Drinking in New Jersey and other Diversions

 Since I was now earning a decent amount of money, I purchased a bar for our apartment. Somehow we had come to believe having a well-stocked bar in your place was the height of sophistication. It was a status symbol of success. Our bar was very well-stocked with a large variety of booze, Wild Turkey Bourbon, Bacardi 151 Rum, Smirnoff Vodka, Crown Royal Whiskey, Dubonnet, Galliano and many more. I had several mixology books and by the time we were high up in Cherry Hill Towers getting high, I had gotten a handle on making cocktails. Back in Philadelphia at the Commodore I almost killed Lois one night.

Lois’ drink of choice was a Manhattan, so this particular evening I decided to make her one. I had bought a little cocktail kit. I took the shaker and added some ice. I opened a book I had and read the recipe. It said use 8 parts whiskey to one-part Vermouth. I wasn’t sure what that meant, so I assumed a jigger constituted one part. I added in 8 jiggers of whiskey and one jigger of vermouth. Dashed some bitters on top, put on the lid and shook that baby up. I poured it out into a glass and she drank it down.

Talk about woozy drunk. She staggered about and announced she felt sick, then headed into the bathroom to throw up. There was a loud crash and I hurried after her. She lay upon the bathroom floor where she passed out after falling head first against the toilet so hard it cracked the tank.

 We didn’t see them quite as often, but we did continue getting together with Bill and Grace weekly for our usual evenings of cards and drinking and listening to Bill pontificate about harapozoids. These were sometimes raunchy, but never oozed over to any group sex affair.

Besides the Stones, we still got together with Joe Rubio occasionally.  These were more on the order of normal suburban life, cookouts and cocktails and a lot of chit chat about jobs and trips.

Wayne and Bunny were out of the picture. It helped us split with them when we disappeared across the Delaware River into South Jersey, new address, new telephone number and not long after, a new employer. We certainly never had a nude Bunny at the front door or heard from them again.

At the my employer, Welder Tube, I met a fellow who would become a close friend for most of the next decade. His name was Victor Ernest and he had originally immigrated to the USA from St Lucia. He had a interesting accent. Lois thought he sounded like Grover, one of the Muppets on Seseme Street.

 He had been with the company for a few years in the position of Cost Accountant. His grade was above mine of Assistant Bookkeeper when I started. Yet in a few months our roles became reversed. He was still the Cost Accountant, but I was now his boss. He had no difficulty with the situation for the most part, although he preferred to keep it quite that I was his boss, even pretend it wasn’t so. Despite this, we become close friends and he remained such for the next several years. We were together a lot, certainly at work, but socially as well. We began playing tennis every lunch hour, putting up a makeshift net of string between lamp posts in the parking lot. We also took up golf and played every weekend. Sometimes we even got together on weekends and played tennis on a real court.

We were just average weekend golfers. My best score at a full-sized golf course was 95 at the Westwood Country Club in Woodbury, New Jersey.  This Club allowed the public to play their course. It was a lovely course. We were playing there one time when a sudden thunderstorm came roaring in overhead.  It was something of a dilemma as we were on the far back end, a long way from the clubhouse and any solid shelter. Mostly this was open field. They tell you not to stand in an open field during lightning, but the only thing around was a solidary tree, but they also say don’t stand under a tree in a storm either. All we did was walk a bit of a distance away from our bags of metal clubs.  I’m here writing this, so obviously we survived the incident.`

 Usually we played at an Executive Golf Course, called the Golf Farm. An Executive Course had nine holes, but two cups cut into each green. You played the nine, then played them again but to a different cup to make your 18-hole course. We played here because the green fees were pretty cheap and Westwood's were pretty steep.
The golf farm bordered right up against a private country club. One day as I came along the fairway near the drive into that club, this guy stopped along the side and took his club and some balls from his trunk. He began driving them directly into the Golf Farm course, darn near hitting me. I yelled at the jerk, but he kept hitting his drives anyway. Finally, he got in his car and continued on to the country club parking lot.

One time we were playing a round at The Golf Club when we came up behind two women. Instead of just waiting for them to finish a hole, we suggested playing as a foursome. After the first nine, Victor headed to the rest room and one of the women also trotted off somewhere. After chit-chatting with the pretty dark frizzy-haired lady with a spectacular figure, she suddenly suggested we go to her apartment, which was just down the road she said. , She would make us a lunch. Then she began to tell me her husband’s business kept him on the road for long stretches and he was away and how lonely she was. I turned her down on her offer of lunch and the other two returned and we finished the back nine.

