This little boy is our youngest son Kenny, at one of our early Carnevale celebrations at our home in Mineola. For point of reference, he’s now 36 years old
While they most definitely have been celebrating Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and will continue to do it into tonight, in Italy the celebration of the days before Ash Wednesday and Lent are a big deal too. Celebrated all over Italy, in Naples, where my Dad’s Family is from, the days leading up to “Fat Tuesday” will feature parades, elaborate costumes, and gluttonous feasts as a way to counter balance the stark period of Lenten fasting. Called Carnevale in Italy, that name comes from the term “Carnem Levare“, which roughly translates to “take meat away.”
While we didn’t have masks and multi day parades, the celebration of Carnevale in our house when I was growing up always included an Italian meal on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. Sadly, the tradition in our family ended with my Dad’s death, till one year in the late 80s, my wife Susie and I decided to revive it. That first year, shopping was quickly done and cooking commenced when I got home from work, and our guest list was limited to our family. In subsequent years, the preparation, menu, decorations, and guest list expanded, and it became a way for our family to honor the memory of my Dad.
Once we both retired, there were many years we were not home on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, so our celebration of Carnevale was reduced to dinner at an Italian restaurant or even just pizza! For some reason, this year we decided to revive the tradition!
We started with beef, pork, boneless chicken thighs, and sweet Italian sausage, which was browned in olive oil, and then lovingly placed in our scratch made tomato sauce to simmer for a couple of hours. Paper thin Pork Cutlets from Bagliani’s were stuffed with my Stuffed Mushroom stuffing, rolled up, and browned. They were than placed in a casserole dish with a generous portion of the aforementioned sauce, in preparation for their final cooking in the oven. These beautiful meats, along with the sauce they helped create, will be served with imported rigatoni pasta (because none of our pasta companies seem to remember how to make real rigatoni), and accompanied with garlic bread, and imported Chianti wine!
As well as helping me cook, Susie has set a beautiful table, and although our celebration will be small this year (just us and our neighbor Doc Anderson), Carnevale is back in our home, as well as memories, almost as tasty as tonight’s food!
The Christmas Tree is perhaps the one universal symbol of the Christmas Season, and has been the centerpiece of our Christmas celebration for all our lives. If you read my recent blog about Christmas Memories (https://rnewadventures.com/2022/12/12/christmas-in-the-city/) you may remember me saying that in our family, the tradition was that your folks put up the tree and that Santa decorated it, and that was indeed the tradition till it wasn’t, but it spawned a new tradition, making the decorating of the Christmas Tree an event. I remember back in our Jackson Heights apartment sharing the task with my best friend David, and some friends we both went to high school with. When we moved to Bayside, the tradition was expanded to include even more folks. Some were people I went to college with and others were folks I worked with. It just became another occasion and a way to celebrate the joy of the holiday season, with family and friends who were like family.
In a comment about my last post, my college friend Andy Bellenkes said “I rejoice in the memories I cherish, celebrating a Christmas or two with the D’Elias, watching your Dad put up the lights along the roof line of your house, sitting with you, your Mom and Dad (and others whose identities at the moment I cannot recall) in the living room and feeling the familial warmth and friendship that in my memories so characterized your home.” Even after Susie and I got married, we continued this tradition at my folks house.
Here’s a picture from my folk’s house in Bayside, at what was Billy’s first Christmas Tree decorating at his Grandparent’s home. An evening populated with good friends I worked with at ABC.
That baby in my arms is just born William Ryan D’Elia, who now is the father of our
three Grandkids. The little girl in front of my Mom is Melinda McGuire Geraghty,
now the Mom of two adorable little people.
As our kids got older, we also continued the tradition at our Mineola house. Some years there were friends of the kids involved, sometimes it was just family, but it was always an event. The holiday toasting flutes would be brought out, the André would be poured, and somehow the tree would always get decorated! I must admit that I am married to a lady with a sort of Christmas Tree Ornament OCD, who would often times rearrange the ornaments after they’d been placed on the tree (especially when the kids were small, and couldn’t reach that high), but we never objected! It’s a tradition of ours that started in New Hyde Park, traveled with us to Mineola, and now resides on Pennlyn Place in Ocean City!
And then there were the ornaments themselves that had become a D’Elia Family Tradition! There were a few things that came from our folks, that Susie and I remember seeing on the trees we had growing up, giving us a kind of time continuum from our childhood. Then there are ornaments that have memories attached to them from our 44 married Christmases, either from places we bought them or from events in our life. Although our tree is beautiful to us, it’s not a designer tree, with carefully curated ornaments! It’s a road map of our family, and our 44 Christmases!
So there you have it…the story of one family’s Christmas Tree, and the central part it has played in our holiday celebration!
As Susie and I sit here in Ocean City on this Christmas Eve, and look at the 44th edition of Our Family’s Christmas Tree, we think back on all our wonderful Christmas memories from Christmases past, and we reflect on the blessings of Christmas that we’ve experienced. We hope that this Christmas finds you feeling blessed, and knowing that you are loved by those in your life! Merry Christmas……
Well, it’s that time of the year, when Hallmark and almost all other networks are hot and heavy into Christmas movies. Watching them recently has made me think about Christmases way back in the 50s when I was a kid.
My Mom’s due date was just before Christmas of 1949, but apparently I had other ideas, so I missed what could have been my first Christmas, and cheated my Dad out of a tax deduction on their 1949 taxes. At 9:15 PM, on Monday, January 2nd, 1950, I was born at Physician’s Hospital in Jackson Heights, New York. It was a neighborhood hospital that has since closed, in the Queens neighborhood that my folks lived in, and that I grew up in. If it’s possible to say this in New York City, I was born in my home town. My Mom, Lilias Chalmers Sim D’Elia was 33 years old, and my Dad, Frank Vincent D’Elia was 39 years old at the time of my birth. Both of my folks were members of New York’s Metropolitan Opera Chorus, and from her stories, this was a very different time for mothers-to-be in the workforce. Being concerned about losing her job because of her pregnancy, my Mom worked every day from the time she found out she was pregnant till I showed up. In fact, Saturday, December 31st, she did both a matinee and an evening show at the Met, and less than 48 hours later, I joined the family, and made my Mom and Dad first time parents.
The story I always heard was that when my folks got married in 1947, they were lucky to get a sublet apartment from a friend in Jackson Heights, as apparently in post World War II NYC, apartments in their price range were not easy to come by. It was a 4th floor walkup apartment in one of Jackson Height’s many Garden Apartment complexes. It had been a somewhat fancy one bedroom, one bath apartment in it’s day. It even had a dining room, and looked out over what had been manicured gardens. That dining room became my bedroom, the gardens became overgrown and neglected, and the neighborhood changed, but we lived in that sublet apartment until I was 18 years old, when we moved to Bayside. Our apartment was just slightly off Roosevelt Avenue on 84th Street, so a feature of the apartment was also the #7 elevated line running by the windows! The 82nd Street stop of the #7 train was just a 2 block walk away, and my folks could be at the Met just off Times Square in Manhattan after a 20 minute ride, so it was a very convenient distance away from work for them and it was the first home I knew.
