Nineteen

 

…Nineteen years, that is, since my double-lung transplant at the wondrous Cleveland Clinic (technically, I won’t hit nineteen years until August 26^th. Unless I step into an open manhole, I should make it.)*

My visit last weekend was both medical and pleasure. Besides my yearly checkup, I spent the weekend with my best friend Steve and his wife, Dede. Steve and I have been best friends since our first day of high school way, way, way back in the Nixon administration.**

My checkup was blissfully routine—my vital signs, breathing tests, chest x-ray and bloodwork were all unremarkable, which is remarkable. I’m a lucky man. I sat next to a woman in the lab waiting area and, as is my habit, nosily asked her, “Did you have a transplant?”

“Yes, lung, on April first,” she said. “Did you?”

It feels so great in situations like that to say, “Yes, in 2004.”*** I like to think laying that ancient date on patients like her gives them a renewed feeling of hope and possibility. She asked me if I ever get used to all of the medications. I told her yes. The whole routine has become routine for me and it will for her.

Then, amazingly, waiting for breathing tests on the ninth floor, I ran into another woman who had her transplant on April 21^st, and an almost identical conversation ensued. It felt great being an elder statesman of the transplant community.

The survival statistics say, sadly, that one of those women won’t make her sixth year anniversary. But nobody knows what the future has in store for them, or me, or any of us. Carpe diem!

* Don't put it past me

** Nixon seemed, then, to be the worst president imaginable. How naïve we were.

*** W seemed, then, to be the worst president imaginable. How naïve we were.

Song of the week(ish):

This Steely Dan outtake from the Gaucho sessions is making the rounds, and it gels perfectly with the rest of that album.

Here is part Thirteen:

While Danny was still working for Atari, he popped into a Record World store in the Syracuse suburb of Cicero and saw Abby Peterson. She was, at just nineteen, already the store assistant manager, which made sense. Abby was really sharp, smarter than Danny, and as big a music lover as he was, which was saying something. She was arrestingly pretty with spiked hair, a thousand-watt smile, and a voice like Peppermint Patty. She loved chatting with him about music and took great joy at mocking Danny’s mainstream tastes. “Bruce? He’s a squirrel! Mellencamp, yuk!,” she teased and then for emphasis made the universal gag me motion.

Her tastes were a bit more avant-garde. Since she was still a teenager, she naturally rejected most “popular” music. Her older brother, Scott’s punk sensibilities greatly influenced her; so did her boss, Phil Carfagno. Phil was an aspiring music producer and he exposed Abby to a wide variety of stuff that didn’t get played on the radio anywhere. Abby liked Lone Justice, the Beat Farmers, the Pixies, and the Cure. None of whom got played on “Casey Kasem.”  And she revered Marianne Faithful, ex-girlfriend of Mick Jagger and singer of the sixties hit “As Tears Go By.”

Abby thought Danny was kinda square but kinda cute, too. She thought he looked a little like Keith Richards, though Danny didn’t exactly consider that complimentary. She loved Keith, everything about him. Abby flirted with Danny every time he came in and he finally got the hint. He was six years older than her, but his immaturity probably cancelled that out, he figured. Danny finally screwed up the courage to ask her out and she said “yes.”

Hilariously, Danny decided that a first date with punk rocker Abby should be a James Taylor concert, at the State Fair, which was like inviting the Pope to a strip club. Abby probably considered James Taylor the antichrist, but she liked Danny and was a good sport. She turned out to be a really good sport because her date couldn’t find his car in the crowded parking lot after the show. It was a beautiful summer night, perfect for getting lost. Danny and Abby chatted and laughed and made the best of it as they searched. Literally a couple of hours later, Danny realized they were looking on the wrong parking level the whole time.

                Danny got lost, a lot, a trait he inherited from his father. Helen used to say Frank got lost turning around, which was sort of true.  Once, Danny and his friends set up a green ten-person tent as a base at the Thousand Island Music Fest and settled in for three days of music. All but Danny, that is. “I left my sunglasses in the car,” he told Rich. “I’m going back to the car to get them. I’ll be right back.”

Rich, presciently, yelled to Danny, “Hey Rooms, don’t forget to use landmarks to get back. There are a lot of tents here.” By then, though, Danny was out of earshot. He eventually found the car, got his shades, but then turned around and all he saw were thousands of tents, most of them green.

He should’ve brought breadcrumbs.

Panicked and stoned (of course) Danny wandered around aimlessly, shouting “Rich! Dean! June!” hoping someone would answer, but after a while he was resigned to his fate. They wouldn’t find his body until after the festival.

                Inside the tent, Danny’s friends started getting worried after he was gone for about a half-hour. Rich said, “Why don’t we fan out and try to find him?” but then realized that he was also stoned and said, “Oh, that’s a bad idea,” laughed, and instead placidly rolled another joint.

Hours later, Dean heard a familiar voice, overcome with emotion and relief, outside the tent. “Oh my God, I found it! I can’t believe I found it!” said the voice, which belonged to Wrong Way Martini, the nickname Dean gave Danny after his escapade. Everyone laughed uproariously, and then Danny said, “Lets smoke a celebratory joint!” For the next three days, Wrong Way never ventured further than six feet from the safety of their home base.

Another time, while working for Atari, he parked outside the JC Penney entrance to the Arnot Mall in Horseheads, New York, went in and visited a few stores. When he left the mall it was during a torrential rainstorm. Naturally, Danny couldn’t find his car. He wandered around the parking lot in the driving rain for about ten minutes, screaming, “Where is my fucking car?” Finally, it dawned on him--he parked the car and entered the mall through the Penney’s entrance, but he exited through the opposite side of the mall on the Sears side. Danny would have required Superman’s x-ray vision to see the other side of the mall, where the Corporate Cruiser was parked.

Abby wasn’t attracted to Danny for his navigation skills, though. She truly liiked him, for him, and even grudgingly accepted his CF. They enjoyed each other’s company immensely, and Danny grew to love her family—her parents, Ruth and Otto, and her brothers and sisters. They made Danny feel welcome from day one. Abby’s laid-back personality contrasted nicely with his Type-A one. Abby had a wicked sense of humor, like Danny, and the two of them parried nonstop. Everybody loved Abby because she was so easy to like, agreeable, mellow and kind. The new couple dated steadily for a few months, but Abby got tired of schlepping to Danny’s apartment. Finally, one night they had the conversation—why not move in together? This was gonna be a big step for both of them. Abby had spent her whole life under her parents roof, and Rich was the only roommate Danny ever had.

The thing was, Danny and Rich had a great place that he would hate to leave if he got an apartment with Abby. The boys were now living in a formerly elegant apartment building on formerly elegant Park Street, on the (ditto) North side. The three-story brick building was located on the southeast corner of Park and Washington Square park. The park was really just a three-acre playground with a statue of—surprise!—George Washington in the center, and was bordered on all sides by old apartment buildings and a few single family homes.  

 The new apartment had high ceilings, lots of windows and two big bedrooms. The place had character. Sometimes, like in this case, “character” meant problems like the leaky ceiling that started dripping three weeks after they moved in. Buckets were arrayed throughout the apartment, but the  steady drip-drip-drip water torture drove Danny nuts. Six months later, there was a smoky three A.M, fire that roused Rich, who quickly woke Danny. A week later, Rich woke Danny up to another fire only a week later. Neither fire was serious, but deep sleep came with some difficulty for weeks.

Still, the boys loved the apartment.  Hardwood floors were a nice change from the wall-to-wall carpeting they had in the Baldwinsville place that was eventually dotted with a thousand pot seed burns.  The bathroom was tiled and had a clawfoot tub and a toilet with commercial flushing power. The toilet had to be reset if the power went out by banging on the flusher with a hammer. Old house, old quirks. They filled the apartment with furniture donated by Rich’s parents. At one time they had three sofas; two more than they really needed. The apartment had an enormous boiler in the basement, and steam heat in the winter easily offset the drafty windows--to a fault. The heat could be so oppressive, even on below-zero days, that they had to open the windows to cool off.

