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A long forgotten cassette tape resurfaced in my office last week. The sound quality was horrible and it was held together with old dried out masking tape. Still, I was glad to see that it had survived in a box of old stereo stuff buried deep in my closet.
The tape was recorded in May of 1968, the year I received my first cassette recorder. Years later I would become a stereo snob and switch to a dual cassette deck. This was not a dual cassette deck though – it was a cheap $30 Panasonic player/recorder but it opened up the door for a lifetime of musical enjoyment.
The old cassette tape actually came with the recorder and is labeled Panasonic C-30. One side is marked “Demonstration Tape.” The other side simply says “For Recording.”
I popped the tape into my 25 year-old cassette deck and heard the familiar voice of Chuck Leonard, a DJ with 77 WABC radio in New York and my mother. I had obviously held the crude microphone up to the radio’s speaker and you can faintly hear my mother talking on the phone in the background. The player apparently did not come with a “recording in progress” flashing red light.
Halfway through the first song, I Think We’re Alone Now by Tommy James and the Shondells, the music cuts off and the opening notes of Whipping Post by the Allman Brothers cuts in. Readers who are unfamiliar with the song should know that Whipping Post is a 23 minute jam on a record that was released in 1972. I probably recorded it over my first cassette in college when I ran short of tapes not realizing its historical significance.
Despite the lousy sound, I continued listening and was a little surprised when the guitar solo was cut short by a recording of Sussidio by Phil Collins. The hit song was released in 1985 and I remember recording it from an Lp I borrowed at the public library. Side one of the tape ended with more of the Allman Brothers song and finished with Chuck Leonard and my mother.
If a future civilization had uncovered this one tape and their spaceship happened to have a cassette player in the dashboard, Tommy James, Greg Allman, Phil Collins and my mother would represent all of the musical culture of our 20th Century. I admit that I am probably placing too much importance on this but an audio archeologist could peel off the different layers of recordings from the past 44 years and learn something about our culture or at least about my musical tastes.
Since that cassette tape was made I have recorded thousands of songs on tapes, discs and hard drives but I never worked so hard to capture music. I carefully held the cheap microphone up to the speaker of my cheap transistor radio and hit record at just the right moment – almost. I could only dream of a day that music came without DJs and commercials.
Today my I-Tunes playlist includes much clearer versions of every song on that old cassette with the exception of my mother’s voice. There is no compelling reason to play this old cassette again but I just don’t have the heart to toss it out. Instead, I will stash it back in the closet where some advanced civilization may find it and… never mind.
Ponce de Leon sought the fountain of youth. I set my sights a little lower and simply sought the pizza of my youth.
The journey for a perfect slice of pizza was part of a recent trip to the land of pizza; New Jersey. I was joined on my quest by my daughter Susan and her boyfriend Adam, a native of Glen Ridge, NJ who was familiar with the local peoples and their strange language.
Rather than study ancient maps, I searched “best pizza, north Jersey” on my IPad and immediately found enough recommendations to keep us on the road as long as Ponce. The journey began at Maggie’s Town Tavern in Little Falls (NJ). Even though I grew up 10 miles away, I had never been in the place. One reason would be that my hometown of Bloomfield had 26 pizza restaurants or pizzerias of its own.
Maggie’s thin crust pizza met with our approval although the no slice policy forced us to eat an entire pie. While that seemed like a good idea at the time, it would catch up with us later.
For no good reason, we took the word of Canadian goaltender Martin Brodeur, for our next pizza location. We figured since he played his entire NHL career with the Jersey Devils, he must have had a few good slices of pizza. According to New Jersey Monthly, “the Brodeur family visits Famous Ray’s Pizza in Verona at least once a month.” It was very convincing.
Officially called The Famous Ray’s Pizza of New York, the pizzeria was a classic slice joint with steamy windows, countertop stools and no tables. The pizza was amazing.
We headed west to the town of Caldwell where the number seven rated pizzeria in north Jersey was located. It was clearly a hit with the locals who were standing out on the sidewalk waiting to get a table.
My Allen American press credentials did not impress the crowd in front of us so we moved on to The Pizza and Sandwich Barn just up the road. This classic pizzeria was recommended by Allen resident Chris Tripucka. The local owner of Eagle Designs grew up in nearby Essex Fells (NJ) and claims to have spent many a teenage afternoon at the Pizza Barn. The pizza couldn’t compare to Famous Rays but apparently the sandwiches are to die for.
Next we circled back to Totowa (NJ) and Dominick’s Pizza. I had been to the pizzeria exactly two times before over the past 5 years and the elderly Dominick still recognized me as that guy from Texas (sort of). The pizza was probably very good but our taste buds and appetites were starting to fade from the oregano overdose.
The final destination for the night was Mario’s, a restaurant in Clifton that was a favorite from my teenage years. My plan had been to compare the previous four pies to the pizza of my youth. Instead, my two companions refused to eat another slice and I didn’t eat my crusts which is an insult to a good pizza. Like the Chicago pizza favorite – we were stuffed.
While the thrill from this pizza parade wore off quickly, we did learn that you can get a good slice of pizza just about anywhere in Jersey. We also learned that Canadian goaltenders know something about pizza (Rays was our favorite) and the next we will leave room for dessert. Spumoni anyone?
