Summer afternoons, a Friday. It is my brother Brian’s birthday. He’s a good man. He was a pain in the ass growing up but now we are friends. It took a while to get to this point and here we are. Years ago, let’s say 50 years ago, it was different.

Life was good and easy and I had few responsibilities. And if I did have responsibilities I sometimes neglected doing them. Something as easy as putting away the butter from the morning, I just couldn’t get it done. Not out of malice, but more out of forgetfulness and distraction.

I remember a walloping from my mother for that exact offense. I didn’t know about money or how much a container of Breakstone’s Lightly Salted Butter was and how it maye have become rancid due to me. I have no idea if scenes like this played out in the homes of my friends but for me I was living in a different world.

I almost burned the house down due to idiocy. Teaching myself how to smoke cigarettes. I thought I would be smart and smoke in the dark, in the basement, sitting on top of dried out newspapers and putting out the cigarette on those very same papers which caused them to smolder.

That was one of the last straws, what will they do about John? Sometimes I was shipped out to friends of my parents. Sometimes they had kids my age, sometimes they didn’t. Marge Mudrack was a friend of my parents, a widow who sometimes hung out at the VFW.

She offered to take me in and so I was shipped off. She had a pool and it was summer but I really did not spend much time in the pool, though I would see my mother drive by since the HBJ book warehouse was quite near.

Mom wasn’t stopping by, she was going home to make dinner for her other children and my father. No time for me. There was nothing to do for me and if I was able, I would get some cash, some coins and buy comic books, but that rarely happened.

I was a handful and someone to worry about. My brother Brian was sometimes saddled with me, my mother telling him to keep an eye on me which he did with great resentment.

One summer Brian was working at HBJ and his friend Pete Frega was coaching a Summer League baseball team. Brian called me up from the warehouse payphone and asked if I wanted to play summer league baseball.

I of course said no to which Brian replied ‘Too bad, you’re gonna’. I could protest until I was blue in the face but the die was cast. I did not want to play baseball and never expressed any interest in doing so. That didn’t matter.

My mother might’ve watched one game and saw me strike out as I was swinging for the fences. Oh I hated it and tried to injure myself to get out of it. I had a baseball cap and a summer league t-shirt to go with my bruised nascent ego. I don’t think I lasted the baseball season which was just another thing in my life that was unfinished and incomplete.

The pattern was starting to form.

Fruit stand vibes. Jamaican artist in the house. Used to be dancehall, now roots. I was never a fan of dancehall. One or two songs but I much preferred roots, ska, rock steady. Basically everything before dancehall. Typical me, behind the times.

My reggae story is convoluted somewhat. I knew who Bob Marley was, and had the Legend greatest hits collection when it came out. My sister had the Rastaman Vibration album. The Legend collection came out after Bob died.

Bob passed in 1981, the greatest hits came out in 1984. I remember one night walking from Summit Avenue in Hackensack to my parents home in Lodi. I am uncertain if my mother was still alive. I think she was. No Woman No Cry is remembered as I walked past what used to be the Tuscan Milk machine.

A few years after that, I had gone to see Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers with the Neville Brothers opening up. I went with Damian Uva, an old friend of Julio’s. Something resonated with me that night, and I was smitten with reggae.

I always liked the herb as you know. Soon I was working at Skyline Studios, where there were Rastas outside on the sidewalks in the area, peddling their herb. They liked me, I liked them and soon I was hanging out in Brooklyn with Rastas from Guyana and Suriname.

My good friend Miriam was also into reggae and the dreads certainly liked Miriam. One time it was bitter cold outside and I invited Marcus and Poncho inside to sit in the lobby to warm up, knowing a few kind buds would make their way into my pockets.

Unfortunately 2 guys name John who invented a dial a song phone line didn’t like that and complained to the management who reprimanded me but did not throw out Marcus or Poncho.

The 2 guys named John were friends of my brother Frank who had them on his radio show a few times. They got famous in the 1990s with their quirky, twee ditties. Now they seem to be regulated to the sidelines once again.

I became friends with Marcus’ brothers as well. Clarence, Kenneth and Jamal. I know Marcus had a real name of Reginald Bowens but Marcus was his name of choice and I can only guess Clarence, Kenneth and Jamal’s names might not have been on their birth certificates.

Poncho passed away in 1999. He was a good man, looked out for me a few times in a commanding voice that stopped me dead in my tracks when I was about to get in trouble or do something stupid or a combination of the two.

Clarence was somewhat religious, Kenneth was a roughneck and Jamal was just a smiling, laughing dude. Somehow, I understood them and spoke to them, mirroring their patois. Things happen, people pass away, move on to other jobs in other locations.

Marcus had his finger in many pots, always hustling and sometimes getting arrested. After a few years of that, I believe he was deported back to Guyana. I have no idea what happened to Clarence, Kenneth or Jamal. I will tell you about another Rasta, Jesse, some other time.