Tag Archives: Men

I’ve Been Sucked into the Vortex That is TV

29 Tuesday Oct 2013

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My TV takes up more than my whole room.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

As the fall television season gets under way, I am struck by how many television choices we now have. When I started working full-time in 1975, there was a total of seven VHF television channels available to me each evening. There may have also been some UHF channels that you could tune in with that bow-tie wire hanger antenna that came with your TV, but who watched them?

In the 1980s, we added a bunch of cable channels like CNN, ESPN, MTV, C-SPAN, HBO, Cinemax and Showtime. We also added VCRs that allowed us to not only record television shows, but also buy cassettes of old shows. Later, more cable channels came aboard and we added Bravo, Lifetime, Hallmark, Disney and many others. Then came DVDs, and more television viewing choices. Just about every movie and television show ever made became available. Still later, the Internet came along and added Internet television like Netflix, YouTube, Ustream, Amazon Prime and Crackle.

We are now to the point where there are literally thousands of choices when we want to watch television. Missed the first season of Burn Notice? It’s available on Amazon Prime. Want to see Kevin Spacey’s new series, House of Cards It’s available on Netflix. Want to watch comedy? YouTube has 201 different channels.

Because of the bonanza that content producers have experienced selling DVDs of throwaways like Car 54 Where Are You? and My Mother The Car, there is almost no movie or television show that is not available for viewing. So when I had a hankering to see Burke’s Law, one of my favorite shows from the 1960s, it took just a few clicks on Amazon to order the DVDs.

There are some shows that for copyright or other reasons are not commercially available. But even these shows can be found if you are persistent. When I wanted to see the 1950s show, The Millionaire, I found someone on the Internet selling DVDs of shows that were taped off of a television, complete with commercials. The quality is not optimal, but I can now watch John Beresford Tipton give Michael Anthony a cashier’s check for a million dollars to give away to some unsuspecting soul.

So now when I switch on the television, the choices are so far beyond what they were in 1975 that there is a danger of television dominating all of my leisure time to the exclusion of reading, listening to music or having some social interaction with friends and family. Add to that, the time spent surfing the Web at places like Facebook and Twitter, and it’s easy to see why as social media grows, we are increasingly anti-social.

We just don’t have time for real human interaction any more. Baby Boomers grew up with television. The first issue of TV Guide came out the week I was born. So we have a natural affinity for television. The trick will be to avoid getting lost in the wonderland of content that is now suddenly available to us. It will be a challenge, but I’m determined. How about a nice game of chess?

My Trip to Turkey: Ruins, a “Virginal” Myth, and Broken Buses

21 Monday Oct 2013

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Ruins of Ephesus. Photo by Frank Terranella.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

Years ago, I vacationed on Prince Edward Island in Canada. While there, we visited the house of Anne of Green Gables. It was a beautiful house, full of tourists and a gift shop where my wife bought an Anne of Green Gables doll. The only problem with all this is that Anne of Green Gables never existed except in the imagination of Lucy Maud Montgomery. Anne was a fictional character. Yet the tourists came in droves and literally, and figuratively, bought the myth.

I bring this up because as I am writing this I’m on a ship in the Mediterranean having just visited what is purported to be the house of the Virgin Mary near the ancient city of Ephesus in modern-day Turkey. There is evidence that Jesus existed and that Mary was his mother. But there is scant evidence that Mary ever set foot in Ephesus. In fact, the only evidence is that Saint John lived there and he was told by Jesus to take care of Mary. But no matter, the tourists come anyway, and those tourists include three popes.

So our ship docked in Izmir, Turkey, and we got on a bus that took us to the ruins of ancient Ephesus – a 90-minute ride to the south. We toured Mary’s house and the ruins at Ephesus. Our guide made no bones about it – no one knows if Mary ever lived in Ephesus. But we were all here so let’s pretend that Mary was here once upon a time.