What was I thinking when I bought that Christmas gift? I’ve reflected on that fateful day for years and I still can’t find a reasonable answer to the question.
It wasn’t a bad gift. I would characterize it more as a misguided gift from a loving but somewhat lazy son.
It wasn’t even entirely my fault. My friend Tom Casey nodded in approval when I picked it out and I think he even considered buying one himself. Fortunately for him, I bought the last one so he had to settle for a classier gift at Spencer’s Gift’s Emporium.
There had been “misguided gifts” before like the drug store perfume and the decorative ashtray but this one was so off the mark that it was never actually displayed in our home. Even the tacky decoupage plaque with Joni Mitchell lyrics found some wall space for a few months.
In my defense, many people have selected misguided gifts for their parents. Among the better tales I heard around Allen this week was one boy’s gift of men’s hair color for his graying father. Other memorable gifts presented by teenagers to their parents included garden rakes, a carton of cigarettes and giant Kermit The Frog slippers.
For years gift giving in the Carroll household was a supervised activity. It started with “here – give this to your brother.” Later, mom gave me money to buy my father and brother a gift. I had the money but it still had to pass the “mom test.”
The gift selection process went downhill when I had my first job and the ability to buy whatever I wanted. Tom and I made our way to the mother of all New Jersey shopping destinations - Willowbrook Mall. It was Christmas Eve (of course) and we needed to start and finish our shopping. We wandered the mall searching for gifts that met our needs and price point.
Panic set in as the mall’s early closing time approached. Certainly the nation’s largest mall had something special for my deserving parents.
“We’ve got to beat the traffic out of here,” Tom encouraged.
I made a quick decision and purchased the item that would set the standard for poor gift giving in northern Jersey and possibly the nation in 1974.
It was a large wooden plaque that you might find in a trophy shop. Its surface was covered with “antique” pounded copper and large rivets. Attached to the plaque were two crossed swords with a mace hanging down across them. All three of the medieval weapons could be removed and used in case of a barbarian home invasion.
My parents politely accepted the misguided gift but could never find the right spot to hang it. It traveled from the dining room closet to the basement a year or so later and hid itself inside my father’s workbench for the next twenty-five years.
Cleaning out the house after my mother died, I found the offensive gift. Other than some dust and extra scratches, it had survived fairly well. I considered hauling it back to Texas but I knew the FAA and my wife would have strongly objected.
Instead, I tossed it the trash – something my mother never had the heart to do.
There is a lesson to be learned here. Finish your shopping before 3 pm on Christmas Eve and think carefully before you buy any weapons for your parents.
Send your comments and column ideas to flipside@tx.rr.com. I look forward to hearing from you.
As the song says, “there’s no place like home for the holidays.”
I never fully appreciated the song’s sentiment until this year when both of my kids rolled in from college to reclaim the upstairs as their own.
It’s been great having them home and we had a wonderful Christmas but I never realized how small our house was or maybe how big my kids had become.
This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise for me since I traveled home from college for five years. I was glad to be home but I think I was more grateful that the twenty-one hour drive in my twenty-one year old car was over.
After the initial greetings, my first observation would be how small the house seemed. Almost nothing had changed but the ceiling seemed lower and the stairs shorter. The illusion soon wore off and I hauled my stuff up to my old bedroom.
Home cooking was certainly appreciated but my own room was the thing I appreciated most when coming home from college. It was big and quiet and had the most comfortable bed in the world even if was old and lumpy.
Another vivid memory of coming home from college was waking up to the familiar sounds of my parents puttering around in the kitchen and rustling the morning newspaper. I’m not much of a coffee drinker but the sound and smell of percolating coffee can transport me back to that small upstairs bedroom.
Now that the roles have been reversed, I find myself hearing the familiar sounds of children, make that young adults, upstairs.
There was a time when I could hear the sound of two tiny feet hitting the floor above us – even in the dead of night. I would wait for the sound clues to determine if I needed to get up. There might be the patter of feet coming down the stairs followed by a soft knock on the bedroom door. Then again there might be more of a moaning sound followed by a sad call for mom, which meant she would comfort and I would clean up.
Now the late night sounds upstairs come from my son John and his friends as they cheer through games of FIFA Soccer and episodes of the Jimmy Fallon Show. Even my ritual of waiting up for the kids has changed. It is a losing proposition trying to stay awake as they operate on college time so I now go to sleep hoping the phone doesn’t ring.
My daughter Susan, who just returned home from her first semester at Texas Tech, admitted that the absolute best part about being home was sleeping in her own bed. I would have been offended if I hadn’t sat on her rock hard dorm bed last October.
One thing that hasn’t changed from my college days to theirs is the juggling of social time with friends and family. Vacation may be time to spend with family but it’s also time to catch up with high school friends and stay connected to new college friends. Add girlfriends or boyfriends into the equation and the quality time with mom and dad quickly gets divided.
After a few weeks my thoughts would start turning away from home and back towards my alternate life at college. I am sure my kids will feel the same way in a few weeks as they look to return to their own routines.
For now I am just going to enjoy the sounds of late night TV while my kids wake to the smell of our Keurig coffee maker and the rustle of the newspaper. In truth, they are more likely to wake to the smell of soup for lunch and the sound of dad raking leaves but that’s a column for another day.
