Our Dead Dads
The concept of Our Dead Dads was born through the daily discussions of seven men who share bonds of blood, friendship and all having lost their fathers. Nick Gaylord, the show’s host, shares his life experiences with his deceased father while exploring the complications and realities of that relationship. Life is intense, grief and loss come in many forms, and no parent-child relationship is black and white, which is why this show touches on all shades of grey.
Join Nick for candid conversations with his three brothers and three of his lifelong friends, along with other special guests who discuss their experiences with loss, grief, laughter, and moving forward. Nothing is off-limits here. Nick learned after his father's passing that he couldn't process what he was going through alone and sought the help of a therapist, who helped him to let go of his anger toward his father. Looking back, he realized just how many people are being crushed under the weight of grief, loss, and in some cases, anger.
Nick's mission through Our Dead Dads is to offer a platform for anyone who needs or wants to tell their story, to have that opportunity. He also hopes to reach many more who need to talk but don't know how to start the conversation, hopeful that by listening to these stories, they will be able to start talking with someone.
Nick has always sought to help others and to make everyone around him laugh. Along with his brothers and friends, he has frequently used humor to get through the hardest times in their lives, and hopefully, you will permit yourself to do the same. Get ready for an emotional deep dive. Nick has a lot to say and so do his guests. He's here for you and ready to help. Everyone has been through trauma, grief, and loss. Now, along with Nick and his guests, everyone will get through it together.
Nick is changing the world one damaged soul at a time. Welcome to Our Dead Dads.
Our Dead Dads
029 - The Influence of Community and Parental Legacy with John Gerst
What happens when a childhood friendship is woven with shared grief and cherished memories? Join us on a heartfelt journey with my dear friend, John Gerst, as we navigate the profound impact of losing his father at a young age. Reflecting on our Boy Scouts days, we explore how those formative years shaped us and delve into the emotions stirred by John's unexpected encounter with unresolved grief during a surprise trip back to his childhood home. Together, we uncover the bittersweet feelings of missing out on an adult relationship with a parent and the powerful role of community and shared stories in healing.
Our conversation also shines a light on the enduring connections formed through shared values and family stories. We'll discuss how these principles are passed down through generations, creating a tapestry of memories that influence our lives today. From recounting my son Charles's encounters with the values of our past to the humorous contrasts between his modern experiences and my own upbringing, we paint a vivid picture of how different generations navigate the complexities of life. This episode is a testament to the significance of acknowledging the legacies left by our father figures and the sense of belonging they instill.
Finally, we explore the evolving dynamics of community on Long Island and how those experiences have shaped our understanding of legacy and identity. Through personal anecdotes of Long Island's humid summers and the camaraderie of the Boy Scouts, we reflect on the invaluable lessons imparted by those larger-than-life father figures. As we reminisce about the lessons learned, both from present and absent fathers, we emphasize the importance of forgiveness and understanding, urging listeners to embrace their own journeys with grace and acceptance. This episode promises a rich tapestry of memories, reflections, and inspiration for anyone seeking to honor their roots while forging their path.
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Hello and welcome back to Our Dead Dads, the podcast where we normalize talking about grief, trauma loss and moving forward. I'm your host, my name is Nick Gaylord, and if this is your first time joining me, then welcome to the show. If you're a regular listener, welcome back. For everybody listening. Thank you so much for the support and thank you for making this show part of your day. The best way that you can continue to support the show is by listening, sending in your feedback on the show's Facebook, instagram and TikTok pages, where you can also see clips of my interviews and some live videos, and, most importantly, please spread the word about the show. Everybody deals with grief. We are all in this together and the best thing that any of us can do is to support each other through that grief. Make sure you're following the show on your favorite listening platform and tell everybody that you know to do the same. Give us a five-star review and, by the way, if you don't know how to leave a five-star review for the show, then you can go to the homepage of OurDeadDadscom, scroll down and it'll show you how to do it step by step.
Speaker 1:I really hope you enjoyed last week's conversation with Eric Paragnoli and today's episode number 29, when another childhood friend joins me to talk grief. John Gerst is here and you should prepare yourself now because we had a lot of fun during this conversation. Yes, we also covered a lot of emotional topics, but for two guys who grew up together and haven't seen each other in almost 30 years, there was no stopping us. John stopped by to talk about his dad, john Sr, who he lost when he was only 21. He talks about how one of the hardest things about losing his dad so young is that he regrets never getting the chance to be friends with his dad as an adult. John lost his dad only two weeks before finishing his final semester of college, when he was barely starting his own life. We met each other in boy scouts when I was only nine years old, so you can imagine that this is quite the jog down memory lane. This conversation came to be thanks to a surprise 50th birthday trip to New York that John's wife planned for him, when he also realized that a fun trip to New York turned into discovering a lot of grief that he never knew he didn't process. It also turned into saying goodbye to his childhood home and so much more. Before we get started.
Speaker 1:I would like to thank you again for listening to the show, for your feedback and for engaging with the show. Please don't forget to follow the show's social media pages on Facebook, instagram and TikTok. As you know, my goal is to normalize talking about grief, loss and trauma, which are topics that are not easy for most of us to talk about, but they are also topics that everybody should be discussing more Not only discussing them, but not feeling like they are taboo topics. Time may not heal all wounds, but keeping everything bottled inside doesn't heal any of them. Together, we are building a community for others to have a safe space to talk about their stories and their feelings, and for anyone who may not yet be ready to talk, just to listen to others and know that nobody is alone in this path. That is why I say we are a community and I'm so happy to have you here.
Speaker 1:If you have a story of grief and loss to share and might want to be considered as a future guest of Our Dead Dads, go to OurDeadDadscom, go to the Contact Us link and then select Be a Guest, fill out the form, send it in and you just might be able to tell your own story and carry on this mission of helping ourselves and so many others. And now it's time to get started and welcome John to the show. Please enjoy this episode and stick around for the end when I will tell you about the next two episodes coming up in the next week. What's going on, man? What's up?
Speaker 2:brother, how are you All right? How you doing? I am amazing, not as amazing as you are brother, how are you All right?
Speaker 1:How you doing I am amazing. Not as amazing as you are, but you know I'm all right there we go.
Speaker 2:I couldn't hear you for a second. I got you.
Speaker 1:There we go. How's it going? How's your Saturday so far?
Speaker 2:Man, I can't complain. Man, I got up this morning, got a good run. The weather's gorgeous. Here in Charlotte it was only 67 degrees this morning, so that's stay outside weather, that is, absolutely stay outside weather.
Speaker 1:Yes, do you have the humidity to deal with? Not yet. Later on we will but not yet. All right, it was a little muggy, a little disgusting here this morning, but Tampa, nobody's surprised.
Speaker 2:I was able to get a great run in this morning. I got to take my son to the gym this afternoon, so living the dream.
Speaker 1:That's right. So glad that we're finally getting to do this. I mean, it was what two, three weeks ago, when we last spoke.
Speaker 2:It was a great conversation, I think, so I'm really looking forward to getting started today.
Speaker 1:I know I said it during that call and I say it again I almost wish that I had recorded that one and use that as an interview because it was such a great conversation, but I know we're going to have an even better one today. First, I'm going to say officially now that we're doing this interview now that we're doing it for the record, doing the interview.
Speaker 1:Welcome officially to our Dead Dads guest or welcome back, whichever way you want to view it. For anybody that does not know, john and I grew up together. We've known each other since I was probably 9 or 10. We grew up in Boy Scouts together and we're going to talk all about that. Yeah Well, we're like we're 25 now.
Speaker 2:We're only times two.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, times two. We grew up together. We've known each other for yeah, probably closing in on 40 years, which is just absurd to even think about. Yes, and yeah, we're going to dive into all of it. Obviously, you're here to partially tell the story about your dad and we're just going to. We're going to talk about a lot of memories. We're going to share a lot of things with everybody. So this is your show. You are the star of this show, so I'm just going to turn it over to you and start wherever you want. There's a lot to tell us. Let's start nice and early. Well, let's buckle up, buckle up, buckle up is absolutely right.
Speaker 2:This is going to be a wild ride, as I discussed with you a few weeks ago, kind of learning, the grief process, and the grief process is different for everybody. It's a complicated process and I think sometimes we try to oversimplify it and hey, you know, get over it, they're in a better place, and things like that. And although those things may be true to some, depending on your faith, but it may not be enough for what you need at the time to get over it. And there were things that, as I said the last time, I thought I was really over until I was faced with getting off at exit 68 on the LIE and traveling home again.
Speaker 1:I would actually like to kind of give the little bit of context. What specifically fueled this conversation was you were back in New York recently. Again, for anybody who doesn't know, we grew up on Long Island. I was in Shirley, you were in Mastic, which for anybody doesn't know where that are. It's like this, far apart.
Speaker 2:I don't know why they're two different towns, but they are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree. I don't know why they're two different towns, it's basically one of the same. You went back home to visit Long Island and you visited your childhood home for the first time in a very long time and I think it was the first time you said in nine years that you had been on Long Island. First time in nine years.
Speaker 2:I've been back.
Speaker 1:And to kind of give a little bit of context, your dad passed in. I think we said it was 1996? Yes, yeah. So you had a lot to well. You didn't even realize how much you still had to process. So at that point, that's where I'm going to turn it back over to you and take it away.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, like I said, my wife took me home, actually on a surprise trip on an early birthday gift, so I didn't know I was going to New York and the center of the trip was really going to a Mets game in Citi Field, so that was like the center. I got to go see the Mets play. She had rented a car so I can go see Long Island and it was really a fun day. Got to see some family on Long Island. That was a good part. But I said, hey, let's drive out to Mastic, because one of the things of course, when your dad is deceased, after you've had all this life, then trying to connect my son to places where I grew up and when I talk about my high school and things like that and those are places that he's never even seen, where when we go visit my wife's family in Arizona he gets to stay in the house she grew up in, he gets to go. You know, my niece was in a basketball tournament in the same high school, just those kinds of things and just connecting to kind of history. So you want to, you know, ride past William Floyd High School, ride past William Packard Junior High School, and one of those stops took me past Madison Street where I grew up, and I went to the house and I heard somebody in the backyard and I remember how awkward and strange it was having to announce myself in my house Exactly, and the owner was there and I said, hey, are you the homeowner? And he said yes, and he thought I was trying to sell something. And I told him who I was and he remembers my mom. Now they've lived in the house 26 years. So it's kind of funny In my mind he's the new homeowner but he's lived there 26 years. He's definitely a new homeowner and I was really blessed because he took so much time with me. He was just working in his yard and he wasn't rushed that day and we sat and talked for about 45 minutes. We walked around the backyard, some. I saw some changes he had made in the house. But of course those memories of growing up there all returned to me and my walking, my wife around the yard and sometimes she had seen pictures and like that's where that picture was taking place, that's where that picture was at right there, and then for my son to never see it, and it was really a good experience for me. But it was a time of laughter that sometimes I felt myself tearing up me. I guess.
Speaker 2:Get to that point was he said man. He said you lived your life here. He said the good times, the bad times, you kissed your first girl, you got your butt beat for not doing right. All the things in your life you experienced. You experienced in this house and now my children experience the same thing. And I said I believe his wife was actually pregnant when they purchased the house. So that child is 26 now on her own and he has two boys still in the house with him.
Speaker 2:And knowing that a whole nother family, a whole nother generation of children have grown up in the place that I called home, made me realize that okay, well, I guess this isn't home any longer for me. And I said, okay, I guess it's time to say goodbye. And that's why the series that I was doing was called saying goodbye to Madison Street, because I realized it was time to close the chapter on those things. And you carry those memories with you. But memories, I've said before, are kind of like windows on your computer where you have your files you use often and the files you don't go to often. And I might've had the memory of Madison Street in a file that was. I go to often but I don't really need to go to as much anymore, so I can kind of file that away and put that file away for another time and kind of look at those pictures or enjoy them when it's time to.
Speaker 2:What was it like to walk through the house? I didn't go into the house, we stayed a lot of time. We stayed in the yard and had to walk around the yard because I wanted to, and simple things like walking in the backyard and the patio was still there and thinking about all the cookouts and stuff we had on the patio. And he has carpets on the patio now. I wanted to raise it up but I didn't want to invade his space too much because our names were engraved there and I was just kind of wondering if it was still engraved there after all those years.
Speaker 2:And just, you know, cutting the grass memories came back. You know my dad was hard on me cutting the grass. So saturday morning, soon as the sun came up, he was waking me up. He didn't care what time I got home from work or wrestling practice, he didn't just want his grass cut on saturday morning he wanted to cut by a certain time, like it, like we had, like, hoa coming by or something, I don't know, you know, wow, well, I know, like you know, nine o'clock in the morning, it had to be done for some reason. I don don't know why, you know, so that was waking me up at seven to do it.
Speaker 2:You know the memories of him yelling at me to get up and cut the grass. Like man, I'm going to be home all day. I have plenty of time to cut it. Why, why must it be cut right now, at this moment? So just all those kinds of things return. And then it really, for me, it turned into a conversation about parenting, about values. He spent time talking to my son about values and growing up in a respectable place and respecting yourself, and it was nice to know that the values that I grew up in the home with someone else grew up in that home with. It really was nice to know. That maybe kind of gave me a sense of comfort. I don't know, you know, just saying, okay, well, you know, other kids learn these same lessons that I learned.
Speaker 1:Right, your son, charles, never had a chance to meet your dad, unfortunately. How old is he? 16. 16. I know it's obviously nowhere close to the same, but what was that like to watch, charles, have this conversation with this man who raised his family in the house that you grew up?
Speaker 2:in. You know something, that whole trip I think was important for him because he got to see a deeper connection to dad and got to see how I grew up and where I grew up and even those values. You know. After leaving Nastic we stopped in Central Islip and even spent some time with my godparents and my godparents my godfather, my father, were best friends for years and hearing the stories about my father through someone else and hearing those stories and the good times and the bad times and then the different time you know he's hearing stories about the seventies and eighties, a time that he can't even visualize, except on that show, Stranger Things, where he can't even you know. So hearing those times and kind of seeing, you know he's seen the church before but seeing, hey, listen, this is the church I grew up in every Sunday, this is where I went to Boy Scouts at and how close the schools were to the church and walking from one to the other and things like that, where it now helps paint a picture even for him.
Speaker 2:And, like I said, I tried to raise him in a certain values, a certain standard in life, a certain work ethic, all those kinds of things that we were kind of taught growing up that maybe aren't as prevalent now in kids. He does have two very kind of old school parents Definitely. He reminds us, oh, you guys are so old all the time, but to know that, hey, listen, these are what your parents were raised with, both of them, Right, and this is what we're trying to give to you. And now you kind of see where I got it from, from walking to my neighbor's houses or walking to the bus stop, Just all the stories we tell you know, because one of the funniest stories I tell in my house is my son has never gone to a school with a school bus, so he has been drove to school every day of his life and the concept of walking through snow to a school bus just like blows his mind. And I'm like, no, you don't understand. In North Carolina, everything closes down when it snows. In New York it did not.
