He Don’t Want to Grow Up

On August 28th, 1990, my friend and coworker Daina told me some new guy was starting work that day. "His name is Carl Cafarelli, and you're gonna love him. He's so funny and he loves music as much as you do," she told me.

Two understatements.

Daina introduced me to Carl, and I said, "Too bad about Stevie Ray, huh?" (Stevie Ray Vaughan was killed in a helicopter crash the previous evening.)

And Carl said, the very first thing he ever said to me, "That's what he gets for flying LaBamba Airlines."

As he likes to say, "You gotta be quick!"

The very swell 443 Social Club on Burnet Avenue in Syracuse last night held, as Carl put it, "the world's loudest book release party in recent memory" to celebrate his very swell new book, Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With the Ramones. His book is available locally and also directly from Rare Bird Records.

The "loudest" part was provided by Perilous, a band featuring members of "regional superstars, The Trend, Pauline and the Perils, Hurtin' Units, and Screaming Meemies” as well as former and current Flashcube Paul Armstrong's Boston-based band 1.4.5. Earplugs were available but were no match for the sonic (and excellent) assault from both bands.  

Carl read a few excerpts from the book and then ended the evening by, no doubt, fulfilling a lifelong dream as he, backed by 1.4.5,  sang "Rockaway Beach.”

Song of the Day: (This is where Carl's video would go if I weren't sixty-six years old and knew how to imbed it), The original will have to do:

 

And here is part 7 of Tougher Than the Rest, in a larger size font.

Helen taught Danny and his sisters there was no problem too big or complicated that it couldn’t be run away from. Danny was ready to sprint.  He half-heartedly tried chest PT but since it didn’t pay big dividends immediately, and felt silly besides, he soon stopped. Ditto, the pancreatic enzymes. Half the time he simply forgot to bring some or felt self-conscious when he took them in front of his friends. Adolescence is tough enough without gobbling down a bunch of pills in front of your peers. Danny was lucky, in a sense, if you can say that about a 19-year-old kid with cystic fibrosis. His case was so mild his non-compliance didn’t really hurt. He saw plenty of kids his age or younger in the CF Clinic who were obviously much sicker, including a few who carried their own oxygen tank. Oxygen! Danny couldn’t imagine himself on oxygen. He vowed to never lug that tank around. Danny secretly wondered how much longer he would live. “Not very”, the life expectancy numbers he saw seemed to indicate. Danny often matter-of-factly told his friends, “I’ll be dead by the time I’m thirty.”

He still caught the bus every morning on the corner of Spring and Court Streets. One day, while waiting he saw Ray’s distinctive yellow Firebird come down the crest of the hill. Oh, maybe I can catch a ride with him, Danny thought and waved frantically as he tried to catch Ray’s eye. His boss was on autopilot, though, and drove right by. Danny stepped into the road and tossed his brown paper bag lunch at the Firebird. “I heard something hit my rear windshield and saw this marionette behind my car in the road and waving his arms,” Ray said to Danny as they both laughed at the absurdity of the scene. The lunch survived the incident.

He kept catching rides with Ray most mornings and still took the bus when Ray didn’t go his way. Danny hated taking the bus, especially since he had a brand new license he was itching to use. His mom knew how much her son wanted a car and one morning, she looked up from her newspaper and said, “Danny, Merchants Bank is having a loan sale! You should apply. Maybe you can get a car.”  Again, with the paper? That turned out pretty great the last time, he thought.

“Who ever heard of a loan sale!?” Danny snorted. Nineteen-year-old boys are not only supremely intelligent but also endlessly condescending. He decided to humor her again, went to the Park Street branch, applied and was approved for the princely sum of eight hundred bucks. Danny scoured the automobile want-ads and quickly found a 1970 Buick Skylark for sale. Steve drove him to look at the car. Danny practically threw his money at the elderly woman who owned the Buick. Not only didn’t he try to talk her down, it was surprising he didn’t offer her more money.

