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1985-1999 The Lisellas

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Jamie and her family in New England Continue reading →

No!!!!!

Until I was almost forty years old I did not have much of a relationship with my sister Jamie1. I remember being quite disappointed when I learned that the sibling that I knew was coming turned out to be a girl. I was in second grade at the time. The girls whom I knew there were all hopelessly stupid. THEY PLAYED HOP-SCOTCH AND PAT-A-CAKE AT RECESS!! I had no use for them at all.

I was nearly seven and a half years older than Jamie, and that half year was significant. I was a freshman in high school when Jamie was in first grade. I had graduated from college before she started high school. During her high school years I was in the Army and then working halfway across the country. We went to different kindergartens (both public), different grade schools (both parochial), different high schools (hers parochial, mine Jesuit), and different colleges (hers a small Benedictine near home, mine a huge state university over seven hundred miles away.

The Kinks on Shindig in 1965. Jamie was 9; I was 16.

So, the only times that we were together were before and after school and during the summers. I remember watching bits of Captain Kangaroo with Jamie before school and some TV shows in the evenings. Batman and Shindig in the evenings. We sat on the floor of the family room watching the tube while mom worked and dad lay on the couch reading a magazine or newspaper punctuated by an occasional “Mmm hmm”. However, I often withdrew to my bedroom to read or work on a project or to the basement to shoot pool and listen to records.

The time between returning from school and supper time was precious to me. I spent very little of it in the house. I either stayed after school to take part in some activity or came home, set down my books somewhere, and dashed back outside to play with my friends. I felt the same way about the summer. If I wasn’t earning money mowing lawns, I was probably out of the house.

So, I never really developed a close relationship with Jamie. We had no great family crises to create bonds of shared suffering. We also did not do that much together as a family. The whole immediate family went on summer vacations (as described here) together, but my only clear recollection of any interaction with Jamie on these trips was when I became very upset that our parents “could not find” the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. She tried to calm me down, which was nice (but ineffective).

SSG Barry Sadler would not have approved of our dance.

We did have a few moments. Perhaps the best was when we invented a dance to perform during the hit song “The Ballad of the Green Berets”. There were not many games that we could play together. War was no fun; Jamie always won Inspired by Sheepshead, I invented a gambling game called “Sevens and fives” and revealed the rules to her one at a time as they came up. I enjoyed that. Of course, I gave her back the money that she lost. Well, most of it.

I also remember spending an afternoon or two helping to teach Jamie how to drive my brand new Datsun in an empty parking lot. This must have been in 1972 after my own stint of heroically defending New Mexico against peace-crazed Ghandiists. Barry was two ranks higher than I was, but I never went to prison.

It was not anything about Jamie’s personality that made me limit our time together. I just enjoyed being with my friends and being by myself a lot more than being with family.

Maybe I was not a very good big brother. Decades later Jamie told me that she had been bullied (or worse) when she was on the way to kindergarten at a public school. I would have been in the eighth grade. If I had known about this, I would probably have tried to enforce the Law of the Jungle (“If you so much as touch my sister, I will …”). I would have, too. I was at least two years older than anyone at her school, and kids who attended public schools were presumably heathens. Also, I knew some moves. I watched a lot of wrestling in the eighth grade.

I don’t know how I missed this. Maybe I was just oblivious; I often am.

Jamie and I had similar senses of humor, and we were both rather tall and quite thin, but those were almost the only things that we had in common. She was always the cute one. When she was little, she had blonde hair that she evidently got from a relative that I had never met and her mother’s dark eyes. She was also a much better athlete and was tremendously more sociable than I was. I did better in school, and I was almost never in trouble.

This is Jamie on her prom night. I was long gone by then.

From 1966, when Jamie was ten and I had left for college, through 1985 I had minimal contact with Jamie. She made a mysterious visit to our apartment in Plymouth (described here), and Sue and I visited her and her husband, Mark Mapes2, once in Iowa (described here).

Other than that, we might have talked on the telephone a few times, but that was it. Why didn’t I call her? It did not occur to me. I didn’t call anyone. I have always hated talking on the telephone, and in those days long-distance calls were expensive.

In late 1985 Jamie was living in the Chicago area with her two daughters, Cadie3 and Kelly4. How they got there is a long story, and I am ignorant of most of the details. Cadie was, by my calculation, eight years old, and Kelly was a couple of years younger. Jamie was working at O’Hare airport for American Airlines. There she met Joe Lisella Jr.5, a fellow employee. I think that they got married in 1985. Jamie has told me a few stories about the travails of working in baggage claim. She may have had other responsibilities there, too.

In 1985 the newlyweds moved to an apartment in Simsbury, CT. For a time both Joe and Jamie worked for American Airlines at Bradley Field in Windsor Locks, CT. Their family grew rather rapidly. Gina6 was born in 1988, Anne7 in 1989, and Joey8 (Joseph III) in 1991.