Speaker 1:New York, it was just Tuesday.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, I said it had to be a foot and a half to two feet before we missed school. I said, you know, we only had a foot, we were going to school. And, first of all, it's cool to talk to somebody who remembers those times and you know, I'm always thankful that I'm married to a woman near my age so we can talk about those times and we have those memories together. Sometimes I see guys my age married to women in their 20s. I go what do you talk about?
Speaker 2:You know, seriously, she knows nothing about how you grew up. You know so, and then sharing those I said with our child and sharing how it used to be, and you know those are all kind of good things, but yeah, yeah, he doesn't understand that concept. I mean, the whole idea of taking a school bus is just like this new concept to him now, why doesn't he take the buses?
Speaker 1:because you guys live far enough away from the school, or no? No?
Speaker 2:he's always gone to christian schools and then that's what he was. So we have that makes sense and by he's looking to get his driver's license by his birthday in february and then he'll be driving himself. The first time he's looking to get his driver's license by his birthday in February, and then he'll be driving himself. The first time he's actually on a school bus with the school was when he's on a football team and they were going to the way game and he actually called me from the school bus. He's like I'm on a school bus. I was like, yeah, this is a common occurrence for most kids, you know he was like 14, experiencing it for the first time.
Speaker 1:That's pretty that you were able to have Charles experience a piece of your childhood, a piece of your history, because, as you said, with your wife's family in Arizona, he's out there all the time. That's just common. She grew up there. He gets to experience that. It's just a recurring part of her family, now your collective family. But he never got to see this on Long Island, so that must have been pretty wild for you just to be able to finally bring this into his world.
Speaker 2:One of the funniest times we were there nine years ago and we went to the church and one of the ladies from the church I had texted she knew I was coming and she got a bunch of old youth group pictures out and she was showing Charles of old youth group pictures out and she was showing Charles our old youth group pictures and he had never seen pictures of grandma in her 30s and he couldn't believe it because she had no grays, her hair was black. It was the 80s. She had a jerry curl. He couldn't believe it. I'm like buddy. This picture is about 1985. I mean grandma's maybe 35, 40 something years old man.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:She was young, yeah, yeah, couldn't believe it and it just blew his mind and, like you said, she had no grades. Because all he knows is grandma as an old lady. He can't picture his parents going out without him, having fun without him and then being an only child. He still doesn't have that concept, because every time it's time to go away, he's right with us.
Speaker 1:How was that for you overall? How did that help you to process some of the grief that you maybe didn't even realize you were holding on to?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was the thing because I said my dad passed in 96. But it was an interesting time in my life because my dad passed two weeks before my college graduation, right. So you had a lot of other things that you were focused on. It was just a juggling life. All I had left was final exams because the classes were winding down. My dad's funeral was during the last week of class.
Speaker 2:I actually missed the last week of classes to go home and my mom said listen, you can not take your finals. If you want to, I understand, but if you don't, it's going to delay you some, because the money was running out and she had to wait for life insurance and stuff to come in because, of course, we were in a two income household. So I said, no, I'm going back to finish these finals. And I came back on the reading day and final exam started the next day. I probably got all C's in every final, but it's enough to make it through and graduate on time.
Speaker 2:And then when you're graduating, all of a sudden now you're looking for an apartment, you're looking for a job, you're just trying to get all these different things lined up and next thing, you know, life just starts going so fast. And you know, I graduated and then four years later I was married. You know, now we're kind of juggling, marriage and life takes place, and I realized I've only been back to my house, I think, maybe twice since my dad died. I came back once, you know, to visit my mom, and then one other time and next, you know, she moved down. Because my mom moved down here in 99. Right. So I realized that this is part of me, that I guess I thought I had said goodbye to that. I really hadn't.
Speaker 1:So the 25 years went by before you saw the house.
Speaker 2:I had no need to. I had friends in Eastern Long Island. I still go visit when I'm out there sometimes, and you know, to tell you the truth, when you're visiting New York City, eastern Long Island is far, sometimes right. So sometimes I'm in New York City and don't even make it out east. So I've been there, you know, to visit family, flew into JFK and flew right back out. Didn't go that far out east, like if someone wrongs you and you think you've forgiven them. But you realize you haven't forgiven them. You just haven't seen them Right. Because when you see them, that anger or frustration that you had, how they made you feel, returns that quick and that's how grief works sometimes that you think that you're over it Right. But you realize you've just avoided it Right. And all of a sudden when it hits you in your face, you have no choice but to deal with it.
Speaker 1:And it may not have been a conscious choice. It's not like you said. I'm not dealing with this. I don't want to deal with this. I don't want to think about losing my dad. I don't want to think about that. My dad is gone. It was just life. Everything happened so quickly. You didn't have time to stop, which, of course, means you didn't have time to process.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and I guess the older I get, over this last year and a half or so, I begin to miss some more, which is like it's crazy because it's 20 something years later. So you can go for 10, 15, 20 years without thinking about it much and all of a sudden 24, 25, whatever that year is like gosh. Now I'm just thinking about it all the time. I begin to think about it more and begin to talk about it more in the house and see me to put those pictures up in the house and things like that, Begin to talk about it more in the house and kind of, what would life be like if he was still here? You know, I try to tell Charles, try to tell Charles, my son's a swimmer. So I say man, grandpa, be at all your swim meets, trust me, he wouldn't miss one, he'd have food for your whole team and of course those are ideas that he likes to hear, the stories, but they don't mean much to him. And I began to miss him more and began to wish he was here more, and because one of the things I felt that I was kind of robbed at was the availability to be adults together. Right, you know, we never got to go enjoy a beer somewhere and watch a game.
Speaker 2:You were what? 22? 21, yeah 21.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we never got to go enjoy those things in life as adults, Right, Watching me have a wife and a family, and I guess I began to miss him more because a lot of the lessons he taught me were coming out more in my own parenting. And I tell everybody your kids turn you into your parents Like you spend this whole life saying how you're not going to be like them, and then you have a kid, you become just like them because it's their fault. I found myself saying things that my dad would say all the time. Like my dad would say you got here in 1974. I got here in 1938. How do you know more than me? And now I tell myself all the time I got here in 74. You got here in 2008. How do you know more than me?
Speaker 2:I find myself having those same conversations and I'm like, oh God, I sound just like him.
Speaker 1:And you say something like that and I know that you hear your dad's voice saying I told you so Clearly clearly.
Speaker 2:So it's like when that began to happen, I began to miss him even more. I'm like man I wish he could see me and that whole feeling of am I making him proud. I got family members that always tell me that, and I have an aunt who was down here a couple of years ago when she saw me. She's like you're making your dad so proud and I cry and she cries. And as children there's always that thing you want to make your parents proud, right? I want him to be proud of the person I became Not perfect, but trying to do good, trying to have good values, trying to live a decent life, trying to live a life that he'd want me to lead, that he raised me to kind of lead, and I try to pass those values, like I said to my son.
Speaker 2:I tell my son all the time because sometimes I'm hard on him. He says why are you so hard on me? And I said because Because my goal for you is when a young woman takes you home to meet her father, her father is not going to like you because you're dating his daughter, but he's not going to say you know who raised this asshole? Because my father said to me all the time, like when you meet a young woman in her family, I don't want her family to look at me like who raised him. And it's funny because those are ideas and concepts that, even from a child, I carried with me. So, although my dad was deceased by the time I met my wife's family, even in that I wanted to make him proud. He prepared me to meet somebody's father and to meet somebody's mother and to sit down and talk with them like I have some sense.
Speaker 1:Exactly, but because he prepared you in the way that he did. That's why it stuck yeah it truly did it stuck so hard because it made sense Everything.
Speaker 1:That's why it's stuck. Yeah, it's stuck so hard because it made sense. Everything fell into place the way that it should and your dad gave you those. Your dad and your mom both your parents gave you those values, but your mom is still here, so obviously I can understand that it's reflected more about your dad. He drove it into you, but not in a bad way, in a way to respect everyone and everything and to set your life up and, by default, to set Charles's life up as well.
Speaker 2:Well, you know and even those things, those lessons were hard. Then you know, like I said, cutting the grass at seven in the morning. Why did it have to be at seven in the morning? But even now, at 50, I'll be 50 next month I still keep a tight schedule. You know, just those little lessons that he gave, that you carry and that you're doing these things and sometimes don't even know where you got them from. You know, I get out of bed, I make my bed Because we weren't allowed to have unmade beds on Madison Street, you know, and the idea of even laying in bed all day was not allowed, even if we weren't doing anything. You're going to get up and sit at your desk. You're going to get up and do something and I look at my kid who can lay in bed till 10 o'clock, sometimes like what are you doing?
Speaker 2:You know, do something, get out of bed. I know it's like I had nothing to do today. I'm relaxing, I'm on my phone, I'm watching TV, you know, and I'm like, no, do something, because that's just how we were taught, right? You know, we weren't allowed to lay in bed and I have to sometimes kind of take that hard wire out of myself and say let him waste some time. You know, he's working hard in school, he's working hard on the swim team. Let him waste some time, let him have some downtime. And I feel sometimes it goes against everything I was raised with.
Speaker 1:That's absolutely right. Do you think that could have been your dad's military background, that he kept it with him for so long and where you got it from?
Speaker 2:Absolutely the military background. And just, you know, he always instilled that you have to work harder than everybody else, whether it was schoolwork. You know he wasn't a big sports parent like I've become an athlete parent now with my son being in a sport but you know he wasn't a big sport guy, but just work ethic. My dad was the kind of guy he averaged, I think, two sick days a year. So, matter of fact, when he passed the, the ta changed their rules about paying sick time because he had so much built up. Oh, my god, you know, because he worked for 30 years and averaged one and a half two days a year. You know. So when you kind of raised like that, you carry it with you. So that same even work ethic he gave me I still have.
Speaker 2:You know, besides covid, I haven't missed days at work, you know. I mean. It mean it's the reality of how it is. And now, of course, we work in such a remote environment I can log in from home and still be active whether I'm there or not, because that's just how we were taught you don't take days off, you don't lay around, you don't be lazy on the clock. And 50 years later we have boomers, gen Xers, millennials, and we're talking different languages. And who's behind the Gen Zers? You know, we have some, I guess 23, 24 working in the office. Now we're truly talking different languages and different work ethics and trying to communicate with each other and different work ethics and trying to communicate with each other, and it's become one of the things I laugh at in the workplace now. It's like how do I communicate with this young lady in her 20s?
Speaker 1:Generally, English should work, but it doesn't always.
Speaker 2:Listen, I don't even know who you're listening to. You're like, who is this? When I pass by your desk, who is this you're listening to? It sounds absolutely horrible. Man, I don't want to hear sexy red in the office. It sounds horrible. Meanwhile they come in my office and they hear Run DMC and Irving and Rakim Lane.
Speaker 1:That's the good music.
Speaker 2:That's the way it should be.
Speaker 1:Play that over the.
Speaker 2:PA, exactly, it's good, though you have those lessons and you kind of like learn to navigate the world, and one of the things that I'm proud of, one of the things my parents did teach me, is, first of all, getting along with everybody, understanding there's different people in the world, how to communicate with different people in the world, and how to whether it be race, religion, age, income, whatever there's always going to be something that can separate you from somebody if you allow it to, and they really taught me how to navigate those things and how to try to overcome those things, and those are lessons that I've taken with me my whole life.
Speaker 1:Your dad taught a lot of people, a lot of things. He was a very influential person in my life. I, as I said earlier, I met him, I mean at some point the summer before I turned 10, that was the summer when I first joined Boy Scouts. We always had the award ceremonies with the Merritt Badgers and the other awards, and the first one that I was really a big part of was the night of my 10th birthday. Okay, the 29th 1985.
Speaker 1:The first thing that I remember hearing that night when we got there was that somebody said happy birthday to your dad. And I went up to him and I was like today's your birthday. And he's like, yeah, today's my birthday. And I said today's my birthday and we just bonded over that. You all shared that day, sure, and I know that your dad was Stubborn Scorpios yeah, definitely stubborn Scorpios, but also your dad was. He was a presence, he was a big man. He was intimidating to a lot of people, but I didn't care. This big teddy bear of a man. He didn't show his teddy bear side all the time, but he would let his guard down every once in a while.
Speaker 1:But he had the biggest heart and I know that I bonded with him so quickly just by having the same birthday and got to build that relationship with him. And when I fucked up, he let me know about it and I loved that too, whether I thought it was right or wrong at the time. He kept, and he didn't do it with me only, he didn't just do it with you, he did it with all of us. He praised us when we did great things and he kicked our ass when we fucked up.
Speaker 2:You know, one of the biggest, I think, things I'd love to take with me and I thank you so much even for sharing that. I love hearing those stories because he cared so much about everybody in that troop. Yes, he did, and everybody became his child in that troop Everybody. They were all his sons and sometimes as a son it's hard sharing him.
Speaker 2:I can understand that for sure, and sometimes as a son, it's hard that you know why is there always someone in our house, so why can't we ever just ride together and things like that? And my son has the same struggle sometimes, as I've been in leadership in churches and things like that. But to know how he affected so many young men in that area of our age range and you know, at least once a year I'll get messages from somebody that says, man, your dad taught me how to cook, or your dad taught me how to do this, this and this, and I still remember it. And you know, some of those men are like I said, we're all in our 40s and 50s now that remember him. And some of them are scout leaders now and some of them back in even 138 and some of them have moved on to other troops. But he's like, no, your dad's camping trips.
Speaker 2:I still remember hearing him over the whole thing and those are cool stories to hear because you know, a lot of people know my dad grew up without a dad and he used to always tell me, even in the house, that he's learning this on the fly. So it ain't perfect, we're dang on it. He didn't had no example, but he's trying to give me the best example and to know that he gave me an example, but so many others an example to some, some that had dads and some that did not. He gave so many others an example of you know what to take and you'll do some stuff and take some stuff. It's kind of cool because knowing how he grew up single mother, poor in Brooklyn, with two other siblings, high school education and went to the Marines, but the legacy of who he became, at least to so many young men in the Massachusetts area, is really cool to still hear.
Speaker 1:I can't imagine how good that must feel to hear that. You hear it directly all the time because he was your dad. I still now, to this day. Every once in a while we'll come across somebody who will bring up your dad in a conversation and I love when that happens because, honestly, I love thinking about both of your parents. They were second parents to everybody who was part of the troop, who was part of their lives. Yes, you know, I never really thought about it the way that you just put it, how you had to share them and you had to share him with all of us. I think back to how all of my friends you and the Smith boys and a lot of other kids always thought of my mom as a second mom. Also, I had a lot of friends that I was tight with, who their parents were like second parents. I had so many second moms and second dads, but I can understand how you did think that and how you would think that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. You know, as a child it's different. As an adult I can see the broader sense of community and, as you said, we were all part of each other's community. It was nothing for us to be dropped off at each other's houses, whether Boy Scouts was going on or not. At the time, even as children, we didn't even realize our parents might've been going through some things and dependent on each other in their circle to just watch their kids for a little while so they can get something squared away, or to just feed their children for a little while because something was going on in our house or your house or the Smith's house or whoever's house. You know where. We're all part of this community.
