Learning to Lie

Growing up in Eatontown, NJ. There were two Little League teams in town; The Smoke Eaters, sponsored by the volunteer fire department, and the Hawks, sponsored by the local Catholic church. The two teams couldn’t have been more different, in that the Smoke Eaters frequently made it to state and regional tournaments, while the Hawks could hardly win a game. I can’t explain the discrepancy. Maybe the firemen/dad coaches were more aggressive than the church-going/dad coaches. Who knows?

I, of course, played for the Hawks. Even within the lower achieving church team, I stood out as having no discernible baseball ability. When I played the outfield,  baseballs would sail right by my outstretched fielder’s glove. The other outfielders on my team would skew their positions so as to be closer to me. In case balls would come my way, one of the other guys could run behind me and field the balls that I usually missed. Opposing batters would step up to the plate and point at my position on the field, ala Babe Ruth, indicating that they were going to try to hit to me. The coach moved me to the catcher’s position to keep me out of trouble I guess. Then when the other team saw it was me catching, they stole bases at will.

So, the coaches worked with me on my batting and fielding skills, spending hours of their time helping me be a better person and baseball player, in accordance with the Little League mission statement, to wit;

“Through proper guidance and exemplary leadership, the Little League program assists youth in developing the qualities of citizenship, discipline, teamwork and physical well-being," according to Little League International. "By espousing the virtues of character, courage and loyalty, the Little League Baseball® and Softball program is designed to develop superior citizens rather than stellar athletes.”

Nah-just kidding. Coaches only cared about one thing, winning games. Kids like me got to play once in a while, and only when the games mattered least, like after there was no chance of the Hawks making it to the playoffs.

One day I asked coach if he would put me in some games, now that we were out of contention. He laughed and said “Sure, you can play now Silva”. These guys always used our last names. Maybe it was some military thing. I don’t know.

Anyway, me being able to “play now” actually meant that I could be the third base coach, you know, the person standing next to the base, either stopping or waving through the base runner. When you run the bases it’s difficult to tell where the ball is, and so you need someone to indicate to you whether to stop at third or keep running to home plate.

I was thrilled to be a third base coach, you know, helping the team. I didn’t realize that they only gave me the job to keep me out of the way. Also, base runners kind of ignored my signals, doing instead what they wanted. Everyone knew I was just there for show, an affirmative action token. I didn’t care. I just wanted to be part of the team in whatever capacity. I coached third base with gusto, waving my arms furiously in different signals to the base runners. Everything went fine until that game.

It was later in the season-1956. The game was actually close-the Hawks were only 1 run behind in the last inning. Tommy Miller stood on second base, Eddie Sharkey on first. At the plate batted Paul Townsend, whom I thought of as Rooty Kazooty, after a cartoon character of the era who wore his baseball cap sideways.

There he is.

Anyway, on the 2-2 pitch, Rooty..er Paul hit the ball into far right field, and the runners started rounding the bases for home. Tommy came around third and by the time he got to home Eddie was in full gallop. His reaching home would win the game.

I stood there wildly waving my left arm in great windmills urging Eddie to run. As I waved, I happened to look down..and noticed that Eddie had not touched third base as he ran, but just ran past it. You can’t do that in baseball-you need to touch each base. That was the rule.

So, noticing the grave error, I started calling to the umpire, shouting “He missed the base, he missed the base”. Suddenly coach came barreling off the bench toward me, red-faced and screaming through bared teeth “Shut up, shut up!”. He got to me and hissed “You don’t tell the umpire when your guy breaks a rule-that’s the ump’s job!. I sputtered “but Eddie missed the base!” “I saw him miss the base!” Coach said that if the umpire doesn’t see the error, then you can get away with it, and that’s OK.

I learned a valuable lesson that Summer day. By the way, I never played Little League baseball again. The lesson is that lying, in this case lying by omission, isn’t a sin unless you get caught. Extend that sentiment to other areas. ___ isn’t a ___ unless you get caught. Let’s try it;

Speeding down the road isn’t a traffic violation unless you get caught-not so bad.

