tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35919841969300999302024-03-14T03:20:16.399-07:00Cosmetics Plussully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-73654325867641692462022-09-20T17:22:00.008-07:002022-09-20T17:23:18.305-07:00Thinking back about Carmela Feb. 5, 1986<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Carmela was a stumpy woman straight out of a 1930s situation
comedy, who looked and acted old, but was not old, that supporting utterly
dependable character the rich people in such flicks always depended on to make
things run smoothly.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">She wore old lady’s dresses and old lady’s perfume, and
during the first years that I worked for Cosmetics Plus, she sat outside Donald’s
office like a guard dog. She fiercely defended his privacy, if only in the nicest
way.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">She drove a Baracuta, the envy of all the workers in the
warehouse complex, who grumbled about such a fine machine being wasted on such
a character such as she. As with everything else, she drove it like an old lady
might, and only to get to work or to drive her sister somewhere.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">While Donald boasted about being a self-made man, it was
Carmela he depended on, until later, when he expanded and bolstered his image as
a modern businessman by bringing on younger, more modern women to as part of
the secretarial staff, leaving Carmela as something of an outdated model,
dependable yes, but hardly hip.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">She was moody even back in the old warehouse, a condition
some claimed was the result of “that time of month.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Most assumed she was still a virgin, an old maid from birth,
and later when the warehouse expanded, some cruel members of the staff offered $100
to any guy brave enough to take her virginity.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">There were no takers, even among the well-meaning, because
she had a put-off air that would only let a person get so close, but no closer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">She reminded me of a petrified aunt, a large nose, deep set
back black eyes, a dark complexion. She was short and perched like a bird
behind her desk, utterly efficient, but not someone to inspire even the most
remote sense of tenderness.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Jokingly, people said she walked like a duck and talked like
a goose, and quacked when upset, her head and shoulders moving side to side.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Sometimes, when I came upon her unawares, I found her starting
off into space, her expression filled with intense loneliness, which vanished
the moment she became aware of me. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">She lived with her sister somewhere in West Caldwell in a
garden apartment, and constantly complained about her mostly male neighbors who
constantly parked in her parking spot, especially in winter after a snow storm.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">She and her sister were twins; I never met her sister.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Carmela spoke of her sister as if an echo, a mirror image of
herself. She spoke of her often, but it was as if she kept her sister in a
drawer, putting her back when not needed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Nobody seemed to know much about Carmela’s parents, or what
made these two sisters cling to each other the way they did. I always got the
feeling she felt as if her parents were always looking over her shoulder.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Donald didn’t seem to care much about where she came from,
only glad he had her when he did, and always jumped when she asked him for
something. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">When she complained later at the new office about the increased
work load, Donald went and hired an army of young women to help her.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">None of them ever met with Carmela’s approve, and
eventually, she became more and more isolated as they flocked together, often ignoring
her.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p>
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</span><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p>sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-80794097959005833492022-07-15T07:18:00.007-07:002022-07-15T07:19:25.032-07:00Bad habits die hard Jan. 12, 1986<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">When Donald fired me in May 1978, I walked out of his office
in utter shock, drove down Route 46, only to realize I still had the keys to
the warehouse and had to go back, marching back into the reception area with a
much dignity as I could muster, dumping them on Carmela’s desk, then in a huff,
turned around and walked right back out.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I was then still under the illusion I was in the right, though
I also feared Donald would have the police show up at my house to recover the keys
or to accuse me of ripping him off in the middle of the night.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Now, all these years later, I do not believe any such event
would have occurred.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">But I remember riding away from the office the second time
how empty and lost I felt.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I had worked for Donald for four years and this for good or
bad gave me some sense of purpose. Without the job, I had only an apartment,
but no real identity. I had become so focused on hating Donald; I had had no
thought of anything else.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Fortunately, my meeting with John Telson earlier had set up
my new job at Wine Imports, which turned out to be a whole different experience
entirely, and a whole new set of characters that included Louie the Bottle Man,
Cowboy the Truck Loader, Cosmos the Drug addict, John Telson the alcoholic, Dan
the Supervisor, and, not least, Roger the owner’s son, and many others whose
names escape me.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Unfortunately, old habits die hard, and by the end of that
year, I managed to get myself fired from that job, too, and largely for doing
the same thing I had done with Donald.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Roger apparently had paid off the shop steward to allow the
company to violate some of the union rules, and while most of the others were
too scared to do anything but bitch, I wrote a letter to the head of the union,
Tony Pro, the man most famous for authorizing the murder of Jimmy Hoffa.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Panic ensued at the wine company as the shot steward held an
emergency meeting in the break room to find out which son of a bitch had
written the letter. Since I wasn’t yet in the union, I stood outside staring in
through the dirty glass as the sweating faces. Roger was in the room with them,
and both he and the shop steward made each man sign a form saying he had not
contacted Tony Pro.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">The only one who refused to sign the form was John Telson,
nor did he rat me out, knowing perfectly well that I had.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Later, he came out to the parking lot with me.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">“I always thought you were a trouble maker,” he said. “Now I
understand you’re what’s left of the 1960s.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">A few days later, Roger met me at the door to the warehouse
and told me the company would not need my services any more. Roger had clearly
spoken with Donald, and put two and two together about who wrote the letter to
Tony Pro.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">He looked scared. Apparently, the shop steward had
disappeared aka Jimmy Hoffa.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">This time I didn’t feel the same sense of shame as I
eventually did with Donald, I knew I had done the right thing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">The next day I applied for unemployment.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">A few years later, I ran into Cowboy in Allendale, who
informed me Wine Imports had closed it doors for good, the whole gang scattered
to the wind.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">John Telson had taken off for California with his wife, only
run into me on River Drive while I was jogging, telling me how his whole life
had changed, but he still considered me his friend.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.scrappaperreview.com" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: large;">Main Menu</span></a></span></o:p></p>
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sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-85593631468231542732022-07-14T08:19:00.002-07:002022-07-14T08:20:49.490-07:00Bringing down the business? Jan. 11, 1986<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I said yesterday that Michele was my motivation for turning
against my boss in 1978, which is only partly true.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">She became an excuse to do so.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">After four years working for the cosmetic company, the job
had worn badly on me.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">While our boss, Donald, was kind of employees at times, he
was also an elitist, keeping himself distant from us, and encouraging Stanley
is supervisor to do the same.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Donald seemed to like the idea of being rich. And like many
people who earned their way to wealth (even though his father was a successful advertising
man in the 1950s), Donald tended to hide more and more behind Stanley.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">But it was largely office politics that ruined the place for
me.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">John Telson, who had come before the 1975 Christmas season,
began to play spy and special envoy for Donald through most of 1977 and has –
as he admitted later once while drunk – plotted to take my spot as supervisor,
when Stanley finally got promoted.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Two important revelations came to mind. The first was the
fact that competition for the higher-level jobs scared the shit out of me. The
second revelation was that I didn’t really see the promotion as important, even
though I was supposedly destined to take Stanley’s place behind the big window
that overlooked the warehouse.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Stanley had very little power as was proven when I became
the manager of the night shift during the 1977 Christmas season, and Stanley
felt threatened by how well I did.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">This suggested that once he rose up to the next level, Stanley
would become even more controlling than Donald had been.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Much to my shame later, I felt threatened by John and harassed
him until he quit his full-time position in May 1977 – although he came back
part time during the 1977 Christmas season. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">It is ironic when I knew my time with Donald was coming to
an end, I arranged to have dinner with John on a Friday night in May 1978 and
he arranged for me to get hired at his new place of employment. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">The letters I had sent to all of the manufacturers were a
ticking bomb which I knew would lead to me getting fired. I’d hoped to quit
first.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">The following Monday, Donald called me into his office,
confronted me with one of these letters and asked who had written it, and when
I said I didn’t know, he pulled out copies of my fictional stories and said the
type face matched.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">He fired me on the spot.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">A month earlier, he had issued me a warning after he had
overheard me talking to one of the other employees about their moving on – I did
not see a future in the warehouse for any of us.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Donald suspected I might be trying to unionize the workers
against him, an idea he absolutely hated. While he could do nothing about
outside forces possibly trying to do something like this, he would not tolerate
betrayal from someone like me who he basically had treated well over the years.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">The fact that I had no such unionizing plans never came up
on our conversation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I guess he saw my letter writing as part of this effort,
rather than simply an act of revenge for Michele and perhaps the whole spying
by John.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Fortunately, my letters did not destroy his business because
I later regrated the whole act and would have had to have lived with the guilt.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I vaguely wondered if I had succeeded, Donald might have
reached out to some of his brother’s mafia friends, a brief if paranoid
thought.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">As it turns out, my actions appeared to have no effect, and
later, Donald would expand his business even further.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Life went on inside the cosmetic warehouse as if I had not
existed.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.scrappaperreview.com" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: large;">Main Menu</span></a></span></p>
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sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-11979387683634633532022-07-14T08:17:00.005-07:002022-07-14T08:20:19.572-07:00More about the other Michele Jan. 10, 1986<p> <span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I spoke about my second Michele yesterday neglecting to
mention that the boss was not the only person at the cosmetic warehouse to
abuse her.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Michele, who had come to work in the outlet section sometime
in 1977, was born and raised in primarily white neighborhood in Caldwell,
spoiled a bit by successful white parents. If she actually knew a black person
personally, it was someone from one of the more successful Essex County
families who were a white and white people.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Like many suburban girls, Michele had an imaginary
perception of other black people, either as villains or victims of society.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">This did not alter much when she finally met “real” black
people when she attended William Paterson College – a school that had a
significant population of underprivileged students from places like Paterson.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Even then, the blacks she met were not the hard-core street
people, but those struggling to make their way up in the system, aided by
Affirmative Action, Pell and other grants geared towards providing blacks with
an equal opportunity.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">As a dancer, however, she got a chance to work with dance
programs at Passaic County Community College, located in the heart of Paterson,
where she met blacks and Latinos alien to her hometown of Caldwell. But even
had this not been the case, she was part of the school’s artist community which
gravitated to the dying and discredited Marxist culture, spouting old social
justice slogans from the 1960s most students on campus didn’t want to hear –
although in New York’s Cooper Union recently, the Marxists plotted their
return, and I suspect she might well have leaped into the renewed movement with
both feet.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">As school, she hung out with black students, dating black
men, and, in fact, was romantically involved with a black man when she came to
work in the outlet, something that did not sit well with many of the white
warehouse workers who grumbled about it, and not always out of earshot.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">These same workers, knowing of my attraction to Michele,
mocked me for coming in second to a black man. And for the first time in many
years, I heard a number of horrible black jokes resurrected. I didn’t argue the
point. I wanted Michele to give up her boyfriend, not because he was black, but
because I wanted her, too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">She seemed as confused as I was, and during those times when
I drove her home, she seemed to linger on the edge of inviting me inside, where
I might take her into my arms.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I got to hold her only once, and this after a dispute over
my picking up lunch from a local eatery and her failing to call the order in,
so I got stuck waiting out my whole lunch break for the chef to make it up. I
yelled at her; and then saw how hurt she looked and immediately regretted it,
wrapping my arms around her small frame as I told her how sorry I was.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">It occurred to me then just how easy it was for strong
people to abuse weak people, power over others that startled me, one of the
rare moments of enlightenment I would get again later when I worked for Two
Guys in Garfield.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">This led directly to my trying to destroy the company since
what I had done to Michele was nothing compared to what the owner was doing to
her on a daily basis, keeping her cooped up in the computer room where he
verbally abused her to underperforming a task she’d not been hired to do in the
first place, which she did not want to do, but needed to do in order to keep
her job.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">She became an emotional wreck. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Then one day, she called in sick, unable to take the abuse.
She didn’t come in that Friday or on the Saturday to deal with programming
orders.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">The owner fired her. Later when she tried to collect
unemployment, he argued she had been a horrible employee, routinely coming in
late (which was not true). Unemployment initially rejected her claim. She was
unable to pay rent and got evicted. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p>
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sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-45925493182474624762022-07-14T08:15:00.004-07:002022-07-14T08:19:55.204-07:00Two women named Michele Jan. 9, 1986<p> <span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Two women named Michele had a huge influence on me in the
early days of 1978.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">One was a regular patron of the band, Sleeper, and the Red
Baron club in Cedar Grove where the band played regularly.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Pauly had ill things to day about her, I was acutely
attracted, and could have gotten involved with her if she’d not scared the crap
out of me, especially during that party on New Year’s Eve when she came onto me
like a storm.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">She had blond hair and always wore provocative clothing, on
that night, a silk blouse unbuttoned enough to show her cleavage, and thin
enough to show how little if anything she wore beneath it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">She usually had her pick of any of the musicians, but for
some reason, she picked me to seduce and I – in a fit of stupidity and panic –
rejected her and did so in a way that burned all future bridges between us,
slipping a somewhat judgmental poem into her purse as I fled the party.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">A year and half later during the luxury of my unemployment,
a girl in a yellow Volkswagen frequently passed me during my jog along the
river in Garfield, beeping the horn at me and waving, with me finding out only
later it was her when she reappeared during a performance of the band I worked
for.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">“You smiled at me,” she said. “You need to do more of that.
Not just at me, but at any girl.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">It was words of wisdom I’ll never forget.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">The other Michele came about at my job in the Cosmetics
company, who equally attracted me but for totally different reasons, a dark
haired, small-boned girl who hoped to make her living as a professional dancer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">She became something symbolic, a focus of my dissatisfaction
with a job in which I felt trapped.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I should have quit the job, but privately stewed, hoping
some miracle would cause the company’s demise as the card company where I had
previously worked.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I actually planned for the company’s destruction in what the
owner would later call “Industrial Sabotage,” but I referred to as revenge over
how the owner had mistreated Michele.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I guess looking back it was a mixture of both.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I was still radical enough to believe in that phony 1960s
regurgitating of union propaganda about workers’ rights and power to the
people.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I disliked the fact that the job had become more mechanized
after moving into the new location, first with rolling conveyors and later
mechanical belts, a real scene from a Charlie Chaplin movie with me as a
hapless Charlie Chaplin.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">This must have showed because the owner of the company
decided to offer the job as assistant warehouse manager to somebody else.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I was already primed when the boss started berating this
Michele, who he had hired as sales girl in his outlet, then graduated to
operate his brand-new computer, yelling at her over her inability to learn the
system fast enough or for the minor mistakes she made.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">She put up with it because she figured she would sooner or
later move on to a career in dance and wouldn’t need the job.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Then, during one of the heavy floods noted for this neck of
the woods, Michele and her boyfriend got their car stranded in the parking lot
of Willowbook Mall and while pushing it to higher ground, she broke her ankle,
not a crippling injury, but one that destroyed any hope for her to become a
dancer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Knowing she was trapped, the owner heaped on abuse,
eventually forcing her to quit, and then refusing to allow her to college unemployment
-- she getting it only because I testified at her hearing about the abuse that
had forced her to resign.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">With her gone, I got angrier, and set about reporting on the
boss to all the companies he did business with, his business based on a
somewhat unethical practice of redistribution that most of the salesman turned
a blind eye to – but not their bosses. When my letters reached each company,
the sales people complained to my boss, and he fired me.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I never saw this Michele again.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p><a href="http://www.scrappaperreview.com"><span style="font-size: large;">Main Menu</span></a></p>
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</span><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p>sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-16213342708645248762021-12-04T06:41:00.002-08:002021-12-04T06:41:54.963-08:00Kevin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheTMe30soAbbs2pHSfouUYXyPHZfv5cazQOZjy4VCUTczxTC5Smgwl4NOsJWeGPH7LU1y8mK5v-E67m3GEWgfg2fWovrrIhPdOBAcnHCYMu-QI4FukDG2btKf6rJJzBwTd8jjfF4tlaWqo/s2048/IMG_3696.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheTMe30soAbbs2pHSfouUYXyPHZfv5cazQOZjy4VCUTczxTC5Smgwl4NOsJWeGPH7LU1y8mK5v-E67m3GEWgfg2fWovrrIhPdOBAcnHCYMu-QI4FukDG2btKf6rJJzBwTd8jjfF4tlaWqo/w400-h300/IMG_3696.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">November 1977<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I’m not the only one that has a problem with Stanley’s
treatment of Gary. I’m just the only person willing to say something to Stanley
about it, when other workers at the warehouse are too scared of losing their
jobs if they do.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I always thought of him as a calm and decent person. Yet
here, he savaged Gary, relentlessly accusing the warehouse’s newest driver for
no reason.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">While Gary had a lot to be desired as being the perfect
employee – constantly late, slow, taking too many water, cigarette or bathroom
breaks – he was not the ogre Stanley made him out to be, constantly watching
Gary’s every move through the large picture window of his office at the top of
the warehouse, yelling unnecessary commands over the PA at him. Everybody in
the place could hear Stanley abusing Gary.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">“I don’t see what this is all about,” said Kevin, the Dead
Head Stanley had hired to help for the Christmas season, a broad-shouldered boy
of about 23, who might have been a high school linebacker if not for his long
hair and his laidback anti-jock attitude. “All Gary did was drop a box and the
stuff in it wasn’t even breakable.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I told him it didn’t matter, busted or not, and that with
Stanley, Gary needed to be extra careful, even though all of us have dropped
stuff from time to time, sometimes breakable stuff, too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">“I need a break,” Kevin snarled, lighting up one of his Pall
Malls, sucking in the smoke that would eventually kill him, or at least
contribute to that awful unhealing wound in his chest doctors would later call
“cancer” as he stared out the back door windows, the afternoon sunlight
cascading through the trees that bordered the church yard and the historic
graves.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Kevin was a throwback to the late 1960s, like those die-hard
deadheads I knew in the East Village, less concerned about getting ahead than
in having an untroubled life. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Stanley had hired him for the holiday season, needing the
extra set of hands to deal with the heavy orders we always had from late August
until a few weeks before Christmas. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">But Kevin hated the hassle Stanley brought to the warehouse
each day, as if Stan outlined his attack on Gary at home and deliberately
orchestrated events with which to put Gary in a bad light, and Kevin – no fan
of Gary at all – just didn’t like the scene.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">“I’m thinking about quitting,” Kevin said, expelling the
smoke with a sigh. “I can’t take this shit anymore.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Although barely into his early 20s, Kevin had not aged well,
his face full of wrinkles his pot use could not cure, growing old at a faster
rate than the rest of us, perhaps the first inroads of the cancer that would later
kill him.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">He ran his thick fingers through his red main of hair which glistened
from recently loading an APA truck with outgoing deliveries.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">“I’ve been thinking about quitting for a while,” he said. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">“Me, too,” I told him, although we both knew I might never
leave, trapped humping boxes of cosmetics for the rest of my life, rolling a
stone up a high hill only to have it roll down the other side.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I had already become a prisoner in my own life, my existence
locked into two cells, the need for the Friday paycheck, and the more
significant prison of my own life. I would not step out of this place without
knowing there was some place else I could reach easily, and I saw nothing like
it any time soon.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Not long later, Kevin was gone, before the end of the holiday
season, leaving us shorthanded, though it was Gary who later informed me Kevin
had signed on at William Paterson College, still looking for a path that was
not the path the rest of us were taking.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p>
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<p></p>sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-44538549813921870342020-09-30T14:03:00.002-07:002021-02-22T17:19:06.641-08:00Big fish and small fry<div class="separator"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><o:p> </o:p><img border="0" data-original-height="115" data-original-width="288" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG_lkbvORQKul94V2VVg8FsUfmGXwJETBNQ8HF9gpcg-tcmdEgxJgHiGQY66Ncx1S__vnkb-X_1j9Dtqa56VKjh1CInd1x6rfIzNI2KlLXFsDI21p7k2n35-mRROuLiVln-XXSOmLgFhnK/w400-h160/willowbrook.jpg" width="400" /></p></div><p> </p>
<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">November 19, 1985</span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /> <o:p> <br /></o:p>I'm beginning to believe that there is no such thing as
right and wrong in American business only illegality and even these last are
only important when you get caught.<br />and more important than any of that is the power derived
from the whole experience.<br />A natural inclination to feel superior arises out of the
acquisition of money much like the feeling that some Germans felt during the
first 3rd of this century about their Aryan heritage, an economic fascism
derived from the ability to hire and fire and sometimes spoil a person's life forever<br />The difference between Donald Gottheimer in 1974 when I
first started working for him and in 1978 when I was fired is remarkable.<br />Just as the spread from when he started in his garage as an
independent minded son of a Jewish working-class person affected his ego, too.<br />It was buying the building in 1976 that really turned him
around, making him realize something about himself that had not been evident
before: he was important.</span><span style="font-size: large;"><br />This led to a roller system (manual at first then later
motorized) from which he could squeeze more efficiency from his loyal employees.<br />Still later the computer and his new house added jewels to
this industrial crown and further isolated him from the realm of his parents<br /> He was above us common Folks<br /> This newfound superiority had to be enforced, however, with middlemen.<br />It is not good for a man of position to deal with too many
underlings which is why he hired Stanley.<br />But Donald was a bad capitalist. in spite of his effort to
separate himself from the working class, he couldn't quite get away from his
own roots. He always had to dirty his hands to feel real about himself.<br />Phil, the middle owner of the Dunkin in Willowbrook, is a
better capitalist, rising in a similar way to Donald.<br />Only Phil lacks the ethics that Donald had or managed to
shed them when Donald couldn't</span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /> This is not to say that Donald was right or even close to
being ethical any more than Craig at the card company was before Donald.<br />We are simply talking about levels of competence and
conscience<br />Craig was sometimes a jerk with a streak of kindness. He
wanted desperately to be important, to act as vicious as normal capitalist
might. But his basic good nature killed all his chances.<br />Frank, one of the original owners of the Willowbrook Dunkin,
learned about capitalism the hard way. He latched onto a real shark named Yacenda,
a man so lacking in conscience he was bound to go somewhere in this world.<br /> Frank reacted with bitter admiration for this capitalist
when Yacenda sold out the business under him – Frank was a minor partner – a true
capitalist buying and selling small fries like Frank.<br />Yacenda knew this money-making game and its vicious rules
that allowed one player to gut another player, paying attention for the most
part only to the legalities, never wavering from the basic concept that small
fries are meant to be eaten in a business various of evolution in which only
the fittest survive.<br />This would not be bad if only the game players got hurt. But
