Chapter ONE
“Know Thyself”
Waiting
“Come with me today.”
The whispered invitation came from somewhere in the darkness.
“Yes,” I said, emerging momentarily from deep REM sleep space.
“You know where to meet me,“ said the voice. “See you at 4 a.m.”
I dozed. My inner alarm rang. I got dressed. Catlike, I made my way over the bodies of my three sleeping brothers. In the quiet of the night, I pulled on my jeans. I laced and tied my Converse sneakers. Stealthily, I closed the screen door. I made no sound.
I made my way on foot to the corner of Old Country and Manetto Hill roads.
It was a warm, spring morning in Plainview, New York. I felt the breeze caress my face.
I waited by the traffic light, looking eastwards.
I waited in the pre-dawn hue.
I lingered in the realm between sleep and wokeness, between dream and memory.
My ten-year-old eyes were fixed on the horizon. My mind danced with pictures of past work outings with my nighttime visitor.
I remembered…
“Hey, Chet,” winked the receiving clerk at the Brooklyn Deli. “I see you brought your helper today,” gesturing toward me with a nod of his head.
“Sure did,” Dad replied.
I swelled with pride.
Dad climbed into the back of the open truck. Like a monkey, I clambered behind him.
Together we stood, surveying the sea of stacked milk crates.
Dad lifted the heavy crates onto a dolly.
I helped…or at least tried.
Pushing, dragging with all my night, the heavy crate resisted my best effort.
“Let me give you a hand with that,” Dad said.
The crate slid and banged across the shiny steel floor.
He loaded the dolly time and again.
He rolled the milk to delicatessens, hospitals, and schools.
A homeless man approached the truck.
Dad handed him a pint of milk.
“You see that man? He is a veteran.”
“Where does he live?” I asked.
“On the street,” he responded.
“When you see a person like that, say to yourself, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’”
“Okay,” I said, not knowing what he meant.
“One more thing,” he said with a sly grin. “Do you like popcorn?”
”You know I do!” I smiled.
He leaned into the driver side door panel. He reached into the space between his seat and the gear box. Magically, a bag of popcorn and an orange soda appeared.
My favorites.
I looked at down at my watch and then towards the eastern horizon.
Still no sign of the three small lights atop the cab of the big Borden truck.
Reveries of past adventures returned…
Work day complete, Dad returned the truck to the East New York, Brooklyn plant headquarters.
He wasn’t allowed to have kids in the truck.
He stopped at Uncle Joe’s. Uncle Joe lived in East New York, not far from the Borden’s plant.
He returned the truck, completed paperwork, got his car and drove back to Plainview.
“Hey Joe,” Dad shouted from the idling truck.
“Hey Chet,” Uncle Joe shouted and waved.
I scampered from the cab to run to my Uncle Joe’s side.
“See you in an hour or so!”
“Okay,” I grinned back, still glowing from being called his helper.
“Hey Bill,” smiled my uncle. “C’mon in.”
Uncle Joe was different. He was kind, attentive, welcoming.
Uncle Joe lived with a man.
Uncle Joe was gay.
One of his eyes was missing behind a thick scar.
“Dad,” I asked, “What happened to your brother’s eye?”
“He got into a fight,” Dad replied.
“With whom?” I asked.
“A bully,” Dad said.
“Did he get punched?” I wondered?
“Stabbed,” Dad said. “He lost his eye in the fight.”
Such memories darted across my ten-year-old mind.
4:05 a.m.
Waiting.
Still no truck.
Still no traffic.
Only the solitude of a Long Island pre-dawn.
My dad’s parents came through Ellis Island from the Silesia region Europe.
Dad was the sixth of eight children.
His dad was killed in a mining accident in 1922 when Dad was four years old and living in Llyodysville, Pennsylvania.
Dad’s family moved from Pennsylvania is Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
He met my mom at a Polish dance just before Pearl Harbor was bombed.
On December 8, Dad jointed the army.
On December 22, 1941, my dad and mom married at Brooklyn’s St. Aloysius church.
Dad shipped off to await the D-Day invasion in Iceland.
I thought of him in Petit-Rechain, Belgium where he served in the 50th Ordnance company.
I thought of dad relaxing.
‘Did he ever relax?’ I wondered.
Hardly.
He sat on the couch sometimes.
He watched the television series “Combat,” with Vic Morrow.
He drank beer. Rheingold. Lots of it.
Sometimes he drank at the house. Sometimes he drank at the Veterans of Foreign Wars hall.
My thoughts became interrupted.
“There it is…” I thought.
I strained my eyes.
“Yes!”
In the far distance, coming from the direction of the Long Island Expressway, a tiny light.
I moved from reverie to reality.
The truck rolled slowly in my direction.
The light grew. It reached me.
In the cab, Dad.
He smiled. I saw the small gap between his front teeth.
Like a Met’s player stealing second base, I ran to the passenger side of the tall, two-ton Borden’s truck. I climbed in.
“You made it,” he smiled.
“I did,” I replied.
Clutch down, gears grinding and clutch easing, away we went.
I never imagined on that morning that Dad would soon be gone.