Welcome back to tales of one kid's musical journey through the Caldwells. Thanks for the somewhat overwhelming positive feedback on the first installment–it means a lot! To start, I have to go backward to go forward–I have an earlier sonic tale that I suspect may echo many of your own. Baby Remember My Name The year was 1980. The instrument teacher, Mr. Buchanan (I'm fairly certain that was his name; was it Becky's father?), held an assembly at Wilson School to demonstrate all of the instruments on offer to us students for in-school lessons. It was actually a concert; kids who were already …

Music has been a massive part of my life as long as I can remember. At 3-years-old, I had my first album, Ernie's Greatest Hits. At 5, I had my first single, "Saturday Night" by the Bay City Rollers. In 1977, I had my official musical Big Bang when my mother indulged in one of those Columbia House "12 8-track tapes for a penny" deals that were so common back then. If you don't remember, the only catch was that you would have to buy X amount of 8-tracks over the coming years at regular (inflated) club prices. I suppose it really wasn't that bad of a deal; as of this writing, ol' Franny just …

People of the Caldwells–prepare for the dreaded "Mischief Night" on Oct. 30! Throughout the area, sales of eggs, shaving cream, soap and toilet paper have been exceeding normal levels. Houses, cars, and trees, pumpkins and people: beware! Growing up, Mischief Night wasn't much of big deal on my block. While we Whitaker Boys (i.e., us kids living on the street and the adjacent Pine Tree Place) were certifiably mischievous, it was more comedy-driven, and all-year 'round at that! One of my most vivid memories of Mischief Night is the time ... The Cadillac Got Jacked We had a nice, 1977 maroon (…

Welcome "back"! It's time for some TV talk. Let's dial it back to the times when "going digital" meant switching your alarm clock. When the closest thing to a TIVO was "Devo." I want to cover the early days of cable in the Caldwells. Background in the Foreground Cable television was originally created as a method of content delivery (there's a modern-day term) for remote folks—and I don't mean remote control. It was for people in areas far away from television broadcast signals; rabbit-ear antennas and the like weren't able to grab and send anything from the air to your 19-inch Magnavox …

Welcome back! Thanks to everyone for reading last week's Mr. Hull-themed entry. Many mailed me with similar memories of this quirky educator. Former Caldwells' kid Eric Blaier passed through Wilson the Hull-way a couple of years before I did, and revealed, "He would talk about "Saturday Night Live" for half of every Monday morning!" Cindy Deyo dropped a line to say that Hull was "absolutely my favorite teacher ever!" Yet another another reader did some intrepid research, and found that a "Dennis C. Hull" retired from the Newark Schools district around 2004. Is this our Hull? If so, it begs …

There's a point on our adopted Anicent-Roman derived, but not exact, calendar. It falls smack in the last week of August, right before Labor Day. Yes folks, "Back to School" time is a period, all it's own, apart from the sometimes dragging hot summer months and right before our houses of learning reopen for business. The weather stays the same and the leaves hold firm hanging on the trees, but something different is happening. Attendance at the pools dips, while the malls swell with customers. It's a time of much exaggerated emotion; kids act sad (and even mad), but secretly glad to go back …

Since I've previously written about being such a "good" boy while going to C.C.D. in The Caldwells, I will now have to confess that I have sinned: For a brief time, I was a hardened criminal, sometimes with a hard pretzel. I wasn't that bad of a kid. My errant behavior and so-called mispent youth was more the product of having a lot of energy (my new POLKA DOT! song "A Lotta Energy" is on iTunes now, by the way), creativity and a propensity for mischief. Isn't that nice? What is mischief? Webster's and dictionary.com may have their own and universally acknowledged interpretations, but my …

My father, Ronald Michael Albanese, passed away this past July 3 at 12:02 a.m. Surrounded by his family, he finally succumbed to the unstoppable ravages of Alzheimer's disease. He was 67 years old. If you've been reading this column closely, you may have realized that my father was a figure who loomed large in my life not only as a parent, but as an iconoclastic hero of sorts. In fact, during what was our only half-serious conversation about his advancing condition, after listening to me say that I'd be there the best I could for him, his response was a flippant "frig it." Thanks to the …

When I think of summer, I remember the time spent "down the shore" at Seaside Park or Seaside Heights, because usually, once school let out, I was outta here until after Labor Day. But there were times when our shore house was rented and I was up here in the sticks.  The memories range from super-nostalgic to just plain weird. The Shorts Strike of 1982 In my sixth-grade summer—that is, the summer after sixth grade—my then common partner-in-crime Sam Lin and I briefly went on a "shorts strike." In "short," we were not gonna wear them, no matter how hot it got! Call it a bizarre social …

All rise, and welcome to the all-religious Remember When? If you have made your Holy Communion and Confirmation, you can surely remember some of these days. Even if you haven't, you can likely still relate.  It Was Hell Learning About Heaven It all started in first grade for me, when the moment she could, my mother enrolled me in Catechism class or "C.C.D." I know that I'm not even two paragraphs into this, but I already have a question: What exactly does that stand for? They never told us, or at least I don't remember that lesson. I've since realized it stands for Confraternity of Christian …