their actions often destroy other people’s lives in the process of change, the
small people the people who do all the work.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p><o:p> </o:p></span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p></p>sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-69437587435897690032018-12-25T12:27:00.004-08:002021-02-22T17:17:48.024-08:00Man of Steel<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Stanley
decided to stick with Donald because he had a family support.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">And
so, began the daily trudged from his home in Belleville to the Fairfield warehouse
complex on Bloomfield Ave.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Since
Donald had started the business in 1968, Stanley must have started with him
right from the beginning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">I
was aware of him as the neighbor next door after I started at the card company
in 1972.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">And
he was still there when I got hired as driver in June 1974.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">I
had had such frequent contact as a neighboring employee that the transition was
easier than it might have been had I gone to a strange place because I knew him
and knew he knew me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">I
needed to learn was the job the stops and to put up with Donald unpredictable
moods.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Stan
and Donald were both moody but in different ways.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Donald
was manic, an agitated gerbil not much different from the Energizer Bunny,
always moving, always ambitious for something more than he had. If he did not
yet have a complete clear vision of what it is he wanted, then he had a clear vision
of the road that would take him somewhere better than it was at any given
moment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Stan
was a turtle. He followed the same road Donald did but did not -- despite his
dreams of success -- seem in a hurry to get anywhere.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Sure,
he wanted to make more money and wear white shirt. Yet once he fell into the
situation with Donald he trudged along as if he really had nowhere to go nor
wanted directions on how to get anywhere.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">More
to the point, the products Stan was hired to pack scared the hell out of him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Accustomed
to dealing with steel -- which was for the most part indestructible -- Stan
suddenly faced items contain in glass, perfumes and fragrances so costly he
sometimes handled them as if they were nitroglycerin.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Stanley
was so obsessive in his need to pack everything so securely that an atom bomb could
not have caused it to break -- though some drivers might have managed it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Orders
took many times longer to get ready than was actually necessary. This seemed frustrate
Donald to no end and was the source of the most disputes between them, one the
urging the other to hurry in a constant game of the unstoppable force seeking
to move the unmovable one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">While
Donald disliked damaged goods, he already set up a system with the
manufacturers to get credit for anything destroyed in shipment. We had whole
shelves dedicated to these, a thankless and stench-filled task of going through
them set aside for off-season when we mostly had little else to do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Stan
would have done better had he pursued a career as a teacher since he tended to
lecture me or anyone else as we worked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">He
often talked about his past and how disappointed he was with the bargain he had
made with Donald, yet -- as if a bargain with the Devil -- he could not get out
of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Working
across the backing table from him, I learned a lot of how he'd come there about
his early years at the steelworks in Harrison.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">“I
grew up with metal,” he told me. “My old man made me sweep up the shavings
during summer vacations when I was young. Then took me on as an apprentice when
I was still in high school.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Stan
blistered his fingers on hot metal and he pulled splinters of steel out of the
backs of his hands -- the scars of both showing like shameful tattoos he kept
from sight as often as possible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">When
his hands were not in his pockets, he kept them hidden in a box and when
exposure was unavoidable, he gripped a clipboard to expose only his thumbs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Stanley
never talk to me about his personal problems. But over time -- especially when
he became manager at the new warehouse -- I would overhear him on the phone
with his wife, talking about a bounced check or a telephone bill from her long-distance
calls to her sick sister in California.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Stan
repeated talked about those seven years of hell, keeping himself going with the
idea that the hell would end when the day finally handed him the diploma.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">“I
hated steel,” he said. “I hated it smell when the torches cut it. I hated the
touch of the warm metal when I had to help move it after it was cut. The place
was always hot, and I was always dirty, sweating my balls off and stinking of
metal even after I took a shower. I used to go out for dinner sometimes with my
family and I could smell the metal in the restaurant. I wanted to quit the job
a million times, but I knew I could not afford to I kept telling myself it
would get better and wouldn't always be like that. That's what got me through
those seven years.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">He
told me he saw himself working in an office building in Manhattan or Newark as
one of those “soft men” with “soft jobs” he always saw you going into and
coming out of buildings made of glass, carrying briefcases, and dressed as if
every day was a graduation ceremony -- suits always pressed nobody breaking out
in a sweat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">While,
he didn't get a solid job offer from the places he applied to, a few brought
him in on as trial jobs slightly better paying then the mailroom. They were not
at all what he thought the degree would qualify him for.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">“I
didn't feel right in any of those places,” he said. “I kept looking around and
scratching my head wondering what I was doing in a place like that. Nobody
seemed to do any work or very little. When I asked someone what they needed me
to do next, they told me to slow down and not make them look bad by doing too
much work. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know I should have stayed
in one of those places if I could have then I wouldn't be putting in the kind
of hours I am now.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Donald’s
offer seemed attractive at the time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">“He
said I wouldn't make a lot of money at first but that I would be on the ground
floor of a growing business,” Stanley said. “If I showed a little patience, I
would end up better off than I would if I worked in one of those corporations.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Later,
after we moved to the new warehouse, Stanley came to really regret his choice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">“It's
like I never left the steel company,” he said. “but instead of being out on the
floor doing honest work, I'm the boss I hated when I was working, and everybody
hates me the way I hated my boss back then.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
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<p></p>sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-46936869412028001492018-12-25T04:31:00.001-08:002021-02-22T17:16:00.609-08:00Being lost with Bruce<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7MqXXYmJ-98tgGxc4lEWy35ZQydFEj6d77FidJMR10a-hq7_vxZs_wPjFJKTyP5JF8hEbqqRHEjGa_7_6YSOmCymIcBHRBm1IRiJPYLOy2PNwaIwUYLx6FuWrwtJuDsDX1D8SYZDkpAGZ/s1600/bruce5.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="976" data-original-width="696" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7MqXXYmJ-98tgGxc4lEWy35ZQydFEj6d77FidJMR10a-hq7_vxZs_wPjFJKTyP5JF8hEbqqRHEjGa_7_6YSOmCymIcBHRBm1IRiJPYLOy2PNwaIwUYLx6FuWrwtJuDsDX1D8SYZDkpAGZ/s320/bruce5.jpg" width="228" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Born
in 1950, Bruce came into an age different from the ones of his brothers, just
as I differed from my uncles who were born before or during the war.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Bruce
was roughly my age and so suffered many of the same issues adapting to a career
as I did.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Barry
and Donald while different in their approaches from each other were both very
practical men with very practical ambitions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Bruce
had none or if he did, they were so vague he could not easily articulate them,
and I got the feeling he was more than a little intimidated by his father and
brothers while at the same time seem to love them dearly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">I
worked with Bruce a few times twice while working for Donald, once or maybe
more while working for Barry -- and all those times I got along with him well
but got the feeling he could not take himself seriously and so did not expect
anyone else to either.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">I
learned later that I actually replaced Bruce when Donald and Stanley hired me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Stanley
did not trust Bruce, found him too flaky -- a prejudice Stanley would later
display again when Gary got hired to be the new driver at the new warehouse a
few years later.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">I
also think Stan did not like relying on his boss's brother and may have imagined
Bruce running back to Donald if Stan gave him too much of a hard time--
something I could not imagine Bruce doing since I suspect Donald scared Bruce
as much as he scared me or even Stanley.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Bruce
resembled Barry more than he did Donald though did not dominate a room when he
came into it the way Barry did.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Bruce
seemed less substantial and less likely to look you in the eye unless he already
knew you and liked you and trusted you. At the same time, he struck me as
someone who didn't trust anyone easily though he clearly trusted and respected
his family.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">I
most likely encountered Bruce first when I worked in the card company warehouse
next door. But I did not recall him except as that other guy who worked with
Stanley and drove the big red truck to make pickups and deliveries.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">After
I worked for Donald for a few months Stan would mumble from time to time how
unreliable Bruce had been,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Stanley, like Donald and Barry, was born in
that practical generation side that did not quite understand the emerging
generation so closely associated with Woodstock and the Beatles. Stanley could
not get the idea in his head that people could live carefree, a passing fad
that helped ruin many of us who actually believed the hype the way Bruce seemed
to.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">I
had more extensive contact with him later in 1974 when Donald brought Bruce
back to help with the Christmas rush.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">He
and I got to interact more extensively, and I found I actually liked him
despite the negative hype Stan had fed me, and Bruce seem to like me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">He
liked the fact that I laughed at his lame jokes and I liked him because his
jokes were lame.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">He
was unpretentious and seemed to accept who he was without any pretense of being
someone important.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">At
the same time, he struck me as someone suffering deep wounds which I could not
comprehend since his family seemed to love him and he never took the world
seriously enough for it to bring anything remotely hurtful into his life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Stanley
didn't trust Bruce to pack orders or to pick up merchandise on the road. So,
Bruce largely loaded and unloaded trucks and ran for cases of merchandise we
ordered him to get when we picked our orders -- a kind of workhorse but one who
seemed to accept his role as if he expected nothing better or wanted anything
better either.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Bruce
apparently worked on and off for Barry at the beauty supply in Verona and
appears to have lived with Barry from time to time as well.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">His
duties for Barry appear to have varied -- from picking orders for deliveries to
various beauty salons to making deliveries himself on a route that covered
nearly all of Northern New Jersey. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Barry
seemed to have one or more drivers and Bruce for the most part went along as a
helper.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">This
was Bruce's role during a week or two long stretch when one of Barry's drivers
called out sick and Donald lent him me as a driver.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Tt
was literally the blind leading the blind.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Since
Bruce was supposed to direct me because I was not familiar with the routes, we
got lost as much as we found what we were looking for.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">We laughed,
joked, complained, exclaimed, cursed and generally made other fools of
ourselves,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Yet
as I recall it was the toughest week or two of labor I ever did, and despite my
enjoying being lost with Bruce I was grateful to get back to Stanley and the
less strenuous pickups and deliveries Donald demanded from me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">I
saw Bruce only once after that during the long week when Donald, Barry, me,
John Telson, Shark, Stanley and others gathered to make the final move from the
old warehouse to the new,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">It
was a move that was more than just a move across town but one that altered the
world as I knew it though I did not know it at the time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Because
we were so caught up in what we had to do, I could not tell if Bruce was happy
or sad or even satisfied and whether he had yet found direction or someone to
love or be loved by.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">I
never saw him again, but I heard about him about a decade later when I worked
for a local newspaper and someone told me -- I don't recall who maybe Gary -- that
Bruce had died.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">I
never got the details. I still don't know them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Yet
I feel the loss as if -- even not seeing him -- I had lost a friend.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
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<p></p>sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-79495211377419227912018-12-24T15:41:00.003-08:002021-02-22T17:10:25.324-08:00Donald, a miracle baby<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Donald
was born on VE day, marking the final defeat of the Nazis in Europe, an event
of such monumental significance to Jews that Irving and Ruth must have seen
this as a positive sign for the future.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">The
family had moved from Newark to Rutherford and lived in a brick house just off
Park Avenue – the main thoroughfare – on a relatively quiet street, Gouverver –
closer to State Highway 3 than to the traffic circle that marked the center of
town near the railway station.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Rutherford
was one of those towns that clung to prohabitionary rules meaning it served no
alcohol. But it was progressive enough to give Ruth parking tickets, as were
reported to the local newspapers in those days.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Rutherford,
where Donald would later set up one of his first batch of retail stores, was
located near Wallington, Garfield and Lodi where my family resided at the time,
and near Passaic where I would live for a time while working for him at his new
warehouse of Kaplun Drive in Fairfield.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Although
geographically closer to St. Mary’s and Beth Israel hospitals in Passaic, Ruth
gave birth to Donald at the more distant Irvington General Hospital, a massive
relic of the 19 th century that sat on an imposing hill, later neglected and
torn down.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">This
was located near where the Garden State Parkway would later intersect Route 78
when both were constructed more than a decade later. At the time, the main
highway was Route 22 which connected Newark, Elizabeth, Bayonne and Union with
the inner parts of the state.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Irving’s
successful career apparently allowed him to move over the next few years to
west to the Livingston and West Orange area, part of a massive exodus of Jews
from the inner city. His kids eventually attended local schools there, with all
three attending West Orange High School, graduating in the 1960s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">As
the middle child, Donald makes me think of that old rent-a-car commerical which
claimed number two had to ry harder.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">It’s
hard to say for certain if Irving favored one son over the others and whether or
not he hoped for Barry to live up to all the potential he showed in childhood.
But Donald’s later success must have impressed Irving, partly because Donald
seemed not to have all those talents Barry ddi, and so Donald had to work
harder to get ahead – and for him to have gotten as far ahead of his two
brothers as he did must have come as a complete surprise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Known
in his senior year of high school at “Don,” Donald was aparently involved with
a school group called Cowboy Consolidated (Cow-con), a booster club that
supported all the sports teams know as the West Orange Cowboys.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Unlike
Barry, who took up wrestling and swimming, and his other brother, Bruce, who
took up tennis, Donald does not appear to have been involved in sports while in
high school – unless you consider jewelry-making a sport.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Yet
as a member of Cow-Con, Donald and others were responsible for setting up the
annual bonfire, football pep ralleys and distributing the booster tags most
students from West Orange High were expected to wear. The group also held
poster parties where the members designed posters that would later be put up
around the halls of the school.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Donald
was also a member of the International Relations Club that took an annual trip
to the United Nations among other activities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Donald’s
classmates at the time painted a whole different picture of him than the Donald
I encountered as his employee. To them, he was a gentleman with a kind heart.
And perhaps this was accurate the the Donald I met felt compelled to put up a
front, scared of being to close to those who worked for him. Indeed, even his
relationship later with Stan seemed full of controdictions, a sincere effort to
share wealth and success but still maintain distance – something that Stan (and
I at the time) clearly misread.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">While
Donald may have come to high school as a geek – and somewhat freewheeling – he
didn’t leave school that way, graduating a changed man, more dignified in some
ways than Barry who had preceded him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">For
those of us looking back at Donald’s frequent exclamations of “Where’s Susan,”
who he meant remains a mystery – although most of his classmates likely knew at
the time. He could have meant any number of Susans that shared clubs and
classes he attended, although I’d like to think he meant one of the particularly
popular cheerleaders.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">While
Donald like Barry got involved in community organizations, Donald seemed to
focus more on his Jewish heritage and in helping Jewish immigrants. This may
have been his motivation for getting involved in Valley Settlement House, a
non-profit service organization that helped people in the four Orange towns, as
well as Newark, Maplewood and Irvington. Although the immigrants the
organization has well elped changed over the years since, many of those helped
at the time where Jewish immigrants making their way to the United States from
Eastern Europe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Donald
also got involved with the Young Men’s Hebrew Associatin located at the time on
Chancellor Avenue in Newark – which was then making plans for its move to
Northfield Avenue in West Orange. He most likely got involved with the centers
first Israel Exhibtion and Trade Fair held there in 1963.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">The
Y’s original mission was to help new Jewish immigrants assemulate in urban
areas like Newark, Jersey City and Bayonne. But after World War II as Jews
began to move out of the cities, the Y’s role changed and became a key element
in helping Jews move from the cities to the suburbs with the goal to keep Jews
enaged with the Jewish community.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">This
not to say kids who belonged to the Y didn’t have fun, enjoying a variety of
activities as well as trips to museums in New York City or even to the Naval
base in Bayonne or the Ford Plant in Mahwah. This last is somewhat ironic since
Donald’s son, Josh, would later play a critical role in rescuing what became an
ailing car company.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">How
and where Donald met his first wife, Gwenn Kuskin remains a mystery to me as
well. But their paths could have easily crossed during his trips to Bradley
Beach, a sea side resort within spitting distance of Deal where Gwenn lived at
the time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">While
the Kuskins lived in Deal, the primary Jewish community was in Bradley Beach,
and the Kuskins were very involved in their temple while living there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Bradley
Beach, two towns south along the ocean from Deal, was one of the few towns that
allowed Jews in the post war years. Brooklyn Jews discovered Bradley Beach long
before they started buying up land in Deal in the 1970s. Magen David
Congregation opened in the summer of 1944 after which Jewish families began
renting bungalos in Bradley Beach the way my family did at the time in Seaside
and Point Pleasant.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">While
it is too much to hope that Donald and Gwenn became high school sweetheart or
had a summer romance, they ironically must have passed each other during those
years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Although
Donald was a history buff in high school, he apparently had less lofty goals
than his brother, Barry, and attended Rutgers to major in Finance, opening
Cosmetics Plus shortly after graduation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
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<p></p>sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-35625657821010962922018-12-22T05:57:00.004-08:002021-02-22T16:11:05.690-08:00Irv’s favorite son: Barry?<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMKd4OqH_CJSz7cdV9Usx6mg0st4rtYH1xi-EsL2o7xtYpW0I2czyBw5G64xhJrToYKKm5UoM4CK1xCw7MC0pVkrbPYpeLoyClu5btgMeJ5_E2rEGX59bQuCH9hjYI37XPNYmW7kGt10aK/s1600/barry2+%25282%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1373" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMKd4OqH_CJSz7cdV9Usx6mg0st4rtYH1xi-EsL2o7xtYpW0I2czyBw5G64xhJrToYKKm5UoM4CK1xCw7MC0pVkrbPYpeLoyClu5btgMeJ5_E2rEGX59bQuCH9hjYI37XPNYmW7kGt10aK/s320/barry2+%25282%2529.jpg" width="274" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">If Irving’s
professional life lived up to the hype of TV's “Mad Men,” his personal life fit
the mold of that classic TV show “My Three Sons” and the lifestyle as a Suburban
family that America coming out of World War II ached to embrace.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Irv most likely met Ruth
in Newark. They married in 1941 and had their first son, Barry in 1943. Donald
the middle son was born in 1945 after the family had moved to Rutherford, and Bruce,
the youngest in 1950.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The three boys could
not have been more different had they been born to different parents, and the
expectations for their success must have been immense.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Whether or not it is
inspired sibling rivalry, I'm not certain, since all three brothers seemed
entwined in both professional and private ways.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Yet as the eldest and
perhaps the most gifted of the three, Barry must have felt the most pressure to
achieve -- even though Donald must at the same time felt he had something to
prove, standing in the shadow of an elder brother.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Barry oozed eloquence
even his father lacked, breaking the mold of the stereotypical Jew by proving Jew
kid from a Newark family could be cool.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">He dressed cool, acted
cool, and hung out with cool crowd in high school, engaging in sports like
wrestling and swimming that gave him the macho most teens in the 50s craved --
and which made him extremely attractive to girls and he was drawn to them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Because Barry and
Donald were born about two years apart, they attended West Orange High school
together briefly.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">This must have been a
burden for the geek-like Donald who hung out with geek-like friends and took up
geek-like things such as jewelry making rather than sports.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">While Bruce, born
five years after Donald, may have seemed more fortunate in that he had not the
shadow of either of them hanging over him, there must have been some residual
effects from both Barry, who was popular among teachers and fellow students,
and the extremely studious Donald.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Bruce, who graduated
in 1969, apparently started working for Donald, who by that time had already
gone into business, and had seen his business grow out of his father’s garage,
and decided Bruce could help him – something that didn’t completely work out
since I was hired in 1974 to replace Bruce – although Bruce continued to work
for Barry, when Barry opened his beauty supply company in Verona.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In high school, Barry
was a classic 50s middle-class kid, wearing his hair Elvis style, and when he
wasn't wearing some sort of sports-jacket he wore button down shirts with long
collars called high rollers considered very cool at the time.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Early on in high
school, Donald looked very much like his father with thick-rimmed glasses and a
tendency to wear bizarrely pattern shirts geeks often mistaken school. He would
later more than make up for this -- perhaps taking lessons from his brother --
and in some ways exceeding Barry in tasteful attire.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Even the way Barry
looked defied most of the stereotypes of Jews. He was fair-haired, almost Aryan
in his features, and had a noble even an arrogant look -- like a young prince
assured he would someday inherit his father's crown. He was that self-assured
and equally ambitious.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Even when I knew him,
he had the habit of repeating the word “seriously” something he was noted for
in high school, a phrase that might have defined the seriousness of something
he said or as a putdown, questioning the validity of some statement made by
someone else.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">As Aryan as he might
have looked, Barry did not abandon his Jewish roots. He became a member of
United Synagogue Youth, which was a youth movement for conservative Jews to use
as a stepping stone to leadership as young Jews learned values and skills for
leadership.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">He also seemed to
follow in his father’s footsteps by giving back to the community. While still
in high school, he volunteered frequently at the nearby Lyons Veterans Hospital
as well as the Kessler Institute of Rehabilitation located in his hometown of
West Orange -- a hospital that had a close relationship with the still
struggling nation of Israel.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Often called “Barr”
by his closest friends, Barry got involved in a remarkable variety of other
activities in high school from photography the horseback riding along with
wrestling and the school's swim club. He may also have had literary ambitions,
since he was also involved with the school's literary magazine -- although he
may have been there only for the girls.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">For all of Barry's
academic prowess, he was every bit a classic 50s teen -- the kind exemplified
in the later film grease or Pleasantville. he loved music and collected records
and knew very well the social benefits of dancing and became a member of the
social dance club.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Even more symbolic of
that era’s teens, he worked in The Valley Sweet Shop as a soda jerk -- not
terribly far from where he would set up his beauty supply business a decade
later and easy stroll to South Mountain Reservation which was a tangle of
trails that several local teens used as a Lover's Lane.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Barry exuded
self-confidence from the way he combed his hair to the way he tilted his head,
even engaging in public speaking early in his high school as if he already assumed,
he would need it in a later career. His plans to study law in college may even
have been his first steps towards a career in politics.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">He was bold arrogant
and seemed to believe he could not fail to someday obtain greatness.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It was difficult to
know if the same schemes he later in hatched in his life went through his head
even then: the land speculation, the business venture after business venture,
or even a brief stint in movies (though this also had a dark side) -- schemes
that seemed determined to outdo all the accomplishments of his father.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Barry married Gina LaRiccia in
April 1977, inheriting the already established Gina’s Discount Beauty Supply,
where I would work briefly with his brother, Bruce, making deliveries. This was
a big to do with the reception held at the posh Glen Ridge County Club. Donald
served as his best man.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">But Barry had other business
interests back in Newark where he apparently hobnobbed with a different kind of
crowd, The Lucchese crime family, the smallest of the five major New York crime
families. While this group mostly dealt in narcotics, it delved into a few
other sidelines that included hijacking, gambling, loan sharking, illegal
landfills, and pornography.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">At the time, the northern Jersey
branch was headed by Michael Taccettra, best known for the 21-month trial in
which he beat the rap against the feds – one of the longest mob trials in
history. Unfortunately, he was convicted in charges out of state, and could not
run his organization. Leadership fell into the hands of his younger brother,
Martin – with whom Barry had a close relationship.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Martin had been around for a while.