During the fourteen years that Jamie lived in New England I worked at least seventy hours per week. Sue and I found time to visit Jamie and Joe a few times in Simsbury. I remember that we ate supper with them at least once at Antonio’s Restaurant near their apartment.

Joe and I played golf together quite a few times, first at a course in Southwick, MA, called Edgewood and then, after they had moved to a house in West Springfield, at East Mountain Country Club in Westfield, MA.

I had a good time, but I still took golf too seriously to have many enjoyable conversations with Joe. Another problem was that we both sliced the ball. He was, however, left-handed. His ball was therefore usually in the rough to the left. Mine was usually pretty far to the right. Talking is, of course, discouraged on the greens and tees.

East Mountain Country Club.

Joe’s brother played with us a few times. I have forgotten his name. Jamie was a very good golfer when she was a teenager, but she never played with Joe and me. It never occurred to ask her why not.

We always played very early in the morning. I sometimes stopped at McDonald’s on the way to the Lisellas’ house and bought Sausage Biscuit with Egg sandwiches for them. Once I evidently messed up about whether we were scheduled to play. They were sleeping in. Someone with bleary eyes came to the door. I apologized when the situation was explained to me, left the McDonald’s bag for them, and drove back home.

At left is a satellite view of the Lisellas’ house on Lancaster Ave. in West Springfield. In the nineties a basketball goal occupied the space where the big white truck in the photo is.

When we visited the Lisellas’ house, there was often a half-court basketball game there. I declined to participate. My skills at basketball were limited to running, jumping, disabling opponents with my sharp joints, and drawing fouls. My jumping days were behind me, running was of no value in a half-court game, and my other abilities were under-appreciated.

The most memorable of these game was the one in which my dad, who at the time was at least pushing seventy, tried to play. He lost his balance, fell down, and broke his arm. He had to be rushed to the emergency room.

The only photo that I could find of Joe Lisella is this one from 1973 on Gina’s sixth birthday.

The menu at the Lisella house was usually hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. Joe had a Weber “kettle” grill, and he used a lot of charcoal. I never asked him about this, but I have never understood how anyone could control the temperature of one of these grills. I have always strongly preferred the ones that allow either the fire pit or the grill to be raised and lowered.

Joe watched a lot of sports on television. In fact the TV always seemed to be on in their house, and it was always set to a sports broadcast. His favorite teams were the Red Sox, the Green Bay Packers, and Notre Dame. I am not sure which team he rooted for in basketball.

When I was at their house I spent most of my time playing with the kids. Jamie always seemed to be cooking, cleaning, or collapsed from exhaustion. Occasionally she took a break for a cigarette.

I did not talk much with Jamie. On the sidelines at the kids’ soccer games she would sometimes keep me apprised of the their progress. I seldom had much to contribute to these conversations. In those days TSI was definitely the focus of my life. Unless I could think of an amusing story, I did not say much.

I clearly remember doing one thing with Jamie. She had somehow scored some tickets for a WWE wrestling card at the Hartford Civic Center, and she invited me. This must have been in 1990. I think that Gina and Anne were there. I am not sure whether the other girls or Sue attended. The girls were really into it. They cheered and booed at all the right places.

The only match that I remember at all was between André the Giant9 and Jake the Snake Roberts10. Although André was way past his prime, he was still enormous and powerful. He could probably have defeated Jake from his hospital bed. However, every move he made seemed to cause him pain, and his back was bent over at a 45° angle when he lumbered from one place to another.He even had difficulty entering the ring. I found the performance rather sad, but I enjoyed the experience of being with the kids.

I marveled at how different this experience was from the other match that the high-school version of me had seen in person. It is described here. In the match in Hartford there was a lot of flash, but very little in the way of wrestling. Vince McMahon had not yet admitted that his events were scripted, but 90 percent of the people over five in the arena could predict the outcome (barring disqualification) of every match. It was kind of like a circus with trained over-developed humans.

In the fall of (I think) 1986 or 1987 Sue and I drove Cadie and Kelly to the Catskill Game Farm11, a private zoo in New York state. This had always been one of our favorite day trips, and it was more fun with the kids. Fall was the best time to go there. The weather was ideal. The deer were in rut, and the cries of the stags could be heard all over the park.

We spent a fair amount of time in the petting area of the park, which was loaded with immature animals that had been handled by humans since birth. That did not in any way mean that they were tame. I had never noticed this in previous visits, but they formed a herd of six or seven species and walked around the petting area as a group.

An priceless trading card from her soccer days autographed by Kelly.

Kelly had been petting one of the fawns, and she did not notice a baby donkey behind her pitching forward on its front legs and aiming a two-legged kick at her back side. Fortunately, the hooves missed by an inch or two.

I also remember feeding the giraffes. The girls got a figurative kick out of that.

Cadie’s glamor shot.

