Pa its been 2 years. Helping John move. Childhood friend stops by

10/12/2014

Pa its been 2 years. Helping John move. Childhood friend stops by
10-11-14

My Pa passed away 2 years ago. My He lived a great long life. He worked very hard. He was in the navy and when he came back, he worked for and eventually with his brothers in the scrap iron business. He was a huge sports fan. He played semi professional football after a 4 year scholarship played football at what is now Boston College. I definitely inherited his love for sports.
For most of my life, the Red Sox were not a good team. Every time we would talk about them, he would say “those bums” Pa… they were definitely bums this year.

It's been 2 years this my Pa was taken from me. I think about you every day. Love you. Miss you. Go Red Sox (Those bums) 03-15-18 10-11-12

* Unfortunately, it was INDIANA who helped me through. She called me a few times a day over the next few days to make sure I was ok and to have someone to talk to.


It was a rainy, crummy day out today but it was moving day for John, my best friend.
He had bought a house and after some sorta major-minor work he had to do before he moved in, it was finally moving day.

He told me he would pick me up between 10-11AM… at 11:15 he picked me up and we went to pick up the U-Hall. We drove to the storage and we got out, he opened up the back and brought me in so I could feel how big it was.

We went to the storage and he opened it up. He went through the stuff in the front, figuring out what will fit where. He gave me a rolled up rug and walking slowly, with nothing (or no one) to guide me, I had to find the start of the ramp and walk up it. (did I mentioned it was raining out) I got up and he was closely behind me. He told me to put it on the shelf, and I did. When I was trailing my way back off the truck, I was confused because I only felt a step. So I went down the two steps with holding on to the hand rail. He said why didn’t you go down the ramp? I told him that I didn’t know where it was. He said it was in the middle with steps on either side. Hmm I was ok with finding the ramp to go up, but not sure where the ramp was exactly coming off, I didn’t want to take a chance and think I’m stepping onto the wet ramp with nothing to hold on to, and fall 4 FT to the ground…my luck, I would hit my head on the ramp on the way down. So after a few more times of going up the ramp and down the stairs, I had a brilliant idea.
Instead of walking up a wet ramp holding boxes with nothing-no way of holding on to something… I’ll fallow the side of the ramp to where the steps are and place the objects on the floor of the truck and John can take them-move them from there. It worked and I was a lot more faster. We were doing this for about an hour. We had put all the small stuff in just me and him.
I complained that he was giving me all light things… I regret that now lol. We picked up a 4 person, leather couch. I could lift it with my arms but for some reason, my knees buckled. I had to put it down. He threw every name at me, referring to me being weak, I said ok, I’m ready. It was heavy and damn heavy when it was on the angle going up the wet ramp and I had the side that was walking forward so all the weight was shifted my way but I got it up …followed by more insults by John. We then waited for his fried Dave to show up. (they are both 6FT + and 270 + … So John told Dave of my weakness… more insults came my way by both of them. I said “Sorry that I don’t have big bones for big muscles like you guys have” they laughed. I just stood there for the rest of the time. The rain subsided to a drizzle. They brought the snow blower, the lawn mower, the grill, a love seat, another matching chair and a coffee table, some cabinets and the worst of the worst. His king size mattress. I would love to know how much a king size mattress weighs. Hmm I guess I can google it lol. (It’s 85-115 LBS…I think it was more than that) With everything in the u-hall, and a few other things in Dave’s car, we were off to John’s house.

John’s mom and her husband were at the house along with John’s kids. She was doing some painting and he was doing something electrical. I played-was in charge of John’s kids. (sorta) They were playing with Holden’s Thomas the Train set, the same one’s Dom’s son had. Grace, John’s 3 year old was singing a song that sounded familiar and I asked her what movie it was from, she said frozen… that’s Dom’s daughter’s favorite movie and she had sang it a lot when I was there and later on, Grace brought out her tea set and we had a tea party and it wasn’t as good as the one I had bought for Dom’s daughter and was a little sad that we don’t talk any more 

John had ordered pizza and it eventually came. I sat at the table with Dave and the kids. I was quite surprised where he got the pizza from. It is this local place which I haven’t heard about since I was in elementary school. Actually, my 4th grade teacher was the owner of the place. The pizza was crappy. It was soggy and there was like two slices of pepperoni per a slice of pizza which, they didn’t even cut the pizza. I could tell Holden didn’t care for it but John said to him, you better get use to it, you better like it, it’s our new Sal’s pizza. (Sal’s is a very good pizza (not a fav of mine but much better than this stuff) and then John said “it’s not bad is it?” Holden said no, it’s alright. I would rather have Sal’s though. (there is about 4 pizza places in the area) Soon after we finished the pizza, the kids were playing and another one of John’s came to help move the stuff. I was just sitting there as his mom was cleaning up. She looked at me and asked me if I wanted to go home. I told her no, I’m ok. Two minutes later she looks at me and says, all you have to do is say the word and I’ll drive you… I eventually said yes. There was a baseball game on and I was just sitting there doing nothing and with Jeff and Dave there, I didn’t think I was needed.

