Happy Father's Day / Still Cruisin' Around

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Still Just Cruising Around

Seems as though I have been driving the roads and highways my whole life.

My Studebaker.

Skipping school to work for fifteen hours, but bringing in $15 in 1959. Gasoline was 35 cents a gallon. Falling asleep in Chemistry. Three times a week the Comeau Trucking rig would stop for me right at Mom's on Route 8, always in the summer at midnight. Exactly midnight.

Mom got me the job because she was a truck stop waitress at Eileen's and she had a nice figure. Why do you always question what I say? I would NEVER lie to you, mi amore. Gulping hot coffee at diners along the way down to stay awake. Sassy waitresses. "Do you want to come to my place and have a cup of coffee on the couch?" Even to this day, four gulps and the coffee is gone.

Riding with the window down, with the diesel smokestack getting redder the closer we got to the great state of New York. Today when I smell that run-over skunk smell, my mind goes right back to those good ol’ days. Why is that?

I rode as a helper. The tractor trailer drivers went to NYC to deliver 100-lb bags of New England lime to the piers that faced the Statue of Liberty. My job was to unload.

Well my diesel is wound up tight,

I don't see a cop in sight.

Six days on the road

and I'm a gonna make it home tonight.

Thought you would enjoy a break with truckin’ music. Roy Sludge played at Johnny D’s recently and sang his big hit, "Too Drunk to Truck." YCMTSup. But I guess you can if your name is Roy Sludge.  

One day on a pier in NYC, a black guy driving a tow motor, the first one I ever saw, I mean the black guy, said, "What you boys got in them bags? Cee-ment?”

My whole family worked at New England Lime Company, soon to be eaten up by a company with the name of Pfizer. The Bongiolottis ran it when I was a teenager. Ippol (Hipe) ran the quarry section and his brother ran the rest of the show. Hipe treated me like his son. I can't think of what the other brother’s name was. Oh Yah! Mr. Bongiolatti. Louis was his name. Do you know those marble open pit mines north of Lucca? John Cerri, who was born in Lucca, says, "The Alpe Apuane are the marble mountains north of Lucca. Seeing them from the coast they look snow covered in July."

When worked slowed, those crews came to Adams, Massachusetts and with the rest of their families founded the Zylonite section, the Ee-talian section. Smachetti,  Balardini, Maleoni, Tomasini, Monchecci, Volpe, Carnazzola, Chiccetti, Sondrini, Dellagelfa, Delmolino, and Bianchi. First names were Aldino, Reno, Alvin, Elio, Ugo, Emilio, Carmen, Giovanni and Santino.

How do I know this you QUESTION? I grew up with Louis's son Dave, and he told me. Actually it was thirty years later when he told me. When you are living the dream you don't think about how you got there.

I worked the open pit quarry for three summers during high school. Drilling with jackhammers all morning and then blasting the limestone in the afternoon into Volkswagen size pieces that Dad's crusher could easily handle. It was freezing at the bottom of the quarries in the early morning but when the sun came up and bounced off those almost pure white walls, you felt as thought you had snow blindness. The impact would knock cans and boxes off Santino & Rosa Carnazolla's Grocery Store shelves. We rocked that valley ever day around three.

You never gave the blasting a second thought. It was life in the Zylonite Ee-talian section of Adams. Did a siren go off to tell that we were about to explode a section of mountain. No! You just stayed away from the Lime Company at that hour. Stupid question, by the way.

Did we have fun? As the quaint Adams people would say, "You bet your ass we had fun." At the end of the day of work, we would all go to an air compressor to blow all the white lime dust off of us. But everyone knew where you worked because you never got all the dust off.

Everyone carried a metal lunch box to work in the morning. Keeping your car clean was next to impossible. Dad once said to me, "When you are married with a family you won't be able to keep your car up as you do now, Also.” Mom's windows were so full of lime dust that Dad would have to jar the windows open with crow bars in the spring. That is when I started to question God. What the heck were all those fish doing inland that settled and made limestone and up 3,491 feet above sea level? At times we would find fossils in the rock.