I attended at least one of Cadie’s softball games. I don’t remember too much about it. She was not a star. She was more of an intellectual than an athlete. More than anything else she has always been very artistic. I seem to recall that she studied art at Hampshire College for one year. I don’t know what happened after that.

For my mom’s seventieth birthday in October of 1995 Cadie flew with me to Kansas City. I gave a little speech to a gathering of my parents’ friends about my relationship with my mom. I am sure that my mom, who was already experiencing some dementia, appreciated that we both came. However, it was obvious that Cadie was uncomfortable throughout the entire trip.

My dad took Cadie with him on his trip to Ireland. They both enjoyed the trip, but my impression was that their personalities did not blend too well. No blood was spilled.

My most vivid memory of Kelly is from the day that she helped plant flowers around a tiny pine tree in our yard on Hamilton Court. The tree, which is now more than thirty feet high, was only a little taller than Kelly at the time.

Kelly was a good soccer player. I remember watching her in at least one game. She was a defender. I don’t know too much about soccer, but the other team never came close to scoring. Her team’s goalie need not have attended.

Kelly had trouble with math in high school. Jamie once asked me if I would be available to help her with it. I said that I would, but I never heard about this again.

Sue and I were invited to attend Kelly’s graduation at the horse show building at the Big E in Agawam. We went, but I don’t remember any details except that I was surprised that the students were mostly wearing casual garments (even shorts) under their graduation gowns. I also recall at the subsequent get-together at the Lisellas’ house. Gina and her classmates humiliated me on the basketball court.

Kelly left West Springfield shortly after finishing high school. I knew that she moved to a western state, but I did not know what she was doing there. I haven’t had any contact with her since then.

This is the oldest photo that I could find of Anne and Gina. If I had waited much longer to ask them to pose with me, I would not have been able to lift them.

I tried to see Gina and Anne as often as I could. One weekend day they stayed with us for a few hours in Enfield. They were delighted to discover that we lived right behind a school that had monkey bars and other athletic equipment.

I usually bought the kids some kind of board game at Christmas. When I was at the Lisellas’ house in West Springfield, I spent most of my time on the floor. In retrospect I wonder if the games were a good idea. Some of them had a lot of pieces.

I bought a Foosball table for them one Christmas. I probably should have asked if it was OK to do so. They seemed to enjoy playing it that day, but I noticed the next time that we went to their house that it was on the front porch and positioned so that it could not possibly be used. If I had been considerate enough to ask ahead of time, Joe or Jamie might have mentioned that there was no possible place to keep it.

This is the West Side girls’ soccer team for 1997. Anne is on the far right in the front row. Gina is second from the right in the back row.
In the team photo for 1998 Anne is second from the right in the front row. Gina is in the middle of the back row.
Sue took this excellent photo of Gina, Anne, Joey, and snow.

I watched Gina and Anne play soccer several times. Anne was a fast runner, but Gina made up for lack of speed with determination and grit. No one ever called Anne gritty. In fact, no one ever called her Anne either. It was always Annie, Princess, or Prinnie.

I also watched Gina play basketball once. The opposing team had one player who was much better that everyone else. Gina’s coach assigned her to guard her even though Gina gave up several inches to her. Gina hung tough with her throughout the game. Unfortunately, it was not enough. The West Siders came up short.

I bought three tickets for the Connecticut Opera’s production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte at the Bushnell Auditorium in Hartford. I made plans for them to attend with me. I was convinced that they had agreed to go, but somehow the plans got messed up. I ended up sitting between two empty seats for the evening. I should have called to confirm, but …

Anne (on the phone) and Gina.

I have one memory of Gina as a teenager. She was on the computer with three or four chat windows open with her friends. She could move among them very rapidly. I was impressed.

My parents came up to visit the Lisellas occasionally. They stayed at the Howard Johnson’s on Route 5. I remember that the first time that Anne saw me beside my mom, she blurted out, “You two have the same hair!” I don’t think that she realized until I told her that her grandma was my mother.

From the time that Joey was old enough to walk, or maybe even before that, he was consumed with sports. He liked all sports, and he was quite good at them. Some of his peers caught up with him later, but I doubt that there was a more athletic four-year-old in all of New England than Joey Lisella.

Joey and I played one-on-one tackle football in the living and dining room when he was a toddler. As soon as I entered the house, he grabbed onto one of my legs and tried to bring me down. Then he picked up the football and tried to burst past me. He could not have known that that his opponent starred in 1961 as the wingback/defensive back of the Queen of the Holy Rosary Rockets, as documented here.

On August 6, 1995, Jamie brought Joey to a party at Betty Slanetz’s house in Enfield. He carried a Whiffle ball and a plastic bat around with him all afternoon. I volunteered to pitch to him. He was batting right handed. I stood about ten or fifteen feet away and threw the ball underhand to him. Rather than swing, he took his left hand off the bat, caught the pitch one-handed, threw it back, and announced, “Overhand!” My recollection, which may be faulty, is that he hit every pitch that he swung at. I was duly impressed. He was four years and zero days old.