After touring Mary’s house and the nearby ruins at Ephesus, we got back on our bus and headed for the commercial advertisement of the tour – a Turkish rug store that apparently pays the tour operator to deliver tourists for a sales pitch. The rugs were gorgeous, but the prices were high. Needless to say, we didn’t buy anything. And that’s when the real adventure began.

We boarded our bus for the ride back to the ship. It was 3:00. We were due back at 4:30, and the ship was scheduled to leave at 5:00. A minute later, our guide gave us the bad news: the bus would not start. The guide asked everyone to get off the bus and then he asked the men to get behind the bus and push it to help it start. So we all got off the bus, but no amount of pushing would budge the bus. It was now 3:15, and we still were 90 minutes from the ship.

The tour guide called for a new bus. That arrived at 3:30, and we all got aboard. We were relieved because the 90-minute trip back to the ship would get us there just before the ship was scheduled to leave. The bus headed back to Izmir at top speed. And then about 45 minutes later, there was a sudden smell of steam, and the driver pulled over. Smoke was coming from the back of the bus. One of the passengers shouted, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” as we all realized that it had happened again. A second bus had broken down. So we all got off the bus once more and stood by the side of a Turkish highway while we waited for our third bus.

This proved to be a much longer wait. Our five-hour tour was quickly turning into something like the SS Minnow. We all began to have visions of being left behind in Izmir.

Finally at 5:00, the time our ship was scheduled to sail, the third bus came. Fortunately, our tour guide had a cell phone and he contacted the ship. We broke Turkish speeding laws as we made it back to the ship at 5:35. The ship’s engines were on, smoke was coming out of the smokestack, and they were waiting impatiently, ready to go. We jumped aboard quickly (bypassing Turkish customs), and our adventure was over.

Despite the stress, it was a great tour and we made some friends who helped us keep in good spirits as the minutes ticked by. So all in all, it was a good experience. But after all this, I sure hope that Mary actually lived in that house!

Christmas Decorations: I Don’t Want to See You in September

08 Tuesday Oct 2013

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Frank xmas

Too soon to be awash in evergreen and sparkly lights.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

OK. Now they’ve gone too far. Christmas advertising this year began in September! Some stores are now beginning the holiday season as soon as they take down their back-to-school decorations. The Hallmark Channel is advertising its Christmas movies already.

Now, I love Christmas as much as anyone, but do we have to celebrate it for the entire fourth quarter of the year? There was a time, not too long ago, when Thanksgiving was the Christmas firewall. Nobody dared begin Christmas advertising until the turkey was cleared from the table. All this pent-up Christmas demand soon erupted into a media-created shopping holiday – Black Friday. And as soon as that became established, it became necessary to advertise the pre-Black-Friday sales beginning just after Halloween.

Halloween held up for many years as the new Christmas advertising firewall. In fact, all the attention that Halloween received as we focused on it as the prelude to the Christmas season transformed it from the kid’s day it used to be to a sort of Fall Carnivale. It’s much more popular as an adult holiday today than it ever was when we were kids.

But now it seems that the Halloween firewall is giving way as well. Oh sure, the Rockettes don’t open their Christmas show until just after Halloween, but especially in the online world, Christmas in October and even September is a reality. Think I’m exaggerating? Have a look.

The commercialization of Christmas is nothing new. In fact, it was the theme of, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” nearly 50 years ago. But what we have today is simply out-of control capitalism.

Religious Christians have long complained that American society has secularized Christmas to the point where it is no longer recognizable as a religious holiday. I think that the fact that many American children of Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist backgrounds hang up stockings and await the visit of Santa Claus every December 25th is a testament to the fact that there is no longer any Christ left in the Great American Christmas. And I think that’s OK – as long as we recognize it for what it is.

American retailers have created a winter holiday that, coincidentally, corresponds with the date of the religious observance of the birth of Christ. It’s not the Christmas of Silent Night – it’s the Christmas of Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Religious Christians have to accept that their holy day has been co-opted. They need to think of their religious Christmas as a separate, parallel-track holiday that they can observe in religious ways separate from the Santa Spectacular.

