Writings

Non-fiction

How I Became Who I Am Today                                                  2023

For many years people who were close to me, especially parents and teachers, made decisions for me. If it wasn’t a decision, it was influence.

            At the age of thirteen or fourteen I decided I was in love with Christine.  She decided to break off the relationship without explanation. 

            I decided as a high school junior that I would apply for admission to a fancy school of photography in Santa Barbara, California. Then I decided the requirement of bringing along $3,200 of my own photographic equipment (in 1962 dollars) was out of the economic equation.

So, I decided to apply for admission to five prestigious schools of architecture. They decided my high school grades in math were beneath their standards.

“Do you think I could get into Yale or Harvard,” I asked the school Guidance Counselor.

“Steven, I’m not sure that your grades are good enough. And can you afford those schools?”

            So I asked Mom and Dad, “What can you afford to pay for my college education?”

“State college tuitions for residents of Connecticut are a few hundred dollars a year. That doesn’t include meals, books, and incidentals. Yale is nearly two-thousand per year. We can probably get you through your first two years at the University of Connecticut…if you’re accepted. And after that you’d be on your own,” said Mom with Dad nodding agreement.

            I decided to apply to the University of Connecticut and was accepted.

Grandma Grace was aghast at the idea of her Steviekins going all

the way to the frigid “Yukon” for school. I gently set her straight.

            At the end of my sophomore year I elected to drop out of UConn for just one year because my grade point average was deeply embedded in the proverbial doo-doo and I was “fresh outta cash.” I needed motivation to study and time to earn some money. Moving back in with the family I worked at a couple of jobs before receiving a letter from the President of the United States of America graciously inviting me to become a fulltime employee of the U.S. Armed Forces. After passing my pre-induction physical exam I continued to work until the government decided exactly when they would induct me into the branch of my choice, the U.S. Army.

            I was about to apply for readmission to UConn to avoid the draft when a decision beyond my control was made by a very drunken driver in a very heavy Pontiac convertible. He decided to pull out into oncoming traffic.  Were there airbags and seat belts in a 1955 Chevy Belair? No, but the steering column did a good job of restraining my head from further forward motion.

            On my fourth day in the hospital my father sat down at my bedside and pulled out a packet of condoms.

“I found these in your glove compartment.”

“Uh…those are Denis’s. He asked me to keep them for him,” I respond through a broken mouth now devoid of truth-telling front teeth.

Sternly, “I doubt that. And I sure hope you know what you’re doing.”

            Recuperating at home after a horrid week in the hospital I received an updated response from Selective Service System, “Due to suffering a severe concussion you must wait six (6) months before being administered a second pre-induction physical examination based upon which a determination can be made regarding your Selective Service status.”

            Three months later the President sent me an induction notice after which I began Basic Training at Fort Dix, New Jersey (June 1965), got married, trained soldiers “to war and prepare for killing” until June 1967, earned a BS from UConn, got divorced, earned an MBA and immediately retreated to teach young Jewish girls how to ski on a lake in Maine.

I’m not clear on how I got to be who I am today. A popular couple in my high school got married after a few years of university. We were all happy for them. They were wonderful people and the perfect couple. They are both dead …as is my dear Christine. Don’t know exactly how I got to be who I am, but I do know that luck gets top billing in this production.

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Grandma Grace

An Important Influencer in My Life    |     A Character in My Memoir

How is it spelled? Steviekins? Steveykins? No matter. It blew only through the lips of Grandma Grace. A term of endearment. It seems she delighted in me and conveyed that delight when she greeted me, “There’s my Steviekins!” I echoed that delight internally whenever we met and I absorbed that special way she had fun with my name. She called me Steeveekins right through high school.

            In 1948, when I had achieved Level 5, Mom and I moved from Venice California to Haddam Connecticut and began the unscheduled routine of driving to the Bronx to visit their parents, usually for a two or three day weekend. My maternal grandmother, Grace, had divorced and lived in a small apartment on the fifth floor on Kingsbridge Avenue with her parents. She embodied a magnet for me, full of free smiles, a bohemian style, and an elder beatnik of the beat generation.

