Chapter 1 - "The Painting" According to Boy

 

(While "The Painting" never actually accompanied us to New York, it still became an integral part of our first years together.)

According to Boy: As are so many memories, this one can be triggered by the utterance of a single noun, preceded by the definite article—"The Painting." Together they become a proper noun, much like Greenwich Village has come to be called "The Village," Frank Sinatra became "The Chairman of the Board"; and all baby boomers knows what is intended when someone mentions "The Assassination."

I can close my eyes and see The Painting; but I have no idea who painted it, nor do I recall what the work was called. What I do remember about The Painting was that I really loved it. It was the first piece of "art" I ever bought. I had found it at a small shop in Springfield, Missouri. I had just finished repainting my dorm room, and I wanted something nice to hang on the wall. I didn’t have a car at the time, so I had to talk a buddy into helping me pick it up. It was too large to carry on the bus.

The Painting looked like something Louis Aston Knight could have painted. In fact, he just might have. It pictured a sleepy river at dusk, with barely a ripple showing. It appeared almost more like a lake, except for the steep bank, which strongly suggested that it was a river. Actually, it wasn’t a real oil painting, it was a printed reproduction. One of those that are mass produced on shiny cardboard, with the brush marks stamped on it before the image was applied. It didn’t look anything like a real oil, but at least the fake brush marks did not reflect light as would a smooth surface.

The frame was real wood. It looked like it might have been produced at the same factory that made cheap wood molding. Even so, it still looked nice to me.

On the bank along the river was a small cottage, in an advanced stage of disrepair. Moss hung from the trees. I think there was a faint hint of a setting sun, but that was not clear. I don’t think there were any birds or humans in the picture. The only sign of civilization was that tumbledown cottage.

The Painting was quite large—probably forty-eight inches by twenty-eight inches (it is pictured at the end of this chapter). It practically filled up my whole dorm wall. Every year I would pack it up and bring it home to my parents’ house. Then, in the fall, I would take it back to school with me. By the time I graduated, it had more than one gouge in both picture and frame. When I moved to New York, my mother decided that it belonged over her fireplace, so that’s where it ended up.

After Evie and I got married, the drama about this "piece of art" got started. I really liked The Painting, and my mother knew it. At least once a year, when Evie and I would visit my parents, my mother would ask us if we were ready to take The Painting home with us. Evie was willing, but I knew her style, and I knew that The Painting did not appeal to her. So, every time my mother would ask us about taking it home, we would come up with a different excuse.

It would have been easy enough for us to take it off her hands, but we were not sure whether or not Mom actually liked it. We thought that just maybe she wanted it, but was offering it back to us just to be gracious. It was a puzzle.

Had she ever taken it off the wall, and replaced it with something she picked out, then the solution would have been clear. We would have acted excited about getting it back, loaded it in our car, and then found a dumpster in Grand Rapids. But we didn’t know how to read her.

With my dad it was a different story. He never minced words. If he didn’t like something, he would mutter about it a little, and then just admit his dislike. My dad’s feelings regarding the picture were obvious—he really liked it. It was his style—the little cottage, the quiet river, the warm still sky. He smiled whenever he looked at it.

But my mom was less easy to read. Confounding the dilemma was my dad’s reaction to her trying to get us to take it back with us. He would always say something like: "Carol, don’t bother them about it. If they had room for it they would take it." So, the picture stayed in their living room.

Nearly fifteen years after we got married, my mother died. My parents had been married about sixty years when she passed. Her death devastated my father. For nearly a year he struggled to come to grips with his loneliness. Still the picture from Springfield hung over his fireplace. I think at that point it reminded him not only of the ideal cottage, but also of the love of his life. He was not about to give up anything that reminded him of her.

Finally, after that first year had passed, he called me one day and asked me to come down to visit him. I normally drove the sixty miles (each way) every weekend to visit, and when I did I would always bring Evie and the kids. This time he wanted me to come alone. I thought that curious, so I inquired about his health. I suspected he might be sick. He assured me, however, that he was feeling physically strong and healthy, but that he just wanted to talk. He had never made a request like that before, so I told Evie that I was heading down to talk to him, about what I did not know.

When I got there, Dad seemed especially melancholy, but otherwise in good health.

After nearly an hour of small talk, Dad finally shared with me the purpose of our meeting. "Mike," he said, looking directly into my eyes, obviously trying to read me, "you know your mother was an angel. I miss her more than I can express. She was everything to me. I get no joy out of life anymore. I get up in the morning, have breakfast, pull out pictures of Carol and me, and I just sit here and cry. I can’t help it. She was an angel, and I miss her more than I can say.

With that, my father started shaking all over. He dropped his head, and cradled it between his wrinkled fists, and started sobbing uncontrollably. My father was a tough man. He had been on his own from the age of thirteen. He started working as a lumberjack at that young age, without the guidance of a father or mother. He was a fighter, a moonshiner, a gun packing purveyor of illegal goods, and a gambler—all, of course, in his youth. As an adult, and as a father, he was a mature responsible man. My mother had tamed him well.

"Mike," he continued, "I don’t want to go on. I can’t handle not holding her, not hearing her voice, not talking to her. It’s just too hard."

Neither one of us could hold back our tears. I had seen him cry only a few times before—once was when my older brother was killed in an accident while serving in the army in 1946. I also saw him shed tears at the death of my mother. Other than on those occasions, I had never seen my father exhibit signs of anything that could be perceived as weakness.

In fact, when Dad first received the news that Mom had died, he did not weep this much. Mom had requested before she died that I be the one to tell Dad she had passed. I was always a little puzzled that she would make that request. I had always known it was not because she thought I would do a better job at it. All of us kids loved her deeply, and any one of us would have performed that heavy task with grace and compassion. It was only later in life that I came to realize her reasoning. I think Mom knew that I, as the youngest, could easily lose my way at her passing.

Prior to her death, she and I had engaged in some lengthy and painful conversations about death and dying. She knew that at that point in life no one close to me had ever died, and I think she wanted to engage me immediately in the grieving process, knowing it would be therapeutic.