I had taken the lady’s offer at face value, just a lunch thing. When I told Lois about it later she gave me a look, shaking her head. “You are so naïve,” she said.

As far as my scores, I didn’t measure my improvement by those. I measured it by how many balls I loss. When we first began we would lose several, either in the water hazard or in the rough. Eventually I reached a point where I was finishing with the same ball I started with and then I felt I was really improving.
Victor particularly hated to lose a ball anywhere. They cost money, you know, and he was a bit tight. He would tramp about in the woods or roughs for a long time before giving up on a ball and if he couldn’t find it he was unhappy. I might look about a bit if I lost a ball, but was willing to continue with a new ball rather than spend time searching. I preferred playing.

Psychologically the worse hazard was the water hazard. The Golf Farm had a lake you had to tee off over. The distance you had to clear was usually easily carried on any other hole, but staring at the water drained away one’s confidence and more likely than not, we would drive our ball straight into the water. Victor really despised this hole. On one occassion he sunk ten straight balls into the water where they disappeared forever. (Actually, they weren't lost forever. There was a guy who came around with a snorkle and fished all the sunken balls from the bottom, which he then sold to golfer for a low price.) Victor and I eventually went to a driving range and bought a bunch of used balls floaters. These balls did not sink. They floated about like strange round white fish and you could sometimes fish them out of the drink. I carried in my bag a special tool for just just a thing. It had a cup at one end and a telescoping handle that could be extended out about ten feet. 

Vic was kind of obsessive-compulsive. He lived by a pretty rigid schedule. He couldn't get together on Tuesdays because this was laundry day. He was fanatical about his appearance and festidious in his grooming. He would arrive at work and head right to the men’s room where he would wash up and fuss with his hair and beard, even though he had showered and groomed himself at home. He often spent 45 minutes in this ritual.

His pride and joy was his yellow Porsche 914. He used to park it right next to the office along the driveway instead of back in the parking lot. He didn’t want anyone parking near him that might ding or scratch his baby.

The structural steel tubing was fabricated in the long building behind the offices. Flatbed 18-wheelers would come in through the front gate, turn up the drive and deliver these great coils of steel to the plant. These coils were very large and very heavy. One day we heard a loud thud just outside the offices. We ran to the windows. Somehow as a truck turned onto the drive, the restraints gave way and one of these giant coils tipped off the side. It made a large dent in the driveway macadam and only missed Victor’s little car by a couple of inches. He never parked along the drive again. Better a couple of dings than a pancaked car beneath a steel coil.

Victor had a girlfriend named Marsha, who he eventually married, so the four of us, he and Marsha, me and Lois, did a lot of things together, but there was no sex involved in this relationship. There was still drinking at his parties.

That was a mainstay of our socializing throughout the early 1970s, parties and plenty of booze. Victor’s parties never got as drowned in the stuff as at Bill and Graces, no one got falling down drunk. We mainly loosened up and spent time singing and laughing. The guitar Victor is playing was mine, but he actually knew how to play it.

We were to continue reveling with this group of friends from 1973 to the fall of 1975 when something would happen that changed everything in my life. I had met Joe Rubio in 1967 and he was still a friend in this period. Victor Ernest became a close friend in early 1973. Both of these would still be friends into the 1980s. Our boozing with Bill and Grace began in 1972, but ended in 1975. Our sexual dalliances with Wayne and Bunny had begun in 1972, but were over by 1973 when we moved to Jersey.

This did not mean our risky sexual proclivities ended.

On September 15, 1973, Lois and I headed to Wisconsin on vacation. It had been a long time coming that we earned enough to afford a real vacation. Our last real one had been the trip to

New York and the tour of Virginia in 1962, our second year of marriage. Since then we had taken a number of day trips, a few overnight stays and one drive out to Cleveland, but that was hardly a vacation since we just drove straight to that city and then straight back home. This was a ten-day trip across several states. The first leg was sort of a dash northwest on interstates, crossing Ohio on up through Gary and Chicago, with no stops. We then went right up to the Wisconsin Dells, after a side trip to Baraboo because I wanted to see the Circus Museum there. We stayed in the Spinning Wheel Motel one night there (right).