Shop lifting isn’t a petty crime unless the store owner calls your mom-a little more serious.

Rape isn’t a heinous crime unless your victim can convince the cops to act-Very serious.

It seems as though any behavior is tacitly allowed, as long as you are not found out.

These days I like to ask myself what is the guiding principle behind the decisions I face and make. I ask that of others too. I do know, though, that “because we wanna win the game” is not a principle at all, but just an excuse.

Joe's Sod Farm

Middletown, N.J. sits in what Jerseyans call “Central Jersey”, inland from shore towns, like Seabright and Long Branch. Middletown mostly serves as a bedroom community for bankers, admen, and fashion house executives who commute to the city via Amtrak and Coast City Coach buses. There is no real downtown, only a few small stores scattered about the place, and chain stores lining rt 35, the state highway that runs north/south, cleaving Middletown neatly in half.

In the late 1960s, the whole Central Jersey area still had a number of working farms. New Jersey is, after all, the “Garden State”. The growing, plant hardiness zone rating of 6 means that all fruits and vegetables, save for tropical varieties, grow well there.

The other crop widely grown in Jersey is sod. With all the housing developments going up, sod is always in demand. It’s so much easier to lay sod than it is to rototill, water, de-weed, sow seeds, re-water, and cover to get a lawn, a tedious process that sometimes doesn’t work. Far easier to call the sod farm, and have the farmer peel up sections of sod, using a kind of giant mechanized cheese grater, then drop it on your yard and water-easy peasy.

Today’s tale concerns one particular sod farm owned and run by Joe Gulick, sod farmer.

The Joe T Gulick Sod Farm was located along Red Hill Rd, on the outside of a slight left-hand bend. These days it seems odd to imagine a time when New Jersey had open farm land located on country roads. The state is, after all, the mostly densely populated of any state in the USA-1200 per square mile. By comparison, my State of Vermont has about 60 per square mile. 45 years ago the place had many acres of rich loam that supported, for instance, double sweet corn seasons.

The Gulick house stood up from the road, at the back of a horseshoe shaped driveway It had three stories, a wrap around porch supported by doric style columns, and was painted white, as was the custom of most farm houses. Elevated placement assured that rain water would flow away from rhe foundation, thus preventing flooding.

Behind the house, a short walk through the dirt yard past chicken coops and a goat pen, stood the main barn, large and red, with a weathervaned cupola atop. Most of the regular farm machinery resided in the lower part of the barn, along with the specialized sod-cutting tools. Upstairs the loft held enough hay to feed all the cows and goats, plus straw for bedding.

Joe was a lanky 74 year-old. He had the long craggy face of a farmer, with wire rimmed glasses perched high on his nose, and a flat topped buzz cut gray hair. Joe had run the farm since inheriting it from his father, Cyrus. When Joe took over, it was what’s called a “truck farm”, commonplace in New Jersey, a farm with a retail stand out by the road, and a wholesale operation selling produce and dairy products to local stores, and even chain supermarkets.

Joe and his wife Milly had no children. They spent almost all of their time together. Milly even accompanied Joe on his sod delivery runs. She just sat in the truck while Joe worked the sod-pallet moving machinery to place the loads on customers’ yards, later to be installed on the lawns by landscapers. Sometimes the landscapers waited for Joe to come and he would drop sod around the lawn for them as they arranged it-no extra charge. Joe was like that. All the time Millie would pour cups of coffee for Joe, and write in her notebook the details of the deliveries. She always brought her knitting along too. Millie had a genius color sense that she applied to her knitted items. Everyone loved her hand made presents of scarves, sweaters and blankets, which were partially fashioned in the passenger seat of Joe’s flat-bed truck.