Danny’s lifelong love affair with driving started the day he put the keys in that Skylark. He drove just for the fun of driving, listening to the radio and singing along. He was a happily unpaid chauffeur for the whole family, none of whom drove. He soon installed an 8-track tape player and soon added a home 8-track recorder to make his own mix tapes for the car. Danny changed formats as the years passed; from 8-track, to cassette, to CD, to Minidisc, to an iPod, and finally to Apple Music through his iPhone. The common denominator? He was determined to hear exactly what he wanted to hear.

1976: Claire

 

Claire Zajac’s sat next to Danny at Arturo’s and the smell of her perfume was intoxicating. Though it was really Claire herself that had him spellbound. Danny, Steve, Claire and Joanie, Steve’s big sister, had met for dinner that July evening of 1975 at the popular family restaurant. Steve was home from college, and Joanie and Claire had the summer off from their classes at St. Agnes’ nursing school in Utica, about a mile east of Syracuse. Even though the evening temperatures were in the high seventies, Danny wore his new leather jacket he bought in New York City a few weeks ago. He wanted to look cool, like Fonzie. Ayyyy. Instead, he was afraid he just looked like a dope who wore a leather jacket in July.

He engaged Claire in conversation, trying to drown out the voice in his head telling him to take the jacket off. “So, nursing school, what’s that like?” he said, wittily.

“It’s challenging! Biology, psychology, pharmacology, math, the works. But I like it. I’ve wanted to be a nurse since I was a little girl,” Claire said excitedly. “What about you? Do you work or go to school?”

“Yeah, I work the parts counter at Motronics,” Danny said, and then tried to make that sound interesting. “There are over thirty-three hundred parts in stock,” he said, as he pulled a number right out of his ass.

“Oh, yeah? That sounds exciting,” Claire said, creating a new definition of “exciting.” She looked intently at Danny as he spoke. Danny noticed she kept touching his hand as she talked.  That’s supposed to be a good sign, right? he asked himself. “That’s a nice jacket, Danny. You look pretty cool,” Claire said, and touched his hand again.

Yeah! he almost shouted, but somehow kept his composure. “Oh, this? I picked it up a couple months ago on a trip to the City,” he said, and immediately regretted saying “The City” instead of “New York City. What a pretentious dope.

“Oh, New York! I’ve always wanted to go. Maybe we can go sometime,” she said, and touched his hand again. We?

“Hey, Danny, aren’t you hot in that jacket? It’s July, you know,” Steve said.

“Yeah Danny, I’m warm and I’m wearing a sleeveless blouse,” Joanie chipped in.

Danny didn’t even listen to them. His full attention was on Claire. She was attractive--very attractive, a willowy brunette with an upbeat, effervescent personality and a smart and refined sense of humor. She was smart, smarter than Danny, that he knew already. Claire and Danny bantered and flirted all during dinner and he gave as good as he got, mostly. Like Steve and Joanie, she was Polish, and she lived in a Polish neighborhood on 7the West Side of Syracuse. She lived in that same house all twenty years of her life. Imagine that, thought Danny, who started counting addresses once and made it to twelve before he quit. The list of places he didn’t live was probably shorter.

Danny fell in love that evening--the “love” a twenty year old man-boy felt, which was more accurately called infatuation. Pop culture always confused love and infatuation, so it was no wonder that hormonal teenagers did, too. Danny always wore his heart on his sleeve.  He might as well have had a big neon red flashing arrow pointing to it. Danny was in love with the idea of being in love. He called it his tragic flaw, though Danny comically called each of his many faults his tragic flaw. This flaw, though, was tragic and it led him down the path of many poor life choices.

Claire was so different from Danny. She had an intact, two parent religious family, and she had a plan, a definite plan what she wanted out of life. Danny? Hell, he didn’t know how long he would even live. Danny’s recent CF diagnosis had walloped him. But tonight was what mattered, and tonight Danny and Claire clicked. At the end of dinner, Danny summoned the courage and asked for Claire’s number. He got it, and Danny floated home that evening. They started going out the next week and had a fun summer. They saw a lot of movies, played a lot of tennis, and Danny even tried polka dancing--tried being the operative word. They did a little back-seat two-step at Burnet Park, strictly PG rated.  Like all summers, it went by like that.  Claire headed back to nursing school in September, but they planned to keep seeing each other. After all, Utica was only about an hour drive away.   