John actually called me up later to thank me for helping him. I was so shocked I called his sister
L: HI dear, what’s up?
J: write this day down in history.
L: what?
J: write this day down in history.
L: why?
J: I just got a call from your brother and he called me just to thank me.
L: WHAT?!?! GET OUT OF HERE!
J: yup, that was all. Just to thank me.
L: wow

Lisa being Lisa, she had to tell me what she was doing-where she was going and with whom. I was happy for her, she was going over a friend’s house to chat and have a few glasses of wine. I think she gets to do something like this 3 times a year. So I was happy for her. She got to have an adult night.

Lastly, a childhood friend stopped by
Kenny, a childhood friend of mine, we went to cub’s scouts together. I have not seen him since HS. He bought his mom's house and was cleaning it out a bit and found a few things my twin and I would like so instead of throwing it out, he brought it over. and he had his 15 year old daughter with him.

The doorbell rang and I answered it. We said our hi’s and he introduced his daughter. He came in, asked where he could put the bag down. I told him just “you can just put it down over there” pointing to the side wall (when you come in my house, there is a little landing and you can go either up or down stairs) He came in, walked down stairs. (his daughter followed him)
K: geez man I remember this place. This room (the den) looks a little different from when I remember it.
J: we had a flood about 7 years ago and we had to gutter out the entire downstairs. Walls and all because of the mildew.
K: oh right right. I remember the TV was against that wall and it was on a big stand and we would be sitting over there. (I’m sure pointing for his daughter’s purpose) We would watch wrestling and baseball in here. And your room was down to the right, right?
J: yup, come on, this way. (they followed me)
K: where do you want me to put the bag down?
J: anywhere is fine. over there is fine. (against the wall)
K: Geez, looking around, I have a lot of this stuff too. (he talked about some of the stuff I had that he had too. including a New England Patriots blanket I have hanging up))
J: I had something to show you. (I took out a baseball that was autographed by the 1948 RedSox.) I told him the person who authenticated it, told me it was the 1948 Red Sox because Ted Williams was on it and he was fighting over seas in WWII. After looking at it for a while, he said that he thinks he sees Ted Williams’s right on top. He said let me pull my phone out. He pulled up an autograph on his phone and cross referencing it with 3 other sources, he said it has to be the 1946 RedSox. He explained to me that he has one source that is a letter he wrote to a kid where the W sort of looks like a C and the S looks like an S where on mine it looks like a backwards 2. But then he brought up another autograph, that was on a baseball and it looked very similar to mine where he explained that he doesn’t pick up the pen going from the Ted to the Williams and just like mine, it looks like a C for the W. He showed his daughter and she agreed that it did look just like the autograph on my ball. When she agreed, I almost had tears running down my face. The 1948 would be $750 this one maybe $2K? maybe a LOT MORE than that. Maybe even into the 10’s of thousands. He handed it back and we were talking about his daughter and how strange it is to pick her up after school and hearing the bell. He explained the bell is now electronic and he turned to his daughter and explained that our bell, sounded like a real bell. She was surprised. I chuckled, thinking “damn man, you are making us look old” He told me that he plays lacrosse and just played in an alumni game against the team they have there now so it was these 30 something year olds vs these 20 and 21 year olds. But it was fun. H told me more about his daughter. He’s trying to get her to play sports. She’s also an artist. I commented saying that in about 7 years, I can get Amanda (my sister) to get her to play football. (Kenny was loving that since he played football) He told me what he does for work and how he got to where he is. He talked about his new born with his new bride. He said twice that he had to go…he asked if I remembered this kid name Mike Fanandez. I said sure. he told me about him now, how he’s a police for the LAPD but comes back to Boston a weekend a month so he was going to go hang with him tonight at whisky park but I’m just going to drink water. I gave up alcohol a year ago. And the conversation went on and on, back and forth. I said to him “I can stay here and chat all night but I think you have to be getting somewhere?” He was like aw ya we should be going. We talked about getting together sometime for a sports event and I saw them to the door with a hand shake from him and a “nice meeting you” to his daughter.

*** Geez, after reading the part over, I left out a lot of discussions. We talked a lot.

But that was pretty much my day as I went back to listening to my baseball and the KC Royals beat the Baltimore Oriels 6-4, taking a 2-0 lead in the American League Championship series with the teams now shifting back to KC for games 3-5 … if it gets to a game 5. Then the SF Giants shutout the STL. Cardinals 3-0 to take game one of the National League championship series.