“I said my thank you’s a year ago. I just wanted to say...You guys were and are my family. We will always love you guys. Thank you again for so many years of hard work, laughter, tears and fun. It’s time for me to go. God Bless.” The guys started a long, loud, emotional applause. I shook Richard Green’s hand and walked back through the double doors without turning around and looking back. It was done.
I had already boxed up my office and the contents were sitting on my desk waiting for me. Margie came in to say goodbye. As expected, she was a sobbing mess. I understood. For the past year we’d all said how we’d stay in touch. How this was just a change at work, but our friendship would endure. But we knew the truth. The sad, unbending truth, that life rolls on and seldom do we keep up with the folks we want to, and even need to keep up with. I knew that for all the good intentions, this was the last day I would see a lot of these people again. Margie gave me a hug and slipped me a card to give to my dad. I hugged her and kissed her cheek and loaded the three cardboard boxes onto a dolly.
Richard Green walked out to the truck with me and helped me load the boxes into the back seat. Another nice gesture. Richard Green was a working man’s executive. That was for sure. I felt better and more at ease about the care he would take with our legacy. He shook my hand and asked me one last time if I was sure I wouldn’t reconsider and stay on as a senior V.P. I declined. “I have more money than you’ll ever pay me. Why would I do that?” I asked. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “I envy you, Joe. You’re forty-four years old and worth more than you’ll ever find the bottom of.” I smiled, “It’s just money, Richard.” I said to him. “Just dollars and cents. My blessings were the memories made here in this building and with these men.” Green shook my hand again. “I got more form this endeavor than just a trash hauling business, Joe. I learned a lot from you about how to really be a boss. Thank you.” Then Richard Green hugged me. Hand to God. The Jewish guy from Brooklyn with the Wharton School business degree and the four-hundred dollar Johnston and Murphy’s hugged me. And I think he was getting tears in his eyes. “I bought a business. I made a friend.” He said quietly. And that -as they say- was that.
5
Time to
Go
Almost six months had passed since that morning when I said goodbye for the last time, to Mezilli Trash Hauling and Cartage. The first month was fun. It was summer so I slept in, because the kids didn’t have to go to school. For the first time in my entire life I didn’t have to play “Wake-up Zone” with myself or my children. I had this game...I would walk into their room at six AM sharp, flick the lights and tell them “Okay campers, you are now in the Wake-up Zone!” In a voice that sounded like a camp announcer on a crackling P.A. system. “You have ten minutes to be up and out of bed!”
The rules were simple...you could lay there as long as you wanted but in ten minutes dad was turning the lights on for real and pulling the covers off your bed. I only ever had to do that a few times before the boys got in the habit of just getting out of bed promptly at six. I didn’t play the game with Emmy because her school started later than the boys. Usually she heard me getting them up and woke up on her own anyway.
For June, July, and August, I slept until Seven AM, which is like slothfulness for me. We spent almost the entire summer at the beach. We rented a cottage in Margate and essentially lived there for the month of July. June and August we commuted. I went to every Phillies home game with Petey. I planted my tomatoes and helped the Old Man grow some of his own for a change. I worked out every day (which Angie really appreciated) I hung out with Uncle Franny and drove him to his new farm a few times. The kids returned to school in September and so I was driving the car pool in the morning, I puttered around the house, cleaned the kitchen every two hours, washed the dog, detailed the cars, and basically...I started the process of driving Angie nuts.