Danny loved his Buick like you love your first crush, but the Skylark proved to be unreliable. Unreliability was something he knew about. She had a mysterious and unsolved electrical system problem that left him stranded a couple of times. That uncertainty, coupled with the typically ferocious upstate New York winter of 75-76, meant many stressful, white-knuckle rides on the lonely New York State Thruway. One Sunday night after he left Claire at the door of her no-boys-allowed dorm, Danny headed home in yet another snowstorm. He presciently skipped the desolation of the Thruway and took state Route 5, a major east-west corridor, in case he needed to pull over. Sure enough, the Buick’s lights begin to dim and that meant electrical trouble. Danny shut the heat off as he tried to preserve whatever power remained in her overworked battery, but the Skylark finally shuddered to a stop.

Right outside of a motel. At least he wouldn’t freeze to death in his car.

Danny had just enough money in his wallet to rent a room for the night. He decided to get some sleep and deal with things in the morning but slept fitfully. Danny woke up early, in a strange room, and his reality came rushing back. He was flat broke, with no credit card, and there were no cell phones in 1976. He felt like he was on a deserted island, with no resources. He gathered his things and walked out to the Buick. With no other options, he hoped for a miracle.

He turned the key and got a miracle.

That big V8, against all odds and logic, fired up. Maybe because it sat all night the battery recharged, but that didn’t make any sense. Danny didn’t press his luck. He left the car running, turned in his motel key and headed for home.  Since It was daytime he didn’t need lights and though he froze, he left the heat off; both measures reduced the strain on the battery. Danny almost made it home, just a couple of miles from his apartment. Danny parked the Buick and walked home a happy man. The next day, he spent the rent money on a new alternator.

Claire and Danny dated for the rest of her time at St. Agnes. By the time she graduated in the spring of ’76, Danny and the Buick broke up for good, and he was back to taking the bus. By then it was apparent he and Claire had no future. She had always kept him at an emotional arm’s length. Claire didn’t love him and was never going to love him. They didn’t really break up; just kept seeing each other over the summer until she just kind of faded away. She started her first job as a registered nurse at Community Hospital, excited to start her chosen career with a bright and unlimited future ahead of her. Danny’s future was not-so-bright, and decidedly limited.

 

 

1977: Knocking on Heaven’s Door

 

                Danny and Claire started seeing each other on an on-again, off-again basis. One night in early July of 1977, off-again was briefly on-again. Claire and Danny headed to Rochester with a couple of friends to spend the weekend. Danny was giddy with the possibilities. He was always, his whole life, a “glass half full” guy. Danny was always a positive thinker and radiated that positivity to others. “Something fantastic could happen today,” was his mantra and it got him out of bed in the morning. “Something fantastic” was going to happen this weekend. He just knew it.

                The night before the on-again, Danny went to one of his favorite bars to hear his friend Guy Capone, DJ. Danny met his friend Al there and they started pounding beers. 1978 was a very different (read: stupid) time regarding drinking and driving. Nobody was seriously worried about getting a DWI. Driving loaded was almost openly accepted. If you were loaded, your concern wasn’t a DWI, it was making it home alive. One time Danny and Al closed a bar and Danny gave Al a ride home. At two AM. Thirty miles away. Smashed. Danny drove there and back in well below-freezing weather with the windows wide open, singing at the top of his lungs, hoping by concentrating on the lyrics it would keep him from passing out. Looking back on those years, he was ashamed of his behavior, but it was the truth.

By ten o’clock that evening, Al had the good sense to leave. Danny’s good sense had left him. He stayed way too long and got absolutely shitfaced. He stumbled towards the DJ booth imploring Guy to “play Rosalita!” and made a fool of himself, as Guy told him a few weeks later.

