Walt Trizna's Blog

WALT TRIZNA: COLLEGE AND LEARNING TO FLY

Recently I’ve been posting chapters of my memoir started 25 years ago remembering my childhood in Newark, New Jersey. Now I’m going to share some memories of when I was much older.

                          COLLEGE AND LEARNING TO FLY

Previously, I listed my two dream professions, science and writing, and along the way you will see how things worked out.

One benefit I see in old slowly becomes apparent as the years progress. oh, there are all the aches and pains. Not being able to do the things you once did or want to do. But now you have time to think and reflect on your life. Looking at what you accomplished and failed to accomplish.

Let me say now that there is nothing I wanted to do in life that I did not do. My disappointment is not achieving the level in my accomplishments that I had hoped for.

One dream, which I mentioned earlier was learning how to fly.

Upon entering Oklahoma State University I enrolled in Air Force ROTC. One of the enlisted men working in the unit said those initials stood for ‘rapers of tiny children’ demonstrating a certain lack of his respect for future officers and probably what most enlisted men thought of second lieutenants. After taking a written test and having a physical, I found that I had qualified for pilot training. When you qualify the government pays for 36 and ½ hours of flight training during your senior year.

I was going to learn how to fly.

Now, Oklahoma can be rather windy at times. I flew twice a week. Once in the early morning and once in the afternoon. In the morning the air was like silk. The afternoons were another story. At times I felt as if I were one with the little two-seat Cessna 150 I was flying during those morning flights.

 After about six hours of instructions, I was flying with my instructor shooting touch-and -goes when he had me stop on the runway got out of the plane and I was on my own flying the traffic pattern. Now, my instructor was not a big guy, but as soon as I took off I notice how different the little plane handled.

Now, about flying in the afternoon, conditions were quite different than my morning flying. In the afternoon thermals were beginning to develop. You would be flying over land and then over a lake and you and your plane got quite a jolt because of the thermals developed over both types of surfaces.

 And the wind!

One windy day I came in for a landing. Tried as I might, I could not keep the plane over the runway. It was that windy. Finally, I had to go around, enter the traffic pattern, and try again. I might mention that on the runway where I was trying to land I had seen a Boeing 707 land.

There was another incident worth mentioning. I have no sense of direction. My family kids me about that. I was flying solo cross-country. Just a short flight of maybe a hundred miles or so. Shortly after taking off, I felt my instrument I was using for direction was wrong and decided to depend on my instincts. Big mistake. I had my map on my knee and soon there were lakes on the ground which weren’t on the map. Something told me those lakes were not formed since the map was published. I was lost. I saw a small town with a water tower. These towers usually have the name of the town on them. Not this tower. Finally, I saw a small airport. Looking at my map and the configuration of the runways I was able to identify the airport and now knew my location. I also noticed that railroad tracks ran from the tow to the route I was supposed to be on. So flying over the tracks I was back in business.

WALT TRIZNA: THE DAY KENNEDY DIED

                                   THE DAY KENNEDY DIED

November is the month of thanksgiving, when the weather no longer bounces between summer and winter, when the chill of fall sets in with a vengeance preparing us for the hard cold of winter.  It is also the month Kennedy died.

During November 1963 I was a junior at East Side High School.  I already had a deep interest in science and forfeited my study hall to work in the school biology lab.  I designed an experiment to study Mendelian heredity.  The experiment required two black and two white mice, which I purchased, and began mating the mice in all the various combinations possible, trying to predict the color of the littermates.  I soon ran out of space in the cellar where I was keeping my mouse colony and asked permission to move my many mice to school.  During the experiment, I took meticulous notes, recording much more than I really needed to.  One quirk of the mice, which totally threw off my experimental results, was the fact that they sometimes eat their young.  When nervous or upset, they would chew off the chord and wouldn’t know when to stop, leaving only the head and a small piece of protruding backbone.  I pressed on, until I began seeing litters of mice with brown siblings, something I had not anticipated.  This brought an end to my experiment and an introduction to the unpredictability of science.

It was while I was working in the school lab one November Friday afternoon that someone came in and said that the president had been shot.  I recall reacting to the news with horror and disbelief.  The emotions of that moment will always stay with me, the sense of experiencing a moment that defied all logic, the vitality of our president in jeopardy.  I had the sense that the world had changed; this quiet November afternoon would become a milestone in history.  All I knew was that the president had been shot; there was still hope of survival as I headed home from school that day.  But as I walked the mile and a half home from school, I saw something I shall never forget, something that dimmed my hope.  On my way I saw clusters of people standing on corners and most were crying.  The residents of Newark are not known for their emotional displays, so this sight was disturbing.  It was the first signal I had that the worst had occurred, that the country, the world had changed forever.

When I reached home, my father was already there, not unusual for he began work early in the morning and was home before me most of the time.  I would find him sitting in the kitchen with his beer and paper, but today he was in the parlor watching the TV and he was crying too, something I recalled seeing only once before.  The last time I saw my father cry was when my mother lost a baby girl shortly after birth.  Ironically, my sister died almost the same time the Kennedy’s lost their child and also for the same reason, underdeveloped lungs.  As my father sat weeping before the TV, he told me that the president had died.

The days that followed seemed unreal.  Long before the age of cable and satellite dishes, there were just three major networks and a few independent New York stations broadcasting to Newark.  All normal broadcasting ceased; TV carried nothing but news and insight into the assassination.  On the radio, all normal programming ceased.  The radio played nothing but somber music and news of the assassination.  Everyone watched the news all weekend, watching history unfold before our eyes.  Shortly after Kennedy died, Oswald was captured.  The nation viewed live, the instrument of their sorrow.  We watched Oswald’s murder at the hands of Jack Ruby, adding confusion on top of the misery.  Everyone’s thoughts were in turmoil as these historic events concluded with JFK Jr. saluting his father’s casket.

The day Kennedy died, I learned something of the unpredictability of life.