I recently went on my annual fifth-grade camping trip at school. I'm not in fifth grade (and I'm smarter than one, I think), but I've gone as a chaperone the last four years. What that basically means is three days of chasing kids around the Pocono mountains, hiking and being away from home. It's pretty great, and for the students, it's just about amazing. Some barely go out in their backyards, let alone into woods. Pulling on all my skills I learned down at "The Trails," I keep an eye on them and enjoy watching them learn and interact with each other. It's one of the last old-school …

Let's all say we're a bunch of second-graders in 1978. It's a warm day and we're at school during lunch time: It's time to play outside. Yes, up to 30 glorious minutes are ours for the taking. We sometimes may choose to play kickball, but today, for the sake of this developing dissertation, all the balls are flat, and the one good one has been kicked on the roof. Today we're going to hit the playground, and partake in some of the finest equipment the '70s had to offer—and a surprising fixture as well. I went to Roosevelt and Wilson schools during this era, and when considering the other …

There I was, looking at 1970's commercials on YouTube, when my son needed some help studying for his science test. In the great science divide of notebooks and "dittos," (remember calling them that?) there was an army of small plastic creatures. These "Gogo's Crazy Bones" are apparently all the rage with Nicholas and his fellow third-graders right now. After dinner he went with Jimmy the neighbor and his third-grader (Emily) to Walgreen's and cleaned out its stock. Now, he has a mini Roman army of multi-colored pieces of hard plastic, the beauty in the eye of the single-digit-aged beholders. …

The other day I was thinking about things from the past in The Caldwells, and how sometimes what is old becomes new again.  For the most part, things change, but mostly stay the same. Former stores come to mind. Grants closed, but soon came Marshalls and Bradlees, whose demise gave us Sears Hardware.  Unlike those purveyors of fine retail shopping, there is one thing that has been lost to the past in these parts and like the Concorde, has no modern equivalent. I'm talking about the Italian Feast. Background The feast was a yearly event, themed on the boot-shaped country definitely held during…

It appears that for once, Mother Nature is finally falling in line with our ancient Rome-derived calendar, and gracing us with some awesome spring weather. As the temperatures continue to rise, that means one main thing: More time outside! For kids, even the most devoted Mario maniac or Xbox addict can't resist the innate urge to leave the virtual world for the real one. Then, there's the kickoff of baseball programs. When I took my son to his first baseball practice the other day, I recalled the baseball days of my youth in West Caldwell. Mass Uniformity There was a baseball program as early…

Welcome back! This edition of Remember When? will conclude my three-part arc on bicycling when I was growing up in The Caldwells, by taking some twists and turns into unexpected territory. If you missed the first two editions, there are here and here. Go read 'em; I'll wait. So, there I was in the early '80s, thinkin' "I'm a grownup," flush with the independence of having a bike. I can go places, man. On top of that, there's a bunch of kids (younger, the same age and older) of like mind. Before this turns into a Dr. Suess book, let me explain. As soon as I could, I was riding everywhere, with…

Welcome to your Caldwells Patch time machine! When I was writing my first main feature last time about bike riding, I noticed two things: 1. Wow, my childhood is interlaced with bike activity! 2. I've missed my calling—I should have been working in the bicycle industry in some capacity.  This week, I'm going to share tales from my kiddie biking days when I moved to Whitaker Place from St. Charles Avenue. It was a new neighborhood with new kids and new places to ride. After this, there will be one more bike feature, which will include my really big biking idea!  Read on! Four Wheelin'... …

Welcome back to Remember When? Thanks again for reading this stuff. It's funny how many ask how I have such a good memory. The answer is simple ... I don't know. But, hopefully it's entertaining! Mother Nature has been blanketing us with snow, but spring is right around the corner. Everyone lightens up a bit in what the Italians call "primavera," mentally and physically. Kids get to play outside more, and although it's not the way it was, they come of age a bit. Riding their bicycles is a big part of the experience.  Ah, bikes. My history of owning pedal-powered wheels is fairly simple, but …

It's time for another edition of Remember When? Thanks to everyone for the feedback on the last few columns. Many of you mentioned that my description of Mrs. McWilliams was "dead on." This time around, Remember When? is going to be about some headline news... literally, and retroactively, of course—let's go!  It's the early '80s, and I want to make you about 11 to 14 years old, and you are... a paperboy! By the decade of the Yuppie, paperboys (or girls, at least somewhere) were far, far removed from their historical cinematic representations. They were no longer found on every urban street …

Welcome "back" to Remember When? So far, it's been some trip through our past lives in The Caldwells—we've rode our bikes all over to play video games, we've walked home from school and we've even gone down the trails. Not bad, for a bunch of time travelers, right? I was going to take a dip this week into the town pools, and will but only do so in part. This time around, I want to revisit our favorite part of elementary school days—in addition to gym and recess—lunch time! Back in my time, school lunches hadn't yet super-evolved into non-stop health campaigns; The gym doubled as the cafeteria…