Speaker 2:We don't think about those things, but our parents really depended even on one another. Hey, could you get him from school today, can you pick him up for Boy Scouts, because I'm working late, or just different things like that that they were there for one another and became and that sense of community is kind of missing now. In my opinion, we don't have a strong sense of community in 2024, like we did back in the eighties. It was a simpler time, you know if, if you were at your house, we were going to eat period. We weren't going to leave hungry. As adults, you can see the sacrifice that put on our parents having the extra two or three houses and a house to feed, but they never complained about it because they were there for each other.
Speaker 1:Right. They were always there for each other. They were the village, they were the community. They did all of it. We never thought about all the things that we're talking about right now, about how they were helping each other out, whether your parents were watching myself and Jack, or you were over at my house, whatever it may have been, or we're over at the Smith's house or anybody else's, we never thought about it that way. It was childhood to us. It was we're being kids.
Speaker 1:All right, we're going over to John and Elaine's house. We're going over to John and Liz's house.
Speaker 2:We're going over to Mary.
Speaker 1:Ellen's house. We're going wherever. It's so interesting to think about it in a totally different light. We were so far removed from childhood, but, yeah, it never occurred to me as anything other than this is just just what it is, and we all loved it.
Speaker 2:We were all a part of each other's lives, and there was no, for better or for worse, it was always for better, that's it.
Speaker 2:But what it does for me is it has me fighting to instill a sense of community in my own child in an environment that is not as easy because we are very mind our business environment now.
Speaker 2:We're very stick to ourselves and I think that's cool in a way. But one of the things I always say to my wife and I say is that when we became so segregated and want everybody to mind their business and leave my kid alone you don't speak to my kid we lost the discipline but we lost the protection as well, because I can name three or four neighbors on Madison street that I knew their houses were safe houses and you know, I remember forgetting my house key and staying at a neighbor's house until 6.30 till my mother got off the train and my neighbor went up with the note and left the note on the door Elaine John John's at my house. He forgot his key and my mother came back down and got me or called the house and said tell them to walk on the block or whatever you know. But I was fed and I did my homework. I wasn't out in the cold and the reality is we don't really have that as much anymore.
Speaker 1:Not that it doesn't exist, but right not nearly as much.
Speaker 2:So even in my own block I'm like, okay, you know this neighbor, you know this neighbor, you have safe houses. You call this neighbor. Luckily, my neighbor, of course, is street. I chose to go to the same school and they're close to the same grade and they've grew up together their whole lives, so we have some of that, but it's not as prevalent as it used to be.
Speaker 2:It's definitely not, and I know that the world has changed as a place. I understand that. You know there's crazies now and there's sex trafficking and there's internet stuff and porn and children being sold on internet. It's not as simple as it was in the 80s, where none of us had to worry about each other's parents being, you know, predators or something. That was the last of it, where now you know, before you drop people off at people's houses, you do have to look differently than you did in the 80s. When the 80s we avoided white vans in the street and that was it. But I mean, come on, our parents never knew where the hell we were on our bicycles. They never knew, and and there was no cell phones to track us, and we just knew he was home before the lights turned on.
Speaker 1:Meanwhile, how many white vans were there in the Boy Scout troop? I mean, John Smith had one and Red Dog had one, but we weren't afraid of those things.
Speaker 2:Back then we lived in each other's houses.
Speaker 1:Yes, we did Like you said. We always had a place to go to be warm fed.
Speaker 2:Do our homework to sleep all of those things and so it's a lot different. You know, 40 years later and our kids have a different experience. I said our parents, we laugh. My wife tells the same stories. Our parents never knew we were wearing no huffy bikes. Absolutely not Be miles away from home.
Speaker 1:They had no idea. We knew to have our asses home by the time it got dark. Think about it.
Speaker 2:Your mom would leave the house, going to work the hospital for 10 hours. She knew what you and john were doing for 10 hours or so easily exactly.
Speaker 1:She would leave the house just after six o'clock. She would get home usually about four. A few minutes after four, we put ourselves on the bus. We got ourselves off the bus and got in and we did whatever. We were 10 years old, I mean, she was raising us as a single parent. She didn't have a a choice. So, but it was 1984, 1985 was a totally different time. Like you said, we didn't have to worry about our safety. We knew what to look out for on the rare occasion that there would be a problem. But that's the thing. It was a rare occasion. The things that you have to worry about, potentially with your son, we never had to have any concern. Anybody who was within our community circle never had to worry about anybody.
Speaker 2:The whole community looked out for everyone else. I told him a story to my mother the other day and she said I had no idea. It even happened where. I remember getting to the bus stop and thinking I was first and I had missed the bus, and both my parents were in the city by that point, and I'm 10 years old. I've missed the bus. If I walk to school I'm going to be very, very late. And one of my neighbors saw me and drove me to school, said John, john, what are you doing?
Speaker 2:here, and I said I'm waiting on the bus and the bus is gone, you missed it. I said, oh no, get in. They drove me all the way to school and with no questions asked. Never a second thought. Never a second thought, where I just wonder in 2024 if that would be the case. It's just so different now. That was never a second thought. Get in the school. Joe Miao was getting my Merchants Elementary.
Speaker 1:I went to Merchants Elementary too, and that was the furthest one away the furthest one, yeah. So I mean that was probably a good 15-minute drive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, easily, I didn't think nothing of it. Had and didn't think nothing of it, had me in class on time and it was never even mentioned again. But that was the community.
Speaker 1:That's the thing. Nobody ever gave those things a second thought, no one made a big deal about them. It's not like you were going to get in trouble that you missed the bus, like he saw. You took you to school, didn't even think about it. And now, because that community aspect is so far gone in most places, you don't, or the kids don't, usually know enough neighbors who are going to see him standing out there or walking and say hey, charles, what's going on?
Speaker 2:Would you pay any attention to him at all?
Speaker 1:Right and, like in his case, he didn't take the bus, so that particular thing wasn't going to happen. But again, the community concept is just gone.
Speaker 2:I think, as parenting has changed and society has changed and societal acceptance of certain things have changed. And I said, my son tells my wife and I all the time you guys are just so old. But we'll take that, because both of our parents were boomers and my mom was born in 46. My dad was born in 38 and her parents were born in 45 and 47, right around my mother. Although there were things in the world that needed to change, there were some things that didn't need to change, and sometimes we can change some things and change too much. But I guess it's all about what your opinion is and my opinion of acceptable and yours might be two different things. So when you find people that have those kind of same values of you and same acceptance levels of you, then you become friends. Right, you go? Okay. Well, you know I don't want kids smoking weed, cursing, counting on my house. Okay, I found a parent who doesn't want that in their house either. We can all be friends. You know Exactly.
Speaker 1:And I think one of the things that really didn't need to change was community. It did, and I think that's just because of reality and we realized that there's, unfortunately, a lot of people that are either not that they're not trustworthy, but sometimes people are a little bit shady, or sometimes people are just really overprotective and you keep the grips a little tighter when you do have kids.
Speaker 2:Keep in mind, whatever change you make, there's a reaction is going to be somewhere, yeah, of course, and we can't always gauge what that reaction is going to be. And that's what every kind of societal change, even the reaction is going to be somewhere. It's kind of like you can go back years from later and look at it and go, okay, well, that kind of caused that and that kind of caused that. I give my parents some grace. I give my dad some grace that I give my parents some grace. I give my dad some grace. When I realized as a child I didn't realize it, but I realize now he was raising children at the very tail end of the first generation behind civil rights.
Speaker 2:My mom grew up in some of her life not all of her life, but she was born in a segregated South. My dad was born in New York, so he didn't live in segregation, but my mom did. My mom went to Black-only schools and had to go to Black-only parks. And actually my mom has an interesting story when she lived in New Orleans she only went to school half the year because they couldn't keep the Black schools safe and there were Black girls getting kidnapped from the French Quarter, so her grandmother never sent her to school because these girls were missing and never found. So when she moved to New York she was so educationally far behind because even an impoverished New York school is still better than an impoverished Louisiana school and it's still like that right, the inner city New York school is still gonna be better than the Louisiana school just is. And it was coming from Louisiana schools and then to a school she only went to half a year and she was supposed to be in the sixth grade but she was like on a third or fourth grade level. And so they're raising children in the tapestry of their own experiences.
Speaker 2:And, as I said before, madison street embraced us, but not all of mastic was happy to see black families moving in in 1972, right, so, being one of the first to move out, that far long island is smaller now than it used to be with technology and transportation and things like that. But when my parents first moved to eastern Long Island, my cousins thought we were going to fall off the earth, coming to our house Like the world ends, like Essex 68. Oh, my God, you know, of course, driving it a few weeks ago, my wife, and getting up at 68. We actually got back on some of this highway and I was telling her believe it or not.
Speaker 2:this highway goes 61 miles each. She's like get the hell out of here. It goes 61, it's 60 miles to Mastin-du-Montauk point. It's a long ride and she's like another hour out and she's like this really is a long ass island, isn't it? Yes, it really is I said the name wasn't very creative.
Speaker 1:That's like really it wasn't. It was pretty generic, but it accomplished the goal.
Speaker 2:Yes, it did long, definitely describe what it is, and so they're raising a family. In the backdrop of all this, the vietnam war is going on. There's, you know, and I think about that because, of course, if you watch the news now, there's all this division, there's all this infighting, there's all this. I hate election years, I just really do, because everybody's arguing with one another. I'm like, can we just argue about football please?
Speaker 2:and everybody's arguing about one another and back and forth, and red states and blue states and this, this and this, going on and trying to raise children in the midst of all this turmoil. My sister was two years old when Dr King was assassinated. I was born six years later, trying to raise children in this black middle class that was forming in the 70s and 80s, and how was it going to look? So I give them some grace now on navigating situations that I didn't even realize they were navigating and coming into an area that they were calling home for a better opportunity for their children. But the reality is, I said to myself, I wonder how comfortable they were moving on Madison Street. Not everybody in Mastic wanted them, but heck, did they really want to be there? But that's where they could afford to go right, because Long Island was even expensive. So that then. But you have both parents from Brooklyn who are now living 60 miles out East.
Speaker 2:My mother tells a story. She said that she wouldn't let my dad move her to Long Island until he taught her how to drive, because she never drove in the city, she never needed to. So here she is, 26 years old, learning how to drive with a two-year-old child, because she's like if you're working and I have to get her to a doctor, I can't drive anywhere. She's like there's no subway here for me to catch Right. And she talks about how afraid she was moving on to Long Island with no subway and then moving so far away from her mother. Because my grandmother grew up, my grandmother lived in Flatbush so my mom could take a train and get to Flatbush no problem and see her mom every day. Not from Mastic, not from Mastic.
Speaker 2:It's so funny because Mastic kind of became a safe haven for my grandparents. They wanted to leave the city. My grandmothers I never knew my grandfathers, but my grandmothers wanted to get out of the city. They came to Mastic and then Mastic became her home. But I mean, when my cousins would come visit me they'd be like yo, it's too quiet here, we can't sleep. And it's so funny because I didn't realize how loud the city was until I was back a few weeks ago. I was like it is loud as hell. I was talking on the phone and all of a sudden there's sirens in the back and I'm like yo, hold on a second.
Speaker 1:But you just adapt to it. Anytime that I go into New York City, that I've always gone into New York City, the noise is the noise. I didn't care, just like whether it's sirens or people or taxi cabs or something. Yeah, it's just part of the routine. It doesn't even phase you, but it is something you notice when you don't experience it for a while.
Speaker 2:Listen, I have a picture of my son's first trip on the subway. Okay, as I've Listen, I have a picture of my son's first trip on the subway. Okay, as I've said, this is a kid who's never taken a school bus to school, so the subway was a totally different experience for him. And he was like I love New York but I hate the subway.
Speaker 2:The day we went to Long Island, I think, was his favorite day as far as transportation, because he rented a car and my wife had rented a Pacifica. So he's in the back seat with his phone charger and his phone. He got his legs crossed, he got his own AC working and there's no one around him and he's having a great time. To the point that he was like can we just keep the rental car till it's time to leave? And I'm like no, because we're not going to drive it in the city and it's freaking a hundred bucks a day to park it. The car is going back and we're jumping on a train and going back to the city. And he's like no, he's like cause he was in the backseat, he had his food with him and snacks and he was just so comfortable not having to share a space. I love going back to New York. I love going to the city. I've always wanted to take my family to the city at Christmas time, but I'm afraid New York cold might be too much for them it might be.
Speaker 1:It gets brutal cold in the winter sometimes.
Speaker 2:I keep in mind. I married a woman from the Valley in Arizona, so North Carolina is the coldest she's ever felt. My nephew, who grew up in Arizona, my wife's sister and her husband's child the oldest they have three and he played football for Arizona State Okay, the oldest, they have three. And he played football for arizona state okay. And he entered the transfer portal and was picked up for a little while by utah state in logan, utah, where he was leaving 85 degrees and going to eight degrees and the kid didn't own a winter coat. We were all like getting the. His father was taking him to get stuff, to get him winter stuff and you know hats and gloves and just all things like that. And now he's in texas and the texas humidity is burning him up. He's because arizona's dry heat. He's never felt humidity like texas humidity. He's like man, it's crazy out here, right, but his other grandma is from is from late charles louisiana, so he's felt some kind of humidity going to visit her but not working out and having football practice doing it.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah anywhere in louisiana you're going to deal with humidity. We've been to New Orleans once. We were there three years ago. We were there in, I think, may or June and the humidity was definitely oh yeah.
Speaker 2:You cannot walk this way.
Speaker 1:You're wet when you walk outside, absolutely, but it's just part of it being from New York, we're both used to it.
Speaker 2:Long Island was humid as heck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when you live on Long Island or near city, you're never more than a few miles from water, and so there's humidity around us all the time. So we just dealt with gross summers. It would be 95 degrees with a real feel of the sun.
Speaker 2:I heard someone say what is it like going up Long Island with the humidity? And they said take a shower and just get out and put your clothes on.
Speaker 1:Don't dry off. Just get out and put your clothes on. That's the best way to describe it. Yeah, put your clothes on as quickly as you can so you can keep most of the water absorbed within the clothes and then go about your day.
Speaker 2:That's how you feel. That's exactly how you feel, but it's all good memories, though Not many people have memories of camping on a beach and waking up to the sun rising over the Atlantic Ocean or the Long Island Sound, and just enjoying those kind of things. I got to visit Smith Point Beach when I was home. That's the beach. The funny thing is, though, it's $18 to park there now. $18? Get the hell out of here. I remember arguing with $5. It is $18 to park there now, I said man.