I knew him in the early 1980s from his operating of several rock and roll clubs
in northern and central New Jersey. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is hard to tell if Barry’s
relationship started that early, but most likely did. He had significant
financial troubles in the early 1980s and may have turned to Martin and others.
Federal authorities believe Barry became the finance guy for some of Martin’s
operations.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The New Jersey branch in the early
1980s had grown in power with large loansharking and gambling operations in and
around Newark. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Michael and a number of his high
ranking members were indicted in 1985. The trial started in 1986 and ended with
Michael and his associates being found not guilty in 1988. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In fighting, partly due to things
that came out in the trial, created factions inside the organization, and there
came an order from the New York faction to “whack” the Jersey Crew. Michael and
Martin quickly sided with New York saving themselves, and won them uncontested
leadership of the Jersey branch.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">This came at a time when Bobby
Manna plotted in Hoboken the murder of New York crime boss John Gotti and his
brother, Gene. Federal authorities swept them up in early 1989.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In September 1989, Martin and Barry
were charged in another scheme to bilk manufactures of video equipment. Barry
had already left his mark as executive producer of two b-rated horror movies,
released in 1987 and 1988. But in this scam, he was seen as the money man
behind the operation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Martin with Barry’s help had set up
a video production company in 1987 ordering a vast amount of products on
credit, which they promptly sold to pornography movie makers for cash – then
went out of business, stiffing their creditors.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The charges were filed in
California. Martin and Barry surrendered to the feds in New Jersey and got out
on $50,000 bail.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lawyers for Barry and Martin
claimed media had sensationalized the whole business transaction by tying it to
the $1 billion California pornography industry. Both men denied wrong-doing. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In December, the two men – faced
with five counts of grand larceny and one count of conspiracy – challenged the
legality of their arrest. A month later, both men dropped their challenge and
agreed to go to California – and apparently prevailed in court.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">But the feds kept their eye on
Barry, and a year later, his home was among dozens of homes and businesses in
four counties raided by the FBI where records were seized in an effort to find
data on money laundering and insurance fraud schemes. Martin and Barry again
apparently prevailed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Somewhere in the middle of all
this, Barry and Gina parted ways. She apparently was still married to him
leading up to the federal investigations, but by 1991, Barry found a new bride.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> On St. Valentine’s Day, Barry remarried to Kim
Blanton, who apparently retired to Florida after Barry’s untimely death in
2002.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">For the last decade of his life, he
appeared to settle down to running family business which included Thymer Health
Care, Carrara Marble Company – both still located in Fairfield, and the Garden
State Hospice, in Cranford – a for-profit nursing home. He had gravitated into
the nursing home field as a result of his company supplying medication carts
for nursing homes. He had also invested in hospices in Oklahoma and Louisana.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Hospice is a win-win-win situation
in a nursing home,” he was quoted in one report. “The patient gets extra care,
the nursing home gets help taking care of the patient and the family gets
additional support.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">He called it “a tremendously under
served area and highly competitive. But he also noted to turn a profit, the
hospice must serve seven to ten patients in each nursing home.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“If we operate efficiently, we make
a profit,” Barry said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">By far a sadder story and
significantly more significant involves Irving’s youngest son, Bruce.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Born in 1950, Bruce came into an
age different from the ones of his brothers, just as I differed from my uncles
who were born before or during the war.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Bruce was roughly my age and so
suffered many of the same issues adapting to a career as I did.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Barry and Donald while different in
their approaches from each other were both very practical men with very
practical ambitions.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Bruce had none or if he did, they
were so vague he could not easily articulate them, and I got the feeling he was
more than a little intimidated by his father and brothers while at the same
time seem to love them dearly.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Bruce graduated West Orange High
School in 1969, nearly a decade after Barry and Donald did, and apparently was
hired on after Donald started Cosmetics Plus in 1968. He most likely worked in
one or more of the retail stores, until they closed, and worked in the Pia Costa
warehouse prior to my arrival there in June 1974.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I worked with Bruce a few times
twice while working for Donald, once or maybe more while working for Barry --
and all those times I got along with him well but got the feeling he could not
take himself seriously and so did not expect anyone else to either.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I learned later that I actually
replaced Bruce when Donald and Stanley hired me.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Stanley did not trust Bruce, found
him too flaky -- a prejudice Stanley would later display again when Gary got
hired to be the new driver at the new warehouse a few years later.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I also think Stan did not like
relying on his boss's brother and may have imagined Bruce running back to
Donald if Stan gave him too much of a hard time-- something I could not imagine
Bruce doing since I suspect Donald scared Bruce as much as he scared me or even
Stanley.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Bruce resembled Barry more than he
did Donald though did not dominate a room when he came into it the way Barry
did.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Bruce seemed less substantial and
less likely to look you in the eye unless he already knew you and liked you and
trusted you. At the same time, he struck me as someone who didn't trust anyone
easily though he clearly trusted and respected his family.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I most likely encountered Bruce
first when I worked in the card company warehouse next door. But I did not
recall him except as that other guy who worked with Stanley and drove the big
red truck to make pickups and deliveries.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">After I worked for Donald for a few
months Stan would mumble from time to time how unreliable Bruce had been.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Stanley, like Donald and Barry, was
born in that practical generation side that did not quite understand the
emerging generation so closely associated with Woodstock and the Beatles.
Stanley could not get the idea in his head that people could live carefree, a
passing fad that helped ruin many of us who actually believed the hype the way
Bruce seemed to.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I had more extensive contact with
him later in 1974 when Donald brought Bruce back to help with the Christmas
rush.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">He and I got to interact more
extensively, and I found I actually liked him despite the negative hype Stan
had fed me, and Bruce seem to like me<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">He liked the fact that I laughed at
his lame jokes and I liked him because his jokes were lame.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">He was unpretentious and seemed to
accept who he was without any pretense of being someone important.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">At the same time, he struck me as
someone suffering deep wounds which I could not comprehend since his family
seemed to love him and he never took the world seriously enough for it to bring
anything remotely hurtful into his life.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Stanley didn't trust Bruce to pack
orders or to pick up merchandise on the road. So, Bruce largely loaded and
unloaded trucks and ran for cases of merchandise we ordered him to get when we
picked our orders -- a kind of workhorse but one who seemed to accept his role
as if he expected nothing better or wanted anything better either.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Bruce apparently worked on and off
for Barry at the beauty supply in Verona and appears to have lived with Barry
from time to time as well.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">His duties for Barry appear to have
varied -- from picking orders for deliveries to various beauty salons to making
deliveries himself on a route that covered nearly all of Northern New Jersey. But Barry seemed to have one or more drivers
and Bruce for the most part went along as a helper.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">This was Bruce's role during a week
or two long stretch when one of Barry's drivers called out sick and Donald lent
him me as a driver.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It was literally the blind leading
the blind.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Since Bruce was supposed to direct
me because I was not familiar with the routes, we got lost as much as we found
what we were looking for.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">We laughed, joked, complained,
exclaimed, cursed and generally made other fools of ourselves,<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Yet as I recall it was the toughest
week or two of labor I ever did, and despite my enjoying being lost with Bruce
I was grateful to get back to Stanley and the less strenuous pickups and
deliveries Donald demanded from me.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I saw Bruce only once after that
during the long week when Donald, Barry, me, John Telson, Shark, Stanley and
others gathered to make the final move from the old warehouse to the new,<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It was a move that was more than
just a move across town but one that altered the world as I knew it though I
did not know it at the time.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Because we were so caught up in
what we had to do, I could not tell if Bruce was happy or sad or even satisfied
and whether he had yet found direction or someone to love or be loved by.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I never saw him again, but I heard
about him about a decade later when I worked for a local newspaper and someone
told me -- I don't recall who maybe Gary -- that Bruce had died.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Barry appears to have made a living
– on and off – as a used car salesman from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Bruce married Sandra Candura in
May1975. Born in Newark in April 1951, Sandra was a graduate of Belleville High
School and received her bachelor’s degree from Montclair State College. She
taught on semester at East Side High School in Newark, where she taught English
and English as a second language before she was hired as a teacher at
Belleville Junior High in 1974 where she taught remedial English for three
years.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 1977, Sanda was hired as a
reading specialist at Belleville High School. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">She was already well-traveled
having made several trips to Europe as a college student. In 1972, she was
among 14 students that went to study at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">A year later she took a three-week
sojourn in early 1973 that oddly enough included a close friend of mine. Some
of the students remained in London, while others went on to visit Munich,
Vienna, and still others remained in Paris at the Sorbonne to study for the
winter semester. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">She and Bruce lived in Belleville
for most of their marriage, although apparently moved to Caldwell in the
mid-1980s where they both died on the same day, April 16, 1988.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Because the police reports are
filed in some dark basement somewhere in a paper form, they were not yet
available for review by the time I wrote this. But there are hints as to
something terrible occurring, although the official story about Sandra’s death
published on April 21 is vague and doesn’t mention Barry at all – even though
he died at the same time she did.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Mrs. Gottheimer died April 16 in
her home,” this report said. “She was recently named Teacher of the Year (at
Belleville High.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Her obituary published on April 19
said she was “the beloved wife of the late Bruce.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Oddly, his obituary was not
published until April 27, also pointing out that he was the “husband of the
late Sandra.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Sandra and Bruce had two separate
funerals. Hers took place on April 20 with a mass at St. Peter’s Church in
Belleville. She was buried at Glendale Cemetery.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Bruce had a graveside service heled
at Beth Israel Cemetery in Woodbridge on April 17.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Although several stories followed
over the next year about Sandra’s being honored at Teacher of the Year, none
mentioned Bruce in association with her, even though the stories noted that she
was being honored “posthumously.” For the most part, these stories merely said,
Sandra had died, but with one glaring exception.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">A May 12, 1988 story noted that
Sandra’s mother represented her daughter at the awards ceremony “because
Gottheimer was killed last month.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></p></div>
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<p></p>sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-31811287759994700802018-12-21T17:41:00.002-08:002021-02-22T17:08:13.857-08:00A broader vision of Stan<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR5H9Gz2O6luUCobbfIn7Q7A3vHRs5-XqaApiQXDXd5ni-rL-OOV84lvLXpCKqD3-Fi_b6MN9YtQQOWunHqDwG1Lz6zmYvrLZoqbMCePnXbQ2q9Ey61OjcCungQLI2fWUNXgpvIOpskIDb/s1600/100_7542.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR5H9Gz2O6luUCobbfIn7Q7A3vHRs5-XqaApiQXDXd5ni-rL-OOV84lvLXpCKqD3-Fi_b6MN9YtQQOWunHqDwG1Lz6zmYvrLZoqbMCePnXbQ2q9Ey61OjcCungQLI2fWUNXgpvIOpskIDb/s320/100_7542.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Oct. 15, 1982<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">On those rare times when the radio plays
Kenny Rankin music I can't help think of Stan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">In the earlier days at Cosmetics Plus --
when he and I work side-by-side in the warehouse – Stan used to play tapes he
made from Kenny Rankin albums, tapes made using a condenser mic because he had
not yet figured out how to record them any other way. So, sometimes I could
hear a cough or him shushing someone in the background.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Over repeated listings, these small additions
became aspects of the music I came to expect and hearing them on the radio now
I anticipate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Then, when they don’t come when they
should, I'm disappointed when they're not there<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Kenny Rankin wasn't the only music he
recorded to listen to while we worked but was by far his favorite. He like
Jackson Browne, James Taylor the kind of music radio with later labeled as soft
rocks these tapes became the soundtrack of our lives, a mellow underpinning to
the day-to-day routines we shared for two or so years before Donald made enough
money to buy his own building across town and to expand his business enough to
hire other employees and to condemn Stan to management position he craved, for
but proved unqualified to do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Stam could not and often would not
delegate authority. So, when he got his office in a new place, we called it the
“Fishbowl” because he had a large picture window that looked out onto the
warehouse and he seemed to be floating inside it waiting to be fed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Stan became miserable and angry, largely
because he believed he got sold a bill of goods when he took the job with
Donald and because being manager looked more tempting than it actually became.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Stan’s family originated in steel
country in Pennsylvania which is how he got into metal work while still in high
school -- though he grew up in Newark at the time when it began to change due
to white flight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">He didn't move far when he got married slipping
over the border into nearby Belleville, a mostly white enclave that bordered
some of the worst of Newark’s ghettoes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">As a teen, he was more than a little
wild, a typical high school kid who like to drink to excess though he's somehow
kept himself out of jail and out of the hospital.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">He hated metal work, but it paid good
and allowed him to go to school at night, even if it did take him seven years
to earn his degree in business.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">He would often recall how tough those
days were and how tired he was trying to hoist and cut sheets of metal by day
and crack school books by night.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">He said he kept looking ahead to a day
when he would earn his living with his brain and not his back and would not
have to come home and treat the cuts bruises and burns, he got from his
non-stop struggle with steel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">He wanted to wear white shirts and a tie
and a suit jacket and not the work clothes he sweated through within an hour of
punching the time clock.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Every day, he looked ahead to when he
would get his degree, his key out of the sweatshop and into the dignity he
believed a college education would endow him with.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Stanley was too working-class to fully
understand how the system worked, how people like him would only trade one sweatshop
for another and, unless he went to the right kind of school and came from the
right kind of family, the degree would be a useless piece of paper.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Donald understood<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">If not a member of America's elite,
Donald understood he would need another way to climb the social ladder and was
able to manipulate the system to get him there and to better to guarantee his
children became even better than he did<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Stanley must have felt the first twinges
of the truth when the degree did not immediately turn him into a Cinderella at
the prince’s ball and he did not get the kind of offers he dreamed about in the
steel company.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Part of this was his age and the fact
that he was already married, he needed a higher salary to support his family
when younger kids popping out of the university could afford to work for less.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The fact was, Stan earned more cutting
steel by far than any of the office jobs he worked as temporary on a trial
basis.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Donald offered a position with a future
which meant if Stan took the job in a startup company, the position would
eventually grow into the kind of job Stan dreamed of.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">It was a tough choice taking, a job that
paid less than steel metal work with the hope that it would bring him what he
wanted or wait to see if a more conventional office offered him something
closer to what he really wanted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ZH-TW; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Practicality
won out.</span><br />
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<p></p>sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-51830764888661730632018-12-21T17:22:00.002-08:002021-02-22T17:06:04.686-08:00Another side of Cliff<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_467uaLRp9wDakZCLkmXRKzNNMJz14oJ1xBzMhM1y7qcl9s4AN9dokV1UPktuT_dBw2vEZi-i6ilJKvzBAH5hH5L4_OdJfUoBlAXAtMB9eUPLmAZKYkQR3tobnZ2Doqs36LfV_STjS0a4/s1600/100B7731.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_467uaLRp9wDakZCLkmXRKzNNMJz14oJ1xBzMhM1y7qcl9s4AN9dokV1UPktuT_dBw2vEZi-i6ilJKvzBAH5hH5L4_OdJfUoBlAXAtMB9eUPLmAZKYkQR3tobnZ2Doqs36LfV_STjS0a4/s320/100B7731.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">January 1, 1982<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Before coming to Cosmetics Plus, Cliff
O'Neal was a football player at the University of Pittsburgh. He was going to
make a career of it, but he hurt his knee.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">He was a real party man at college; he
was involved in a number of drunken brawls and, in one case, he threw someone
through a glass window.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Cliff was also involved with a lot of
women at these parties.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">His father owned an insurance office
nearby. Cliff resisted going into the same business but since he had to have a
job, he came to the new warehouse just after Donald moved there in early 1977.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">He was a big New York Yankees and New
York Giants fan. In fact, Cliff looked like a larger version of Thurman Munson
with blond hair and a brush like mustache.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">His father or some other family member
introduced him to some friend of the family, a woman who he dated a few times.