No discussion of Park Street was complete without the inimitable Mrs. Korczak. Jadwiga, a sixty-something Polish immigrant and WW II survivor, lived across the hall from the boys. She and her husband Zbigniew were empty nesters. Zbigniew worked for General Electric and Mrs. Korczak stayed in. Her adult children had long ago moved to far-flung spots in the U.S. and Europe, and she was often alone and lonely for company. The Korczaks were the only seniors in the building. She craved adult conversation and settled for chats with her two stoner neighbors. No matter how quietly the boys tried sneaking in, she heard them. Often, as soon as Danny turned the deadbolt of his door, the tell-tale click of her door followed. “Hello, Daniel. How are you today?...” Danny was always in a hurry to do nothing, really. He broke off those conversations as quickly as he could.

Which was something he ultimately regretted. Mrs. Korczak was a wonderful woman. She and Zbigniew were intelligent, pleasant, and worldly. They had lived a life Danny only knew of, often inaccurately, from movies and old newsreels. She never talked about it, but the numbers on her arm spoke loudly enough. They saw and experienced  the horrors of WW II, first hand. The only time Danny ever saw her angry was once when she spoke about Holocaust deniers. “No Holocaust? Tell that to my mother, and my sister, and Zbigniew’s whole family!” she exclaimed, her voice shaking, before she caught herself and the shield went back up. “And how are you today, Danny?”

She used to bake for the boys--cakes, pies, and other goodies. She also made them large dinner rolls which were delicious when warm but were hard as diamonds roughly thirty seconds after they cooled. The boys never refused the rolls—it would have hurt her feelings—but had to eat them when warm or they might have lost a tooth or two.      

One evening, the Korczaks invited the boys to their apartment. It was luxuriously appointed, with a couple of Tiffany lamps and sturdy and timeless Stickley furniture, a far cry from Danny and Rich’s dorm room chic. Zbigniew peppered them with questions: what did they want to do with their lives? Are they working toward those goals? He bore in like a Polish Mike Wallace. Zbigniew played them a Mort Sahl record and explained that Sahl was the father of the modern social comedian’s movement. Danny had heard of Sahl, maybe even seen him on Ed Sullivan, but wasn’t sure. This guy is good, but he ain’t no Carlin, thought Danny, not realizing that, without Mort Sahl, there wouldn’t have been a Carlin.

Forty years later, Danny himself was in his sixties, and he often thought about the Korczaks. They were history come alive, a horrible history but they represented, in the flesh, one of the worst times in human history. Much of the wisdom they tried to impart to the boys was wasted by Danny and Rich’s youth and marijuana.  Danny, especially, could have benefitted greatly from their guidance, callow as he was. Now, at sixty, he understood better how the Korczaks felt--invisible, or at least, irrelevant. Twenty- somethings naturally have their own culture and their own concerns. They don’t have much in common with, and often reject, their parents’ generation. Nobody in their twenties or thirties cares much about what the sixty-something Danny and his peers think. They don’t want to spend any more time with them than absolutely necessary, which was exactly the way Danny felt about Mrs. K in his twenties.

Now that Abby and Danny had decided to move in together, he needed to tell Rich. “Rooms, Abby and I are looking for our own place and I’m gonna be moving out, I think.” Danny had a habit then of qualifying declarative statements. There was no “I think” about it—he was moving out. “What do you think?” he said, again qualifying his previous statement.

Rich was surprised. He knew that Danny and Abby were getting serious but didn’t know they were that serious. “Well, that’s cool, Rooms. Life goes on, right? Debbie and I were talking about doing the same, but this just hastens our decision.” Debbie was Rich’s new girlfriend, a vivacious registered nurse. Danny liked her and was happy for Rich. “I think the easiest thing would be for one of us to move and one of us stay here, right?” They still had nine months on the lease.

Danny smiled. “That is a great idea. How do we decide who gets the place?”

Rich smiled back, and said, “I’ll play you for it.”

“I’ll play you for it,” meant “Chess.”

Danny and Rich played chess at least once a day. They were a study in contrasts; equally skilled but their playing styles reflected their personalities. Danny was rash and undisciplined, even reckless. He usually surveyed the board, looked for obvious traps, then quickly decided, “Ah, that’s a good move.” He liked to self-deprecatingly say his style was “Move first, evaluate later.” He was ultra-aggressive, and usually rushed his powerful queen out at the start, augmented by his pesky, dangerous knights. Sometimes, though, Danny’s queen was surrounded and lost, and the loss of his most powerful piece always led to Danny tipping his king over as he conceded defeat.

Rich was ultra-conservative. He never made a move without the next three already mapped out, and almost never made an unforced error. Danny was always surprised by the gift of a mistake by Rich and usually jumped all over it. Rich sometimes slowly fought back from one of those early errors and came back to win, but the opposite was almost never true.  His endgame, when there were fewer pieces and more empty space on the board, was far superior to Danny’s. Danny needed to take his time and play an error-free game to beat Rich, and that just didn’t happen that often.

The ”Contest For the Couches” (as it was billed) was set for the following Saturday, and the couches were filled. Abby, Debbie, Ann, Dean, Gary and Dale all came to root, the guys mostly to kibbitz. About seven o’clock, Dean hid a white pawn in his right hand and a black one in his left. “Ok, Rich, choose,” Dean said. Rich chose Dean’s right hand, so he was white and got first move, a slight advantage.

Rich started by bringing out his king’s knight. Danny mirrored that move. Rich predictably moved his queen out next and after only seven moves, had Danny’s king in trouble. Gary and Dale were both skillful chess players but that didn’t stop them from shouting out nonsensical things. Dale yelled out “Jump him!” (a checkers term) after every move. It was funnier each time he said it.

After nine moves, Rich had Danny’s king boxed in. Any miscalculation by Danny would have been fatal. He studied his limited options. Then Dean yelled “Yahtzee! You’ve got Yahtzee!” Danny shot him a dirty look, but then took some of the pressure off by swapping his knight for Rich’s bishop, and on the next move took Rich’s knight, as well. That gave Danny a power piece advantage (power pieces are rooks, knights and bishops, and of course, the queens) and completely broke Rich’s assault on his king.

“When is halftime? It’s gotta be halftime soon, right?” Gary said and added “Will we see highlights of the first half?” then did his best nasal Howard Cosell impression—“You are live, at the contest for the couches!” he shouted. Once he had the knight advantage, Danny blocked out the fake-moronic asides from his friends. They hurt Rich and his more cerebral style more than Danny’s seat-of-the-pants approach.

Or so he thought, because Rich then put Danny’s king in check, and after Danny was forced to move safely out of check, Rich captured his rook in the home row, a huge gain.

“You sunk my battleship!” Dean shouted.

                After a few moves, Rich used his remaining knight to protect his rooks. A few moves later, Danny’s queen was trapped in no-mans-land between Rich’s rook and Danny’s king. Danny had no choice but to take Rich’s rook, and then Rich took Danny’s queen.

                “Double Yahtzee!” Dean hollered, and Danny, furious with Dean and himself, started to say something, but shut up. It was Danny’s idea to have the guys over to watch the game. After that flurry of moves, Rich had Danny’s king in open water and his queen, knight and rook circled Danny’s king like a pod of orcas. Rich, boasting superior manpower and an excellent endgame, smelled blood as if they were orcas.

                “Hucklebucklebeanstalk!” Ann yelled out from the sidelines, as she tried to get in on the fun. Hucklebucklebeanstalk was a game they played as kids on Syracuse’s south side. It was more commonly known elsewhere as the “hot-cold” game. One kid hides the stone, and everyone else looks for it, with the hiding kid hinting, “Warmer…warmer….ice cold!” If you found it, you had to yell out “Hucklebucklebeanstalk!” before someone else did. Danny often asked other people what they yelled when they won the game. “Uh, ‘I found it,’ I guess,” was the common answer. What a bunch of bores.