But even the secular Christmas has to have its limits. Christmas sales are becoming as unseemly as those Going-Out-of-Business sales that last for months. I know that there is no hope of rolling the commercialization back to after Thanksgiving. That ship has sailed. But can’t the honchos of television agree not to show Christmas ads until November? And while we’re at it, can we perhaps not begin the 2016 presidential campaign for a few more months?

Smile! Probing Pictures Are Being Taken from Space

07 Monday Oct 2013

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Bob's Universe.

Bob’s universe. By Julie Seyler.

BY BOB SMITH

Sitting at breakfast recently reading a magazine, I came across a photo taken by a NASA spacecraft called the Cassini probe, which since 2004 has been orbiting Saturn, exploring the planet and its moons. The entire upper portion of the photo is dominated by the dark arc of one portion of Saturn, and to the right of that, a greenish-gray swath of the planet’s rings. The tightly concentric black and green-gray lines comprising the rings resemble the grooves on an old vinyl record, except that the rings appear to be glowing gently against the black background of space. That dark expanse dominates the center portion of the photo, and at the bottom there’s a ghostly horizonal white stripe that’s either light from an unseen source to the left, or a distant slice of the Milky Way. The image is majestic, peaceful, and kind of eerie.

The sobering thing is that, as explained in the accompanying article, it’s actually a photo of earth from approximately 900 million miles (1.4 billion kilometers) away. I thought, at first, that the object just to the right of center was a fragment of the english muffin I’d been eating. Indeed, a toasty crumb had fallen on the magazine, so I brushed it off to reveal a minuscule white speck – 1/100th the size of my bread crumb. It looked like a nick in the ink, or a dust mote, but I couldn’t wipe it away. According to the article, that irregular speck is the earth and the infinitesmal bulge on its side is the moon, both as seen from Saturn’s orbit.

Two thoughts came to mind: We are nothing. And we are not alone. If an infininte number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters, and an infinite amount of time could eventually write the entire works of Shakspeare, then there must be untold numbers of other planets with Earth-like life forms spread throughout the inconceivable vastness of the universe. I decided to have another fried egg. What the hell.

But the earth photo was nothing compared to the news a few days later, when NASA made the ultimate “Elvis has left the building” announcement: after 36 years of hurtling through the void at 38,000 miles per hour, the Voyager space probe has exited the solar system and entered interstellar space. It’s now nearly 12 billion miles away, and still sends back minute radio signals using a transmitter with about the same amount of power as a refrigerator light bulb. It takes nearly 17 1/2 hours for the signal to reach Earth, and when it arrives, the wattage striking the antenna is only about 1 part in 10 quadrillion. By comparison, it takes 20 billion times more power than that to operate an electronic digital watch.

Aside from studying the planets and the far reaches of our solar system, Voyager also carries a message for any intelligent life that may find it someday: the Golden Record. This 12-inch diameter, gold-plated, copper audiovisual disk includes 115 images and sounds representative of life on Earth as well as musical selections and spoken greetings in 55 languages. Of course, to play the record, you’d first have to build a record/video disk player, speakers, and display screen. I guess they figured that any life form intelligent enough to snatch this probe from its race through space would be able to figure that out. And the NASA engineers were thoughful enough to include a cartridge and needle you could use to play the record once you’d built the machine to play it on – a good idea, since it’s hard even now, right here on Earth, to get needles and cartridges to play old vinyl LPs.

I thought back to the Cassini photo: if the entire planet is a speck from 900 million miles, aren’t we surely invisible from 12 billion and counting? Compared to the universe, our solar system is smaller than an electron oscillating in one molecule of a hair follicle on the ass of a flea. And if we’re invisible and barely detectable, who’s ever going to find us, even if other intelligent beings are out there? And if they really are out there, why haven’t they sent us their Golden LPs, begging for retrieval and playback?