Speaker 1:I remember when it went from five. I think it went from five to seven at one point and I was like what the hell is this?
Speaker 2:When I saw 18, I said, oh my God. I said well, you're not parking today. I said here, stay with the car. I'm gonna go run and grab a few pictures. I'm gonna jump right back in the car. That's disgusting.
Speaker 1:It was crazy today. We used to sneak into this parking lot in high school and my wife was like yeah, you're not trying that now?
Speaker 2:yeah, I was like no, we can sneak in. Oh, no, you can't do that anymore. That little, uh, that little chained off area in high school we would sneak in in a second. Oh, absolutely nobody cared.
Speaker 1:All right, so now we can walk across the bridge if I wanted to do it.
Speaker 2:That's a different story, but it's a different story and not for a few minutes, because actually smith point beach has a triathlon every year. Okay, and I've always said, maybe one year I'll travel back and do it and I was actually I was at a gym I've all places.
Speaker 2:I was in myrtle beach, south carolina okay, I love myrtle beach and met a lady who, uh, we actually bonded over her iron man tattoo, because I have one as well. From completing an iron man, she's completed two. I I've completed one, but she's from Bethpage, okay, and done the Smith Point triathlon several times.
Speaker 1:Wow, she still goes up there and does it.
Speaker 2:No, she had just moved to Middle Beach from Bethpage. Oh, okay, so she did it while she was still living in Bethpage. I've done that race several times we were just talking. I take my son to the pool to go work out and I met her doing her swim workout.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that Smith Point had a triathlon. Yeah, they have a triathlon there in the bay.
Speaker 2:I'm not a triathlete, so In the bay and the ride goes across the bridge and up William Flay Parkway somewhere, because, as a matter of fact, the triathlon was the next weekend, because I saw the sign saying expect delays.
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Speaker 1:And now back to the show. Let's relive some of the memories of Boy Scouts, because that was some of my favorite times growing up and your dad was a very big part of that and I'm so grateful for that. We talked about his presence before and when he was cooking. I always remember either your dad or John Smith were the ones that were cooking and they both said the same thing any time that they were cooking and any of us got near them Get the hell out of my kitchen. And of course you look around. Like what kitchen? It's a frigging picnic table.
Speaker 2:Get the hell out of my kitchen it's a coal and stove out here.
Speaker 1:It's a coal and stove, but they made sure that we all knew when it was time to eat and we would all line up and get our food, but until then we didn't go anywhere near it. Your dad's voice, now, I've only known a few people, maybe four or so people in my life. I kind of use the analogy of I can hear them through concrete. Your dad, on the mornings of the campouts, when everybody was starting to wake up, you would hear John Smith talking and Richie talking and whoever else was there You'd hear. Just kind of like in the distance You'd hear, and John also had.
Speaker 1:John Smith had a bit of a loud voice. Usually you heard him, but when your dad spoke, holy hell, you couldn't not listen. If you were just waking up and you weren't even functional, you still understood every word that was coming out of his mouth. He just projected so well and I don't even think he was trying, it was just him, it was his personality and I love that and I miss that so much Because whether he was trying to, sometimes he was trying to get on your nerves because he didn't care, but otherwise he was just talking and he just had. He just presented this huge presence and he just, I don't know, he just drew people to him and I think that was, you know, his voice, command and his heart. Once you got to know him, you understood the person he was, and I don't know if there was anybody that ever met that man that just did not fall in love with him immediately.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I realize now he really lived for those kinds of things and those trips because as a parent now, juggling schedule, juggling life, juggling work, where you know you come off work at Friday at six o'clock, coming from New York city and was at the church by 630 and camping all weekend long and getting home you know two o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, showering, going to bed for a little while and back up in the morning at four to go to work again in New York City on Monday. And he did that, no problem, yeah. And then I guess I realized how much he lived for it when I was no longer active and he was still doing it. And that's kind of the cool part I was talking about earlier. When I see these kids who we're calling them kids they're grown men now who I've never met because I was in high school working and wrestling or trying to go to college or in college and he was still on those camping trips and he was still at the Boy Scout Jamborees. I can remember I think it's my senior in high school because I had went to two Jamborees and he went to another one that I didn't even go to and he went there again and he was there working it for a week and lived in a tent for a week and you know working and that's just. He enjoyed doing it so much that I said, even as it wasn't part of my life, it was still part of his and he loved being able to help shape young men.
Speaker 2:In those conversations I think he understood more than I think he realized how much he understood how teenage years can be awkward and kind of crazy for all of us and he just became this kind of voice amongst so many that we can kind of turn to and kind of bounce things off of and kind of go. Well, that's not a good idea. And those adolescent years are so important in our development as men, as we discussed last time. I won't go into the politics of it, but even some of the decisions that the Boy Scouts have made I've been so disappointed in because I realized how important that 13 to 15, 13 to 16 was, or 12 to 15, whatever. Those years are just important in you developing and the importance of boys being around boys and learning how to become men together, whether it's on the side of a camp and ship, whether it's in a tent, and we should have been sleeping at nine o'clock and it's 11 and we're still awake with flashbacks, sleeping bags, just all those little things become those memories and those good things.
Speaker 2:But he really lived for those times and he loved to help young men out and he loved to and I think it was really part of just what he never had. So he wanted to be that because sometimes I wish he was alive to get his accolades and get his flowers and hear people talk about him. But I think a testament to that is, like I said before, troop 138 cut his grass until my mom sold the house Right. So every Saturday morning she'd have Boy Scouts in her front yard cutting the grass and cutting trimming hedges, where that's just something they took on themselves, that they were going to do yeah, because your dad meant that much to them she didn't sell the house for two, two and a half years after he passed Right.
Speaker 2:So two, two and a half years of grass cut was all taken care of by the troop, and not many people can really say that. So that was kind of cool. Very, very few can say that Because I got a message from somebody that didn't get to know you. I didn't get to know your dad, but I cut your mom's grass and I heard all these stories about your dad. I wish I got to know him, you know, and things like that. So and then I look at how the troop has grown and I know he'd be so excited. The troop is still going on and the troop. You know I was the only eagle scout forever in the troop. For at least three or four years I was only one. And now there's so many eagle scouts in this troop that there's two or three plaques and my plaque with my name on. It's probably somewhere in the church basement or something. Now you know it's not on the wall anymore. You know because now every time I turn around there's an Eagle Scout in Troop 138, you know, that's crazy.
Speaker 2:And I always stop If I see the post. I always stop and try to congratulate them. From the troops first, and several recognize the name Gerson man. We knew your dad or we heard your dad. You know, thank you. And so those kind of things are cool, that that legacy kind of goes on. So those kinds of things are cool, that that legacy kind of goes on and that you know, and it's about what you carry with you, cause although my son's not in scouts, I try to affect the kids on his team.
Speaker 2:You know, at one point this summer we were all weightlifting together and he'd get mad, he'd be like why they all got to come with us? Why can't it just be me and you? And I says my dad and me, if we're in the weight room, the weight room's right outside the pool. If you're lifting and they want to come lift too, I'm going to give them the same workout. And my wife laughs and that's your dad in you, right? And I said I guess so, because I'd have three or four swimmers doing pull-ups after swim practice. He was never about just his own children having. You know, if he had, everybody had, if he didn't have, nobody had.
Speaker 1:That's kind of how it was. There was never a time we stopped for snacks at 7-Eleven and not everybody got snacks. So that's just kind of those things he instilled. Right, if it was just you in the car, then you get snacks. If there were six kids in the car, six kids got snacks.
Speaker 2:I might not get as much snacks because you got to pay for six snacks. Now, right, of course I might get one bag of chips instead of four or five, just little things like that. But it's cool to look back at those lessons when you see your parents alive in you today. And I think part of my process of being ready to say goodbye is that I said not a perfect dude, I got so much crap going on in my life sometimes, but I can say that I think I've become the person he'd want me to be and that made it easier to say I think that's a very fair statement Thank you. So that made it easier to say goodbye to Madison Street and realize I didn't have to hold on to this thing anymore and try to make this block proud Because, hey, you've done that.
Speaker 2:You got a 24-year marriage, you got a 16-year-old son. You try to be a positive guy in your community. I'm very active in my church. I've gotten what I'm going to get from Madison Street. I don't have to make this a focal point in my memories any longer Absolutely, and I can now put this memory away in this window and go back to it when it's time to, but I don't have to think about this memory daily or carry this grief daily with me. Am I making him proud? Am I making him smile? Am I doing what he wants me to do? Because at that point it's like you're trying to impress a ghost because you don't have somebody here that gives you that attaboy.
Speaker 2:I've seen friends of mine and getting married, remarried in their 50s and their dads are still coming to the weddings like oh my God, what's that like? I hate to sound almost cold hearted, but like my friends call me in their 50s, who have lost their just oh man, my grandmother just passed. I don't know what to say to that man. My last grandmother passed, I was 18.
Speaker 2:You know you had a grandparent at 50. What's that like? You know where? Sometimes I almost sound not sympathetic and I try not to be, but the concept of having people that long is just unique to me and you realize that you're trying to, at least for me. I was trying to always live up to what he taught me, but not realizing that I had really lived up to it. And this last trip with my family and I said, hearing this gentleman talk to my son about values and by just meeting him and talking about the values I can tell you're being raised with, because your parents made the sacrifice even to bring you here to Madison Street and that really solidified in my mind at that point that you know something. Hey, he's alive in me.
Speaker 1:He absolutely is. Anybody who knows you, who knew your dad, knows that he is living on through you.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that, but I realized part of the grief process for me was realizing that, yes, and internalizing that.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the thing. Everybody can tell you oh, you're so much like your dad. Your dad would be so proud of you. It's different for them to say it and for you to hear it. Yeah, as opposed to seeing it yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm starting to really feel it, and I said it took a stranger because I don't know the man who lives on madison street took a stranger to kind of tell my son that to make me go. You know, know, oh yeah, you know, we did raise him with values. You know, we did raise him kind of like we were raised and you know, my wife and I always laughed because we were raised so much alike that we had to make sure we weren't related, you know. So he had no choice but to be raised old school. He had no choice. That's what you was going to get. You was going to get a mom and dad who stayed together forever. You was going to get a mom and dad who walked in agreement when it came to disciplining you. You can't run to one of us, not the other one. You know just little things like that that we saw in our households, that we just going to instill in our household. You're not going to get an allowance if you don't do a damn thing around here.
Speaker 1:Exactly, there's not produce money.
Speaker 2:Listen, that's just the reality of it. And if your grades are bad, don't come ask to go out. Little things that we do not to do. If our grades weren't good, we weren't going out.
Speaker 1:Right. Yeah, you want things you're going to have to earn them.
Speaker 2:So having a partner who was raising that kind of value system too, it made it a lot easier with our child. I know he hates it sometimes. I said he calls us old. Oh God, you guys like ancient or his word. We're cringe now, oh God, my parents are cringe. What the hell is cringe? It's derogatory. Whatever it means, it's derogatory. It doesn't sound pleasant. Yeah, I tell them. I don't even know what it means. I'm like, don't you?
Speaker 1:say that about me, because I know it's not good. Dad, do you even know?
Speaker 2:what it means. No, but I know that it's not good, so I don't say it.
Speaker 1:your intonation is not good, exactly, you're not saying it with a smile, you're not saying it with admiration.
Speaker 2:Exactly. No, it's definitely derogatory. But you know, I'd rather you be derogatory towards me now and go up and affect your community in a good way, and I guess I had to learn that now, the same way that I said, my dad beat me down sometimes, and you know now there's things I wish were different. Though, nick, I can be honest with you, because sometimes in such a place to establish authority, we miss a lot of avenues to become friends. In that meantime and I can remember the summer of 95, I got my first job in New York City. No, summer of 94. I got my first job. My cousin got me a job in New York City and I worked in Midtown and I thought I was the man.
Speaker 2:I was coming in from Long Island, going to the city every day, I was riding the subway and I thought I was the man and my dad and I used to ride in the car together, because he was driving into work every day at the time and he would drive into Brooklyn and then he would not jump on a train from Brooklyn and he would go his way and I'd go my way, his way and I go my way, right. And so you have this hour and a half in a car, three hours a day, that we were really talking, because we didn't always know how to have a conversation in there. And those are the times that I regret now sometimes, cause I, like you know, that was summer 94 and, uh, summer 95 would be our last summer, cause he passed April of 96. So it's like we didn't know in that car that we'd only have a year and a half left with each other.
Speaker 1:Right, and who is supposed to know at that point? None of us.
Speaker 2:And I say all those times that we were in that car and I had my my son has his AirPods in now. We had Walkmans.
Speaker 1:I had on my.
Speaker 2:Walkman because he was listening to 1010 Winds and I didn't want to hear the news every 10 minutes. It was so many opportunities we had. And then at one point I forgot what caused the argument that summer. I forgot what caused it. Okay, and we were fussing all the way home and he said if you don't want to ride with me, then you buy a blankety blank Long Island Railroad ticket. And you got a Long Island Railroad, blankety blank Long Island Railroad ticket. And you got a Long Island Railroad. And that weekend I bought one and it cost me $420 for a monthly pass. This is 1994. So it's probably $600, $700 now, if not more. You know, maybe somebody from Long Island hit us and tell them it's even more.
Speaker 2:But and I remember the first Monday, cause I didn't tell him I got it. I didn't tell him cause I was already like him. So Monday morning he woke me up to get up and get started getting ready. And I woke up and said I get to sleep later. I got a Long Island railroad pass and the train doesn't leave till 630.
Speaker 2:And I got back in bed, oh boy, and he went in the room and he told my mother do you know? He got a Long Island railroad pass, and my mother's like well, what are you about me to do? You told him to get one. He wanted to rule, and it was so funny because he said he's stubborn, just like me. He's stubborn, he's like God.
Speaker 2:I raised him too much like me. Because he said he went out and spent $400 something. Then the funny part is, though, is that I was prepared for the $400 on the pass. I wasn't prepared for paying for subway tokens, because I walked through the gate with him, and that's when Metro cards were first coming out, so I had to buy my first Metro card and pay for it. Man, when I tell you that hurt buying a Metro card because I had never paid. I walked through the gate with him, oh my God. So even when I was in the city a few weeks ago, I told my wife I still hate paying for MetroCard. I said I'm going to do it, but I hate doing it. Thanks.
Speaker 1:Dad.
Speaker 2:Exactly. It was so funny though. Oh, I look back at the time now and I laugh, because I was ornery and I got up every morning and drove to Ronkonkoma and caught the train from that station because I had the electric line, so on the Ronkonkoma station I could be in the city within, you know, 50 minutes. I was in Penn station and did that all summer long and then his shift switched so he started taking Ron Conklin line too, so he was working nights at the time, so when I get off the train he'd be going in and we'd talk for two minutes in the parking lot. And I'm thankful we even had those times because, yeah, who knew in 18 months later he'd be gone. Yeah, and that's what I mean by just those experiences of being robbed.