We were too young to be under each other’s feet all day long. Old people can sit in the living room and watch TV in silence, but not a couple in their early forties. I was going nuts without anything to do and you can only vacuum the carpet so many times in a day. I was becoming OCD about cleaning the kitchen and it all came to a head that morning when I reactively scraped Angie’s eggs into the sink before she’d even taken a bite, and then started washing the dish. After she threatened to turn me into sausage, she got serious. “Joseph,” she said, “It’s time for us to move.” I sat down at the table across from her. I didn’t say a word, I just listened. “You’re antsy, Joe.” she continued, “You know you want to make this move and yet you keep hesitating. You won’t let yourself start the next chapter of you’re life Babe, and the last chapter ended almost a year ago.” Again, Angie knows me. “Babe,” she said firmly, “If we’re going to make this move, it’s time to just make it. You’re waiting for the perfect time to tell your dad, right?” I nodded my head, still just listening to her being the wise woman I married. “Joseph there is not going to be a perfect time for him, and if you don’t make the move soon, the boys will be in high school and then we’ll be stuck here.” Angie got up and started making herself another plate of scrambled eggs. Over her shoulder she said, “Homecoming is next month, let’s just you and me go this year. And let’s come back with a new address.” It wasn’t a question or a suggestion. It was her statement on the matter.
I got up and kissed her on the cheek and told her I was going for a walk. She looked at me and smiled. “He took Uncle Franny to the farm, Joe. He won’t be back until dinner.” I smiled at her. My wife, again how she knew me! I was intending on walking over to my dad’s house and talking to him about moving. Angie knew it before I even said a word. And she was right; Pop was taking Uncle Franny out to Chester County to the farm. They’d gotten in the habit of this every Wednesday.
“You’re right, Anj,” I said to her. “It’s time.” I called Jannie, our realtor friend in Lynchburg, and put her on speaker. Angie and I sat at the kitchen table and talked to her for ten minutes, telling her what we wanted. We’d narrowed it down to Forest, a suburb of Lynchburg where we could still buy a house sitting on a lot that was at least five acres. Jannie said she would email us some more listings. I told her we’d be down the next month for homecoming and we’d be seriously looking. Jannie said she’d get right to work on it and she hung up. I looked at Angie.
“Do you think I should tell the Old Man now or wait until we buy something first?” I said to her. Angie was quiet after that. Thoughtful. She raised her coffee cup to her lips and before she took a sip she said; “Maybe you wait until we buy, Joe. Maybe if the deal is already done when you tell him, he accepts it better, You know?” “Yeah,” I shrugged, “I was thinking the same thing. He’s going to take this hard, and to be honest, it’s going to be hard on me, Anj. Selling the business was the best thing that ever happened to our relationship.” Angie stood up and walked over to me and sat down on my lap facing me. She got about three inches from my face and said, “Joseph, we either make this move this fall or we don’t move...ever. You hear me? No indecision. You’ve never been indecisive and you’re not going to start now. We go to homecoming, we decide on a house, or we decide to stay. Either way it’s done after that, agreed?” That’s my Angie. Tough as nails.
The month between this conversation and Homecoming felt like three years. I tried to stay busy outside the house so I didn’t get under Angie’s skin. I spent a lot of time with the Old Man and my uncles. Uncle Franny was having some of the boys from the neighborhood come out and help clear some wooded land on the farm. They were the grandsons of the guys he played pinochle with, and some of their friends. It was funny watching Uncle Franny and my Dad work these kids. When I was a kid, my Old Man would put a boot up my rear end without a second thought. “Jeeziz Mary and Joziph!” he’d scream at me, “If you don’t step it up, we’re gonna have a three-legged race to the hospital!” He said this to me for years until I finally asked him what it meant. He said “It means if you don’t work harder (or roll those c
ans faster, or hose out those dumpsters faster...) I’m gonna stick my foot so far up your ass it will get stuck there and I’ll have to hop behind you on one leg, to the hospital, to get it removed!”
I had a work ethic like an ant because of him. Uncle Franny was the same way. Now, these kids who were clearing brush at the farm were in their early twenties. They weren’t raised the way I was or the way Uncle Franny raised my cousins. These kids were soft. Seriously. I’m not some old curmudgeon who never thinks “these kids today” stand up to scrutiny when compared to my generation. No, these kids really are soft. It drove Uncle Franny and Pop crazy too. I could always tell when one of them was ready to uncork a stream of profanity on one of these mooz-ahdells and plant a boot in their pants. Somehow they both kept each other in check and got the work done. Granted, it took two weeks longer than it should have, but they got it done.