I saw Joey play soccer several times. The first time he was on a mixed team. He was too young to play legally, or at least that was what Jamie told me. He was certainly the shortest participant on either team, but he was positioned as the striker on his team. After he scored his fourth goal in just a few minutes, the umpires (!) overruled the coach’s assignment and made him play defense for the rest of the game. The final score was 4-0.

I don’t remember this game. It is hard to believe that Anne is only two years older than Joey.

The last soccer game that I recall involved Joey’s high school team. Joey was still one of the smallest players, but he was still quite good. He did not dominate this game the way that he dominated as a youngster, but he was a force to be reckoned with.

I had the same impression the only time that I watched him play high school basketball game. His lack of size was a serious detriment in this game, but he was a good ball-handler and shooter, and he played tight, aggressive defense.

During these years Joey (and just about everyone else his age) was obsessed with sneakers. I am not sure how many he pairs he had, just for basketball.

Joey and I shared one great adventure. In the summer of 1998 (I think that it was) I drive him in my Saturn to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. Sue and I also made this trip during most summers to attend operas at the Glimmerglass Festival.

The Doubleday Cafe.
Joey and Babe Ruth.

It was a long drive. By the time that we reached our destination it was time for lunch. We stopped at the Doubleday Cafe because I knew from experience that it would be a waste of time to try to find a better place. Cooperstown is not known for its cuisine.

I had never been to the Hall, and I was a little bit disappointed. I think that Joey enjoyed it, however, and I definitely enjoyed the time with him.

On the way home I think that we stopped at Friendly’s near Albany. I have a vague recollection of a misadventure in the process, but I cannot recall the details.

Jamie arranged for a party in August of 1994 for our dad’s 70th birthday at Simsbury 1820 House. The celebration got off to a terrible start. When my dad went to sit down by the table, his chair collapsed beneath him, and he fell onto the floor. He wasn’t badly hurt, but Jamie was infuriated. She later told me that she had refused to pay the bill.

I tried something that was too clever by half. I asked a question of Anne that I thought that she could answer and a slightly more difficult one of Gina that I thought that she could answer. After the second failure, Anne rebuked me, “Uncle Mike, we’re just kids!”

So, I set that aside and instead led everyone in a rendition of my dad’s favorite song, “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”12 I am sure that that buoyed everyone’s spirits.

In 2000 Joe drove Gina, Anne, and Joey to Kansas City for my dad’s seventy-sixth birthday. Sue and I were already there.Here is what I wrote in my notes about the occasion:

We had a good time on my dad’s birthday. I brought a wrestling card game that Sue gave me for my birthday. I played it twice with Gina, Annie, and Joey. They all enjoyed it. When Gina beat Joey in the first game, he got angry, accused her of cheating, made a mad dash at her and started pulling her hair. She just laughed, and Joe broke it up.

We went to an Italian restaurant for supper. It wasn’t very good, but Annie lit up as I have never seen her do. She was animated and talkative.

I continued to drive to Massachusetts to watch the kid’s play on sports teams after Jamie left (described here). Sue and I even went to Joe’s wedding with Jenna. It was a rather strange event, held on a boat, as I recall. Joe’s father was wearing shorts and buying everyone drinks. The highlight for me was when Jenna, Gina, and Anne sang along with “Who Let the Dogs Out?”

When my dad died in 2011 he left $18,000 to each of Jamie’s five kids. I administered the will and sent the checks to them.

In 2012, give or take a year or two, Sue and I drove up to have supper with Gina in a town north of Springfield. We tried to arrange a second get-together a few times, but it never seemed to work out.

1. I think that in 2021 Jamie still resides in Birmingham, AL. I am not sure what she is doing there. Her Facebook page is here. I am embarrassed to say that I could locate only one photo of Jamie in all of our junk.

2. All indications are that Mark Mapes lives in Davenport, IA.

3. Cadie Mapes still seems to live in Massachusetts, but I am not sure where. Her business website is here.

4. Kelly Mapes went off on her own at an early age. If I had to guess, I would say that she probably lives in Tucson in 2021.

5. Joe Lisella still lives in West Springfield. He works for McDonald’s. His LinkedIn page is here.

6. In 2021 Gina Lisella lives in the Westfield, MA, area. Her LinkedIn page is here. I think that she recently bought a new house.

7. Anne Lisella lives in San Antonio, TX. She is a nurse. Her LinkedIn page is here.

8. Joey Lisella lives somewhere in the Boston area. His LinkedIn page is here. I follow him on Twitter. He posts about nothing but sports.

9. André René Roussimoff died in January of 1991.

10. In 2021 Aurelian Smith, Jr., is retired from playing Jake the Snake Roberts, but I bet that he would listen to offers.