Keep your eyes open, kids. You never know. And let’s just hope that if the aliens send an 8-track tape with information about their planet, they include the whole device because working 8-track players are even scarcer than record needles.

Vacuuming My Way into Clarity

02 Wednesday Oct 2013

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carpenter street

Mowing the lawn of my youth was as cathartic as vacuuming.

BY ANTHONY BUCCINO

It’s the same story every week: “Ant, the house is all dusted. You can vacuum when you’re ready.”

“Aw, I got to vacuum the whole house,” I mutter under my breath.

When I’m ready, I grab the vacuum from the upstairs closet, plug it in and click it on. While the noise drowns out the rest of the world, I focus on specks of dust and lint challenging me to a duel they will lose.

Before I know it, my head is cleared of everyday life. My mind is fogged by memories of Mom and her Electrolux that slid on metal blades across our old rug in the four-room cold water flat.

There was that time when the neighborhood version of “Benny Miller-from-Cucamonga” tried to sell Mom a new vacuum. “Would you let your eight-year-old son pick up a handful of dirt outside and eat it?”

“Of course NOT!”

“But, Mrs. Buccino,” he said, “the rug inside your house is much worse than the dirt outside.”

Hey, I was eight. I wouldn’t eat dirt in the yard. Anymore. What was this guy talking about?

Ma was unconvinced and sent him on his way. She wouldn’t even give him the name of a friend he could call on, the way a now-former friend had given her his name. We made do with that old Electrolux until after we moved to our big house, where there was now also a wall-to-wall carpet to vacuum.

That new house had an 8,000 square foot side lawn that needed to be mowed. Gone was that old rotary push mower. In my eagerness to use the new Lawn Boy Dad bought, that chore became mine.

After a gazillion pulls on the easy-start cord, the roaring motor drowned out the rest of the world. I focus on overlapping cuts, straight lines, the end of my imaginary row where I’ll turn around and head back in 200-foot paths for the next hour and a half.

Automatically, I round trees, maneuver past pits, side-cut hills, and watch for that silly little patch of blue grass growing below the black walnut tree. I kick aside the fallen green walnuts. I know where every root pops up, and where I might create a divot. I eye the neighbor’s hedges that need trimming, stop and empty the bag of clippings, leaving the mower to whine for my return. As my hands are shaken into numbness, my brain solves all the problems of my little world.

After Dad died, and I had a home of my own, Ma’s lawn was still under my stewardship. Weekly I’d haul the latest working mower and gas can back and forth between our lawns.

I’d tell my daughter, “Hey, you want to visit Grandma? We can take our lawn mower for a ride. It’ll be so much fun.”

The older I got, the larger Mom’s lawn seemed. By comparison, my home lawn was a postage stamp and hers was the novel, “Pride and Prejudice”. At least Mom was still up to doing her own vacuuming.

Meanwhile, back at my ranch, I was able to bring home a Labrador Retriever, as long as I promised to vacuum all the dog hair in its wake. No one could figure how our basement dog got her fur past the drop stairs into the second-floor attic. But there I was, vacuuming dog hair in the attic.

Two dogs later, and I’m still vacuuming dog hair everywhere. Heck, our latest Lab sees me plug in the vacuum, and heads to the sanctuary of his crate on the bare floor side of the basement.

I don’t know that my father ever touched our vacuum. Mom was a housewife. Dad went to work, Ma did her chores. Monday was wash day. Tuesday was ironing. Wednesday was scrubbing. Thursday was mending. Friday was mopping. Every day was cooking dinner.

When Mom vacuumed, the old Electrolux had a cloth bag held in by clamps. When the bag was full, Mom would empty the dirt and dust onto old newspapers spread out on the floor. Try doing that online. These days when the bag is full, I snap it out and replace it with a clean bag. Our local vacuum dealer recommends we have ours serviced about every 90 days. Huh? I don’t even change the bags that often.