 

The Greatest Story Ever Told

The Emperor's New Clothes

Many years ago there was an Emperor so exceedingly fond of new clothes that he spent all his money on being well dressed. He cared nothing about reviewing his soldiers, going to the theatre, or going for a ride in his carriage, except to show off his new clothes. He had a coat for every hour of the day, and instead of saying, as one might, about any other ruler, "The King's in council," here they always said. "The Emperor's in his dressing room."

In the great city where he lived, life was always gay. Every day many strangers came to town, and among them one day came two swindlers. They let it be known they were weavers, and they said they could weave the most magnificent fabrics imaginable. Not only were their colors and patterns uncommonly fine, but clothes made of this cloth had a wonderful way of becoming invisible to anyone who was unfit for his office, or who was unusually stupid.

"Those would be just the clothes for me," thought the Emperor. "If I wore them I would be able to discover which men in my empire are unfit for their posts. And I could tell the wise men from the fools. Yes, I certainly must get some of the stuff woven for me right away." He paid the two swindlers a large sum of money to start work at once.

They set up two looms and pretended to weave, though there was nothing on the looms. All the finest silk and the purest old thread which they demanded went into their traveling bags, while they worked the empty looms far into the night.

"I'd like to know how those weavers are getting on with the cloth," the Emperor thought, but he felt slightly uncomfortable when he remembered that those who were unfit for their position would not be able to see the fabric. It couldn't have been that he doubted himself, yet he thought he'd rather send someone else to see how things were going. The whole town knew about the cloth's peculiar power, and all were impatient to find out how stupid their neighbors were.

"I'll send my honest old minister to the weavers," the Emperor decided. "He'll be the best one to tell me how the material looks, for he's a sensible man and no one does his duty better."

So the honest old minister went to the room where the two swindlers sat working away at their empty looms.

"Heaven help me," he thought as his eyes flew wide open, "I can't see anything at all". But he did not say so.

Both the swindlers begged him to be so kind as to come near to approve the excellent pattern, the beautiful colors. They pointed to the empty looms, and the poor old minister stared as hard as he dared. He couldn't see anything, because there was nothing to see. "Heaven have mercy," he thought. "Can it be that I'm a fool? I'd have never guessed it, and not a soul must know. Am I unfit to be the minister? It would never do to let on that I can't see the cloth."

"Don't hesitate to tell us what you think of it," said one of the weavers.

"Oh, it's beautiful -it's enchanting." The old minister peered through his spectacles. "Such a pattern, what colors!" I'll be sure to tell the Emperor how delighted I am with it."

"We're pleased to hear that," the swindlers said. They proceeded to name all the colors and to explain the intricate pattern. The old minister paid the closest attention, so that he could tell it all to the Emperor. And so he did.

The swindlers at once asked for more money, more silk and gold thread, to get on with the weaving. But it all went into their pockets. Not a thread went into the looms, though they worked at their weaving as hard as ever.

The Emperor presently sent another trustworthy official to see how the work progressed and how soon it would be ready. The same thing happened to him that had happened to the minister. He looked and he looked, but as there was nothing to see in the looms he couldn't see anything.

"Isn't it a beautiful piece of goods?" the swindlers asked him, as they displayed and described their imaginary pattern.

"I know I'm not stupid," the man thought, "so it must be that I'm unworthy of my good office. That's strange. I mustn't let anyone find it out, though." So he praised the material he did not see. He declared he was delighted with the beautiful colors and the exquisite pattern. To the Emperor he said, "It held me spellbound."

All the town was talking of this splendid cloth, and the Emperor wanted to see it for himself while it was still in the looms. Attended by a band of chosen men, among whom were his two old trusted officials-the ones who had been to the weavers-he set out to see the two swindlers. He found them weaving with might and main, but without a thread in their looms.

"Magnificent," said the two officials already duped. "Just look, Your Majesty, what colors! What a design!" They pointed to the empty looms, each supposing that the others could see the stuff.

"What's this?" thought the Emperor. "I can't see anything. This is terrible!

Am I a fool? Am I unfit to be the Emperor? What a thing to happen to me of all people! - Oh! It's very pretty," he said. "It has my highest approval." And he nodded approbation at the empty loom. Nothing could make him say that he couldn't see anything.

His whole retinue stared and stared. One saw no more than another, but they all joined the Emperor in exclaiming, "Oh! It's very pretty," and they advised him to wear clothes made of this wonderful cloth especially for the great procession he was soon to lead. "Magnificent! Excellent! Unsurpassed!" were bandied from mouth to mouth, and everyone did his best to seem well pleased. The Emperor gave each of the swindlers a cross to wear in his buttonhole, and the title of "Sir Weaver."

Before the procession the swindlers sat up all night and burned more than six candles, to show how busy they were finishing the Emperor's new clothes. They pretended to take the cloth off the loom. They made cuts in the air with huge scissors. And at last they said, "Now the Emperor's new clothes are ready for him."

Then the Emperor himself came with his noblest noblemen, and the swindlers each raised an arm as if they were holding something. They said, "These are the trousers, here's the coat, and this is the mantle," naming each garment. "All of them are as light as a spider web. One would almost think he had nothing on, but that's what makes them so fine."

"Exactly," all the noblemen agreed, though they could see nothing, for there was nothing to see.

"If Your Imperial Majesty will condescend to take your clothes off," said the swindlers, "we will help you on with your new ones here in front of the long mirror."

The Emperor undressed, and the swindlers pretended to put his new clothes on him, one garment after another. They took him around the waist and seemed to be fastening something - that was his train-as the Emperor turned round and round before the looking glass.

"How well Your Majesty's new clothes look. Aren't they becoming!" He heard on all sides, "That pattern, so perfect! Those colors, so suitable! It is a magnificent outfit."

Then the minister of public processions announced: "Your Majesty's canopy is waiting outside."

"Well, I'm supposed to be ready," the Emperor said, and turned again for one last look in the mirror. "It is a remarkable fit, isn't it?" He seemed to regard his costume with the greatest interest.

The noblemen who were to carry his train stooped low and reached for the floor as if they were picking up his mantle. Then they pretended to lift and hold it high. They didn't dare admit they had nothing to hold.

So off went the Emperor in procession under his splendid canopy. Everyone in the streets and the windows said, "Oh, how fine are the Emperor's new clothes! Don't they fit him to perfection? And see his long train!" Nobody would confess that he couldn't see anything, for that would prove him either unfit for his position, or a fool. No costume the Emperor had worn before was ever such a complete success.

"But he hasn't got anything on," a little child said.

"Did you ever hear such innocent prattle?" said its father. And one person whispered to another what the child had said, "He hasn't anything on. A child says he hasn't anything on."

"But he hasn't got anything on!" the whole town cried out at last.

The Emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he thought, "This procession has got to go on." So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn't there at all.

Moral of the story--if someone tells you and shows you what they are, believe them.

Especially when they do it over and over and over.

Song of the Week: Two songs, since I didn't post anything last week:

What so Never the Dance, Parts 1 & 2--Houseguests. Try to get that five note refrain out of your head afterward.

Mr. B.K.--Ronnie Earl & the Broadcasters

Here's part 11 (and 12) of Tougher Than the Rest: 

Danny adjusted quickly and capitalized on his seven years of experience at Motronics selling stereo equipment. Within a few weeks he climbed near the top of the sales charts. Danny’s friend Dale Kroger, a top-notch manufacturers rep from Buffalo, had begged Danny to get into sales for years.  Danny’s knee-jerk reaction was typically misinformed. “Aren’t all salesmen crooks?” he asked Dale.

                “Yeah, the bad ones are, but they don’t last,” Dale said. “The good ones last, cause sales is mostly listening. Learn your product, then just listen, look for the cues, and make the sale. You have to be honest, or you’ll wash out.” That was some of the best advice Danny ever got, and it served him well for years, in sales and in life. He settled in at Sounds Great for, he hoped, the long haul.