The French Canadien "aye" Bacons were working people. Actually our original name was Bachand. My grandson certainly has that work ethic. When everyone around you is a worker bee, you don't realize that you can -- or should -- be any different. As well as Sandy and both our daughters, everyone here is a worker bee. Along with Dad's work ethic, Abel has Dad's blue eyes.

I learned a lot more on those trips to NY than I learned in high school. All of Adams were strictly Yankee fans. Screw Boston. They still think the state ends at Springfield. If I'm lying, I'm dying. Everyone from the Hoosac Valley believes that. Even to this day.

Highway miles, first as a teenager, then 44 years as a traveling salesman so far. I ran 54 ,000 miles during my crazy running days, but I have no idea how many highway miles I have driven. In Mexico on the Yucatan Peninsula, we once logged 1,500 miles with Eileen and Tom or Elena and Tomas. An ancient hombre along the way asked us if it was true that in los Estados Unidos we have roads where 4 or 5 cars can drive in the same direction.

Tom and Kezia got me iPods so I ONLY listen to music that I really like while I am driving. I hate talk radio and NEVER listen to any music on the radio. Stuck in my ways? You bet. Lovin it? As they say out west, “You bet.”

“Where you from?  Massachusetts? You’re a long way from home.”

“You bet.”

My BMW 635csi.

Cajun / Zydeco band Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys. Never heard of them? They recently played in Russia at the embassy and at the Jazz Festival. We visited in Connecticut just last weekend. Steve said, "As long as the Democrats are in office, the State Department keeps sending us on these goodwill missions. What a great connector music is. We get these ‘make the world friendlier’ gigs.”

More singers /musicians on my iPod. Jesse Lege, Magnolia from Rhode Island, and Beau Jocque. The manager of Johnny D's said that the best show he EVER saw there was Beau Jocque. 

Boozoo, Queen Ida, Clifton Chenier, Gino Delafose for sure. Boz, Bob Seger, Simon and Garfunkel, Elvis, Neil Young, Bob Marley, Andrea Bochelli, Marvin Gaye, the Delfonics. Jerry Lee and Roy. Spanish classical guitar, or even a CD I bought on Highway 40 near Gallup at a truck stop, called Fiddlin Johnny.

Linda Ronstadt, Cesaria Evora, yup. L. Cohen, all the time. Texas Tornados with Flaco and the late Freddy Fender. I am really entranced by Texas Border musica. Sandy and I love to dance to it. Unlike Cajun, you dance belly to belly, but it's all the same steps. It probably comes quite naturally, having grown up in a poor mill town in western Massachusetts. What? The Polka, you fool. 

Country music, not at all. Nada. Never. Although cowboy musica with Michael Martin Murphy makes me smile. 

His hat was throwed back 

and his spurs were a jingling 

and as he was ridin’ 

he was singing this song. 

Whoopi ti yi yo, 

get along little doggies, 

it's your misfortune 

and none of my own. 

Lo siento, sorry. I just had a cowboy moment. Do you have them too?  Well, we grew up with Hoppy, Gene and Roy. Every Saturday afternoon spent at the Adams Movie Theatre on Park Street. 

Oh and also in the iPod, Van Morrison. Carly and J.T. forever. “So was the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston.” No, I did not forget Arlo. I figured you assumed that. Arlo lives in Washington, Mass.

Today while cruising between jobs in my pickup, John Stewart of the Kingston Trio came on with, "July You’re A Woman." What a great sense of humor he had. And could he pick -- banjo or guitar. So as the locals do in Italy and Mexico as they pass churches or missions, I did the sign of the cross and sent it skyward. Where that came from I do not know. Although a doctor recently put me on steroids -- really -- and not only am I flush with energy, my mind is so very clear. One more day and I am back to my 67 year old life, but it certainly was nice being seventeen again. 

As for the Catholic thing, it has been a while. Could be my old age. Who do I think I am to bless someone?  It simply felt like the right thing to do at the time. So I did the sign of the cross or I blessed myself. What ever you call it. I meant well. But I did not mean it for me.  

Hi Mom. Still love you. Thanks for all the love and freedom you gave Mike and me.

Happy Fathers Day, Dad.

Your good son,           

Bobby