Nowadays we split chores. I don’t mind vacuuming. Bachelors must vacuum their pads, no? Eventually, yes? In fact, I sometimes really get into vacuuming. I flip over furniture, zip under dining room chairs, slip under slipcovers and leave a path of no footprints. I crisscross the carpet giving it the look of center field at Yankee Stadium. All this time, I keep a business-like look on my face. You can’t let on that vacuuming is cathartic.

“Aw, I got to vacuum!” You may hear me moan, but I look forward to those moments when the noise fills the outside air and my brain solves all the problems of my little world.

Knocking at My New Front Door: My 59th Birthday; Retirement

30 Monday Sep 2013

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Bob door

BY BOB SMITH

When you’re born, they start at zero, and count your age in days, weeks and months until you’ve completed a year of life, and you turn one. I was 59 on September 29, which means I’ve completed my 59th year on the planet, and my 60th year begins, today, on September 30. I’m not “in my 60s” as the term is conventionally used, but it’s close enough. Holy crap – suddenly I’m old.

I’m also retiring after nearly 30 years of practicing law – more than 26 of those with the same firm. It’s unsettling to be leaving a profession and a work environment that I know so well, but it’s also exciting to be setting out into uncharted waters. I’m not exactly sure what I’ll do – acting, writing, and travel all come to mind. But the important thing is that I’ll be defining what I do, and when I do it. And it doesn’t matter if I earn money at it or not. My last day at work is today, Monday, September 30.

Now that we don’t need to live close to any work site (my wife retired from her job in Nutley in December), we’re having renovations done at our former vacation home in Monmouth County, and will move there permanently in a couple of weeks. We did an extensive facelift of the house, including new siding and ground-level stone, the addition of a porch on the third floor, and upgrading the siding, railings and trim around the porches on the first and second floors.

We’re also adding a brand-new mahogany front door, with a stained-glass insert in the center, and stained-glass panels on either side. It’s replacing a double door that had a white aluminum frame and full glass panels – basically, a sliding glass door with handles and hinges. The new door, by contrast, is a work of art.

As with most renovations, this project has hit a number of snags – missing/slow tradesmen, late inspectors, delayed shipment of materials, machinery, and/or fixtures, rerouting pipes and ductwork to accommodate conditions unknown until the walls were opened, etc. The usual.

As a result, the projected completion date of July 30 has now been pushed to October something-soon. My builder won’t commit to anything more concrete than after the first, but before Halloween. Although the front porch and the steps leading to it have been rebuilt, the paved path that’s supposed to run between the porch steps and the sidewalk is still a pile of dirt. Nonetheless, the builder tells me he’s ready to install the new front door. It’s to be delivered, today, Monday, September 30, and installed on Tuesday, October 1.

That’s also my first day of retirement. And the second day of my 60th year. They say that when one door – or in this case, a couple of them – closes, a new one opens. We’ll see.

I’ll Always Have a Love for a “We’ll-Always-Have” Story

18 Wednesday Sep 2013

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Frank Robert and Francesca.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

Those who follow my writings on this blog may have picked up on a theme that runs through most of my favorite books, movies and even songs. I am a lover of stories about people who meet, enjoy a brief time together, and then are forced to move on. It’s been described as ships-passing-in-the-night fiction.

A famous example of this is, “Casablanca.” Rick and Ilsa enjoy a short time together in both Paris and Casablanca, but they part at the airport. And as Rick reminds Ilsa, “We’ll always have Paris.” And that’s the way I like to refer to these stories. To me they are the, “We’ll-always-have(fill in the blank)” stories.

Over the years there have been many, “We’ll-always-have” stories.  One of my favorites is, “Two For The Seesaw,” a 1962 film starring Shirley MacLaine and Robert Mitchum that was made into the musical, “Seesaw” a decade later.  Stories like this are naturals for musicalization because the emotional level is so high.