I’ve seen lots of pictures over the years, so don’t really know when I actually start remembering Christmases, but think it was probably about 1953. Our apartment in Jackson Heights was pretty good sized, but the living room also contained a baby grand piano, a big console TV/Radio/Record Player, a large mahogany dish hutch, a couch, coffee table, an armchair, and a small pump organ. I’m sure the furniture worked out better when they’d had a dining room, but my arrival had taken that out of the equation, but we always had space for a Christmas tree…a real tree
Now, you may ask, did we drive out into the country (that would have been Long Island) and cut our tree down? Well, my Dad was a product of growing up in NYC, and didn’t even get a driver’s license till after I was born, and a car was several years later, so no. In those days in Queens, you got a tree in the neighborhood, either at an establishment that had popped up in a vacant lot, or you bought one that was leaning up against the front of the A&P or Dilberts grocery stores around the corner on Roosevelt Avenue. It was just like in the movies, but our trees never came with a wooden X on the bottom! My Mom and Dad would then carry it home, up the four flights of stairs to our apartment. I don’t know where the tradition came from, but the tradition in our house when I was growing up was that your folks put the tree up, but Santa was the one who decorated it. I remember one incredible year when it seemed to be magically decorated in minutes, but I’m sure I’d probably fallen asleep, and it just seemed like minutes! Ahhh, that Santa!
Speaking of Santa, a visit with the jolly round man was always a part of my holiday, usually at Macy’s on 34th Street, sometimes between a Met matinee and evening show. My memories are of that Toyland/Santa Village being as grand and incredible as it always looks in movies, and the toy department in Macy’s being huge. From large Lionel Train layouts, to every new toy you could think of! Of course, without the internet, we were a lot less informed than I’m sure our three Grandkids are today, but somehow, we knew about the latest from Remco, AC Gilbert, American Flyer, Lionel, or Fisher-Price, and they were always on our Christmas Lists.
One of my first Christmases, “Santa” brought me a red pedal fire engine, that I enjoyed for many years. This was also the first of the “problem” gifts I received at Christmas! Late this Christmas Eve, after my folks had done an evening performance at the Met, they opened what must have been a huge box, to assemble the truck. As my Dad put it together (probably with my Mom reading him the directions), he made an unfortunate discovery! There were only 3 wheels in the box! My Dad, ever resourceful, figuring that I should at least be able to sit in it on Christmas morning, fashioned an empty cigar box as a substitute wheel. FYI…before they went to sleep early on Christmas morning, they discovered that the missing wheel had rolled out of the box and was lodged behind the couch….Christmas was saved!
Christmas morning I found that Santa had set up a Lionel freight train under the tree, and that became a valued D’Elia Family heirloom. With a Pennsylvania Railroad steam engine (that actually puffed smoke) with coal tender, and then a box car, tanker car, gondola car, and ending in a light-up caboose, it made many passes around that tree until it eventually years later became a part of my yearly train set-up. That same little old Lionel train also made many revolutions around Susie’s and my tree in Mineola, and got to be played with by our three kids, and today it resides in North Carolina with our oldest son Bill, so the next generation of D’Elia kids can marvel at 1953 Lionel excellence!
Oh, and the presents I remember, besides that Lionel Train set. There seemed to be lots of building toys, like sets of Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys, Erector Sets, and I remember getting them all, and building incredible edifices. There were trikes and as I got older bikes (one that I couldn’t try on Christmas Day, because Santa had gotten a defective version). There were lots of Dinky Toys, and there were accessories for my trains. One year, the hot present was a slot racing set, a Lionel version of which I found under the tree…but only one car worked Christmas morning! There were also two-way radios, a crystal radio set, and other small electronics that probably were my early entry into my life in radio, but that was as far the electronic’s industry entered into those early Christmases of my life…so different from our kids and Grandkids! One “electronic” game I remembered getting was Tudor Electric Football Game! You set up the players on the field, plugged in the cord, turned it on, and a motor vibrated the playing field, and the players “magically” moved across the field…but not necessarily in the correct direction! I remember that one year I got a kid’s version of the very popular Polaroid Camera – magic! Then there were the “toys” that might seem questionable looking back from today’s world view. Things like my AC Gilbert Chemistry Set, where if you closely followed the instructions, you could produce a test tube full of truly noxious smelling material, with an odor that took days for your mother to get out of the apartment. Or the Wood Burning Kit, that allowed a young child to use a soldering iron type of tool to burn designs into balsa wood! But the worst had to be the Lead Soldier Kit, that came with molds, little lead bars, and a little plug-in electric hot plate and pot that you used to turn the bars into molten lead, that you then poured into the molds to make the soldiers. Today, that would be a lawsuit waiting to happen!
One of my main Christmas Eve memories, that I’m sure started as a convenience for my Mom and Dad long ago, is a tradition of long standing in our family. Now remember, most Christmas Eves my Mom and Dad would be getting home after 11 PM, having just done at least one opera performance (and 2 if the Eve fell on Saturday). Sometime, before I was aware of it, they started having their own quiet time celebration as they decorated the tree, assembled gifts, and set everything up. There was some food and a drink or two as they both played Santa for me (amazing how Santa and my Mom had such similar hand writing). When I got older and got to participate, the tradition became Italian Cold Cut Sandwiches and André Champagne, before I’d scurry off to bed, to get up way too early. Eventually, the opening the presents part of Christmas became a part of that Christmas Eve celebration too, as then on Christmas morning I could get up as early as I wanted to play with my gifts, while my folks could get some shut-eye, as they probably had to do a show that night! Now, we don’t open presents on Christmas Eve, but the tradition of Italian Cold Cut Sandwiches and André was a staple of our kids growing up, was something we continued to do as they became young adults, and is still something Susie and I still do, as do the kids in their own homes! It’s something that Kenny has even tried to duplicate when he’s been away from home performing on Christmas Eve, either on National Tours or even Cruise Ships! Funny how Family Traditions sometimes get started, and then endure!
So I’ll be thinking of my folks, and the Christmases of my childhood, and all those wonderful Christmas memories as we eat our sandwiches this December 24th, and probably shedding a tear or two thinking back to when I was a kid, and when Billy, Krissi and Kenny were little too! Christmas is a time for memories, and Susie and I are very blessed to have so many wonderful ones, shared with family and friends that are like family…people that we truly love! Hope you get to bathe in your Christmas memories this year, and even make some new ones! To quote the immortal words and sentiment of Clement Moore’s classic story, The Night Before Christmas………
“Happy Christmas to All, and to All a Good Night!”
