Abestia

                        ********************************

I am lucky to know that I have the greatest father in the world.  Not for the obvious reasons, like, he is the most humble person I’ve ever met.  Or because he has spent his entire life giving selflessly. Or because I think I am a decent human being because he was my model of what it means to be a good person.  These reasons, although true, are not what I am thinking about today.

I remember the exhilaration of throwing a fast ball with an egg at a moving bus on South Orange Avenue in Newark on the night before Halloween, when I was somewhere around 7 years old, with my Dad and brother at my side.

“Not at the cars,”  he said.

Then soaping car windows with multi-colored animal shaped bars of soap along the dark sidewalks of Smith street in the Vailsburg section.

In my teen years, it was all out war, 1st Avenue versus 9th St, crates of eggs in the trunk of my Duster, by the end of the night covered head to toe in yolk, bodies bloody, black and blue, one particular year, pumped full of mescalin and beer.

Older kids opened fire hydrants and nailed passing cars on Bloomfield Avenue with heavy streams of water, by using hands and arms to manipulate the water’s flow.  Nicky Dinardo blowing out car windows with a sling shot, at passerbys who dared look his way.  They’d never stop to challenge a group of enraged, wilding Newark teenagers.

My Dad would not have approved of where his good-time-with-my-sons on Mischief Night eventually led.

Tonight I am one of the organizers of a multi-media poetry/social activism event at the historic Symphony Hall in downtown Newark.  And I am wondering if my teenage kharma will break my windshield in the city of my youth on this Mischief Night.

Shell and I went to Delaware Park .  It was the first time we had ever gone there. Lost 4 or 5 races, was being cheap now.  The next race was Arabian horses and a very long race. There was a horse named Lucky Tess (Tessie, my aunt’s name). I bet $5.00 to win and an exacta. 

Race starts and Tess is in the back, the other horse is laying 3rd or 4th. Coming around the last turn, the other horse starts makng it’s move and takes first at the top of the stretch.  By now I cannot see who is who, but I hear the announcer say “And here comes Lucky Tess!” I began screaming, “Comeon Aunt Tessie, comeon Aunt Tessie!”

Aunt Tessie.  The backbone of the family women.  Great daughter, mother, grandmother, sister and aunt.  When she died everyone was fighting for her old pots, pans, & recipes.

Well, she won.  I had forgotten about the other horse.  I’m jumping up and down, the only person doing so, because she was a long shot.  Everyone was looking at me.  Then I remembered I had an exacta, and asked Shell what the number of the second horse was and when he told me I started screaming, “Oh my God, I have the exacta,” and started jumping and screaming again. Both were long shots. Shell said later that everyone must have been saying, how the hell do you pick out two long shots like that.  The reason I did was because of the Tess horse (like an anniversary or birthday), don’t remember what numbers they were.  I felt like Mrs. Rockefeller when we left the track.

Elaine Smith

I returned to Harrahs from one of my shore excursions on a recent trip to Atlantic City, and learned that while I was playing in the surf on the Brigantine beach , my wife was involved in a not for fun experience at the casino, and at the same time, playing out a fantasy of her own. It happened this way:

Elaine took notice of the short, wiry, brown-skinned, fortyish looking man standing next to the ATM machine she was about to use, and concluded that he was waiting for someone, but, she decided the situation warranted some necessary precautions —- just to be safe.  she shortened the hold on her handbag, grasped her cash card tightly, and planted herself firmly for defensive action, if it should be needed.  The bystander waited until she submitted her card and punched the numbers in before acting.

The accused logically would have assumed that his grandmotherly looking mark should behave in an appropriately grandmotherly fashion.  He had no way of knowing that this particular grandmother was not only an expert on scams, but an unsung genius in the area of criminal activities.  Years of assidious attention to, and the study of, television police programming, has given her the ability to name the bad guy in a police drama (with uncanny accuracy) in no more than five minutes after the opening credits.  Nor could he have known that she has memorized every offensive and defensive maneuver ever used on screen by Chuck Norris and Steven Segal —- and is able to anticipate their actions with frightening precision.

The ’scam’ as Elaine explained it to me later, worked as follows:  When the scoundrel was sure that the user had entered his or her numbers into the machine, he went into his act, harassing and intimidating the victim until she became flustered enough to leave the machine primed for a withdrawal.  He took a card out of his pocket and slid it into the machine above the card that was already there, while shouting indignantly — its broke — its broke.  Elaine, neither flustered nor deterred held onto her card with an iron grip and hit the cancel transaction order with her free hand.  The villain then made a near-fatal mistake.  He tried to forcefully nudge her away from the machine with his body (he had a better chance of moving the machine) and immediately realized he was in over his head — and if at that point he saw the expression that I am certain she must have had on her face —- he knew for sure it was time to exit the casino. When he turned and saw Elaine following, he picked up speed —looked again —- she was hot on his heels.  He panicked and bolted.  Her first intinct was to assume the policeman’s shooting stance, but the weapon she was holding was only a check card, useful for other forms of annihilation.  She took off after him, at first trying to avoid jostling as many people as possible, but he was fast and elusive, and a desperate situation called for desperate measures. She began  body-blocking anyone that got in her way.  Cups of quarters were flying like meteors —- shouting “Stop that man,” she leapfrogged over a woman in a wheelchair, jumped up on the craps table, and was in diving distance of the perpetrator, when a team of security guard’s surrounded her and ended the chase.

She wanted an APB sent out — all bridges and tunnels blocked — asked for a map of the area, and of course gave them a detailed description of the assailant with instructions to have a composite police drawing made.

Exaggerations aside —- the rascal did scamper through and out of the casino before Elaine could alert security, but if I were him I would not rest too easy —- she never forgets a face.

I hit the jackpot at an Atlantic city casino, early one morning.  In point of fact, I was outside Harrah’s Casino, when a slot machine labeled “moments to remember” paid off for me with a winning combination of BAY VIEW - SAILBOAT- SUNRISE. The noiseless payout came in the form of a few serene moments, rather than the clatter of falling quarters, but the prize had a far longer lasting reward than the traditional cup fillers.  Since that time, whenever we visit Harrah’s, I have made it a habit to rise early and try my luck at the same machine.  Using the same technique each time (patience and a cup of coffee) I have yet to experience a losing outing at the site.

About 730am or so, I pick up a newspaper and return to our room - wake my wife for breakfast - give her a few minutes to shed the cobwebs - and wait - sometimes it takes as long as five minutes.

I cannot believe you come to Atlantic City to wake up at 5am to go down and look at the same bay you see every time we are here.  What do you see there? Its just weeds and water!

She’s right of course - so after breakfast, I take the car over to Brigantine Island, for a change of scenery.  The beach is more of a hands on experience — or more accurately, a feet on experience, as I walk the shoreline searching for God knows what — shells of my past? — or a glimpse of the future in the next wave? I have never been able to explain properly, to Elaine, just what it is I see when I look “out there.” I do know that any slot machine that can produce an environment that puts your mind at peace, —- whether it for an hour or a minute —- is one worth playing.