11. The Catskill Game Farm closed in 2006. It is now reopened as a historic tourist attraction in which one can camp or stay in a Bed and Breakfast inside the compound of the old zoo. The website is here.

12. My dad was tone-deaf. He was—bar none—the worst singer that I have ever heard. He agreed with Pope Pius X that Gregorian Chant was the best music ever produced by man. He could remember some of the words of songs, but the melody he produced bore no resemblance to the original.

1981-1988 Life in Rockville: Other Events

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Just the two of us. Continue reading →

No monumental events occurred during our seven and a half years in Rockville, but I remember all kinds of smaller ones.

Sports

Jogging: I continued to go jogging a couple of times a week, but Rockville was much too hilly for an occasional runner like me. I drove my car a mile or two into Ellington to find a surface that was relatively level. I took Upper Butcher Road, which turned into Middle Butcher Road and then Windemere Ave., up to Pinney Road (Route 286). I parked my car near the intersection.

I ran up Windemere to Abbott Road, where I turned right. I ran north alongside the golf course before turning on either Middle Road or Frog Hollow Road to return to Pinney Road. The only problems that I ever encountered were dogs. A few barked ferociously and came within a few feet of my ankles, but none ever bit me.

Basketball: During the winter of 1987-88 Tom Corcoran invited me to watch a basketball game that included some players that he knew from work. It was held at a high school gym. I can’t remember if Sue came or not. The game itself was not a bit memorable, but at halftime a door prize was awarded. It was a pair of tickets to a Hartford Whalers game, and my ticket had the winning number.

Hockey: You really should listen to “Brass Bonanza”, the Hartford Whalers’ fight song while reading this section. You can find it here. It will open in a new tab.

I had only attended one hockey game in my life, an intramural game at U-M. The tickets that I won were for the last game of the season. It took place in the Civic Center3 in downtown Hartford. The opponents were the Pittsburgh Penguins.

In those days there were nineteen teams in the NHL. Sixteen of them made the playoffs. At the time of the game the Whalers had already clinched one of the last playoff spots4, but the Penguins had been eliminated. So, the game was meaningless for most purposes.

The Whalers were clearly the better team, as even a neophyte like myself could discern. They held a 2-1 lead going into the third period. The home team continued to dominate play, but they could not get the puck past the Penguins’ goalie. At the other end the Penguins only took four shots, but three of them ended up in the net. So, the visitors won 4-2.

Art Slanetz also took Sue and me to a Springfield Indians hockey game. I don’t remember much about it.

Golf: I played a few times with Denise Bessette’s husband Ray and his dad. His dad was even worse at the game than my dad. I just could not afford to play regularly; golf was too expensive.

Television

Spare me Kirstie Alley.

We had cable in Rockville. In the days before bundling it was reasonably priced. I watched a lot of college football, and we watched a few shows in the evening, especially Thursdays. NBC showed Cheers and Frasier. I could not get into Seinfeld.

We also had the Playboy channel for a while. Its productions were awful . One show featured a woman from England. They introduced her with “And now, from across the Pacific …”

In the mornings I sometimes went downstairs to do exercises. I remember two different shows that I watched. One had a different woman leading every day. The other one, Morning Stretch, had only one hostess, Joanie Greggains. One of her favorite sayings was, “Your grew it; you lift it!”

Pets

At some point Puca and Tonto, our tortoise, died. Thereafter the home-made snake cage in the barnboard bookshelves remained empty.

I know that we had guinea pigs in Rockville for at least a couple of years. The last one was an all-white Peruvian that I named Ratso. He loved to be petted, and he whistled whenever I did. Unfortunately, he had a tumor on his belly, and it eventually killed him.

Slippers could win this competition.

Somehow we ended up with a very nice black rabbit named Slippers. That little guy could really leap. He could jump from the floor to the top shelf of the bookshelves, which was more than six feet off of the ground.

Slippers had a bad habit of chewing on electrical cords. I went to a local pet store that had a very knowledgeable proprietor. I waited until she was free. I then approached her to ask what I could use to prevent a bunny from chewing on the cables. She quickly answered, “Nothing.”

Slippers had a stroke, and we brought him to the vet. While we were there he let out a blood-curdling cry—the only sound that we ever heard him make. He was dead. I think that that was the saddest that I had ever felt.

In the summer of 1986 a stray cat that hung around the Elks Club gave birth to a litter of three in the courtyard behind our house. One was mostly white, one was tuxedo-colored, and one was black and white with a black mask like a raccoon’s. The tuxedo-attired one had short hair, perhaps inherited from his father; the other two had long hair. At first we called them Whitey, Blacky, and the Coon Cat. Based on her disposition, we think that Whitey was female; the other two were males. Sue wrote a children’s story about them and read it to Brian and Casey Corcoran.