WALT TRIZNA: GARDENING IN NEWARK

                                                      GARDENING

Have you ever stopped for a red light while driving, and gazed over at the concrete median and there, against all odds, growing through a tiny flaw in the concrete is a plant.  I am amazed to see how life persists even under the most adverse conditions.  As a child in Newark, I simulated those exact conditions, although I called it gardening.

The yard we had on Christie Street was quite large.  Large enough to have kickball and baseball games, but then again, we were quite small.  Once I was older, we would have barbecues on our charcoal grill, summer nights spent sitting on beach chairs on the hard-packed soil, enjoying burgers and hot dogs and listening to the sound of the city as night closed the day. 

Next to our house was the landlord’s house, which was a small two story one family dwelling with and alley running between the two houses.  Behind the landlord’s house was a garden, fenced in.  On the opposite side of this small house was a driveway, which was actually quite long, and when I was old enough to shovel snow, it seemed to become longer still.  Behind the two houses was our yard, large enough to hold a couple of cars, with some scraggly patches of grass growing defiantly close to the fences where the cars could not maneuver.  To the rear of our yard was a three-car garage, one of which my father rented, and this was the reason I was given the opportunity to shovel the driveway.  Next to the garages, and beyond the area of the yard where we were permitted to play, was another fenced area, which was also part of the yard, but an area where the kids were not allowed.  There was an old glider swing back there but nothing much more.  This fenced area was quite large, making up one third of the playable area of the yard.  At the edge of this restricted area was another small, fenced space, about six feet by six feet, and this was fence sheltered a small garden belonging to the old woman across the hall.  She had mostly zinnias and marigolds, and it was a great place to catch whatever butterflies found their way into our yard.  I admired her garden.  She was always out there tending her flowers, pulling weeds, tying up plants with wooden stake and old stockings, which was the traditional way of supporting tall plants back then.

Then one day the fence bordering the back of the yard came down and the restricted area of the yard was no longer restricted.  I’m not sure why the fence came down, but it seems that the glider swing came down about the same time.  Now a whole new area of the yard was available, an area where cars would not park or drive, an area perfect for a garden.  So with our landlady’s permission, my sisters and I started small gardens. 

The ground was as hard as concrete; there was a total lack of anything that resembled topsoil.  So off we went in the old Chevy for some rich topsoil.  We traveled a short distance to where my grandparents lived in Hillside. There was a little-used park along a stream not far from where they lived, and that is where we headed for some our soil.  We parked as close as we could and, armed with a shovel and several large containers, started digging up the bank of the stream. 

Once our topsoil was obtained, my sisters and I framed out small areas, one next to the other, in the newly freed-up back area of our yard.  We each had an area about twenty to twenty-five square feet backing up to the fence separating our yard from the neighbor’s yard.  We made a feeble attempt to turn the soil before adding the topsoil, but the product of our digging was only reddish soil and rock, so we dumped our topsoil on top of our little garden areas and started planting.

I was rather ambitious when I planted my garden.  I bought tomato and pepper plants, planted carrot, beet and parsley seeds all in neat little rows.  These poor plants and seeds did less than thrive in my garden for I seemed to grow everything in miniature.  My beefsteak tomatoes were more like their cherry cousins, the plants barely needing any support at all.  My peppers were the size of plums.  And my carrots – I grew those tiny carrots that they feature in seed catalogs, ones as big as your pinky, but I in fact was going for the full-sized edition.  Why I attempted to grow root crops in my concrete soil is a mystery to me now.  But I was proud of my little garden, and as my sisters lost interest, the size of my garden grew.  I watered and weeded the few limp weeds that dare take up residence amongst my crops and generally enjoyed the little area of green I had created out back.

Then one summer it happened, a true sign that I had truly established a growing zone in Newark, I was infested with insects.  The leaves on my plants were full of holes.  This phenomenon amazes me to this day.  How you can grow a plant that is unknown to the area where it is being grown, an area that may have never seen that plant before, yet an insect that specifically attacks that plant will find and destroy it.  And so it went for my little plot in Newark.  I purchased a powder that I thought might remedy the situation, and after a heavy dusting that left my plants white under the strong midafternoon sun I read the directions.  This pesticide was to be applied lightly and only during the cool of the evening, always avoiding exposing the plants to this killer during the heat of the afternoon.  By nightfall, my whole garden was withered and dead.  I eliminated my insect infestation and in the process eliminated my garden.

The next year I planted again with a new knowledge of pesticide use.  I branched out to flowers, planting some morning glories in a corner of my yard near my garden, another small square of the yard taken over for horticulture.  I have my own yard now, much larger than the yard of my youth.  I enjoy my vegetable garden, and the flowers planted around the property, but there are days when I think back to my little plot in Newark where I teased life from the concrete soil.

WALT TRIZNA: COMIC BOOKS

                                           COMIC BOOKS

When perhaps the age of nine or ten, I recall making trips with my father to used bookstores to buy comic books.

The stores are now long gone, torn down and replaced by skyscrapers, but once there was a series of used bookstores, the only ones in the area, huddled together on Market Street, located where the uptown section of Newark began, just beyond Penn Station, the train station and accompanying railroad that bisected Newark.  Once you left my area of Newark and made your way to Penn Station and under the elevated railroad you were uptown, walking toward Broad and Market, the heart of Newark, but more on that intersection later.  

Off I would go with my Dad to buy comic books.  The stores were old musty-smelling rooms filled with piles upon piles of books from creaky hardwood floor to the grimy ceiling.   I love bookstores to this day, both old and new, and the smells of the used bookstores take me back to Market Street.  The bookstores of Market Street had huge front windows crammed with books, and the store overflowed with books.  And somewhere in this maze of books were bags and bags of used comic books.  The comics had their covers removed (which might have indicated something illegal) and sold for a nickel each or six for a quarter and we would buy them by the stack.