               

1982: Danny Hits the Big Time

 

Mark Longley called Danny one evening, just a couple months into his gig at Sounds Great. After just a few pleasantries, Mark got to the purpose of the call. “Danny, the people from Atari are coming in to Motronics tomorrow. They want to start a national product merchandising program and are looking to hire someone to cover Upstate New York. I told them about you. I think you’d be great for the job. They want to interview you. Can you come in?”

(Note: there is currently, forty-plus years later, still a company called Atari; they share only the name and are many companies removed from the videogame juggernaut.)

Atari? How could he say “no”? He didn’t. Danny practically sputtered out his answer, “Well, yeah, are you kidding?” He was stunned, and excited. Atari was the hottest company in the world, almost literally; at that time, in the fall of ’81, they were the fastest growing company in U.S. history. Danny never read the business pages but even he knew they were a juggernaut. Atari dominated the fledgling video game industry with their 2600 game console and interchangeable game cartridges. There weren’t many people who didn’t know about “Space Invaders” or “Asteroids.”

                The next day, Danny met with Ed Perlmutter, the regional national sales manager, and Paul McGee, the head of the new product merchandiser division. Danny sat opposite the two intimidating men in his new sports coat and borrowed tie.  McGee, effervescent and animated, asked Danny about his background and sales experience. “Are you a good closer?” McGee asked him.

In sales, if you’re a closer, you can convince the customer to buy, or “close” the deal. Unfortunately, Danny had never even heard the term and muffed the answer, but McGee didn’t seem to care. Even though Danny lacked a college degree and had never even taken a single course, Paul McGee saw something in him. McGee explained the job to Danny. “You’ll visit key Atari dealers, educate their employees and get them excited about the newest games and happenings, spiff up their displays of Atari stuff, and occasionally you’ll get some swag like pens or stickers to hand out. You’ll be our ‘eyes and ears’ in the field. You’ll get info about Atari as well as the competition, and file weekly reports that tell us what is happening in the trenches.” McGee paused. “Most important, you will be the only representative of Atari, a multi-million dollar company, that your customers will ever see. You’ll need to be both professional and enthusiastic and make us look good!”

That last part is what got Danny the job. McGee saw a young man who was articulate, animated and expressive. He knew, as far as the merchandiser job was concerned, that was worth more than a college degree. He called Danny the next day and said, “This is Paul McGee. Welcome to Atari, Danny!” Atari’s newest employee was too stunned to respond. In three months, Danny went from being laid off to landing a job with the coolest company in the world. Atari paid him a yearly salary of $14,600, a small fortune for him at the time. Plus, they gave him a brand new company car. Danny barely got his bearings he was on a flight to Sunnyvale, California to meet the other product merchandisers.

The trips to California, of which there were many, were exciting and fast-paced. Paul McGee was a master motivator. He wined and dined his crew in exotic Silicon Valley restaurants, and they often closed the place. Danny felt ill-at-ease at these meetings. The other merchandisers were all college graduates, worldlier and more refined from four years of not only higher education but immersion with other people from far-flung destinations and nationalities. They all possessed social graces taught during childhood. They had polish.

At best, Danny was a diamond-in-the-very-rough. On those first trips to Sunnyvale Danny always felt unsure of himself. He wasn’t even comfortable trying to be funny because he knew his crude sense of humor would be wildly out of place there. He was mentally and emotionally exhausted trying to keep up with such a disparate, educated group. After a few days of pump-you-up meetings, dinners, outings and general group activities, Danny was about out of gas as he gratefully boarded the plane home.

                The glamour and wining and dining in Sunnyvale contrasted sharply with the monotonous grind of the actual merchandising job. Danny drove, and drove, and drove. He drove west, to Buffalo and beyond; east to Albany; south to Binghamton; and north, to Plattsburgh, which hugged the Canadian border. He had the largest territory, in area, of any of the merchandisers. McGee invariably praised Danny for his fortitude in surviving those Upstate New York winters whenever the team met in Sunnyvale. In Upstate New York, “winter” can start on Halloween and persist past Easter (and one memorable year, Mother’s Day).

The treks were long, solitary, and often lonely, with only a low fidelity AM radio for company. Danny spent many overnights in motels for the longest trips, and was often away from home Monday to Friday. He missed the old days, the camaraderie with his Motronics coworkers. The idea of the merchandising gig—the company car, fancy Atari business card, the California junkets, and the prestige of working for such a hip company, turned out to be more appealing than the actual job.

                The Atari-provided Chevrolet Citation was Danny’s company car, which he quickly dubbed the Corporate Cruiser. The now long-gone and even less-lamented “X-Body” automobile was not General Motors’ proudest moment. The Citation was homely, bland, utilitarian, woefully underpowered, and slow. Danny told people it did “zero-to-sixty in a week.” It might not have been that fast. The Citation was so underpowered it often struggled climbing many of the steep hills east of Syracuse. He just puttered along in the slow lane as cars with more pep passed him. To be fair, Atari paid for it, for gas and upkeep, and Danny had full use of the Cruiser when he wasn’t at work.

                Danny turned twenty-five in July of ’81. He was a lucky man, all things considered. His CF peers, not so much. They were in and out of hospitals, on intravenous medications, or even using external oxygen-- if they were still alive. Danny was lucky; he was never hospitalized because of CF, and his lung function was close to normal. His weight, only 105 after the ulcer surgery, had recovered to about 135 pounds, still thin for his five foot-nine-inch frame. Danny had minimal upper-body strength, and he hauled around suitcases, briefcases, and boxes of Atari brochures with difficulty. The Atari road trips taxed him mentally and physically, but he called on an inner reserve when he hit the stores and put on a proper Atari face. Danny was the face of the coolest brand name around (Mr. Atari, they called him) and was always greeted like a conquering king. He felt obligated to present a professional and upbeat appearance.

                1981 ended, 1982 arrived and the Atari juggernaut seemed unstoppable. Record-breaking sales of the 2600 and its games kept the black ink flowing. Paul McGee spent gobs of money on the merchandisers, lavishing them with attention and trips to Sunnyvale. Silicon Valley was another world to Danny. When the team met in Sunnyvale they were put up in fancy hotels and treated to terrific training seminars. Then, after working all day, they got to play, and they played hard; one memorable night the whole crew did shots of Bailey’s Irish Crème until four in the morning, and then a few of the guys, Danny included, trashed a hotel room like they were the Who.

                In one of those early ’82 meetings, McGee announced a second quarter (April to June period) promotion, to be tied in with Atari’s March release of Pac Man. The Namco arcade version of Pac Man dominated the gaming world and, unlike most shoot-‘em-up games, appealed to women. Atari’s Pac Man game cartridge, heavily anticipated by Atari gamers, went on to sell over eight million cartridges worldwide. Pac Man didn’t really need any hype but in true Atari fashion they spent a ton of money on the rollout. National Pac Man Day was scheduled for April 3^rd in multiple cities across the U.S. and Atari spent millions on advertising the promo with full page ads in the New York Times, among other newspapers. But it was the job of McGee’s merchandisers to make Pac Man Day a success.

                “Pac Man Day is your chance to shine,” McGee told his merchandising crew. “You are the company’s ‘boots on the ground’”, he told them, in typical rah-rah fashion. (McGee was an ex-Navy Seal and war terminology often peppered his communications). Atari gave each merchandiser the responsibility of finding and securing three shopping malls where the festivities would happen. There would be a costumed Pac Man there in “person”, with games, prizes, and lots of stickers and t-shirts. Danny’s hometown lost out to Rochester. The Flower City,  seventy miles west of Syracuse and considered a stronger market by Atari. was chosen over Syracuse as the Upstate location.

                The Pac Man Day promotion was a lot to ask of a bunch of green, entry-level employees, so each merchandiser was assigned an inside contact in Sunnyvale. Danny’s contact was Clara Pfeiffer. Clara was a six-month veteran at Atari, about the same as Danny. She was bright and funny, with a quick, sardonic wit. From the first moment they spoke, Danny and Clara had a spark-- that instant, mysterious, sometimes undefinable, chemistry. They became instant old friends. Clara followed up on field requests from Danny and her bosses, and they compared notes daily. Sometimes they spoke two or three times a day.