A more recent example of this is, “The Bridges of Madison County.”  A few weeks ago I saw a performance of the pre-Broadway run of, “Bridges” up in Williamstown, Massachusetts.  Most people known the story from the 1995 Clint Eastwood/Meryl Streep movie, but the original Robert James Waller novel is much more heartfelt. Anyway, the musical version of the story comes to Broadway early next year and I heartily recommend it for those who love a good, “We’ll-always-have” story.

For the uninitiated, “The Bridges of Madison County” revolves around Francesca Johnson, an Italian-born war bride who marries an American GI right after World War II, and accompanies him home to his farm in Winterset, Iowa. She raises a family and has a good life there. But then one day a photographer named Robert Kincaid arrives at her farmhouse. He’s lost and looking for directions to a nearby covered bridge. Francesca is home alone because her family is at the Illinois State Fair. What transpires over the next week is one of the great love stories of all time. But just as Rick knew that the right thing to do was to let Ilsa go off with her husband, Robert and Francesca painfully reach the same decision. Francesca must stay with her husband and children. And so, even though they would never see each other again, they’d always have that week in Winterset.

But perhaps you have experienced your own “We’ll-always-have” story in real life. It doesn’t have to have been the love of your life. Maybe you had a dear childhood friend, and the family had to move away. I can imagine a tearful farewell scene where you promised to write, and never forget one another.

I had that kind of tearful farewell 40 years ago at a train station in Baden-Oos, Germany (now known as Baden-Baden). My cousin Bob and I were in college, and backpacking through Europe. We met two sisters in Budapest, and hit it off so well that we couldn’t bear to say goodbye when our planned time there ended. So they invited us to visit them at their home on a Canadian military base in Germany. We had such a tremendous time in those few days that there were tears at the train station when we had to get back to Munich for our flight home. We promised to write, and I did diligently for several years. Eventually life moved on for all of us. But even though Bob and I are not likely to ever meet Rosemary or Linda again, we’ll always have Germany.

While there is something sad about two friends or lovers separated by life, what makes these stories bittersweet rather than tragedies is the fact that they did enjoy a brief time of true happiness. In fact their happiness is so strong that it’s enough to last a lifetime. So whether it’s Robert and Francesca, Rick and Ilsa or even you and that special someone you had to leave behind, there is much truth in the words of Tennyson: “‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

And we’ll always have our memories.

Ocean Grove Flea Market a Great Find

17 Tuesday Sep 2013

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flea market

Photos by Bob Smith.

BY BOB SMITH

On a recent Saturday, we went to the annual Ocean Grove Flea Market, which is probably the largest such event held in Monmouth County each year. Over 300 vendors set up tables and booths on Ocean Pathway, the wide swath of grass between the Great Auditorium and Ocean Avenue. (The Great Auditorium itself is pretty impressive. Built in 1894, and featuring seating for over 6,000, it’s supposedly the largest enclosed auditorium in New Jersey.)

But this day wasn’t about the auditorium, it was about the flea market – hundreds of sellers displaying every trinket, doodad, and outright junk you could imagine. It was sunny and pleasantly warm – the kind of September day that sweeps away all memory of the humid August doldrums, and makes you wish summer would never end. At the center of the event were food vendors selling sausage and pepper sandwiches, meats of dubious provenance barbecued on a stick, Italian ice, hot dogs, lemonade, calzones, and candied popcorn. The smoke and steam rising from the clustered food trucks combined to give the day a carnival air.
We promptly fell into a predictable pattern: the women in our group lingered at the jewelry and clothing tables, while my brother Jim and I poked through adjacent displays of moldy books and magazines, glassware, tools, candles, board games, and toys.flea3

There were impressive collections of refurbished antique furniture, carefully glued together and polished for resale. There were concrete lawn ornaments shaped like geese, frogs, turtles, lizards, and grimacing gremlins. There were carved wooden replicas of African tribal masks, brightly painted gourds, and an array of meat cleavers in varying sizes for all your cleaving needs.

flea5 best
There was a phalanx of shiny metallic figures, each resembling a dentist, lawyer, accountant, surgeon, or other professional – all inexplicably fashioned from cheese graters. There were Ghostbusters action figures, and an anonymous pile of molded green soldiers, twelve for a dollar. There were handmade doilies, baseball cards, bayonets, and real World War II army helmets – both Allied and German (none with bullet holes). We picked them up, and marveled at their dull weight, and at how much more effective the German helmets seemed, with their sides extending down over the ears and neck in back like an angular ’60s flip hairdo.