Millie and Joe, I guess since they had no kids, maintained an open invitation to local families to come to the farm anytime they wanted; to picnic, play games, feed the animals. Parents allowed their kids to go to the farm by themselves, to play, swim, or even help with the farm chores. Kids all loved their home away from home.

At Christmastime their house was similarly open for visitors. People would pitch in to put up decorations. Millie kept the kitchen table piled high with cookies of all varieties, and all the side tables decorated with homemade candy filled jars. Unending coffee and hot chocolate completed the scene. Millie organized visitors into carolers, walking to nearby neighbors to serenade them with noel tunes.

They even extended the Christmas theme to the barn, where Joe set up a manger with two goats and a cow. Marty Holler’s parents always brought Jesus, Mary and Joseph statues, along with a light-up star to hang overhead.

To be sure, Joe and Millie were not religious people. I never remember them going to church. Millie (nee McGarrity) was Northern Irish Protestant, and Joe Gulick Polish Catholic, but they never pressed it. I think that they just liked the idea of Christmas, the sense of fellowship and giving. Their only belief system was each other, and they turned that joy outward to include other people in their happy, peaceful world.

I find myself thinking about Joe a lot lately. I’m his age now, and I have just realized that my main goal in life is to bring happiness to people, to be like Joe. He profoundly affected many people, back in the day in Middletown, NJ. I don’t know if I’ve been successful in reaching my goal, but I’m still having fun getting there.

Greed

Locust Ave dead-ended at the chain link fence which separated Eatontown, New Jersey from the sprawling Ft. Monmouth, home of the Signal Corps, and temporary abode of one Joe Valachi, whom the US government thought it prudent to protect while he “spilled his guts” about organized crime.

I grew up on Locust Ave. across the street from my childhood friend, Ted Lewis. We attended school together, played on the church Little League team together, and flew model airplanes together.

Ted had gotten his model plane by saving hundreds of stickers from cigarette packs. His father and , I guess all his father's friends smoked cigarettes-who didn't? They gave the prize stickers from their packs to Ted, who eventually had enough to send for the flying model.

The best place to fly a model plane happened to be on the other side of that chain link fence, where the fort's athletic fields stood. Neither Ted nor I felt like walking several miles to the nearest gate to try and talk our way into the fort property, so we did the next best thing. We dug a tunnel under the fence, crawled through it, and spent many an afternoon flying planes around and around in circles, until the Military Police came by to roust us out of the place. They just drove up and glared at us til we packed up the planes and equipment and then crawled back through the tunnel to Locust Ave. Funny that they never filled in the tunnel. We just kept coming back to fly, and get rousted by the MPs for the entire summer, till we had to go back to school. But that's not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about greed.

Eatontown in those days was a backwater town with 1 police car, and hardly any crime. A few little stores stood downtown. Nothing much happened. If you wanted to do any “shopping”, that is, beyond picking up a few items, then you drove to either Long Branch or Red Bank, comparative thriving shopping hubs. If I wanted to go see a movie, I had to take the bus to the Strand or Paramount movie theatres in Long Branch. The only model car store, Bob Peru's Hobby Headquarters, was in Red Bank.

You get the idea. Eatontown had nothing, except soldiers who always walked in step-habit no doubt, and went to the dry cleaner or smoke shop, or sub shop, for rhe 50 cent submarine sandwich. Then one day...

The Atlantic Superama opened, on a piece of land next to the railroad tracks in New Shrewsbury, just on the Northern border of Eatontown, within walking distance.

The Superama had everything from food, to clothing, to records, to toys, to guns. I mean EVERYTHING!

To celebrate the opening of this Garden of Commercial Eden, the Superama folks sponsored a day of festivities, with rides, circus acts, a battle of the bands, free food, and prize drawings. Ted's father, Ted Senior, drove us there in his 50 Lincoln, a tank of a car. We got in the free food line for burgers and fries and coke. We walked around the giant store, looking at the bow-and-arrow sets. We met all our school friends. What a great day!