September 29th in the year 1979 was a Saturday. I know that because that afternoon, at the C.W. Post Interfaith Chapel, Susan Johnson became Susan Johnson D’Elia, and my life changed forever! The story of how we ended up there started years before, but really got guidance a little over 2 years earlier, on the afternoon of July 3rd, 1977, when both Susie and I were guests at an early July 4th party in the back yard of Mary Ann and Bill Epperhart’s house in Oyster Bay. Sue knew Mary Ann as they both worked at Glen Cove Hospital as Registered Nurses, and Bill and I had been friends since we met years earlier at WCWP, The College Radio Station of C.W. Post College. There’s that CW Post connection again!
So, to continue our story, let’s go all the way back to the fall of 1967, when as a 17 high school graduate, I started as a commuter freshman at C.W. Post College. I wasn’t a great student, and really had no idea where I was going in life, which is why in short order I was a Theater Arts major, an English Major, a Philosophy Major, and a Political Science major, before finally settling on being a Music Major. Along the way, thanks to a class I had to take, I got involved at the college radio station, and as stories like to say, “the rest is history.”
Meanwhile, the young lady I was going to make my wife 43 years ago today, knew she wanted to be a nurse practically from the moment she was born it seems. Her early life lead up to it with Candy Striper and other volunteer jobs, and working at Nursing Homes, until finally after graduating from high school, she enrolled in the Pilgrim State Hospital School of Nursing on her way to getting her RN. There was lots of hands on learning at the hospital, but for their academic classes they were bused to C.W. Post College, and there’s that connection again!
As Susie is 2 years younger than I am, after meeting we discovered that we’d both been at Post at the same time! After 4 years of college, I graduated in the Spring of 1971, while Susie graduated from the 3 year program at Pilgrim in 1972. While we’d never met, nor to the best of our knowledge had we ever seen each other, the real possibility exists that during those couple of years that we both walked on the Brookville Campus, we might have passed each other, and that was our C.W. Post connection!
So, after that July 3rd, 1977 party, Susie and I were definitely an item. I think the description “Love at First Sight” could indeed be applied to us, and it only took me getting my permanent job at ABC Radio for me to take the leap, and on Christmas Day, 1978 ask her to marry me! In case you’re wondering, she said yes, and the planning began! The first hurdle was where to get married. Susie was raised a Protestant and I a Catholic. The question was how could we honor both of our families’ history, and answer was very easy for us….The Interfaith Chapel at C.W. Post! It was a lovely building, in a beautiful setting, on the college campus we’d both traveled while in school! Connection complete!
On the afternoon of Saturday September 29, 1979, at the Interfaith Chapel, with a Catholic Priest and a Protestant Minister officiating, in front of our family and friends, we joined two lives into one, and this great adventure we’ve had the past 43 years started! My life has been blessed every single day since then, because this wonderful lady is my lover, my best friend, my teacher, really, my EVERYTHING! Thanks for saying “I Do” 43 years ago today, I thank God every night for bringing you into my life! I love you more each day, and will love you forever and here’s to another 43 years of love together!!!
HAPPY 43rd ANNIVERSARY TO THE LOVE OF MY LIFE!
FYI..unlike the usual occurrence in this blog, Susan Johnson D’Elia did zero proof reading on today’s story. Any and all mistakes are exclusively the fault of yours truly.
I first wrote this blog several years after the 9/11 Attacks, and over the past 21 years, I have revised and republished it several times. The following is my latest revision of our personal memories of that day we’d all really rather forget, when our world changed forever.
Anyone who was just about anywhere in the New York Metropolitan area on the morning of September 11, 2001, will always remember that day, and where they were. I know in our family that’s the case. My wife Sue was at work at Hampton Street School in Mineola. Our oldest son Billy was in his second year at Ithaca College, and his brother and sister, Krissi and Kenny, were sophomores at Mineola High School. I was at work at WABC Radio, 17 floors above Penn Station.
I remember it was a great looking, if uneventful, September morning. There was just a touch of fall in the air – it was one of those special kinds of days we get after the humidity of summer leaves. I was, as usual, on the 7:24 LIRR train from Mineola to Penn Station. Just before the train entered the tunnel under the East River to take us from Queens to Manhattan, we got our usual view of the Manhattan Skyline. The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and the Twin Towers…they were all there. As I said, a totally uneventful September morning in all respects….but that was soon to change.
Shortly after the first plane hit at 8:46 AM, word started to come into the newsroom that a plane had hit the World Trade Center’s North Tower. It was primary day in New York, and there were reporters around the city for the various TV morning shows. Almost immediately, Dick Oliver of Channel 5 went on the air from Park Row, just outside of City Hall. They weren’t the best shots, but you definitely could see the fire and damage to the tower. Everyone assumed that it was a small plane that had hit and no one could understand how someone could have missed seeing a structure as big as the World Trade Center on a beautiful, clear morning. There was speculation of a student pilot, or someone who had a heart attack – just about anything but what had really happened, which up until that point was unthinkable to most of us.
By 9 o’clock, better pictures of the damage were available on TV, including long shots of the buildings from further uptown. Just before 9:03 AM, I was standing in studio 17E next to Chief Engineer Kevin Plumb, when we noticed a plane flying into the frame of the shot. Assuming we were looking at a small plane trying to get a better view of what was happening, one of us commented, “what the heck is that plane trying to do?” At 9:03 we were shocked when we saw that plane (which we later found out was a Boeing 767) crash into the South Tower and explode in a ball of flames. At the same moment, Susie was standing in the Teacher’s Lounge of Hampton Street School, next to a good friend, Midge McInnes. When that second plane hit, Midge lost her brother who worked in the tower at just about the level the plane hit. In that moment, everyone who saw that happen live, knew that life as we had known it up until that moment was over, and that there was a brand new reality.
I remember all hell breaking loose at the station as we all went into high gear. There was an incredible amount of misinformation flying around, and frankly, open fear from some. Many tried to act professionally, but since no one knew exactly what was going on, and since we were all working 17 floors above Penn Station and a couple of blocks west of the Empire State Building, we frankly wondered if we might be in the target zone for future attacks. The next hour was a blur of news reports, discussion and speculation. Shortly after the first plane hit, our morning anchor George Weber took off downtown armed with a cell phone and a recorder. He phoned in a couple of reports about what he was seeing, but as the cell phone system overloaded, we stopped hearing from him. Then at 9:59 AM, the South Tower collapsed. Faces stared at the TV pictures, and as a group, were almost unable to fathom what we’d seen. Less than 30 minutes later the North Tower collapsed, and these twin buildings, which were so identified with the skyline of New York City, were incredibly gone, along with close to 3,000 of our fellow New Yorkers.