We did not really plan on having cats as pets, but it did not seem too likely to us that all four of them would be able to survive the winter. We did not want to be responsible for that. So, I embarked on a plan to trap them. I bought some Purina Cat Chow1 and put a bowl of it in the courtyard about ten feet from our kitchen door. Every day I moved the bowl closer to the door. Then I left the door open and put the bowl in the kitchen. The two males came in, but the female was too timid to enter the house.

This photo of Rocky was taken by Sue. It is attached by a magnet to our refrigerator.

When the bowl was well inside the kitchen, and I knew that both male cats had come in to eat, I snuck out the other courtyard door and shut the kitchen door from the outside, thereby trapping them in the kitchen. The Coon Cat, whom we renamed Rocky shortly thereafter, threw himself at the door over and over while Blacky (later named Jake) sat in the corner and calmly assessed the situation.

I bought a litter box and some litter. As soon as they had grown accustomed to being with humans, we took the boys to the vet for their shots and to get them fixed. We kept our two new feline friends in the house all winter. In the spring we saw their mother hanging around the Elks Club, but there was no sign of their sister.

Rocky and Sue in the snow.

In the spring and summer we let Rocky and Jake roam wherever they wanted. When they wanted back in, they would wait patiently in the courtyard for someone to open the door.

In early October of 1987 Rocky did not come home for a couple of days. When he finally came to the door, his face and chest were covered with blood. We took him to the vet. He had a broken jaw. The vet wired it, and they kept him for a few days because we had a weekend planned in Washington (described above). All the staff loved him.

We brought Rocky home. Within twenty-four hours he broke the wire on his jaw. With his eight remaining lives he never looked back and lived for another seventeen years. He was incredibly athletic. I once saw him vault/climb the nine foot stone wall in our front yard in one smooth motion.

Jake was much less sociable than Rocky, but he was nearly as good an athlete. One afternoon while I was napping in the bedroom, I heard a very strange noise just outside of the window. It was the sound of Jake climbing the drain pipe for the rain gutter in hot pursuit of a squirrel that was taunting him from the ledge of the bedroom window. I don’t think that he got that squirrel, but he did figure out how to get down on his own.

Games

D&D: In the first few years after we arrived back in Connecticut, I staged a few dungeons. The best was when the debaters from Wayne State came to visit us as described above.

After that Tom Corcoran was always eager to play. Sue could usually be talked into it. Sue’s sister Betty and some of her friends could occasionally be coerced. We tried to talk a few clients into trying it, but there were no takers.

Patti Corcoran’s favorite game.

Board Games: We played a lot of board games with the Corcorans. We also played fairly often with Sue’s sister Betty. Her favorites were The Farming Game and Broadway. Sue and I occasionally played Backgammon together.

Murder Mysteries: It was easier to get people together for a Murder Mystery party, which became fairly popular in the eighties, than it was to arrange for a D&D adventure. We bought several of these games, which were sold in toy stores. The idea was that everyone was assigned a character and given secret information about the character. Only the murderer was allowed to lie. Then everyone guessed at the end.

We only played a few of these games. The quality was very uneven, as it was with the board games2. In one of them the most important clue was in the very first paragraph of the description of the setting that was read aloud. When we played it, the player who had that character (Ken Owen, introduced here) did a vivid portrayal of his role in that setting. The game was ruined. It was not his fault; he was expected to get into his character; the game was just poorly designed. Another problem was that you could only play each one once.

Camping

I have always loved camping, and when I say camping I mean sleeping on the ground in a tent that one set up for oneself, not sleeping in an RV that has more electrical doodads than a hotel. Sue liked camping, too, but the sleeping on the ground part proved to be too much for her. She bought a fold-up cot with a mattress that was about 2″ thick. That proved to be a pretty good compromise, and that mattress got considerable use after our camping days ended.

On a few occasions we spent a couple of days on our own at Mineral Springs Campground in Stafford Springs, CT. This place had spaces for a lot of trailers. Some people spent every summer there for years. We always stayed in the “primitive” areas, which were just plots set aside for people who eschewed electrical and plumbing hookups in the woods. We set up the tent and scoured the woods for firewood. On some occasions we needed to supplement what we could find with wood purchased from the campground’s store.

This is the headquarters building. There were arcade games and a ballroom inside, as well as a store..

The campground had a headquarters building in and around which all kinds of activities were scheduled. There were also several areas designated for volleyball and other sports. The small swimming pool did not interest me, but I think that Sue took a dip at least once.

Many kids were forced to spend time here, and the operators did their best to give them something entertaining to do while the adults sat around the campfire and drank beer.

I would have preferred something more rustic, but, after all, this was Connecticut. It had been civilized for more than three centuries.

I relished the challenge of creating a hot supper over an open fire. I was quite proud when the result actually tasted like a well-cooked meal. Sue’s favorite part of camping was making s’mores. I can’t say that I ever developed a taste for them. I preferred my graham crackers without the gooey stuff.

In the late eighties Sue talked her nephew, Travis LaPlante, and Brian Corcoran into joining us on camping trips. If she hadn’t, I doubt that either one of them would have ever slept outside.