Again, the "angel" was right. It seemed that she was always right—right in life, and now she was right in death. The fact that she gave me that job, truly did force me to begin my time of mourning. How wise that woman was.

When I gave Dad the sad news, he was sitting in his favorite chair, in the living room, beside the fireplace, and under that wonderfully serene picture of the cottage on the still river. As the words came from my mouth, he simply lowered his head. He sat there quietly for a moment, and then I heard him quietly say, "It’s better now, she won’t have to suffer anymore." His words were true; he had watched his love waste away from a long bout with pancreatic cancer.

I bent over him from behind, and kissed him on his thinning gray hair. As I pressed my lips on the crown of his head, and wrapped my arms around his neck, I could feel the heat rising from him. He was weeping alright, but gently—not convulsively as he did today. After a few minutes, he got up and went into the bathroom. When he came out his face was pale and old, but he had stopped crying, and he seemed ready to take on life again.

Today, however, Dad was approaching life from a different direction. "I’ve got something I need to talk to you about," he said. "I’ve thought about it a lot." He paused for a few moments to organize his thoughts, then he looked up at me with his tired blue eyes, and continued. "If I give up the fight, I will pass, and be with her. I was never happy before I met her, and I’m miserable now." He then paused again. I could sense that he thought he might have given me the wrong impression of what he was intending. "Don’t get me wrong. You and your brothers and sisters do all you can, and I appreciate it. But it’s just not the same anymore. No one, and no thing, can take her place. She was one of a kind."

By that time, he was finished crying. He had some serious talking to do, and he had to block out his emotions in order to do it. He forced himself to stop. I likewise struggled to stop weeping.

"I wouldn’t do anything to take my life. That’s not what I mean," he said. "That would be the coward’s way out. But it is a real struggle to keep my head clear, to take my medicine, and all the rest of it. If I just quit the struggle, I know I would just pass."

At that point, he was sober as a preacher, but I had begun crying much harder than before. I did not have his self control—not when it came to this. He tried to console me, but without success. The harder I tried to stop, it seemed, the worse it got. It was not that I was used to shedding tears. Not at all. As far as pain is concerned, I do not remember ever crying from pain, at least not as an adult. But the death of a loved one was something I was not prepared to deal with at that moment, and the prospect of it being my father devastated me.

I knew he needed me to be a strong man, not a weak one. I simply had not expected anything like this, and I was not prepared to handle it. Finally I excused myself and went into the bathroom. I washed off my face with cold water, and convinced myself that I had to buck up.

I did get control, and returned to talk to him.

As soon as I sat back down, Dad continued, "What I want to know from you is this. Do I have your permission to give up?"

"What a strange question to ask your youngest son," I thought as I sat there. After a few moments, I said: "Dad, you should do whatever you think you should do. I love you with all my heart. You were, and are, a great dad. All your children love you, and look up to you. We all need you. My kids need you. All your other grandchildren need you. You are the patriarch."

Then I paused for a moment, "But, with all that having been said, I will always respect your wishes. If you cannot go on, I will respect that. I do not want to lose you. I don’t know how to let go. You are so very important to me. But I know you have thought about this. And I understand your loss. We all loved Mom. She left a huge hole in all of us. But we all have our own families, now. Dad, I know how devastating your loss must be. So, whatever you do, it’s okay with me. You have always been a great father, and I will respect your wishes. And I will always love and respect you."

I knew he had not come to this conclusion overnight. I cannot say that I knew how he felt, but I think I had an idea. We continued after that with small talk, and eventually I excused myself and headed home. But my world had just been rocked. I really had no idea what decision Dad might have reached after our conversation, but I decided that I would accept and understand whatever he ended up doing. I did not share what Dad had said, not to my brothers and sisters, and not even to Evie.

Sometime shortly after that memorable meeting with my father, my sister Tot called to tell me that she, too, had met with Dad. He had asked her to do him a favor. He wanted her to take him on a driving tour of all the places he had ever lived. I knew at the time that he had not had the same conversation with her that he had with me. She would not have been able to handle it (not that I did such a great job at it).

Much like my mother before her, Tot too is an angel. She always made every effort to help our parents, and so she readily agreed to comply with Dad’s wishes. With his help, she drew up a map, and the next Saturday morning they embarked on what Dad thought would be his last trip.

As it turned out, while on that memorable tour, my father discovered that one of my mother’s best high school friends (Edith) had just lost her husband. On a lark, my father got her Florida mailing address from one of her Michigan neighbors, and he began writing her letters. After my sister got back, she called me and told me all about it. We both got a kick out of this part of it.

Shortly after discovering his new pen pal, my father shocked the entire family by buying a plane ticket to meet her in Florida (that was the first time he had ever flown). Shortly thereafter the letters turned into love letters, poetry, and songs. And within a year, they were married.

What does all this have to do with that picture of the serene cottage on the river that Evie and I feared might end up on our wall? Well, just like my mother before, Edith liked the picture, or at least she said she did. So, it continued to hang above the mantel, watching over my dad’s new love affair.

Finally, five years later (at age ninety-four) my father passed away from a heart attack.

I remember sitting there in the living room after the funeral, eating sandwiches and laughing with our whole family. Soon my eyes drifted to and focused on that well-traveled picture of that lonely cottage, with the still river and faint sunset, hanging over the fireplace. For all those years it never moved. I began thinking about whether my mother ever really liked it, or if she was just placating me, or maybe my father. I knew Evie didn’t like it—that’s why it never hung on her wall. Then I wondered if Edith liked it, or if she just tolerated it.

Then I anthropomorphized it. In a very real sense, that picture was actually me, at least in the eyes of my parents. I was gone, but they had the picture; Evie had me, but they had my cottage on the river. I have no doubt that had my parents not loved me with all their hearts, that picture would have found my dad’s burning barrel in the backyard the day I moved my junk back in their house.