So many questions hit us all at once…who would do this, how did it happen, how could these two huge buildings collapse, and one that was on all our minds at WABC, where was George Weber? The news reports continued, but with all the confusion it was hard to tell what was true and what wasn’t. Were there more hijacked planes out there, and had other attacks taken place in Washington and elsewhere around the country? Getting a landline phone call was very hard; cell service was pretty non-existent, communications among families and friends was almost impossible. It was over an hour later when we heard from George. He’d walked for blocks from the WTC site and had waited on a line at a pay phone before he was finally able to check in with the station. Okay, we knew one of our friends and coworkers was alive…but what about everyone else.
WABC’s 2001 9/11 Montage
The day dragged on, and we watched TV as they tried to figure out what had happened, and what was happening. One of the hardest tasks of the day was getting in touch with friends and family, finding out if they were okay, and assuring them that I was fine. The first response of the city was to shut down, and a lot of us wondered if we’d get home. Being above Penn Station, we kept looking down at the crowds milling around a closed Penn Station. We also kept looking a couple of blocks to the east at the Empire State Building and realizing it was once again the tallest building in New York!
Later that day, the Long Island Rail Road started running and those of us from Long Island headed downstairs, and like every other commuter that day, got on any train as long are it was leaving New York City! As the packed standing room only train came out of the tunnel into Queens, everyone looked to the south where the twin towers of the World Trade Center had been on the way in that morning, but now were replaced by smoke. It was very quiet in the train as everyone realized that those two buildings we’d seen every day on our commute into Manhattan were gone, along with all the folks who were working in them.
The days after September 11th were very strange to say the least. The fact that there were absolutely no planes in the sky made for a very eerie quiet that was very unlike the norm, especially for us living in Mineola, which could alternately be in the flight path to either LaGuardia or JFK Airports. I know that for weeks after the planes started flying again, every time one flew over I would find myself stopping and looking at it. Taking the LIRR into the city in the days after September 11th was also different. There was an uneasy quiet on the trains, that I guess came from a lot of folks who would rather be somewhere else, but who had responsibilities and had to do what they were doing. I remember not seeing people that had been regulars on our trains, and wondering if they were in the towers when they came down, or were they perhaps too scared to venture into Manhattan again. Questions I’d never have the answers to….
One thing that made the post 9/11 strangeness livable was the feeling that we were all in it together. There were American flags on houses, cars, businesses…virtually everywhere! Our Boy Scout Troop did a huge drive to get some of the supplies that the rescue workers at Ground Zero needed, and we had great response. People were friendlier to each other and more respectful…even politicians! From New York City to Washington, the political discourse had a united front. We weren’t Republicans or Democrats, Liberals or Conservatives, we were Americans. There was no finger pointing, just everyone shouldering the load and helping to move forward. If every cloud has to have a silver lining, that was September 11th’s.
Too bad that 21 years later, so many seem to have forgotten. There’s no way that anyone who lived through that day will not be thinking today about their experiences, about all the New Yorkers who are no longer with us and about how the rest of us pulled together as a team. On that day, 2,750 people lost their lives when the World Trade Center was attacked. Members of our Mineola Community were among the 455 of those victims who were fellow Long Islanders. Within the 2,750 victims that day were 415 who were emergency workers in New York City, who responded to the World Trade Center. They included 343 firefighters from the New York City Fire Department, 37 police officers with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department, 23 police officers of the New York City Police Department, 8 emergency medical technicians and paramedics from private emergency medical services, 3 New York State Court Officers, 1 Patrolman from the New York Fire Patrol, and 1 Special Agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
For months after 9/11, there were important people in our lives that we never saw, because we had friends and neighbors who worked around the clock for months on “the pile” looking for remains of the 2,750 victims of the attack. Today, I’ll also be thinking about my friends who were involved after the towers came down. People like NYPD ESU Officer Scott Strauss who pulled the last survivor out of the rubble, or PAPD Detective Don McMahon, who’s partner sped towards the Towers from JFK airport that morning just after the first plane hit, and who was the first PAPD Officer to die that day. Donnie then spent the next 6 months at the on site morgue, working to identify remains of the victims when they were found. We’ll also be thinking today of the many Firemen we know, both NYFD and others who spent so many hours on the pile digging, without regard for their own personal safety, and sadly several we know are paying the price with their health today. We Thank God that there are so many people among us who run towards trouble as the rest of us run away! As we remember 9/11, and the days, weeks, and months afterward, we thank you for your service and for your friendship and for setting an example for the rest of us.
In the fall of 2004, our youngest son Kenny started as a freshman at the Manhattan Campus of Pace University, which was located just across from New York’s City Hall. Members of the senior class who worked orientation, told us stories of what 9/11 was like for them, just days into their freshman semester at Pace. Kenny’s 4 college years were virtually spent at Ground Zero. In his second year, he lived in an apartment just behind the heavily damaged Deutsche Bank Building. As a Junior he lived in an apartment on John Street, just up the street from the South Street Seaport. The truth is that for years after, the neighborhood was an ongoing demolition/construction site, and frankly nobody wanted to live there, which is why college students (or their parents) could afford the rent. There were so many visible reminders of that horrible day, every time we drove through the neighborhood, around detours, and looked at the remains of the destroyed buildings. Remember that in addition to the North and South Towers, other builds lost due to the attack were 7 World Trade Center, Manhattan Community College’s Fireman Hall, 5 World Trade Center, St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, Marriott World Trade Center, US Customs Building, The Deutsche Bank Building, and several others. It took years for the area to appear “normal” again.
But as we remember 9/11 today, I know we live in a better world because people like Scott and Donnie are a part of it. As we remember those who died 21 years ago, I hope we will all also remember the heroes of September 11th. Friends, neighbors, family members, and people whose names we will never know, who stepped up on that horrible day. Ordinary folks who did extrodinary things, and renewed our faith in our fellow human beings. That’s the lesson I try to take from that horrible day 21 years ago. Yes indeed, 9/11/2001 was very personal to us!
FDIII – 9/11/2015
WABC’s 2002 9/11 Montage put together for the first anniversary
Have you ever had one of those moments in your life that whatever your actions were, affected the rest of your life? Today is one of those days in the lives of Susie and myself. You see, it was 45 years ago today that Susie and I met, and I can honestly say it was love at first sight!
Back in the Summer of 1977, NABET was in the middle of a 5 and a half month strike against ABC. Rather than running the board on the 8th floor of the ABC Building for WABC and WPLJ, I was picketing 3 days a week for 3 hours at a time. Thankfully, I was a 27 year old single guy, so not going through the financial peril a lot of the older married folks were suffering through. It was a sad, kind of poor summer, but I did have lots more free time than I normally would., and that’s why I was able to accept an invitation to a Fourth of July backyard Bar-b-cue on Sunday July 3rd!