While he didn't seem to be in love with her, he thought he ought to settle down
and decided at one point to marry her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The day Cliff started at the warehouse, John
Telson ran up to me in the warehouse to warn me that about Cliffs of arrival. Since
I tended to taunt fellow workers, John thought it wise to tell me that Cliff is
too big and tough for me to mess with. But John also told me about this trick knee,
so I started in on Cliff right away. Naturally, Cliff chased me through the
warehouse and when he caught me, pounded on my arm until I said uncle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I said, “I thought you had a trick knee.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">He said, “I do it tricked you didn't it?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Cliff didn't like John he saw him as a
kiss ass and Cliff just barely tolerated Donald. But Cliff sincerely like Stan
and often split the tab on a six pack of beer we all shared in the late
afternoons.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Cliff, unlike the rest of us, didn't
start out as a driver but remained a warehouse worker picking and packing
orders and loading trucks. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">During the summer of 1977, Cliff and I
attended a number of New York Yankee games. We drove to a garage near the Port
Authority building and from there we took a Subway to the stadium. We drank too
much at these games to trust driving home directly. So, we figured we could
sober up on the subway ride back to Times Square.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">At first, we each drank a beer for each
inning. Later on, for 1/2 Innings; then we tried for every out. I did not
survive this; even Cliff staggered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">By the end of the 1977 Christmas season
Cliff made up his mind to work for his father and get married. I never saw him
again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Since Cliff arrived just out of college,
he must have been about 22 or 23 and 1977 I was 25 going on 26 so I guess he
was born in 1954 or 55. He tended to take things in stride though when pissed could
get violent. He was a soft-spoken man the epitome of Teddy Roosevelt's concept
of speaking softly but carry a big stick.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While he was flexible, he never let anybody push him around; he was calm
in the way a brooding volcano is.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">He loved sports and seemed most at home
on a field or stadium where he could let loose a little.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">He wanted to pursue a career in sports
and when that was denied him, he felt around for something to make a living but
made it clear he wasn't going to be hoisting boxes into a truck the rest of his
life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">He wasn't looking for success in the way
John Telson was, nor wanted a position; he just wanted security and was looking
for a place in the world where he could live comfortably.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I remember how his clear eyes seemed to
be laughing or thinking of something funny except when pissed and then they
narrowed and focused.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">His blond hair hung down over broad
forehead which had a few creases suggesting he worried at times yet held in his
concerns<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">he also had a broad nose yet not one
overly large and this thing over the bristle like mustache that partially hid
his thin upper lip. He had shoulders so broad he seemed to be wearing shoulder
pads even when he was not -- this idea supported by a football jersey he
routinely wore -- some from his college some from the New York Giants. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also wore a New York Yankees pinstripe
shirt sometimes with Munson's number on it and the New York Yankees hat with
his blond hair sticking out the back and sides.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">His chest was as broad as his shoulders
only he was clearly out of shape and had a bit of a beer gut from partying he
did in college. He limped a little, more on cold or wet days when he claimed
his knee bothered him most.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Cliff grew up locally the Caldwells
where he went to school and where his father still ran the insurance office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had a younger sister I never met.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Cliff told me he respected his father
yet did not wish to end up like him. But eventually, he got so sick of working
like a mule, he saw no alternative since he wanted to live a normal life which
meant home and family and job.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">This may be the reason he calmed down
after college. Instead of partying with party girls, he started to date women
he might eventually marry. He tended to be more conservative than the rest of
us more like his father yet did not wave a flag and never served in the
military since he was in college during the last years of the Vietnam War he
graduated after the draft had ended.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Unlike some of the other workers that
came on at the warehouse, Cliff tended to like drinking more than drugs and was
part of that kind of crowd when in high school and college yet as much as he
loved party women and focused on marriage, he struck me as someone who
preferred being around other men rather than women and found it easier to talk
to a man than he did to a woman and so did not lust after the girls in the
outlet like some of the other warehouse workers did.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">He wasn't a dumb jock. He was versatile
enough to be able to do more than physical work and wise enough to want to life
that allowed him to use his talents rather than his back.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">While he boasted about his past
exploits, he clearly did not want to get trapped into the kind of life he saw
many of his college friends getting trapped in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
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<p></p>sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-90952115084803130402018-12-20T17:27:00.003-08:002021-02-22T17:04:15.515-08:00Ruth<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Thursday,
December 20, 2018<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Ruth
Weissman, mother of Barry, Donald and Bruce, was already deceased three years
when I wandered back into neighborhood of Kearny where I had seen her often
during the few years I drove picking up and delivering merchandise for Donald.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">I
had come to the area of Kearny Avenue and Belleville Pike on another matter,
but nostalgia lured me to the place where Ruth had operated Donald’s Kearny
Cosmetic Plus, one of a handful of retail stores he had launched after he
started business in 1968 but had begun to close a short time prior to his
hiring me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Stanley,
who had lived around 15 blocks away on the other side of Kearny had made
frequent stops here and at the other stores – including the most recently
closed in Rutherford – as had Stanley’s brother, Bruce, who I apparently had
replaced when I came on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">The
neighborhood over 40 years had changed, but not so much as to have lost its
blue collar feel. There was still a beauty salon a door or two away from where
Ruth had managed Cosmetic Plus, but some of the stores were the same stores I
remembered. The men’s wear store across the street was gone, as was the
housewares store, one of those was vacant, the other selling more upscale goods
designed to ensnare the yuppie walking wallets as they made their way to and
from Manhattan down the long hill of the Pike.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">As
it turned out, the owner of the string of buildings that included the former
Cosmetics Plus was out of the sidewalk, surveying a world he’d owned for almost
50 years, and wondered at my interest in the place when he saw me there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">When
I told him, he looked more than a little sad, having heart of Ruth’s passing,
yet more importantly, he said he still missed her, and her assistant whose name
he mentioned, but I didn’t catch, and could not remember even though I had
liked her a lot when I made my stops here – perhaps her name was Cathy. I still
remember her face and her remarkable manners, and I had clear memories of Ruth,
who always treated me like a son.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Cosmetics
Plus, the owner said, was one of his earliest tenants, and he was particularly
fond of Ruth, who he called “a saint” even though she was Jewish.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">He
said he missed her, and the store even thought he had not seen them in almost
as long as I had.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">I
took part in closing down the store around 1976 or 1977, and never saw Ruth or
Cathy after that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Yet
for my first two years driving for Stanley, the Kearny store was a regular a
beat as any, not just a source of goods being shipped there by the cosmetic
manufacturers, but as a stopover to pick up and deliver paper work and sale
items – and in high summer, I was assigned to take part in the sidewalk sale,
where I rubbed shoulders with Ruth and get to listen to some of her stories
growing up, most of which have been lost to the hazy of memory except those
that I was fortunate enough to write down later as a journal in college.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">I
remember Ruth being small but sprite, and because I was still in my mid-20s,
she seemed old to me at the time although he was only in her mid-50s. She would
live to 93.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">In a
journal I wrote for college in 1982, I recalled a few of her stories about her
husband Irving.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">She
was apparently more outgoing than Irving was – she called him reserved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">But
she was very proud of his accomplishments and was proud when she got to
accompany him to various functions such as the time, he was part of a grand
opening of a hardware store in Teaneck he helped design, which featured a
prescription counter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">“He
was an expert on drug store design,” she said, though this sounded a little
tongue in cheek as if she believed Irv sometimes leaped into ventures just for
the challenge and was as surprised at the positive outcome as everybody else
was.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Although
Irving actually didn’t die until about two years before I recorded Ruth’s story
in my journal, she claimed she nearly lost him in 1967 to what was then called
“a cardiac ailment.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">“They
even hospitalized him,” she said, blaming his condition in the fact that he
tended to hold in his emotions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">“Then,
when we were to bring him home, he started to hiccup,” she said. “And it
wouldn’t stop. It went on and one. So, we took him back to get home. But the
doctors didn’t know what to make of us. They didn’t have a cure. They
recommended home remedies.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">These
were the same ineffective things we all did as kids when we got such things –
although he apparently didn’t try drinking out of water in which he’d doused a
lighted match or tried drinking from a glass the wrong way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">“He
put hot compresses on his stomach. He held his breath. He drank glass after
glass of water, and it still didn’t stop,” Ruth said. “The spasms didn’t go on
constantly. He might go on for an hour or so without one, but they’d come back,
lasting from 15 minutes to a half an hour. He even hiccupped in his sleep and
it was nerve-racking.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Ruth
claimed the hiccups had to so with Irv’s emotions, but she didn’t have a clear
definition of what she meant by that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Days
passed and so one of Ruth’s brothers, Monroe or Leo – she mentioned both at
various points in her stories – suggested a therapist, one specializing in
hypnosis.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">“After
about a half an hour the hiccups stopped, and we thought it was all over,” Ruth
said. “So, did Irv, so he didn’t bother listening to the therapist’s tape
recordings left in order to continue the therapy after he was gone. Irv said he
didn’t have time to sit down and listen to the recordings. He said if he sat
down, he’d fall asleep.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Unfortunately,
in the middle of the night, the hiccups returned with a vengeance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Later,
the therapist blamed Irv for doing the exercises wrong that he’d provided. So,
the hiccups continued for one week, then a second week.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">“Then
one day they just stopped and didn’t come back,” Ruth said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Since
Kearny at the time was still a foreign country to me, I had to rely on Stan’s
directions to get there the first time, a route that took me down Route 46 to
Route 3, then south on Route 21 headed in the direction of Newark.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">“But
if you end up in Newark, you’ve gone too far,” Stan warned me, clearly
remembering my first day’s trip in which I mistook Harrison Street for Harrison
Avenue and wound up in an accident.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Stan’s
instructions had me turn off onto a narrow road called Mill Street and weave
through equally narrow streets until I found the Pike and took this over the
bridge – passed the Arlington Diner – and up the long hill to Kearny Avenue at
the top.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Later,
I would go down the other side of the hill, through the trash dumps of Kearny,
across the stickle bridge into Jersey City and the Holland Tunnel and stops in
lower Manhattan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">The
Kearny store was a small shop tucked between several other stores including the
beauty parlor, a clothing store and some other shop selling trinkets of some
sort.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">The
whole neighborhood had a small town feel that I found attractive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Irving
was still alive at the time – passing away in 1980 – though if I ever met him
it was in passing and most likely when a very proud Donald gave him a tour of
the new warehouse on Kaplan Drive in 1997.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">At
the time of his death, he and Ruth had been married for nearly 40 years. Ruth
would outlive him for nearly as long. But I’m sure, she never forgot him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">If
she told me how they met, I can’t recall it, although it must have been in
Newark where his parents operated a grocery store and her father did business
as a junk dealer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">She
grew up on 17th Avenue with her parents Jacob (commonly called Jack) and
mother, Fannie Best (shortened from some more complicated eastern European
name.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">She
had two brothers, Monroe and Leo, and two sisters, Beatrice and Anna – all of
whom apparently passed away before she did.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Ruth
treated me like an adopted son, and I still have memories of her greeting me
whenever I came around and sending me on my way with a wave, making me feel as
much apart of the family business as Bruce or Barry were.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">The
closing of the Kearny store signaled a larger change that would alter my
feelings toward my job, and eventually lead to a much more viable corporation,
and lead eventually to my leaving, letting Donald realize his dream when he
relaunched the retail aspect of his operation aimed at a more upscale cliental
than the blue-collar types the original stores seemed to attract.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Standing
there with the owner of the property I felt all that rush through me again, as
if I had just missed the sailing of a ship but could still see the smoke rising
from its smoke stack on the horizon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
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<p></p>sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-60854794913197041712018-12-18T05:38:00.004-08:002021-02-22T17:00:34.326-08:00The Importance of Being Irving<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_ue5oXHY_yDpSkT0UVE8ZD1HAp_JCKO6FORY0BPseiotCPoEST7t2Y92YJk6DW6wwEN5Z9hxr-XhdM2XhMIRyHwqCcdIv7t2hF2fYnxtPkGUfjdL_HoEFig2ra6Xa_8DRcT8nFnSMz-lQ/s1600/irv3+%25283%2529.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="380" data-original-width="321" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_ue5oXHY_yDpSkT0UVE8ZD1HAp_JCKO6FORY0BPseiotCPoEST7t2Y92YJk6DW6wwEN5Z9hxr-XhdM2XhMIRyHwqCcdIv7t2hF2fYnxtPkGUfjdL_HoEFig2ra6Xa_8DRcT8nFnSMz-lQ/s320/irv3+%25283%2529.png" width="270" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Donald’s self-made man image becomes a bit less
genuine when you realize just who his father was and how successful and just
how this family managed to step into the post-world war concept of the American
dream.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">At a
time when Jews -- rich or poor -- were fleeing urban centers such as Newark,
Paterson and Bayonne, Irv was far ahead of them -- a 1940's Madman success
story as an economic executive for Vitamin Corp of America (VCA.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">The
son of George and Fannie, Irv grew up in Newark. His parents who came from then
Russia controlled area that would later become Poland. They ran in a grocery
store in Newark.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Irv
apparently learned the benefit of a good education and completed high school at
a time when many of his contemporaries had not<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">VCA
was already famous with roots out of both pharmaceutical and patent medicines slightly
more legitimate then Humphries of Rutherford where I later work for a short
time in 1990.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Although
the company suffered a scathing attack by the mayor of New York City in 1945,
it rapidly became one of the post war successes and this had a lot to do with
Irv who served as the company's advertising strategist learning early to use
media to get his message out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Advertising,
he claimed, was the secret to the success advertising carried through to the
point of sale merchandising.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">“The
merchandising,” he claimed, “clinches the sale.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">VCA
he said used radio and TV to educate the public about the need for vitamins.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">One
of its most popular products at the time was called Robutol, a vitamin product
geared toward adults.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">The
company, in order to expand its advertising budget, borrowed heavily – but it
paid off in big profits later.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">The
company sold every sort of drug from patent drugs and aspirin to things such as
Cal-o-Metric for weight control, and a variety of skin creams and lotions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">One
of its most significant accomplishments and what allowed the company to expand
even more was when VCA got the contract to sell to Rexall Drug Company in 1952.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Irv’s
advertising strategy for various consumer drug products had a number of factors:
such as seeking mass appeal programs or agencies to sponsor on the air media in
emotional and highly-charged commercials and special offers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">“But
it is the druggist who actually puts Robutol in the customer's hands,” Irv told
one consumer publication in the early 50s after he helped boost sales from two
or three million in 1952 more than 10 million 3 years later.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">“But
it works both ways,” he added. “The druggist is more likely to push a product
that is backed by national advertising.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">This
relationship between producer and drugstore would not be lost on Donald, who
would form close associations with drug stores throughout the area in a network
of sources for cosmetics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Donald
briefly delved into and had a supply of vitamins when I worked with him, but
his business model clearly wanted to serve as a middleman for cosmetics
especially the high-end products corporations were reluctant to sell on the
mass market.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Clearly,
he learned relationships and business strategies from a father who helped
develop them three decades earlier.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">VCA
through Irv’s help learned how to use Madison Avenue and increased its
advertising budget in TV radio and newspapers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">“We
spend for promotion when we feel their time is right,” Irv said. “Our campaign
is geared for national market.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">VCA
had a target audience mostly women in their mid-30s or older – mostly housewives
although the drugs were not developed exclusively for them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">“Women
are the main buyers of drug products,” Irv said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">For
this reason, many of the ads appeared on shows that appeal to women or were
then considered family-oriented.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">The
company also begin a new approach to spot TV buying, one that stressed
identifying their product both with strong local personality and with a program.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">One
of the programs they bought spots in was Best Movie of the Week, a 90-minute
feature film usually shown after 10 or 10:30 p.m.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Their
ads appeared and markets that included New York, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago,
Minneapolis, Dallas, San Diego, Los Angeles, Seattle and Portland.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">One
of their favorite announcers was a guy named John Reed King who hosted the show
live in New York or on WABC TV.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">He
was a hefty vigorous looking man in his forties and has convincing salesman for
their products. Irv figured the audience would assume King benefited from VCA’s
products.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Under
Irv’s direction the company sponsored a number of other shows as well, which
included game shows on ABCs such as “On Your Way” quiz show.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">When
the company came out with a juvenile product for kids it held a Junior Follies
based out of WATV in Newark.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">More
importantly, Irv was instrumental in the development of one of the first
shopping TV shows called Let's Go Shopping, decades ahead of those on cable in
the 1970s and 1980s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Under
his watch, VCA became the principal sponsor of the long-established and
extremely popular radio show The Goldbergs after one of the principal actors
was blacklisted for being alleged communist the previous sponsor dumped the
show – not much different from black lists today that targeted people like
Roseanne.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">His
success allowed Irv to relocate the family from Newark to Livingston and West
Orange where he apparently took an active role in the local Jewish Center. He
even planned a forum for Beth Torah Hebrew School PTA and The Parents Council
of the Jewish Education Association of Essex County where panelist disgusted
the problem of Jewish Education in relationship to his non-Jewish environment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">I
must have met at some point while I was working for Donald, but I don't
remember it -- possibly at the point where Donald moved into the new warehouse
in 1977 and brought his family on a tour of his new place.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Donald
of course was trying to sell the same $400 myth he had sold to me this concept
that he was enough of an entrepreneur to make a massive success of himself and
possibly equal his father's accomplishments.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">In
some ways he did.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">In
the 1980s, Donald managed to relaunch a retail chain that had floundered when
he first launched one in 1968.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">But
perhaps his greatest accomplishment was fostering his son Joshua who would go
on to become Counsellor for President Bill Clinton and a presidential speech
writer and later a congressman and maybe in the future the first Jewish
president of the United States.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<p></p>sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-23661158209081905902018-12-15T11:11:00.002-08:002021-02-22T16:54:55.825-08:00Carmella Revisited<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZcGLxQq7XAQTIMZhFOhEpEFy2OU-0_rqcob5KtDw9tPNrjs8sfyYPPQdwNvccRtd0YVuXzkWvqqverSVm3rHMMOPHpRr7hE_I9mmL8T3PhQwExoVQakufLgcCgID575y8hyphenhyphen_pSlMq-4E_/s1600/kaplan2.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="822" data-original-width="1159" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZcGLxQq7XAQTIMZhFOhEpEFy2OU-0_rqcob5KtDw9tPNrjs8sfyYPPQdwNvccRtd0YVuXzkWvqqverSVm3rHMMOPHpRr7hE_I9mmL8T3PhQwExoVQakufLgcCgID575y8hyphenhyphen_pSlMq-4E_/w400-h283/kaplan2.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">(Uncertain
when this was written)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Carmela
wasn't as old as she appeared to us at the time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">She
reminded me of some of the nuns who taught me at St. Brendan's, a woman who may
have been born a spinster and whose life seem to revolve around spinster sister
I never met or don't remember meeting if I had.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Carmela
was the most dependable person in Donald’s operation, someone on whom Donald
was able to count on for the letters we needed sent, the billing, the typing of
labels, arranging of interviews and so much more.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Carmela
was fiercely loyal and perhaps this is why she felt so put out later on after
we moved to the new location and Donald brought on other people to help her
with office chores.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">The
expanded business meant a lot more paperwork and such and he clearly did not
think she could keep up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">This
was particularly true later when Donald installed the computer in his office
around 1977 or early 1978 and did not see her as having the ability to handle
such a new innovation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Although
Carmella for the most part was soft-spoken her voice tended to grate when she
got excited although to some degree, she was amazingly shy. She still managed
to do all the jobs he was assigned to while we operated out of the warehouse in
the Pia Costa warehouse Park on Bloomfield Avenue. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Hers
was the first desk you came to after coming in through the tiny lobby from the
front.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">There
were two doors: one that led straight ahead from the front door down a narrow
passage to a door leading to the warehouse in the rear. This passage also had
access to the restrooms which were doors on the right. Across from the
bathrooms was the door to Donald office. He used this door to access the
warehouse unseen by guests waiting to see him in the front or as a shortcut.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Most
guests, when they came into the front lobby, turned immediately to the left
into a tiny space Carmella occupied, her desk located to the left coming in
with her back to a couple of small windows looking out onto the parking lot. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">The
whole front office section reminded me of a maze with another door to the left
of Carmella's desk and across from the door from the lobby. This lid to a tiny
meeting room with chairs and an overlarge table where Donald met with clients
or salespeople. A door to the right off this room led back to his office.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Carmela
served as gatekeeper and kept anyone from seeing Donald without seeing her
first. She was better than a bulldog gentle but firm -- attributes guest came
to respect. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Her
desk represented most of the business issues with a typewriter, phone, and
trays for in and out mail laid out before her while around her -- against the
wall filing cabinets contained files on various businesses that Donald did
routine business with. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">On
her desk was also a very large Rolodex from which she could draw the name
address and phone number of all but the most secretive Donald contacts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">I
remember her office as well as the outer lobby as being relatively dark,
paneled with dark wood typical of that time, later redecorated to seem less
oppressive yet the earlier version best represented Carmella's strange
character.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Although
a calming force in the office early on, Carmela struck me as a person with
significant inner turmoil, filled with private issues we could only get clues
of, family tragedies that helped cement her somber moods.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">I
got the sense that she was more outgoing of the two spinster sisters in that
she could come and go and hold a regular job though she disliked driving after
dark -- an issue that loomed over her during winter months and required her to
leave early so she could get home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">She
apparently did not live far from either of the two warehouses somewhere in West
Caldwell or at least I believe that at the time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">She
seemed to enjoy the fact that she could work in the real world without risk,
protected by both environments. She seemed not to feel comfortable with the
world and most likely would have felt more comfortable in her father's or
grandfather's time a Victorian like existence denied people in the 1970s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">What
struck us most was the car she drove, a 1960s Barracuda we all envied, something
a family member had apparently purchased for her. This was ironic since this
was considered a hot car on the street. But she drove it the way old ladies
drive with ultimate caution.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">How
Donald stumbled on her I still do not know perhaps a friend of a friend or
family. She was not Jewish and so in some ways seemed out of place with him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">She
was small, dark and I guess an Italian woman, sturdy and slightly plump. She
had dark eyes that seemed friendly yet seemed to vail personal secrets. Her
dark hair framed and oval face with wide-set eyes thick eyebrows and a squat
nose. She had a wide mouth and thin lips and sometimes the good cheer her mouth
expressed was contradicted by her I thought I saw in her eyes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">She
tended to walk the way an old woman might slowly with great care as if
expecting a sudden fall. She dressed decades out of date with pin on earrings,
the kind with the twist in back, and sometimes wore a necklace of pearls over
which on cold days she wore scarf -- sometimes even inside the office.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">In winter,
she wore a cloth coat, scarf, a knit or old ladies’ hat. In summer she shed the
hat gloves and coat, but generally wore dark ankle-length pattern dresses, practical
low-heeled shoes and stockings all of which seemed appropriate to a World War
II era or earlier.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">If
she ever talked about her parents or her upbringing, I don't recall hearing it.