As I sat there staring at it, I remember thinking, "I wonder how long that will survive now?" For sure, I was not going to ask for it. My sister was planning to move into the house after Dad’s death. I had never discussed with her the origin or history of that picture. I imagine she simply thought that Mom had bought it years ago. Little did she know that picture represented me. And now that Dad was gone, I no longer lived in that house—not in the flesh, not in memory, and not even in the picture of the serene cottage on the still river.

After all the hugging was done, and enough sandwiches eaten, I said my goodbyes to my brothers and sisters, and got our children ready for the drive back to Grand Rapids. Just before leaving, I went back in the living room to pick on my oldest brother (Jack) one last time. Whenever I teased him, he always would grab me and call me a "potlicker." I never knew what a potlicker was, but I assumed it to be a term of endearment.

As I turned to walk out of Mom’s and Dad’s house for the last time, I took one last look at the picture above the fireplace. My eyes fixed on it for a few short moments, and I realized that it no longer represented me hanging there. Always before looking into it gave me a warm feeling. But this time was different.

The one-hour trip back to Grand Rapids was atypical. Usually the kids would be fighting in the back of the van, and Evie would be correcting them. This time they pretty much just sat there thinking. Losing my father was a terrible loss to all of us. Finally one of them (probably John) threw a toy and hit Charity. With that, everything turned normal.

"Are you okay?" Evie finally asked me.

"Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just really hard for me to let go of him. He always had the right answers to my questions."

"He still does," she said. "Part of him is living inside of you. You know, you are a lot like him. You’re wise in many of the same ways."

I thought about what she had said, and it consoled me.

After several minutes, Evie asked me, "Do you want your picture?"

"No, do you?" I replied in jest.

"If you want it, you better tell Tot. I’m sure she won’t leave it there. And she doesn’t know its history. She’ll toss it."

"That’s fine with me," I responded. "Mike doesn’t live there anymore."

That was the last time I ever saw The Painting.

"Our kids will need to know about this."

We had two windows on the front of our apartment—one leading onto the fire escape, and the other just looking out over the street. We had built wooden shutters over both to prevent junkies from breaking in. Most of the time we kept them securely locked from the inside.

Evie and I each opened one of the shutters again, and this time stuck our heads out. It was a warm evening. Evie had just finished her last day of work at the bank, we had withdrawn all our money, and we were anxious to get on our way. But how could we? We had one thing in our favor—we could wait them out. We knew that eventually they would grow impatient, and take off. Junkies are not patient people.

Our plan had been to snatch up our remaining belongings, and run down the stairs toward the street. Once outside, we would jump in the front of the truck, tossing our laundry bags full of goodies in ahead of us, and stealthily slip out of town.

Our lead-up planning did not foresee that the path to our truck would become a war zone; that the street people would choose this place and this time to stage their final attack. I leaned out the window, and spotted seven or eight of them leaning against our building on the truck side of our front door, and a couple others sitting on our hood. The battle lines were drawn, but not by us.

As the situation stood at that moment, there was no obvious way to escape. Furthermore, their numbers, and the way they had laid out the battlefield, strongly suggested that robbery was not their ultimate goal—I was to be killed, perhaps Evie as well.

As soon as we would get past the guys leaning on the building, we would be confronted by those sitting on our hood—they would simply slide off and block the truck door. Then those leaning on the building would attack us from the rear, probably with a slug or blade to the spine. I recognized one of the junkies from an earlier encounter. At that time he had used a chrome-plated 38 Special in an effort to rob me. I had no reason to think that he would have discarded this firearm. He was positioned to come at us from the rear.

They had numbers, and they had weapons. We were in trouble.

The only solution I came up with would be for me to brandish my 12 gauge pump. I knew that would certainly land me (maybe us) in jail. Instead, we decided to wait them out.

But sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes chance is your most faithful ally. This was to be one of those times.

Suddenly, as Evie and I stood there with our heads still poking out our windows, we heard a "pop," then another; followed two seconds later by a third "pop."

"Ev! Those are gunshots!" I exclaimed. "Those are gunshots! Who’s shooting?"

Then it unfolded before our eyes. Out of a bar about six doors down the street bolted a shirtless sprinter. He was bounding toward us faster than I had ever seen a junkie run. Peering behind as much as ahead, he ran up the middle of the street, right past our truck, and right past our junkie/dealer "buddies."

In his right hand was a revolver, and in his left hand a wad of bills. Just behind him was the proprietor of the bar, with a still-smoking black snub-nose pistol in his right hand. He was old and fat, and sloppily bedecked in a neck apron, untied and dangling. It was obvious he had no chance of catching the robber who had already sped out of snub-nose range.

So, instead of firing more shots, the overweight pursuer merely staggered to a halt right below us, and there fired off a litany of ethnic slurs at his no-longer visible target. After a couple deep breaths, he then contented himself to lower his pistol and turn back toward his bar.

His retreat was greeted by a chorus of jeers from his unsavory audience. They, of course, sided with the robber.

"That idiot just robbed the bar! Can you believe it? This is it! This is our chance!" I shouted to Evie. Her mouth opened, but she never said a thing.

Without a split-second’s hesitation, I ran to the phone and dialed the NYPD. This was the first and last time I ever enlisted their help.

"I want to report a robbery in progress! A man just robbed a bar! Shots were fired! The address? 531 East Sixth Street!" I exclaimed, affecting as much excitement as possible.

Now, the crime had actually occurred at something like 500 East Sixth, but I didn’t want the cops stopping six or seven buildings up the street. I wanted them stopping at our address—531 East Sixth Street.

"My name? Roger Smith. Yes, I will wait inside." Then I hung up.

I scurried around the apartment grabbing our laundry bags. I positioned them right by the door. I then went back to the window and waited for the signal to make our escape. "When the cops get here, we’re gonna have to move quickly. Grab the camera bag and follow me," I told Evie. I adjusted the wrist strap on my big stick to ensure that it could not be easily wrestled away, and put the truck keys in my mouth.

Within seconds we saw the first cop car approach. We bolted to the door, grabbing the laundry bags as we ran out.

By the time we hit the street, there were half a dozen emergency vehicles pulling up, some even taking positions on the sidewalk.