There would be romance comics for my mother, science fiction and action heroes for me and for the younger kids there would be Nancy, Donald Duck, Archie and more.   We would bring home a bundle of comics, along with the musty smell of the store, sit around the kitchen table and divide them up.

Taking part of my stack of comics and hiding some in the bathroom for nature’s calls did not endear me to my family.  There was a water pipe running from floor to ceiling on the outer wall and I would hide my comics rolled up and wedged between the pipe and the wall near the ceiling.  Of course, they were in plain sight.  I just assumed no one would ever look up.

At the age of nine or ten comics were my entertainment; they were my entry to the world of reading and imagination.  To this day I lose patience with computer games, get bored with TV and other electronic means of filling your day.  But given a good book, I get lost for hours always needing to know what the next page holds.

THOUGHTS ON SELF-PUBLISHING

Self-publishing is very popular these days. A way to stroke your ego, and in most cases, involves little effort in producing a work which deserves publication.

One definition of an author is of a writer whose work has been published. With that meaning in mind, is a writer who pays someone to publish their work an author?

                                        THOUGHTS ON SELF-PUBLISHING

In the past presses involved in self-publishing were known as vanity presses. For that is what they were. Getting a book published was a way to stroke your ego even if the only people who would see it were your mother, siblings, kids and close friends. The fact that there is no standard of quality centered on publication or gatekeepers makes it possible of getting a book connected to your name rather easy, if you have the money.

Not long ago I was looking for a publisher for my science fiction/horror novel. In the past Tor was one of the few, or perhaps only, major publisher where you could submit a manuscript without an agent with the qualifier that it needed to be at least 80,000 words long. Being a well-known publisher of science fiction and fantasy I began an internet search, something for which I do not have a great deal of skill. I was unable to obtain the information I wanted but somehow stumbled upon the publisher Dorrance.

Dorrance was the primary vanity press publisher in the past. Now they are a self-publishing press. From that stumble, and apparently for the next six months, every time I began to use the internet I was treated to an ad by Dorance saying that they wanted to read my book. What did they know about the book such as genre or length or whether it was fiction or nonfiction – nothing. What did they know about me as a writer – nothing. But they wanted to read my book.

I wonder how many books they ask to read they actually read; my guess is none. I wonder how many manuscripts they are sent and decide not to publish, my guess is none. With the advent of self-publishing this company does not stand alone. A later article will discuss why I think self-publishing has greatly expanded.

There are now a host of publishers who will publish your book. One ad which I have seen has a man lying on the floor in front of his laptop. There is a toddler sitting on his back and another sitting on the floor on his left. In this condition he is writing ‘for a higher purpose’. The ad is for a Christian publisher. If this works I need to hire a couple of toddlers and with a higher purpose in mind get my novel published. My purpose in the past must not have been high enough. My purpose was not high enough to get the job done.

Now, it is possible to have a book self-published and be extremely successful. Andy Weir, the author of The Martian, a bestseller and later made into a movie, is a prime example. Since publishing that book he has published two more. His latest book, Project Hail Mary, made it to the combined hardcover and paperback bestseller list in The New York Times.

To reach this level there are a few requirements. First, you must be one hell of a writer. Sad to say, there are a good number, maybe most, of self-published books where the author is not a very good writer. You must also be willing to be able to work your ass off peddling your book by any means possible. That means making a major investment by buying large amounts of books and keeping them around, in the trunk of your car, and try to sell them whenever an opportunity presents itself. Being a capable salesman probably also doesn’t hurt.

I have heard of another method in the past where writers have had publishers show interest in their books. But that was sometime ago and carries with it a certain amount of risk.

A blog is a great way to tell the world who you are and what you do, such as writing books. However, a blog has the same amount of gatekeeping as self-publishing has. In the past writers have posted chapters of their books on their blogs. These chapters stimulated interest in their readers and that interest gained the attention of a publisher. For this to be successful it does not hurt to have a large readership for your blog.

But here is the danger. Many publishers consider something having been published if you have posted on your blog. They will not touch something that has already been published, and they would consider those chapters as having been published. So, you are taking major chance going down that road.

Another thing you must consider is that your self-published book is going to have a hell of a lot of competition. Because self-published books have no gatekeepers, I feel that any book submitted to a publisher publishing those books will publish it. And the competition could be in the hundreds of thousands of books published every year. So, your book must really be able to stand out in a crowd. But it is possible for a self-published book to be a success. Look what Andy Weir was able to accomplish with a self-published book.

WALT TRIZNA: THE NEWARK DRIVE IN

THE NEWARK DRIVE IN

On the far eastern edge of Newark, tucked between the Jersey City and New York City bound bridges, stood the Newark Drive In.  The drive in was directly under the flight path of nearby Newark Airport, which tended to make listening to the movie something of a challenge.  When approaching the drive in, you were greeted by the swampy, musty smell of Newark Bay.  A resident of ‘The Dumps’ (what the locals called the area surrounding the theater) added to the odors of its refineries and sewage treatment plants to the ambiance of the area.

  The drive in was surrounded by a tall wooden fence marking its boundaries with a total lack of landscaping of any kind, being true to the Newark life style – bare essentials is all that you get.

On warm summer nights my family would pack into the old Chevy with food and pillows and head to the drive in.  The smaller kids would already be in their pajamas in anticipation of not making it to the second movie of the double feature.  Being the oldest, I was given the opportunity to sit up front and in those days of front seats being bench seats, providing plenty of room.

Arriving at the drive in just before dusk, my dad paid and was given the PIC and off we would go.  PIC was an insect repellent product.  It was a flat spiral affair. You lit the end and it would give off a pungent aroma daring mosquitoes to venture near.  I really don’t know if it worked because we would also douse ourselves with insect repellent to ward off the visitors from the nearby swamps.

During this period, mosquito-borne encephalitis (sleeping sickness) was a constant threat.  On summer nights in Newark, trucks would go through the city streets emitting clouds of insect repellent. 