She spoke about her sister with whom she lived but only in passing and how she
had to get back to her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Neither
she nor her sister ever married, and it is unclear if there was ever a love in
either of their lives. Both were apparently well educated since Carmela had all
the skills needed to run the office. This suggested her parents had provided
for her and probably educated her sister. I vaguely recall her sister may have
worked in a library.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Since
Carmella did not talk politics the way most of us did, I don't know what she
believed in. But since Donald was a liberal Democrat who voted for Jimmy Carter
1976, Carmella’s views must have fallen somewhat in line with those -- even if
she seemed and looked like a Nixon conservative with the old-fashioned
Republican cloth coat etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Carmella
seemed not want anything more than the job she had and seemed to generate
importance from it and so got put out later when Donald hired other people to
help her when he expanded the business. He was right in believing the workload
was too much for her, yet he was not sensitive enough to realize these hirings
undermined her -- partly because the new women did not see her as important,
but a relic and they did not treat her as a boss going to directly to Donald or
Stanley if they needed something.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Carmella
began to think of herself as useless piece of furniture in the expanding
operation this included people hired to work in the outlet with whom she had
running conflicts those were still unresolved when I left Donald's employment
in the spring of 1978.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<p></p>sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-10601872151342162082018-12-14T05:58:00.004-08:002021-02-22T16:52:22.885-08:00A bonus for Christmas <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi45e1-x9mlaa7_M27jy2c9Ip6m8oR17Xe2V5Aus7mZWKLq_3AXoZvXPB3O9Ru2UXu7dR44HsMoDS3wVpYNmvbYSKtuDR3VRTUdtkmSP7EIhqtBeKVJTJql_M5f1lqH9Mer1-Gd9srtDVOp/s540/2003_1204Image0006.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="405" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi45e1-x9mlaa7_M27jy2c9Ip6m8oR17Xe2V5Aus7mZWKLq_3AXoZvXPB3O9Ru2UXu7dR44HsMoDS3wVpYNmvbYSKtuDR3VRTUdtkmSP7EIhqtBeKVJTJql_M5f1lqH9Mer1-Gd9srtDVOp/s320/2003_1204Image0006.jpg" width="320" /></a><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">(College journal from 1981)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I stared down at the check Donald had handed me as if he or me or even
Stanley had two heads, or that this was some artifact from some alien planet,
an envelop with my name on it, resembling the envelops I’d received each Friday
since I’d started six months earlier with my pay check in it – only this was a
Monday, not a Friday, and I’d already been paid the Friday before.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“Well, aren’t you going to open it?” Stanley asked, looking at me with
those puppy-dog eyes of his, the way he would likely look in two days when he
watched his kids opening presents under the tree.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“What is it?” I asked, thinking the worst, recalling how I’d been fired
from the theater with an envelop containing my last pay check and a pink slip.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“What do you think it is?” Donald asked, slightly back from where
Donald stood, all of us crammed into the front where Carmella’s desk hogged up
one side of the room, and a few chairs sat against the wall across from it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“I’m scared to say,” I said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“It’s a bonus,” Stanley blurted out, drawing a dark and disappointed
look from Donald, who turned to me with something of a rare smile, the edges of
his moustache rising that seemed unnatural to a man who perpetually seemed in a
dour mood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“A bonus?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“For Christmas,” Stanley said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">This totally blew me away and for several reasons.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Until that moment, I’d seen Donald being as generous as a five-year-old
with the last remaining gumdrop clutched in his sweaty hand.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">He was also Jewish, and I wanted to say, “Jews don’t believe in
Christmas,” but was savvy enough not to blurt this out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Of course, a number of Jewish vendors I picked up goods from over the
last few months had wished me well for the holiday and had their stores decked
out with Christmas tinsel, I thought that was only good business, since most of
those who shopped there were gentiles.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">But this was different, striking me the way I might have been struck
seeing Scrooge on Christmas morning after the three ghosts had paid him a
visit, and I wondered just which ghosts had visited Donald to make him so
generous.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I didn’t have to say any of this. I saw a kink of twisted humor in
Donald’s eyes, bloated by his small glasses, as if he was enjoying my
awkwardness more than he might have at me being appreciative over the Christmas
gift.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">His lips twitched under his moustache, again defying his basic nature
with a strange smile.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Carmella sat behind her desk as non-committal as a Buddha.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I didn’t know how any of them expected me to react, so I just sputtered
and tried to say something that remotely sounded sincere, and tried to make
sense of Donald, who clearly contradicted himself, someone who crafted as
public image as a tough business man and yet did stuff like this, who got his
haircut twice a month so that he seemed as unchanging as a statue, and yet at
this moment, two days before Christmas, seemed utterly different, if not in the
way he looked, then in the way he seemed to look at the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Later, I would reflect on this moment and realize that this was my bar
mitzvah, my first season’s rite of passage from gentile to the Jewish son.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I stuttered out a thank-you which was more a reflection of my confusion
then my appreciation but Donald took it is one, picking up his pipe and sucking
on it and for a few seconds he pretended to look out through the window behind
Carmella’s desk at the busy world in the parking, then went back to the inner
sanctum of his office as Stan and I made our way back to the warehouse, now
quiet after a hefty six months of insanity, carts lined up around the packing
table like elephants headed towards some mythical graveyard.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">My head already spun with too many issues, public and private, the
resignation of a president along with my resignation to give Louise – my
estranged wife – the divorce she wanted, Donald giving me a check serving as a
kind of salve to ease the pain of another Christmas without her or my daughter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“So, what are you going to do with the money?” Stan asked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I glanced down at the green slip as if it was counterfeit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“Hire private eye,” I mumbled, as Stan’s dark eyebrows rose.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“What?” he asked, his large hands clutching a collection of Chanel
Number Five bottles he intended to relocate to a shelf across the warehouse,
near Donald’s cabinet where the special stash got locked away, but not quite
deserving of the distinction of being guarded as well.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I faked a laugh and told Stan I intended to buy some presents, for Pauly,
Garrick, Hank, my mother, my aunt, and the host of siblings I would see on
Christmas, the bonus coming just in time for me to get to Willowbrook Mall for
rushed shopping spree.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Of course, Stanley had received a bonus, too, I found out then, and I
asked him what he would do with his.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">He shrugged.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“It’s not enough to buy a house,” he said. “That’s what my wife really
wanted for Christmas.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">He apparently had another kid on the way finances were getting hairy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Donald, he said, kept telling him how Stanley had a future here and how
things would get better, but all Stan saw as the dusty old warehouse, and the
now-empty tray where the orders were kept, and seemed to envision this as
another version of the sheet metal factory in Harrison where he had labored for
ten years with the dream of putting on a white shirt some day and not needing
to sweat out his shifts the way we all did now.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">His bonus went towards survival it kept him from floundering totally
alone in the water.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Donald had that unique way of shining a light now and then only the
ship never came which it was supposed to be attached to.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">There was always that feeling of drowning was just an inch or so away.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Stanley said he had to see his
mother on Christmas she was, according to his rather sketchy narration a
determined woman who wouldn't leave her old neighborhood in Newark if it burned
down around her,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">His father had died there in 1962, a year or so after Stanley graduated
high school and started to work full time at the sheet metal plant where his
father had worked before him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Stanley started down at the bottles he held, treating them as if they
were rare piece of sculpture. While Donald saw these things as gold, sand
treated them as if they were nitro his scarred fingers surrounding them as if
sculpting them from steel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">He said his mother thinks that if she is leaves Newark, she would be
leaving her husband.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“We’ve asked her to move in with us,” he said. “We only live a few
miles from where she lives now. But she won’t do it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">That's when the office door slammed, and the familiar heels clicked on
concrete floor again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“What? You’re not through putting that stuff away yet?” Donald said. “I
give you two a bonus and this is what I get?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I cringed, but Stanley smiled, his six years prior to my coming giving
him a better read of Donald’s moods than I had, although there still seemed
pain in Stanley’s eyes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“We’re almost done,” Stanley said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“Good,” he said. “Then we can all leave, maybe get a drink before we
go.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Even Stanley frowned, apparently struck by something odd in our boss’s
behavior.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“A drink?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“Yes, a fucking drink,” Donald said. “What’s wrong with that?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“Nothing,” Stanley said, “Although it seems strange that we’d be
drinking on the clock.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“Nobody said that,” Donald said. “You’ll punch out first.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I didn’t go with them, so I never found out why Donald was in such a
mood that day, and never saw him in that same mood again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
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<p></p>sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-83918739607185316752018-12-13T05:42:00.002-08:002021-02-22T16:48:58.220-08:00The best job I ever had -- Cosmetics Plus -- a novel<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq0R7N1mN3SUa7YEuD0zDYDwG3M5_Jc0aHj3r8FhJIkUGcVzEgjaTOrZSuRwmvexIdaZk2Z0dzJpmuhCPPAR-uJk5in5iotaH3AuYlttE59dkx00TXDFuGTUcETU3vDR25jneal-rmCyEl/s594/1947-Packard-Clipper-10.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="594" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq0R7N1mN3SUa7YEuD0zDYDwG3M5_Jc0aHj3r8FhJIkUGcVzEgjaTOrZSuRwmvexIdaZk2Z0dzJpmuhCPPAR-uJk5in5iotaH3AuYlttE59dkx00TXDFuGTUcETU3vDR25jneal-rmCyEl/s320/1947-Packard-Clipper-10.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">(from college journal
1980-81)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Eventually the best
part of the job was out on the road.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">There is freedom and
driving about where there is none in the warehouse;<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It got so bad at the
warehouse I was constantly looking over my shoulder for Donald always wondering
what kind of wisecrack he would come up with next.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">For us the Christmas
rush started in late August which meant I was on the road a lot starting then.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">That first year it
was rough because business picked up dramatically and Stanley and I had to bust
to get stuff packed and sent.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Donald also had this
nasty habit of not telling anyone till late that I had to go out to get
something. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">This left Stanley
stranded in a sea of unpacked merchandise. This left me with something of a guilty
feeling and caused me to learn to rush from stop to stop.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Then one day near
enough Christmas for us for business to slacking Donald shouted at me telling
me I have to go to New York.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It was 3 and I was
supposed to meet Paulie and Hank <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“I have to go New
York?” I asked, as if half believing I had misheard him.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Yeah,” Donald said,
snapping open his private cabinet and unpacking several bottles of Joy perfume
and Shalimar.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">He told me to strip
the tags off the goods he gave me, and seemed angry, making me a bit paranoid,
since Donald got angry often, and sometimes over something insignificant.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I asked him if there
was something wrong, taking the bottles from him. He paused seemed a little
disoriented as if he couldn't figure out for himself whether he was angry or
not. Then he looked at me his now gaze ran over, and he laughed harshly.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“I'm not mad at you
if that's what you're worried about,” he said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I sputtered and then turned my attention
towards the boxes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Why would I be
worried?” I said and yet deep down I was relieved.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Stanley heard some of
this and came up from the back pulling a pallet jack and a pallet. He addressed
Donald asking why he was sending me out now.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Donald didn't answer
he didn't even look up, but his neck stiffened, and I knew that it was Stanley
who Donald was angry with.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Don't worry,” he
told Stanley, “you won't have to stay late and wait for him.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Stanley slammed back
the handle to the pallet jack and swore<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“That's not what it's
about and you know it, I don't mind working the hours,” he said and then
stuttered to a stop.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“You just don't think
you're making enough money,” Donald said easing closed the doors to his special
stash, his stubby hands pressing against the flat metal like he was preventing
the cabinet from falling.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“No, I don't think
I'm making enough for the hours I work but it was my wife who complained not me,”
Stanley said putting his clipboard down on the work table.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">He gripped his pencil
though like a knife<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“So, go home nobody's
stopping you if you're damned wife can't live without her husband then I'm
sorry for her,” Donald said, his hand dropped from the cabinet and he handed me
the packing list to check. I counted the bottles and the items and handed it
back then he walked back up towards the office.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Stanley stared down
at his clipboard. But he wasn't reading the items there he was just staring
then he looked up at me his hound like eyes for the first time looked mean. Then
he relaxed a little when he realized he was looking at me and not Donald.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Don't you think
you'd better get going,” he said. You don't want to get back at midnight.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I nodded and sealed the box and then headed
for the van<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The van was a bright
red Dodge with windows all around. Stanley had argued against the color when
Donald first bought it, saying that it was all too obvious and that the police
could pick up on it easier.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Stan was unusually
aware of police speeding traps because of own experience with them he had 12
points on his license from speeding tickets and was on the verge of losing his
license because of them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">And it wasn't that he
was reckless. He told me stories about his younger days when he was, but he had
calmed down since his marriage. He was simply the unfortunate schmuck in a line
of cars doing 60 and he was the one to get caught.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I had yet to get
caught speeding although I did a lot of it. My specialty was parking tickets
over which Donald had a fit but then it wasn't an easy feat parking legally in
New York City.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I climbed in the van
and started the engine there was power under me a terrible frightening power
that thrilled me in a special way. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
wasn't particularly excited about the speed just freedom. The job was perfect
for being on my own, using my head.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Donald waved at me
from the door and I stopped he ran out with a couple of memos and stuffed them
through the window.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Two more stops, he
said, and I nodded as I looked at them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It was Friday and he
had me going uptown and downtown and after 3.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I might just be back
at midnight, I thought. But I wasn't about to argue not then.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Some other time I
might have pointed out that it would take me forever with the New York weekend traffic,
but his face was tight in the lines around his nose and mouth deep; he was in
no mood for argument<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Okay,” I said and
backed out watching him as he turned back to go inside.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Donald was a short man, a Jewish Napoleon with
blond hair and blue eyes, eyes when stern were often exaggerated by the glasses
he wore.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">But then everything
about him was exaggerated, his clothing was rich, his haircut fine and
carefully cut, and his manner was that of an executive.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">He turned to watch me
then vanished in the door as I drove around the end of the building heading for
Bloomfield Avenue.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Once on the road
again, I was gunning it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had little
patience with traffic weaving in and out of lanes like I owned them. This was
quite different from my first day when I crashed into the back of a Mercedes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was going to New York then to and that made
me laugh.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I slowed on the highway
by the light only because the police had a nasty habit of hiding behind the
hedges in front of the restaurant. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had
seen enough other suckers fall into that. But then by Willowbrook I was gunning
it again.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The secret was to
sneak through the tunnel before heavy traffic started and rush up the West Side
Up 11th or 10<sup>th</sup>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I had a trick for
cutting through the park too, but I wouldn't try that now. Fridays were
miserable that way, so I would put up with 57th Street across town somehow
traveling up and down the East Side involved extreme hardship<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I sailed on to Route
3.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">This wasn't the way I
normally went to New York unless I was headed to see Donald’s mother, Ruth at
the Kearny store -- so there was something adventurous about it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">There were still a
few fluffs of dirty plowed snow along the side of the road and the air was cold
and crisp and smelled of Christmas.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">But pain went through
me with that this Christmas, creating a kind of bittersweet spice over the fact
that I would be spending another Christmas without my wife or seeing my kid.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Louise had called,
but after meeting her near Scranton, I discovered that she only really wanted
me to agree to a divorce.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The van rolled pass
the Nevins print factory on Route 3 where Louise and I had met five years
earlier. It only made the feelings more intense.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Traffic thickened and
so it put Louise out of my mind for a time, but it came back, and I had to struggle
with it and the bumper to bumper insanity of the helix winding down towards the
mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I was annoyed, yet
knew that traffic might lighten up once through the tunnel, after which
different feelings emerged, nostalgic feelings of those days when I worked at a
messenger in New York, and did largely what I did not, and returning here like
this before the holiday, felt a little like me being a prodigal son returning finally
to a place I felt most comfortable at.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Once the city gets
into your blood, you can’t get rid of it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The truck vibrated
over the potholes and bumps and I laughed the sidewalk Santa's with their
tinkling bills, the red suits wrinkled, the belts holding up padding showing
through the fabric.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Yes, it was a flavor
here that that I savored, a fine wine that seemed to bubble out of the air with
the clouds of subway steam.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I turned uptown half
humming some old Christmas carol.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<p></p>sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-66513691611217220372018-12-12T19:16:00.001-08:002021-02-22T17:20:24.199-08:0019 - Aftermath<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikIdE8aP-4ANeppR6J6_tVzj1Z1W0jiM6AqeMkGsz4ERCI2wr7dyxHDvEo21ssRqLoGy0R5THNIi3sXMsdFO6LAYQzwV7dXkRHLLGiWy3tCCqY2WjUWcAMaTpoqUhPNGskfriIzbM5iyOJ/s1600/ware8.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5657963640055417058" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikIdE8aP-4ANeppR6J6_tVzj1Z1W0jiM6AqeMkGsz4ERCI2wr7dyxHDvEo21ssRqLoGy0R5THNIi3sXMsdFO6LAYQzwV7dXkRHLLGiWy3tCCqY2WjUWcAMaTpoqUhPNGskfriIzbM5iyOJ/s320/ware8.JPG" style="cursor: hand; float: left; height: 224px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 320px;" /></a><br />
<br />
<div><span style="font-size: large;">
Based on journals from 1/15/2002 to 1/28/2002</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
In January, 2002, I mailed a Christmas card to John Telson in just after New Years Day, on a whim.<br />
I used an internet search to find an old address for him in a nearby town and hoped I could reconnect with him.<br />
Perhaps 9/11 had hit me harder than I even thought, and the death of George Harrison, after which came my mother’s death. I felt nostalgic for that relatively innocent time during the mid-1970s when hope still bloomed in me, if not in the country.<br />
After working with him for almost five years, I last saw him in the Spring of 1980 after his return from California.<br />
I knew nothing of his pending divorce.<br />
I recognized his olive-colored van that had been his pride since its purchase some years before.<br />
I paused in my jog along River Drive in Garfield, and he pulled over. But he seemed remote<br />
We had gone through some pretty steep emotional moments since starting to work together in 1975 and he seemed a little shy about risking yet one more such encounter and merely told me he was doing well – when he was not.<br />
No such shyness affected his voice 20 years later when he called me after receiving my card, though I struggled to hear his weak voice over the phone with the busy news room going on around me.<br />
I was pressed for time or I might have asked more about his activities over the long years since we had last met.<br />