One of my "buddies," was redirecting an officer to the bar up the street, while others were pointing down the street indicating where the robber had run.

We had timed it perfectly. We pushed right through the initial line of junkies. They had moved away from the building a bit to get a better look at the excitement. When we got to our truck, I dropped my bag and

quickly unlocked and opened the driver’s side door. I tossed the laundry bags across the seat. The cameras landed on the floor, and the weapons came to rest against the passenger door.

Evie then jumped in, sliding over as far as she could to make room for me.

We still had a couple unwanted hood ornaments sitting on our truck, even as I cranked the engine. Startled, they turned around to see what was happening. I flashed them my biggest smile, and shoved the shifter into reverse. They knew the time had come to give up.

We had won.

Their immense frustration was obvious. They had been so very determined to get me. But again they failed, just as I imagine they failed at everything else they had ever attempted in life.

While two or three officers interrogated the junkies, I backed our Chevy up until I felt the rear bumper gently thud against the lamp-less car behind me. I whipped the wheel to the right and eased ahead until I bumped the car in front. Backing up again, I felt the curb. I whipped the wheel again to the right, and pulled onto the street, narrowly missing a cruiser that sped past in pursuit of the robber. The officer inside gave me a dirty look.

"Mike, we forgot to tell Mrs. Bono goodbye. Should we go back?" Evie said, finally smiling.

"I don’t think so," I followed, forcing a nervous laugh.

With four truck wheels moving down East Sixth Street, and with us inside, Evie and I were finally confident that we had successfully eluded the bad guys, hopefully for the last time.

But we also realized that without the timely distraction of the bar robbery, this chapter of our lives might have had a different ending. In fact, dozens of times throughout the years, as I contemplated this amazing event, I wondered how it might have turned out had these guys simply put a knife through one of our tires, or pried open the lock on the back of the camper, and tossed our stuff on the street. That would have changed the whole dynamic of the situation.

We inched past the last cruiser; this one parked a few car-lengths down the street.

"No need to hurry now," I said, probably trying to convince myself that we were safe at last.

"Man, can you believe all the cops out here?" I commented. "I think they show up in greater numbers if they think they might get to shoot someone."

"That’s good for us," Evie said, as she turned around as if to look back. Of course, she could not, because there was no window in the camper. "Goodbye Mrs. Bono. Goodbye East Sixth Street. Goodbye New York."

For the next ten minutes I concentrated on fighting rush hour traffic; but I still observed that a thick quiet had settled over us. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Evie was stirring. I glanced over at her, and saw her reaching into her purse for a tissue. Her dark brown eyes had filled with tears. She was silently sobbing.

I then said, trying to console us both: "We had a great time, didn’t we? …We’ll come back. …Whenever you leave someplace, you take a part of it with you." My eyes were stinging with tears.

Several long minutes passed. "Hello Philly," Evie finally squeaked out.

We looked at each other, and forced a smile.

And so it happened. With map in hand, gas in tank, hopes high, cash (but not very much) in pocket; and with a treasure trove of rich memories from our first years together, our Chevy pickup popped out of the tunnel into a bright New Jersey sunset.

Evie and I were now officially on our way to our next great adventure.

We did not say much during the remainder of the trip—there was not a lot that needed saying. But one thought did galvanize itself deep into the creases of my brain, never to be forgotten: "We must chronicle our experiences in New York."

Then Evie confirmed my thinking. With nose running, and makeup streaking down her face, she mumbled: "Mike, someday we have to write a book about our life together in New York. We just have to. Our kids will need to know about this."

"We will," I replied.

Then I thought for a minute, "Did she say ‘kids’?"

Well, we have now been married for over forty years. She was right, we did have kids—four of them, and six grandchildren to date.

And what follows is our effort to record (in a roughly chronological fashion) the story that we contemplated doing nearly forty years ago.

As you read the books in this series, you will find them to be filled more with romance, excitement and history, than with the sort of violence that marked our last moments in the city.

Also, you most likely will conclude that our story reads more like two stories in one binding. That’s because once you get past the introductory comments, Evie and I each record our own version of events—Evie tells the story the way she remembers it, and I tell it my way.

Of course, Evie thinks her version is the correct one; while I believe mine to be the more accurate. At no point does either one of us seek to be dishonest or misleading, we simply remember things differently, some of the time.

In the end, you the reader will make the determination as to who is right, who is wrong, and who is just honestly mistaken.

Introduction to TRAX New York Volumes 1-3: Why we did this project

Not the best smelling place in the world—New York in the 1960s and 70s. But that fact had nothing to do with our leaving the city. To us, the sights, sounds and smells of New York would forever be latched into our memory as some of the things we would miss most; to us they greatly contributed to the charm of the city.

We were moving in pursuit of educational opportunity. I had been offered what was described as a "fellowship" to study at The Dropsie College of Hebrew and Cognate Learning in Philadelphia. I understood that as a part of this arrangement I could be granted scholarly access to thousands of Neo-Sumerian documents archived at the University Museum (University of Pennsylvania). New York University, where I had studied for the past four years, could offer nothing comparable.

We strategized this move for over a month, making every effort to iron out all the details. Over the course of the week leading up to our move, we loaded most of our belongings into a plywood camper that my father had constructed and placed on the back of our 1963 autumn-bronze Chevy pickup truck. We transported these items from our apartment to the camper, one or two at a time, trying not to alert our "neighbors" that we were moving. The neighbors we were trying to elude were the dealers and junkies that lived around us.

You see, the East Village (east side of Greenwich Village) neighborhood where Evie and I had lived for the past two years was not surrounded by white picket fences or rose-filled flower gardens. During those pre-Rudy Giuliani years, crime, really violent crime, was out of control throughout much of that area. For example, when we first sat down to write this book, we could recall in detail seven murders, all occurring within a few blocks of our apartment. That was just during the two years we lived there. Of those seven murders, we actually witnessed three of them firsthand.

In one case (the stabbing of an old man) I inadvertently photographed the whole killing while in progress, thinking it was only a fight between two junkies. Simply put, the East Village was a tough place to live in 1972.

