Tag Archives: Hyman Gross

I Am Mine

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Monday Monday, Can’t trust that day. And here I am on a Monday and it hasn’t been so undeserving of trust. Yesterday was quite an interesting day, much more so than today.

For one thing, it was a Sunday and it was a day off. I requested it earlier at the beginning of April. I had plans to visit Hyman Gross in the hospital, first visit post-surgery. His bone density was enough that the surgeon felt setting a pin in his leg/foot/ankle would suffice.

I only expected to be there for an hour but it turned into 2 hours. Hyman had an ultrasound on Friday pre-surgery and while he was waiting there was an alarm in the hospital causing most of the staff to abandon Hyman on a gurney in the hallway, leaving him to holler in vain as he heard the scurrying of mice around the wheels of the gurney.

I hung in there with Hyman, and even offered to move the gurney back to his room so I could get moving along myself, but it was advised to have an orderly do it. I figured it was no big deal since 20 years ago I carried dear Harpy from one floor to another when he was in the hospital.

Luckily Harpy weighed less than the 98 pounds he usually weighs and carried him in my arms down a flight of steps. It all went well with Hyman and I was able to head to the Hoboken Art & Music Festival, a little later than I expected but really it was no big deal.

My main goal was to see Ian Hunter and the Rant Band playing featuring Mr. Wonderful Jim Mastro. And with Jim involved that meant it was more than likely that Lily, Ruby & the funniest girl alive, Meghan would be there. And they were. As was Chaz!

I met Ivan Julian who I have seen on stage a few times. Ivan played with Richard Hell & the Voidoids as well as the Outsets. He looked great then and hasn’t aged one bit, looking as sexy as ever these days. Steve Fallon was around as were several other people from the Maxwells days. I kept mainly to myself though, after saying hello to Steve.

I missed the Steve Wynn & Peter Buck thing, the Baseball Project but I didn’t really know they were playing until about an hour or two before I left the apartment. It was great to see Meghan and the girls, Lily off to Bard, Ruby to be a sophomore next semester and Meghan maintaining her reign as funniest girl alive.

Ian Hunter took the stage, opening with All the Way from Memphis, and doing Mott the Hoople and solo hits, Cleveland Rocks, Once Bitten Twice Shy among others like Somewhere from West Side Story, finishing off with a sing along of All the Young Dudes.

It had gotten cooler and after saying my goodbyes to Meghan and Lily & Ruby and the Jack of Hearts I started for home. Ran into Rand & Lisa, and then the three of us ran into RoDa & Elly with Logan and Autumn in tow.

RoDa, born & raised in Hoboken knows everyone and we lost track of him. Rand & Lisa walked me to the corner of my block before they headed to their home. I came upstairs, quite slowly since once again I was standing on concrete for a few hours, though wearing Airwalks helped.

I turned on the TV and noticed there was no audio. Instead I watched a DVD via Netflix. An Australian movie, Animal Kingdom. I heard it was like the Australian version of Goodfellas and this was way more intense than how I remember Goodfellas to be.

It was so good, nicely paced and so intense that at one point I thought about turning off the movie, it had gotten that far under my skin. Jacki Weaver who plays the matriarch was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar, but went home empty handed. This movie was bound to give her more notice, worldwide if not the States.

Bill came home in the last 20 minutes of the movie and I told him about the cable audio being out so he called the cable company as I watched the extras on the DVD. The woman on the other end of the line instructed Bill who instructed me to unplug the cable box and plug it in again so the box would reboot.

Fair enough. But before that I had turned on the TV to show Bill how it was not working when we saw the Osama Bin Laden had been killed. Big news indeed and here we were without any TV News.

The NY Times website had the info and Bill relayed the news to the woman on the phone who was understandably excited. We eventually got the audio back and watched the news being repeated eventually deciding on the BBC and waiting for President Obama to make the announcement regarding Osama Bin Laden being killed.

Bill went to bed after a little while, I stayed up late watching and not getting anything but the basic information. Tomorrow I have off from work. Bill is taking a half day since he is singing the National Anthem at CitiField before the NY Mets/ San Francisco Giants game tomorrow night. Very exciting and we are understandably nervous.

Bill more so than I am, but still I will probably catch up eventually.

Ian Hunter's Back!


Ian Hunter & Jim Mastro



Baby, It WAS You


I Am A Cider Drinker

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Another day in the cigar shack. It’s been a long day, but it’s been a productive day and my sales, while in the third place are still pretty good, four figure range. It’s Calvin and Thomas and myself once again.

Tomorrow I am off as I requested at the beginning of April so I could attend the Hoboken Art & Music Festival on Washington Street. I am really looking forward to seeing Ian Hunter and I believe Mr. Wonderful Jim Mastro is playing with Ian Hunter. Hopefully that means Meghan and Lily and Ruby will also be in town and it is always very good to see them.

I spoke with Hyman Gross earlier in the day and apparently his bone density is good enough that a pin may have been inserted and not needing him to wear a cast and be incapacitated for 12 weeks.

That would not be good for Hyman since he thrives on getting around and having him housebound would not be a good thing at all. Bill and I plan on seeing him tomorrow in the hospital and all three of us are looking forward to it.

I had lunch with Raymond, aka Dave who used to work alongside me in the cigar shack. We didn’t eat, we smoked cigars on a bench near the park. I ate before heading out. It was good to see him, I hadn’t seen him in a while.

Bill is driving once again to Atlantic City. I did not see him at all this morning, he missed the train he usually takes and had to catch a 10:00 train which is when I was headed to the bus stop. I gambled and hoped that a 10:30 bus would show up and much to my surprise it did.

So it’s been a busy and relatively fun day in the cigar shack.

Now the fire alarm is going off. We are on alert. There was no need for alarm and there was no need for the alarm. It turns out some kids pulled the fire alarm then ran. I suppose a false alarm is better than an actual alarm, that is unless there was a need for the fire department elsewhere.

No, I didn’t do it. I was too busy taking pride in my job, you know, me and millions of other people not complaining or whining about having to stand on concrete floors for 9 hours a day. Because we are all exactly the same, we are all in the same situations.

The knee seems to be getting better, new shoes helped but at the end of the day I look forward to an ice pack on my knee the same way a businessman looks forward to a martini or whatever when they come home from work.

And of course climbing up subway stairs as well as four flights of stairs doesn’t really help the knee but instead of sounding like I am whining, I might as well just stop writing right now.
UA-9199038-1 from Toms River?


Raymond aka Dave