On these same summer nights in our flat, ineffective screens would keep all but the largest and dumbest insects out of our house.  When all were in bed, my mother would walk the length of our flat spraying insect repellent while telling all of us to close our eyes.  As we lay in bed, you could feel the particles of spray falling on your body.

Once in the theater, we’d find our spot and park the car at just the right angle on the mound that ran the length of the theater to get a perfect view of the screen for everyone.  The smaller kids, in their pajamas, would head for the playground and run around till they couldn’t see what they were doing which also indicated that it was time for the movie to begin.

One movie I recall seeing was entitled Macabre.  The movie was supposed to be so scary that you were issued a life insurance policy when you entered the drive in.  It was good for the length of the movie and if you should be unlucky enough to die of a fright-induced heart attack during the movie you collected, or you next of kin anyway.  The movie was a real bomb; the cartoon was scarier.  I wondered though what would have happened if someone would have dropped dead of your usual run-of-the-mill heart attacks.

There was always an intermission between movies, time to advertise the goodies available at the snack bar.  The screen would be full of dancing hot dogs and talking cups of soda all counting down the fifteen minutes till the next show.   The audience was your typical Newark crowd, the women in their smocks and the dads in their handlebar tee shirts.  They thrived on meat and potatoes, with hot dogs and sodas would be your typical snack. But one snack that was advertised every time I went to the drive in was Flavo Shrimp Rolls.  The only place you could buy a Flavo Shrimp Roll was at the drive in, they did not exist outside their gates.   I’m sure you could get other shrimp rolls someplace else in Newark, maybe in the small China Town on Mulberry Street, but I don’t think your typical Newark crowd ate many shrimp rolls.  But up there on the screen, after the hot dogs had danced off you could see the cartoon characters lining up for their Flavo Shrimp Rolls.  I think we actually bought one once, only once.  It was a deep-fried affair running in grease.  I would wonder who looked at the crowd coming into the drive in and said to himself, “These people will buy up Flavo Shrimp Rolls like there’s no tomorrow.”

The Newark Drive In is gone now, long gone.  Last I heard, a movie theater stands where the drive in once existed.  And I’m sure with the demise of the drive in went the opportunity for anyone to buy a Flavo Shrimp Roll.

WALT TRIZNA: THE NEWARK DUMPS

THE NEWARK DUMPS

Located on the eastern boarder of Newark is Newark Bay, a body of water leading out to the Atlantic Ocean.  I have always loved the smell of the ocean, the proximity of primal life.  However, by the time the ocean’s water mixed with the additions contributed by the factories surrounding the port, all that was left was a hint of what was once the ocean’s promise.

Port Newark lacked that promise, referred to as “The Dumps”.  The area surrounding the dock was the home to tank farms, sewage treatment plants, junkyards and the polluting factories.  It did not take a great stretch of the imagination to determine how “The Dumps” got its name.  On hot summer nights, the family would pile into the old Chevy and take a ride “down the dumps”.  It was a chance to escape the heat of the city and sit by the water’s edge.  We would park along one of the perimeter roads and look at the freighters and container ships, from countries we could only dream of visiting – distant lands holding even more distant dreams.  On one road where we usually parked, you sat between the runways of Newark Airport and the moored vessels. This was before the age of jet airliners – props and turboprops ruled the skies.  If you watched enough airplane fly overhead, you would eventfully see a four-engine plane flying with one propeller lazily turning indicating engine trouble.

Sometimes, before heading for ‘The Dumps’, we would stop for a pizza. There was this elderly Italian man – he must have been at least fifty decided to open a pizzeria.  So what did he do?  He rented a garage, bought a pizza oven, a couple of small tables, and he was in business.  The garage was a freestanding cinderblock structure containing three one-car garages.  He rented one of the end garages, cut a door through the garage door and this served as the entrance.  Located on a narrow street, not more than an alley, it was a far cry from today’s chain-store pizza establishments.  Each pizza had a bubbly hard crust and stood as an individual creation – nothing massed-produced here.  Later, when the quality of his product became known, he rented the adjoining garage, knocked down part of the common wall and expanded.  Could this happen today, with all the zoning laws and chain-store competition, I don’t think so.  But back in the fifties he thrived and produced great pizzas.

On hot summer nights, armed with a pizza, we would go ‘Down the Dumps’, to see the ships and watch the airplanes land and dream of distant cities and lands far away.

On weekends the roads of the port were mostly deserted, an ideal place to learn to drive.  It was along one of these deserted roads that I almost put my father through the windshield.  While driving on one of these roads he instructed me to stop, not yet acquainted with the feel of the brakes, I performed this maneuver rather aggressively.  My early driving lessons occurred long before seat belts were standard equipment; hence my aggressiveness resulted in my father flying unrestricted around the car.  I finally learned to drive some years later on the back roads of Alabama, after I had already learned to fly an airplane, but that’s another story.

  ‘The Dumps’ also was the site of two excursions that occurred when I was young.  Both were odysseys that have stayed with me, the details slightly blurred, but with time an impression remains.

Before I describe these adventures, there was another activity which we did for entertainment during the summer.  We went to the dumps to go fishing.  Now the fishing we did down the dumps was not your usual type of fishing.  In involve neither a pole, fishing line or hooks.  The fish we were after were kellies.  I don’t know if this was the actual name of the fish, but kellies is the name we know them by.  I do not know if they were saltwater fish for they inhabited tributaries near the ocean, perhaps they were freshwater for the flow of these bodies of water may have been going to the ocean, but kellies they were, and we caught them.  They were no more than two to four inches long and gray in color with a light underbelly.  No kaleidoscope of color for the fish surrounding the waters of Newark.  We usually went fishing after dinner, trading the heat of summer for the breeze coming off the water giving some relief from the hot day.  We would pile into the car, and my dad would head for ‘the Dumps’ trying to find a spot on the water near the bay or one of the various channels running through the dumps to the port.