Speaker 2:As an adult that I'm like man I miss those times when I see people, my friends, going out to dinner with just their dads, or taking their dads out for Father's Day, or going to sit and enjoy a beer watching a football game my dad was a big football man but he came and watched the game with me or something and those times that you miss that you go. Oh man, you know, I kind of wish I had that, but then I'm very intentional on telling my son. It's hard because if you thought Walkmans were a distraction, picture iPhones or AirPods. They have no reason to talk to us anymore. I'm like, don't put down your phone and tell me about your day. It was the same as yesterday. I don't care how was swim practice, how was class Talk to me, and I'm very intentional like that because none of us know how much time we do have left.
Speaker 2:You're just trying to engage them, god forbid. But if summer 2024 is the last summer we have together, he can say man, we were in New York having a good time, I got to see my dad's hometown, I got to go hang out in the Hudson River with him Right, exactly Because it's not promised.
Speaker 1:No, it's not, and it doesn't have to be, that you could get sick. It could be an instant thing. Something can happen and poof, you're gone. We know, we're old enough to know, we're experienced and cultured enough in this world to know that we are not promised tomorrow. Hell, we're not even promised the rest of today. Listen.
Speaker 2:I do triathlons we talked about before and every year someone I know or someone who knows someone I know is taken on a bicycle from a driver texting or something. It's just the reality of it. I'm going to ride tomorrow with my friends. We pray before every ride because the reality is that, say, someone's rushing to church tomorrow and don't see us. You know, you don't know if that next ride is your last ride, right? So no, we live in a crazy world that you don't have. Like I said, the rest of today is not promised. We've been on this podcast for an hour and a half. There's people who takes them to school because my wife has to go to work earlier, because she works at an early school, so I'm the morning parent. We got a 10-minute ride from the house to school. You can put your phone up for 10 minutes and talk to me without me having to buy you something, Because if you open your wallet, these kids talk all day long.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely. They're your best damn friend.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're opening your wallet. You're going to listen. I told my son he has such high taste in someone with no money, right, because he wants Chick-fil-A and Cava every day. No, you're going to put up your phone. You're going to talk to me. You're going to tell me about your day. You're going to tell me about it. How was practice, dad? We swim the same four strokes. Okay, well, how did you swim them today? Just whatever to engage you. And then, on the flip side, even as parents, we have to make sure we're putting down the phones, because sometimes we can all be in a room together and my wife and I can both be like this easily, or behind a laptop answering a work email, or school starts here on Monday. So she's been preparing for school to start for the last two, three weeks. She's at the school right now getting the last minute things set up to welcome students on Monday.
Speaker 1:She's a teacher, she's a vice principal now, oh, vice principal, okay, yes, she has a lot of work to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so she's at the school right now preparing. She told me yesterday. She said I got to go in for a couple of hours. I said, okay, well, I'll be home. So I got the Zoom call, I said I'll be home. I got to go handle this and I'll be home. But we can all kind of get caught in our day. Without a doubt every single one of us. One of the great things about technology, and the bad things, is that it brought work home with us.
Speaker 1:We don't know how to leave work and honestly, I mean, I work remotely and sometimes it's just as bad, not with this job, but with other jobs that I've had. There are plenty of times that I've had my phone. I've never had actually one time, one job I had a work phone. That was my last one and I honestly I hope I never have a work phone again. Yep, there's always shit to do. Somebody is always sending a ping or a message, a team's message or an email that you have to check, and even if it's just two or three minutes, it's still two or three minutes. It takes you away from everything else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no. And then there's expectation that you answer. So you know, I say, even as parents, we have to watch that and make sure. I remember during COVID we had a zoom safe areas in our house that you couldn't be on Zoom so you could be in a robe, in your underwear, whatever you want to do in that area, that there would never be a camera there and that we're not going to take work in this area. And it was difficult. But I was talking to someone the other day I said I said the thing that blessed me the most coming through COVID was it gave me a renewed sense of family because we were all stuck in the house together. We had no choice but to try to get along.
Speaker 1:Yeah, nobody's going anywhere.
Speaker 2:We have to figure this out, Listen we had theme nights on Saturdays where we rent a movie on Netflix or whatever the streaming service at the time was, and we'd have taco night.
Speaker 2:We'd have ice cream Sunday night, we'd have chicken sandwich night, you know whatever, just to bring some variety into being home all day long.
Speaker 2:Okay, you know, I'm chopping up, I'm chopping up avocados and I'm, you know, I got burrito shells in the oven and my wife was making taquitos or something, just to have some kind of sitting on the couch together the same couch that he had class on, but it wasn't class time and it gave us that sense of family back and it made us for lack of a better way of saying it it made us love each other more because we couldn't go anywhere, because when you can get out the house and you can do different things, life can distract you quick.
Speaker 2:Definitely, we were all stuck in the house together. We had no choice but to acknowledge one another and I was leaving the house every day because I was still working in the office, because we didn't close the office here, but my wife and my son were both still home and every time she was like okay, he got on my nerves in this house, you got to come home and then remote church and it's like, oh gosh, now we're all online in the screen. We had a conference call church and things like that. But it made us lazy in a way too, because we were all going to church in our sweatpants, right.
Speaker 1:Everything has changed so much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, technology is cool. I would say you tell them what work for. I remember I got my first company cell phone. You couldn't tell me anything. I was so excited I had a company cell phone until it rang like 10 o'clock at night and I was like hold up. I got to answer that I got to answer that.
Speaker 2:I got to answer that. I got to answer that. I got to answer that I. And I realized that hold up to who much is given, much is required. So you're required more access, but even creating opportunities that you're unaccessible Like I told my office when I was going on vacation, I didn't know where I was going that, okay, my wife told me I have Wi-Fi.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure how much I'm going to have of Wi-Fi. I'm not sure if I need an international plan on my cell phone or not. So therefore, I'm not sure how accessible I'm going to be for a week. Yeah, I'm not sure, because I have no idea where I'm going. Right when I found out it was New York, I was like, okay, I got Wi-Fi, I'll be fine. But even creating opportunities that I'm not available, I'm sitting on a boat taking in the views of the Statue of Liberty at Brooklyn Bridge. We're not going to talk about numbers right now. You know I got that's the priority. Yeah, you know, my son's on the front of the Circle Line Ferry and the Statue of Liberty is behind him. We're going to engage in that moment right there. I'm going to take this picture in this moment, right here, and he's smiling, the statue's behind him. He's holding his hat on his head because it's windy. We're going to enjoy this moment because who knows if we'll ever get it back.
Speaker 1:And you might, but the next time you do he'll probably be like 25.
Speaker 2:He might have his own family on the Circle Line Ferry. He just might. That's how fast.
Speaker 1:Time does go, it does, but I hope something that happens when the time comes that he has his own family, when he gets married, if they have kids.
Speaker 1:As much as he will say to you and your wife now that you're old, you're ancient, this you're that probably a lot of the same things that you thought about your dad.
Speaker 1:But looking at it now and this is even before you lost your dad you still understood, as a young adult, a lot of the reasons for the things that he was doing.
Speaker 1:Obviously, now they have even more impact because you haven't had it's not like you just lost him last year. You've had him gone for more than half of your life, absolutely, and so you have held onto that and, as you said, fortunately your wife was brought up in a very similar environment, which is why you guys are driving this into Charles's head. You are trying to control is not the right word, but you're trying to bring him up in a way that your parents brought you up and that her parents brought her up, because it is all about values and at some point, when he's 20 or 25 or 30 or older and he has a family and they have their first child, god willing that they're able to. He will remember everything that you guys are doing to him and saying to him, as much as it may drive him crazy right now. He's going to cherish every bit of that when that time comes in.
Speaker 2:He will turn into me and I hope I'll be here to watch that.
Speaker 1:He will turn into you and he will turn into your wife and that will be okay. I hope that you are here to witness that. I hope that you were around long enough for him to thank you guys for the way that you raised him enough for him to thank you guys for the way that you raised him Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And I said and those are the things that I do, I felt I missed. But really part of kind of putting everything in a box is realizing. Although we don't have the physical conversation, the teaching is there. And you know, I've been able to talk to people who had bad relationships with their parents. Now the parents are gone and I say you know something? I tell them.
Speaker 2:I was talking to a brother of mine the other day, one of my friends, and I said even in your father's bad behavior, he taught you what not to be. And he was like yo. I never thought about it that way. It's the truth. I said because you turned out the total opposite of his example. So even in his bad behavior and his bad character and his bad, his father had some damages, had some flaws. I said, but I can't judge what he was going through in the 60s, but you turned out the opposite. So you'll see the good and take that good. It becomes you. Or you'll see the bad and you go. I don't want to be that and you become the opposite. But either way it's a lesson.
Speaker 1:It's a very valuable lesson. It's a lesson that we all need to learn, and sometimes it's some good and some bad. Absolutely, there are a lot of things that I took from my dad. There was anybody who has listened to this podcast I mean episode one is me telling my whole experience with dealing with him and growing up with him.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I point out is in Boy Scouts, my Eagle Scout ceremony in May of 1993, and it was the first thing Boy Scout related that he ever attended had to give the big speech, and the one person that I did not include intentionally was him because I didn't have any reason to. I mean, looking back at it now, if I had it to do all over again, I would do exactly the same thing. He didn't have any reason to. I mean, looking back at it now, if I had it to do all over again, I would do exactly the same thing. He didn't have anything to do with Boy Scouts. That is why John Smith and John Gerst and all of the other dads that were part of the group became my second dads. I had so many second dads and I'm so grateful for all of them, and that may have happened regardless. But it happened in large part because he was not part of it, because he intentionally wanted nothing to do with it, even listening to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like opportunity, because what if he had said you know something, it's my weekend, but I'm going to join the leadership team too and be out there in the woods with them? He could have, but we even asked him to different. Yeah, and you know, I didn't know your dad, but I know enough to know that sometimes they're dealing with so much stuff and sometimes even dads can become jealous of other people in your life, because I remember joining the wrestling team and my dad didn't like the wrestling coach and hadn't had really never met him. But it was this other person that had this influence that I was talking about all the time and I was listening to and all of a sudden I was coming home listening to Led Zeppelin because that's what we listen to in wrestling practice, and things like that, and Coach Terry Fallon and things like that.
Speaker 1:Coach Fallon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when he was part of my village but never really part of my dad's village with me. And you know I was actually reached out to Alyssa Mecca on Facebook the other day and told her hey, listen, talk to your brother, Tell him thank you, Because how much Coach Mecca influenced us all, but they were never part of my dad's village. And you have all these leaders and Boy Scouts who weren't part of your dad's village.
Speaker 1:No, they weren't. We tried to include my dad, like we asked him jack, and I asked multiple times. We wanted him to be part of either being the troop or just come to the award ceremony. Yeah, they're like once a month, the last whatever. I mean either monday or tuesday, I can't remember what day it was that we had the meetings, but the last one of the month where the word service we told him so many many times just come on down, it's good, it's not that bad. He never wanted to be bothered and so that's why I didn't.
Speaker 1:I tried for years and I mean I gave up trying to impress my dad and make my dad happy at an early age because I knew it just wasn't possible, unfortunately because of who he was. But after the Eagle Scout ceremony, when I finished up the speech and did not include him, bob Crawford was the scout master at that point and he said you know this concludes the ceremony. Thank you all for coming. You know we're going over the Knights of Columbus for food and stuff afterwards and my dad was the first one out of the auditorium and I talked to him later in the week and I knew he was going to be pissed, but it's what it is I. I knew he was going to be pissed, but it's what it is. I get that he was pissed, but his first response was the thing that I have a problem with is nobody at that award ceremony knew you had a fucking father. And I said well, dad, nobody in Boy Scouts for nine years knew I had a fucking father either. Yeah, so that's on you.
Speaker 1:He hated that.
Speaker 2:But he had nothing to say. It was your reality.
Speaker 1:That was the reality. I said say it was your reality. That was the reality. I said we asked you so many times to not give us so much shit. We wanted you to be part of it. You chose not to be part of it, as you've chosen not to be part of so many things in our lives. And so, yeah, nobody knew that I had a dad, whether I had one or I didn't. Nobody knew. Yeah, no one has ever no one of the troop has ever met you why they didn't have to be that way. You decided to make it that way for whatever stupid reason you have.
Speaker 1:And that was just his. Again, he didn't like it and we basically hung up. We didn't say anything. Then we went over the next weekend, we got into it, we got into a big fight and at the end of the time we were there, he said when you leave today, I don't ever want to see you at my house again. And I said, all right, so you know. But I mean, obviously that didn't last forever, um, but just for that, just for him to say that, like, really like, you were such a selfish prick and now you're going to try to turn this around on me and I I really wish that I could have had him as part of. I wish he would have been willing just to take some interest in something that Jack and I were doing. But he didn't because it affected his life, as he thought. Like it affected his weekend, even though we were going to have him the weekend before and after it, just like because something disrupted his perfect little world. It was a problem for him and so, yeah, so I never had that support from him, and your dad and all the other dads were such a key part of not just my years in Boy Scouts and developing me into the teen and the adult and the leader within the troop that I became and the leader within the troop that I became.
Speaker 1:All of them played a role and not every parent is active in Boy Scouts or in any organization, and I totally understand that. I didn't need him to be at every camp out or every meeting. I just wanted to have a little bit of involvement. It would have been nice, but he wanted none, and so I guess maybe that is a big part of why, early on, I was looking to John Smith and your dad and all the other dads to just for that role model and I found them all very quickly and I do appreciate that you I mean I know you didn't have much of a choice in it, but I still appreciate that you shared your dad with me and with Jack and with all of the other boys, because he taught us so fucking much about being Boy Scouts, about setting up tents, about building fires, about cooking, about tying knots and about being men.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's awesome. I'll even listened to you, because there's things going on in your home that we weren't aware of, right, or our parents may have spoke, but we weren't aware. We grew up knowing your parents weren't together. But everything you've told me now is my first time hearing. It makes me more happy that you did have other men in your life for those areas and for anybody listening not just for you, but for anybody listening that we can let regret control that future. Now what's done is done, right. There's unresolved issues. Our dads are gone and your moms are gone and whoever in your life is gone. You have to put that away in a window somewhere for another time, because trying to resolve things that are unresolvable will drive you crazy.
Speaker 1:It will drive you crazy. And I've learned that a little bit in this journey Right, and it doesn't mean that it can't be somewhat resolved, like everything does have a place All feelings, all emotions. It doesn't mean you're going to get the answer that you quote unquote want yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, life doesn't always come in a good little box with a bow. Wrap it up tight, it just doesn't.
Speaker 1:No, usually it comes in a folded little box with a bow, it just doesn't.
