Villa Restaurant

I just started work as a bus boy/diswasher at the Italian Villa Restaurant on Bustleton Avenue in Northeast Philadelphia.

I started on Monday---quit on Wednesday.

My hours were 5 to 11, but I didn't get out of there either night until after 1, and my parents were a little concerned.

What I remember most about the place were the waiters and waitresses seemed have to dress in hats and fancy shirts and blouses, the salad bar, the hot water to get the the sauce off the dishes, the crusted on burnt sauce in the pans, and the slippery floor.

I called the nasty owner on Wednesday to tell him I wasn't coming in and he started yelling and screaming at me.

My father called him to ask him about my paycheck, and he apparently said he wasn't going to pay me. My father threatened to punch him in the nose and drove up to get my paycheck. He got it :)

1974 Flyers Parade---May 20, 1974

I was in town applying for a job with the Victor Temporaries (typed 64 words per minutes) when I exited the building and came upon the parade celebrating the Flyers 1974 Stanley Cup victory from the day before.

There are still photos of a young man who looks like me jumping up on of the flat bed trucks to shake Bernie Parent's hand (I now get to do that each year at the Haddon Heart Run 5K in December).

http://www.runnersworld.com/cda/racefinderdetail/1,7150,s6-239-283-284-0-0-0-0-1892967,00.html

Here's a Youtube video of the parade---see if you see me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aOamH4nzA0

Losers no more---Flyers win the Stanley Cup

One of the greatest sports moments I have ever known---even more special because it was the first championship for a city that truly was the city of losers.

Here's a youtube video of Game #2, Bobby Clark's overtime goal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Kbg_1Y7saA

and here are the final moments of the final game...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-feMY5gi1M

It's Halloween 1973

It's Halloween, 1973---Wednesday, October 31st--about 5PM.


It's dark, as we have set our clocks back the previous Sunday.


I have driven to college today, and about 10 miles down the road is Fitzgerald Mercy Hospital. That's where my father is. He has had surgery to remove his Prostate.


Its's dark--I enter his room and he is heavily sedated and sleeping peacefully---with a tube of some kind coming out of him.


He doesn't waken, and I don't try to wake him.


When I return home, the house is like a morgue.

Bob and Pat Smiley marry

My brother Bob and his fiance, Patricia just got married---congratulations!

My mother tells me my father has cancer

Sometime after dinner, my mother and I were sitting at the kitchen table, and she asked me to walk down to the Pharmacy on Orthodox street and pick up a prescription.

I guess I was a little puzzled as my father does all the errands---at that point, she told me my father had prostate cancer.

I didn't really know what to think---I didn't even know how to spell it (prostrate, prostate) and there was no Internet.

As I walked the two blocks to the Pharmacy and the two blocks back, I sensed that my childhood had just ended.

A little less than 2 years later, my hero, the man to this day I still refer to as the most saintly person I ever met (my mother is saintly too, but her temper and language are a bit stronger), was gone.

Everyone is here for dinner

It's a Monday, and everyone (mother, father, Joe and Annette, Bob and Pat are here for dinner).

What's going on?