was. Heavy rain became hail and I crouched behind a Sahuaro.

           Sometimes I only took Sammy out for a hike and left Sally back at the compound. Sammy was tough as nails, Sally not so much. Sammy had a docked tail and an awesome moment was when I saw Sammy rear up on his hind legs with three coyotes challenging him. He really looked just like a Bear, a shaggy Black Bear. That was cool.

           Moving to Enfield Connecticut in 1984, I was 30 and was doing a lot of yoga and running 3 miles. Along with working outdoors as a gardener, that was my health regimen for a long time. I’ve been working outdoors for forty years. Minus the year and a half with Plantations and Plantscapes, the indoor plant companies.

            So in Thompsonville my big thing was jogging down route 5 and looking at all the big houses. There was a tiny library there too and I belonged to a workout club for a year called The Sporting House just off route 5.

           Then moving to Hazardville brought me to one of my favorite ecosystems. Freshwater brook, stream, river, who knows? Swamps and bogs and white Birch pioneer stands and Pitch Pine. Very nice Hemlocks and an occasional Shagbark Hickory.

           Giant 100 foot Sycamores at the edge of farmers fields.

RIGHT HERE WOULD BE THE PLACE TO PUT MY STORY CALLED DESOTO POND. THE STORY OF CREATING THAT TRAIL.

    We start the writing prompt editing again right here with the question ... do you have a favorite year you would go back and live again without changing it?

    Well I was writing about the music released and 1973 and it seemed astounding. Then I started thinking about what I was doing that year and I thought of another writing prompt  

 1973

Sleeping under a big tree at the college on the corner near West Hartford and Hartford. Somewhere along the way in '73 I switched from Wally the 250 Suzuki to a pair of ten speeds. I rode them to the food co-op downtown and to Wethersfield to sink a six pack of Pabst with the boys. What luck the drinking age was lowered to my age and it was suddenly completely legal.

     Free to do as I please the year after school ended. Joined book of the month club and there were some great old book stores in Central Connecticut.  Research wise I became interested in corn and life of the Indian tribes in the Connecticut River Valley. So I went downtown to the state library and started searching for the culture of the native Americans and corn seemed to be the key. Copy machines were becoming more common.

     I joined the book of the month club that year and moved into my own place and the first that I had to pay rent for. I'll run down a list of my fave albums from '73 and I swear, it's the shit. The stuff that will last forever. Lost on a desert island … yeh that kind of year.

    If I recall, I got Wally in like, June of '72, ostensibly for Manchester Community College. I do remember exactly how many miles I drove on all Wally with the raised pipes. I went down every state road in Connecticut to see what there was to see.

   Wally was a sturdy old cuss, a '68 I think, and put 16,000 more miles on him. Went to school and drove down every road in Connecticut and Central Massachusetts looking at the foliage that fall. 

       Quit school after one semester, the bike went away in the cold, for less than three months and I was still living at home. I had the dough so I spent a lot of time reading and not working that winter. 

    As soon as it was warm enough, I was back on the motorcycle. That shit was fun. Drove everywhere that spring and went to the ten speed in July. Mary Lou and Suzie from Bristol were girlfriends to visit.13 months and 16,000 miles. I felt like I had a real motorcycle experience. Thank you, Jesus for getting me over Avon Mountain so many times, and not letting me get killed on those rainy nights.

    I remember taking Anne home in a heavy rain when her car broke down at her college and she called me to help. Drove that motorcycle in the rain and she returned the favor by driving me to the Pink Floyd, "Dark side of the Moon" tour in March 1973.

   So seriously what an exhilarating year I had. Re-educating myself, travelling thoroughly in my own bioregion, the *Connecticut River Valley. The east side of the river. I was a river rat from the west side. Wethersfield and Bloomfield, the later on the east side in Enfield Hazardville and Thompsonville.

 Pink Floyd and the first quadrophonic concert in March. Bill Bruford left Yes and he brought out the best in King Crimson on the "Larks Tongue in Aspic" album later in '73. Carl Palmer, John Bonham Ian Paice and Billy Cobham round out the best five drummers in 1973

    I rode my bicycle during the summer of 1974. Drove it all the way to the beach and did some ten speeding to the Wethersfield Green or up hills like at Pennwood Park. Near Avon Mountain looking like the Appalachians.

      It was like 60 miles from Bloomfield to Hamonasett Beach and 22 more miles up to Higganum where a friend lived. 82 miles in one day. Physical challenge.

      You know, so bizarre, all these Indian names of everything but where did they go? My parents favorite lake with a tough to pronounce Indian name. I'll look it up in a minute, my computer is doing weird stuff with tabs.

       My head was going to explode from the programmed learning in the highly inadequate educational system. Training the brain for the mundane, I can't count the thousands of hours wasted on what passes for learning.

     So I bought a camera and began photography as a hobby after I graduated. The Enfield Falls the Travelers Tower, the zombie three tier abandoned overpass in West Hartford. I put hundreds of miles on my ten speed every month and got a few pictures as a memory.

           

       I researched The Charter Oak at the state library near the Capitol building. Just locked my bicycle out front and hewed away at the Dewey Decimal System.

       The Book of the Month Club had gone radical with all these occult books and I bought a bunch of them. I got a Tarot Deck at a used book store, which were also proliferating, and were comfortable hangouts. Of that Tarot deck, I only have seven cards left. I slept with the deck near me for 15 years but by the end of the eighties, I became an atheist again.