Homecoming was a week away. Angie and I had made arrangements with my folks to watch the kids. The kids weren’t very happy about not going with us. It’s not that they didn’t love spending time with Nonno and Nonna, but they really wanted to go to Lynchburg and see the mountains again. Angie and I almost caved in and took them with us, but we knew we needed to have them stay here so we could leave the emotion out of our decision making. If it was up to the kids, we would have left the furniture and everything and just moved to Virginia the next day. We needed to have a few days alone to look things over and think things through. So we remained firm and we went to Homecoming alone.
Angie and I talked the whole trip down. It occurred to us that this was the first time we’d taken a trip, just the two of us, since before Emily was born. There were always kids, and ball, games, and dance recitals, and family vacations. We had not had a weekend to ourselves in almost seven years. We rounded that bend outside of Culpeper Va. where you can see the mountains for the first time, and we looked at each other, and smiled. There was really no debating this. This trip was a buying excursion, not another factfinding jaunt.
Pulling into Lynchburg on Thursday afternoon, we checked into our hotel and headed over to Jannie’s office. We told her to call her husband Kirk and we would take them to dinner. Jannie said Kirk would be finished with practice at four-thirty, could we meet them at six? It was settled and Angie and I just drove around campus and remarked how the school just kept growing. When I was going to school here, and playing hockey for the men’s team, it was so much smaller. We didn’t even have a rink on campus. We drove in to Roanoke late at night for practice and games. There was only one floor to the main educational building. There were not nearly as many dorms and they weren’t nearly as nice. And of course, there were only about twenty-five hundred kids here when I attended. This year they hit fourteen thousand on campus and another hundred-thousand or so online. Things have changed a lot.
We signed-in for the Homecoming activities at the Welcome Center and walked over to the little prayer chapel on top of the hill. I always loved this little chapel. It had a quaint country feel to it and seemed very sacred in its own way. Angie and I went in and sat down near the front.
Now, you need to know something. We’re not Catholic. I mean we are, but we aren’t. You know what I mean? Angie and I were both raised Catholic, and attended Catholic school from Kindergarten until College. The summer of my junior year in High School, I went to a Fellowship of Christian Athletes camp with some guys from my hockey team and I really liked it. I decided to attend their church as well.
Of course, my Old Man hated the notion and my mother...oh Madonn, my mother thought I’d sold my soul to Beelzebub. “Whaddayou mean you’re a Baptist?” She hissed at me, “The Pope isn’t good enough for you anymore Joseph? Saint Francis isn’t good enough for you?” She was losing her grip. “Who do you have to look to for spiritual guidance now Joseph? Huh? Tell me! We have the Pope. The Holy Father. Who do you have now?”
My mom was turning green. I knew better than to be a wise guy, not with the Old Man standing there, and his hand twitching like he actually needed to belt me one. “Billy Graham, Ma, you like him, right?” I answered. Good God, the only thing my mother hates more than me answering with a smart mouth when she’s ranting at me, is me answering with respect and proving her wrong.
She stared at me for a second. Then she cocked her head a little, like a Labrador puppy. “He’s a Baptist?” she said, more to herself than to me. “Yeah Ma, he’s a Baptist.” The Old Man stepped in and was remarkably calm about the whole thing. “Listen Joey, we’re a Catholic family. If you want to go to another church –as long as it’s not some cult or some fajoot nonsense- you can go. But you still go to Mass once a week and you make confession too. You understand?” Pop was pretty much laying the law down, but he was calm about it. I thought it was fair enough. “Sure Pop,” I said, “That’s fair. Listen Ma, I’m not leaving the Holy Church. Just doing both, okay? It’s a place to hang out with the guys on the team.” My mother accepted the terms reluctantly. When my dad says his piece, it’s over. She knows this. They’re old-school in that way. But she didn’t like it a bit.
To be honest, I pretty much straddled the fence on the matter. I liked the new way of viewing things that my Protestant friends had, but I felt a connection to the liturgy and tradition of The Church of Rome. So I went to Mass on Saturday afternoons with my grandmother and Church on Sunday morning with my FCA friends. Angie had gone with me a few times and decided it was for her as well. In our marriage, we had basically been Baptists, but retained our heritage in Catholicism. It was easier than never seeing our families again, which –believe me- is how it would have played out.
