what she was doing most of her adult life. With her very few problems, she was the most supportive person I still have ever met in my life. She would give you anything you needed; however, she wanted to see a person surviving, doing the right thing in life. In life, you really need to try to do the right thing every day. If you do, then most issues go away. That is one of Mom’s secrets that she taught me growing up.
Back when I was a little kid, growing up, I used to go crabbing and fishing with Pops as well as Jupe, my older asshole brother. Jupe is my nickname for this asshole. So we would bring about six traps and about the same amount of drop lines so we would have about twelve things to monitor all day long. Pops would lie down in the one raft. There were two of them, side by side, in Edgewater where we went crabbing. So we would normally catch about thirty nice-sized crabs and give them to the Porzios, who loved to eat them, which worked out perfectly for us each time we went.
So one day I brought my fishing pole and cast it into the river and hooked this long green eel that started to give me a hell of a fight to bring him on land, which I finally did. It was about three and a half feet long as well as a half foot thick. We would go crabbing about five to six times in the summer each year for a few years until it stopped due to Pops drinking and other bullshit he caused. Pops always fucked up the few good things we had going on, like this crabbing shit. It was a good time and kept everyone out of trouble for the day. It was just another thing he fucked up on me. His drinking was really getting to my mother as well as everyone else. He would drink like a real asshole and start picking on whoever was in his sight, which a lot of the time was me. I could not help it, but I always told his ass off; it just came out naturally.
There are just so many stories I can write about my life with my mother, so I am just going to start now. The first story is when me and Mom went to a department store called Valley Fair in Little Ferry, New Jersey. It was a large department store as well as a supermarket. We were walking through when Mom came across a man’s wallet that was stuffed with one-hundred-dollar bills, so what she said to me was that we had to find the man who lost his wallet and give it back to him because she could not live with herself if she did not do so. So, me being me, I asked Mom to just take out the hundreds, and we can turn it into security, which quickly got me a slap in the face, and I shut up; so mom went through the wallet and found his driver’s license with his picture on it, and we found him, and she gave it back to him. He tried to give her a reward, which she would not take. She told me she would feel very good tonight because she found him and returned his wallet and money to him. She was glowing after that. It was a very important part of my life back then due to me not knowing anything about life at that time.
The above story was one that she had meant for me to learn and never forget, which I still have not at fifty-seven. It was immorally valuable throughout my entire life. We were living at 129 Bergan Avenue in Ridgefield Park, NJ. We had the Porzios on the left as well as the Murtags across the street with their twelve children. It was always a Wiffle ball game or a touch football game between everyone on the block.
The ball games were always intense, with all of us trying to win. Each year I would go up to the Catskills with the Porzios. They had fifteen acres, two homes on the property, as well as a big lake on it. I always had a great time with Mike as well as the rest of his family. We would go fishing almost every day. He also had two of the most beautiful sisters, Leslie and Evelin. I really liked Evelin simply because she was only three years older than me and had one of the most beautiful asses you would ever see.
So one day, up in the mountains, it was really bad whether outside, and me and Mile were going to sleep on the pair of bunk beds. So Mike took the bottom one, and I took the top. The weather was getting really bad, so Evelyn came into our room, and she told me to move over because she was going to sleep with me that night, which was a great night for me. Nothing really happened; however, I had a great sleep that night with Evelien right next to me the whole night!
Anyway, me and Mike Porzio used to go fishing quite often up there. His mom would drive us too and come and pick us up in a few hours. She would be drinking Budweiser while she drove us around. After we would fish, she would take us out for something to eat, then we would go to a local neighbor who had tons of corn on the cob, which we would jump out of her van and take a dozen or so each, bring them home, and shuck them for his mom. Then she would cook them, and we would eat them with whatever dinner she had made. I had such a good time with the Porzios because they always treated me in such a great way with no crap.
On the weekends it was always a blast due to everyone being there, such as Mr. Porzio as well as Leslie and Wally and Evelin. We would play all kinds of different things all the time. The time would go by so fucking quickly the weekends were up in the blink of an eye. It was so very nice to hang out with real friends who would mess around with you but also love you just the same. They were the best people in my life for such a long time!
My mom did not mind me going away with the Porzios simply because she trusted them. She believed it was good for me to get away due to the everyday problems I had each and every school day. Mainly due to the fact she had no choice but to work each and every day, she would get home till approximately 5:30, at which time I could finally come in the home because my witch older sister, Laura, kept me and my older jerk of a brother, Joe, locked out all day long.
Most days I would stay at the Porzios’ home whenever someone was home. They knew my witch sister was a total asshole. These people were the best I had ever known while I was growing up. They also had a couple of pet dogs. One was called Princess, who stayed mainly with Mrs. Porzio; the other dog’s name was Troubles, who I fell for 100 percent. He was a Terra. If he did not know you, he was 100 percent German shepherd, black as night. Troubles was mostly locked outside most days; so one day the town drunk called Tubby was drinking and was walking up to the Porzios’ fence, where Troubles was.
I screamed at Tubby, “Do not go there. He will rip you apart if you do.”
He told me to mind my fucking business then walked up to Troubles’s fence, then Troubles grabbed him by his face and tore half of his face off. He was bleeding like I had never seen before in my life. After that, the police came, and Mr. Porzio had to make a move with Troubles. He had to move him up to his New York property, or they were going to kill him. He got moved upstate to their property.
Back in my early life going to St. Francis Catholic School, which was right down the street from our home, was a tough place to go to school for anyone due to the strict layout of the entire school system with all the nuns. There was also a Catholic church on the property as well, so it was St. Francis School and St. Francis Church on the same property. I did not get into very much trouble my first three or four years; however, that changed. My last two years at St. Francis were not very good. I had started to steal the chocolate milk as well as the regular milk I knew when the deliveries would come. On top of that, I had so much time to myself due to being locked out of my home by my evil sister, Laura.
So after a year of swiping the milk whenever I could, as well as getting into trouble during the school day, such as ducking out of classes and not bringing my school work in for homework and all that kind of stupid stuff, I also took a lot of abuse from Sister Virginia as well as the principal, Sister Catherine. I also had an issue with Father Fats, as I called Father Daughty, who would always come after me because I would get into the school to shoot the basketball by myself for hours. He would always come into the school. I had no idea why or how he knew I was in there, shooting hoops; that was the only reason I would stop shooting hoops due to Father Fats. At the end of the day, I did have, I guess, a really good time going to school at St. Francis because I believed it was a very good school in my little community.
When I was growing up, at around six years old, me and my mom were so close basically everything I was doing I almost always let my mom know just to get her approval on my thoughts. So I was always getting into some kind of skirmish nearly every day with the neighbors or someone on the block. I did not know why this kept happening; however, it had to stop. I