We allowed one hawker to spot-test a cosmetic depilatory on one of the women. He buttered a wide piece of tape with the magic goo, laid it on her arm for two seconds, then peeled it off and proudly displayed the result: a hairy piece of tape. He assured us it was equally effective on mens’ ears, chests, noses, and sensitive parts of the female anatomy. We were duly impressed, but weren’t willing to lay out $35 for a gallon jug of the stuff, which based on that demonstration would appear to be a lifetime supply – at least for the mildly hirsute.

We were less impressed when that now-naked swatch of our companion’s arm developed an angry red chemical burn ten minutes later. But it was all in good fun. I bought a jar of local honey – guaranteed to guard against allergies, and at $8 a pound, to dispel the beekeepers’ aversion to poverty. My sister-in-law bought a portable (meaning it weighs less than six German WWII helmets), vintage Singer sewing machine that my brother declared would be perfect to keep the other sewing machines company in their closet at home. And for our 11 nieces, my wife Maria bought lovely, unique, hand-crafted Christmas gifts, the nature of which I’m not at liberty to disclose or it would spoil the surprise.

Here’s a hint: wide metal cuff bracelets with vintage costume jewelry earrings and pendants artistically arranged and glued on top. Shhhh. It’s a secret.

A Commuter Tale (From Home)

12 Thursday Sep 2013

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port authority bus terminal

BY ANTHONY BUCCINO

“Left a good job in the city … la-di-da-dah.” 

I wonder if Fogerty had to wait ten minutes for a bus, take a 45-minute ride – on a good day – and then walk uptown for about 15 minutes from the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan dodging hundreds of early-rising tourists looking for the line in the skyline in Times Square from W. 42nd Street to W. 48th Street and Avenue of the Americas?

TIMES SQUARE 2

In that short trip, we leave the one-family homes in outer suburbia, pass the shuttered gas stations, the backside of one mall and the side view of another, cross a memorial bridge over the Passaic River, then tool along that river for a while until it’s time to ride parallel to the highway-under-forever-construction project to Ridge Road at the ridge of New Jersey’s great northern swamp. The swamp is a reminder of man’s tinkering with nature. It was once a vast forest until the settlers decided the trees there made fabulous furniture.

We roll along a half-cloverleaf past the former drive-in theater (now business center), and pass the new stadium that replaced the 40-year-old stadium, onto the highway, the past-due arena, and a blue-striped, boxy monstrosity that someday may become a mega-mall if it doesn’t sink into the muck and mire of earth and New Jersey politics. Think of it as a piece of art to awaken sleepy commuters slogging towards the wizard in that city back-lit by a glimmering sun. For home-bound commuters, it’s a symbol of leaving behind all that is ugly, and yet still stands, while everyone fills their pockets and the construction never gets done.

For a while, in the morning heading into the city, our buses have their own lanes. We’re actually driving in the left lane against oncoming traffic – yes, on the other side of the divided highway taking us all the way to the whirlwind helix leading into the tunnel named for our 16th president. Unless you’re riding shotgun, or have a habit of staring out the driver’s side window, the tight traffic pattern goes virtually unnoticed.  But it serves to move us quickly (a relative term), to our destination to two of the ugliest, yet functional, buildings known as the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

Inside, the buses queue as far as the eye can see, stopping long enough to let out a few passengers, then pulling up, letting off a few more, repeat, rinse and spit. And so you see the eager beavers rush to be the first off the bus at the earliest stops in the queue. They can then scoot down the stairwells and arrive at the west side of the terminal. The longer you stay on the bus, the farther east you travel. In the “far east,” you’ll find the escalators that take you down a level, thus avoiding the crush of the stairwells.