Once we had located the ideal spot with only a small drop down to the water, we started to fish.  These were to days of delivering milk to the door.  Early in the morning the milkman would leave quart bottles of milk outside our door and remove the empties; it was the empty milk bottles that we used to fish for Kellies.  Torn-up slices of white bread were used for bait.  We would put bread in the bottle, tie a rope around the bottle’s neck and we were set.  Then sink the bottle in the water and patiently wait.  The waiting was the hardest part for I believe none of us were over ten.  We would wait for what a child thought was a reasonably length of time and then pull the bottle up, and if you were lucky, you had one or two Kellies swimming around in your milk bottle.  Any fish we caught we took home but they were short-lived pets.  Housed in a fishbowl, the next morning would find them all be floating belly-up, always.  We did not go fishing for Kellies often, but it was an adventure for us but misery for the Kellies.

Now for my dumps’ odysseys, my adventures that took place there.  They were journeys in more ways than one; one occurred when I was about ten and the other when I was about thirteen.  I now live in the suburbs where the houses have large yards and manicured lawns.  There is crime but it is usually minor and occurs at the malls which they never stop building.  Yet in this environment whenever our girls leave the house we want to know where they are going and whom they will be with.  When I was young I can’t recall being interrogated every time I left the house.  We were just going out to play, and if there was a plan it was not usually related to our parents.  If we were going far from home we would tell our mom where we were going, but all us kids just seemed to come and go.

The first journey to the dumps involved my sister Judy and I and two kittens.  Everyone knows I do not care for cats even though we have two living with the family now.  Our oldest cat is a pure white named Stimpy.  We adopted him when the woman who found him, as a tiny kitten lying next to his mother who had been hit by a car, determined that she was allergic to cats.  Stimpy has been with us for about ten years and has grown to be a big old cat.  The other cat in our family is Sally.  She was adopted by Lynn two years ago from the SPCA and is definitely Lynn’s cat.  She follows Lynn like a shadow wherever Lynn goes and wants nothing to do with me.  Sally will jump on my lap during the rare times when no one else is available.

 I can tolerate cat, but they are not my favorite animals.   When I was nine or ten I, and my sister Judy, who is three years younger, somehow obtained two kittens.  They were mostly black with some white markings and were very young.  Of course, we wanted to keep them, and I think we did for a day or two but it soon was discovered they were infested with fleas, for the whole family started to scratch.  Our parents said they had to go.  I now think of myself as an organized person.  My career has been in science for years now.  Every day I must deal with a vast amount of detail when I conduct my experiments and look for a successful outcome.  Back at the tender age of nine or ten details were not something I bothered with much.

 I told Judy I had a plan, a plan that would allow us to keep the kittens and no one would know anything about it.  Unfortunately, my plan lacked any detail.  I decided where we could safely keep them; we would take them down ‘the Dumps’.  We would build a shelter for them, and they would be safe, and we could visit them whenever we wanted.  And the place we would keep them was only two or so miles away – perfect.  How would they be fed or watered, where would they go to the bathroom, what happened if some of the wild dogs that populated the dumps found their hideout?  What happened if the weather turned bad?  These were details that my young mind did not consider.  Judy and I took some cat food and the kittens telling my parents that we were going to get rid of them but not telling them what my excellent plan was.

We set out down our street, Christie Street, towards ‘the Dumps’.  Our little legs took us past part of the Ballantine brewery complex.  We walked past the projects on Hawkin’s Street.  We walked under a darkened bridge where people parted with couches and other items no longer deemed useful, and reached the boarder of the dumps, which also meant the end of the sidewalks.  On we walked past a factory making headstones and other works from quarried stone.  We passed more factories, getting closer and closer to our destination.  Finally, we were in area of ‘the Dumps’ I decided it would be a perfect place to keep the kittens.  The site of our kitten sanctuary was across the street from the future site of the Newark Drive In, but that was still a year or two in the future.  We gathered pieces of wood and old crates and soon had shelter for our kittens.  As safe and secure as a nine- and six-year-old could hope for.  Once we were happy with our construction we put the kittens inside, left them some food but no water, we were unable to carry water, sealed up any exits and started our journey home.  We knew we had done the right thing.  We could keep the kittens and visit them whenever we wanted.  We only had to walk two miles each way.

We arrived home after being gone what must have been hours, and no one asked us where we had been.  I don’t know who broke first, but it was probably my sister.  The beans were spilled, the plan revealed, the journey exposed.  We all piled into the car to rescue the kittens from their secure abode.  As we approached the shelter we could hear their cries, they were still there.  We released them from their shelter and took them home but did not keep them; I do not remember what their final fate was only our attempt to save them down ‘the Dumps’, was a failure.  What I took away from that experience was that a plan without the details worked out might not be a good plan or maybe not even a plan at all. 

My next journey down the dumps came a few years later and was of a completely different nature.  This excursion took place with two other guys, one of which was my good friend Billy.  He told me he had explored an area on the edge of the dumps which contained a hobo camp, and that he was going again and did I want to come along.  Of course I wanted to go, exploring a hobo camp on a Saturday afternoon seemed like a brilliant idea.  The fact that we would be violating someone else’s home and property never entered our young minds.  Also, the fact that the hobos might be home was never considered. We were on a mission, an exploration.  After telling my mother I was going for a walk with my friends and would be back in a while, we set out on our adventure.

It was a good two or three mile walk to our destination.  Our journey took us to the more industrial edge of the dumps.  We walked past a series of large and small factories towards the far end of Wilson Avenue and our destination.  The hobo camp was located behind the East Side High School football stadium, the high school I was soon to attend.  The high school was located nowhere near the stadium, with land being at a premium, they located the stadium near the edge of the dumps.  After I left East Side High School, in a stroke of genius, they decided to build a new stadium.  The old stadium had plenty of parking. The new stadium, nestled among factories and an elevated railroad track, no closer to the school than the old stadium, had absolutely no parking at all, all the parking would have to be on the street.  I’m sure the residents of the homes that bordered the area of the stadium really look forward to football games.