Eventually, their conversations morphed from just Atari to their personal lives. Danny was single. Clara lived with her longtime boyfriend, Phil. After literally hours of phone calls, they started writing letters, pages and pages. Danny and Clara had much in common. They both were atheists, political left-wingers, and each at least a little neurotic. They had deep, strange, wonderful conversations. They both questioned authority (though nobody was second to Danny there). Most of all, their chats and letters were joyful and full of laughter. Clara once told him, “You have joie de vivre, Danny.”

                Danny jokingly said, “No, no, I have cystic fibrosis,” but admitted he didn’t know what that meant.

                “Love of life, an exuberance. You’re contagious,” Clara said.

Danny almost followed up with, no, CF isn’t contagious, but instead said, “I love it, as long as I have it, I guess.”

                Their childhoods couldn’t have been more different. Danny’s was poverty and evictions and crazy parents and divorce. Clara’s was the opposite. She grew up in a wealthy neighborhood in Northern California with two educated, loving, and mentally stable parents who gave her the head start she needed to thrive and pursue a college education. Clara tried to impress that upon Danny. Even in their early conversations, Clara prodded Danny to go to school. “You’ll never advance at Atari without a degree,” Clara told him, echoing what McGee had told him. They saw the potential in Danny that maybe he didn’t see in himself.

                Pac Man Day Eve arrived on April second, and Clara got into the Rochester airport at five o’clock. Danny met her at gate A-12. The chemistry they had developed during all those phone calls and in those letters was real and a little overwhelming. Standing face-to-face, in person, after all this buildup, was fraught with potential and peril at the same time. “I can’t believe I’m here,” Clara said, as she hugged Danny tightly.

“I can’t believe you’re here in person,” Danny said, then self-consciously laughed at his curious sentence. He was in way over his head--in trouble and he knew it. They chatted excitedly on the way to the Holiday Inn where Clara was staying. Danny dropped her off at the door. He was afraid, a bit, of walking her inside, and told Clara “I’ll come get you in about an hour, ok?. I told Steve Copeland (the local manufacturers’ rep), we would get dinner with him and his wife, Tammy.”

Clara looked a little disappointed, or did Danny imagine it? “Ok, sure. That’ll be fun,” she said.

The four of them grabbed a booth at T.G.I. Fridays and the conversation flowed for a while, but Steve and Tammy soon realized that two was company, and four a crowd, and they begged off early. Clara and Danny didn’t miss them. A lot of heat built up in the last month between them and the last place they wanted to be right then was a crowded restaurant. Danny paid the check, they headed back to the hotel. This time, Danny stayed.

                April 3^rd, Pac Man Day. Typical Upstate weather for April, raw and wet, greeted the Atari team that consisted of Danny, Clara, Steve, and others from the Atari rep firm’s office, Paston-Hunter. Larry Banick, the office manager at P/H, was deputized (drafted is more like it) to wear the Pac Man costume. The team rode the Pac Man Van, decorated with removable decals that shouted PAC MAN DAY on both sides, to each mall location. The Pac Van was escorted by two Rochester police cars and Danny announced their presence with a bullhorn, so they didn’t exactly sneak up on the waiting families. Larry performed above and beyond as the costumed character. He bore up well under the heavy, hot, and cumbersome outfit, and enthusiastically danced and waddled around at all three locations, delighting the throngs of kids. Pac Man Day, in Rochester and across the country, was a roaring success for Atari, though nobody knew how many extra game cartridges it sold.

The Paston-Hunter crew headed back to Syracuse. The whole Atari team did a great job and Pac Man Day was history. But what about Danny and Clara? Danny and Clara returned the van and then he took Clara to the airport for her three o’clock flight. There was one question on their minds, and in their hearts: now what? Clara had Phil, and she loved him, she was sure of that, but she felt something special for Danny, too. Danny and Clara kissed goodbye at the gate and decided things felt too raw to address the future until they both had time to reflect.

As far as he was concerned, Danny knew. His head was way over his heels. “Clara, I’m smitten.” Danny said to her just before she got on the plane. Clara loved that.

                Danny never felt a connection quite like this before. Clara was a spitfire, a supernova, weirdly (because their names were so similar) a lot like Claire, the girl he dated in the mid-seventies. But Claire never loved Danny. Clara? Who knew? Clara got home and immediately wrote Danny a letter that said, I want to see you again, for more than two days. I need to come out there and decide if this is real.

                Danny’s heart raced as he read her letter. He was elated. Come, whenever you want and whenever you can. I already can’t wait to see you and you just left, said his response. They settled on mid-July for her visit, continued their copious mail correspondence and ran up massive phone bills, hundreds of dollars, between early April and mid-July.

July 10^th  finally arrived. Danny waited impatiently at the gate. He was fresh from a ballgame and still dressed in his E-Street All Stars uniform. E-Street lost but Danny barely remembered the score by the time he arrived at the gate. Clara spotted him right away and ran into his arms. “You didn’t have to get all dressed up for me,” she said with a laugh. “I can’t believe I’m here. I can’t believe I’m seeing you,” she said, and then she kissed him.

 “I can’t believe it either. This is surreal,” Danny replied. They headed to baggage claim, arms around each other, and waited for the suitcase carousel to bring Clara’s luggage.

 “I want to kiss more,” Clara said with a giggle. Danny was happy to oblige.

                Naturally, TWA lost Clara’s suitcase.  The airline assured her they would deliver it to Danny’s place by the next morning. “What am I going to wear until then?” Clara said, to no one in particular. You won’t need any clothes tonight, he thought but wisely said nothing. Despite Danny’s great yearning to see more of Clara, so to speak, he continued with the evening’s plan, which was a stop at Lee’s Restaurant.

                Danny wanted everyone to meet Clara, and they all wanted to meet her. They had heard so much about her. Besides, the team had a little “Welcome to Syracuse” surprise cooked up by Danny. Back in April, Clara and Danny exchanged photos, and one of the ones Clara sent Danny was a black and white picture of her at maybe four or five years old, grinning at the camera, her hand stuck in her French toast.  It was impossibly cute, and Danny had an idea.

                Danny had about twenty copies of the French toast pic printed and turned into twenty wearable pin-on buttons, in preparation for Clara’s arrival.  When the couple walked into Lee’s, the whole team greeted her wearing buttons featuring an adorable little French-toast-fondling girl. After she finally stopped laughing, Clara was overwhelmed by the immediate acceptance and warmth the team showed her. She made twenty instant friends.

                Danny and Clara stayed for a while and had a couple beers and danced their asses off (technically, he had no ass to begin with). Clara assumed the coveted role of Diana Ross when “Baby Love” played, and the whole E-Street team behind her as the sweaty, lumpy Supremes.  On the way home, Clara gushed, “I like your friends!”

                “Me too,” replied Danny. Speaking of friends, he hoped his friend Rich remembered he was supposed to crash at Dale Kroger’s place. Before he left for the airport, Danny had pleaded with Rich to find a place to sleep.

                “Home? I don’t even remember where I live tonight, Rooms,” said Rich, innocently.

Danny tried to imagine Clara’s culture shock. Her affluent, upscale neighborhood in Northern California was the opposite of Danny’s north side neighborhood in a rust-belt Northeast city in just about every way. Danny and Clara stopped at a convenience store a couple of blocks from home. When they came out, Danny glanced at the rundown apartment next door and saw a familiar face; an old high school pal, Rick, who was sitting on his front porch. Rick was one of the cool kids; he headed the yearbook committee and was the lead in the drama club’s presentation of The Music Man. 

“Hi Rick, how’s it going?” Danny said.

Rick lifted the paper bag he held in his lap, put his nose in it and took a big whiff. Airplane glue. “I’m good,” he said and handed the bag out, to offer Danny a hit. Danny politely declined, but walked away shocked and embarrassed for himself and his neighborhood.

“That’s the mayor of Syracuse,” Danny told her, deadpan, as he tried to joke away his mortification.