But that was not the case where we lived—531 East Sixth Street. Our building was unique to the block. There, and in the street immediately outside, I personally ran security. I did so to the degree that I became known in the neighborhood as "The Man": a moniker most commonly attributed to a police officer. I was able to play this role because I always carried a big stick (yes, an actual big, weighty stick). And, I had convinced the junkies and dealers that I was willing, if not madly anxious, to use it.

It should come as no surprise that the bad guys hated us. We had made some very serious enemies. And those enemies were not about to let us leave without exacting revenge. They were so intent on this, that they turned the final moments leading up to our exodus into one of the most bizarre experiences of our lives.

As I explained above, over the previous few days we had loaded (piecemeal ) most of our belongings into the plywood camper on the back of our pickup. But, we had held off to the end taking out our more precious possessions. Those items were stashed in three over-sized laundry bags. In the bottom of the first bag we laid several photo albums. On top of the albums, we carefully positioned our cameras (each individually wrapped in bath towels). These included a Nikon Photomic T, a Canon 35mm camera, and a Bolex 16mm movie camera.

In the second bag we packed our most serious weaponry. That consisted of a couple shotguns (with ammunition), an assortment of knives, a hunting bow (with arrows), and an unregistered WWII semi-automatic pistol (long since disposed of). Because the long guns extended beyond the top of their bag, we placed the third bag over the opening of the second, and secured the bags in the middle with rope, which also served as a handle.

I had been hesitant to load the bags in the camper until we were actually all set to leave, because all that protected our stashed belongings was a four-dollar padlock on the rear camper door. No way would I allow that much firepower to reach the streets of New York, especially not in our neighborhood.

The street people knew we were moving. Even though I had tried to be discrete by spreading our preparation out, it had still attracted attention. As I would toss something in the camper, skinny shirtless guys would walk up and say something like: "Hey, man, you movin’?"

To which I would reply, with stick in hand, "I ain’t goin’ nowhere, man."

The local junkies and dealers knew better. They were not going to let us leave unscathed—too often, in their eyes, I had interfered with their business. They were upset that they had never really got the best of me. Every time I caught one of them trying to get into our building, I kicked him out. Every time someone was getting mugged in or around our building, my stick and I came to the rescue. Eventually they simply decided to avoid me.

Looking down from our third-floor window on this steamy evening, through the rusted black steel construct that was our fire escape, I counted five or six troublemakers leaning against (or standing by) our ticket out of

town. I could deal with one or two at a time, but I knew I would fail against those numbers. I wasn’t sure how we were going to pull this off. I could easily see that the big stick option was not going to work—not this time.

I went down to the first floor and knocked on the super’s door. She (Mrs. Bono) lived directly below us with her sister, and together they ran things. They both commanded respect in the building, and on the street—no one ever seemed to bother them. Strangely, I don’t recall either of them ever toting a purse. So no one knew where they carried their money, or had the guts to find out.

Their biggest assets were their physical strength, and their wisdom. They were both large (but not overweight) tough-looking women, and they always went out together. I suppose if Mrs. Bono had a third strength, it would have been her lung power. She could (and frequently did) dress down a junkie half a block away.

I knocked, and she came to the door.

I said, "Hi, Mrs. Bono. I think I have a problem."

She knew we were moving to Philadelphia, and she was sad to see us go. She too had come to accept that I was the building’s "cop." On several occasions she actually came up to our apartment to enlist my help in kicking out burglars and breaking up fights. No one ever bothered to call the cops—certainly not Mrs. Bono.

"What’s your problem, Mike?" She asked.

I explained to her that I thought I had five or six "friends" hanging around our truck, and that I was sure they were determined to get even with me before I left town.

Mrs. Bono’s second-floor apartment extended the full length of the building, with its entrance more toward the rear. It was in the hall just outside her door that we stood and talked.

"I know you got some enemies out there," she said smiling. "Wait here; I’ll see what’s goin’ on."

With arms swinging, she walked briskly and with total confidence toward the street. She never seemed to be afraid of anything. She propped open the usually-locked inner door with a door stop. She approached the outer door, and looked to the left, then to the right through the glass, then opened it. Holding it open with her left foot, she looked around to scrutinize the situation. After only a moment, she closed the outer door, and kicked the stop out of the inner.

Then, with checks puffed in a big grin, she headed back to where I was standing (at her door as ordered). I can still envision the silhouette of her broad form as she walked back toward me—backlit by the light of the street streaking through the small windows in the doors. She was an imposing figure of a woman. "Mike, you don’t have five or six buddies out there, you have at least fifteen. They are lined up against the building half-way down the block!"

I knew she was exaggerating a bit, but I got the picture. "Great," I said. "That’s even better. … Got any suggestions?"

Jokingly, Mrs. Bono suggested that we could call the cops. We shared an aversion to the police for this type of situation. It simply involved less paperwork if a person solved his own problems.

"Yeah, right," I responded. "like they are going to help me."

Besides, I wanted to avoid generating any police interest as to what I was loading into the truck on my last trip. Possessing an unregistered firearm in the city was a felony. Possessing the types and quantity of firearms and ammo that I had, who knows. I had to come up with an alternative plan of action.

I went back up to the apartment and told Evie what Mrs. Bono found outside. We looked into each other’s eyes, and contemplated our alternatives.

"Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin." - Barbara Kingsolver

As the years passed, that slanted version of history (the "annals of the king") would be formally committed to memory by the king’s "preachers," who were then dispatched throughout the kingdom to spread the good word about the king. Thus the written annals became the basis of an oral literature, with all the variations and additional embellishments common to oral literatures.

In more modern times it has become a tradition for political leaders around the world to write autobiographies, or to authorize others to write their biographies. The purpose being to establish (embellish?) their legacies by controlling what was written about them. Winston Churchill was not willing to leave anything to chance in this regard. He said that "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it." He was keenly aware that there will always be conflicting views of history, and that they are often driven by agenda.