            We had so much fun together. And, if my memory serves, we always had fun together.

            Short bursts of laughter came easily to her. Just a bit pudgy, but not short and not a classic beauty, but attractive and full of energy. I loved being left alone with her and her parents in the Bronx while Mom and Dad visited his parents or some childhood friends in the borough. Though supporting herself and her parents with seamstress work, Grandma truly lived in the artist’s space as did her ex-husband, brother, and father. The apartment, chock full of paintings, small sculptures and wood carvings, held me fascinated by so much creativity inhabiting such a small space.

            I lived without a bathtub in Connecticut until age fourteen. But Grandma had one! And how I loved playing in the bathtub. What a treat to play with floating ducks and baking soda propelled boats and submarines. Nonetheless, the most treasured time with Grandma Grace found us outside of the apartment.  She seemed to know what a country beach boy wanted to experience. The Museum of Natural History, the auto show at the Coliseum, the Planetarium, the Guggenheim, MoMA, the Bronx Zoo (oh, the stench of that monkey house), and a movie! After all, what can possibly beat the 1954 release of Prince Valiant starring Robert Wagner, Janet Leigh, James Mason, Sterling Hayden and Debra Paget in Technicolor!? Grandma and I saw it together.

            Central Park! That’s even better than a movie and all the rest. Grandma took me there. And she loved it too. She kept her loving eyes and warm smile on me and let me play on the huge bedrock rocks of Manhattan. Then we’d sometimes take a rowboat out on the pond. And exploring the trimmed and pruned treed areas and fresh mown lawns brought a sense of civilized surroundings so different from the wild, wooded hills of Haddam.

            After her parents died Grandma moved to Connecticut in a small house down the road. What a joy to be able to spend more time with her, although I become increasingly busy with the stuff of high school and college. Yet before she achieved ‘old’ and nearly blind she took me to The Big Apple to help me pick out a used camera. She knew where the street bargains were. I bought a used Exakta 35mm SLR that saw many months of light and dark colors and characters through its lens. Because I can, I’ll share a photo of Grandma Grace sitting in Cedar Lake one summer in Chester, CT.   

            I miss her. 

Sitting with her in the lake (out of frame) is my 3-year old sister.

This is how I remember Grandma Grace, a happy girl when

reacting to and interacting with her beloved grandchildren.

Steviekins is a lucky boy.

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Coming of Age                                                                         2023

Nine hundred miles from home on a dark December night. How did I get here? Why? Suitcase tugging at my arm, I find the fraternity house and start down the long concrete walkway toward the large front door. Then comes the unexpected and unwelcomed warning, a deep guttural growling from shrubs to my left. I freeze. I see nothing, but this is clearly a large, unfriendly guard dog. More growling. A light comes on behind a second floor window. A young man slides the window up and leans out to shout, “Ox! Come!” Relief as the very hefty bulldog shakes himself out of his bushy bed and saunters up to the door. Ox was convincingly dutiful but friendly after all.

            What drives my journey? Independence? Exploration? Manhood? Sex? Relationships?

            I had just celebrated twenty years as a virgin when winter break divided my sophomore year at the University of Connecticut. What better time to visit my high school girlfriend who was also on break as a freshman at Indiana University.  

            How did I get here? Well, I hitchhiked nine hundred miles in winter.

            Somewhere around New York City a big black man pulls over in the largest Cadillac I’ve ever seen. We head toward New Jersey and I compliment him on his wheels. He proudly replies that the Caddy has “four pods.” I struggle to understand and ask if he means dual carburetors. “No, no. We have four pards – pardners who share the expenses and alternate days using the car.” A lesson in sharing to make every dollar go farther.

            In New Jersey I’m lucky to ride in a tractor-trailer full of bananas right off of the boat. When we enter Pennsylvania the load must be weighed and the driver jumps down to sign the paperwork and yells to me, “Get down from there, son.  You’re a whole crate of bananas.” First and last time I’ve been so identified.