Clara looked at Danny and said, “I don’t care about that, Danny. I only care about one thing tonight, and that’s being with you.” Her suitcase showed up the next morning. She never missed it.

                The rest of the week was a whirlwind. Clara met Danny’s other friends and his family. She climbed a tree with Danny’s twelve-year-old brother, Mike.  He took her sightseeing. Clara was thrilled to see the real, actual Erie Canal. Even California kids sang “Erie Canal” in school. They celebrated his twenty-sixth birthday and spent Saturday night dancing (their asses off) to a cool retro-swing band.  After a stop at Niagara Falls, another place the West Coast native had read about but never seen, they spent the next three days in Toronto. They toured the enormous Zoo, the Ontario Science Centre, and rode paddle boats in High Park.

                “This city is ours tonight!” Danny said, the eternal romantic. Clara was swept up in the magic of not only Toronto but the whole exciting week. And that was the problem.  Was this real? Can I really give up the safety and security of all that I have at home in California? she thought. Phil knew where she was. She didn’t lie to him. He just figured she had to get it out of her system. Was he right?

                Danny had similar thoughts, and doubts. Why would Clara uproot her whole life based on a couple of hyper-romantic, fantastic months (The root word of “fantastic” is “fantasy,” after all)?  Danny knew in his heart that they had no future, as much as he wished otherwise.

                Departure Sunday arrived, nine days after Clara arrived in Syracuse. They said their tearful goodbyes. Clara flew back to California and Danny went back on the road. Each mundane day in the Corporate Cruiser seemed to make their magical week less real, more distant.  Going on the road was Hell. More monotonous highway driving to distant locations. Danny, ever the trouper, always managed to smile and joke when he made store visits. That was the easy part--people who called him Mr. Atari. Getting back in the Cruiser for another lonely hundred-mile drive, that was murder.

Danny and Clara kept writing, kept calling, Danny tried to forge a path forward. Clara tried to, impossibly, forge two paths.  Her indecision, she told him, “Made me crazy.”  Phil had the (deserved) inside track. He had the history, the backstory, and maybe most important, as the real estate adage goes, location, location, location. Phil weathered the storm of her trip east and let Clara work through her conflicted emotions. Clara’s pragmatic side eventually won over her emotions.

One fateful evening Danny’s phone rang, and it was Clara. “Danny…” she paused, “The week I came to see you was one of the greatest weeks of my life. I’ll never forget it, and I’ll never forget you…”

Danny cut her off. “Why do I feel like there is a huge ‘But…’ coming?” he asked her.

Clara began to cry then. “Danny, my life is here. Phil is here, my family is here, my job is here. My life is here,” she said again. “Please understand. I love you but sometimes that isn’t enough. Phil and I have a history, and we are good for each other. I want to, I need to make what we have work.”

Now Danny began to cry. “Uh, I do understand but man, it isn’t easy, Clara,” and then he trailed off.

“You deserve someone one hundred percent your own, Danny. You’re worth it,” Clara said. She meant it. “Sometimes, I wish there were two of me, y’know?”

“Well, if there were two of you, I’d still want the original one,” he said, and then they both laughed. Danny dug down deep and tried to find the humor, as usual. Even though he died a little, a lot, inside.

“Why don’t we hang up now, on a good note, ok?” Clara said. “Take care of yourself. I’ll always, always remember you. Bye, Danny,” and then Clara hung up before Danny protested.

He never forgot her, either.

Danny was heartbroken. There were some dark days. But he was a survivor. He pivoted and threw himself into his work, and Atari loved his work. They loved his copious reports from the field; after all, that’s what he was there for. As Paul McGee said, the merchandisers were the “eyes and ears” of Atari. One of the big things he reported on was the burgeoning popularity of upstart game maker Activision. Atari treated their game programmers as engineers, which they were, but without recognizing they were artists, too. The limits of programming space when designing an Atari game were the electronic equivalent of building a ship in a bottle. Five of the most talented Atari programmers left Atari in 1979 and, after some legal wrangling, finally began development of the first Activision games.

                The first big hit for the fledgling company was 1981’s Kaboom!, but a monster seller in 1982 was an adventure game called Pitfall. Game programmers were rock stars and Activision treated them like they were, with game packaging featuring the designer’s name and picture on the back cover and a biography included inside the instruction manual.  At Atari, the programmers’ identities remained cloaked in anonymity.

Danny had cultivated strong relationships with management in key outlets. He knew they would give him the straight scoop about the marketplace. They did. Activision games were far outselling Atari’s for one simple reason—they were better games. It was hard to hear, but Danny took that information and put it in his weekly reports.  There was often some grumbling on the other end but, after all, he was just the messenger.

                The summertime ’82 blockbuster E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was a once-in-a-generation movie,  and Atari leapt to secure the videogame rights. Atari and Spielberg struck a deal, and the videogame juggernaut decided to rush-release the game in time for the busy Christmas season. That gave the unlucky programmer, Howard Warshaw, a mere five weeks to design the game. It showed. The game suffered from poor gameplay (way too much time falling into holes) and the word-of-mouth was terrible. E.T still sold very well, almost one and a half million games initially, but nearly half of them came back to Atari unsold after Christmas.

Danny and the other merchandisers did their best to encourage sales of the faltering game. Atari placed spiffy merchandising displays, large stand-alone display cases designed to showcase new Atari hits, in most of the bigger stores. Danny gave E.T prime real estate in those displays, but often found Activision hits like Pitfall in those prime spots. As far as the staff was concerned, anything that played on the Atari 2600 was an Atari game.

                Despite all the turmoil, Danny kept his job. He was even up for a possible promotion. McGee told him about an in-house job, writing instruction manuals for new games. Atari flew him to Chicago for the interview, and Danny cooled his heels waiting in the lobby of the Drake hotel. He almost immediately saw Jim Rose, a former Syracuse sports reporter who’d relocated to the Windy City.

“Hey, Jim Rose!” Danny said, and Rose stopped. Danny told Rose he was from Syracuse and remembered him.

“Hey, how’s everyone in Syracuse?” Rose said.

A ridiculous question. Danny gave him a ridiculous answer. “Great!”

A few minutes later, a much more familiar and iconic figure lumbered in front of him, stage right; Howard Cosell, the acerbic and loquacious ABC sports reporter. Cosell was one of the first to befriend and defend Muhammad Ali in the sixties when the boxer refused to submit to the military draft on religious grounds and then was stripped of his boxing license. Cosell was practically ubiquitous in the seventies and early eighties and thrived on “asking the tough question.” In 1982, Howard Cosell was almost certainly better known than the vice president. He was larger than life.

“Howard Cosell!” Danny yelled, in the general direction of Howard Cosell.

Cosell turned to face Danny, puzzled. He shouldn’t have been. People were probably always yelling out to him. He was, after all, Howard Cosell.

                Danny saw his chance. He stuck his hand out and said, “I’d like to shake your hand!” Howard obliged, barely. He half-heartedly took Danny’s hand briefly, and then flung it away as if it had shit on it.

                “Is that it?” Danny asked him. Didn’t you want to chat about Ali? Namath? Dandy Don Meredith? I got some time.

 Cosell never broke stride. “Shut up,” Howard Cosell said. I deserved that, Danny thought.

Danny’s interview went well but it felt like an expensive formality, a favor to Paul McGee. He didn’t get the job. No degree, no promotion. Danny’s main interest in moving to California, anyway, wasn’t Atari, it was Clara, and they were through. Getting the promotion would’ve made him not unlike the dog that catches the car. Now what?

                Danny continued to work hard. He received the “Merchandiser of the Month” award in November, for the second time.  Atari began pivoting from the 2600 game system, which was already old tech, to their line of personal computers in an attempt to prop up their sagging fortunes. Atari ran a joint promotion with key retailers in major markets to try and gauge the appeal of their personal computers.  Merchandisers like Danny camped out in retail outlets, sold Atari computers, and then provided feedback to Sunnyvale.