I did learn that he now lived with his parents again after a series of very serious illnesses. He had even suffered through a triple-bypass heart surgery, testimony to his bad died, action to cigarettes and constant drinking.<br />
In 1976, his claim to have quit smoking caused me to quit as well, and only a blurt from his sister at the supper table one night disclosed his deception. He told me over the phone that he had only returned to work a few weeks earlier, employed by Burns as a security guard – a role he seemed destined to play from the moment I met him. He loved war games and military models, and fit the stereotype of a macho American male, except that he really wasn’t macho at all.<br />
His frail shape always denied him credibility and he seem more suited to becoming an artist than a cop or a truck driver.<br />
John once confided in me of his desire to be a history teacher, but his upbringing in a working class family seemed to keep him from boasting about his dreams to anyone but me.<br />
His voice on the telephone had the same dull toned I heard in the voices of men who had failed to live up to their dreams. Yet he seemed thrilled to have heard from me and had tried to reach me at my work number on Saturday in his rush to contact me.<br />
I suggested we meet for lunch so as to better rehash the past.<br />
<br />
***********<br />
Except for the goatee, John looked almost exactly like another friend who I had seen near death’s door: the same frail frame, the same bald head, the same intense look of suffering paintings of midlevel monks often portray.<br />
If I had expected comfort after losing my mother two weeks earlier, I got none from his look of despair, and seeing him like this, only added to my sense of loss and my inability to make sense of this idiocy we called life.<br />
Seeing John did nothing to dispel this mood except to recall times when we were still young enough to dream.<br />
Outside of nagging problems with my teeth and a troublesome back, my life had largely been something akin to Dorian Gray with me holding onto portraits of people I knew from when I knew them, none of them ever aging, growing sick or unhappy beyond when I last saw them.<br />
And if I saw them as the same, then I did not see myself as aging, looking out from the inside without an honest mirror to suggest that I was anything other than the person I was when I was 24 or 25.<br />
But as of late, and with the events that had taken place over the previous few months, the horror of my growing old hit me – with John as one more blow to my illusion.<br />
We met at a restaurant in East Rutherford that locals called “The Wick,” The Candlewick Dinner on Paterson Plank Road which had been John’s hangout growing up, and a place I had frequented for a time when I had dated a woman from Rutherford. For a time I had lived only two blocks from the place after marrying for the second time, passing it daily without going in. But John had lived his whole life within sight of the place and had continued to haunt it. From its side door he could have tossed a stone and hit the church where he’d married in the late 1970s.<br />
As with most meetings I covered as a reporter, I showed up early and sat in my car listening to old Beatles songs in the restaurant parking lot, challenging myself to recognize him if and when he appeared.<br />
I guessed wrong a dozen times before I saw the 1994 Chevy pull into the lot. Once seeing him, I realized I could not have mistaken him for anybody else. All his features were essentially unchanged from the last time I’d seen him on River Drive in Garfield, except he looked older and sickly, as if he had managed to cram additional decades into those between when we last saw each other. He was already dying as he walked towards me across the lot.<br />
************<br />
Born on Nov. 24, 1953, John was close to me in age, but seemed a lot younger and less experienced that these of us.<br />
He was part of that mass movement of Blue Collar Americans that the Right Wing would later call “the silent majority,” of a kind who were old enough to have lived through the 1960s, but never evolved out of their 1950s mentality and thus reverted to that 1950s mentality once the 1960s faded, and became Reagan Democrats when the time came for the back lash against social reform.<br />
Although the baby boom didn’t officially end until about 1963, the most radical of our generation were born between the end of World War II and 1950, since this was the age group that was most likely to face being drafted into the most violent part of the Vietnam War.<br />
By the time John reached draft age, the war was winding down, and a lottery system had replaced wholesale kidnapping of kids for the war.<br />
John’s father and grandfather both worked largely for themselves, self made men who set a pattern of expectation that John apparently couldn’t live up to – even to the point where he could not or would lot get into the military.<br />
When he came into the warehouse in 1975, he seemed very young to me, even though he tried to pretend he was tougher than he was.<br />
Seeing him again in early 2002, he struck me with the same sense of inexperience combined with missed opportunities. John seemed to have gone through the motions of living, but had failed to derive from them any sense of experience most other people would have obtained. Despite disease, divorce and personal misfortunes, John seemed as naïve in 2002 as he had been in 1975, as if he had spent the additional years living in a bubble.<br />
While he was no longer protect as he once was, he failed to comprehend the significant to early events he’d experience or learned much from the pain he had suffered.<br />
He was the same confused man sitting across the table from me as he was when I first saw him, just as puzzled over life as he had been, and again looking to me to supply him with answers only he could supply<br />
This unchanging innocence was the thing that first drew me to him, and eventually made his company unbearable, when as a younger man; I failed to understand how some people grew from their troubles while others like John slowly wilted under them without every comprehending as to why.<br />
<br />
************<br />
In one of those twisted coincidences life seems to dump on people from time to time, my card to John arrived at his house in the same week that he learned that his wife intended to move back to New Jersey.<br />
Both events surprised John, even though he claimed to have a “good and open relationship” with his ex-wife, Eva – proving that to the end when it came to women, John remained an absolute sucker.<br />
I couldn’t recall when he met Eva, only that she had latched onto him as some point following his graduation from high school, and that he was as shocked as anyone to learn that he had suddenly been caught up in a relationship.<br />
At one point, when we worked at Cosmetics Plus, John me another woman to whom he was extremely attractive, and who treated him with the respect he deserved. Torn between the woman who manipulated him and the one he was extremely attract to, John actually asked my advice, and I told him to dump Eva.<br />
A week later, John informed me of his engagement to Eva and even invited me to the wedding held in Hasbrouck Heights at a Church about a mile north of The Wick.<br />
Unkind fellow workers claimed Eva looked like a fish – which as I recall was a pretty accurate description of her. Worse, she had a personality to match her looks.<br />
Unfortunately, when John pulled out a photograph of his daughter, I mistook her for his ex-wife.<br />
At the time, his daughter was attending graduate school in Boston, and he said he was to see her shortly.<br />
This may have explained Eva’s return to East Rutherford.<br />
She had given him little warning, he said, and suggested that she feared he might run away before she arrived.<br />
All I could think of as I sat with him in the diner was the memory of how confused he looked on the alter that day nearly 25 years earlier when he got married and how she had to nudge him with her elbow to say “I do.”<br />
<br />
*****************<br />
<br />
In mid-to-late 1977, John and I had something of a falling out, when I accused him to selling out to management.<br />
He was kissing Donald’s ass in order to hop over me and take my place as assistant manager for the warehouse – a position I clung to even as I felt the urgency to leave the company before I became trapped there like Stanley.<br />
But even at the time, I sensed that John’s actions were something born out of desperation.<br />
Faced with the prospect of an unhappy married and no real career, he sought to follow in Stanley’s footsteps and find a permanent position, even if it meant that he would be packing boxes the rest of his life.<br />
Part of what Donald wanted was for John to point out and report on all the trouble makers in the warehouse, the biggest of which was me.<br />
After nearly four years working in the warehouse, I had reached the limit of the job, and unlike John, I did not wish to get trapped in it the way Stanley was.<br />
I was unhappy and saw no easy way to escape. I lacked courage to simply walk away from the job. In the past, jobs had mostly abandoned me, either by dumping me out or collapsing around me the way the card company had.<br />
But Donald was too shrewd a business man for the business to fail. Even when parts of it faltered, he found a way to make money. Things were going good, and worse, Donald seemed determined to keep me, the way he kept Stanley.<br />
Capitalism feeds on workers’ desperation to keep their jobs, using them until their either grow accustomed to their misery or walk away.<br />
I became a morale problem, which not only affected my work, but the work of those around me. I nearly constantly badmouthed management in a nearly constant personal revolution that could have no positive outcome.<br />
I kept trying to turn other people against Donald and management, and eventually I committed an utter act of betrayal in an attempt to bring down the company on the feeble excuse that Donald had abused a fellow worker—which I still believe he had, but my actions were out of proportion to his sin.<br />
Years later I realized just how mistaken I was.<br />
John did not understand it at all – although strangely, he later praised me for it, mistaking me for some kind of hero.<br />
<br />
************<br />
Just when John started reporting to Donald about my activities, I’m still not certain, and I did not bring it up at our lunch meeting.<br />
But I caught on to John’s activity by accident on day when I was putting away some boxes in the warehouse ladies room we used for storage because no women worked in that part of the building.<br />
I heard voices through the wall – on the other side of which was Donald’s inner sanctum, and one of those voices was John’s.<br />
I didn’t hear precisely what he said, but the fact that he was there at all startled me, and from that point on, every time he vanished from the warehouse, I headed to the storage room, eventually configuring a way to hear a mumbled version of what transpired – John testifying to mine and other workers’ transgressions.<br />
Why Donald didn’t use this information to fire me I may never know.<br />
As much as I came to fear and distrust him, Donald appeared to genuinely like me.<br />
He seemed to like the company of men – perhaps because he struggled so much to overcome the dominating women in his life: mother and wife, as well as other female family members.<br />
I suspected that half the reason Donald seemed so furious was a direct reaction to how helpless he felt in the rest of his life – and perhaps why he so abused Michele, the woman from the outlet, which led eventually to the final rebellion that forced him to fire me.<br />
Years later, I realized that we were all damaged people working in that warehouse from Donald all the way down to the newest employee, many of us struggling to somehow come to grips with our private lives, some of which had to do with women and sex. And I was the most damaged of them all, full of rage I had no way to express -- so I took it out on John.<br />
<br />
*************<br />
During those years working together at Cosmetics Plus, John and I lived strange double lives, enemies sometimes by day, and remarkably close friends after work.<br />
It was during this private association that I got glimpses of the more vulnerable John, and on occasion, came into contact with other people in his life, friends that had helped him survive high school, his family, and some of his other off hour recreation activities, and how I met his future wife, Eva.<br />
Although not particularly gifted in handling electronic devices, John spent much of his high school time in the audio-visual department. Here he developed some friendships that last until his death, and gave him a position of authority that raised his status above other people the cool kids called geeks. It also gave him a place to hide away from the worst abuse the jocks and cool kids handed out, since no jock or cool kid would be caught dead in with the projectors and other such equipment.<br />
Unlike most of his friends, who attended trade school or college, John kicked around at his father’s trucking firm until he found it intolerable and eventually applied to Cosmetic Plus when Donald advertised for a drive.<br />
He kept in touch with his old friends, some of whom became members of his bowling team that jockeyed from Wallington Lanes to lanes as far away as Springfield. John tried to get me involved in this, but I had nothing in common with his friends and discovered that the competition was largely an excuse to drink beer and ogle the pretty girls playing in the other lanes, girls they all knew they could never have.<br />
Before the hostilities escalated at work, I was a welcome guest as John’s family’s house, where I got to meet his brother and sisters. During our lunch twenty five years later, John gave me a quick update on these family members, whose faces were vague at best.<br />
I remember John’s brother as being a moody soul, one of those frustrated men of talent who found no support for his frivolous exploits in a very practical-minded family – who eventually broke contact with that family over some joke they made at his wife’s expense.<br />
I remember one sister being a home body and another a flirt, the first working on a second marriage now with the second set of kids, while the second sister suffered through a string of unsatisfactory lovers, the latest of which John said she would soon dump in favor of some new man.<br />
I remembered her flirting with me over the supper table and how she accidentally uncovered John’s secret when he pretended to have quit smoking (telling us all this at work) when he really had not – although this motivated me to quit – a gift from John I will always remember.<br />
<br />
*************<br />
<br />
Seeing John 25 years or so after my first meeting him, I was struck by how trapped he had become in his own life and how dissatisfied the world was with him, despite his attempts to make everyone around him happy: his father, his mother, wife, boss, even me. We all pressed him to do things and he did them, and no one, lease of all John, was happy.<br />
When his father demanded John get a real job, John gave up his dream of becoming a teacher to buckle down and work with his father, when that didn’t work out, John went to a series of other jobs that included warehouses, bartending, short order cook, even security guard. When his girlfriend, Eva, demanded that he make love to her somewhere other than the back of his van, he begged for use of my bedroom in Passaic, then suffered criticism from her for making her look like a whore in front of his friends.<br />
If John ever stood up to anyone, I heard nothing about it – except in one particular moment when he wanted to prove to me that he could be a rebel, too, somehow turning revolution into a kind of conformity.<br />
Considering all the abuse I heaped on him, John should never have gotten me a job at his new place, Wine Imports of America after I got fired from Cosmetics Plus, but he did.<br />
Although as much as a trap as the previous job, the new place introduced me to a remarkable group of characters, all of whom were losers like me and John, coming to this place because this was the last place on the planet that would have them.<br />
For the most part I hardly saw John except during change of shifts or during breaks. But even then, he tended to blend into the background other people, characters such as Cowboy or Cosmov or Ronnie or Roger, men whose pasts warranted arrest, who worked like horses and drank enough to drown one, yet who crumbled when the owner and the union rep conspired to violate their union contract, at which point I picked up my pen again and wrote to the head of the union, only to later get fired.<br />
John caught up with me in the parking lot, and pulled me aside.<br />
“When I worked with you at the other place, I thought you were a trouble maker,” he said. “But now I know better. Now I realize you are all that’s left of the 1960s.”<br />
It was a remarkable moment for the both of us, and one both of us would carry to the grave, even though we met only twice, once a short time after this, and then more than 20 years later at The Wick.<br />
<br />
**************<br />
<br />
If John thought Wine Imports would provide him with the long-sought-after career, he was soon disappointed. The company closed not long later at which point his wife Eva decided they had to move to California<br />
But before they could go, John came down with hotchkins disease.<br />
While the treatments were successful, they led to later heath problems, and in the subsequent decade, he would suffer through surgery for other intestinal ailments as well, leading up to the final and more terrifying procedure, a triple bypass on his heart in August, 2001.<br />
Over the last two decades of his life, John worked a variety of jobs, some of which lasted long than Cosmetics Plus or Wine Imports of American, but none which supplied the same sense of hope he had during those job. It was as if he knew no job would fill the empty space inside of him, a space that seemed to expand over time as his family scattered and his wife divorced him.<br />
In 1985, John moved back to New Jersey from California.<br />
But Eva refused to come back, remaining on the West Coast with their new born daughter.<br />
In John’s life, the one constant had always been his family home in Moonachie, while full of conservative principles and stern scolding, he was always welcome there.<br />
This was true this time, too, as his parents found a place for him.<br />
There he picked up his life as he had left it, falling into the old routines even though his brother and sisters had long gone.<br />
He felt like an only child.<br />
In 2000, he went back to Cosmetics Plus asking for a job.<br />
But if he had hoped to pick up where he had left off in the 1970s or find the people there the same, John was again disappointed.<br />
He said Stan – the warehouse manager we both admired – had fallen onto hard times.<br />
The growing use of alcohol Stan had started to help ease the tension of a tough job had become an debilitating habit – and according to John during our lunch at The Wick, Stan had suffered some serious trouble during the 1990s, which apparently got significantly worse with the death of his wife, Diana, at their home in Lake Hopatcong in 1999,<br />
“Stan had just come back to the warehouse after some treatment,” John said. “But Donald didn’t give him back his job as warehouse manager – He gave him your job.”<br />
This meaning the assistant manager job Donald had dangled in front of me, John and Cliff, how ironic.<br />
For John, life just got steadily tougher. Without a steady job, insurance was hard to come buy, and though he still had a job to go back to at Burns Security after his by pass surgery, he found himself deep in debt.<br />
“I look at the bills and laugh,” he said. “I’ll never be able to pay them, not in a million years.”<br />
John said even his parents were on the verge of abandoning him.<br />
“They’re getting ready to retire to south Jersey,” he said.<br />
This would leave him homeless and he had vague plans to move north to Boston where he daughter attended school. But he didn’t know what he would do for a living when he got there. He had no way of knowing that by the end of the year, a few days before John’s 49th birthday, his father would pass away.<br />
After our lunch, we shook hands and made our way out to our cars. He sat in his for a while without started it, and waved as I pulled out of the parking lot, -- me just one more ghost from the past moving through his life again, a ghost who had at some point contributed to his doom.<br />
What if I had left him in peace back at Cosmetics Plus? Would his life have turned out any better?<br />
Who can say?</span></div>
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<p></p>sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-76109503706925737412018-12-12T19:15:00.001-08:002021-02-22T16:58:14.804-08:0018 - Love Bites<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXzOFzasfUToe-9ciiSVrXbJgBbWGoOgvvv2uiyCfzqPBmssU8i_NXTgiy-puobl8TDOoG6Tr6A2VvZKYSVZXm7gHavBIki18sgatAB9Y8N8OhsjFTHxE0BuuY5-_fqAUUBfW_3qWLlJjf/s1600/DONALD6.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5657963365725619906" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXzOFzasfUToe-9ciiSVrXbJgBbWGoOgvvv2uiyCfzqPBmssU8i_NXTgiy-puobl8TDOoG6Tr6A2VvZKYSVZXm7gHavBIki18sgatAB9Y8N8OhsjFTHxE0BuuY5-_fqAUUBfW_3qWLlJjf/s320/DONALD6.JPG" style="cursor: hand; float: right; height: 320px; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 239px;" /></a><br />
<br />
<div><span style="font-size: large;">
Adding complexity to an already complex situation, I then fell in love with one of the retail clerks in the outlet, a woman named Michele Calabrese.<br />
“Michele was a dark haired dancer, a fragile flower with brown eyes and nearly ivory skin,” according to a journal entry I wrote on June 24, 1982. “I used to drive her home after work even though I knew she loved someone else, waiting for that moment when she would smile at me. She wasn’t pretty in any conventional sense, but she was warm.”<br />
This came at the same time Stanley was looking for an excuse to get under my skin, treating me much in the way he had treated Gary earlier.<br />
“He began looking for things to blame me for, and my attitude went from bad to worse. I think maybe he feared what he saw coming as much as I did. Donald had brought in a computer to improve production, and had plans to install an automated conveyor belt system that would cut production time by more than half. As it was, we already had a roller system in place, soon it would be mechanized.”<br />
In a journal entry dated Jan. 8, 1986, I recalled “By the time 1978 came around, I had grown very unhappy with Donald and the warehouse, partly because I felt trapped, the way Stan was trapped, and wished that something dramatic would happen that would set me free – but I was just too much of a coward to simply quit. I had become a radical trouble maker, blaming Donald for the woes of my world, when he really wasn’t to blame for the most part. We had grown too big for my tastes – and Donald wanted to turn the company into something more like an assembly line, far from the intimacy I had enjoyed with Stan at the old warehouse. I only saw things getting worse, more impersonal, and felt a greater distance growing between me and Stan, who was now supposed to act out the role of a warehouse manager and not one of the boys. Perhaps because of my attitude, or perhaps because Donald liked having college graduates working for him, he offered Cliff O’Neil the job I had once been promised.”<br />
In a journal entry dated Jan. 19, 1986, I recalled other problems I was having at the time.<br />
“While working at Cosmetics Plus, I spent a lot of time in a doctor’s office in Caldwell. I seemed to have a perpetual cold. It didn’t occur to me until years later that the dust and fumes were working on me like a gradual poison. He kept giving me shots of b-12 and prescriptions for various cold remedies.”<br />
My 1997 journal had the most complete accounting of the events and how I felt at the time.<br />
“Donald infuriated me, partly because his ambition reflected the collective ambition of the era and its attitude towards workers. We no longer mattered and in fact sometimes we got in the way, seen as too expensive and expendable in an ever more urgent push to gather wealth. It was a time when the working man was finally earning a reasonable living, and the wealthy were looking for a way to cut our salaries.”<br />
Yet, according to his journal, life in the new warehouse seemed to lack cohesion and there was a kind of constant adjustment.<br />
“From the start of 1978, I felt only the desire to flee, and fantasized that Michele and I might flee together. I wasn’t the only one who had an interest in the women working in the outlet. Once back on the day shift, Tim Holly got it on with the outlet manager.”<br />
Michele according to this account started out as one of the sales people in the outlet and evolved into an office worker. I got to know her before the office sucked her in, and she more or less took my side against one of the other sales girls – an uppity pretty, spoiled brat from the rich section of Wayne who actually liked being called “a bitch.”<br />
Although I ached to get to know Michele better, she became the talk of the warehouse because she had a black boyfriend. The fact that he beat her frequently pissed me off. The fact that he was black didn’t bother me the way it did other workers in the warehouse.<br />
“She had a black boyfriend – a notorious womanizer – which became the talk of the warehouse,” I wrote in a Jan. 8, 1986 journal. “Some of the warehouse workers weren’t kind, heaping their scorn on her. I made matters worse since I wanted her, too, and I more than willingly volunteered to drive her home whenever I could. I got mocked by fellow workers who said she would never love me, a white man, and said I was a fool for even trying.”<br />
“This was 1978,” I wrote in the 1997 journal entry. “I erroneously presumed that America had gotten over its racism. But I learned from this situation with Michele that it has simply taken a more silent and insidious form.”<br />
Michele, as I recalled in that journal, “was too soft spoken and inexperienced with cosmetics to make a good salesperson, so Donald moved her into the office to help out Carmella.”<br />
