Tag Archives: VFW Post 3484

Da Butt

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Ok, I have a swollen face. Well it was really swollen this morning. It’s gone down considerably. Things have improved a lot between Bill and myself. Last night I took a nap from 5:30 to about 10:00. Saw Bill and went to bed an hour later. So it was cool. Still have some ways to go but he’s working on it.

I haven’t had a cigarette in over 24 hours and that is an accomplishment. I do enjoy holding one, but no lighting. Holding one is enough. If I could get off cigarettes I would be impressed. The cigars are an occasional thing though.

I certainly don’t mind being around smokers and in midtown Manhattan, outside of most office buildings there are a lot of smokers mingling. The thing is I always liked smoking. I wanted to do it when I was just a kid. I was surrounded by smokers since most everyone smoked back then. It was alright. In junior and senior year of high school, we could smoke in out designated smoking area.

Smoking saved my butt also. In summer school between junior and senior year having cigarettes helped me win favor from the ‘cool’ kids so much so, that when the regular sessions began in the fall, I wasn’t picked on so much since the cool kids liked me. For my cigarettes of course. Having 2 parents that smoked made sure that I wouldn’t be out of cigarettes. I must have had my first cigarette when I may have been about 10 years old.

Johnny Serpone, a neighbor and I plotted out stealing a pack of cigarettes from his parents and riding down to Industrial Lane on a Saturday afternoon and have our first puffs. I barely had a puff before I was wracked with guilt and fear and rode my bicycle home, gulping in as much air and running to the kitchen faucet when I got home to drink as much water as possible.

At various points in my childhood I was hanging out with juvenile delinquent smokers. At the Boys Club which was supposed to be where boys could get away from bad influences, I went out of my way to find the bad influences. Also outside the VFW where my parents hung out. Found myself outside with some naer do wells sneaking illicit puffs. I was found out though, but I doubt my siblings remember.

Everyone smoked. It was everywhere. You could smoke in the bank, in the supermarket, movie theaters were great places to smoke. Hospitals, doctor’s offices, buses, trains, restaurants. They frowned on places of worship, though one had to wonder where they got the ashes for Ash Wednesday. Having a cigarette was a good way to meet people, and not just oncologists.

You could ask someone for a light, and perhaps strike up a conversation or more. Or when cigarettes were cheaper you could bum a cigarette from someone or they could bum from you. Nowadays, people offer you money for a cigarette, sometimes a quarter, but lately a dollar.

Me, I rolled my own. Sometimes people would ask for a cigarette and I would offer a ready rolled cigarette. More often than not they would refuse, proving that beggars could be choosers. So, it’s been over 24 hours, been holding a cigarette, not lighting it. Feels good just to hold it. I guess it’s like Baretta. All I need is a cockatoo. Or was that a typo?

I Hope I Never

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Well I just woke up from a two part nap. First part was exhausting and concerned a dream involving Zombies. The zombies were unseen but you just know they were lurking around the corner. And the zombies had help with one of our own, someone who I think was modeled after Richard Marty, someone I went to grammar school with years ago, and I haven’t seen him since 1971. According to my unconscious mind, Richard is lithe and very effeminate, besides being a zombie collaborator. Still had the horned rimmed glasses, but none of the humor he possessed when he was a lad. He was actually like a more evil Doctor Smith from Lost In Space.

It was a Ten Little Indians scenario, we were all being picked off one by one in a huge warehouse (looking like the Nostromo from Alien) that had a room that looked like the bar at the VFW where I grew up, Post 3484. I was preparing to evacuate but I couldn’t find my bag, which if you know me, know that I always have the bag nearby. I placed it down as the zombies were approaching and I couldn’t find it. Not that I really needed it, there was nothing as far as I knew in it to stop the zombies. I think it had more vampiric weapons which were ineffective anyhow.

And of course I violated one of the primary rules from the Zombie Survival Guide by dilly dallying looking for unneeded things. I eventually escaped and made my way down a very long stair case, running down half a dozen steps at a time. Then I woke up, signifying the end of part one. I went and had some water, feeling exhausted and proceeded to go back to sleep. I thought I’d be back in the zombie dream again, but I think it was in turnaround and I found myself in a dreamland where I didn’t know what was going on and so went unremembered.

After that uneventful sleep I woke up to find the cable was out, so no TV, and also no Internet. Of course the first thought I had was about zombies. Perhaps while sleeping they attacked the television stations or at least the Cablevision headquarters knocking out the cable. No screaming in the distance which is always a good thing. And there’s no reports of zombies crawling up and down Hudson county, but they’re broadcasting from Manhattan, unaffected and probably wouldn’t report it if given a choice between a puppy dog licking someone’s face or a zombie attack.

Seriously though, they are reporting on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, in Pakistan, and also the tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo (that seems out of 12 Monkeys). Cable still out, watching fuzzy screened broadcast TV. That bunker mentality. Well it doesn’t look like there is a zombie attack, so I’m making dinner instead of stocking up on provisions. Foolhardy, perhaps, but I am hungry.

Cable back on, still zombie free.