To a lesser degree every family does a similar thing. While leaders of a family do not typically hire scribes or biographers to write about their laudable exploits, they do employ a form of oral literature to accomplish it.

For instance, at family picnics and reunions, the same old stories are repeated time after time. One such tale might go like this: "We all remember Great Uncle Rex — Doctor Rex. He was our family’s ancestor who worked with Dr. Jonas Salk in developing the polio vaccine. In fact, it was actually Dr. Rex who did most of the research, and without him the vaccine would never have been successful."

Another story might center upon someone like Great, Great Grandpa Jones. "Yeah, you’ve heard about Grandpa Jones, haven’t you? It was his hardware store that served as the cornerstone around which this whole town grew. Yeah, without Great, Great Grandpa Jones there might never have been a town called Springfield."

Of course, there was no "Dr. Rex" associated with Dr. Salk; nor did the family’s hardware store necessarily ever amount to much. I simply made these two stories up to demonstrate my point—every family has an oral literature. And, the reliability of these oral literatures is sometimes (if not usually) suspect.

But this practice is even more pervasive than the examples cited above. Even small family units consisting of a mother and father, and their grown children, tell stories about their lives. If the experience was a happy one, the stories will be slanted in that direction. If unhappy, mostly the negative will be rehashed, and of course amplified.

In every case, there will be key words that serve as the triggering devices for these significant memories of events. As mentioned earlier, Evie and I refer to them as vignettes. Scientifically, they are call mnemonics, which is basically an omnibus term used to denote anything having to do with the study of memory.

Educators apply the term a little more specifically. When they speak of mnemonics, they are usually referring to such things as rhymes and acrostics—the devices they use in order to help students memorize lists. It is in a similar fashion, I believe, that families employ memory triggering devices (mnemonics) in the development of its collective memory, or its oral literature.

After getting a grasp on some of the more practical aspects of mnemonics, Evie and I decided to take a closer look at the science behind it; more specifically, into that area of mnemonics that explains the manner in which the human brain stores and retrieves memories. As a result, we started to understand what was happening to us as we were writing this book.

It is this concept of mnemonics, and the inherent manner in which the human brain stores and retrieves memories, that led Evie and me to a fourth possible cause for the discrepancies we experienced when retrieving and expressing our memories.

We discovered that while we may have shared a common mnemonic; the information triggered by that mnemonic had through the years developed differently in our individual memory bank.

Here’s how that works: Just like all normal human beings, Evie and I each have brains containing over 100 billion neurons (although she might argue less for me). That’s where memories are stored. But it doesn’t stop there. Each individual neuron may be interconnected to hundreds of other memory-containing cells by transmission devices called synapses, of which there are trillions.

The way this network develops is different in every case, as it is highly influenced by emotional stimuli—both at the time of the event, and every time it is recalled thereafter. While Evie and I may have shared a common memory trigger (mnemonic), through the years the synapses network associated with it had developed differently in each of us. That means, when I would bring up a memory triggered by a particular mnemonic, such as "walks in the East Village," while it would spark a similarly excited flurry of brain activity in each of us, the synapses network she had developed around the stimulated neuron was sometimes vastly different from mine.

Therefore, to Evie the "walks in the East Village" mnemonic might conjure up the sights, sounds and smells of little shops and galleries; my synapses network triggered neurons which stored elements of relative safety and danger. After all, her primary role in life has always been shopping; while mine was watching out for her while she shopped.

The irony of this phenomenon is that before we started writing this book, whenever Evie and I would mention one of our common memory triggers, we would both assume that the memory it retrieved in each of us would be virtually the same. Obviously that was a wrong assumption, as is made clear by the chapters that follow.

Perhaps there are additional causes for the disparities. But my hunch is that those listed above are the major ones; with the likelihood that divergent synopsis development played an overriding role.

I would really like to see this phenomenon become the subject of a scholarly paper—perhaps even a doctoral thesis, if such is not already the case.

Also, I would encourage other married couples who have lived together longer than a couple decades to engage themselves in a similar project. I have no doubt that they would find fascinating the disparities (perhaps even contradistinctions) in their own recollections. I am sure it would do amazing things for their relationship, plus provide gossip fodder for their family tree going forward. What a hoot!

Even beyond married couples, the practice of "comparative mnemonics" (the term we coined to describe the phenomenon) could be easily adapted for groups such as college roommates, adult siblings, members of fraternities and sororities, etc. Even adult children and their elderly parents might wish to participate. All of these groups could employ a similar system for recording their diverging accounts of significant memories. To aid in this effort, Evie and I are completing a new book (TRAX the Manual), which lays out all the pathways and pitfalls that we think would be helpful to know when embarking on a similar odyssey. Watch for it in early 2011.
 

Another note that I should point out that most names have been changed in this book. Even though Evie and I wrote everything with good intentions, and tried to be as honest as possible, we realized that offense might be taken by some of those mentioned. In several instances we note that the names have been changed, in other cases we did not.

There is no doubt that mistakes have been made with regard to facts. For instance, were the police cars in New York (in 1968) blue and white, or black and white? We simply could not agree on this. If you discover errors such as that, or regarding specific dates, don’t worry about them. But if you find spelling or grammatical errors, please let us know.

Finally, Evie and I were both a little surprised to discover just how significant a role wine played in our lives during those early years. I think if we were able to go back and change one thing, that would be it. We did discuss whether or not we should attempt to minimize the fact that we did drink too much when we first got married, and decided that it would be best to stick to the truth, as we remembered it. Today, neither of us drinks alcohol. At some point it ceased to have the attraction it once did.

"Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin."

—Barbara Kingsolver

"A lie told often enough becomes truth." —Vladimir Lenin

For the most part, over the course of those years, Evie and I seldom discussed the details of these stories with each other. If we discussed them at all, it would have been along this line, "Hey, Ev, remember that time we got mugged in Washington Square Park?"

To which she might reply, "Yeah, that was scary!"

Typically, that would have been the sum total of the discussion. Any mention of one of these stories between the two of us over the years would have consisted only of the memory

As it turned out, they are not. We each have our own version. In many instances, they are very similar—sometimes virtually identical. But in some cases our versions of these vignettes look like two totally different stories.

