Subject: ASP-Way Back1-The Volare Years Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 20:14:02 GMT One of these days, I can see I'm going to have to try and rename all these stories. I guess this is the result when you're writing all over the map, without going from point A to point Z. So for now, I'll just call this adventure, "Way Back1-The Volare Years." It ain't perfect, but what the hell. As the story shows, this relates to a time a couple/few years before the PRE1 through PRE5 adventures that I recently posted. The Giz ______________________________________________________ THE "VOLARE" YEARS It was a party! Cheap, colored blinking Woolworth's Christmas Lights hung across the outside of the window sills, along the clothes line and around the chain link fence in tacky nouvous middle class style. The smell of Open Pit barbecue sauce being liberally brushed onto the hamburgers, hotdogs and chicken in the grill permeated the seductively warm breezy summer night. And there was laughter. A lot of laughter and bright conversation. Fueled by Johnny Walker, Haig & Haig Scotch, Marlboro's and good food. And there was "Volare." That's right, "Volare." This song, made ultra popular by singer, actor, comedian and "Rat Pack" member, Dean Martin, may have defined the moment. The era was 1959 through 1963. The "fifties" were drawing to a close and the "60's" had not yet become associated with The Beatles, Long Hair, Hippies, Drugs and Draft Dodgers. Nope, this was a special time. The grownups that attended that party were the beneficiaries and heroes of WWII. The war was over about 15 years or so and most of the parents in my neighborhood had come back from overseas, got jobs, got married and had kids. Most of them were proud, many were tough and some were weird. They worked forty to sixty hours a week at whatever job they did. They were milkmen, grocery store owners, postal workers, painters, carpenters, barbers, accountants and cab drivers. But in the evening they kicked back, watched that new and magical device, Television, which at that time only maybe 1 out of every 6 families had, watched the kids go outside and play and made babies. The parents that is! On the weekend they had parties and dinners and took long drives to far away places. All business's were closed on Sundays with the exception of hospitals, funeral parlors and a few other mandatory 7 day a week gigs. There were no shopping malls as yet. The closest thing to one was this Shopping Complex that just opened in 1959/60 called The Cross County Shopping Center. It was in Yonkers, NY. This was a early prototype of the malls of today, although the only thing that was indoor was each store. The roads, sidewalks etc. were all on the outside. Yup, Volare would embed itself into my memory for the rest of my life. I wonder if Dean Martin knew he was doing that? At these weekend parties, even the grownups would sing along to the chorus, "Volare, Oh Oh, Cantare, Oh Oh Oh Oh. Nel blu, di pinto di blu. Feleci di stare lassu." Everyone sang those damn lyrics, even if they weren't Italian. My parents would always want me to go with them to these barbecues. Indeed I wanted to go, cause I couldn't wait to sink my teeth into one of those juicy hamburgers, charbroiled to perfection and painted with "Open Pit Barbecue Sauce, the only barbecue sauce anyone ever fucked with. At that time, in that place and at the wide open age of nine or ten, Open Pit was like dope would be to me later. It was habit forming. I think they should have put the Skull & Crossbones insignia on the bottle with a warning about it being highly addictive. Instead it probably just said, "good for man or beast." It's true that there are now more varieties of barbecue sauce than there are ways to cook chicken. But I grew up on Open Pit. It was the only barbecue sauce we used in our house. So I'm prejudiced to it. One or two bites into a superbly cooked hamburgers with this stuff on it and I was gone. It wasn't long before I was singing Volare too! Madonn. My parents friends and neighbors who attended these weekend summer barbecues looked like they were flown in from Universal Studio's Central Casting. One of my father's good friends was a guy they called Booboo, who's real name was Lew Shadufsky. Booboo? Who knows why they called him that? Probably had something to do with his weight. He was big. He was about 5'10" and weighed in at about 350lbs. A big dude. There were jokes and rumors about him which somehow made him instantly likeable. It was said "that even his shadow was heavy enough to crush someone." Or, "Hey I hear that Booboo's stomach arrives five minutes before he does." Booboo was a truck driver for a popular music & instrument store called Bronens in The Bronx. It may still be there on Webster Avenue off Fordham Road. Everyone liked Booboo. I liked him even more. Because a year or two later, thanks to me and my dads pleas for a nice new Gretch Chet Atkins Electric Guitar, he arrived at my parents house with a brand new Orange Gretch Chet Atkins Electric Guitar. Based upon the known price back then of about $300 and the fact that my dad paid about $50 I think it can be safely surmised that it "feel off the truck." Lots of stuff did back then. There was Joe Puleone. It was Joe that usually threw a lot of these barbecues. At first he and my dad really liked each other. But a year or so later when my dad was trying to pour a concrete patio down at the bottom of our back porch, Joe came over and "offered to help!" Things went really well and all day long the two men, stripped naked from the waist up, worked up the concrete and added the light reddish color to the mixture. By nightfall, we had a new patio. My dad trying to be friendly said, "jeeez joe, thanks a lot. Is there anything I can get you to show my appreciation. How about a bottle of Johnny Walker?" Before he could even finish the sentence Joe turned and said, "well I think $75 ought to cover it!^($(@^" My dad couldn't believe it and from that day forward he never spoke to Joe again. For the next few months I would hear my father curse about the day Joe Leone suckered him into paying $75 for something that Joe did under the guise of a good neighborly favor. But that didn't happen till later. It was Volare Time. Party Time. Open Pit Time. A good time was had by all. The woman of our neighborhood, our moms seemed to fall into one of two categories. About half of them sort of forgot about their looks and looked more and more like moms and housewives. Or maybe they always looked like that. The other half, of which my mother was a prime example continued to try to look good. They all had big bouffant hairdos, and hair perms and wanted to look like Jackie Kennedy, Marylyn Monroe, or some other famous movie star. I could probably write a separate book on the part of the Bronx where I grew up and the time period. It was truly a magical time. So what does this have to do with smack? Well, nothing. Everything. But it started from here. It was all in there. I may have only been about 10, 11 or 12 years of age back then, but there was something in my makeup that looking back on I could see the seeds in the germ. Or is it germs in the seed? I had a huge lust for experience. I thought everyone was like that until as time went by I realized that this was not the case for everyone. I don't have anyway to quantify this, but remembering my thoughts and feelings and looking back at those years nowadays I can see that I was hungry. I quickly ate up things. Not just the Open Pit Hamburgers. I ate up experience like some people ate food. And no matter how much I ate, I was always hungry for more. By the ripe young age of 12 or 13 in some ways I thought I had digested a lot and I was beginning to look out for my next fix. Of course I had only a vague notion that it would soon be drugs, but that was about to change. As I'm about to relate I started getting my first real hungers/desires in the form of my 6th grade home room religion teacher. Another bombshell was my parents let me watch the Frank Sinatra movie, "The Man With The Golden Arm." Than came a guitar, music, Dylan, the early 60's, Pot. With my intense curiosity, my interest in science and chemistry and all this I guess the die was cast. Copyright Gizmo 2001