The party was given by my friend Bill Epperhart and his wife Maryanne. I met Bill when we both worked at the CW Post College Radio Station, WCWP, and now Bill worked at WNBC. Bill’s wife Maryanne was a Registered Nurse at the Glen Cove Community Hospital, as was the the young lady I met that day, Susan Lynn Johnson, RN! Turns out that Susie had called in sick that day to attend the party, and many years later we found out from Maryanne that getting us together was the main inspiration for the party!
I’m very happy to say that it worked! We were thrown together at the party when I helped Susie light some fireworks she’d brought back from a visit to her Great Aunt in North Carolina, and as I said before, it was really Love at First Sight! The following weekend we went out on our first real date, and at the Dynasty Chinese restaurant in Roslyn, my fortune cookie said, “You Will Marry Your Current Lover and Be Happy”. 45 Years later, the fortune cookie is still correct!!
Happy Anniversary baby! I L Y J T W Y A then, now, and forever!! XO XO XO XO XO XO
Ten years ago, when Billy and Lori got married, Susie and Krissi, in preparation for the wedding had a manicure and a pedicure. They didn’t know it then, but that was the beginning of a tradition of long standing in our lives that came to be called “Nail Night!”
Late afternoon, every other Wednesday after work, my two ladies would go to see Kim at Best Nails on Second Street in Mineola and have their nails done. This continued even after we’d sold the Mineola house and made Ocean City our permanent home. When it started, Krissi was working in a cardiologist’s office by the train station in Mineola and living home. It continued as she still worked and went to CW Post for her Master’s of Public Administration degree. It was still a thing when she stopped living at home, and moved to Astoria, and she commuted via the Long Island Rail Road after she got her MPA, and started working at Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan.
It just so happened that separated from Best Nails by an alley, was the St. James Restaurant. While Mom and Krissi went and had their nails done, Dad held down a seat at the St. James’s Bar and waited for the girls. When they were done, we’d all have a drink at the bar, and then get a table in the restaurant and Dad would buy dinner. In fact, the St. James and Nail Night was the place we first met Michael shortly after he and Krissi started dating (she actually left him alone with me that first night), and for the rest of the time, every Nail Night, Mike and I joined the bar crowd at St. James waiting for our girls to show!
And quite a crowd it was! There were Doctors and other staff from Winthrop hospital just down the street, there were folks stopping for a shot or two on their way home from the train station, there was Ed who was a local Judge, and as Mineola is the seat of the Nassau County Government, there were lawyers, like Glenn the real estate lawyer, who actually handled the selling of our Mineola house for us! It was an interesting mix of folks who lived and worked in the neighborhood, with lots of regulars. It was a great location, and a good bar, but the real reason that these folks gathered at the bar of the St. James was the man behind the bar, Dennis Sweeney!
Dennis had been a commodity trader on Wall Street, who just had enough. His brother owned a bar and restaurant, and Dennis had done his fair share of time behind the bar, so he knew his way around. As he told us, it was a better life, with none of the pressure and the BS of his former life. I know we were very happy he made that decision, as were the rest of the St. James regulars! When Krissi worked at that local Doctor’s office next to the Mineola Train Station, she and her co-workers would often stop in, as did her Mom and Dad on days other than Nail Night, sometimes just for a drink with Dennis! Dennis was the father of two daughters, and we knew that he would watch out for Krissi, and in fact, when Mike started hanging around with us, Dennis gave Krissi a thumbs up on her new boyfriend!
Unfortunately, after years of having the same owner, new owners bought the St. James, and things started changing. Menu items that had been popular for years were re-worked, often times missing the mark in the opinion of regulars. The new owners wanted a new “vibe” and started to mess with personnel and the atmosphere. Gradually, the place felt less like Cheers and more like a sleazy sports bar, with too many TVs and too loud music! If their intention was to chase away the regulars, they were doing a good job!
Eventually, our Nail Nights ended, as we spent more and more of our time in OC and had less and less desire to be on Long Island. Eventually we heard that Dennis had less and less desire to be behind the bar at the St. James, and he moved on. We were sad, but totally understood! The last time we were in the St. James was 3 years ago on the weekend that Krissi and Mike got married. We were doing the rounds of Mineola, and in an effort to re-create those early Nail Nights with Mike, we went back to St. James for a drink. We found that without Dennis behind the bar, the bar that you had trouble finding a seat at back in the day, was now deserted! (Don’t get me started on why people buy a popular restaurant/bar and then change things and drive away the regulars!)
So turn the clock forward to the end of May, when we ran into a former neighbor who had been a fill-in bartender at the St. James. Turns out he knew that Dennis had moved on to Leo’s in Garden City, the next town south of Mineola and just blocks away from the St, James. With this new information, Susie and I resolved to stop in and see Dennis the next time we were on Long Island, and we did exactly that!
We got two seats at the end of the bar, and there was Dennis at the other end. As he walked towards us, he realized it was us, put a big smile on his face, and we had a wonderful reunion! We talked about our respective families and what was happening in everybody’s lives, and of course, we had two Grey Gooses Vodkas…shaken, cold, served up with a twist, with the marinated ice on the side! It was great to see him again, and reconnect with an old friend! Susie and I love the relationships we have in life with bartenders, waitresses, and waiters, and we were very happy to once again see this man, who we’d literary spent hours with over the years! As always, it’s the people that make a place special, at least that’s what we think!
This recent Memorial Day, Susie and I did something we haven’t done for years. In a very real sense, we Turned Back the Hands of Time! Let me give you a little background….
In August of 1986, Susie, Billy, and I moved to our new (to us) house at 40 Fairfield Avenue in Mineola, NY. About 3 months later, our family of 3 morphed into a family of 5 when Billy’s sister and brother Krissi and Kenny were born. For the next 31 years, we called 40 Fairfield our home and the Village of Mineola the place where we lived. When Billy was in first grade, he along with several of his school friends wanted to join Cub Scouts, so off we went to Cub Pack 246 that met at Mineola’s First Presbyterian Church. Billy’s friend John’s Dad, Andy McInnes, volunteered to be Cubmaster, and as I remembered my great experiences being a Boy Scout, I volunteered to help in anyway I could, and I became the Pack Treasurer. Starting that first year, in May of 1987, Billy and I joined Pack 246 and marched in the Mineola Memorial Day Parade. For the next 28 years, with and/or without our sons Billy and Kenny, I continued to march in that parade…first with Cub Pack 246, and eventually with Mineola’s Boy Scout Troop 45.
Whatever happened on that year’s Memorial Day Weekend, marching in Mineola’s Parade was a given. In the early years, we’d go to see fireworks at Bar Beach in the Town of North Hempstead on Friday night, and then many times head down to the Jersey Shore for Saturday and Sunday, and then head back to Long Island for the parade. Starting in 2005, when we bought the house in Ocean City, NJ our routine changed. Now instead of Fireworks on Friday, we’d head down to Ocean City, and spend the weekend at our house with our Ocean City friends! Some weekends we had kids and their friends with us, and some weekends we were alone, but every year, we’d set an alarm for 5 AM on Monday, throw clothes on, and head up the Garden State Parkway, to Long Island and our parade.