When we first discovered this phenomenon, we were discouraged. We felt it to be one or two degrees beyond troublesome; almost a deal-breaker, as far as our collaborative effort in writing the book. We asked ourselves, "How can we do this, if we can’t even agree on the details of what happened?" We knew each other well enough to be certain that our intentions were never to be dishonest or misleading, but that did not make the divergences easier to deal with.

At one point early on, one of us suggested that we hammer out the differences and combine the two versions. It took only a few minutes to figure out that was a bad idea. Neither of us was willing to compromise a bit. And why should we? Besides, all charm would be lost with a phony and boring milk-toast version. Simply put, we concluded that the very discrepancies that cropped up in our stories made the whole process fun for us, and hopefully interesting to our readers.

However, even after we got past this aspect of the book’s development,

In some cases, we concluded, the differences could be attributed to the degree to which one of us might not have actively participated in a given vignette. It was a simple fact, I was barely a player in some vignettes; while in others, Evie did not participate directly.

For instance, whenever I would engage a mugger in our building, Evie would remain safe (but worried) in our apartment. I could be several floors up or down, and all she could do was listen to me yelling like hell. In those cases, Evie was best able only to reflect on her concern for my safety, and parrot what few details I or others related to her afterward. So, for the most part, that would be the extent of the memory bank from which she could draw.

In still other instances, such as when Evie’s bank got robbed, because I was not actually present at the time, my version of events was limited to the things she and her co-workers told me. I am sure that in my mind, my version was the most correct version possible—but such was probably not the case. Quite likely my mind had jumped in and filled this memory vacuum with speculation and hearsay. Human nature always strives to make sense out of life, after all.

While this "vacuum filling" concept did help us to understand the reason for some of the discrepancies, it did not help with numerous others. Particularly troublesome were our conflicting accounts of events in which both of us mutually participated. The more we thought about it, however, the more plausible explanations we came up with.

For instance, it is likely in some cases one or both of use may have

Another possible cause for some of the disparities might have to do with the way humans tend to regard themselves centermost in every picture. For example, whenever most of us page through a family album, we always look for pictures of ourselves, particularly ones that make us look good (at least that’s what I do).

Also, along this same line, I think we all are tempted to embellish our role in life. For instance, when a person is asked about a major historical event that occurred during his lifetime, such as the assassination of President Kennedy, his first thoughts will likely go to his own personal experiences surrounding the event—where he was at the time, what he was doing, or whom he was with. We all tend to place ourselves in the middle of whatever is happening, because it makes us feel important. I think this factor might have played a significant role in Evie and I coming up with different versions of the same story—we were each viewing it from our own somewhat self-centered perspective.

On a much larger scale, this self-centering (or self-serving) phenomenon is what has produced various versions of recorded history. It is a fact that the recording of history was particularly troublesome prior to Gutenberg, and the advent of the printed page. For instance, kings in ancient cultures would hire scribes to handwrite how they wanted to be remembered. That highly-complimentary compendium would then be read over and over at public meetings until it was ground into the minds of the proletariat as absolute truth (or so the king hoped).
"A lie told often enough becomes truth." —Vladimir Lenin

Vignettes

Once we had completed it, however, we took a long look and decided that what we had just written might better serve as an introduction to the whole three-volume New York set. Therefore, that’s where you will find it—right after these "perfunctory notes."

Then, we wrote another conclusion. That second conclusion is now placed at the end of volume three, which is (obviously) the last book of the New York series.

With the beginning and the end established, all that was left was to fill in the details.
We decided that our next step would be to establish the chapter headings. The first chapter heading meeting was held at a third coffee house—Beaner’s (later to be called Biggby Coffee). We quickly observed that of the three places, Beaner’s had the best background music (they usually played Classic Blues); but sported the loudest patrons, wielding the most offensive cell phones. We determined that if we were to continue working in public places, we would have to train ourselves to shut out all distracting sights and sounds. We found that with some effort, we could force our minds to be virtually impervious to all outside stimuli. I think the raising of four children helped us with that. At any rate, as long as Beaner’s could make our double espressos with whipped cream, we could get fired up there, just as we could at the other locations.

The first night of "chapter heading writing" we rapidly arrived at one

hundred within the first twenty minutes. We found it very easy to remember events from those New York years. After we reached one hundred on that the first night, we decided to come back the next night to see if we could come up with another fifty or so. We thought that one hundred and fifty chapter headings would be adequate; besides, we didn’t think it possible to come up with many more than that.

We also decided during that first session that a better term to describe our current activity would be "vignette selection." At that stage, vignettes sounded more palatable to us than chapters, even though that’s what they were eventually to become.

The next night of vignette selection, we went to a new coffee shop. This one was called "Common Ground"—a community extension of a nearby church. We really liked this place, except for the very noisy digital chess timers. Common Ground was a throwback to the early 1960s. It reminded me greatly of the beatnik coffee houses that were prevalent in Greenwich Village during the pre-hippie era—but without the heroin, of course. Lenny Bruce might have felt almost at home there. Common Ground was a fun place to work, and they knew how to make exceptional espressos with whipped cream. Life was good.

This second night of vignette selection was also very fruitful. We quickly reached our target fifty, and kept going. With only a half-hour invested, we had reached one hundred. We sped past that number with an ounce left in our cups. By the time we finished our espressos, we had logged over two hundred

We took a few minutes to talk about how many chapters we actually wanted to include in the book. We reviewed our list of three hundred and decided that they were all worth consideration, if not inclusion. We decided to continue with these vignette selection meetings until we started to run out of potential topics. We concluded that when it happened (when it became difficult to come up with new vignettes), we would know that the well was running dry and that it was time to close out this part of the project.

The problem was, as long as we sat down with those double espressos, we just kept coming up with more vignettes. We never slowed down. "How many chapter headings could a little book accommodate?"