                Curiously, they sent Danny to the flagship “Crazy Eddie” store in Manhattan. Curious, because the company had their choice of three native, battle-tested and savvy NYC merchandisers, and Eddie’s was a huge Atari account. Atari flew Danny into the city, put him up in a midtown hotel, rented him a car paid his expenses. They trusted he would get the job done.

So Danny parked himself in front of the Atari display at Crazy Eddie’s first thing Monday morning. He was eager to talk about Atari’s newest products, but fielded few customer questions and sold zero computers. The Atari computers were well-regarded by insiders, but the hottest computer on the market at the time was the Commodore 64, and Eddie’s salespeople sold them all day long.  He left the store discouraged, but managed to lift his spirits with…spirits. He toured the bars of Manhattan with one of those crack New York merchandisers, Paul Feinman. They drank till the bars closed, and then the very inebriated Danny aimed his car back to the hotel.

Danny and Paul had a great time all week, but the Crazy Eddie experiment was a complete bust. Danny sold not a single Atari computer all week. He barely got a chance to talk to a customer. The Eddie’s guys boxed him out, although they were nice about it. For whatever reason, they were determined to sell the Commodores. A wiser and more experienced Danny would have known why, and the reason was M-O-N-E-Y. Danny’s showed up at Eddie’s Friday morning, hung over but on time. A few minutes after the store opened, a man came in and spotted Danny.

The “Crazy Eddie” from the famous TV commercials was actually a well-known DJ named Jerry Carroll. This guy was the real thing--Eddie Antar. He approached Danny. “Who are you and what are you doing in my store?” the Real Eddie asked. He was suspicious and not happy. There didn’t seem to be an  answer that would satisfy the Real Eddie, but Danny valiantly tried.

                “Ed Perlmutter said I could be--” was all Danny said and then Eddie cut him off.

 “I don’t care who said you could be here. Nobody told me. I don’t want you in my store. You have to leave. Nothing personal, it’s not you, but leave,” said Real Eddie.

                So, Danny left, having sold exactly as many Atari computers that week as Ed Koch, or Howard Cosell.  He bummed around Manhattan for a few hours, got some lunch, had a beer, and then caught his plane for home later that evening, and life returned to normal. He got back on the road and kept doing his job but the reports he sent in contained more and more bad news. The amazing Atari era was nearing its end. Dave Adams, the Rochester-area merchandiser hired well after Danny, was laid off as part of departmental cutbacks. Danny had to drive to Rochester to repossess, so to speak, Dave’s car. “Sorry, Dave, I hate taking your car away like this,” Danny told his suddenly former co-worker, a genial sort.

“Ah, it’s ok, Danny,” Dave told him, “I already called my old video store, and they want to hire me back.” Danny was relieved his friend landed on his feet, but he felt ghoulish stealing Dave’s Corporate Cruiser. The Grim Reaper was just getting started. A few weeks later, Greg Susskind, the new regional manager, called Danny.

“I’ve got some bad news, Danny. Friday is your last day. Someone will come to your house and pick up your car. Good luck,” Susskind said, rather unemotionally.

The Atari era was over. It was fun while it lasted.

Grrr

I was driving home from work the other day, stopped at the corner of Oak and James Streets. A late model Nissan waited ahead of me at the light, and as it changed and they drove away, the passenger tossed what looked to be a snack-size potato chip bag out the window. It fluttered to the ground as they drove away.

 

Big deal, right? Look at the trash you see on the streets all the time. I see these everywhere for some reason:

 

 

Why are people flossing their teeth on the street? What’s next, cutting their toenails, or using a Ped-Egg?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp6trGdGDsg

(I think we can all agree, yum!)

 

And if I could resell all the masks I see, I'd be a rich man:

 

But that potato chip bag made me mad, and sad. What goes through a person’s mind when they use the planet as a trash can? Look, I’m no Pollyanna, and there are worse things people do, and do to each other.

 

Don’t litter. And don’t floss your teeth on the street. I don’t want to get hit with a flying piece of your burrito.  

And, for the love of God, use your Ped-Egg behind closed doors.

Song of the...Week: (I've been calling it "Song of the Day" but since I only post once a week)...

Oh Sharon, look what you do to those men.

And now, part TEN of Tougher Than the Rest:

Mark’s car was an old Chevy Nova and it smelled like an ashtray, mainly because it was an ashtray, with a car wrapped around it. Driving a rolling ashtray was the least of Danny’s problems, because he was driving a rolling ashtray that didn’t consistently roll. The Nova stalled at lights. It stalled at right turns. It stalled, terrifyingly, at left turns. Danny slipped the car into neutral at stop lights and feathered the gas, which helped, but the Nova had it in for Danny, it seemed. Danny stalled as he drove the busy and chaotic Carrier Circle roundabout but managed to get her started again. He got a lot of dirty looks as angry drivers zoomed around him. “Yeah, asshole, I’m doing it on purpose! I’m a thrillseeker!” Danny yelled out the window.

Finally, Danny arrived at the huge industrial park where Burnett Process was hypothetically located. He pulled out the directions his dad gave him and realized they were no help at all. Danny, like his father, was very directionally challenged and often got lost turning around. He stopped at two different factories to ask directions, then promptly got lost again, all the time trying to keep Mark’s Nova running.  I’m gonna die in this industrial park, he thought. Discouraged, he sat in front of a building he had already seen twice. Then he looked at the sign above the door: BURNETT PROCESS.

Danny found his dad, said a quick hello, grabbed the registration, and, more or less, sped off. It was already one-thirty. He promptly got lost as he tried to get out of the industrial park, stalling all the way. Finally, he made it to the Thruway and headed to Liverpool. At least he knew how to get to his dad’s. He coaxed the Nova all the way to the typically pretentiously named Casual Estates trailer park.

Danny knocked once and practically burst inside. “Oh, hi, Danny. I didn’t expect you,” said Lulu. Oh, please don’t say that! Danny thought.

“Hi Lulu,” Danny said, and gave her a hug and a kiss. “I came for the title, remember?”

“Oh, that’s right. I’ll get it. Do you have time for coffee?” Lulu asked. If I had a time machine, yes, Danny thought. But the way things are going today, a time machine would probably stall and leave me in the year 1879 or something.

“No, I’m sorry, Lulu, I’m very late already,” Danny said, as he stuffed the title into his shirt pocket.

“Oh, come on! You can stay for a cup of coffee!” Lulu said. She was normally not one to take “no” for an answer, but this was no normal day.

“I promise when I get the car on the road I’ll come out and have that cup. Gotta go—bye!” Danny said with another quick kiss on the cheek, and then he was off.

The Nova didn’t stall. This time, it didn’t start.

 Danny waited a few minutes, then tried again. He couldn’t tell if the Nova was flooded but smelled gas, and assumed it was. He popped the hood to let the gas evaporate more quickly, which took a few minutes. “Hey Lulu, I’ll have that cup of coffee,” Danny said.

“I told you that you had time,” Lulu said.

Ten minutes and one gulped cup of coffee later, it was two-thirty, a mere two and a half hours since he left work. Danny pushed the gas pedal all the way to the floor and tried again. The Stallmobile turned over and started. Danny wasted no time and hightailed it out of there, stalling all the way. He hoped the Nova would behave long enough to get to the DMV. Danny raced down Route 57 towards  the highway. The Department of Motor Vehicles was on West Genesee Street, not far from work, where Mark Longley had to be wondering if Danny had stolen his car. It was three-fifteen when Danny pulled into the DMV parking lot.

Danny practically ran inside. His first break of the day—not much of a line and he was at the window in about ten minutes. “Hi,” he said, nearly out of breath. “I bought this car off my dad for a dollar and need to get everything switched over so I can get her on the road.” He smiled at the middle-aged woman behind the desk, who, unsurprisingly, did not return his smile. Danny didn’t care. He was so happy. He was going to Marilyn’s tonight and—

Danny’s reverie was interrupted by the DMV clerk. “The title isn’t signed.”

What? What? Title what? “What do you mean? Everything is signed, no?” Danny felt a little lightheaded, almost uncomprehending.