In 1998, our good friend Steve Grosskopf became the Scoutmaster of Troop 45 (I talked him into taking the job), and starting that first May, we gathered at their house and he fed the boys breakfast with the help of his wife Pat and my wife Sue. Eventually the breakfast morphed into an after-parade gathering for the Scouts and the families of the Troop at their house, and we were always there! We’d arrive home about 9 AM, I’d change into my Scout uniform, Susie would get herself ready, and we’d head over to Pat and Steve’s house for the parade. After we all headed off to the start of the parade, Susie and Pat would settle on the house’s front porch, and watch the parade pass by, yelling their support for the Boy Scout contingent!
A much younger Kenny D’Elia marching with the American Flag in a Memorial Day ParadeSteve & his dog Scoutie marching years earlierSusie & Pat Watching an earlier parade
It was a tradition of long standing, that continued through 2015! Then something changed… I retired from WABC in January of 2016, and now since I was no longer working, there was no reason not to extend our celebration of Memorial Day at the shore. It was very strange for us, that something that had been a part of our family’s life since 1987 was no longer there. It only got stranger when we sold the Mineola house in 2017, and now we really had no connection with the village! We might not have been there for the parade, but it was still a part of me, and every Memorial Day, my Facebook posts were filled with pictures of the Scouts of Troop 45 carrying flags and marching in Mineola’s parade!
So since that first May in 2016, our Memorial Day Weekends have been centered in Ocean City, but we have fondly remembered our time in Mineola, our friends in Troop 45, and years and years of parade participation. For six years that was our MO, but not this year. This year, we grabbed that clock and turned back the hands of time, proving once again that you can go home!
What is different? Well, our friend Steve Grosskopf announced that he was in his last year of being the Scoutmaster of Troop 45. 24 years of work and dedication, and of making Troop 45 one of, if not the best Boy Scout Troop on Long Island, had not been easy, but Steve had done it, and now it was time for him to pass the torch to the next generation. A couple of weeks ago, I got a crazy idea, and one day I shared it with Susie. “You know, we were there for Steve’s first parade, what do you think about being there for his last?” Susie liked the idea, and for the next week or so we batted around the idea. We really wanted to be there for our dear friends Pat and Steve, but wondered if we’d feel out of place and would we know anybody? After all, the last time we’d been there for the parade was 7 years ago in 2015! On Sunday afternoon, I sent him this text message, “Just checking in with you…How are you doing? Are you all set for the parade?” His answer to that text took away any doubt we might have had. “All good thanks! I know this will be my last one, so it is bittersweet. Wish you guys were here having cocktails on the porch.” Game On!
On Sunday we picked out the clothes we were going to wear, made sure our overnight “to go” bag was fully packed, and filled the car with gas. A shower before and an early bed time, and we were ready to go! The alarm woke us at 5:15 Memorial Day morning, and by 6:25 we were backing out of the garage and on our way to the Garden State Parkway! The trip back to Mineola is just under a hundred and 20 miles, and since we were on the road early, traffic was not an issue. The parade was scheduled to start at 11 AM, and we were in great shape time wise. At about 9:15, we rolled down Westbury Avenue, and parked the car around the corner from their house!
Activity was already in full parade mode as we walked up to the house, with Scouts and Adult Leaders gathering flags, and preparing for the after-parade party. As we came around the corner, and walked up to the front of their house, Steve came off the front porch, looked at us, and said, “Oh My God…what are you two doing here?!” We exchanged hugs and told him, “We were here for your first one, no way we were missing your last one!” Mission Accomplished! Pat was equally surprised when she came downstairs, but thrilled that we were going to be there for the day! She insisted that we spend the night, and we gladly agreed.
As the 11 AM hour got near, Steve and the Troop moved over to the parade starting point around the corner, and Susie, Pat, and I settled in on their front porch. Something new for me this year…for the first time since we first marched in 1987, I was going to see the parade, and what better place to see it, than Patrice and Steve Grosskopf’s front porch, a location on which the 4 of us had spent many, many enjoyable hours over the past 20 years they’ve owned the house! Promptly at 11 AM, the parade set off from Mineola’s Wilson Park, rounded the corner of Union Street and Westbury Avenue, and sailed by our front row seats! Lots of memories and lots of folks we recognized from our 31 years in Mineola, and we enjoyed all the groups from the Boy Scouts to the Mineola High School Mustang Marching Band (which all 3 of our kids were members of), and from the Mineola Fire Dept to the Portuguese Dancers and their castanets, and everybody else!
The parade route is 1.8 miles through the village, ending at Mineola’s Memorial Park for a brief service of remembrance and placing of wreaths. Steve was the MC for the event (I wrote his speech), and from all accounts it was a brief but meaningful reminder what the day was all about. Just after 12 noon, the Troop started to arrive back at the Grosskopf’s house for what has become a Troop 45 Tradition over the years, the Troop’s Memorial Day Parade after-party! The men of the Troop immediately went to work grilling hamburgers, hot dogs and bratwurst, while the boys changed out of uniforms and into proper attire for the pool and games. Troop Families showed up, and a great time was had by all!
Susie and I looked at each other several times during the afternoon, and commented about how the 7 intervening years since we’d last been in Mineola for a Memorial Day seemed to melt away, and how easy it was to fall back into old routines. A lot of the people we knew over the years are not still involved, but the folks of Troop 45 are always like family..old or new. We were welcomed back and made to feel at home, and were so glad we were there for Pat and Steve, and Steve’s last Memorial Day as Scoutmaster. All in all, it was a great plan, and worked out perfectly! As TR used to say, “BULLY!!!!”
Today in the conclusion of our multi-part blog Taking Stock, we leave you with a look at some of the nuts and bolts part of our Retirement Life over the past six years.
MOVING – In August of 1986, we moved to 40 Fairfield Avenue in Mineola, NY. Our house was, at that time, 60+ years old and I was 36 and Susie was 34. Billy was a 3 year old, and Krissi and Kenny were still in Susie’s belly, as she was fully 4 1/2 months pregnant. That old house was the home we brought our new twins home to, that we watched all three of our kids grow up in, where we celebrated Christmases and Birthdays and Anniversaries and all the other celebratory days in a family’s life. It was the place our three kids went off to college from, and the place they returned to when they were done. It was the place they always could call home, and it was that for over 31 years!