Moving staircase or static steps, down a level, and you end up on the mezzanine level where you must decide how to leave the building. If you debark the bus early you may walk the city-block width of the terminal at the mezzanine level, or the first floor level. Or you may simply exit the nearby west doors to your destination. Each path has its own rewards and retailers.

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There are always too many people milling around the station. They have time to sit around, read a newspaper, have coffee or breakfast, or wait in line to buy a magazine or a winning lottery ticket out of this rat race. Well, that is what it’s all about. I mean we all want to get out of this rat race. We know the rats are winning. Remember that ugly blue-striped building?

We go to work every day so we can some day stay home, and not go to work. There are plenty of good jobs in the city; plenty for us to leave when we get tired of the crowds, the endless walks, the broken sidewalks, tripping potholes, sudden-stopping tourists, Bible-spouting commuters.

If we look long enough, we’ll see Murray the groundhog frolicking in the safe zone under the catenary wires. Murray is fat, dumb, and happy. He doesn’t have to commute to work in the city. Neither these days does Proud Mary – nor I. I write from home.

Happy Trails.

SUBWAY

A B&B Can Be “Home” on the Road

10 Tuesday Sep 2013

Posted by in Men, Travel

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By FRANK TERRANELLA

Staying at a bed and breakfast (B&B) is not for everyone. It takes a bit of a leap of faith, and more than a little effort to be sociable. So if you’re really not a morning person, and just want to be left alone while you eat breakfast, you’re better off staying at the Hilton, Holiday Inn, or any of the other cookie-cutter hotel room providers. But if you are up for a bit of adventure, and just love meeting new, interesting people, there’s nothing like a B&B. Recently, I was reading that in the 19th century many inns did not provide private rooms. Strangers shared rooms, and even in some cases, they shared beds. Meals were, of course, communal.

Well. 21st century B&Bs have maintained the shared meals and shared living rooms, but the rooms in most B&Bs are now private, and come with private bathrooms. Yet it is the communal part of the B&B experience that makes it special. My wife and I were in our 50s when we tried our first B&B.

It was a wonderful home in Bennington, Vermont called The Four Chimneys. We had some trepidation about how communal an experience this would be. We quickly found out that at a B&B you can be as social or as unsocial as you want. Those who want to keep to themselves can do so. But the real fun is sitting around the communal living room and meeting the other guests. Invariably we had met fascinating people, and had a great time. Some B&Bs are just large, old houses that the owner sets up for guests. You stay in a guest bedroom; you eat in the dining room; you hang out in the living room of what was once a normal house. Newer B&Bs are built almost like a hotel with all the modern amenities except that care is taken not to get larger than a large house. So typically, there are five or fewer bedrooms.

One B&B we stayed at in Mendocino, California, the MacCallum House, had both the old-fashioned-house guest rooms, as well as a newly-constructed annex. Mendocino is one of those places that are full of B&Bs. Most recently, we stayed at a new B&B in Williamstown, Mass., up near the Vermont border. It was called Journey’s End, and I hesitate to mention it because I fear I may never be able to get a reservation again once people discover it.

Journey’s End is a beautiful new construction B&B. It’s a log cabin on a hill with a gorgeous view of the Berkshires. The people we met there were mostly over-50 travelers, so we had a lot in common. But probably the best thing at Journey’s End is the food that Carlos feeds his guests for breakfast. That’s something that’s common to all B&Bs. You get a real home-cooked meal every morning. B&Bs are perfect for making you feel like you’re at home while you’re on the road. I recommend them to all over 50 travelers who may be looking for a cross between a motel and the youth hostels we stayed in while backpacking 40 years ago. A B&B provides a great communal traveling experience but with private rooms. It’s the best of both worlds.