This is the box that our tent came in. I found it in the basement. I don’t know where the tent itself is.

They were very different kids, but we all had a pretty good time. We played some board or card games together. I don’t remember the specifics, but the two boys enjoyed them. They also enjoyed tramping through the woods looking for firewood. Travis liked playing with the fire itself.

We tried a few other campgrounds after we left Rockville in 1988. Those adventures are detailed here.

Health

Not Jake, but similar.

My health, with one exception, was fine throughout our stay in Rockville. During the winter of 1987-88 we kept our two little buddies, Rocky and Jake inside the house. Therefore, we put out a litter box for them, and they used it.

One day Jake scratched me on the back of my left hand. I took care of the wound, but it would not heal. I ran a very slight fever, and eventually a bubo appeared under my left armpit. I continued working, but I could only concentrate for a couple of hours at a time before I needed to take a nap.

We did not have health insurance, and I had not seen a doctor since my knee healed. However, I knew that I needed medical help. I made an appointment with a doctor whose office was within easy walking distance. He asked me if my vision had been affected, which would have been an indication of toxoplasmosis. I answered that it might have been, but I was not sure. It was not significant. He told me to come to the emergency room at Rockville General Hospital at 9 a.m.

He met me when I arrived, and we skipped the usual ER routine. He lanced my bubo and gave me a week’s worth of antibiotics. As soon as he lanced the bubo I felt much better, but the antibiotics did not solve the problem. A week later he lanced again and gave me a different antibiotic. This was repeated one more time.

As soon as the third antibiotic circulated in my system, the wound healed rapidly, the bubo never formed again, and my fever disappeared. In short, I was cured.

I don’t remember what the doctor billed me for this treatment, but it was extremely reasonable.

Sue’s health problems were more chronic than mine. She had put on some weight in the time that we had been together. By the mid eighties she was having real problems sleeping.

She snored fairly heavily when she did get to sleep, and she would often wake up every few minutes with a start to catch her breath. She went to a doctor. He arranged a sleep study, after which he informed her that she had sleep apnea. I am not exactly sure what the difficulty was, but she got into a dispute with the doctor about something. I told Sue not to worry about the cost, but my efforts did not help the situation. She could be stubborn that way.

A good deal of time passed, and she only got worse. She finally got a CPAP3 machine that was connected to a mask that she wore in bed. She found it uncomfortable, but it did seem to help her sleep.

Unfortunately, I could tell that her mental acuity had deteriorated during this period. Evidently she just was not getting enough oxygen to her brain.

In late 1981 I received a phone call from Vince Follert. I knew him as a friend and fellow coach and teacher at Wayne State, as described here. I also knew that he had been diagnosed with colorectal cancer and had a difficult time with the treatment.

He told me that he had waited to call until he had some good news. This was not the fast-talking, wise-cracking guy that I knew from Detroit. He had obviously been through the wringer. I don’t even remember what the new was. It did not sound that good to me.

He insisted that the cancer had nothing to do with the Diet Pepsi that he chain drank. I did not mention the cigarettes. He seemed to be invested now in the power of positive thinking.

The next call that I got was a few months later. It was from Gerry Cox, not Vince. He told me that Vince had died. I was not surprised.

Effy Slanetz, Sue’s mother, contracted some kind of illness at approximately the same time in 1987 of 1988 that I got scratched by Jake. Her symptoms were similar to mine, and the treatments seemed similar. However, she did not make the instant recovery that I did. Instead, her disease dragged on for years. She never got over it.

Gardening

I got interested in vegetable gardening by watching two television shows on Saturdays. The one that I enjoyed the most was The Joy of Gardening with Dick Raymond. It was sponsored by Garden Way, makers of Troy-Bilt products. The other was Square Foot Gardening, hosted by Mel Bartholomew. He was a little preachier and more disdainful of other approaches.

Both hosts had books promoting their approaches, and I acquired both of them. Dick’s book was filled with lovely color photos. He had fairly instructions about the best way of dealing with each type of vegetable. The production values in Mel’s book were not as high, but he also knew his stuff. Both men argued that vegetables could be planted much more closely to one another than was done by most gardeners.

I did not have much space in the courtyard, and so I used their advice to maximize my yield. The open end of the courtyard was on the south, but the walls on the east and west sides limited the morning and evening sunlight. There was not much I could do about that. I imagined mounting huge mirrors, but I was never that fanatical. Besides, I was cheap

I grew a fairly diverse array of vegetables. I tried to do without pesticides. I used bacillus thuringiensis to thwart cabbage worms. I just picked the horn worms off of the tomatoes. The only insect species for which I resorted to chemical treatments to counter was Mexican bean beetle. These little monsters arrived en masse in early July and they attached so many larvae to the undersides of the beans that I could not keep up with them.