Speaker 2:No, usually it comes in a folded, a broken up box that you found in the back of a toilet. It's nasty. My wife and I do pre-marriage counseling and I tell the couples on the first session I said I need you to understand. Marriage isn't wedding dresses and flowers and sunshiny days. Marriage is disgusting. Marriage is vomit. Marriage is diarrhea. Marriage is menstrual cycles. Marriage is getting old. Marriage is diarrhea. Marriage is menstrual cycles. Marriage is getting old. Marriage is farts in the night. That's what marriage is.
Speaker 2:So let's take away the prettiness and the good looking and the social media aspect of marriage and let's rip the bandaid off and get to what reality is, because you will always be one thing on Facebook when you live with somebody for 24 seven. It's a different story and it's a different thing. You have going on and you have to understand that. And grief is kind of the same way where it's and life is the same way. It's not always pretty and in a box and just perfectly wrapped. There's going to be things that are left undone, right. There's going to be feelings that are left unresolved. There's going to be things that you just have to live with Absolutely. I think one of the hardest things about having a teenager now? Is that sometimes trying to teach him that life ain't always perfect? No, and it's not always going to go your way, and sometimes you're just going to have to be satisfied that it didn't go your way and move on. Yeah, not everything is about participation trophies, because the kids born in the 2000s don't believe that, because the whole world is noted on there since they got here right. So it's nasty, it's unresolved.
Speaker 2:I found myself on William Floyd Parkway with this Band-Aid being ripped off. Yeah, then I realized, man, hold up, I put a Band-Aid on a cut for 26 years that adhesive held tight. And now I'm shaking as I'm turning on the madison street, I'm driving up patchogue avenue and all these things are coming back to my memory walking a taco bell to go to work and I pass by my taco bell and just all these things are coming back to my memory and I'm like, oh my gosh, okay, what's the business over here now? That was where I saw Star Wars at for my first movie theater. It used to be a show theater and now it's. I don't know what's over there now and just you know, all these things are coming back to me. I'm like the Aldi was my pathmark. Pathmark was my first job when I passed by Like something I recognize. King Cullen is still here, my wife's like what the hell is a King Cullen? You know?
Speaker 1:Let me show you what it is. It's the greatest grocery store ever.
Speaker 2:It's not the greatest grocery store ever, but what you grew up on is the best thing ever. You know it's fantastic, it's familiar.
Speaker 2:I'm thankful that I lived long enough and my wife took me to this to face those things. Actually she said listen, I didn't know you're going to get all this. I was just taking a trip. You wanted to go on because you've been complaining about being homesick for years and I'm trying to go home for years. But of course money goes other places and swim coaches and family, and then it's so important to get her home because both her parents are still here. So she has to get home to Arizona two or three times a year sometimes. So I'm like, okay, well, I'll take mom. No, I never stopped from going to see your mom. So money gets diverted other places sometimes. Of course she had saved this for this and she said the level of healing you got put it this way I'm walking down Fifth Avenue the last day there, I'm going towards the park and I want to show my son the park and I see the building I used to work at and I just start crying and I'm tearing up because of all these memories.
Speaker 2:I'm tearing up and my wife just see me tearing up, just run my back. So I'm tearing up, trying to hide from my son that I'm crying in the streets. I'm like, yeah, this dirty New York air. You know, like all these memories are rushing back and all these memories of being 21,. Working in the city, thinking I was grown and you know, spending. It's my first real job. I got paid like $450,000 a week cash. You couldn't tell me nothing. You know, 20 years old, with a pocket full of money. You could not tell me anything. And I'm working in the city where all my friends are still working on Long Island, somewhere, you know, at Pathwalk and King Cullen, and I'm getting up and getting on the train and going to this like I'm like a real grownup. You know that's right, you've made it, you're an adult. And then I get to come back to UNC, charlotte and tell all my friends about my summer in the city.
Speaker 2:Just all those memories came rushing back and I'm just like, oh my gosh, but I'm learning to separate those good ones and those bad ones. Life is about, you know, if you had more good days than bad days and life wasn't perfect on Madison Street and my dad died, with a lot of unresolved issues between us and a lot of things that, like I said, I wish we had got to become friends as adults Because he was so busy setting the authority sometimes that he never took the time to recognize, hey, we can be friends in this process and we never got to become friends. And letting that go. For another time, though, realizing you know something, I've had more good than bad. And realizing that, hey, I'm trying to make you proud every day and if my faith holds true, then we'll meet again. And really letting my mind say goodbye, letting my mind say, man, you're right. A whole nother family has grown up here now.
Speaker 2:Madison Street is no longer home and that's why, for the first time since 1996, I was ready to say goodbye to it and I said I'll still go out to New York. My son loves the city now, except the subway, so I still take him to New York City and things like that. But if I don't make it that far east for a little while, I'm okay, and that pull to see home is not as strong as it used to be, because I'm recognizing Charlotte, north Carolina's home. This is where I've been married at for years. This is where we raised our child. You know, only city he's ever lived in is Charlotte, north Carolina. He came home from the hospital in this home that we're in now lived in in Charlotte, north Carolina. He came home from the hospital in this home that we're in now and being thankful that we were able to give him the same stability that we were raised with, because I came home from the hospital on Madison Street and didn't leave there until 21.
Speaker 2:My sister was raised on Madison Street.
Speaker 2:She lived in Brooklyn as a little girl till my parents bought the house and being able to give him that same stability that we were given, let me know that Madison Street had prepared me and that's really kind of full circle, in kind of where I've come with this. I said I'll be 50 in three weeks and realizing that there's things that I'm not going to get answers to, that's fine. But those lessons and I said, and it took a total stranger that's the kind of crazy part, because sometimes life works like that it took a total stranger to remind me of the lessons that I got on Madison Street and how I was teaching those lessons to my son now, who had never seen Madison Street or one time. And it wasn't about the house, it was about the community, it was about the lessons and the values, and those values are mimicked five states away in North Carolina. Those same values that came from Tempe, arizona, where my wife grew up, and Maslow, new York, where I grew up, are now alive and well in Charlotte, north Carolina.
Speaker 1:That has got to make you both incredibly proud that you were able to, that you were raised with the values that you were, that you were separately raised with the values that you were, and you have been able to keep all of that alive and funnel it to your son.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, just, we are proud of what we grew up with, right? Yes, and the reality is like I said, you have all these different facets of people who have affected you, of the tapestry of who you are. Miss Smith, my first business teacher is the first one that taught me about debits and credits and who knew I'd be working in finance 30-something years later and that would still be the lessons that I got in 10th grade are still very much alive and well those concepts 30 years later. Just they're on computer now. We had ledger cards back in DECA. They're on computers now and spreadsheet, but those concepts are still very much there.
Speaker 2:And as it becomes a tapestry, you look back and I guess the older you get, the more reflective you get. I look back and go well, dang, I had a good life. I had two parents who tried, wasn't perfect, but they tried, didn't have everything I want, but we tried and we gave more to my son than we had. And I said now your job is to give more to your kids than you have. I said, guess what? You've gone to Christian school your whole life, so that should be a value you want to take into your, your parenthood. You're on a private year round swim team If your kid is a swimmer or a tracker or whatever. You want to take that value into your children, just like the sacrifice my dad made for me of camping all weekend on a camping trip in the mountains and stinking boys and farting in the cars and just all those things that come on.
Speaker 2:This man would have had him at home with a glass of wine laid up with his wife once a month or so. He knew this is the weekend for it. That's the one I laid up with his wife once a month, and so he knew this is the weekend for it. And I think about those cold polar bear camping trips and it's eight degrees in Long Island. We're out there camping in mummy bags and moon boots and stuff. I'm like, listen, I hate tent camping now. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. I know no Eagle Scout should say that, but I hate it. You can't pay me to tent camp.
Speaker 1:now, that's so funny.
Speaker 2:And I still love it.
Speaker 1:to be honest, we need desperately to go camping, because I have not been camping in a tent in eight years and I fucking hate it. I'm so mad that we haven't done it and we just need to make the time. That's all it is.
Speaker 2:I am so the opposite. My son was in a group called the Explorers it's run through the Seventh-day Adventist church and it's kind of like a Boy Scouts for the church and my wife went camping with him and she was like why am I going camping with him when his father's an Eagle Scout? She's like how did I get roped into this?
Speaker 1:She's like how am I going on this trip and I was like I'm not going.
Speaker 2:I said I need you to realize that I'm not going tent camping again. I said my parents bought a camper for a reason. I'm not going tent camping again. So she's like he wanted to go. He was maybe nine or so, so they're in Wisconsin somewhere. I forgot the city in Wisconsin, okay. And she said it rained, they were wet, he was miserable, she had to use an outhouse. He's like oh my God. She's like yo. She's like I'm traumatized. She's like this is how you grew up. My wife I call her the. My wife is a resort lady because our parents had this timeshares and stuff. So she was like two bedroom resorts, ac, sitting on a balcony. She's like I'm camping and I forgot what rural part of Wisconsin they were in. And she's like this is horrible. And I was just like this is how you grew up. I said welcome to it. I said you don't understand.
Speaker 2:I said I worked at a Boy Scout camp and lived in a tent all summer long and she was like how did you go with no AC and just little things? Like, for instance, when I'm grilling, I make sure I clean up as soon as I'm done grilling because I want to have raccoons in my backyard because if you know what a boy scout chip, the kid who has food out is going to have raccoons in his tent snacks. Keep them locked up. You have to use little things like that that you already know you're going to deal with squirrels, you're going to be definitely so, those lessons that you keep with you and those wrestles, like I said, I can still. I can still tie a knot and you know, I still recognize, I still have much appreciation when I see the new eagle scouts coming in and, to be honest with you, something I never really realized I'm walking through the, I'm walking to the subway station a few weeks ago and I'm looking at the cleaners and the transit workers and I realized I told my wife I got so much respect for them because the transit is what put me through college, that's what paid for our house, that's what made sure I had closed my back and I said I got respect for these guys out here working.
Speaker 2:I really do, because they're doing the same thing and I'm hoping they're treating their families the same way I was treated and just all those kinds of things, because my dad worked for the transit for 30 years and he commuted for 30 years from Long Island into the city, which is not a short commute every day to make, but he did that so he can provide college Boy Scouts uniforms, food, and you get to a point. You go, man, I didn't go without. And you go, my kid's not going without either, right.
Speaker 1:That's when you know you did all right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm like he got everything. He got too much. Matter of fact, I told him. I told him what time do you need to get a job? He's like what, what? What's that word? I didn't understand. But it's so funny because even I gave him because he's 16. I said I remember when sneakers, I'll date myself. You're the same age.
Speaker 1:They were Reebok pumps and there was some at the flea market on Sunrise Highway and they were $100.
Speaker 2:And I took my dad and my dad picked him up and said, John, these sneakers are $100. And with my smartness, no, they're only 94.
Speaker 1:And he said- I can already imagine the rest of the conversation, but please tell me he said I don't wear $100 sneakers.
Speaker 2:And you figure this is 1991-ish. And I'm saying yeah, but they got the pump, I can pump them on the side. And he said you need to get a job. And I said, well, you sign up for me to work? And two weeks later I was at Taco Bell working for 4.25 an hour. You know how long you gotta work to make 100 for sneakers that was me a path mark 4.25 an hour exactly?
Speaker 2:do you know how long you have to work? I'm like I'm looking at the political nonsense. Now we're gonna raise the minimum wage to 15, like they don't deserve it. They need to make five dollars an hour, like we did. That's right, kids don't know anything these days my old man comes out quick like they don't deserve that kind of money.
Speaker 1:Oh man.
Speaker 2:He made me get a job. And I look at my kid, I'm like okay, like hey, buddy, you're 16. You can work and there's a food line that's our King Cullen. That's a mile and a half from my house and, like when I'm running in the morning especially over the summertime, not as much during the school year I'll run down the food line and back and I get three mile running and I can see the kids all walking to work. There's no coming back.
Speaker 2:And I said, buddy, you got kids 15, 16, this neighborhood and they're all walking to work. And they got on their blue food line. You know polo shirts and they're aping around their shoulder walking up the hill and the food line. And I said I'll give you a bye because I wasn't trying to become a college athlete. He is, but sooner or later you're going to have to figure both things out. You're just going to have to. I said, you know, I said I'll give you a bye because he swims eight to nine times a week. So I said, okay, that's a lie and you keep your grades up, I won't complain.
Speaker 1:But sooner or later you're going to have to figure out the third part too. Unless if he becomes so good that he becomes in the elite he can go for, you know, state championships and national championships and, you know, the Olympics and get sponsorships. Unless that happens, then he's going to have to figure it out.
Speaker 2:Sooner or later you got to work Sooner or later. There's a Chick-fil-A two miles from the house the other way and the food line. The funniest, the simplest thing we have a neighborhood pool. I said you can lifeguard in the neighborhood. The pool's a half mile from the house. We have to pass it, leave the neighborhood. Every time we need a neighborhood, he's like, yeah, I want to work there. I'm like you know something? Life is going to teach you. One of the things I've learned in these almost 50 years of being here the lessons your parents cannot teach you life will. Parents cannot teach you, life will. It's just the reality of it. Absolutely so I realized that I can't cover every base, but the bases I couldn't cover, life will cover for me.
Speaker 1:Right, and for the bases that you may not be able to cover, it is through no fault of your own. It's certainly not due to a lack of trying. Yeah, there are going to be certain things that he's not ready to hear and he's not ready to see and he's not ready to do. Not because you haven't done everything that you guys can do to prepare him, because he's not ready. So in time he will figure it out, whether it's, you know, because he needs to get a job, or because he decides he's going to, or because life just punches him in the face with something. He's going to figure it out, but at the same time you were doing everything you can to prepare him for that Exactly.
Speaker 2:So when you launch, you can't say your parents didn't prepare you. You see your parents go to work every day. You can't say they didn't prepare you.
Speaker 1:He can never say that you guys didn't make him ready. I don't think he ever would. For that one half second. He wants to be a smartass and he wants to even try. No way.
Speaker 2:Listen, you see both your parents every day. I say I look at these kids all the time I'm running back and you see them in the morning walking there because I guess boot line opens at 7. So they all got to be there about 6.30 going to work and it's like 6 o'clock. In going to snatch you up the street walking a mile and a half.
Speaker 1:You're fine. There's enough traffic that if somebody sees it happening, somebody's going to do something about it.
Speaker 2:Listen, you can ride your bike and be there in 10 minutes. But when there's a will, there's a way, absolutely, and life will teach you.
Speaker 1:Life teaches us a lot and everything that we have experienced has taught us a whole lot. Your dad has taught us a whole lot. I am so grateful for the time that I did have with your dad. I'm so grateful that he was a huge part of my life growing up, and I know that because everybody's busy and blah, blah, blah, we have not spent nearly enough time talking together and I think now that we have reconnected over the last few weeks, I think we hopefully can and will both make an effort to not let that happen, and these conversations have been really good, even for me too.