            At the western end of Pennsylvania I thumb a ride from two young men in a smallish sedan. Sweet! They are heading to Indianapolis. After a while I see that the driver whose right arm is hanging over his seat back is inching his hand slowly toward my knee. When he touches my leg I squeeze hard on his wrist and place it back in his space. Not a word is spoken. Today my reaction would be different.

            On a dark street on the outskirts of Indianapolis a station wagon drives slowly by my outstretched thumb. A man driving with a young woman seated next to him. To my surprise they drive around the block and stop to ask me where I’m headed.

“Bloomington.”

“We’re going there too. You can put your suitcase in the back.”

 And when I do, I see two babies sleeping under blankets with the rear seats folded down. The interior is about 80-degrees and the fragrance of baby powder fills the air. Under the dash board sets a small light that illuminates the three of us. The bench seat keeps us very close which I don’t mind as I’m seated next to a very attractive twenty-something. But a few miles down the road my assumptions are challenged. The heat is to keep the babies warm. Right. Her uncle is taking her to the Bloomington campus and no one is home to mind the babies. Her short sleeve dress with a single row of buttons down the front is chosen because of the heat. Right.

From the corner of my eye I see the young woman fiddling with the buttons of her dress. My country bumpkin assumption: I don’t blame her. It’s hot in here. It soon becomes clear why she is going all the way to Bloomington with no luggage. Her dress opens wide, the dash light bathing her perfect form as she turns to me and reaches up for my cheek. My virgin mind is racing. I gently pull her hand from my face and surprise myself with, “Sorry, but I’m going to see my girlfriend tonight …and I only have travelers cheques.” Not bad for a country boy. They let me out and head back to the city. 

There were other adventures that night before I was greeted by Ox. But what drove me there besides some interesting characters?  Independence? Exploration? Manhood? Sex? Relationships?

All of the above.  My university was less than an hour from home. I needed to prove I could go farther.  Exploring new places and subcultures along with added independence gave me a stronger sense of my manhood. I returned to Connecticut with my virginity intact, yet I knew the sex drive drove me to be with my girlfriend across so many miles in the dead of winter.

Relationships. When I left home to begin my passage it was the only time I ever saw my father cry. I carried that with me. To this day I’m not certain why he cried. I’m guessing it was from a combination of guilt and love.  Or those emotions melding with a realization that I had come of age.

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FIFTH FLOOR                                                                           2023

Up on the roof. Me and Mom. Kingsbridge Avenue where her mother and maternal grandparents lived on the fifth floor. The top floor of their Bronx walk-up. No elevators. I don’t remember anything about my first year when all five of us lived in the small apartment. My father was serving in the World War II in the Philippines.

            After one year Mom took me away to the beach in sunny Venice California. Four years later she took me away to the woods of Haddam Connecticut. It was then that we – Mom, Dad and I – began regular visits to see both sets of grandparents in the Big Apple. After another two years my infant sister Karen would join us.

            We would pile into the ’49 Ford and head down a dusty dirt road for three miles before turning onto the blacktop that carried us on toward the winding Sawmill River Parkway.

            Contrasting homes. Smells, tastes, sights and sensations.

            Venice in a trailer park on the canals. Salt humidity fills the air. The wind carries the faint, almost undetectable whiff of hot sandy beach. The odor of dead, decaying marine life-death fills the nostrils. So easy to forgive the smell of death when it is part of the ocean’s allure. At the trailer, the sounds of dogs barking, the hum of LAX holding patterns, landings and take-offs. If the wind shifts, sometimes the Berea tar pits can be detected and remind me of the fresh hot oil spread years later on the dirt road in Haddam. Oil in the summer heat.

            Haddam in the woods. The familiar scent of the deciduous and coniferous trees. The decaying leaves and fruit. Spring brings the flowers and chirping of wooing birds. June the wild blueberries and currants. Winter has little sound, taste or smell, but seeing and feeling reign supreme in the frosty air, snow and ice. A snowball can be wet, dry or in between. One falls apart before it reaches its target. Another is a ball of ice and forbidden by parents. Summer sounds mark cicadas, tree frogs, owls, hawks and dry leaves rustling under rodent’s feet.