The culmination of this orgy of consumption involved small planes flying low overhead, dropping thousands of coupons for free stuff and discounts. Among the coupons were a few with expensive prizes; kitchen ranges, fridges, TV sets, stereos, and other big ticket items.

Of course, being 10 years old, all us kids thought it was a kids' event. We waited in the huge parking lot, eagerly listening for the planes carrying who-knew-what wonderful treasures we could grab as the coupons came fluttering down. The wait seemed interminable, until...

There They Were!-Planes buzzing overhead like giant hornets in the twilight-Swoopng back and forth, dropping their confetti. We all started running around, grabbing coupons for 10 cents off a Hershey Bar, or a free 45 rpm record of Dean Martin singing “That's Amore”. It was wild! I was great! I was in Heaven! Then I saw them.

Right in the middle of the superama parking lot, right under the planes dropping manna from Heaven, was a couple. They looked to my 10 year old eyes to be in their 30s or 40s-both dressed in chino slacks, and wearing sort of matching wind breakers. I watched as they climbed out of their car, unsmiling, reached into the trunk, and pulled out two large fishing nets on poles. The pair then climbed onto the roof of the car, and started waving the netted poles around, so as to catch as many coupons as possible, before those coupons could get down to the innocently grabby little hands of us kids. Some of the coupons failed to separate, falling in blocks of 50 or more. The net couple especially went after these, almost falling off the car roof to capture as many coupons as they could.

When I saw the spectacle of this troll couple exhibiting what I would later come to consider the worst of human behavior, I lost interest, and walked away, taking with me a valuable lesson.

I'm sure other people in that crowd thought “Damn, I should have thought of that”. My hope is that most people regarded the spectacle with disdain.

As you know from the horse racing story, my father imbued me with an apathy toward money and accumulation that I carry to this day.

Don't be greedy, kids. Greed isn't good. Greed leads you to standing on a car roof, in chinos, looking like a moron.

Trust

Monmouth Park, a horse racing track in Oceanport, New Jersey, served as a central theme in my childhood. My mother and her family were “heaters”, a slang term used to describe heavy racehorse betters. She would go to the track frequently, losing most of the time. Dinner conversations in our house usually revolved around which “sure thing” horse- inexplicably lost the race they had all bet. 
(Uncle Pete) “Margaret, what happened to that nag you bet in the third?” 
(My mother) “Still running”. 
Gales of rueful laughter would fill the room as they all vowed to do better “next week” and make up for the losses, spending more of my college fund (Har!). Most people at the track, when they lose a race bet, will tear up their losing tickets and with great flourish toss the confetti into the air. Not my mother-She would always bring her losing tickets home to examine later, just in case she had accidentally bought the winning ticket, or the race in question came under appeal which put her losing horse into the winner's circle. Every long once-in-awhile it would happen, making her losses that day to be less severe. As it turns out, there was only one person in the family who could reliably pick winners...me.