Danny woke up with a predictable hangover. He took some aspirin and started to get excited about the on-again-glass-half-full weekend. He made some coffee and had a bowl of raisin bran, with the predictable results-- but with the worst possible color—red. Blood red. Blood, in the toilet. Danny’s heart sank. He knew his ulcer had probably burst again. Then he made an exceedingly bad judgement call, even for Danny. He was so optimistic about the weekend with Claire that he decided to say nothing about, say, he was bleeding to death, and hope the bleeding stopped on its own like it did in ’73.  Claire, her friend Tina, and Tina’s boyfriend Phil picked Danny up at 9 for the trip to Rochester. It was a perfect summer day, and they all went to the beach. Claire and Tina buried Danny up to his neck in the sand. There is an eerie photo of Danny, breaking out of the sand, while he and the girls all laughed, hahaha just some summer fun, but unbeknownst to the girls. Danny had a secret. A stomach full of blood.

After dinner at Phil’s place, Danny visited the bathroom. He was almost too afraid to look but forced himself to. His fears were confirmed, and he had no choice but to fess up. “I’ve got some bad news, guys,” Danny said, shakily.

The girls and Phil looked at each other and then Danny. “What is it?” Claire asked him.

“I think, I’m pretty sure my ulcer has burst again,” he said.

“When?! Just now?!” Claire said.

“Well, truthfully, yesterday,” Danny answered sheepishly.

“Yesterday!?!” Claire exclaimed. “Why the hell did you come on this trip?”

“I don’t have an answer that makes sense, Claire. I just thought it would stop, I guess. I was really looking forward to this trip with you.”

Claire softened then. She was a little flattered even though Danny was the world’s biggest idiot. “Well, we you’re going to the hospital, stat!” she said, sounding like the registered nurse she was. The weekend was abruptly over. They all piled in Phil’s car and headed straight to the Crouse Hospital emergency room in Syracuse.  Claire and Danny sat in the back seat, and she tenderly cradled his head in her lap as Phil raced to Syracuse. The rest of the afternoon and evening went by in a blur. They took Danny in at the E.R. but quickly admitted him in the ICU. Phil and Tina left, but Claire stayed with Danny.

Danny felt fine. His vitals were fine, though ominously, his blood pressure was a little low. He laughed and talked with Claire and thought maybe it stopped, like before. A few moments later, though, it was 1973 redux. Danny lurched once, twice, and then unleashed a crimson stream that drenched his hospital gown and his bedding, and even splattered the floor. Not only was he still bleeding, this time he needed surgery, and fast. He had a badly bleeding duodenal ulcer that threatened his life. Danny’s latest night of excessive drinking was almost certainly the catalyst. The aspirin he took the next morning may have been the last straw.

He was quickly rushed to the O.R and prepped for surgery, where Dr. David Taylor performed a partial gastrectomy, or a partial removal of the stomach.  Danny woke up from surgery a few hours later in tremendous pain.  Dr. Taylor came in to check on him and leaned over his bed to be heard better.  He had a soft voice and kind eyes. “You were a very sick young man, Danny,” Danny listened but felt too miserable to ask any questions. He was far from out of the woods. The first few days he was in agony. Fortuitously, Bob Butler, a Motronics coworker visited him and saw the pain Danny was in.

Bob said, “Danny, are you getting shots for pain?” Danny grimaced and shook his head, no. Bob said, “Don’t turn them down, Danny. They will really help. That’s what they’re there for.” Once he got that first shot of Demerol, not only did it relieve the pain nearly instantly, but provided an “In the cloud” narcotic euphoria. That was it for Danny. He never passed up another shot.

But Danny’s biggest problem was adhesions, scar tissue that sometimes form after operations. Adhesions can cause abdominal tissues to stick together. Usually, they don’t require treatment, but,  being Danny, it wasn’t a typical case. Whenever Danny ate, no matter how small a meal, his system shut down and his stomach distended like a beachball. The pain was not a ten, nor an eleven, like in Spinal Tap. It was a fifty. Or five hundred. It was the worst pain Danny ever felt--even a shot of Demerol provided only a few minutes of relief.