            The Bronx. An absolute delight for a six year old, an eight or ten year old boy. I would jump up a few brownstone steps into the marble and tiled foyer then bound up five flights of marble stairs with excitement. Automobile exhaust fumes fill the air. Windows are open. The cars are beeping and bus engines roaring. It’s that wonderful hustle and bustle that surrounds my Grandma Grace and her parents.

The apartment began with a narrow hall leading to the left and passing the tiny kitchen where my great grandfather would often be sitting with the morning oatmeal scattered in his beard. His greeting required that he slowly feel my face, neck and shoulders with his fingers. He would exclaim how much I had grown and how handsome I was. He was blind. Yet he did wood carvings of figurines by touch alone and that hobby filled the air with the fragrance of fresh cedar. Only here would I bathe in the love and attention I craved. Nannie, my great grandmother always tended tenderly to me, Mom, Grandma and her husband.

            Only at Grandma’s place would I taste and smell fresh coconut. Only there would I savor hot oatmeal with raisins for breakfast or sit in a bath tub and play with floating toys of all sorts: ducks, fish, frogs and little self-propelled boats and submarines. Every wall was cloaked with paintings by my grandfather, great uncle and grandmother. The smell of old oil paints formed the olfactory base upon which the aromas of coconut, chicory and cedar dwelt. Oil.

            The night sounds generated mixed feelings for me at a young age. On one hand, I didn’t fall asleep right away. On the other hand, they were fascinating sounds: horns blaring at midnight, sirens from police and emergency vehicles, a steady din of traffic which was constant day and night. Also very unlike my country home in Connecticut, there was light all night from street lamps below.

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Ya Got Your Dead Skunk…                                                            2023

Lenore’s Volkswagen crept slowly up our blacktop driveway. The night was dark and the moon was new. Clouds hid the starlight. The car moaned, getting old and tired. Hell, we too felt old and tired. But our eyes were mostly open and the headlights lit up the garage doors after a three-day weekend in Maine and oh how we did yearn to sleep in our own bed…immediately if not sooner. Exhaustion sat back in a recliner and said, “Don’t even think about unpacking tonight.” So who can argue?

            Lenore with hands still gripping the steering wheel turned to me and exhaled a whispered, “Home.”

            As she said it I saw tension sliding off her neck and shoulders. Home at last and just yards away from the finest king-size bed in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We were convinced of it.

            But then there were the dogs.

            Arrakis and Kaiser, two of the best poodles on the planet; I say that with a smile, with pride and with certainty. For them I had built the perfect chain link pen behind the garage, eight feet wide and running the entire length of the two-car garage. A third of the pen’s floor was sand for doing the doggie’s duty. Overhead in the heat of summer the broad leaves of two Niagara and two Concord grape vines – which I planted outside the fence – climbed up four strands of twine to the garage roof and provided all the shade that twin poodles could expect on a hot summer day. A doggy door led into the garage where four wood pallets held two human-size, single mattresses covered with bed sheets. While we were away Arrakis and Kaiser enjoyed huge bowls of dry food and water. Better than a Quality Inn. And they rarely barked – without me teasing them – and the arrangement was as good as it gets. We never left them for more than two nights and when Lenore and I were at home they were in the house all day…unless they were on the front lawn chasing and leaping for tennis balls tossed high into the air.

            As usual we had left the right side garage door up four inches for air flow. The space on the right was reserved for my new 1986 Dodge Daytona Turbo-Z with T-tops and the Carroll Shelby handling package. Bright red, of course. The left side housed Lenore’s 1980 VW Scirocco in flat, boring grey. The mattresses fit nicely between the vehicles.

          Dragging our tired selves out of the front seats we hear only a lone cicada and the distinctive eight hoots of barred owls calling to mate or date. One sounded like it had perched in a tree just behind the house – while the matching hoots came from way back up in the woods, “Your place or mine tonight?”

            “ Hoo, hoo are you?”

          Lenore remarked, “What’s that smell?”

