THIS IS THE COMPLETE INTRODUCTION TO A Mile in my Shoes... The Amazing True story of an American Nobody: A bright light brought me out of yet another night of troubled sleep. Through hazy vision, somewhere between dreams and the reality of the morning, I realized that today was the day I had been dreading for months. Today was my birthday. I was now forty years old. Sitting on the sofa, where I had fallen asleep again, an ugly truth started breaking through. Have you ever taken the time to look back on your life and thought, “How in the hell did I end up here?!?” I didn’t know, and I needed to have that question answered in order for me to move forward in my life. Rubbing the remains of sleep from my eyes, I decided that today would be a day of taking stock, of reflection, of looking back. As I thought about my life, I realized that there are moments that affect us every single day. Things that help shape us into who we are and what we will become. For me, it was two words… moving day. Never in my life have two simple words filled me with both a sense of anticipation and dread simultaneously. The first move that I can remember directly affecting me happened in the summer of 1974. My parents got divorced when I was fairly young and we, my mother, older and younger sister and I ended up living with my grandparents. We lived on Millick St, in Southwest Philadelphia. It was a great place to live. Bartram Field was just across the railroad track, the Italian grocer around the corner was owned by three brothers who would let the kids go behind the counter to pick out their penny candy, my friends and I would play street hockey at the end of block. Like I said, it was a great place to live and it had everything a boy could want. We were a tight knit street. Families knew each other, and we helped each other when it was needed. I always loved living there during the holidays. The whole neighborhood really went all out decorating for every holiday. Speaking of decorating; you know how there are some families during Christmas that would decorate the tree together enjoying hot chocolate, listening to Christmas music, kind of like a hallmark presentation. Well, our family wasn’t like that. We’d be off to school that morning and the house looked normal. When we’d come home, the whole place was decorated, tree would be up and decorated as well by my mother. To this day, I think she is the only one who is allowed to decorate the tree. I’ve always loved the holidays, especially Halloween, costumes and candy; what else is there to say, and New Year’s Eve. New Year’s Eve on Millick St was not only fun at our house, but the whole street. My grandmother would have Guy Lombardo or Lawrence Welk on TV and we would have snacks while we waited for midnight. Twelve o’clock came and the whole street would come out of their houses, banging on pots and pans yelling Happy New Year’s to each other. Our one neighbor would come out and fire off a couple of shotgun rounds into the air, just for good measure, to signal the New Year has begun. I was nine and had just completed another year of Catholic school. For the last four years, I had been going to St. Mary’s of Czestochowa on 59th & Elmwood Ave. Being a good Catholic boy; it was there that I made my first Confession, Communion and Confirmation. In fact, my older sister and I made these sacraments at the same time since that is when the bishop made the rounds to the local churches. Anyway, as far as St. Mary’s went, I loved that school! I was an altar boy at the church, I did okay in school, mostly because I was lazy, had my first crush, won first place in a Fire Prevention Week Poster contest because my mother actually made my poster the night before it was due only because that is when I told her I needed to make one. Like I said, I was lazy… Anyway, I was enjoying my summer vacation hanging out with my friends from the neighborhood and my older sister. One of our neighbors would open up the fire hydrant at the end of the block and all the kids in the neighborhood would have a blast playing in the cool spray. In the evening, our parents would sit on the stoops and chat while we played all those childhood games. The girls would double-dutch or play hopscotch while the boys played stoop-ball or pitched pennies… we’d all play Freeze Tag, Red Light/Green Light among many others. Our street was a pretty tight knit group, with the exception of the bully who used to jump me for no reason until I stood up to him, and we became friends or the strange lady on the corner whose house no one would walk in front of, which would cause her to run out and scream at us. Overall we all got along pretty well. Like I said, it was a great place to be a kid, until the summer of 1974 when everything changed.
Posted on: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 16:35:50 +0000
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