Category Archives: So how’s band camp?

I Like The Way You Move- Outkast

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I am pretty sure it was junior year of high school, when Sister Reginald told the class that we were there because we had to be there. Once we went to college, no one would be making us go to class. That rang a bell in my head. I am the type of person that if I don’t want to do something or go somewhere, then I won’t do it, or I won’t go there. ‘Why stay in college? Why go to night school? Gonna be different this time” was a line that floated through my head as I rode my bicycle with a tape deck in my arms. Yes I was somewhat coordinated at that point.

In between junior and senior year of high school, I had to go to summer school. I failed history which was odd since history was one of my favorite subjects. I had two friends in high school, Jim Carley and John Nesselt. Jim grew up in Harrington Park and Nesselt grew up in Glen Rock. Paramus Catholic is a regional high school so that meant I never saw them out of school. But the times we were together were genuine and fun.

Jim and I had Mr. Ward for our history teacher and Mr. Ward looked like Lou Costello from the Abbott & Costello cartoons. In between classes Jim and I would see Mr. Ward approaching and one of us would usually yell out ‘Hey Abbott!’ like they did in the cartoons. Mr. Ward eventually caught on and despite being a history teacher, was able to put 2 and 2 together, and flunked both Jim and myself meaning we would have to go to summer school. It was a drag but manageable. I don’t know what school Jim went to but I wound up going to Hackensack high school.

I would get up and get myself together and hitchhike along Essex Street, up the big hill. I almost always got a ride which dropped me off close to the school. There were a few other kids from Paramus Catholic in my class so I wasn’t a total stranger in a strange land. But these kids were the ‘bad’ kids and they didn’t know me that well and I didn’t know them that well. I did wind up in their favor by giving hem cigarettes which I had stolen from my mother. It was a bit like prison, using cigarettes to ‘buy’ protection.

After summer school I would either walk or take a bus to the HBJ warehouse and work most of the day. My parents had gone on vacation to Disney World, leaving my brother Brian and myself behind. Brian would probably not have gone to Disney World with our parents and my opportunity was taken away by Mr. Ward’s desire to teach Jim Carley and myself a lesson. I didn’t mind working through the summer and found myself really enjoying my work and my co-workers.

Nick Lattanzio and John Carroll hit it off and were constantly riffing on Odd Couple episodes, freezing me out since I was not as obsessive as they were. I wound up hanging out with people in other departments. People like Bill Wrice and Perry Dedovitch who worked in the Psych department a few feet over. They worked with Annie Carroll who was John Carroll’s sister, and they all worked for Carlos Baez who was some former junkie from the Bronx.

There was also Laszlo Papp who according to my mother used to be a nice boy, leaving the warehouse one Friday night and coming back to work on Monday with spiked hair and a swastika on his shirt. He wasn’t a Nazi, he just bought some Vivian Goldman stuff in the Village for shock value. And shocked he did. They couldn’t fire him, he was a good worker and a tough nut to crack.

I hung out with Laszlo occasionally, asking if he was going to the city over the weekend and I would give him some money to pick up some records for me if he had the chance. He usually did have the chance and on Mondays I’d meet up with him and get whatever was new and current. Soon I would be going with him on weekends and buying the records for myself.

I was enjoying work so much and also reading the textbooks that I would be shipping to college students around the country. My SAT scores were decent but I wasn’t encouraged to go to college. I wasn’t encouraged to do anything with my life. As far as I knew, financial aid would not be available to me since my parents made too much money. Not that we were rich, just thisclose to being over the cut off point.

I was “gonna be different this time”. I mean, I already was different, it’s just that no one besides me knew it at that point.

I got the mews




12 Life During Wartime

I Know You’re Out There Somewhere

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I just woke up from a nap. It was supposed to be an hour long nap, and I set the Internet Alarm Clock for an hour. I got as far as a half hour, waking up from a deep sleep, apparently dreaming that the alarm clock was going off. It creates an irritating sound, two rooms away which would cause me to get out of bed and shut it off, close the window.

I guess I was dreaming about it, and the sound is like a large mechanical dog barking and it ‘barked’ about 4 or 5 times then stopped making me think Bill was home and shut it off. But he wasn’t and once I was awake, I couldn’t go back to sleep.

It was a somewhat productive day off. Laundry that was washed over the weekend was finally put away. It took a while due to time and the fact that things were dried on racks. The humidity did not help much with the drying. The usual trip to the supermarket, the quick chat with Isis and back home for breakfast.

I started to despair since about a dozen resumes went out over the past weekend and nary a nibble had occurred. I knew if I stayed indoors all day it would be too depressing so out for a walk I went.

I printed out a few resumes and decided to hit a few spots on Washington Street, even if there was no sign in the window, I talked to whoever was in and introduced myself, gave a little song and dance and dropped off the CV. Other places that did have ‘Now Hiring’ signs in their window directed me to visit their websites and go sign up there. Still, I left my CV there before heading out.

There are a few spots in town with ‘Join our Team’ signs in the window, and you visit their website and wait for nothing to happen. At least nothing happens to me. I’ve applied a few times, I don’t have any visible tattoos and am willing to stand and do whatever it takes, whatever they ask and no word is forthcoming. So I apply and reapply anyway.

A bright spot in my day was running into Lisa Rigoux Hoppe on the street. She was looking good, coming back from physical therapy and going to get a bite to eat before heading back to work. She mentioned that she’s been looking at the university website on my behalf but there really isn’t anything happening and the things that are happening are listed for the students. And that’s my competition, the students, the recent college graduates and the people who have been out of work for some time.

I don’t know what it is. The cigar shack for me personally has been getting worse and worse. A cigar dinner is planned and I have advertised it on the cigar shack blog, and I have placed other adverts online and sent out emails. My clients are uninterested or broke or what is the likely cause, my emails get sent to their spam folders since under pressure from the midlevel head cheeses I send them too many emails.

So there is that pressure to upsell everything. I have to stop treating people the way I like to be treated when I shop. I have to be more in their face, hovering around them and not sell the lower priced items but go for the big ticket items which more often than not, turns them off and after trying to sell a lighter for $1,900 they leave not caring about a $25 lighter that is available and in their price range.

I don’t care about fancy watches and I don’t look for them on people’s wrists. I can’t read people like that, I tend to look past the surface and see the person underneath the fancy trappings. My co-workers have an eye for that and I guess that’s why they tend to do better. I guess working at the late, lamented Farfetched or even Pier Platters back in the day, i.e. working for friends- does not really count as working retail.

Apparently I am ahead of the curve on cigars somehow. I prefer the larger gauge cigars and for the past two years management and co-workers have derided me on that fact. Now the premium cigar makers are coming out with larger gauge cigars. Management will grumble, but there’s the fact- I was right and they were wrong.

With regards to my co-workers, there is also the fact that they have been working retail most of their lives and are better at that, where I have been working in offices mostly and used to the 9 to 5, Monday through Friday gigs.

It’s still rough out there and I do have a job.


Road To Nowhere