This was a journey of discovery for me, exploring the hobo camp and discovering more while we walked and talked.  Somehow along the way, the conversation turned to sex with the introduction of the subject of how babies are born or more importantly conceived.  My friends asked me if I knew the facts concerning conception.  This was something I had thought about and felt I had it all figured out so I shared my knowledge with them.

You see I’m the oldest in my family and witnessed my mother’s other pregnancies.  I guess it was when my mother was pregnant with my brother, the youngest and ten years my junior, that I really started noticing things and figuring out what was going on.  I noticed that my mother started taking a strange pill when she was pregnant with my brother.  It all made sense.  To get pregnant you took pills, sold of course only to married women.  When the baby was to be born, a flap of skin opened on the women’s belly, the baby was born, and the skin healed over.  I shared this knowledge with my friends, and I thought they would wet their pants with laughter.

They now told me their idea of the matter of conception, and they were more on the mark than I was.  Oh no, pills did not get you pregnant; a far different deed did the job.  I was in shock.  My parents would never do the things described to me, described in great detail I might add.  And if somehow, someway even a little of what they told me was true; I surely would never perform what was needed to become a father.  My pill theory made so much more sense, my world was turned completely upside-down.  My young mind had a great deal to digest after this momentous walk.

This conversation caught my attention, and before I knew it, we were approaching the hobo jungle.  Soon we had the football stadium in sight.  I was familiar with the area long before the stadium was built for this was also the location of Rupert Stadium.  Rupert Stadium was the home of the Newark Bears, a minor league baseball team.  After the team folded, they transformed the stadium into a track for stock car races, which I attended with my father when I was quite young. 

Behind the football stadium, off in a large area of small hills and high grass was a series of small sheds made from whatever materials were available.  In this area there was a large mound of broken glass, which knows why, but my friends thought this added an important ambiance to the area.  To get to the hobo camp we had to cross a fairly wide stream, but there was a large plank set across the stream, so crossing was not a problem.  Did a flag go up in my young mind?  Did a small voice say, “Do you realize, dummy, that this is the only way out?” No small voices that day so of course we continued.  Once in the camp we just walked around observing the hobo lifestyle.  The place was empty, or so we thought.  Suddenly we started yelling at us from the area of the stream crossing. There was a hobo between the only exit and us.  He indicated to us that we were trespassing, more truly intruding in his life.  I don’t remember his exact words but I’m sure they weren’t friendly.  He was right though.  We were intruding on his life and when he stepped away we crossed the plank and beat a hasty retreat.

The adventure was over.  Time to return home to a tired but somewhat wiser individual with new knowledge gained on my walk to the hobo camp.

THE PROLIFERATION OF SELF-PUBLISHING

                     THE PROLIFERATION OF SELF-PUBLISHING

I have been writing prose for 25 years now, and before that poetry beginning when I was in high school. So, my time spent writing has been approximately 60 years. And having begun writing long before the computer and internet come on the scene I have seen massive changes in that pursuit.

Back when I began I used a typewriter, along with carbon paper to make copies and white-out to correct mistakes. To approach publishers my work went by mail along with the required SASE, self-addressed stamped envelope.

Then came along the computer and later the internet and radical change occurred in the writing experience. Another recent ‘advancement’ AI is reading my mind and supplying suggestions of words and phrased and it is usually right.

In conjunction with the above advances writing programs were developed making the writing experience much easier than it was in the past. I use Microsoft Word which provides a relatively worry-free writing experience when it comes to spelling and punctuation. There are other writing programs out there which may be better or worse than what I am used to but I advantages I discuss will be the results of using Microsoft Word.

I feel that replacing the typewriter with the computer has opened the floodgates increasing the number of writers now in existence for better or, in my opinion, worse.

 No more white-out needed to correct mistakes. The mistakes are easily corrected with a couple of keystrokes. The ability to cut and paste or delete entire sections of unwanted work is a great benefit making the process of editing so much easier than in the past.

With the printer you can produce as many copies of your work as you need relegating the SASE a thing of the past and something many current writers have never needed to use or even know of its existence. You now also bypass the expense of postage. Another advantage of the ability to make multiple copies with ease is that many publishers allow simultaneous submissions – submissions, at the same time, to more than one publisher. But I don’t know if this advantage exists in the self-publishing industry. But the above advances have been a boom to the self-publishing industry in the volume of work which can easily be produced. Of course, the one thing all these technical advances can not provide is skill which comes in handy when you want to get your work published.

In my personal writing major benefits of the word process program is spellcheck and the automatic correction suggested in my punctuation. My knowledge of the correct use of punctuation is nearly nonexistent so the vast amount of the correct punctuation the use is in the hands of the writing program. When it comes to spelling my ability has rapidly gone downhill, not that it was ever great. To give you an idea of how deficient my spelling ability is there have been times when I have been trying to spell a word and the program has no idea what the word I am trying to spell is.

So, there you have the advances in writing which have made the ability to produce a work so much easier than it was in the past. And these advances have resulted in a huge increase in work being produced and submitted to self-publishing presses which results in an incredible number of books being published every year. Books, if feel, would never see the light of day if the typewriter was the only means available to produce the work.  

WALT TRIZNA: ESCAPE FROM THE CITY

There are quite a few more chapters of my memoir I want to share. Along with those posts I will occasionally post opinions, websites and the occasional story to provide some variety. I hope you will find this mixture interesting and worthy of your attention.

                                  ESCAPE FROM THE CITY

As a youngster I was a member of scouts for years, going from Cub Scout to Boy Scout and on to Explorer.  Along the way I earned an Eagle Award and learned and explored many things a city boy would not normally encounter.  One of the activities I enjoyed the most was the opportunity to go camping.