Speaker 2:So I thank you for even the invite, because it has been good for me.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely. Look, I can extend the invite all day long, but you're the one who did all the hard work. I'm just throwing a bunch of questions out there. You are the one that had to tell this story. Had I known years ago kind of the things that were on your mind if I were doing podcasting years ago, I'm not sure that even that would have been the right time for you to talk to me or to anybody Seeing your post a few weeks ago saying goodbye to Madison street. I thought about it and I did. Of course it was exactly what I say, that I hate when everybody else does. I saw it when I was at the gym. But of course this is why I go to the gym at quarter to five in the morning, because there's like five people there and I'm not if I stop my phone for a second right.
Speaker 1:Nobody's holding. I'm not holding anybody up. So I saw your post and read it and, just like I, went on the side, I sat down at a bench for a few minutes, read it and read everything that you wrote, and saw some of the posts from the last few days and sent you that message because I just knew that it was really important in that moment for, one, for us to get reconnected like this and, two, to see if this was something that you'd be willing to talk about. Look, I would have loved hearing all of this, even if I wasn't doing a podcast, but the fact that I'm doing this and trying to help people. I've read that story and I knew right away we need to have a conversation.
Speaker 1:Of course, my second thought was I hope he's willing to have a conversation and I'm so hope he's willing to have a conversation, and I'm so glad, yeah, and I'm so grateful for that, but it just seemed like the perfect way again for us to reconnect and to highlight your grief journey and everything that you've been through.
Speaker 2:And I love that. We've my biggest prayers for anybody that are listening, anybody who listened to this or any of your other podcasts. You know my prayer is that you face your journey, that you face it, that you resolve what you can and that you learn to live your life on the other side of it.
Speaker 1:Right. So not everything can be resolved. You've learned that. I've learned that the therapy journey that I had a few months after my dad died, when dealing with a lot of anger toward him, every conversation that I was having at that point was one side, because he's dead, he's not going to respond. But honestly, I also knew that a lot of the things that I was thinking and feeling and saying these were conversations that I had with him when he was alive, but I wasn't getting any answers out of him then. So I knew that, no matter how long he lived if he had lived the answers weren't going to change.
Speaker 2:I wasn't going to get wrapped up, right.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and so that's why I found myself in therapy. Kim is the one who said you need to talk to someone, and I'm so thankful that she did, because that was the next six months of weekly conversations with a therapist. Speaking with that lady did give me the tools to process what I needed to process, to put everything in its appropriate place. I got rid of the anger. I forgave myself for being angry at him, I forgave him for being who he was, and I forgave him from not being able to be who we know he could have been.
Speaker 2:And that's such a big step because I love that right there. You forgave him for being who he was. Yeah, that's such a big step and that's a step we all have to learn from those who even had good relationships. Like I said earlier and I'm going to keep rehearsing the same thing, but keeping in mind, when I look at all the things that my dad might've been going through in 1974, having a child and all the things that all these macro things that America was going through that are now coming into how he's raising his family I have to say, hey, listen, you did the best job, you know how to do and the areas you fell short in, I'll just try to do better with my kid.
Speaker 1:I know that my dad, probably largely, was a product of his environment. Not that his parents were horrible people at all, but he was very close with his mother. He did not have a close relationship with his father, his. His mother was home. She took care of the family. His father after they.
Speaker 1:He was initially raised in astoria, in queens, and then they moved out to shirley in 58 or 59 gotcha and my grandfather was a chef and commuted into the city and he did that five or six days a week. So his job at the time was to provide. It was a very different dynamic in 1960s. The man provides, the woman takes care of the family. That's just the way it was for us, probably 95% of the families.
Speaker 1:For whatever reason, he told me about this at some point that he just chose not to have a great relationship with his dad. He just I don't know for whatever reason, they weren't on the same page, they weren't close. It is what it is. I don't believe ever that my dad set out to be an asshole. I believe that he had some tools and he also lacked others. I want to believe that he did the best he could with what he had. Now, also the fact that by the time all was said and done, he was married and divorced five times and had seven kids. That obviously is going to impact things as well.
Speaker 2:It lets you see the character, though, and even the commitment level.
Speaker 1:Look how long you've been married now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've been married for 18 years. Bad. So even in like I was telling my friend, even in who he was, he taught you what not to be. That's exactly right, Because now you're in this committed marriage that's going on for 20 years.
Speaker 1:And he definitely did teach me some things. He taught me a lot of things and he also gave me a lot of interests that I still have today. I've talked about this on the show my love of weather. I wanted to be a meteorologist originally. He was passionate about weather. I got that from him. Baseball he took us to our first Mets game at old Shea Stadium when I was, I don't know, probably seven or eight. He got me so much into playing. I mean it started out as a wiffle ball in the backyard and then eventually playing softball and baseball. The Mets were always my team, even though he grew up as an obsessive Yankees fan.
Speaker 1:Movies we both had a love, all of the kids. We all share a big love for movies and professional wrestling like okay, as ridiculous as it is, I mean I remember watching, you know, saturday morning wrestling before hogan was ever the champion, bob backland was still the champion and I knew nothing about it, but I was watching it then and now, 40 something years later, I'm still watching. I don't necessarily sit there and watch every episode of raw or smackdown or the, the pay-per-views. It's still entertainment. Yeah, again, I say this to people who are out there saying it's fake, it's bullshit, it's fake. You already know that it's entertainment. Yeah, it's entertainment, but also, guys, the injuries that they get can be real. They're putting their bodies on the line to do this. It's entertainment. It's the guy's version of soap operas.
Speaker 1:Not everybody likes it and I understand that, but it's something that all of us we grew up with that together and because of him, and also there are so many other things that he taught me and I am proud of and I do keep close to the vest and I am glad that he taught me certain things and I am still also glad that he taught me some things of how not to be Absolutely, how not to be absolutely, how not to treat a woman, how not to treat, you know, a wife or girlfriend or a mother. Any of just watching some of the things that he did were great lessons of don't let this happen to you yep, in those good and bad times you got a story exactly, and it's all.
Speaker 1:Whether we like it or not, whether we wanted it or not, it's all part of our reality. You said it yourself with your dad you wish that you had enough time to have been able to become friends as adults and unfortunately yeah, like you said you got robbed of that. All that you have to remember are the first 21 years of your life. But you got enough, hopefully, out of your dad that you can be proud of what you did get from him and, as you've done today, continue to honor his life and honor his legacy, because he left, through Boy Scouts and just through everything that he taught us, he left a legacy on so many people.
Speaker 2:And I love hearing that. Thank you again.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Again, thank you for sharing him with us, because I know you didn't have much of a choice at the time.
Speaker 2:You were just going along for the ride but you did.
Speaker 1:Whether you realized it at the time or not, you were sharing your dad with so many of us and you have one biological sister and you've got probably a hundred brothers. One biological sister and you've got probably a hundred brothers absolutely easily, easily, yeah, and I'm so grateful for for that relationship with him, and your mom is an incredible lady too, and and your sister, I mean I know jill was probably jack's first crush. Jill is incredible, I mean. I know I haven't seen her in forever, um, but just your whole family. We just loved all of you guys and still I don't want to say loved, we love all of you guys I told you, a lot of still reached out to me.
Speaker 2:She sent me some pictures a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1:Man, I loved it yeah she you had mentioned, uh, in our last call that she did that I'm so glad that she did, nah, just some old pictures and we had the blue light 138 hats, horrible hats with the Long Island.
Speaker 1:Yep, hey, that's where we're from. That's where we're from. I mean, the hats seemed kind of cheesy then and I wish I still had mine, because every now and then, like last time, I was home visiting my mom and I saw some pictures and I saw some of the old Boy Scout pictures and I remember those hats and I was like damn, I wish I still had mine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Now that's where we are from and realizing that hey, listen, no matter where we go in life, NASTIC is where it started. That's the launch pad.
Speaker 1:When we moved to Texas and when we bought our house, some of our friends were like y'all are Texans now. First of all, let's talk about that. No, we're not. I loved our time there. We have just incredible friends who were like family and still are in Texas.
Speaker 2:And even now, living in Tampa, we are not.
Speaker 1:Floridians. If I live here for the rest of my life, whether that is a day or 60 years, I will never be a Floridian. I will always be a Long Islander who lives in Florida.
Speaker 2:Listen, long Island is on the inside of us.
Speaker 1:It's not going anywhere, that's right, you can take the boy out of Long Island. You cannot take Long.
Speaker 2:Island out of the boy. I'll leave you with this. I saw a post not too long ago that said you know, you're from Long Island. When you could pronounce, and it had Ha-Pog, you could pronounce, and it had Ha-Pog Pat-Jog Copay Ron-Konkoma.
Speaker 1:I was like yo, montauk Quag, all of that.
Speaker 2:I saw that same post. I was like exactly, and it made me laugh so hard because, as I'm driving the LIE out to the Massachusetts exit, my wife is going how do you say this town? Where are we? She's like, where are we? Copay going? How do you say this town? Where are we? She's like what? What copia? Yeah, like, why. And danca? Well, what is that? What is this? Oh man, I was born in syracin hospital, right, and so as we passed through syracin, she's like how do you say that? She's like c-o-c-1, I was told. I said listen, y'all know mastic, but this is really where it began, because this is the house I was born in. She's like yo, I never knew that about you. It's like how do you say the town? I love that. She's like what's going on?
Speaker 1:see when I still live in at my mom's house and shirley like that's easy because shirley is a name, so anybody can pronounce shirley. When we bought our house in ronkonkoma and we lived there for eight years anytime if, if I had to call some customer service number, whatever a bill or anything, if there was an issue anytime, somebody would try to say that, looking at my address, and say, ron Cole, oh, is that? How you pronounce it yes.
Speaker 2:No, I'm making it up as you throw in, like I said, some Copay and some HopHop man. People are just really throwing off with our names. He said Montauk, we got them all.
Speaker 1:We've got them, them all, and if you're not from long island, you're not going to be able to pronounce most of them. And that's okay, because then we know who our people are exactly we.
Speaker 2:We know how to jump on the wanton expressway and cut north to south in a second we can do it like champs.
Speaker 1:Everybody else is like where do I go?
Speaker 2:oh, the gps is telling me exactly but this, but no, no, no, I need a damn GPS.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. Long Island can be a fucking handful and it can be crazy, but it's ours.
Speaker 2:You know something, but there's nothing like having a sense of home and having a sense of, hey, listen, no matter where life takes me, there's nothing like it.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I was thinking about during the course of this conversation is how you haven't called Madison Street home in 28 years. And I mean I don't call Long Island home anymore. My mom is still alive and I don't want to say, well, physically she's fine, but mentally, you know, questionable. But I mean it has been for the last, you know well, my entire life. So nothing's changed there, Right, Nothing's changed. Exactly, she's perfectly fine. What I was thinking of is when that day comes and Jack and I you know she's gone and Jack and I sell that house because there will be no reason to keep it. I'm just thinking about, like listening to everything that you were talking about, and what it will be like the first time that I go back to New York and pass that house. It will be impossible to avoid or miss.
Speaker 2:Listen, I talked about your mother passing by the house. I said it's one of these houses over here, I'm not sure which one, but it's one of these houses like three in a row. I said right here and I said that's before. I knew that you and I would link up again and have this conversation, but I talked about her passing in. I said remember the lady that sent me the pictures? My wife was like, yeah, okay, let me talk to somebody that sent me pictures. I was like she lives right over here somewhere in one of these three houses.
Speaker 1:You might remember it, if you saw it or if you did see it at the time. It was the one with the flagpole, with the American flag and the army flag right below it no-transcript. I always ask a bunch of random questions. I have a list of them. They pop up and this is just a usually a fun way to end on a lighter note. This way, we're getting away from talking about grief and loss and all the horrible things that we were talking about Not that this was a horrible conversation by any means, because this was absolutely perfect conversation but we're going to have a little bit of fun for a couple of minutes and then we'll wrap this up, because I know we are way over time and anybody who's listening is saying what the fuck are you two talking?
Speaker 2:about for so long.
Speaker 1:Well, when you know somebody for 40 years, this is what happens, yeah you got to catch up, that's right. You got to catch up, all right. What was your last impulse buy?
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, probably parts of my bicycle. I ride a triathlon bike and parts are expensive. So bike tires or whatever, something like that Definitely.
Speaker 1:What is the place you want to travel to the most?
Speaker 2:My wife and I have been talking about doing an Africa vacation.
Speaker 1:One of the questions that has come up in here a few times is have you ever been to Africa? So if that one comes up, then we'll be able to say not yet, but you're heading to it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, we've talked about doing that. We have. I have a friend of mine in South Africa right now that he just traveled to, I think, ghana, so what is your favorite ice cream flavor? Favorite ice cream flavor is probably going to be I'm going to go old school here with that Heavenly Hash, like, yeah, I'm going to go old school. Wow, that is old school, haven't it? Yeah, I'm going to go old school. I'm thinking about Friendly's Jack Daniel's Sundae with five scoops of Heavenly Hash and Rocky Road. Right there, man, that's some good eating right there. I got to run now.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to burn, that's right. I don't think I've heard somebody mention Heavenly Hash ice cream in jeez.
Speaker 2:15 years. Yeah, let me go age myself a little bit more.
Speaker 1:That was the bomb, that's okay, how often is it healthy to cry?
Speaker 2:Gosh, I don't know if there's a time frame. I think just whenever you need to, I find myself crying over stupid stuff. I see a building in New York and I'm crying. I think it's whenever you need to. I just think the biggest thing when it comes to that is what you need at the moment. I agree, and sometimes people, why are you crying over that? That's stupid. It's stupid for you, stupid for you. But we all have different opinions and different experiences in this thing. So let me have my experience. You have yours. How many?
Speaker 1:cups of coffee do you drink per day? Zero, nice.
Speaker 2:I don't drink coffee. I drink tea, but I don't drink coffee. Yeah, I drink tea sometimes and recently, like in the last few weeks, denise bought a juicer, so she's making beet juice around the house and now we have fresh beets in the refrigerator because she makes a beet juice with, I think, pineapples and celery or something. My main Ironman partner, training partner she used to own a vegan restaurant and I used to eat what she prepared when we were training and she prepared foods that were based on. So really, training with her got me hooked on the beet juice because she made at her restaurant, and then I got hooked on sweet potatoes.
Speaker 1:As a kid I hated sweet potatoes. Now I love them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they became a great recovery food because she'd actually carry potatoes like in her car and we'd have like 70, 80 mile bike rides and she'd come back and eat a potato before she went to go run. So I kind of learned that from her Nice. Do you think rats are cute? Absolutely not. The rats, the animal, or rat, the rock group either one, they're not cute. If I had to choose one, I'll go with a rat Rat Group. A little bit of Round and Round instead of Exactly.