When I retired in 2016, our intention was to make Ocean City our one and only home, but dealing with 31 years of memories, emotions, and “stuff” took time. Frankly, we did drag our feet, not wanting to take the time and effort to make the transition, but eventually the cost of two houses forced us to make the move. In early November of 2017, we sold our home in Mineola to a woman and her family that Susie had worked with at school. We sold it without using a real estate agent, with the closing being handled by a lawyer we knew from the St. James Restaurant. In November of 2017, the license plates on the cars went from NY to NJ, Susie and I got New Jersey driver’s licenses, and we changed our voter registration from Mineola to Ocean City. We were now residents of Jersey! https://rnewadventures.com/2017/02/22/big-changes-on-the-horizon/
VISITING FAMILY – When our older son Bill married Lori, the two of them lived in a condo in Astoria, NY. When the prospect of little ones entering their life came about, they looked for a bigger apartment, but prices were insane. By the time our Granddaughter Layla was born, the younger D’Elias had bought a house in Deer Park, Long Island. They still lived there when a little over a year later, our Grandson Henry joined the family. So in the beginning, a trip to see Bill and his family was either a trip from Mineola to Astoria, or out on the Long Island Expressway to Deer Park.
But like so many folks, the prices and the hassle of Long Island got to be too much for them. With his job at Fox News and his Long Island Rail Road commute, he was gone from early morning to almost the kid’s bedtime on a daily basis! They needed a change, and they got a huge one, when after I retired they sold their house and moved down to Raleigh, North Carolina. Down there, Bill works for Xerox, Lori has a successful Family Counseling practice, they recently bought a brand new house and moved to Wake Forest, and they are surrounded by family. Life is different down there, and we are very happy for them! The one downside is that it’s a 7-8 hour drive in the car when we go. Their family grew when Annabelle joined the group, and that only made the desire to spend time with them even stronger. So it’s not 40 minutes in the car, but we love being with them, and do the trip as often as we can!
COVID-19 – Anybody who has not felt the effect of the pandemic on the last 2 years of their life, has obviously been living in a huge bubble! From that day in March of 2020, when we ran home from Florida because we really had no idea what the pandemic was going to bring, right up to the minute I wrote these words, Covid-19 has been a huge influence on our life! From that first day when the world shut down, we wondered if life would ever go back to normal. For months we couldn’t go out to eat, we were fearful even shopping, we sat around a lot and looked for ways to occupy ourselves. We obviously didn’t travel, and it was over a year before we got to see our grandkids again. Contact with friends and family was very limited and strange! Then there was the scramble for Susie and I to get vaccinated, in the hope we’d get some of our life back. Warmer weather came, and we learned new ways of doing things. We ate outside, wore masks, washed our hands constantly, and took great hope in whatever little bit of normality we had. We learned words like Delta and Omicron, discussed the best masks, and where to get a Covid Test! We saw friends get sick, and hoped that they would get well. We went back and forth between feeling confident and feeling scared. We watched people downplay the seriousness of the pandemic, and we watched some of these same folks succumb to it, and join the almost 900,000 fellow Americans who are no longer with us. Oh Yeah….Covid-19 DEFINITELY affected us, and in many ways robbed 2 years of our lives!
BEING BIONIC – Remember the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman TV shows from the 70s? Both shows centered around characters that had been severely injured, and through the use of ‘bionic” replacement parts, now had super human strength and abilities! The show was labeled as a Science Fiction/Action Adventure, and indeed the kind of replacement parts they talked about, were just that. But, turn the calendar ahead 50 years, and the ideas of body part replacements are common and ordinary. I know, because I have got two titanium and plastic knee implants, and while I cannot jump 2 stories, as could the Six Million Dollar Man’s Steve Austin, I can now stand and walk as good as I did 20 years ago.
My left knee was replaced on 7/11/19 and my right on 9/14/21, and counting prep and recovery, each procedure took about 3 months out of our lives. Susie, of course, was the best nurse one could ever ask for, and thanks to her and my efforts, and that of our Doctors and PT folks, both knees were textbook cases of Orthopedic Surgery! Everything worked so well, that Susie is going to join me as a bionic person. On March 1st, 2022 she will be the recipient of a new hip! Everything old is new again!!! Thanks Science!
NEW CARS – When I retired in 2016. we were driving a 2013 Hyundai Sonata that we had bought on St. Patrick’s Day in 2013. She had been a good car, taking us on several trips to Florida and on our Big Adventure trip! However, when she was 5+ years old, and her mileage was approaching 90,000 we started spending money on various items, and decided that the wiser approach was not to keep it long term, as we usually did. We also decided that since it was going to be the only real car we had (the toy car would be the red 2000 Mustang convertible that’s still downstairs in the garage), we should look at a small SUV. Having done research, we liked the Honda CR-V, but we were still not sure if we were going to buy or try leasing for the first time. The idea of having a brand new car every 3 years was attractive to us as we’re getting older, but was very different from our usual approach of keeping a vehicle many years. In the end, we decided to try leasing, and in June of 2018 took possession of a 2018 Honda CR-V. After several Florida trips, countless trips to see our family in North Carolina, driving around our local area, and being able to load lots of stuff in the back, we were very happy with our decision! We probably would have had more mileage on her had Covid not shown up, but still we had better than 43,000 trouble-free miles. We were looking forward to leasing a new CR-V, but thanks to the chip shortage and other issues, there were none to be had. In August of 2021, we extended our lease for 6 months, but as the months passed, the situation looked no better, and we started to feel our best move was to buy the CR-V and wait out the shortage. And that’s the situation we were in till I got a text message on November 23rd from our Honda salesman. His message was short but sweet…a Red 2022 CR-V EX-L had just come off the truck…were we interested? We texted back and forth on price until my cell phone rang and it was Brian. “How bout you give us your 2018 CR-V and you take this new one at the same monthly lease payment you were making on the 2018?” I called that an offer we couldn’t refuse, and on the afternoon of November 23rd, we traded our 3 year old Sandstone Metallic CR-V for a brand new 2022 in Radiant Red Metallic! Color us happy!
THE BEACH – The first time I came to Ocean City was in 1955 when I was 5 years old. The first time Susie came to Ocean City was in 1980, just after we got married. The first time we came as a family was the Summer of 1983, when we spent a week here with our new baby, Billy. That was followed by yearly trips to Ocean City, first as a family of 3 and then as a family of 5 when Krissi and Kenny joined the clan. 17 years ago, on January 28, 2005, when Susie and I bought our house, it was the culmination of a lifetime dream of owning a house in Ocean City. Since that start 17 years ago, we spent weeks each year at 854 Pennlyn, and more and more came to know it was going to be our forever home. In November of 2017 when we sold our Mineola house, we took the last step…we now live at the beach! Retirement has meant that we can spend every day, all summer on the beach, or just sit on our front porch and watch the world go by. We can head out early and get a good spot down by the water, or we can go later in the day, and enjoy cocktail hour at the beach. In short, what used to be our vacation is now our life, and for the past six years, we have taken advantage of living at the beach! Yes, dreams do come true!T
So there you have it! A look back at 6 years of retirement, through the eyes of Sue and Frank D’Elia. It has included:
Six trips to Florida
Six Weeks of Cruising
Two Weddings
One train trip across the US
One Driving Trip across the US
A Move from New York to New Jersey
Multiple trips down to our Family in North Carolina
3 Cars
and
2 New Knees!
The best parts of being retired?? Well #1 is the two of us being together 24/7/365 X 6. We love being and doing things together, so what could be better than spending all day, every day, with my best friend, and the love of my life. After that, #2 is easy…doing what we want when we want. Need I say more?