A little background: My father taught me how to read, write and do math before I entered school. In New Jersey at the time, we had no kindergarten, we started school in first grade. Since my birthday was in January, that meant that I would start school at age 6 and be basically a year behind other kids. So my father decided to get me started early, and I took to this “early education” very well.
One of the first things I learned how to read was the Morning Telegraph, perhaps the most prominent newspaper to cover horse racing. The next day's races at Monmouth Park got previewed along with an almost hieroglyphic style system of symbols that covered each horse's history of wins, losses, weight, track preferences, etc. At age 8 I started reading this sheet every day, and I became quite adept at picking probable winners. I handicapped races for my mother and uncles Pete and Sal, so that when they went to the track they would win a lot more often than before.
Then, as now, I didn't care much about money, an attitude I inherited from my father. I never asked for, or received any portion of the new-found winnings It just never occurred to me. I had what I needed. I had an allowance of $2.00 a week. I used it to buy model cars-AMT 3-in-1 customizing kits, $1.29 plus paint, brushes(no model spray paint existed yet) and glue. This situation continued for about 3 years-I picked horses, mother and uncles did well at the track, everyone was happy. Until that day.
It all happened on a Saturday in June, I think. School had ended for the Summer. I was at home with my father. My mother took the bus to her weekly betting adventure at Monmouth Park. I do not know why, but he never drove her there. Maybe he objected to gambling, maybe she liked the bus ride, who knows.
Anyway, this particular day I decided that I wanted to place a bet of my own on a horse that I knew would win. I do not remember what prompted this decision, but for some reason I chose to have my own payday at the track. Of course 13 year olds could not bet money, or even be allowed onto racetrack property, so I asked my mother to place the bet for me. Also I needed her to advance me my allowance for that week, so that my 2 bucks, not hers, would go for the bet. If I lost, so be it. If I won, I would be rich. I advised my mother to place her own bet on my sure winner. It was quite the long shot bet, went off at 20 something to 1. That means that it would pay about 50 dollars for the standard 2 dollar bet. Remember, this was around 1957. Gas sold for 20 cents a gallon. VW Beetles cost $1749.00(never forgot that price). 50 bucks seemed like a fortune.
My mother agreed to place the bet for me, reminding me that it was my money and if the horse lost then my money would be gone. I eagerly agreed, and emphasized the horse and the race. I think that it was “Happy New Year” in the fifth. She seemed annoyed at my insistence, but promised to bet on my horse.

In those days Monmouth Park was a big deal in the area. Many people worked there, visiting gamblers spent money locally, the track payed both tons of taxes and large payoffs to Jersey politicians. Also, a local radio station live-carried the calling of each race, which I attended everyday. I had an interest in all things horse-racing related.

On the day in question I made sure to come inside to listen to the fifth race, sitting in the kitchen with my ear next to the radio. My father worked in the yard cutting the grass. The race started in the usual way, with “Annnnd they're off!” followed with the hoof-by-hoof coverage by the monotone-voiced announcer. It was a claiming race covering 6 furlongs(3/4 mile). My horse went off at 26 to 1 odds, which pays $54.00 for a $2.00 bet.
"Happy New Year" started last then swept around 12 other horses to win the race. I jumped up and ran outside screaming “He won, he won, my horse won.” I found my father mowing in the front yard. “He won the race” I shouted over the sound of the mower. He turned off the mower and looked at me with kind of a wry half smile, then he looked down and shook his head a little. He mumbled something like “I wouldn't count on it”. I had no idea what he meant. He was not a very optimistic person, maybe he was just being opposite. I resumed running around the yard, drunk with my good fortune. What would I do with the 54 bucks? 54 bucks! A fortune to a young boy from a family of limited means! I had never felt so excited in all my 12 years. Then I learned what he meant.

My mother returned from the track on the 7 bus that ran from Long Branch, past the track in Oceanport, through Eatontown where we lived, then on to Red Bank. I did not go to the corner to wait for her bus. I waited in the house, watching an old western movie on the tv.
She entered the house without saying a word, then started to walk to the kitchen to make dinner. I went up to her-she still had on her coat-and asked her if she played my horse. She said yes. Then I reminded her that my horse had won the race. She said “I know that”. Then I asked her if I could have my winnings She looked at me without emotion, then turned to walk away, and as she turned from me she said “Heh, maybe I'll give you a dollar”, then she took off her coat and went into the kitchen.
Funny thing, I didn't give it a second thought, I just went back to the western and waited for dinner. We never spoke of it ever again. It didn't bother me at all that she took my tip and 2 bucks, parlayed it into at least $54-$108 if she also bet on Happy New Year for herself, then punked me out of any of it. She could have explained to me that we really needed the money and “here's a tenner for your help”. She could have done anything else than just blow me off. 
Funny thing, it didn't bother me at all, although...I never again picked another racehorse.