      In 1973, I was re-educating myself in a hurry with Drucker and Hofstadter and H G Wells' History of the world where I learned about the Reindeer People.

         In August I moved into Mr. Lynchs flop house. I rode my ten speed to work, probably a mile and a half, but I remember one day I went to hop a curb like you would with a solid one speed bike. Needless to say that was a bloody mess all over my arm.

    Revelation pasty white guy and his Mercedes. One of my best moments was when I decided not to be a bookkeeper and to not go back to college. 

   It must have been in April or May of '73. The motorcycle wasn't any real kind of exercise so I drove the ten speed back to Wethersfield to hang out. Maybe I was overnight at Steves and with a Polish breakfast in my belly, I was riding back home. I often ended up on Windsor Street and I think it was near a bridge, but not 84. Trumbull Street maybe.

There were innumerable routes to get to Blue Hills Avenue which I needed to use on Hampton Lane or Emerson Avenue. Unless I was taking the longer route through West Hartford.

I remember it being like 9 in the morning and I stopped the bike to get a sip of water. Standing on the sidewalk I saw a car drive into a teeny parking area and I noted an extremely small building. Less than 500 square feet and it was for like bookkeeping services. 

  A young adult spends a lot of time trying to figure out what the fuck kind of career a dude wants and pondering how you want to pursue the Almighty Dollar. 

So here's Ronald Rotunda stepping out of his minty yellow Mercedes and it was like I was tripping, you know, those moments when you are transcending time and space? It was an incredibly run down part of a run down city and this tiny island of prosperity seemed to hold no joy. 

     He looked like he was on the Bridge of Sighs at Attica, headed for execution. It all seemed like slow motion; you know. My spirit guide needed me to stop thinking about going into the business world. It was like a wrecking ball to my future.

   I had $4000 in the bank for my future. Higher education I decided against and thought of getting a used Mercedes. As my revelation unfolded, I realized I was looking at myself 20 years from now. Did I want to be this person? A pasty white, under exercised cipher drone for some company or another?

   For days I pondered the mystery. I was going to let a career choice flow. Do what I like and let the Universe be my guide. Now I didn't really think like that, but I was going to let it flow from there. It would be another five years before I decided on a career in horticulture and proceeded with my career path self-education from there out in 1980. 

   Sports was so important to my youth. Greatly attracted to baseball and football. Baseball ended up as  difficult as the boys had growth spurts while my growth stopped at 5'6".  I managed to get a letter in Football in tenth grade, that was cool. The reward for doing difficult things in your youth is rewarde in memories later. Glad that's over kind of thing.

    So there I was one early morning in 11th grade at the Wethersfield Town Green. I've always loved when the darkness of the night had given way to a very gray reality of dawn.  Sometimes I would take a book on my paper route and would sit at a bench that was near the Nathanial Foote landmark. This was before the bus shelter was put in.

    I was reading a book by Jim Kicx or something and it was a ground breaking book on Jogging. Nope. Google shows me Kixx' book came out in '77 He's the dumbass that thought he could run marathons with an enlarged heart and a father who died of one at 43.

    I was probably reading the Roby Davis book "jogging for  fitness and weight control". I was also reading Hittlemans guide to Yoga.

     I remember formulating the plan that day. Yoga jogging and bicycling. Running would lead to injuries I was reading. Long term.  So jogging seemed like a more natural choice. Walk the more scenic areas and run past unpleasant people. What you abuse as a youth, you'll pay for it when you're 50. and rough sports like rugby .... well....I didn’t need any more concussions.

     I remember jogging around the Green. I read that running on the street was more stressful on the knees, so I always tried to stay on the grass or dirt. In retrospect I think my attitude was to do what i wanted instead of needing people to share the experience? I think its more about control and the human need for it. I abhor control I don't like to be bossed and i don't like being the boss.

    Then there was Richard Hittlemans book about Yoga in 1969.  

The college edumacated characters I've met usually lack the overall skills needed to get the job done. Working for a greenhouse, the owner was the inventor of the Jet Plug and vice president of Ball Seed and a college grad with a business degree. He was manic and emotional and clueless with the employees. He hired Dwight who could repair the trucks and then rebuild an old greenhouse and spot plant problems with the best of them. He was a leader not a boss. Then he hired Vicky touting her degree, but she knew too much of what wasn't needed and also had no people skills. On another job I was the first person to take care of an elaborate ten million dollar beach club. A year later the installer won an award for his design and told me the only reason he won it in the first year was because I got the plants to fill in quickly. Didn't need no boss to tell me what to do but then after three years in receivership, the staff expanded and I got me a freshly minted college grad as a boss. I could ignore him pretty much, but one day a patch of grass got yellow and he took it upon himself to fertilize it. He also got iron stains all over the place that I had to remove with Muriatic Acid. Then there have been all the overpaid "landscape architects" whose flawed designs were the bane of workers existence on many jobs. Then there was Joe the college grad nursery boss. "It doesn't matter what you say to a customer just say it authoritatively" I could go on and on with examples but in conclusion, Donna you are a botanist, and you don't need a piece of paper from the city hall making you one. This guy too Tony Santoro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVmSy5bsuMk 

BELOW IS THE PREVIOUS REWRITE