Dr. Taylor was forced to open Danny up again, to cut away the scar tissue, which, naturally, caused more scar tissue.  The second surgery mostly alleviated the distension problem, but Danny still had occasional flare-ups, even years later. They came on with no warning and usually led to from eight to as much as twenty-four hours of agony. When they happened, Danny was helpless. He just thrashed in his bed in agony, moaning and even crying out, unable to eat, rest or sleep.

Ray and Mark came to visit Danny on August 17^th, and it was a memorable day for two reasons. One, it was the day after Elvis Presley died and they were all reeling at the news. But Danny was happily reeling at another piece of news. The guys had taken up a collection at work, not only from coworkers but all the TV dealers and repairmen who frequented Motronics. Ray also brought along a huge get-well card that was not only signed by everyone, but also had numerous and hilarious fake signatures, like Elton John and Bruce “Springstein” (Ray was never much of a speller). The amount they raised, a thousand bucks, was roughly equivalent to about five thousand in 2022. It was incredibly gratifying especially considering how much eighteen year old Danny managed to rub just about everyone the wrong way. He spent about a month in the hospital--unable to eat, because of the adhesions, for most of it. He was there so long he got hooked on the CBS soap opera, The Guiding Light. Danny finally left the hospital after about a month-- all 105 pounds of him.

 

1978: Reefer Men

 

                Late summer, and Danny was still frail and troubled by his adhesions but wanted to go back to work.  Work was good therapy, and so was getting paid. Danny settled back in and in a few weeks, Ray promoted him to RCA parts manager. Danny was grateful they held his job at all, so that promotion felt special. He happily dove back into his work.

                Danny resumed driving his coworkers crazy with his iron grip on the store’s stereo system. Before Danny started working at Motronics, their high-end system was wasted playing the low-quality signal of WOLF-AM top-40 radio. Everyone was complacent hearing “Muskrat Love”, “Knock Three Times”, and other soft rock hits over and over (and over) until Danny commandeered the sound system. He hooked up an 8-track player and started playing the music he wanted to hear. Nobody cared much,  for a while. First, it was Elton John, nothing but Elton, all the time. Then, Danny discovered Bruce Springsteen. Soon, the playlist changed to all-Bruce, non-stop. Sometimes to wretched excess.

                The Wild, the Innocent, and the E-Street Shuffle, Springsteen’s second album, was on its approximately five-millionth run-through when, out of the corner of his eye, Danny saw Ray. His boss walked briskly from his office and opened the door that separated the counter from the sales floor. Ray very purposefully strode over to the 8-track player, pulled the cartridge out of the machine, reached inside of the housing and yanked the tape out, forcefully and repeatedly, until all that remained was the empty cartridge and a tangled, useless fistful of tape that used to be Bruce Springsteen’s album. It was cinematic—very much like a scene in a mobster movie when the Mafia goon grabs the photographer’s camera and jerks out all the film and says, “Da boss says, no pitchurs.”

Ray then dropped the demolished tape to the floor and gave it a good stomp, sending pieces of shattered plastic everywhere. He then retraced his steps and walked back to his office. Ray didn’t say one word during his search-and-destroy mission. Silent but deadly. Even though Danny’s favorite Bruce tape was history, it was worth it because it was the funniest thing he ever saw. Needless to say, Danny was quite a bit more circumspect with his future playlists.

                Rich Nesmith, a big burly bearded guy with long reddish brown hair and, curiously, enormous boots, started working in the shipping department while Danny was in the hospital. Shortly after Danny returned to work they found they had a lot in common. Well, not everything in common-Rich had a mellow, easy-going disposition, the exact opposite of Danny’s sometimes fiery temper. But they bonded over music, the Yankees, politics, pretty much everything, and quickly became friends.  One day at Ponderosa they were having lunch when Rich surprised Danny with a suggestion. “ Hey, man, whaddya think about looking for a place as roommates? I’m losing my mind where I am now. When I got this job I just looked for a place that was close, but I didn’t know the city very well and turns out, I fucked up,” Rich said with a laugh. “They stole a battery out of my car last week and after I replaced it, they stole that one, too!”

                “Oh, that sucks but you have to admit that’s funny,” Danny said, laughing.