After a few more sessions, we hit seven hundred. We agreed that was a good number, and that we should quit seeking more. We concluded that we had listed all the best topics, and that if we kept squeezing the life out of those four years, the last drops would not contain anything sexy. We did make one concession in this regard—if a new topic were to shout out at us along the way, we could include it if we wished; otherwise, we would stick with the original seven hundred.

With the introduction and conclusion in place, and with a list of seven hundred potentially viable chapter headings in hand, we embarked on the hard work of actually writing the book.

When it came down to putting flesh on the skeleton, we weren’t quite sure how we should go about it. Would it be best to first discuss an event in detail, and then come up with a common version? Or should we each take a vignette and write about it independently? Evie was strongly against the former. She believed that we each should bring a laptop, discuss the title of the vignette only to the point that we were sure we were on the same event, and then develop our own accounts.

We still weren’t sure if that was the best way to do it, but we did think that it would at least be a good way to get started. We decided to do it like this: We would be sure that we both understood the vignette in question. Then, we would each take whatever time we needed to record our take on that vignette. After we were both finished, we would exchange flash drives, and each read the other’s writing. We agreed from the start never

to be critical, and never to edit the each other’s work. It was great fun.

At first we devoted two evenings each week to the endeavor. We were initially content with that regimen. But then we calculated just how long (at that rate) this project would take us to complete.

We decided to up the ante to four evenings each week—Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. We contented ourselves with that schedule even though it still seemed to stretch the project out over an inordinate amount of time. After we were about two years into the effort, we increased it to five nights each week.

Not wanting to watch each other’s face wrinkle over cups of pre-publication doppio con pannas, for a while we tried doing two vignettes each session. We quickly found that we were not capable of doing that, so we dropped back down to one per writing session.

At that rate, we began to see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel—we were completing five chapters per week.

However, all did not go entirely well. After about a half-dozen writing sessions we discovered that something really very exciting (verging on troubling) was happening. While we would always write about the same vignette on any given night, our recollection of the events associated with that vignette could be very different—sometimes disturbingly so.

At first I was totally surprised. "What in the world is she thinking?" I would ask myself. "That’s not the way

But then I would think about it more objectively (I have to admit that it was tricky for me to be totally objective, because I would have just finished writing my own version of that same vignette). Even though I did not always agree with her version, in every case I could still get my mind wrapped around it well enough to appreciate it. It was clear that she was recording events as honestly as she possibly could; it was just that she had a different take on them.

Even more interestingly, it seemed obvious to me that she had not just come up with her views on these past events; she had developed them over the years. When I would question her about it, she would be adamant. When her version differed from mine, Evie truly believed her recollections were right, and that mine were wrong. She was not being stubborn—she was honestly convinced.

I knew that I could not change her mind, had that even been my intention. I also knew that I was convinced that my versions were the more correct. I questioned these disparities, even asking myself whether or not we should attempt to reconcile them.

Then, I recalled the concept behind the old psychological parlor game called "Telephone." Most of us have played some variation of that game at parties, or acted it out in a classroom. The basic concept of the game is to demonstrate the unintentional distortion of a story as it is retold through a chain of people.

In that game, the first person reads a written message to a second person, and the second person repeats aloud the story from memory to a third. This process is repeated until the message has passed orally through a dozen or more people. The last person in the chain writes the message down, and then the final version is compared to the original. Invariably, the two versions of the same message bear little similarity. It is comically entertaining to see how dramatic the differences are between the two.

In the case of the writing of our book, while the stories that Evie and I tell are not subjected to numerous retellers, they have been molded by thirty-eight years of retelling; howbeit if only in our minds.

 

"The difference between false memories and the true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real,

the most brilliant." —Salvador Dali

Perfunctory (but important) Notes

“When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had hap­pened or not.” —Mark Twain

This story (which turned out to be a seven-volume series) was forty years in the making—thirty-seven in the womb, and three (so far) in the weaning. For many years its writing was at the top of the list of things we intended to do, when we had more time. As the years passed, we real­ized that we would never have more time. Our busy lives just got busier.

So, in the spring of 2007, we decided that the only way this project would ever get done was if it first got started. That made sense to us.

The first thing we did (to “get started”) was to go out to a Barnes and Noble and order a round of “doppio con pannas” (double espressos with whipped cream). This was our first of three planning sessions. The only decision we made that first evening was to buy a dozen spiral notebooks, which Evie did the following week. Later, however, we opted for laptops instead of the notebooks.

The next week we had our second planning session at Schuler Books and Music. We found that there, just as at Barnes and Noble, we could buy double espressos (with whipped cream, of course). The nice thing about Schuler’s is that they served their espressos in cute little cups with crystallized amber sugar swizzle sticks. I liked to stir the whipped cream into my espresso with the sugar swizzle stick, and then lick the sweet mixture off the crystallized sugar. Hey, writing is hard work; there ought to be some immediate gratification.

Before we actually started writing the book, we first wanted to estab­lish its scope. We decided that the book should start when Evie first visited me in New York (1968), and it should end four years later with our move from New York to Philadelphia. Also, it should include only matters for which one or both of us had firsthand knowledge.

Later, however, we decided to extend our story writing to include our two year sojourn in Philadelphia, and our two years in Topton (PA). We decided to terminate the project with Topton because it was while living there that we had our first child, Charity Jayne. We thought it proper to stop writing our story with the advent of our family.

We have subsequently discussed it, and are now considering an even­tual continuation of the series. As it stands right now (February, 2010), we have rough drafts for seven volumes, each between 350 and 550 pages.

As noted above, when we first started writing our story, we intended to end it at the point we moved from New York to Philadelphia. So, we started out by writing about the events of our last day in New York and our drive through the tunnel into New Jersey. In other words, we started with the conclusion.

1968

The TRAX series tells a love story. Volumes one through three are set in the boroughs of New York, 1968-72. She was a skinny wisp of a girl, and he was a graduate student at NYU. They drove a Mustang, a Chevy pickup truck, owned two big dogs, and rented a studio in Alphabet City. He was a diamond courier after classes and she worked at the bank. The charm of the book is the events they each recall, and the way the details are remembered-after forty years.