An hour’s drive northwest of Newark was a Boy Scout campground near Booton, New Jersey.  My troop would camp there several times a year, mostly in the winter.  Cabins of various sizes dotted the campground.  The only source of heat was a fireplace, and cooking was done on a wood-burning stove.  One winter, the weather was so cold that the pipes to the old hand pump burst, and we had to melt ice for water.  It seemed the harsher the conditions; the more we enjoyed the outing.  City boys were facing nature head on.

The camping trips were formal outings organized by troops.  The less formal day hikes to the local Boy Scout area located in the South Orange Mountain Reservation, would be organized spontaneously, when a group of us were just hanging around with nothing to do.  For a group of boys ranging from maybe eleven to thirteen, these trips were a real adventure.  The beauty of these outings was that the city bus could take us to the base of the mountain.  No adult input was required, once permission to go was obtained.

We usually caught the bus fairly early in the morning because once we arrived at the base of the mountain; it was at least an hour’s walk up the mountain to the Boy Scout area.  Sitting amongst commuters going to work or out to do some shopping, we were ladened with packs and canteens and any other camping paraphernalia we thought we might need.  We rode through the Newark downtown area, then north through some of the blighted areas of the city, and finally on to the more affluent suburbs.  The bus would leave us in the shopping district of South Orange, where we would start to trudge up the hill to what us city boys considered wilderness.  We hiked past stately homes with manicured lawns, a far cry from our homes in Newark.  Finally, the houses were replaced with trees and the sidewalks with a dirt shoulder – we were almost there.

Our destination lay down on a dirt road branching from the main highway.  The area was large and open, set aside where scouts could build fires and cook their meals.  Across a stream bordering the area and up into the trees, stood a few cabins for weekend trips.  The day hike area was also supplied with a generous amount of wood provided by work crews trimming trees.  For a bunch of boys who thought starting a charcoal fire by themselves was an adventure – this was nirvana.

Everyone’s lunch usually consisted of hot dogs and foil-wrapped potatoes and onions.  The fire built to prepare these meager meals was immense to say the least.  Once everyone tired of throwing on wood, we had a fire too hot to approach to do any cooking.  Either you waited for the flames to die down or had to find a very long stick to cook our hot dogs.

Late afternoon we found us journeying down the mountain to catch the bus home.  People on the bus would stare at us because we smelled of smoke on our ride home to Newark.

WALT TRIZNA: DOWNNECK NEWARK

DOWNNECK

I began my life on August 1947 in Newark, New Jersey, the Down Neck section, and lived in that city, in the same house, the same cold water flat for nearly twenty years.  This section of Newark is still known by this name for a few years ago, on a train to New York with my wife and two daughters, we passed a sign for a pizza place that stated, ‘ A DOWN NECK TRADITION’.  My hometown is along the eastern edge of the city, not far from Newark Bay and the bridges leading into Jersey City.  It is also referred to, as the Ironbound Section, gaining its name from the railroad tracks that ring the area and known for the light and heavy industry.  Small factories existed amongst the two and four family homes and tenements that predominated the area. The mingling of homes and factories was a mixture ready for disaster.  Even the Passaic River, flowing through the area was known to catch fire.

 One Good Friday afternoon, during my teenage years, while getting ready for church I noticed the sky turning black.  At first I thought a storm was approaching but soon realized that somewhere a huge fire was burning.  I went outside to see what was going up in flames.  Immediately, I was being joined by scores of people seeking the same exciting rush of a fire.  Walking up Ferry Street, one of the major streets of the area, I could see that the coke trestle was on fire.  As I approached to within a couple of blocks of the source of all the smoke, fifty-five-gallon drums full of God knows what began to explode. The situation went from the usual spectacle of a fire to people running for their lives as the drums shot flames into the air and rained debris – smoking pieces of trestle – down around the scattering people who had moments before been spectators.  Needless to say, everyone got out of there fast.  Some had to go home and wet down their roofs because some of the debris and embers were falling and starting other houses on fire.  This made for a memorable afternoon; ten to fifteen houses along with the trestle were lost. 

Our house was lucky, because we stood literally in the shadows of Balentine Brewery.   Across the street from our house was a four-story building, which was part office building, part garage and truck wash located on the lower level.  This structure, along with many others on the surrounding city blocks, owned by Balentine, created Newark’s life’s blood, Balentine beer and ale.  This building stood between the fire and us, so it bore the brunt of the embers and debris raining down on the houses on my block.

The reason I mention this event is to lend a flavor to what life was like back then, and what life was like in Newark.  Life happened and the consequences accepted – right or wrong – that’s how it was and when life went less than perfectly, you just moved on.  Life did not always treat people well, but they endured, didn’t whine about their state in life.  They took responsibility for their actions.  They all didn’t prosper, yet people didn’t step on one another to get ahead.

Things were not always politically correct either.  In fact, I cannot recall anything about my time as a youth in Newark that was politically correct.  For example, I once had a math teacher toward the end of my high school career with a bit of a temper.  One day during class, there were a few guys talking in the rear of the classroom.  My teacher blew up.  He yelled at the class, “Do you know what is wrong with you guys?  Not enough of you drop out of school.  If you don’t want to learn, you’re wasting everyone’s time by staying in school.  You’re just holding people who want to learn back.”   I do not think there exists the honesty today to say that before a class of unruly students.

People were once able to observe the world, analyze their surroundings, draw on their common sense and speak their mind.  That age is long gone, but it still echoes Down Neck’s past.  The talking heads of today say we all have the same potential if only given the right circumstances or drug therapy. Nonsense!  Twelve years or more of education are given free to each member of our society.  Granted, the conditions under which the education is applied varies along a wide spectrum.  And when there is a breakdown in the educational goals meant to be accomplished, as happens all to often, it is always the fault of the system and never the individual.  The usual solution is to throw more money at the problem, but until the real problem is addressed, this will never help.  The individual student along with their parents carries the burden of responsibility and the older the student the more directly responsible for their education.  These seem to be times of a total lack of responsibility of the individual.  Whenever someone makes a really boneheaded move, there is always something that happened to him either done by his family or society that was the cause of that action.  We live in a time of not guilty because of whatever reason other than my own actions.  Of course, in some cases a person’s life gets completely out of control, but the excuses people create these days for their actions is sometimes unbelievable.