I had the most success with cherry tomatoes and sunflowers. My three cherry tomato plants produced over 250 tomatoes, and the vines were over twelve feet long. The secret for my success, I am convinced, is that I fertilized them with Slippers’ poops.

I also grew one plant indoors over the winter. It was not as big as the ones in the garden, but it produced a reasonably good output until white flies found it. My sunflowers were well over eight feet high, but the birds always harvested them before I did. I didn’t really care.

My onions were pitiful. The bulbs that I harvested were hardly bigger than the sets that I planted in the spring. Mel claimed that you only needed a 4’x4′ patch to grow corn, but I never had much luck. Corn really needs unrestricted access to both the sun and the wind.

Food

We ate at home most of the time. I usually skipped breakfast. I ate a piece of fruit if one was around For lunch I usually ate leftovers or, even sometimes in the summer, some kind of chicken noodle soup. I preferred the Lipton’s version that had “diced white chicken meat”, but I was not picky.

For outdoor grilling we used the hibachi that we brought back from Michigan for a while. Then we upgraded to an inexpensive barbecue grill with wheels from, I think, Caldor’s. It provided a means of regulating the distance between the fire and the grill. I did not understand how anyone could grill successfully without this feature.

We patronized a few local restaurants. Tasty Chick was a very good fried chicken takeout place on Regan Road just off of Route 83. The owners, Michael and Marie McGuire5, often were behind the counter. Michael would sometimes claim that they were almost sold out. All that remained, he explained, were “beaks and toes.”

We also liked to go to the Golden Lucky6 for Chinese food. The ginger chicken wing appetizers were to die for. Once in a while we thought that we could afford to go to J. Copperfield7 for a more elegant dinner and a drink.

Live Performances

Sue and I did not attend many concerts, but in October of 1981 we were among the 40,000+ in attendance at the performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida at the Hartford Civic Center. In some ways it was not really an opera. The singers were all wearing cordless microphones, which is absolutely prohibited in most opera houses. Because of the Civic Center’s poor acoustics, they had to allow this.

The emphasis in this production was on spectacle. “The Grand March” scene included not just dancers, but elephants, camels, and, if I remember correctly, snakes.

Although it has, in my opinion, the best final scene in all of opera, Aida has never been one of my favorites. The producers of this extravaganza spent a half million dollars on the production. There was nothing left to hire top-notch singers. Even so, I think that everyone had a pretty good time. The New York Times sent a reviewer, Theodore W. Libby, Jr. He had a similar opinion, which can be read (for free) here.

The next year they tried to repeat the experience with a production of Turandot, an outstanding opera of imperial China by Giacomo Puccini (finished by Franco Alfano). We didn’t go, and nearly everyone else stayed away, as well. I am embarrassed to report that I had never heard of this opera at the time. If I had been familiar with it, I might have gone. In the ensuing years I have probably listened to it fifty times or more.

Sue and I also attended a few second- or third-tier concerts. I can remember three of them:

Garnet Rogers.
  • Sue and I went to see Livingston Taylor, James Taylor’s brother, perform at a coffee house in Hartford. It was a guy’s name followed by “‘s”, but I cannot remember it. I enjoyed it, but … My friend from U-M Raz (John LaPrelle) went to high school with James Taylor in North Carolina. He never mentioned Livingston, I presume.
  • We also saw Garnet Rogers, the brother of Stan Rogers. Stan’s album Northwest Passage, was one of the very few that I bought during this period. I heard Stan’s music on a show on WWUH radio that featured acoustic music. I still listen to the album on an mp3 player when I go walking.
  • Sue and I went up to the Iron Horse Cafe to hear Donovan. He was one of Sue’s idols when she was a teeny bopper.

In truth I was slightly disappointed by all of these concerts. They weren’t bad, but there was no thrill. By the way, I think that all three of these guys are still alive and performing.

Sue loved (and loves) every type of live music. She probably attended additional concerts with friends or by herself.

1. In the subsequent thirty-five years I have never fed our cats any product other than Purina Cat Chow. None of them has ever had an illness more serious than a hairball. When people tell me that their cats will not eat dried cat food, I always reply, “Maybe not in the first week, but they will eat it.”

2. The quality of some games was so bad that I could not believe that anyone had ever tried to play them before they were marketed. Others were clearly ripoffs of other games that took advantage of a popular movie or television show.

3. Stafford Springs is the least “Yankee” of all New England’s towns. Its principal claim to fame is its speedway. The main street of town is often filled with motorcycles. It feels much more like Kentucky or Tennessee.

4. CPAP stands for continuous positive airways pressure. Sue eventually found a much less intrusive model.

5. The McGuires ran Tasty Chick from 1975-89. It stayed open under separate management until the early twenty-first century. Michael McGuire died in 2021. His obituary is here.

6. The Golden Lucky opened in 1983 and closed in 1988. The sad story is documented here. We never had a bad meal there.

7. J. Copperfield was in business from 1982 to 1996.