          Clearly it involved more the fresh night air. We lifted the Dodge’s garage door and the poodles came rushing out to greet us and absorb the hugs that we had at the ready. But something was wrong. Initially I thought there might be an electrical fire. The odor was so caustic and strong it stung the mucous membranes. A pungent concentration of the odor seemed to be coming directly from Arrakis. We turned on the lights. And Lenore answered her own question saying softly with angst, “Skunk.”

          Arrakis had been sprayed. Kaiser still smelled like poodle. After considerable jumping and wagging of tails the dogs were delivered to the laundry room for quarantine. I grabbed a flashlight and began to study the garage interior when I heard something rustling along the back wall. It seemed to scurry behind some boxes and I was sure that this was the skunk that had been cowering in the corner since being scared odorless by two dogs in the darkness. I immediately turned off the lights, left the garage door open and went into the house. The dogs would sleep on the laundry room floor that night. Lenore and I crashed in a king-size way. Mañana is soon enough for me.

          Our morning sniffing of Arrakis led us to conclude the strongest stench was on his head. We agreed that in all likelihood the skunk had smelled the dog food, slipped through the four inch high opening, began chomping on the dry canine cuisine thereby waking Arrakis who then went to investigate in the pitch dark. Who was taking his food in the middle of the night? That’s when the myopic pseudo-weasel was frightened enough to let loose on whatever was growling at her.

          The skunk was gone in the morning, but when I looked at the Dodge it appeared as though someone had thrown grey ink low on the driver’s door. Ouch! My baby! I was aghast. This had to be from that skunk’s two special glands. We were going to take Arrakis to the groomer to get the de-skunk-stunk-dunk, but what about the paint on my dear Daytona? 

          I drove to the office hoping insurance would cover the re-painting even if rodent damage is covered and skunks are not rodents.

          The next morning we had to get a nose right into Arrakis’ fur to smell a tiny hint of skunk. We declared that he had been successfully de-stunked. And to my astonishment the stain on the car door had disappeared!

          But the end to this story came six months later.  ________________________________________________________________

          Over five months passed and we began to smell something rotten in Westford. Not a strong stench at first, but over the course of two weeks it grew progressively stronger and more caustic. After a morning of sniffing we believe it comes from under the cellar stairs. But the stairs are totally closed. They would have to be dismantled to find out what’s beneath them. And how would anything get under those stairs?

          I begin by removing a few risers and pointing the flashlight into the darkness. The tale is told.

          The ghost of a skunk that had caused such a fuss six months earlier had come back to haunt us. Peering under the staircase we could almost taste death. Only the pelt of the animal covered its bones. No flesh had been left as the maggots were at work on the carcass and had done nature’s bidding. Furthermore, the terribly offensive odor had waned in the past few days. Decomposition complete.

          How did it end for Flower the skunk? It turns out that Ms. Flower had never left the garage that warm summer night. Instead she “escaped” through a small opening at the top of the stairs and fell nine feet only to be impaled on two three-inch nails sticking up out of a piece of scrap lumber left by the builders.

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SOCIAL WORKERS                                                                              2023

Upstairs we are naked under the covers …and we freeze. Our soft, loving eyes snap wide open and become hardened orbs of fear.

            Knock! Knock! Knock!

Is that really my mother’s voice downstairs at the front door?

            “Hello. Anybody there?”

Why is she here?

            Knock-knock-knock!  “Hello in there. It’s Dee.”

            Had Bonnie locked the front door? Should we get dressed fast and answer the door?

            No. We remain quiet and still while sexual arousal which engaged all of our senses evaporates to be replaced with a mundane fear of being “caught in the act.” Our brains now racing in high gear. Why would my mother drive half an hour to seek me out? And how would she know I’m at Mrs. Ryan’s house…in bed with Bonnie? It’s not as if we have ever done this before.

            After another five minutes we hear Mom’s car as she drives away.

            The high school senior in love with the gorgeous, red haired junior, Bonnie Ryan. Bonnie with those modest, smiling Irish eyes, a ready laugh and straight A’s. Her mother worked that day. Mrs. Ryan became an excellent social worker and then a seasoned supervisor. Not surprising then that after graduating from Indiana University her daughter also headed straight into her own MSW. We dated for three years before a boatload of bickering floated in between us while working together as wait staff during the summer of 1964.