The theory that we all have the same potential also totally negates that one thing that has, in my eyes, an influence equal to education in persons potential, the influence of personality.  Those who succeed are those who realize they must seize the opportunity, the knowledge and go forward.  It takes personal drive, ambition and purpose along with a strong education.  This is the combination that makes a successful individual.

And what is success?  This can mean so many different quantities, depending on an individual.  Does success mean money, fame, family, a life free of conflict or a life full of conflict and challenge?  The levels, the goals we attain, depend to a large extent on education.  But what we do when we arrive at our goals and the life we mold around those accomplishments depends on personality.

I know I digress, but the purpose of this effort is to point out my view of the mindset of today and how my upbringing, my environment has formed my mindset.  So we’ll return now to my past, to Newark’s past, and see this mindset take form.

Balentine brewery ruled the Down Neck section of Newark, with a major factory and office complex that stretched for blocks.  Across from our house was the office and garage. Next to that building was a parking lot that stretched to the next parallel street, and taking up the last third of the block was the catholic school, which was part of Saint Aloysius parish.  The brewery’s lot was a remarkable sight when a storm was approaching, with workers just standing there waiting, leaning on their snow shovels looking toward the sky.  God help the first snowflake that fell and all its partners for they were gone in an instant.  Our street was never clogged with snow; the beer trucks had to roll out of the parking lot unhampered.  They did not move the snow they removed the snow, taking and dumping it in the Passaic River.  At times, long after the parking lot was cleared of snow, the city streets were opened.  The beer was delivered but the city government took a while to get going.

As I mentioned earlier, the building across from our house housed the truck wash for cleaning the beer trucks and the tractor trailer cabs, an endless procession of dark blue trucks sporting three golden rings.  Our street was a narrow street with parking on both sides, and the locals knew not to park their cars directly across from the truck wash exit.  Now the reason lies in the fact that they knew that instead of coffee breaks some of the drivers took beer breaks.  Once the truck was washed, they would have to exit the building and make a sharp left, and sometimes the left was not quite sharp enough, as the unsuspecting person who found a good parking spot and could not figure out why it was vacant found out when they returned to their slightly bent automobiles.

Some of the trucks used for the brewery were themselves interesting.  They were old trucks with hard rubber tires and driven by a chain drive connected to the rear axle.  But somehow these trucks did not look out of place going down my street because for much of my early youth my street was paved with cobblestone.  So, these trucks would rattle down my street carrying their loads of used grain from the brewery, stubbornly resisting progress.

Change seemed to come slowly to Newark in its vehicles and its people.  We lived just four blocks from Hawkins Street School. Hawkins Street was a typical ‘Down Neck’ street with parking on both sides and just enough room for two-way traffic.  It was the same elementary school my mother attended.  In fact, her family once lived across the street from the school.  While I was attending elementary school, two of her sisters and a brother, all of whom were unmarried, continued to live in the same two-family house rented by their parents.

While attending Hawkins Street School, I had the same first grade teacher my mother had and after that another two or three teachers that taught her. When we had an open house, and my mother would walk with me through the corridors of the school she once attended, she would point out changes in the school that had been made since she attended.  The gym in use while I was there was new, however, the faded markings of the basketball court from the old gym were still on the floor of some of the nearby classrooms.

I have not returned to my grammar school since I graduated, with the exception of one of my sister’s graduations, but I have heard reports of the changes that have taken place from my nieces who also attended Hawking Street School.  The changes were not for the best, gone is the library – classrooms, the cafeteria – is being used for classrooms.  Changes happen to old cities and schools, and they are not always for the better. But people endure.  People who want to learn, who want to succeed, seem to be able to do so in spite of the circumstances, in spite of what life has dealt with them.  That is why, to this day, and it seems to increase with age, I have little sympathy for those who complain that everything is not going as it should for them to reach their full potential.  I honestly feel that there is something inside us all – call it a spark – call it will or destiny – call it a road we start at birth and end at death, but we must be more than just a traveler, we must take control.  Too many times, we look around and see what the world seems to offer and settle for the inevitable.  Our future is in our hands if we only have the courage to grasp our potential and pursue our goals.

My mother’s fate was tied to Newark and so was that of some of her friends.  I became friends with two boys who were the sons of friends my mother had in school.  With one of these friends, I completed twelve years of school.  I chanced to meet this friend after I had attended an out-of-state college and spent four years in the military, he had not left home.  We no longer had anything in common. It was not the fact that I had left, and he had stayed, people just change. 

The old neighborhood seemed to resist change.  It was small, compact, and is to some extent to this day.  You walked to church, you walked to school, and even downtown Newark was a short bus ride or a healthy walk away from my home.  Nowadays, my kids have to be driven everywhere.  They make no decision about whether or not to attend mass; I the driver have that power.  When I was a kid, you looked out the parlor window and saw the church steeple two blocks away and heaven help you – literally – if you missed church.  When you could walk, you were in control.

These are some of the memories, the feelings that remain with me of ‘Down Neck’ Newark, New Jersey.  Time tends to erase the harsh memories; time and distance tend to smooth the rough edges.  What I wanted to show here was that my hometown was not perfect, it was real.  I know that there were better neighborhoods than mine, many not too far away, but I look at where I have come from and what I am and see the mark my youth has left.  The past I carry within me, for better or worse, has made me the person that I am.  And sometimes, in the situations that life presents, I am glad I carry within me a small part of ‘Down Neck’ Newark, and approach life not to grieve for what I don’t have but rejoicing for what I possess.