at first. That was good. What was bad was that my mom still worked in the city, so I felt badly about her commute and how hard she had to work. She knew this. My mom had to work, while a lot of other parents, including many stay-at-home moms, would drop off their kids at practice and go to games. My mom couldn’t do that. My dad couldn’t do that. My grandfather couldn’t do that. So I didn’t have that support. My parents were working. They couldn’t come to games. Later on in life when I had my first child, Paige, I tried to do things differently. I went to her track meets and cheerleading competitions. But I understood my mother’s position. I understood she had to work.
I would get on her sometimes, saying things like, “Oh, you know, Tippy’s mom was at practice.”
My mother said, “Lemme break it down to you. I work.”
In high school when I was fifteen, I met Marilyn, the woman who would become my first wife and the mother of my first child, Paige. Marilyn showed me what Suburban life was. If it was not for our relationship, I may not have gotten into the car business the way that I did. We met at Bay Shore Roller Rink. Most of us were still too young to drive, so all the parents would drop us off there. Now, for some of you young people reading this, you may not know what a roller rink is, but, in the seventies and eighties, these were places of great entertainment for teenagers. We’re talking roller skates, not ice skates. The lights on the roller floor would be low and theatrical, like a disco or a dance club. Instead of asking a girl to dance, you’d ask her to skate, if the right song was on. Then you’d hold her hand and spin around and around the roller rink. There was a snack bar with bad pizza and an arcade with pinball machines, Asteroids, and Pac-Man. Disco and early rap were blaring over the sound system. Sugar Hill Gang, Bee Gees, Kool and the Gang. Rock too. Led Zeppelin and The Who. Pink Floyd. “We don’t need no education.” Teenage hormone heaven. Bay Shore is gone now, long ago ripped apart by a wrecking ball. But back then, it was the center of our teenage social life. Every Friday night, we’d head over there in our school football jerseys, showing team spirit for the game the following day. Wearing your jersey was a way to rep your town: Brentwood, Bay Shore, Islip. One night I was at the roller rink with Kenny Williams, and he skated up to Marilyn and her friends. Kenny broke the ice, so to speak, and we started talking. She went to a nearby high school, not mine in Brentwood. A couple months after first meeting, we were dating.
So slowly, I adjusted. I still had Kenny Williams as my best friend, but I also began meeting other people. One of my best friends who lived across from my mom’s house in Brentwood was Joseph Romagnoli (he would later pass away in the 9/11 attack). We rode bikes together, and he helped me with my bicycle chain to keep the bike in good running shape. Joe was from a working-class Italian family, and we got along really well. Eventually, after several years, Long Island started to grow on me, because I realized there was a new sense of freedom. Back in the city, I was free to roam from uptown to downtown, but, on Long Island, there was space. And that wide-open sense of space brought a new freedom to my life. And now, I had Marilyn in my life. And, of course, when I turned sixteen, I got my driver’s license right away. Once again, Kenny Williams had a huge influence on me. He bought a Plymouth Satellite Sebring in a beautiful color: like a sea-foam green. The car had rims on it and a Pioneer stereo system rocking “Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde,” which he loved. The sound system was amazing. So Kenny said, “Will, you got to get a car. What’s wrong with you?” and he’s saying, “How are you going to go anywhere? You got to have a car.”
And I said, “Yeah, I got to get me a car.” So I talked to my grandfather, and I made up a story. And I said, “Listen, Papi, you know, I’m riding the bike everywhere, and, you know, at night, they can’t see me. I don’t want to get hit, so I want to buy a car.” So Papi helped me out with my first car. It was a Buick Skylark. It was a black one, really nice. Because I couldn’t get the Trans Am!
Kenny was saying things like, “Oh, you got to get the Burt Reynolds car.”
I was like, “Yeah, okay. My grandfather ain’t buying me that.” You know what I mean? So he helped me with my first car, and I got a license. And I used the car to go visit Marilyn. When you’re young and you’re dating and you’ve got your girl, you’ll do anything at any time to go see her. Well, I left before school at five thirty in the morning once to go hit up her house. I went down this road, hit a patch of black ice right on Brentwood Parkway, I think it was, and skidded right into a tree, wrecking the car. End of story. That was when I first discovered black ice. Marilyn’s uncle John had a body shop (I wound up working there later as a detailer), and he fixed the car for me. Soon after, I sold that car and wound up getting a green Pontiac LeMans. That became my main driver for the next several years.
When I turned seventeen, I wound up learning how to valet park cars at Mario’s Restaurant. At first, I tried to get a job as a busboy, but I wasn’t very good. One day the manager said to me, “The valet is not in today. Can you drive a stick shift?”
I said, “Hell, yeah, I can drive a stick shift.” They gave me the job for the night, because the regular guy, Gerard, was out for a couple days. It was a fancy restaurant, and I loved it. I thought Oh, my God, I got my dream job, parking all these nice cars. I’m getting paid well, loving the tips. Of course, Gerard eventually came back for his job. He was an older guy too. He was out of high school, while I was still in high school. I had the evening shift after school, and at night is when you make the money.
So Gerard said, “Listen, I usually do the doubles.” Then he goes, “I like you. I’m going to give you two days, and you can do the afternoons if you get like a work release from school, if you get out early enough.”
So I think I started getting out at—I don’t know—eleven thirty or twelve. I had early courses or whatever, and I would work the afternoons and later in the evening, and I fell in love with the job. El Dorados, Rivieras, Ferraris, Jaguars. That’s when I got really hooked on cars. I was like, Wow. These guys got money. They’re business guys. They’re paying me fifty or a hundred dollars just to park their car. It was just a great job; I only worked two days a week and wound up being able to buy an engagement ring for Marilyn. You know what I’m saying? So I was doing really well while still in high school.
“That’s when I got really hooked on cars.”
One day I had a JV baseball double header, and I called in sick to school. In the afternoon, I wound up going to Carvel Ice Cream with Marilyn and running into my baseball coach, and he told me, “I thought you were sick.” So he busted me. The following day I went to practice. He had me do ten laps around the park, so this is when I forgot about baseball and football and decided I was going to work and make money. My twenty-dollar allowance wasn’t getting me anywhere, and I had to pay for insurance for the car if I wanted to drive.
Now, it was around this time that I first ran headlong into tragedy. Kenny Williams was still my best friend; he made a great effort to stay connected to me when I moved from the city out to Long Island, and our relationship grew more even after I left the Lower East Side. He would come out with my mom every weekend and stay at the house with us. We’d watch Super Bowls. We were both Steelers fans growing up. You know, Franco Harris, Lynn Swann, Mean Joe Green, Terry Bradshaw, L.C. Greenwood, I mean, that whole Steel Curtain era meant a lot to us. Didn’t matter that we were from New York—that was our team together. Me and him were very, very big into football. Kenny was strange in a way; he never liked anybody getting in between us and our friendship, attention-wise. Kenny always wanted attention, always. So he didn’t like me having Marilyn in my life. He was one of those guys. Odd. He thought when someone finds a girlfriend, they forget about their best friend.
So one day, he drove to Marilyn’s place and brought my ex-girlfriend, Sophie. Marilyn answered the door and turned and said to me, “Oh, Kenny is here with your girlfriend.” And she was crying and pissed off that Kenny came with this girl from the city.
And I was like, “What are