Speaker 1:As somebody who has spent plenty of time in a New York City subway, you know that rats are not cute Not at all. Would you go to a movie alone?
Speaker 2:Yes, polka dots, or stripes Gosh, I'm going to go. Polka dots. Too much gut for stripes. Guys with guts can't wear stripes. They go out like that. They don't go straight.
Speaker 1:That's right. I can relate to that, so I got to go polka dots. That's perfect.
Speaker 2:Have you ever tasted soap? Absolutely.
Speaker 1:You know who my father was? If you said the answer was no, I was going to have to call bullshit.
Speaker 2:Just soap, body soap. Which kind are you talking about? You know clothes detergent? You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1:Whatever was closest.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we were doing the tie pod challenge before it was a thing.
Speaker 1:Our parents are making us do it. Yeah, we didn't have a choice. Exactly what secret about the universe would you most want to learn?
Speaker 2:I got to go with the assassination of Kennedy. All the conspiracy theories were floating around for 50, 60 years. I just want to know what the hell happened. You know 50, 60 years. I just want to know what the hell happened. It's one of those unanswered things. I had a chance to visit the Deadly Plaza in Dallas. I was like how can he shoot from here? I was like the guys in the movie trying to reenact things.
Speaker 1:We went to Dallas in 2014 before we ever moved, before moving was ever on the radar. We were in Deadly Plaza and saw the building and saw everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly how the the building and saw everything like, yeah, exactly like how the hell did he did this happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm like all of us don't was right, one bullet could have did this. Yeah, the magic bullet that had, uh, yeah, oh, so crazy. That's a good one though I would. I hope someday we find the real answer to that yeah, so that there you go fresh food or fried food fresh. What is the coolest feature in your home?
Speaker 2:oh wow, I have a little breakfast nook. We don't use it enough that we used to, but my wife and I used to sit down there and have a cup of tea and eat breakfast together before the child came to join us and wanted to eat all the food. So I guess maybe when he goes to college we'll continue that tradition. Ah, the child. So yeah, that. Or my grilling area. Okay, that's pretty cool. So I have a smoker and a gas grill on my back, porch and Sundays I can be out there for hours.
Speaker 1:I miss my smoker. We had a smoker in Texas. I sold it because when we moved here we thought we were going to be in an apartment for a couple of years. Sure Little did we know, nine months later we'd be buying a house and we haven't gotten. One has been saying for a while I've wanted to get one again. But now she is saying we need to get a smoker. She wants me to cook her brisket or ribs or whatever.
Speaker 2:Well, I will tell you a funny story behind my smoker. My smoker was a Father's Day gift a couple of years ago and I realized that when a woman buys you a smoker as a gift, it's the equivalent of when we buy her lingerie as a gift, because she brought me the smoker and the next week she brought meat marinade. She's like here. I'm like, yeah, this woman's never bought a steak in her life. Now she's buying briskets and steaks and she's, you know, bringing home wooden planks with salmon. She's like here, go smoke it. I'm like yo, it's a hundred degrees outside today.
Speaker 1:She's channeling your dad. She's like so exactly.
Speaker 2:So I'm out there sweating in a smoker for her and, uh, my church has a Father's Day cook-off every year now and I am your two-time champion. Nice, very, very nice. They say it's because I smoked this year I smoked wings and salmon. Yeah, and the funny part is I don't eat meat, but I smoked wings and salmon and they won. And so the ongoing joke in the church is how do you keep letting a vegetarian win the meat contest?
Speaker 1:Clearly something's going on here. There's another thing we might have to exchange some recipes for, whether rub or meat or anything. We're going to have to talk about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love my smoker. Matter of fact, I have a cousin in Atlanta and he just married my cousin and he's a smoker too. So he said you want to have a grill up? I said be careful what you're asking for.
Speaker 1:You better be real careful.
Speaker 2:I saw my setup and he's like I got a setup too. Buddy, I'm ready for you, that's right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm a vegetarian. I'm a two-time smoking champion. Yeah, I said, be careful.
Speaker 2:We have little grill trophies of what you get. I have my grill trophies upstairs in the house. Oh, man?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I never would have. I never would have figured that a vegetarian being a two-time smoking champion vegetables too.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I do my cabbage. I don't know that you can smoke vegetables. Yeah, like cabbage, my zucchini, I'll do all that. That's amazing. I love it. What is your favorite animal, like domestic animal or like anything? Anything I would have to be like, like a lion or a tiger or something like that. Okay, I'm highly allergic to most domestic animals, so I don't. I don't own pets. I got a dog one time and the dog almost killed me, but I loved it. I can't take it. The pet dander it's just oh. But yeah, no, I just love watching the nature show. It's a majestic way. You know, you got an 800-pound line that moves like he's 20 pounds. It's always a cool watch.
Speaker 1:Good answer. Are you more cautious?
Speaker 2:or bold Depends on what I'm doing. And the reason why I say that? Because I'm cautious, like when it comes to my family or money, making sure we have money in the bank. I don't do a lot of bold spending. I'm always conservative in that area. But you know, to go out and train for Ironman, you got to kind of bold in that jump in a lake and swim two and a half miles. You got to be kind of bold in that area to do that things with my family I'm probably much more cautious.
Speaker 2:What would you like to accomplish in the next year? To tell you the truth, most of my goals now are within my son. I've taken a lot of time off. I'm not training for any Ironman right now. I've taken a lot of time off from what I used to do and just all in preparation for him. I want to see him accomplish his goals and whatever I can do to help him get there. He has a swim team that practices six times a week. He practices with them six times a week but then two mornings a week he gets up and comes with me and goes to swim with me and he comes to the gym with me two, three times a week lifting weights. So really, and plus, that's a cool kind of bonding period for us because no one else is there and we can kind of talk in the car on the way to school. I stop and get him breakfast and really helping him hit his goals. I think that my wife and him have both put so much of their lives on hold to hit my goals.
Speaker 2:When you have somebody who's training for an Ironman, they're out of the house for 10 hours at a time on a Saturday sometimes and they were both kind of here by themselves while I was all doing that and they didn't give me a hard time at all. So if I can take some time off from that now. And hey, what do you want to do? You want to go swim, you want to go lift, you want to go run today? What do you want to do? I got you so and hopefully one day you'll see me.
Speaker 2:He's committed somewhere, going to school, and I'll be like okay, it worked, I know we're. And he had some big goals last year and crushed them all. Nice, especially if someone had only been swimming 20 months or so. I mean, he wanted to qualify for states and won two things last year at his school and he qualified in like seven things and he won conference swimming two things. So I was really really excited for him and he's starting to get even more competitive. So whatever I can do to help him, I'm with it. I'm being 100% full-time dad right now.
Speaker 1:I didn't realize he's only been doing it for a couple of years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, he just started swimming. His freshman year in high school he started swimming, so he's only had two school seasons.
Speaker 1:And he's already made it to conference.
Speaker 2:He had the goal this year. He said I want to try to qualify on one or two events and they want to qualify in seven, and so you know this. But this year now it's different because you're coming in with expectations, because now everybody knows you Right Now. How can you handle expectations? Him and I have an eye conversation all the time and managing expectations and just keep working as hard as you need to work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a hundred percent. Last question Sure, what is the kindest thing that anybody has ever done for you?
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, my gosh, that's a hard one, because I have met so many amazing people. I mean, oh gosh, I have been blessed beyond blessed with so many different people, whether it was times I had no money, times I might need a place to stay, or whatever. Oh man kindest. We've discussed this before, but I think I told you the story, but I'll tell it to all the listeners now. When I was about 20-something years old and me and the girl I was dating at the time and her sister, we went to New York City and I wanted to show them a good time in the city, because they were from Long Island but didn't get to the city much, and we went to the city, hung out. We ate dinner in Chinatown. I'm buying them stuff at the shops on the streets.
Speaker 2:I'm buying them street vendor food, whatever they want. I'm just spending money like I'm pub daddy or something and I was. You know, I'm just in the street spending money and we're having a good time and we take the A train and there's two A trains. There's a Rockaway A train, that's a Lefferts Boulevard A train and you got to take the Rockaway A train because that goes to the Howard Beach train station, right. So I learned that, because if you get on Lefferts Boulevard A, you're not going to go that way because they split off. So you got to catch it every other A and we got to Rockaway A and at the time parking was $3. I know it's a whole lot more than that now, but at the time this is maybe say, 94-ish Parking was $3.
Speaker 2:And I get to the parking lot and I realize I've spent every dime I have in the city. I have $0 left and I'm like, oh my God, I have nothing. And they're both getting frustrated because we've been there for like 20 minutes now and they're ready to go home and you can't go ask the railroad clerk for money. But meanwhile my dad was a station manager at the time and his picture's on the wall at Howard beach and we got the same name and I'm like there's no way in the hell I'm going to ask this clerk for money because if it gets back to my dad that I had no money, understand we will live at this station before I find that my dad finds out I've done this. If we got to live here, we just live here now. It is what it is. You know, pick a spot under the subway, go to sleep. That's right. My dad cannot find out you don't understand who my dad is, but he cannot find out that his son spent all of his money and had to ask one of his employees for three dollars to get his car out. And I mean I'm in the seats digging for change. I mean I'm not gonna find a nickel, a quarter. Listen, we don't have three dollars between three of us. It's crazy.
Speaker 2:You got three people here, all 19 20 years old, and we don't have $3 between three of us. It's crazy. You got three people here, all 19, 20 years old, and we don't have $3 between three of us. And this guy looked like he was coming out of work late and I said, sir, I'm not homeless, I spent all my money in the city. Can you help with $3? And he's like you're freaking stupid kids. And he gave me like $5, and he yelled at me when he did it. And I look at it now I say he's probably frustrated with his own kids and I probably reminded him of someone. He got at home and he like he busted out when he gave it to me and I didn't like being bust out, but I really needed that money to get my car out, so I didn't say anything. I was like thank you kind sir. Thank you so much. You made my day.
Speaker 1:Your day probably made your life.
Speaker 2:Just go ask the railroad clerk. You know the railroad clerk. You give him $3 to tell him who you are. No, you don't understand. That is not an option. I need you to understand that you have a better chance of going to show some leg to the railroad clerk and get the money, because it's not an option that I'm going to do this, because if I say I'm John Gerson and this gets back to my dad, I will never hear the end of it. So if we have to live in Howard Beach, we just live in Howard Beach Station. Now it is what it is. Just, you know this was before Zelle and Cash App and all this kind of stuff. We have to get money quick. You know this is before then. So, yeah, I had to beg for money and, like the third or fourth guy, he was coming from work, a suit on or something, let's come with work and he threw five dollars at me. I'll never forget it and I can get my car out.
Speaker 1:I had an 85 honda civic and I can get it out. Oh my gosh, you did tell me that story when we spoke a few weeks ago and I had almost I thought about that before we jumped onto this call and I forgot about it momentarily. But as soon as you started saying went into the city with your friends and I knew exactly where you were going and I almost had to mute my side because I was laughing so much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's probably the kindest thing someone did for me was give me five hours to get my car out of the parking lot at Howell Beach Station.
Speaker 1:So, sir, if you're listening. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you're listening, I appreciate you, sir. I never forgot you, and that was like 30 years ago, but I never forgot you. Thank you, that's incredible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he saved you from living under a bridge.
Speaker 2:Listen, if I had to live at the station, you don't understand, because asking that clerk was not an option. If I had to, yeah, it was not an option, and it was before cell phones and stuff, you couldn't call anybody.
Speaker 1:Oh no absolutely yeah, nobody had a cell phone in 1994.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we and I'll beg again whatever we got to do, because that's right, we're not doing this?
Speaker 1:how much longer were you dating that girl afterwards?
Speaker 2:you know something, not too as long. We both. The funny part was we both went to UNC, charlotte, so, but not too long after that because, yeah, I guess it could be me being broke. But you know, people remember when you're broke. They don't remember that part, they just remember you're broke and picked your money out. But you know, god has a plan, because my wife now she's seen me broke, she's seen me with money. We're still together. So God has a plan, absolutely right.
Speaker 1:John, thank you so much for today. Thank you Again. I'm not going to say I'm sorry that this went way over. I hope that Denise is not too mad. She's not even home. Okay, oh good, Then she doesn't know. Then she'll find out whenever she gets home.
Speaker 2:Exactly, she's not even home and my son didn't want to go to the gym, so he's fine, there you go.
Speaker 1:I truly am grateful for your time today for talking about all this. It was great to see you, and we do need to do this more often. I hope that one of these days we can see each other in person. Been too fucking long.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I will get my mom on one.
Speaker 1:Yes, definitely, let's.
Speaker 2:please make sure that happens.
Speaker 1:Awesome. In the meantime, go enjoy your weekend.
Speaker 2:Do the same. Please tell your wife I said hello and let me call all the doctors they need from me, definitely yes, I will, and give my love to your family and much love to you.
Speaker 1:I hope that we can talk more and see each other soon.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, thank you.
Speaker 1:John hadn't been back to New York in nine years and a surprise birthday trip turned into the vacation of a lifetime. Not only did he get to introduce his wife and teenage son to so many parts of his early life, but he uncovered a lot of what he didn't realize he had buried from his past. Once it smacked him in the face, he knew he had no choice but to confront it and process it. I don't have words to express how honored and proud I am to know John and to be the person he shared his very personal story with for the world to hear. I hope that you enjoyed hearing this conversation as much as we enjoyed having it. If you have a story of grief and loss to share and might want to be considered as a future guest on Our Dead Dads, go to OurDeadDadscom, go to the Contact Us link and then select Be a Guest, fill out the form, send it in and you just might be able to tell your story and carry on this mission of helping ourselves and helping so many others. Again, there are no rules to navigating grief and there's no timeline for doing it either. Everybody needs to go at their own pace, but the most important part is taking the very first step. Whether you want to tell your own story or you just want to listen to others tell their stories, the most important thing to understand is that nobody is alone in grief or should ever feel like they don't have someone who will talk to you or listen to you. Here at Our Dead Dads, within the safe space of this community, you always have both. Thank you for listening and get ready, because you have two episodes coming your way in the next week.
Speaker 1:This Friday, I'll be dropping the next edition of the hot seat, with my wife Kim returning to the co-host duties, and next week, all of the original crew returns for a holiday reunion my three brothers, jack, joe and Mike, who you met in episode two, my three friends Mike, ed and Dennis, who you met in episode three, my wife Kim, who has made a couple of appearances already, and my youngest sister, helene, from episode 22. Everybody's coming back together to talk about old Christmas traditions as well as the new ones, so don't forget to tune in this Friday for episode number 30, the Hot Seat, and next week for episode 31, the Goodfellas Holiday Reunion. Make sure you're following Our Dead Dads on your favorite podcast streaming platform, because you will not want to miss either of these episodes or any upcoming episode. This is Our Dead Dads, where we're changing the world one damage soul at a time. See you next time.