            That same year I met Sharon at a fraternity party on campus. Animal attraction, mating olfaction, chain reaction, consensual transaction, that special contraction and safe satisfaction. The next year we marry and when we return to Connecticut from Fort Dix, New Jersey, Sharon lands a job in social work. The following year she is earning an MSW at night. And we divorce.

            Merely a year passes and I am again in love and wed to Maria from New Jersey who had recently graduated from Springfield College where she majored in …yes indeed…social work! Two years later we divorce.

            Back to bachelorhood. “Playing the field.” That’s what they called it when I met Patricia Corbett, another Irish-American social worker, and we dated for three years. But I struggled to overcome what felt to me like a mismatch of “chemistry.”

To my great surprise, decades passed before I discovered the common thread connecting these four passionate, intelligent, attractive and adoring women. Social workers all and I’d never even noticed the connection.

So who was I in these failed relationships? Was I drawn to caretaker-types or were those four helping professionals attracted by me and my vulnerabilities? Could it have been both? Or had I identified a purely coincidental thread?

            A product of my mother and father, I can offer some clues. Behaviors modelled for young, little Steviekins?  Constant bickering, shouting, distancing, scaring, bullying, exploding, raging, tantrums. And a focus more on differences than on commonalities.  

            And how about behaviors not modelled at all: responsible drinking and happy couples.

            There was no alcohol ever in our home. And subservient women were nowhere to be found there. My mother was not a woman to model anything other than equality with men. When she was 33 she could have taught 20-year old Gloria Steinem a thing or two. She was that advanced when I was growing up. So, my expectations of alcohol and of significant others were many degrees off course from the beginning.

            At some point in each relationship – with Bonnie, Sharon, Maria, Pat – my inner child was hooked by my home-grown weaknesses.  I would not tolerate the tiniest bit of bickering, shouting, distancing, scaring, bullying, exploding, raging, tantrums. I expected women to be capable of and want to do whatever my mother did. I expected alcohol to be no more than a social enzyme or a catalyst for more fun. Both expectations led to severe disappointments and pain for me and for those I held dear.

            Today I believe that the social workers wanted to help me and others, and I have slowly learned to be someone who is better in relationships than were my mother and father. More tolerant, self-aware and more accepting.

            I’m pleased to continue my education and to never stop learning.

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The Little House in Haddam Connecticut                         2023

We called it “the little house” only after we built the “new house” about a hundred yards away in 1958 when I was just fourteen years old. And for nine years, 1949-1958, the little house was our home high above the Connecticut River Valley, south of Hartford and north of Old Saybrook – up on Turkey Hill.

            At five years old I began to learn about responsibility when I walked with my mother or father on the wooded path down the steep hill and across the dirt road to the cold, clear water of a pristine woodland stream where one or two buckets of fresh spring water would be filled daily and carried up to the house for drinking, bathing, and washing of clothes and dishes. Soon I would be entrusted with the task on my own. Without running water or electricity in the first few years I found myself helping to carry water and fill the kerosene heater in the colder months.  I doubt that anyone can become accustomed to the pungent odor of kerosene which smells similar to gasoline but not quite as hard hitting to the senses. Yet it may have given me a greater appreciation of the outdoors with its fresh air.

            And we did not in those first few years need to sit on the cold wood seat of an outdoor toilet or outhouse. The plastic seat on our indoor, chemical toilet was cold enough. The odor from that commode was less than pleasant, if I may understate. This device held poop and pee in a large can without releasing their stench as they were covered with a milky looking chemical that masked the more offensive smells. Both pungent and antiseptic at the same time, that chemical with its odorous liquid is not something I need to ever smell again – thank you.

            We managed without electricity for a year, thus adding more kerosene to the mix for lanterns. Inside of two years we enjoyed running water, a septic system, a real shower and no more trudging buckets to and from the little brook down the road. Finally the strongest scent to fill the little house became Mom’s cooking.

A very special family event when I am eight.  In this photo my parents have stepped out of the little house and are ready to take me and my first sister Karen, to her baptism ceremony at the Roman Catholic Church.

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