So here we were, sitting in the Prayer Chapel all alone, while fourteen thousand college kids were going about their business down the hill from us, and our kids were back in Philly, being spoiled by their grandparents. Angie took my hand and said, “Joey, let’s pray.” She’s a strong girl, my Angie, and sometimes her strength blows me away. We walked to the front and knelt down by the tiny podium. “I used to come here when I wanted to skip Chapel services” I told her. “We could sit in the back with a textbook and study. It looked like were praying.” Angie smacked my arm playfully. “Is that all you did here?” she smiled. The only time Angie and I had ever been apart since seventh grade was the four years I was here in Virginia and she was at West Chester University. I knew what she was getting at, even if she was only teasing. “Oh you know better. There was never anybody for me, but you. These girls can’t make gravy like you.
Angie grinned and we were silent for just a few seconds. “I feel like I want to light a candle.” She whispered. We both smiled. Angie and I prayed together. Just asking for a little help from above made this decision feel better. So did kneeling next to my wife.
We walked out of the chapel and got in my truck. Jannie had texted us and told us where we’d meet. It was a great little place about five miles from campus. I hadn’t seen Jannie and Kirk since last year when we came down for the big hockey celebration. Kirk had played at Liberty a long time after I had been there. He and Jannie are a lot younger than Angie and Me. But we have a common bond with our love for hockey and our school. Kirk is a great coach, and I think he’s going to bring us a championship one of these days.
I told Jannie right up front to just go ahead and make this a working dinner. We only have the weekend and we want to see something and make a decision. We’re ready to buy. What realtor doesn’t like hearing that, right? We ordered an appetizer and Jannie broke out her iPad. Technology is wonderful. I remember when the Old Man and my mom were looking at a beach house in Brigantine. The realtor lugged in those old “MLS” books that were the size of the Manhattan white pages. My mother thumbed through those things for hours looking for a little place “down the shore” as we say in Philly.
Jannie showed us a couple of nice places but nothing grabbed us. She remembered a nice neighborhood out in Forest, where there was still a number of neighborhoods with really big lots. I had told her I wanted two-to-five acres. I
wanted a garden and a pool and to still have room for the kids to run around. Jannie showed us one house on a corner lot that backed up to a big section of woodlands. It was “Williamsburg Blue” with big white columns out front. Very Antebellum. Angie squeezed my arm impulsively. That was the one. “Jannie, can we see this one here?” I asked her. Jannie perked up a bit. “Joe, you see the asking price, right?” she said. “That’s seven-hundred, thirty-five thousand dollars.”
I looked at Angie and laughed a little. If there is a fun thing about being really rich, it’s those moments when you realize that nobody knows how much you actually have. I told Angie once that it means we’re living right, because we apparently aren’t pretentious.
“Yeah I see that, Jannie.” I laughed, “If we like it, we’ll find a way to make it happen, okay?” Jannie liked that, obviously. Kirk smiled a little and we turned the conversation to the hockey team while Jannie emailed the listing agent. We ordered our dinner while we waited for the other agent to respond. Jannie had taken us to this nice place called Isabella’s. It was really a first-class restaurant, and I was impressed, which is saying something, considering I’m an Italian from Little Italy in Philly. Angie and I loved the name. We had seriously considered naming Emily, “Isabella” when she was born, but we thought about the teasing she might take being “Izzy Mezzili” and we went with something far less ethnic.
Angie and I had both gone to college away from the city, and when we got back, we were very aware of how stereotypical some of our friends had become. There is nothing wrong with heritage and tradition if that’s really you. But some of them had gone to great lengths to cultivate an aura of Italian-American life that really wasn’t theirs. Anj and I both decided not to do this. We were proud of where we came from but we weren’t trying to live in a time warp.
The Legend of Joey Trucks: The Accidental Mobster Page 9