Circus had long fascinated me, especially the Ten-in-one or sideshow or Freak Show. Circus World is a museum dedicated to the history and all things circus. Owned by the Wisconsin Historical Society, it was built in Baraboo because that was the home of the Ringling Brothers. Ringling began their first circus tour out of the town in 1884.

From there we went to The Dells for a couple days. My regret is I had a fairly new movie camera at the time and I took a lot of films on the trip and not many photographs. I still have the films in a metal box, but nothing to view them with since I got rid of my projectors a few years back. If I ever have any spare money, I will take my movies to a place that can convert them to DVDs.

We took the long way home, cutting through Minnesota, then Indiana. We found a wonderful little local bar restaurant in some small town in Indiana. It wasn’t a tourist destination, but a place where the locals ate. We also had some car trouble in Indiana. The carburetor needed adjusting or something, but we were able to get it fixed quickly and continue our tour.

We began driving through Iowa. I decided we would continue into Missouri and stop over at Hannibal where there was a lot of Mark Twain stuff to visit, but we didn’t make it. After hours of driving through repetitive flat farm land and hearing obituaries being read on the radio along with pork belly market reports, we made a left turn east halfway down the state and headed home.

One of the few pictures I did take is of Lois in the Redwood Center Motel in Angola, Indiana. If much of our life sounds typically humdrum, the drinking and parties aside, our sexual behavior was not. For instance, I often parted the curtains slightly when we stayed in motels on the idea people might peek in and see us making love. Our risk taking sex life continued in these years, just as I continued buying pornography and going to the xxx films or strip shows.

Several of the adult bookstore now added cubicles or booths in the back where you could view pornography movies in private. Some even added such booths where a curtain would part revealing a naked woman who would do “tricks” for you as long as you pushed money through a slot. Sitting in those booths viewing such “performers” as Annie Sprinkle (use your imagination), I never gave a thought to all the previous men who had sat on that bench doing whatever they might be doing while watching a filthy film. The films weren’t the only thing dirty about such places, the interiors were none too clean either.

And at the end of 1973, we were moving again.

New York, New York

In August Lois and I managed to get our two-week vacation at the same time. She had been complaining about cabin fever a few weeks into summer and said we needed to get away for a while. I arranged for a three-day excursion to New York City. She was still writing me some of her notes at work, which showed her tendency toward anxiety, especially if we couldn’t hook up for lunch together, such as happened on August 1.

Hi Sweetheart:

Boy did I ever miss you at lunch. I thought I was going to burst into tears when hatchet-face told or rather commanded me to stay until one o’clock. Oh honey, I love you so much. Today was so miserable not having lunch with you.

Well daring I have to close. Only 68 hours till we leave for New York.

I love you, Lois

Sixty-eight hours to go before we would leave for New York. On the 3rd of August we went to my parents for dinner, but more importantly, to leave our car there for servicing. My parents took us up home and at 7:30 the next day we called a taxi to take us to the Paoli train station.  We were off to New York.

We transferred trains at 30^th Street Station, a stop before our normal work-a-day stop and  kept hauling North until we pulled into Grand Central Station. we were a bit overwhelmed by the size of that station, but we quickly hailed a cab out front and soon checked in at the Waldorf-Astoria (left in the 1960s).
The Waldorf-Astoria was one of the top ranked hotels anywhere back then. (I think it still is a Five-Star establishment.)  It was at that time also the tallest hotel in the world. (That it isn’t any more.) During our stay President Herbert Hoover was still in residence. He would die two years later at age 90. We never caught so much as a glimpse of him. On the right is Lois on the day we checked in.

The address was 301 Park Avenue, which is between 49^th and 50^th Streets. Thankfully, the city wasn’t festooned with garish Trump signs yet. It was the Waldorf-Astoria, not the Trump-Astoria and over by Central Park was just plain The Plaza.

Our two-bed room was $20 a night. It must have been one of their bargain rates for we lower-class types. In today’s dollars that would be the equivalent of about $160 a night, really a modest sum for such a lavish address. There is a photo of Lois sitting on one of the beds in our room to the left. That price was a good deal anyway you look at it. You can book through Expedia at a special rate at the Waldorf today for a mere $319 a night. Low-rate room or not, we lived it up during our stay. 

We did the usual tourist things, I suppose. We took a Gray Line Bus Tour to all the highlights. The ones I remember best were a walking tour in the Bowery, especially along what they called Skid Row (pictured right, a certain contrast to Park Avenue) and the elevator ride to the top of the Empire State Building. The down trip takes your breath away. With my fear of height, I sort of hung back away from the outer wall of the observation deck.