Part Four of our Taking Stock Blog gives you a peek at the weddings of our twins Krissi and Kenny, and a look at traveling across our country on a train. Welcome aboard!
WEDDINGS – When I retired in January of 2016, only our oldest son Bill was married. Now, six years later, we find ourselves with 3 married children. On October 13th, 2018, in Lake Tahoe, California, Kenny and Chris became one! It was a wonderful outdoor “do-it-yourself” wedding at the Tahoe Vistana Resort. A “destination” wedding in a beautiful spot, overlooking the waters of Lake Tahoe, surrounded by lots of friends and family…what could be better? We were also happy to be in Chris’ hometown of Reno for most of the week before, sharing wedding duties with Chris’ family, and getting to really know so many wonderful members of our Fox Family!! With everybody pitching in, there were multiple trips to Costco (we were those folks you always wonder about at Costco buying everything in sight), several party stores, and everything else you can think of (do it yourself). The week leading up to the grand event was a series of parties and get-togethers in Reno, and the time just got more special as more family and friends arrived in town. The actual three day wedding event on Lake Tahoe was perfect, and exactly what the boys wanted their wedding to be! It was the best!
On June 15th, 2019, Kenny’s twin sister Krissi and her fiancé Mike, joined the group and became Mr. and Mrs. Mickowicz! Our twins were born 2 minutes apart, married 8 months apart, and now our circle of married children was complete! Krissi and Mike lived in Astoria, New York (at one point, all 3 of our kids lived in Astoria) and decided that they wanted their wedding to be a local event. Towards that end, Mike’s Family traveled up from Maryland, and Susie and I (with brother Kenny in tow, on leave from a cruise contract) traveled to an interesting old school hotel called The Paper Factory in Long Island City (it was indeed a paper factory in a former life). On Friday night, we had a wonderful family dinner gathering at a close Mexican restaurant with Mike’s immediate family. Mom and Dad Paula and Jerry, sister Sara and her husband Gabe and their kids Maddy and Ethan, and Krissi’s family, including, besides us, older brother Bill, wife Lori and their kids Layla, Henry, and baby Annabelle, and twin brother Kenny! The only one missing was new brother-in-law Chris who could not join his husband Kenny because of their cruise contract. The next day, on the roof of their Astoria apartment building, surrounded by immediate family, and with the Manhattan skyline as the back drop, they exchanged vows and became a married couple. Then it was time to party, and it was off to a local Wine Bar that had been one of their first date spots, where they were joined by additional family and friends! It was an incredible celebration of their marriage, and exactly what Krissi and Mike wanted!
Jerry, Paula and SaraAunt Krissi and Uncle Mike with Ethan, Maddy, & AnnaTheir View!Siblings4 of our 6 kids!The proud parentsAunt Barbara with her Great Niece AnnaSon Bill…always prepared!These men have been drinking!They are Married!Stained Glass made by Michael’s Mom Paula
TRAIN TRAVEL – Back in the 1950s, the Metropolitan Opera’s yearly Spring Tour around the country went by train. When I was a little kid, there were a couple of years that I went with my folks on the tour. There were short trips (like New York to Boston) and longer trips (like Boston to Cleveland), so they traveled in both coach and sleeper accommodations. In addition, my Mom’s Mom and Dad lived in Chicago, and while today we’d just hop on a plane or in the car to get there, back in the day, we used the New York Central’s 20th Century Limited to make the trip. It had ben a long time, but I had done train travel, Susie had not. Because of the way the allure of rail travel has been portrayed in movies, like Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, or the movie Silver Streak, or even the James Bond movie Live and Let Die, Susie has always wanted to take an overnight train. She’s been jealous of the memories I have, and wanted her own, and to check off another Bucket List item, we made it happen.
We decided that in association with Kenny and Chris’ wedding in Lake Tahoe, we would go one direction by train. We did research and watched a ton of YouTube videos on AMTRAK train travel to prepare ourselves, bought two first class sleeper accommodation tickets, and on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2018, we started our journey! We left Ocean City early that morning with our first destination being Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station. There we boarded AMTRAK Train number 141, the Northeast Regional to Washington, DC’s Union Station. As we had first class tickets, we journeyed on this first leg in a Business Class luxury seating car. After spending some time in the Acela Club in Washington, we boarded Train #29, the Capital Limited overnight to Chicago. This was the first leg that we would be in a sleeper, and we got ourself set up in Bedroom E in Car #2900. The room contains a big couch, a comfortable chair, a huge picture window, and our own bathroom (think an RV kind of bathroom). Each car has an attendant, that at night will convert our sleeper from a day room to our bedroom. In addition, on this leg, our attendant will also take our dinner order as the Capital Limited had just had its Dining Car removed. After dinner, our room was turned into a sleeper, the big couch became the lower bunk and an upper bunk was lowered from the wall, complete with a ladder! My dear wife was gracious enough to take the upper bunk, and we fell asleep to the click clack lullaby from the rails!
At about noon the next day, we arrived in Chicago at AMTRAK’s Union Station, where we had to switch trains. Just after 3:00 PM, with us in Room C of Car 330, the Southwest Chief pulled out of Union Station. The Southwest Chief is the Amtrak successor to the famous Santa Fe Super Chief. It was dubbed the “Train of the Stars” because of the celebrities it carried between Chicago and Los Angeles in the days before air travel. The route took the train through some of the most beautiful scenery the United States has to offer, and it was right outside our bedroom window. The Southwest Chief had a real Dining Car, and three meals a day were served on china plates with white tablecloths and impecable service by true professionals, and were included in our ticket price.
Early on the morning of the third day, the train moved through the Los Angelos suburbs, and a little after 8 AM, the Southwest Chief pulled into LA’s Union Station. We’d left Ocean City on the morning of Wednesday, October 3rd, and now on Saturday morning we’d arrived in Los Angelos. It was an experience, and another check on the Bucket List of life! If you’d like more details about our trip, here’s a link to the starting blog post: https://rnewadventures.com/2018/10/01/all-aboard/
Well, tomorrow we wrap up our multi-part blog Taking Stock. Friday’s edition is loaded with looks at some very important things that have happened in our life over the last six years! Be sure to stay tuned!
R New Adventures 