This account differs slightly from some other journal entries, by painting Carmella into something much more of a shrew than I recall now.<br />
“Carmella had already worn out a half dozen helpers since our coming to the new warehouse. None were ever good enough to share the same space with her. They couldn’t file good enough as she could, they had no skills for handling customers on the telephone and they lacked the dedication to remain after five to finish filling out or filing former the way she did. Her jealousy and resentment drove out every one but Michele.”<br />
Michele wanted to quit but was then hoping a New York City dance company would make her an offer.<br />
“So she held on, day after miserable day,” this account claims.<br />
The Jan. 8, 1986 journal described Michele as “a ballet and modern dancer, who had arrived at the outlet just prior to the 1976 Christmas season, but by 1978 was fully entrenched in the front office.<br />
Donald didn’t get on well with Michele. For some reason he felt compelled to ride her hard the way he sometimes rode Stanley. But a dancer is made of different stuff than a sheet metal worker, and when Donald yelled at her for making mistakes, she cried, and he yelled louder, loud enough for us to sometimes hear it in the warehouse.<br />
He had some foolish notion that she might be able to operate his new computer – something that would later be the equivalent of a Commodore 64, but took up most of a glassed in room near his office.<br />
“He seemed put out by her artistic temperament,” I wrote in the 1997 account, “and seemed bent on breaking it the way a cowboy might break a wild horse. He succeeded in breaking her spirit the same week a freak accident did a portion of her lower leg. She got the fracture while helping her boyfriend pushed his car out of a flooded area near Willowbrook Mall. It was not severe but bad enough to ruin her career as a dancer.”<br />
She could still work around the office in the cast, but according to the Jan. 8 1986 account, “she hobbled around for months, finally coming to the realization that she would never dance again.”<br />
The 1997 account recalls her breaking into crying jags each time Donald yelled at her, which seemed to make him even angrier and caused him to push her all the harder.<br />
“He demanded that she extend her hours, but did not pay her overtime. Then when the pressure got too much, she called in sick on Friday. Donald had ordered her to work that Saturday and when she didn’t show up, he fired her. When she tried to collect unemployment, he disputed it, claiming her work record was poor, both in attendance and quality. She said she needed the unemployment because her boyfriend has lost his job, too.”<br />
I later learned she and her boyfriend were evicted from their apartment and this enraged me.<br />
In a journal written in 1982, I wrote “It was at this point, I vowed to destroy Donald’s business by revealing his business operations. Years later, I realize it was a mistake.”<br />
The 1997 account elaborated on my motives better.<br />
“While what happened to Michele inspired me to finally act, I was in no means acting on her behalf,” I wrote. “My rage – justified or not – had grown more potent over the previous few months, partly because of my feeling trapped and partly because I lacked courage to simply get up and leave. Much of this I masked behind my rebellion against Donald.”<br />
In 1996, I wrote “In my mind, I had painted Donald into a monster, when he was simply driven. On one hand, he could be kind to his employees; on the other hand, he was consumed with making money and elevating his status.”<br />
Again the 1997 journal gave Donald more credit.<br />
“I don’t think Donald understood the impact of the change and how the growing company could no longer accommodates those of us who had formed the foundation of his success. The new building was too big for us.”<br />
The attack, this account went on to say, was justified only in the sense that he served as my personal symbol for the vast changes underway in America.<br />
“I blamed him for the fact that blue collar jobs had lost value and that the world as we knew it would never come again like the 1960s that bred me, the era of my kind faded with each passing year, and I lived too close to see how large a problem it was. I questioned why Donald had not hired new workers at a high rate than the amount that he had hired four years earlier. I knew inflation was making havoc on the economy. I knew that my money went far less far than it had when I fire started. But I did not understand how wages fueled inflation or how wealthy investors in companies expected workers like us to pay the highest price with our labor in order to save their investments. Instead, I saw the world in too narrow terms, seeing Donald as the cause of problems he really was only living with, too in many ways.”<br />
But something else had happened to me, part of some larger dissatisfaction with my own place in the world. I was no longer satisfied with being one of the boys, a member of society of order pickers, whose labors were repeated daily, weekly, monthly, yearly until we died with no other real recognition by a weekly pay check.<br />
I was aching for a change, an opportunity to grow, but didn’t know how or what to become. I was dabbling in writing and began to see myself as an artist, too, which was why Donald’s abuse of Michele struck such a nerve in me.<br />
But I had been plotting something even before Michele, something the Cliff had half heartedly suggested.<br />
I knew Donald’s vulnerability was his wholesale dealings that allowed him to redistribute merchandise he secretly purchased around the region. So I collected the labels we cut off the boxes, filing them away at home as I built up a complete list. Sometimes I even fished bills of lading out of Carmella’s trash, and then made a list of all the companies, typing out letters to each corporation with a list of the stores Donald collected from.<br />
When I was finished, I did not mail out any of those letters. Some mysterious force held me back from taking that final step. Although Cliff had encouraged me to do this earlier, he was gone and I was less certain that it was the right thing to do. I eventually dumped the whole lot into the trash.<br />
When Donald fired Michele I went back and redid every letter, not as well or complete as the first time, but with a hot rage that I could no longer hold back. Instead of taking a month or two the way it had the first time, I completed it all in two days, and mailed them all, sealing my own fate as it turned out, not Donald’s.<br />
In a journal from 1982, I recounted the days after writing the letters.<br />
“After I sent out the letters, I knew I was doomed at Cosmetics Plus and went over to John’s house in early May, 1978 to talk to him about getting me a job at his new place of employment.<br />
This was nerve and I knew it, but he made the arrangements for me to meet the supervisor the following week. Donald called me into his office on Monday morning and said he knew about the letters I’d sent. He asked if I knew who had sent them. I said no. He called me a liar saying that he had compared the type face on the letters with some fiction I had written. I could see the hurt on his face, a sense of betrayal that had almost nothing to do with business.”<br />
Donald stood behind his desk and cursed me, his voice horse, his face red.<br />
“You’re lucky I don’t press charges against you,” he said. “This is industrial sabotage.”<br />
He told me to leave, which I did, and then about a mile down the road, I realized I still had the key to the building and I came back and gave it to one of his secretaries, before fleeing again. Riding away for the second time, I felt empty and lost. I had worked for Donald for four years and in a matter of minutes, whatever future I had had, evaporated, and me with a new apartment and new car payments to make. Hating Donald had been a full time occupation and now that evaporated, too.”</span></div>
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<p></p>sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-57628903968890042772018-12-12T19:14:00.001-08:002021-02-22T16:57:05.579-08:0017 -- Night Shift<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwxrfo915pWNreEV0eBWc723ljuYsFPwFy40mv4h6cQaVK4Xaw1tYKnvi5YsmnKiJ8rH_h3b5JmGql1p6feXpyFYfpmwQdccJxhx4FrhhoUpeo6GceaQvnJdZkNmJLsBcx57dAuD9H3OD0/s1600/tim+holly+3.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5657963094912162050" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwxrfo915pWNreEV0eBWc723ljuYsFPwFy40mv4h6cQaVK4Xaw1tYKnvi5YsmnKiJ8rH_h3b5JmGql1p6feXpyFYfpmwQdccJxhx4FrhhoUpeo6GceaQvnJdZkNmJLsBcx57dAuD9H3OD0/s320/tim+holly+3.JPG" style="cursor: hand; float: left; height: 269px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 320px;" /></a><br />
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</span><div><span style="font-size: large;">
No moment in the whole of the three ring circus Cosmetics Plus had become seemed more romantic than the start of the night shift did.<br />
In as progression of corporate moves that continued to isolate people, putting us all into boxes out of which were could supposedly better operated like a machine, Donald had finally isolated me to a point where I actually felt free again – not quite as free as I had felt in the earlier days on the road, but out from under the insane pressure of the day time where everybody hated everybody else, especially the boss.<br />
Years later, I would think back on this moment and the role that Donald’s son played in developing and promoting President Bill Clinton’s NAFTA, the biggest screwing of American workers in history, and understand that in this case, the apple did not fall far from the tree.<br />
For me, the night shift was as if I had found a loop hole in Donald’s corporate structure, and adding to the ironic twist, he had put me in charge.<br />
This may have been a test to determine how well I would do if I actually got promoted to assistant manager now that Cliff and John and left, and I – at the moment – was the last possible candidate for the job.<br />
Perhaps Donald had thought to buy me off the way he had tried with those two by giving me a taste of what it would be like to be part of management.<br />
But as I detailed in an earlier journal about that time, I knew it was an illusion.<br />
“Management didn’t except for Stanley and Donald, the owner, and Donald didn’t really fit the role, and Stanley could no longer talk about ordinary things the way he had with us in the old place, his personal hands-on work habits no longer fit with the vision Donald had for the expanding company. The more authority Stanley got, the less control he felt.”<br />
While I could not have known it at the time, I instinctively knew there was barely room in management for Stanley and no room for me.<br />
But I was grateful for the reprieve from the pressure of the day shift as pointed out in that same journal entry.<br />
“There was never really a need for a night shift had the day shift functioned properly,” I wrote. Donald constantly struggled to get around human failings with innovation; but like all capitalists Donald feared that by entrusting too much authority in too many hands, he would lost control of his vision. It was easier to control a machine than a thinking person, especially if that thinking person was someone like me.<br />
By hiding me away in the night shift, Donald might have thought to buy some time until he could figure out what to do next. I was a poison in the warehouse for a number of reasons and this move, he hoped, would also reduce tensions in the day crew.<br />
Stanley believed I would screw things up so badly at night they would have an excuse to fire me – or at worst, it would put me in my place and teach me not to question the wisdom of my superiors.<br />
Unfortunately for Stanley, Donald put three good men under me, a hippie deadhead, a musician named Tim Holly, and Donald’s pharmacist friend from a West Orange pharmacy with which we did business – one of my regular stops when I was still on the road.<br />
This last was supposed to serve as Donald’s failsafe, a new John to spry on us at night. But the pharmacist was no John and had come to help Donald out as a favor, not as a career. The two of us, who had liked each other prior to the night shift, got on very well.<br />
“In the summer of 1997 in anticipation of a larger than ever Christmas rush, Donald set up the second shift, one journal entry from 1997 recalled. “In the new building, we had already taken on a significant staff, growing from the four person operation (including Donald) at the old warehouse to three-full time pickers and packers, one full time driver, Stanley, me, three secretaries working with Carmella, three sales women in the outlet, and the woman Donald had hired to oversee operations there.”<br />
In a journal entry from June 1994, I concluded that Donald had created the night shift to handle the back log of orders the day shift was unable to catch up on.<br />
“Three men were assigned to the shift with me,” I wrote. “At the beginning of each shift, I divided up the orders equally, handing a pile to each man, telling them to have them done by the end of the night. I didn’t check on them. I didn’t ask what method they used or watched over them in various stages from picking to packing, I simply let them do what they were hired to do and questioned them towards the end of the night if one or more of them had problems keeping up.”<br />
In the 1997 accounting of the same period, I wrote, “I was the 2nd longest employee working in the warehouse and was put in charge of the shift, something that clearly concerned Stanley from the start. We had become friends over the years, but now I became competition.”<br />
Stanley may have feared by showing him up because of his obvious deficiencies.<br />
“I did just that but never by design,” I wrote in the same 1997 journal entry. “I just didn’t believe I had to look over everybody’s shoulder and believed people could be trusted to do their jobs. If they screwed up, then we would talk. Meanwhile I just let them go and went on with my own work – they and me, working side by side to get our assigned lot of shipments done.”<br />
The 1994 account shows some of the reaction from the others.<br />
“They seemed relieved to be left on their own and seemed to respond to this new freedom rather than being under Stanley’s watchful eye.”<br />
The two accounts differ on the percentage of total work done, but both record how amazed Donald was by the result, and how much Stanley resented it.<br />
“We did not have to deal with many of the interruptions the day crew did, such as the arrival of the lunch truck or the regular deliveries by UPS and other trucks. We worked until we were finished, then we sat down for a while. Tim Holly and I broke out our guitars, and then we all went home.”<br />
Stanley was appalled as recalled in the 1994 journal.<br />
“Stanley began to double check each order after we’d completed them, actually knifing open sealed boxes at random to check, not just how well they were packed, but the accuracy as to what we said was contained in each carton. Did he find mistakes? Of course. Any large operation is going to result in some error. But Stanley didn’t see it that way; we had rubbed his perfectionist fur the wrong way. He began to writ up a list of our mistakes and took them to Donald.”<br />
The 1997 account detailed Stanley’s confronting me about it.<br />
“He stared at me when I came in to pick up my paycheck, showing me the list of all the mistakes we had made. These were natural mistakes that came with filling orders, minor items with similar names of package designed put in one box or another to get shipped out.”<br />
Stanley gloated defiantly as if he had won some moral victory.<br />
My accounts of Donald’s reaction differ; one suggesting Donald was less concerned about the mistakes than Stanley was. The other said he shut down the operation a month earlier. I believe both account to be correct, and that he shut down the shift because we had managed to catch up with the back log early.<br />
The only problem was that we now had to go back to the corporate structure of the day shift and work under a supervisor who had a grudge against me.</span></div>
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<p></p>sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-72263517449956446232018-12-12T19:13:00.001-08:002021-02-22T16:45:28.520-08:0016 -- Isolation and Rebellion<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcnAgXFR41-kOOBGvLHSHYgAY_RQjn1OZ94KAHwMc1fENOPQJ5Ho63_Qsydn6MKM9rT0pGEftZlZ5s1gFgti2d7mjuDX6sfrrt-h28zuhILQAF_UOpNIz9zY7oTn_1g9s63M6EDkdbBZEg/s896/danny20.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="704" data-original-width="896" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcnAgXFR41-kOOBGvLHSHYgAY_RQjn1OZ94KAHwMc1fENOPQJ5Ho63_Qsydn6MKM9rT0pGEftZlZ5s1gFgti2d7mjuDX6sfrrt-h28zuhILQAF_UOpNIz9zY7oTn_1g9s63M6EDkdbBZEg/w400-h314/danny20.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: large;">From the day we moved into the new digs at Kaplan Drive, Donald’s new corporate structure went into effect, a forced isolation of each of the old staff.<br />
Carmella, prickly as a lone secretary at the old warehouse, became more and more hated and mocked as she became the head of a staff of younger and less loyal secretaries, who were charged with receiving calls and doing invoicing.<br />
Stanley was forced by direct command and geographic location and he became the bugger between workers and Donald. Stanley was ill-equipped for a role that made him more of a traffic cop than a warehouse manager.<br />
He was the man in the fishbowl workers made fun of, less feared than he ought to have been, and with the exception of new workers, no one respected him, seeing him largely as a puppet Donald operated by removed control from his inner sanctum.<br />
Donald became easy to hate simply because had had achieved what he always wanted, adding more layers to that buffer between his working class roots in his father’s garage and the corporate executive he ached to become.<br />
Remote prior to the move, Donald became almost unapproachable after it, insisting on a new formality that had always been alien to someone like me.<br />
Donald in upgrading had created a situation in which the old staff had to choose sides. While he berated Stanley for being too close to the men, I suffered the same unfortunate choice.<br />
The new men who lacked the more intimate experience of the smaller warehouse more or less accepted the new conditions as normal.<br />
I could not.<br />
Going into 1976, John took to the new system like a puppy – not only because he had too little experience with the old system, but because he had too much experience dealing with a small company at his father’s trucking firm. The expanded operation allowed him to more or less become one cog in a larger machine, degraded as a member of the working class, but no more or less than any of the other workers.<br />
John saw opportunity for advancement and quickly learned that by expanding the operations, Donald had introduced an element non-existent prior to this: office politics.<br />
As much as I came to like John – and for a time I liked him a lot – I never trusted him. This may have been the result of my seeing him kiss Stanley’s ass in the early months of 1976. At some point, John must have realized that Stanley lacked the power to give him what he wanted, and secretly he began to groove up to Donald instead.<br />
John – even years later when I met with him again – never said who initiated his spying on the rest of us.<br />
It hardly matters.<br />
By isolating Stanley from the rest of the work force, Donald needed a new means of gathering information about what actually went on in the warehouse.<br />
Donald needed to know about the issues and who the ring leaders were, and it could not have been much of a surprise to learn that I was the ring leader.<br />
New people gravitated to me in a way they could not with Stanley and less so with the God-like Donald we saw only once a day when he made his parade through the warehouse to get the lay of the land.<br />
In some ways, I had deluded myself as much as Stanley had when it came to what the expansion of the business meant.<br />
It was a common delusion I would see repeated during the 1980s and 1990s when I worked for small companies sold while I still worked in them, and the relationships employees made with old bosses vanished, leaving them to start from scratch or leave.<br />
I should have left Cosmetic Plus.<br />
Instead, I bitched both in public and in private, and this bitching became infectious so that other employees caught it, and to a greater or lesser degree my disease.<br />
Never stupid, Donald used John to learn about how deeply this infection went, and to pick a time when he would cur it by firing me and those other in whom the disease had progressed too far.<br />
I found out about the spying by accident when I went into the warehouse women’s room to store some rarely used item and I heard John’s nasally voice on the other side of the wall that separated the toilet from Donald’s inner sanctum.<br />
When I put my ear to the wall I heard John talking about me, Cliff and several other people in back. It took me a moment to realize what was going on and then I got angry.<br />
Cliff being Cliff wanted to beat John up when I informed him about the spying.<br />
But I had a better, crueler idea and one I would live to regret just as I regretted<br />
One or two other vicious things I have done in my life.<br />
I began a campaign of abuse that did not stop until John resigned.<br />
And from the start, I let him know why and drafted help from others, especially Cliff.<br />
We tortured John over everything, including the woman he dated.<br />
This last had something of an ironic twist in a relationship already tangled with twisted motives.<br />
I resented John for wanting and trying to steal from me a job I didn’t actually want.<br />
I felt betrayed by John, but I actually still liked him down deep, and truly believed the girl he dated and would later marry was no good for him.<br />
We did everything possible to talk him out of being with her, especially after we learned that a truly remarkable woman – a woman who loved books and history – had taken an interest in him.<br />
Cliff was convinced that John’s girlfriend had something on him, some bit of perverted dirt perhaps that made John give into her every whim, a woman we came to call “Fish Face” even in front of John.<br />
John married her a short time later, and she gloated about it to me, since she had heard all about how heavily we had lobbied against her.<br />
She would later bear John’s child and after they moved to California, she refused to return east again when John decided he wanted to come home.<br />
This left John more than a little bitter, and terribly alone.<br />
Donald, of course, didn’t trust John any more than we did. So after consulting with Stanley, he offered the job of assistant warehouse manager – the job John had lobbied so hard to get and I was supposed to get and did not want – to Cliff.<br />
John Quit.<br />
This was early 1977.<br />
I still don’t know for sure whether it was my abuse or Donald’s betrayal that drove John to quit.<br />
But Donald’s scheme backfired.<br />
He and Stanley had apparently hoped to cut the legs out from under my petty rebellion by buying off my biggest supporter in Cliff.<br />
Donald – through John’s spying – knew very well that Cliff was as angry about everything as I was, but he simply didn’t make as much noise about it as I did.<br />
For Cliff, however, Cosmetics Plus was always a stop over between college and some as yet unimagined future. His plans for a possible career in the NFL had evaporated with the injury to his knees.<br />
One thing Cliff was certain of is that he didn’t intend to make a career out of cosmetics.<br />
The offer to become assistant manager propelled him to leave.<br />
He did something he had resisted since before going to college, he went to work in his father’s insurance agency. He also proposed to some girl he had only dated a few times, promising himself a future as bland as his past at college had been exciting.<br />
Stumped by this sequence of events, Donald and Stanley made plans for the upcoming Christmas season, which included the establishing of a night shift.<br />
To my under astonishment, they offered me to run it, and even a bigger surprise to me – I said yes.</span><div><span style="font-size: large;">
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<p></p></div>sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-67700232861910486862018-12-12T19:11:00.001-08:002021-02-22T16:41:44.080-08:0015 - Cliff O'Neil<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ458jmEaBHHLE1Rbd60yG5zVc9s9vDzvNZpBsrQ0hFbi2pzKo3j-MQyvEfEgvgy0rG6UOn2daFBym4jdnN3F4zVqrYxsHLEM131L5u6EWpnf1ByJDKUmznV_x8bv_Qnk8k5dpurPKT8hX/s1600/ware7.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5657962715943528754" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ458jmEaBHHLE1Rbd60yG5zVc9s9vDzvNZpBsrQ0hFbi2pzKo3j-MQyvEfEgvgy0rG6UOn2daFBym4jdnN3F4zVqrYxsHLEM131L5u6EWpnf1ByJDKUmznV_x8bv_Qnk8k5dpurPKT8hX/s320/ware7.JPG" style="cursor: hand; float: right; height: 320px; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 218px;" /></a><br />
<br />
<div><span style="font-size: large;">
Not long after we moved into the new warehouse, the pressure got to Stanley and he started drinking more and more heavily, keeping one or more six packs in the small refrigerator in his office.<br />
He had always had a beer with lunch from the day I first started, but by this time, he didn’t bother with lunch.<br />
He felt caught between Donald and us, and often glared out through the window at us as he grew more and more suspicious of whether or not we were actually working.<br />
I resented the change as well. I missed the intimacy of the old place, but knew we could never go back. Every time Donald or Stanley hired another man, the further we got from the job I loved.<br />
We went through a number of men after John Telson in a desperate attempt to fill Donald’s assembly line. Most of them didn’t work out. For a time, John and I became close friends, visiting each others houses, I even had a knack for his sister, but that didn’t go anywhere.<br />
Things brightened up slightly when Cliff O’Neil came on board, but the atmosphere of warehouse was too far gone to be a happy place.<br />
From a journal entry of January 23, 1981:<br />