Probably the most romantic thing we did was take a carriage ride through Central Park in the late evening. No one had fed this horse on Beefaroni, so there was none of that resulting unpleasantness (a little Seinfeld reference there). Walking from the carriage to the hotel so late at night did not bother us. You felt safe trotting through downtown Manhattan even in the wee hours because of the ever-present crowds.

We did not go to a Broadway Show this time, but we did eat well. We searched out several of the well-known eateries such as Mama Leone’s. Back then, if you were a tourist to New York, you had to go to Mama Leone’s.

Mama Leone’s was a mecca, sitting on 44^th Street in the heart of the theater district. We entered into an entryway more like a corridor that was crowded with people waiting and the hustle and bustle of passing waiters. All the wait staff was male, dressed better than myself, except for an ankle-length white apron tied about their waists. It took something close to an hour, but we did finally get a table. It was a nice table, I felt, I mean what did I know, it wasn’t anywhere near the kitchen door. It was located pretty much in the center of this fancy dining room. There was a lot of crystal about and statues on pedestals, mostly naked I believe. Three strolling violinist maneuvered between the tables all evening playing Italian love songs, stopping briefly by the tables to serenade each guest.

Our waiter appeared and Lois ordered from the somewhat outsized menu (pictured left). Probably some kind of seafood dish, for she does like her seafood. I don’t. I am a red meat guy. I looked the menu over and decided this one dish sounded good, so I ordered it. I asked for the Chateaubriand. This is a slab of tenderloin cut from the thickest part.

“But, sir,” said the waiter, looking somewhat stricken and perplexed, “that is for two.”

Oh?”

No wonder it was twice as much as anything else.

Feeling just a little bit stupid, I settled for the filet mignon. It was not my final stupid gesture.

When dinner was done the waiter brought the chit. It was for $12.00. Those were lush days, my friend, and I was use to $12 dinners. That was what we often paid at The Black Angus and other restaurants we frequented around Philadelphia. Remember, I already told you that $20 in 1962 had the buying power of $160 today. And without so much as a moment’s hesitation I tossed down a twenty-dollar bill and said, “Keep the change.”

The waiter scooped it up and started to walk away. Lois and I headed for the exit. Suddenly the waiter was trailing behind me bowing and scraping, going, “Oh, thank you, sir, thank you, thank you.” I thought he was going to throw himself down and kiss my feet. I expected the violinists to traipse behind playing, “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow!”   My gosh, we hurried our pace to escape this.

In 1962 10% was the expected gratuity. A dollar twenty would have been considered a fair tip. I gave him a 67% tip. I decided it was quite as embarrassing to over tip as to under tip.

We were up reasonably early on August 5. Back then Lois was still working and used to being up and out with the birds, although on days off she tended to sleep late. But that morning we were dressed and exited the Waldorf around 9:30. We went walking along looking for a place we could buy breakfast. Suddenly something caught my eye and I pulled Lois to a stop and pointed. There on the curb was a small newsstand and on the front was a large photograph with one headline beneath the Daily News banner, Marilyn Dead. There was no need for a last name. In the early ‘sixties Marilyn could only mean Marilyn Monroe.

Marilyn’s death garnered world-wide coverage, but nothing such events bring about today. Of course, 1962 could be considered as still the early years of Television and there was no so-called social media beyond the telephone; no internet, no Facebook and no Cable TV with its 500 channels of mediocracy. Details of her body being found were given. In the first stages it was reported by some paper as a suicide. She was known as a troubled woman. Other reports gave the cause as an overdose of sleeping pills. No fowl play whatsoever was suspected. Conspiracy theories weren’t as rampant in the early ‘sixties, there were no rash of murder  rumors or sexual liaisons with the Kennedy brothers for the length of a  decade, except some sparsely dissimulated ones from less than credible sources: 1964, The Strange Death of Marilyn Monroe by Frank A. Capelli, who claimed it was part of a Communist Plot; 1966, Who Killed Marilyn Monroe by Charles Hamblett and 1968, The Mysterious Death of Marilyn Monroe by James A. Hudson.

Photographs of the death scene or of her body in the morgue were not quickly and readily available to the public until long after her passing.

It was a different time.

We went to breakfast and probably talked briefly about Monroe, but then we had a trip to New York to finish.