“The title isn’t signed by the previous owner. I can’t proceed without a signed title. Please get it signed and come back. Please step aside. Next!” said the woman, unaware and unconcerned by Danny’s plight.

Just then, behind her, Danny saw Ziggy Sadowski. Ziggy was a regular at Motronics. He was an electronics hobbyist and came in every couple of weeks for something, and even though he always dealt with Ray, all the guys knew him. Ziggy was also, Danny knew, the DMV supervisor. Ziggy, his pal.

“Ziggy! Ziggy!” Danny started, and then spit out a string of words that probably, but not assuredly, got across the quandary he faced. “Ziggy, you gotta help me!” Danny implored him.

Ziggy’s face was impassive. “Danny, all I can tell you, is the title has to be signed.”

It was after four, and so, impossible to take the Stallmobile all the way out to Casual Estates and back again. “But Ziggy, you don’t understand what this means to me! I—”

Ziggy cut him off. He put his face closer to Danny’s and enunciated each word, slowly and clearly so Danny couldn’t miss the meaning. “Danny, all I can tell you is the title has to be signed,” then he paused. “Get it?”

The dim light bulb above Danny’s head finally brightened. “Oh, yeah, sure. My stepmom is in the car. She’s in the car. I’ll go out there and have her sign it. I’ll be right back,” Danny said, triumphantly. Ziggy just smiled.

Later that evening, Danny’s new-to-him Plymouth Belvedere sat in Marilyn’s driveway as the two chatted, horizontally. “If you told me this was your first time, I would have baked you a cake, or something,” she said.

“Ah, Marilyn, you’ve done more than enough,” said Danny.

 

 

1981: E-Street

 

                Danny headed out the front door of Motronics at five o’clock that July evening in 1981. He was already in uniform-- black pants and gold jersey, big number 0 on his back--headed to his team’s softball game. He also had a matching black satin jacket, jauntily slung over his shoulder. The team’s name was stitched in flowing gold script on the front of the jersey and the back of the jacket: The E-Street All Stars.

                There was no bigger Bruce Springsteen fan than Danny, but he didn’t come up with the name. Danny’s choice was “The Destroyers,” the name of George Thorogood’s band, then enjoying their first burst of fame. Co-worker and teammate Frank, though, cautioned that with a name like the Destroyers, “We’d get beat up,” and suggested the E-Street name.  So, E-Street All Stars it was. The team had the flashiest uniforms in the league.

The E-Street All Stars talent, unfortunately, was not flashy. The E-Street All Stars couldn’t field, they couldn’t pitch, they couldn’t hit the cutoff man, they couldn’t hit, period. They were the slo-pitch softball version of the Bad News Bears.  Danny himself contributed a couple of plays for the “highlight” reel. In the first inning of one game, with the team already behind 11-0, Danny sprinted from his post in right field into foul territory and attempted to catch a foul pop-up. He ran full tilt, keeping his eye on the ball, until he looked down to see how close he was to the fence, which was: extremely. Danny, about a quarter inch from the fence, had just enough time to think oh, shit. He not only didn’t catch the ball (of course) but smashed into the fence, cut his lip, and bloodied his face. Undaunted, he jumped up and snarled, “C’mon! let’s get these guys!” a scene right out of a “B” movie.

Postscript: They didn’t get those guys.

Another time, Danny was in centerfield and fielded a base hit on one bounce.  The runner from second had just rounded third. Danny’s throwing arm was surprisingly strong and he thought, this guy is dead meat. Danny uncorked a strong throw, nailed the runner at the plate, and ended the inning, providing the emotional lift for a comeback rally that won the game for E-Street…

No.

Danny instead accidently let go of the ball early, like one of those fake-out “throws” you fool your dog or little brother with, and it plopped harmlessly behind him. Danny wanted to dig a big hole right there in centerfield to hide in. Lucky for him, misery sure loved company. Big, strong, athletic guys came to play for E-Street and turned into terrible hitters and clumsy fielders. Maybe it was contagious. As a result of this lack of talent, the E-Streeters usually spent the season in last place. Their uniforms continued being flashy, though.

After the game, however, the E Street All Stars were at their best. Danny bragged they had the highest “fun-to-win ratio” in the league. The team decamped to Lee’s Restaurant on Westcott Street after every game and did what they did best; drinking, laughing, and dancing, sometimes all three things at the same time.  They hung together, even the married guys and their wives, and had an absolute ball every Friday evening. The Lee’s DJ spun Motown hits and other danceable oldies, and almost everyone boogied on the crowded, too-small dance floor. One wife or girlfriend, designated “Diana Ross” for the evening, sang lead to a Supremes song like “Baby Love,” while ten drunken ballplayers in their sweaty, dirty uniforms, were the “backup singers.” CF made it hard to keep up, but he was game. He never missed a dance, even if he was sidelined briefly with a coughing jag after an especially energetic song

The All-Stars usually closed the place, and the song the DJ played last was Kate Smith’s iconic version of “God Bless America.” The whole team sang along mightily, if not tunefully and when the line, “White with foam” played everyone sloshed their beers and made a sloppy, happy mess. Then they all staggered to their cars, if they could find them, and drunkenly drove home. Nobody was worried about getting a DWI, incredibly--just making it home okay. It was a different time--everyone who drove drunk was wrong, but that’s just the way it was in the late seventies and early eighties.

Danny almost made it to the door as he left Motronics that July evening, but he was stopped by Ray Ronson’s voice crackling over the ancient intercom.  “Danny Martini, I gotta see you,” Ray said.

                Shit, I’m gonna be late for the game, he thought as he walked back to Ray’s office. He knew what Ray wanted to tell him, and he dreaded hearing it. The rumors had flown around the place all day. Dave DeSocio was getting canned, and Danny felt terrible. He really liked Dave, who was a few years older than Danny and a mellow presence on the counter. Danny and Dave worked together for a couple of years and usually got along great.

                Danny didn’t understand why they had to give Dave the axe—he was newly married and had a two-year old son. Danny was just sick about it and anxious to get it over with. “What’s going on, Ray?” he said, as he pretended not to know. Danny prepared a response in his head. Oh, Ray, Dave’ll be okay. He has a lot of experience,

                “Danny, I gotta let you go,” Ray said.

Danny began his prepared answer. “Oh, Ray, Dave’ll….ME?!” So much for the rumors. “Why me? what happened?” Danny asked.

Ray genuinely looked lost. “It came from upstairs. Who knows what they are thinking? This is the worst thing I’ve ever had to do.” It sounded like he meant it, at least.

                “We’ll give you a week’s severance and you’ll get a good recommendation from me and Mark,” he said. Danny was stunned, too stunned to say much. He almost said a modified version of his prepared answer; Oh, Ray, I’ll be okay. I have a lot of experience.

He instead said, “I’m so thankful you took a chance on me, what, seven years ago, man.” He meant it. If Motronics hadn’t hired him, and he started work at another place, he would have washed out in weeks, maybe even days, train wreck that he was then. He might have started and quit one job after another, just like Helen.

                The funny thing was that Danny had secretly started working part-time at Sounds Great, an audio/video retailer on Erie Boulevard. The Boulevard, as it was known, was a bustling arterial that straddled the city and DeWitt. In the early eighties it was known for its many stereo shops. A couple of weeks before he got canned at Motronics, he stopped in to Sounds Great and asked if they were hiring. Danny loved Sounds Great’s cool TV and radio ads and thought it’d be a fun place to work. He told the manager he was looking for part-time hours. Two weeks later, he went to work and told the manager, “Hey, change of plans.  I can work full-time if you want me,” and was immediately bumped up to full time. Danny was out of a job for zero days.

                The TV and radio ads fooled Danny. The hip and irreverent Sounds Great portrayed in the ads was a product of an advertising agency. Danny was spoiled by the friendly and nurturing atmosphere at Motronics. At Sounds Great the climate was cold and cutthroat. Commission sales can be that way. Danny never worked on commission before. He liked the idea until he butted heads with the salesmen (all men) who were unhelpful and often untrustworthy.