When Jimmy Carter got elected president, I thought it was the end of the world, and told everybody at Cosmetics Plus as much. Stanley only shook his head at me.<br />
“If you were so worried about it, you should have voted,” he said.<br />
I had a bad attitude of late. I couldn’t get myself out of bed in the morning at the thought of coming to work. I drove Stanley crazy with my griping, and Donald, and his wife, and Carmella. I half expected Donald to fire me. Sooner or later I knew he would.”<br />
Cliff had just come east from being a line backer at the University of Pittsburgh, and lived up to every inch of his name, a tall, broad-shouldered, blonde-haired man that had played on the football team in college right up until he hurt his knees, but still clearly a mountain of a man and nobody for anybody to take lightly.<br />
“If you start using your mouth around that guy, he’s going to use his fists on you,” Stanley warned me one day.<br />
He had carried on like a madman in college, and once recalled throwing some guy through a window when he was drunk. He talked all the time about the wild sex he had with women in the frat.”<br />
Already known for my snide remarks, John also cautioned me about messing with Cliff. I couldn’t resist, and teased him the first chance I got. I figured that his bad knees would give out if he tried to run me down.<br />
And he did chase me, and his knees did not give out, and he pinned me against some boxes in the back and wailed on me until I cried out, “enough!”<br />
“You’re supposed to have trick knees!” I said.<br />
“They tricked you, didn’t they?” Cliff said.<br />
Cliff had come to the warehouse as a temporary stopover between graduation from college and the real world. Without football as a real option, he seemed lost as to what else he wanted to do.<br />
Eventually, he came to accept that he would follow in his father’s footsteps and take on job in insurance.<br />
He would go on to marry a woman he took out only once, seemingly content in a passionless marriage to raise a family, although he had talked passionately about his life at school, about the fights and the sex and how good he felt to be one of the boys.<br />
He talked about the future as if bracing himself for a jail sentence.<br />
In the meantime, Cliff and I became close friends, taking in Yankee games where we got drunk and bitched about John, who had turned into something of a snake in his pursuit of power, figuring if he could narc on the rest of us, there wouldn’t be anyone left but him to get the job as assistant manager.<br />
This from a 1981 journal recounting some of those events:<br />
Anything we said in the warehouse John took back to Donald, happily reporting our actions in detail. Donald used John, but didn’t trust him any more than we did, which is probably why he offered Cliff the job over me or John. John was part of the reason my attitude got so bad.<br />
But John wasn’t the only reason – only the most obvious one. Our moving to the new warehouse had changed everything. Donald was consumed with becoming corporate, seeking to turn the whole place into a fine tuned machine in which we lost any sense of humanity.<br />
I guess I was shocked the first week when he installed a time clock and we began to punch in and out, and later the rollers that sent loose items to the packing tables in small cardboard carton. He had plans to install and even more insane machine, one with a motor attached. Then, he purchased a computer that began to churn out printed order for us to fill.<br />
I guess this all was progress, but I missed the more intimate flavor of the old warehouse where people relied on other people more than they relied on machines.<br />
John’s spying just make the rest unbearable, and because we knew he was doing it, we abused him openly.<br />
And for a long time, he endured it, and when he could no longer endure it, he quit.<br />
But by that time, I was ruined for the job, a total rebel that needed only the barest of excuses to rise up, and when Donald went after Michele.<br />
Stanley and Donald knew how to thwart me. By offering Cliff the job they once promised me and dangled before John, they removed my one strong supporter – even though in some ways, he was as angry as I was, he just kept silent about it.<br />
Stanley had brokered the deal, saying that I was too angry to be trusted.<br />
I told him I was angry enough to leave.<br />
“So leave already,” Donald later told me. “No one ever said you had to work for me.”<br />
Cliff never took the job, but left for a job with his father shortly after that.<br />
I felt guilty about harassing John, especially about mistreating him over his girlfriend Eva. Cliff and I were convinced she had something on him to keep him doing stupid things for her. In many ways, she mistreated him more than we did, and like a dog, he kept going back for more. He even married her.<br />
After Cliff moved on, other people came and went, some survived me. I remember the nasty time I gave some poor Dead Head, making his life as miserable as mine just because he loved a band more than life itself.<br />
Later, I realized that like Stanley I was striking out at people, not because they did anything wrong, but because I had become trapped in a job and a way of life I hated and I needed to break free or go crazy.<br />
The year 1976 faded away and 1977 came, as we geared up for another holiday rush<br />
This from a journal Aug. 8, 1981<br />
“The Summer of 1977 was the summer of Cliff O’Neil, Tim Holly, and part time John Telson. It was the summer Elvis died, we had a black out, and a tornado hit the Kaplan Drive warehouse while we were inside it.<br />
Cliff and I went to several Yankees games, got drunk at each, cursing John for his spying after I accidentally over heard him through the woman’s room door talking to Donald about us. John quit. Then so did Cliff. Donald and Stanley asked me to run the night shift for the Christmas season.”</span></div>
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<p></p>sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-50915071100458532012018-12-12T19:10:00.001-08:002021-02-22T16:40:08.705-08:0014 - Gary<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHaELoynskEcpKBRn9Gucg4SVkIoe_rwKKKes4wR5uVzqFSdZ5_Bv4bjbrirRQixYQ0e_edH-fxKCdKk2xoxvzQb67adWEImlEGsLv8JPG1oQyy2cZQ9XMmP9y1c-jGqancGICPEJjzkNK/s1600/fair06.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" height="274" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5657962415640783634" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHaELoynskEcpKBRn9Gucg4SVkIoe_rwKKKes4wR5uVzqFSdZ5_Bv4bjbrirRQixYQ0e_edH-fxKCdKk2xoxvzQb67adWEImlEGsLv8JPG1oQyy2cZQ9XMmP9y1c-jGqancGICPEJjzkNK/w640-h274/fair06.JPG" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 137px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" width="640" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"> Stanley didn’t understand until it was too late that his deal with Donald was a bad deal, and Stanley didn’t have the guts any more than I did to simply walk away and start over. He had already invested more than half his life between college and Donald’s business, and he had no place to go, not even to that dreadful hell of sheet metal he so much hated.<br />
“I hated that metal,” he told me once. “I hated its smell when the torches cut it. I hated the touch of the warm metal when I had to help move it after it was cut. The place was always hot and I was always dirty, sweating my balls off and stinking of metal even after I’d taken a shower. I used to go out for dinner sometimes with my family and could smell the metal in the restaurant. I wanted to quit that job a million times, but I knew I couldn’t afford it. I kept telling myself it would get better once I graduated college.”<br />
Donald must have known something was wrong, but he didn’t know how to fix it. He was like a repairman with a hammer as his only tool, his solution to everything was to bang on it. That’s what Donald did when it came to dealing with Michele (which eventually led to enraging me). It is what he did with Stanley.<br />
But the more he banged on Stanley, the worse Stanley got – drinking more, getting deeper and deeper into moods he couldn’t drag himself out.<br />
Maybe he kept thinking about those other two firms he had hooked up with in Newark prior to taking Donald’s offer.<br />
“Maybe I should have stayed in one of them,” Stanley told me. “Then I wouldn’t be putting in these kinds of hours. I just didn’t feel right in those places. I kept looking around and scratching my head and wondering what I was doing in the middle of a place like that, and why nobody was doing any work – or very little. When I asked someone what I should do next, they told me to slow down and not make everybody look bad.”<br />
He said his office – which we called the fish bowl – felt as bad as the metal shop sometimes.<br />
Isolated as he was, Stanley said he didn’t feel as if he was doing an honest day’s work and always ached to come out onto the floor to lend us a hand. Donald wouldn’t let him, and I overheard Donald once tell Stanley, “They get paid to work, you get paid to make sure they do it.”<br />
Donald made a point of parading through the warehouse at lease once a day, making sure we all noticed him, but dressed as he was with his expensive clothing, he looked out of place in the warehouse.<br />
Sometimes, when I saw Stanley and Donald in the fish bowl together I thought of them as some kind of classic comedy team – Stanley more than a foot taller than Donald, but with Donald doing all the talking.<br />
Stanley seemed to endure scolding until Donald left, and then he always reached for a beer.<br />
The more pressure he felt from the front office, the more Stanley drank – but he also drank when we gave him grief, which was pretty much all the time.<br />
Stanley didn’t know how to delegate authority. And didn’t trust anyone to do a job as well as he could, and often, out of frustration, he did the job regardless of what Donald said, lecturing the person who should have done it about how it ought to be done.<br />
Stanley didn’t like many of the other changes Donald had instituted, each appearing to take him farther and farther from the work table, isolating him from the rest of us, and over time, he began to think we hated him, and to some degree we did.<br />
Before we moved, Stanley was a remarkable kind man, someone who would do nearly anything to help out other workers. He often spoke about things his fellow workers understood like family maters, music, theaters. He suffered many of the same prejudices the rest of his workers had.<br />
As a boss, Stanley lost his ability to speak with his workers, falling into the same clichéd phrases his old bosses used when they bossed him, falling to communicate just as they had, believing the whole time he was acting properly.<br />
In a journal entry from the early 1990s, I recalled some of this.<br />
“After four years working with the man, I saw the frayed edges showing before I left. His doom was not his inability to lock lots or even his sense of perfection. For All Stanley’s desire to elevate himself, to climb up out of the muck of dirt and noise that marks life for working men, he lacked the one ability he needed most. He could not delegate authority. He told people what to do well enough, reading off their assignments every morning with the air of a truly modern warehouse manager. But in checking upon those duties, he often found himself frustrated by their failure to do the job as well as he could. Sometimes he took time from his own duties to do the job himself. Donald scolded him frequently and lectured him on the art of management. But each time there was a problem with an order or a delivery, Stanley rolled up his sleeves and did the work.”<br />
Stanley soon found a scapegoat for his frustration when a man named Gary came to work for us.<br />
Gary reminded Stanley of someone else, someone out of Stanley’s past who had done him wrong.<br />
He called Gary “a shyster,” and more than once I intervened on Gary’s behalf.<br />
“I wish you wouldn’t call him a shyster,” I said once when sharing a beer with Stanley in his office. “He takes it personally.”<br />
“He should. I’ve had my eye on that little con man since the day he started. He’s always puttering around in the back pretending to be working, but I know he’s got no good plans of his own.”<br />
“You hardly know him,” I argued.<br />
“I knew someone just like him. So I don’t need to know this one to know I don’t like him.”<br />
This was a side of Stanley I never expected to see. It was as if the two of them in the same location caused a chemical reaction.<br />
Donald had hired Gary as the new driver when Stanley was on vacation, raising questions in Stanley’s mind about Donald’s ability to read character.<br />
Gary loved Donald, partly because in some ways they were of the same breed, Gary found Donald’s ability to turn a buck admirable.<br />
Stanley and Gary disagreed on everything from sport to the time of day. Whereas Stanley loved the New York Mets, Gary loved the Yankees.<br />
Stanley was always watching the clock when Gary came in, looking for an excuse to slam him. If he was a minute late, Stanley was on him, when the rule was five minutes for the rest of us.<br />
Gary was a willowy man, reminding me more of a yard bird than a bird of prey, one of those wrens or sparrows picking at crumbs of bread someone threw on the sidewalk. He talked a good game, often claiming to have big plans that would take him places eventually. None of these ever amounted to anything. He flitted from job to job which he seemed likely to do the rest of his life.<br />
Years later, I ran into his again in Clifton. He was working another no-future job. His girlfriend was pregnant so he kept working even though he hated what he was doing.<br />
When I asked him if he had ever run into Stanley again, Gary looked at me.<br />
“That asshole,” he said. “If I do, I’ll punch him in the mouth.”
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<p></p>sully00http://www.blogger.com/profile/08523929037351094072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3591984196930099930.post-30625891050825046892018-12-12T19:08:00.001-08:002021-02-22T16:38:15.465-08:0013 -- Donald's Dream Warehouse<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoZOTzA5NKyFf0fW5jI1L9Bsai7sUSYolAtWZSs1CDOLyNtKwiJIFzYMWag-9tD5ZJ7-N3aysa-UTkW77nUjr3hAKvUNHVurX-zGEdMm8ND9DcMAnKfTYwk5xkboilP4PCzt1KghBX-nCN/s1600/neware2.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5657962134434325266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoZOTzA5NKyFf0fW5jI1L9Bsai7sUSYolAtWZSs1CDOLyNtKwiJIFzYMWag-9tD5ZJ7-N3aysa-UTkW77nUjr3hAKvUNHVurX-zGEdMm8ND9DcMAnKfTYwk5xkboilP4PCzt1KghBX-nCN/s320/neware2.JPG" style="cursor: hand; float: right; height: 301px; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 320px;" /></a><br />
<br />
<div><span style="font-size: large;">
Donald bought the new building in late 1975, and sold it about 30 years later when he finally was able to separate operations, locating D & B Wholesale Cosmetics in a new warehouse in Pine Brook, while moving the offices to Cosmetics Plus to a posh office complex in Wayne. Why he sold the building to an investment company for one dollar remains a mystery, although I suspect he probably had some interest in the firm.<br />
In 1975, however, this was a big move for him, and a big risk since his retail businesses had not panned out, and the whole of his future rested on the back of his wholesale operation – and us, especially Stanley.<br />
This was the big time, the moment Stanley had waited for since his coming into the firm in 1968, a time when his skills as a management person were to be tested. This was what he had worked for hard to reach, spending those seven years sweating over hot sheet metal by day and tough college books at night.<br />
For me, it was a slight change, for the most part. I was to give up my time on the road, and work more closely with Stanley inside.<br />
I was being groomed to take over Stanley’s job as warehouse manager when he moved up.<br />
All this seemed rather vague to me at the time.<br />
We all talked about Stan’s eventual promotion, and plotted to see which one of us would take his place when he did, but in truth, I never saw any place for Stanley to go.<br />
From the beginning, Donald was the top dog in this corporate structure. Certainly his brother played a role for a while, and later, Donald had some silent partners in other ventures that included some mysterious Service Corporation in Florida, but in every listing off company officers, there was Donald on top, and one manager of his warehouse operations. This was true when he founded the company in 1968 and this was true in the latest reporting issued in fall of 2011.<br />
Cosmetics Plus, D & B Wholesale, and all the other names he did business under were always all about Donald, there simply wasn’t room for anyone else.<br />
Years later, after I burned all my bridges, I wondered if I had been groomed, not to fill in because Stanley was moving out, but to replace him when Donald decided Stanley could no longer keep up with the business.<br />
When I talked to John in 2002, he pointed out a rather odd irony in all this. For all the plotting that would transpire behind the scenes for that coveted seat, none of us would get it, and, in fact, Stanley wouldn’t even keep it. After his wide died in 1999, Stanley’s deteriorated to a point where Donald replaced him. When John went back to apply for a job there in 2000, he found Stanley back at work, but not in his old job, he was doing what I had done before my departure in 1978.<br />
The lower ranks, however, changed dramatically going into 1976, as the company took on one, two, then finally three or four additional people to handle the volume of work that Stanley expected the new warehouse to generate.<br />
While we still had wheeled carts to carry pieces to the packing tables, Donald had installed a line of rollers along one wall and cardboard trays in which we could put the items as we went through the newly installed rows of shelving that made up a corner of the new warehouse. The idea is that someone could start at one row of these shelves, placed the items in the tray, roll it to the next series of shelves – or if the tray was full – start a new tray, pushing these along the rollers until the picking was done and a line of cardboard trays waited for the packer to check and package.<br />
I was more than a little startled by the assembly line concept, even if it made sense, because it more than hinted at what Donald’s vision was for the future, and since I did not want to be part of any assembly line, I suspected things would only get worse – and as it turned out, they did. After I left, Donald expanded this to include a larger, motorized system of belts. During a brief visit to see Stanley in early 1979 (after Donald had fired me), I was shocked at the change. But not quite as much as Stanley was. After being fired, I had taken up a job at Wine Imports of America where such a system filled the entire warehouse, so I’d had time to get used to it.<br />
A deer in headlights perhaps best described Stanley’s expression each time he looked over at Donald’s contraption. This was the future of Cosmetics Plus.<br />
The building was huge. Perhaps ten times the size of the old warehouse might be an exaggeration, but not much of one. It had so much office space in the front, you needed a map to get around it, and the only reason we couldn’t get lost in the back is because it was so wide open,<br />
If Carmella had felt cramped in the old warehouse often space, here the world stretched out around her like a John Ford movie with one room for meetings, another room with desks for multiple secretaries, and still a vast glassed in space that was to become Donald’s office – with yet more space to put Stanley in if and when someone could figure out what exactly he would do once he actually did get a promotion.<br />
Located somewhat off the main Fairfield Road via Daniels Road, the new warehouse was something of a box-like structure with a decorative front that would eventually boast the name “Cosmetics Plus” on it in large red lettering until it was sold in 2004 to become some kind of printing facility.<br />
When we arrived, it was divided into three distinct sections: office space just beyond and to the left of the front door.<br />
Coming in through the glass front door, you would find yourself in a kind of foyer with two doors to the right and left, with a receptionist window to next to the door on the left.<br />
A door to the right would eventually lead to a subdivision that would become a beauty supply outlet – which would eat up some of the warehouse house space along the left side of the building.<br />
Carmella began her job here behind the receptionist window, but over time was moved back farther in the office as other women were hired, filling in for her initially, until she lost that aspect of her job entirely, and became a kind of office manager – and gradually became more isolated and disliked as the management structure emerged, and the younger women saw her as a kind of overseer.<br />
The open office had a number of other doors off of it, to a meeting room and other rooms, including Donald’s new inner sanctum, and a space he would eventually glass in to keep the dust off the new Cadillac-sized computer, the heart of Donald’s new empire. This machine would print out our orders, keep track of inventory and of our hours, and tell Donald how much money he was making. Another door led to the back and the section of the warehouse where we worked.<br />
<br />
<br />
When we arrived, there were two large warehouse rooms connected by a large interior opening. The left warehouse was where we did most of our work, and this had a regular side door about three quarters down the right side that led to the parking lot, and at its rear was a loading dock with a sunken drive leaving up to it.<br />
The other warehouse had a garage like door that was even with the surface outside, which meant that we could pull the van inside and unload. We could load it the night before for the next morning’s delivery, rather than having to rush as we did in the old place.<br />
Early on, we primarily used the left side of the warehouse.<br />
Near the front of this section between the start of the shelving and the front office proper, were the bathrooms. Since the office had its own toilets, the women’s room in back was used as a storage room – a significant piece of information that would later prove important since I was in there often and it had a common wall with Donald’s office up front.<br />
On wall just inside the door from the front and across a narrow space from what was to become Stanley’s office, was the time clock.<br />
This – more than the computer or any of the other modernizations – most symbolized Donald’s plans for the future.<br />
Prior to this, employees simply signed in and out. For me, it suggested a distrust that I had not sensed in Donald and Stanley before, a sense of suspicion that would make itself evident in other ways, too.<br />
Stanley when I raised the issue with him said it was simply a matter of keeping up with the increased number of workers.<br />
With the new space and the increased number of doors between us and his office, Donald became even more remote than before, insisting on our following a chain of command. In other words, we spoke with Stanley, and then Stanley would go talk to him.<br />
Stanley’s office, whose door opened into the warehouse directly across from the time clock marked another major change in company policy.<br />
Clearly built after Donald had taken possession of the building with two by fours and plaster board, it was more a box than a legitimate office with two walls made up of the wall to the office behind and the wall to what would be the outlet center opposite the door. The final wall had a large window that looked out over the warehouse.<br />
From a story called “Stanley’s Passion” and later “KiKu,” I draw this description about this space.<br />
` “Stanley’s face floated behind his office window like a drowned man’s. Donald, the owner, had installed the window so that Stanley could keep an eye on us, but instead, we stared at him, and he hated it. As a warehouse manager, Stanley was a snap shot out of the 1950s, from short black hair to his solid American beliefs, and often, we caught him cupping his face in his hands as if a scene from that old TV sitcom Dobby Gillis. A tall man made strong by work in sheet metal, Stanley gloated over his transition from union man to management, claiming the seven years of night school had more than paid him back. Yet in those private moments, when he studied us studying him through the window, his eyes seemed pinched and his mouth twisted, as if he was seeking someone to blame for his misery.<br />
“Most of us liked the warehouse since we have arrived here as had Stanley from personal infernos full of demon bosses and dismal working conditions. The high windows sent shafts of bright sunlight down onto the wide aisle and racks of goods, giving even the settling dust a jewel-like quality.<br />
“`Stan’s in a bad mood,’ one of the other workers said as I hurried in, trying to punch in before I violated the five-minute time clock policy that officially pronounced me as late.<br />
Spring had arrived that morning after a harsh winter and I had walked down the hill to work rather than staying on the stuffy bus for the last two stops, letting the changing air invigorate me.<br />
Seeing Stanley confirmed the rumors that he came in early before sunrise, and so didn’t have the chance to appreciate the change of season. If we could get him out into the air, maybe his mood would change. But Stanley never played hooky. He came to work each day like a soldier, picking up his marching orders from the front desk as he entered and then pushed us through the drills for the next eight to twelve hours. He did not exempt himself from the pile of orders and so never let us get away with anything either.”<br />
Even Stanley suffered under the new chain of command, since he could not simply walk up to Carmella as he had in the old place to ask and see the boss. He had to call Donald on the phone or make his way into the front office to deal with the new bureaucracy, Donald had built around himself.<br />
Stanley was totally isolated. He hated the idea of having an office at all, but Donald insisted, telling him he had to learn to keep his distance from us. We called the office “a fish bowl” and day after day he would sit at his desk, consuming his beer as he watched us work.</span></div>
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